Category: Culture

I’ve stumbled across something that I’m sure that many many other people have seen before. I’ve always been kind of slow on the uptake. That something that I’ve stumbled across is a commonality that exists between and among disciplines that have been thought to have been quite varied. What I’ve discovered is that disciplines like Keynesianism (economics), Deconstructionism (literary theory), Marxism (political theory), Legal Positivism (legal theory), Nihilism and existentialism (philosophy), historicism (historiography theory) neo-orthodoxy (theological theory) and Code Pink (sexual theory) all derive from a common theological assumption and that assumption is that “God, or the objective, is Dead.” Of course this makes perfect sense because it serves, once again, to reveal that theology (in this case the theology of anti-theology) is the fount out of which springs an integrated fount of academic disciplines.

Humanism is the positive side of the negative I am getting at. In other words, all the disciplines I’ve mentioned are, positiviely speaking the embrace of Humanism. However, when view negatively they all share the common thread of insisting that any notion of an objective, including an objective God is dead. Let us consider this to see if we can see the clear “death of the objective” strand that links all of these disciplines together.

In economics, Keynesianism desires the death of any objective standard for money and desires only that a subjective governmental standard be used in order to set the value of money. This is done so that money by fiat can be pursued. This explains why Keynesians hate the idea of a gold or silver standard. Keynesians despise the notion of the objective and so in order to set the government or the money interest up as god they seek to forever get rid of the objectively objective. In economics you have the death of the objectively objective.

In literary theory, Deconstructionism posits the death of the objective author. With the death of the objective the Deconstructionists end up positing the subjective reader as the sovereign. In Deconstructionism it is the subjective reader who determines the meaning of the text. When Deconstructionism is given its head all of life becomes a author-less text and the sovereign subjective interpreter shapes and creates their own meaning out of whatever text they encounter. In literary theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In political theory, Marxism is materialistic and so posits the death of an objective God finding its objective instead in the subjective movement of the Hegelian Absolute spirit. For the Marxist economics is the foundation and talk about religion, mind, and values are merely the superstructure that is built upon the foundation in order to justify the foundation in a ex post facto manner. For the Marxist there is no external objective reality to which subjective reality must answer to. For the Marxist the subjective is all there is and the best that can happen is that the subjective can be enlarged (blown up like a balloon) to become the objective. This is done by making the State the subjective objective by which all the rest of the subjective is measured. In political theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In legal theory, Legal positivism denies transcendent meaning insisting that meaning can only be that which can be proven subjectively. (All statements must be verifiable except for the statement that all statements must be verifiable.) Legal positivism assumes the death of the objective and then insists that anybody who disagrees with their ontology must prove the objectively objective by means of their subjective standard as it exist in their subjectively objective worldview. An impossibility from the word go. The result of legal positivism is that God and the objectively objective are ruled out of bounds clearing the field for their legal theory. In legal theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In philosophy, the existence of both Nihilism and Existentialism (the informing streams of post-modern consciousnesses) is posited upon the truth that there is no objectively objective truth. Nihilism denies their is any meaning except for the meaning that there is no meaning. Existentialism declares that existence precedes essence so that existence has no concern about objectively objective essence or meaning since subjective existence determines meaning. In both of these philosophies all that exists is the sovereign subjective individual using his will to power to turn his subjective will into the objective standard by which all things will be measured. In philosophy you have the death of the objectively objective.

In educational theory, the standard for meaning comes from within each child. Whether one is talking Freud, Dewey, or Rogers, educational theory has lost the objectively objective and the results are programs such as value neutral education where the sovereign subjective student is encouraged to discover his own values. Now, clearly value neutral education is not neutral but since the sovereign subjective student is putatively discovering and navigating his own value system what we we see once again is the clear demonstration of the death of the objective objective. God is dead. The objective is dead. All that is left is the subjective enlarging his or her subjectivity in order to turn the subjective into the a subjective objective. In educational theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In historiography theory, historicism insists that there is no God or objective by which the meaning of History can be determined or known. As such the only thing that is left is for subjective History itself to become the objective by which it is itself measured. In Historicism God is dead and man becomes the infallible interpreter of all reality. Naturally the problem here is that historiography is only as good as the objective standard of the historian who is, by his subjective will, forcing history to do his bidding. If the historian who is doing the history is Humanist or Muslim, or Hindu, then his produced historiography will be respectively Humanist, Muslim or Hindu. The idea of the objectively objective is lost and historiography becomes awash in a sea of subjectivism. In historiography you have the death of the objectively objective.

In sexual theory such as militant homosexuality and Feminism, and all other sexual perversions what you have once again is the positing of the death of God and the death of the objectively objective clearing the field for the pervert interest to insist that perversions aren’t really perversions since w/o a God there can be no such thing as perversion. Without God or the objectively objective and with the introduction of polytheistic pagan gods who are but “man said loudly” what happens is that perversion is subjectively re-defined and sexual polymorphy becomes the norm. In sexual theory you have the death of the objectively objective and the death of God.

In theological theory, Neo-orthodoxy posits the Transcendence of God (His objectiveness if you please) but in neo-orthodoxy God becomes so objective that He has no contact with the subjective. As such, God dies of incurable hyper-transcendencism, and the subjective once again becomes objective. Since God is beyond the creature the subjective creature is left to take his subjective intuitions and enlarge them so that the subjective once again becomes objective. I once had a conversation with a Dean of a theological Seminary (this conversation is on Iron Ink somewhere) who was neo-orthodox (though he refused to admit it for fear of his job I think) and who freely admitted that it was impossible to access the objective. If one can not access the objective then God is dead. In theological theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

Now, where R2Kt comes in is that it insists that the Spirit of God is constricted to the Church and that the Church can not and should not and must not insist that a living God, as the objectively objective reality that gives meaning to everything is not dead and as such He comes in conflict against the Spirit of Chaos that manifests itself in Keynesianism, Deconstructionism, Marxism, Legal Positivism, Historicism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Perverted Sexual Theory, Freudianism, and all other pseudo realities that exist upon the premise that God is dead. R2Kt insists that the Church must not speak of the implications of a living God to a culture that is animated by philosophies, theologies, and theories that incarnate the death of God and the objectively objective. R2Kt insists that implications of the living God are to be felt only in the Church and that the Church as the Church can not speak with the voice of the living God against those who would create a culture where because God is dead, God is mute.

Keynesianism, Deconstructionism, Marxism, Legal Positivism, Historicism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Perverted Sexual Theory, Freudianism, all love R2Kt to pieces, first, because a Church infected w/ the R2Kt virus has no place from which to stand to resist the God is dead movement as it makes cultural inroads. Second, the God is dead movement loves the R2Kt virus because it teaches nothing to God’s people that will serve as a prophylactic against the impact of the God is dead movement upon the culture. Because of this the R2Kt churches will churn out people who will be saints on one hand in the church but who very likely will imbibe deeply from the God is dead movement culture they are immersed in. They will have no ability to ward of the God is dead cultural movement because they will have never been taught to see the implications of the death of the objectively objective.

“More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:

1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.

2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.

3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.

4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means and that hardball politics is a moral necessity.

5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.

6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.

7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.

8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.

9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.

10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill advised.

11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.

12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.

13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.

14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.

15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)

16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.

17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.”

Congressman Ron Paul
Neo-Conned Speech

There is a great deal of talk these days about conservatives recapturing the Republican party to use it as a vehicle to advance their agenda. This is all well and good. However, what I suspect may very well happen is that the conservatives that end up capturing the Republican party as a vehicle will be the neo-conservatives (actually neo-liberals) that the Republicans have been plagued with since Reagan allowed them to hijack his conservative revolution. These neo-liberals are not conservative in the slightest. Their agenda for big government was clearly on display during the Bush administration where government welfare was expanded through the “no child left behind act,” the prescription drugs legislation for senior citizens, the attempt to force amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants down the throats of Americans, and the unnecessary preemptive war on Iraq. None of this is conservatism and yet many if not most of the major Republican players are certainly neo-libs. Voices in the Republican party such as Dick Cheney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, George Will and Glen Beck are all neo-liberals. This means all of these people are on the right side of the left as opposed to being on the left side of the left where people like Barack Obama hang out. The differences between the left side of the left and the right side of the left is merely one of degrees.

Rank and file activist Republicans, as well as activists in the Tea Parties need to do their homework on neo-liberalism. Many of these people profess a deep and abiding love for the constitution and yet if they fail to familiarize themselves with the neo-liberal movement — a movement that is easily identifiable as distinct from classical conservatism — they will end up supporting a candidate that will be merely a George W. Bush retread.

The reason that this is of great import is that it looks like, unless something drastically changes the political landscape between now and November, we are going to have a election cycle that is going to be a massive correction to Barack Obama and the left side of the left. My fear is that, despite the rise of Middle America that we have seen in the past year, what is going to happen is that this rise is going to be betrayed by a Republican party that remains ideologically captive to the neo-liberals. What Middle America does not yet realize (even after 8 years of Bush) is that the Trotsky-liberals are every bit as capable as the Marxist-liberals of constructing a Fascist state.

If Middle-America really desires a return to a two-party system they will flush the neo-liberals out of their party and instead build the party with people who;

1.) Support decentralizing the Federal state and so return power to the states per the 9th and 10th amendments.

2.) Enforce immigration laws and so give time for America to re-establish its historic identity.

3.) Withdraw from areas of the world where we have little or no pressing national interest and so relieve some of the strain upon our massive government debt.

4.) Eliminate the department of education so that education can be returned to states and families.

5.) Creatively restructure the welfare / entitlement state so that contractual obligations come close to being honored and government debt is paid down and personal responsibility restored in the citizenry.

6.) Pursue a fair / free trade policy that would include the dismantling of globalistic trade agreements that work to the end of disintegrating national sovereignty.

7.) Eliminate corporate welfare thus insuring that mega-corporations can’t use government handout and government policy to crush their competition and institutionalize their market hegemony.

8.) Eliminate Federal government involvement with social engineering programs such as quotas thus ending the race pimp industry and allowing all Americans to make their own choices with who they will and will not associate with.

9.) Substantially reduce the oppressive regulation put upon American small business thus freeing the entrepreneur to be once again be the engine of our economy.

10.) End the Federal Reserve return to a hard money that has objective value. Such action would forever break the back of the controlling reach of the money interest.

11.) Simplify and restructure the tax code so that it can not be used as a means of social engineering.

12.) Pass legislation that will make it possible to impeach judges so that judicial over-reach will not be attempted without consequence.

13.) Eliminate abortion and pass legislation, based upon the US Constitution’s requirement for Due Process, that abortion will be outlawed in the 50 states.

If Middle America really wants to return to a two party system, requiring all or any number of these proposals for candidates for office would go a long way towards creating a true second party.

http://www.therightscoop.com/ryan-sorba-cpac-and-my-personal-thoughts-on-homosexuality/#disqus_thread

Watch the 70 second video and read some of the comments and notice a general theme. Keep in mind that CPAC is The Conservative wing of the Republican party. Among the Conservative wing of the Republican party a young man, making a natural law argument against homosexuality is booed out of the place.

Here the hero of millions of “conservative” Republican Americans, Bill O’Reilly of FOX news, advocates that the Federal Government has a legal right to seize your weapons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvrwsZwL5vE&feature=player_embedded

And here O’Reilly tries to rescue his position by citing the precedence of Abraham Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus but only succeeds in proving that Abraham Lincoln was a unconstitutional tyrant.

http://www.therightscoop.com/oreilly-defends-his-statements-on-gun-confiscation-in-state-of-emergency/

Folks, it is most especially in a state of emergency that citizens need their weapons. What …. Does O’Reilly think think that once law abiding citizens are stripped of their weapons that the criminals will suddenly go away?

“In the modern world, and especially among the Protestants, the church has become a secondary society, a kind of religious auxiliary or dependency of the primary society which is the state; and the secular and economic sides of life are continually encroaching upon it, until the Church is in danger of being pushed out of life altogether.

How is this state of things to be remedied? How can Christianity once more become the vital center of human life?

In the first place it is necessary to recover the ground that has been lost through the progressive secularization of modern civilization. We must transcend the individualism and sectarianism of the post Reformation period, and recover our vital contact w/ Christianity as a social reality and an organic unity. And this is impossible unless we transcend the subjectivity and relativism of nineteenth-century thought and recover an objective and realist sense of spiritual truth.

But even this by itself is not enough. It is merely the foundation for the essential task that the modern Christian has got to face. What the world needs is not a new religion, but a new application of religion to life. And Christianity cannot manifest its full efficacy either as a living faith or as an organic social reality unless it heals the maladies of the individual soul and restore the broken unity of man’s inner life. As we have seen, human life today is divided against itself. But this division is not simply due to an opposition between the religious faith that control his external activity. It goes much deeper than that, since it also springs from a disharmony and contradiction between the life of a spirit and the life of the body. Spiritual life and physical life are both real and both are necessary to the ideal integrity of human existence. But if a man is left to himself, w/o a higher principle of order — w/o Grace, to use the Christian term — this integrity, is not realized. The spirit fights against the flesh and flesh against the spirit, and human life is torn asunder by this inner conflict.

The oriental religions attempted to solve this conflict by denial of the body, and the radical condemnation of matter as evil or non existent. They won the peace of Nirvana by the sacrifice of humanity. The Western humanist, on the other hand, tried to find a solution w/i the frontiers of human nature by the elimination of the absolute values and the careful adjustment of man’s spiritual aspirations to his material circumstances. He pacified the revolt of the body by sacrificing the soul’s demand for God.

Christianity cannot accept either of these solutions. It cannot deny either the reality of the spirit or the value of the body. It stands for the redemption of the body and the realization of a higher unity in which flesh and spirit alike become channels of divine life.”

Christopher Dawson
Enquiries Into Religion & Culture

Now as we read Dawson we have to keep in mind that he was a devout Roman Catholic. As such we have to re-interpret somewhat before we can accept what he offers.

For example in this quote Dawson attacks the Reformation as sectarian and individualizing when in point of fact it was 16th century Roman Catholicism that was sectarian and Anabaptists who were responsible for individualizing. None of this would have happened had Rome been willing to repent. Second, we need to keep in mind the way that Medieval Europe developed organic Christianity was by bringing everything into the Church so that nothing could be Christian unless it was sanctioned by the Church. The return to a Christianity that ministers to the whole man can never find us returning to a place where all things have to be under the umbrella of the Church in order to achieve an organic unity. Part of what the Reformation did was to free different spheres of life to be directly under the Lordship of Jesus Christ so that all spheres could serve Christ w/o having to serve the Church. The Reformation delivered people from the mediatorial rule of the Church over their callings and occupations and set them free to place those callings, careers and occupations directly under the mediatorial Lordship of Christ. With the Reformation the Church went from mediatorial to ministerial in its role to the saints.

However, having given those qualifications to what Dawson offers, on the whole I concur w/ Dawson’s main thrust, which is the necessity for Christianity to once again provide a organic unity for man, considered both as spirit and body and considered both as individual and as part of society.

One means of doing that, I believe, is by the insistence that Christianity once again become totatlistic in its expression. Recently, I was reading an argument between two people. One person was arguing that Christianity is invariably a “political faith.” The other person — A R2k theologian — was arguing that Christianity as Christianity was not a political faith at all and that it was a bad thing to try and make it so. Further he was arguing that Christianity is a Spiritual faith. As I read the conversation I found myself thinking that the line of reasoning should really be that Christianity is a spiritual faith and precisely because it is a spiritual faith it invariably and inevitably develops political, economic, aesthetic, familial, educational, ecclesiastical, and legal faiths that are incidental extensions to that spiritual faith. If we really desire a Christianity that once again integrates all of life so that we once again have a organic unity to our lives we must understand that our undoubted Catholic Christian spiritual faith is a undoubted Catholic Christian faith that incarnates itself in every area of life. There is no way that the Christian faith and the implications that are derivative of it can be cordoned of so that it is directly applicable to only one narrow slice of life.

The fact that some Christians would argue that spiritual faith of Christianity is not totalistic in its implications so that it creates a political faith or economic faith or aesthetic faith that is distinctly Christian is more than passing strange. Does the Muslim argue that his faith does not impact the public square? Does the Hindu or the Humanist argue that his faith does not impact the public square? Is it only among some Christians that we here this argument that the Christian faith does not incarnate itself in order to create a organically whole Christian culture?

Dawson says that the Church has become a secondary society in danger of being pushed out of life altogether. I think it is much more serious then that even. I think that Christianity is becoming a fantasy faith that is in danger of being completely irrelevant because it is being amputated of its limbs — by its advocates, no less — so that all it can do is sit and stare as life goes by. Not having the arms and legs that allows it to move in the public square it lays lifeless developing the bed sores that come from pietistic inertia.

Dawson is right that we do not need a new Christian faith. What we need is a new application of the Christian faith. Christianity, by looking and learning from its long history must adjust and reinterpret and reapply our undoubted Catholic Christian faith to the times God has given us.

Dawson is right that however we do this, the end achieved must be the reintegration of the whole of man. Humanism has divided body from soul and has put in concrete man’s alienation w/ himself. Only the Christian faith can provide the organic unity that man cannot live without. Only Christianity can offer the Gospel which heals man’s alienation. Only a people who have been healed of their alienation from God, from others, and from self, can build Christian cultures where the institutions and spheres in those Christian cultures likewise know the relief that comes from alienation being eliminated.

All of this starts with the Gospel. Only a Gospel that preaches a Transcendent God and a Crucified Christ can heal individuals that are individually alienated and cultures that are organically splintered. Only in Christ is their hope for the West.

May God give us the Spirit of Christ to think God’s thoughts after Him and then the unction of the Spirit to articulate these truths in ways that people can hear them.

There remains a great deal of misunderstanding regarding the whole notion of separation of church and state as that phrase is applies in our cultural context.

First, we would say that while there may be no agreed upon content of the meaning of “separation of church and state” in our culture there certainly is a historical meaning to that phrase.

The whole notion of separation of Church and State is nowhere found in any of the founding legal documents of this country. Indeed a perusal of the Congressional Records from June 7 to September 25, 1789 — a perusal of the time frame that covers the time period when the First Amendment was debated by the ninety men responsible for giving us the language of the First Amendment — finds absolutely no mention of the phrase “Separation of Church and State.” This phrase comes instead from Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. Jefferson – who was not one of the ninety who gave us the language of the First amendment — was seeking to reassure a group of Baptists that the Federal Government would do nothing to delimit their First Amendment rights.

There seems to be a widespread failure to realize that the First Amendment originally only applied to the Federal Government. The State Governments were free to establish state Churches — and many did. The prohibition against States establishing a Church was only codified much later in the incorporation doctrine — a legal doctrine that is still controverted — though it had been decades since any State had established a State Church.

So, when the phrase “separation of Church and State” is used in its historical context, at the most it meant, that the Federal Government could not establish a State Church.

I can not speak to what other people mean when they say that the “separation of church and state” does not exist. However, what I mean when I negate the “separation of church and state” is that church and state are still firmly tied at the hip in this country. Now when I say that church and state are still firmly tied at the hip in this country I do not mean that the state does not officially declare that there is no state established church. What I mean is that the state, even if it refuses to recognize in a dejure sense a state church, will recognize one in a defacto sense. In our own country the defacto state established Church is humanism and the Churches of the state that dot our country are euphemistically referred to as “public schools.” Like all established state churches their funding is forcefully extracted from the citizenry — both those who agree and disagree with the established church. Like all established state churches parents must secure permission from the state in order for their children to be excused from attending. Like all established state churches the children are, while attending the government funded state church, taught the essentials of the belief system of the church that the state has established. Clearly, we see here that separation of church and state is does not exist in this country.

Now, there are many who insist that Christians should actively work to make sure that, in our country with its putative separation of Church and state, the state insures that Christianity does not become the ascendant faith. These folks seems to reason that it would be unfair to other faiths if the government ever played favorites with any one expression of faith, including Christianity. One problem w/ this line of reasoning is that by insisting that the state is responsible to insure that all faiths have a seat at the table what is at the same time being accomplished is that the state is being made the god of the gods. When the state actively works to make sure that all faiths continue to have a seat at the table and that no one faith is allowed to reach cultural ascendancy what the state has been invested w/ is the power to limit how much influence any one god can have in a culture. This works to effectively make the state God.

A second problem with the idea of a Christian advocating some version of “it is only fair that in a pluralistic culture that no faith, including Christianity, ever be preferred by the state” is that such a statement is treason against the King Jesus Christ. All Christians should be actively working for the elimination of false faiths from our culture and for the elimination of the influence of false faiths upon our civil-social / governmental structures. Any Christian who advocates the planned continuance of religious and cultural pluralism is a Christian who is denying the King Jesus.