Noonan On Faith

“I said a great stress is here and coming, and people are going to be reminded of what’s important, and the greatest of these will be our faith, it’s what is going to hold us together as a country.”

Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal Op Ed piece

Peggy couldn’t be more wrong here. If the great stress is indeed as great as many people are suggesting then it will be our sundry faiths that are going to drive us apart. Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that the only thing that could possibly hold this country together if the coming stress is as great as many people are hinting at is unmitigated brute force as engaged in by the state. We are a balkanized people and we do not share the kind of common faith that might be able to hold us together in the midst of great stress.

Finding the Behemoth Idol & Pulling It Down

Some people have commented on my predilection to write on things on government, state, politics. I do not do this because I think those subjects are be all end all of discussion but I do it because that is the way many moderns think about those subjects.

Try to think of it this way. Before the Reformation changed the European theology, Church, social order, and culture everything was under the umbrella of the Church. If you wanted to change European theology, Church life, social order, and culture you had to give a virus to the thought life of Medieval Europe in order to make their contemporary understandings of the Church unacceptable. The Church was the behemoth driving everything in Medieval culture.

Today the behemoth driving everything is the state, and if you want to change our current Western theology, Church, social order and culture you have to find a way to give a virus to the thought life of the West in order to make our contemporary understanding of the state unacceptable. In Medieval Europe they believed that in the Church they lived and moved and had their being. In the modern West we believe that in the state we live and move and have our being. Just as the Reformers brought down the Medieval Church by attacking its core theology so those who would desire to see Reformation today must bring down the Modern State by attacking its core theology.

There are some other interesting parallels here as well. Just as the Reformers appealed to the text (the Scripture in its original intent and meaning) to bring down the Church, thus freeing the other God ordained institutions to find their proper place as ministerial institutions before God, so Reformers today must appeal to the text (the Constitution in its original intent and meaning) in order to bring down the state, in order to once again free up the other god ordained institutions to find their proper place as ministerial institutions before God. During the Reformation the problem is that the interpretive tradition of the Church had replaced the plain meaning of Scripture. The Magisterial Reformers gave the Medieval Church a belly ache by returning to the Scripture. The same thing needs to happen again today in the realm that is playing behemoth. The state has stolen the Constitution away from the people — just as the Medieval Church had stolen the Scriptures away from the people — and determined meaning by reading it according to a tradition that emphasizes more the horizon of meaning in the Constitution. This horizon of meaning is created by logical positivists Judges who use the idea of evolutionary growth of the meaning of the Constitution. This evolutionary process reading is done by making case law determine the meaning of the Constitution as opposed to making the Constitution determine the meaning of case law. The point that needs to be grasped is that Reformation will be achieved by winning on the text just as Reformation was won by winning on the text in the 16th century.

Pressing this issue a little further we must note that since the state is the behemoth of our age wherein everything finds its meaning we must realize that this means that the must of the modern church finds its meaning in relation to the state. This means that the state has an official theology. If we want to change the behemoth that is defining everything we must give its corrupt official theology a virus. Just as the Magisterial Reformers attacked the anthropocentric theology that was the official theology of the Medieval Church so aspiring Reformers today must find a way to effectively attack the anthropocentric theology that is the official theology of the state.

It is because the state today is the behemoth idol that we must think of ways to challenge the state with sound theology. This is what the Reformers did in the 16th century with the Medieval Church which was their behemoth idol.

When I write on issues of government, politics, culture, social order and the state I am trying to figure out a way to give the beast a belly ache that will cause the idol to topple.

The Reformers found the Idols and attacked them. We must do the same.

Two Truth’s At The Heart Of The West’s Social Order

You can always arrive at the truths (or myths) that a social order is built on by finding the taboos in a culture. The taboos are those issues that can’t be spoken upon or brought up in polite company without causing somebody to faint or freak. Violation of the assault on the social order by violating the received wisdom surrounding the taboo will cause you either to be ostracized from society or will get you arrested. All social orders protect the foundational truths they are built upon and the closer you get to the core truth that the social order is built upon, the more harrowing will be your experience if you mess with it or call it into question. This is especially true if you are able to make a convincing case that the core truth is utter nonsense, or if you are able to make people believe you have a convincing case.

Now, I am convinced that the core myth that our social order is based upon is the myth that all people, all faiths, and all cultures are equal, and I submit that is proven by the response that is visited upon someone who begins to mess with that core truth and who thus begins to violate cultural taboo. Allow me to introduce as evidence the response of people when the idea is raised that ethnic groups have different strengths and weaknesses that make them more or less inclined to achieve and prosper in certain tasks. To raise such a notion, which was taken for granted as truth for centuries, is a statement that will immediately raise hackles. You see if everyone and every faith and every culture is equal then it is heresy in our social order to suggest that some members of a set ethnic group might be inherently superior to members of another ethnic group for a given task or calling. The fact that our social order has been based upon the myth that all people, all cultures, and all faiths are equal demands that we dare not think that some cultures, faiths, or peoples, might be better suited for some task, calling or mission then others. And so if you suggest, in the presence of polite company who have imbibed the multi-cultural social order myth, the notion that all peoples, cultures, and faiths are not equal in value for all tasks you will be met by individuals either freaking or fainting. This is because the guiding myths that propel social orders come to be seen as self-evident by the weight of ongoing and perpetual repetition.

Now, out of fear of being misunderstood, allow me to insist that it is Christian to believe that all men are created equal in the sense of having equal value before God and in the sense of none being privileged over others in being adjudicated by God’s law. Equality does not mean that all peoples have all the same ability or even the same propensity in ability in sundry categories. Equality does not mean that all cultures or all faiths are to be equally esteemed.

The fact that all faiths are seen as equal is demonstrated in something recently said by the Prince Of Wales. It is a well known fact that the monarch of England carries with it the title, “The Defender of the Faith.” The faith referenced there is the Christian faith. Charles has recently said that he would prefer it if that title was changed so that the Monarch of England would be called “The Defender of the faithS.” Obviously for Charles no faith is to be preferred over any other faith since all faithS are equally valid.

A second indicator that I am correct in this assessment is another “truth” that has received official “do not touch” sanction and that is the idea that 6 million Jews died in the holocaust. Now, the moral behind the 6 million Jews dying in the holocaust is the moral that teaches, according to the multi-culturalists, that no society should be allowed to become uni-cultural in its organization because in the death of 6 million Jews we see what happens to minorities in those places that have not embraced the multi-cultural ethic and social order. The Germans sin was to believe that the Aryan was superior. The German sin is most clearly seen in their killing 6 million Jews. The way to avoid the German sin of Aryan superiority, therefore, is to embrace the social order idea that only multi-cultural superiority is allowed for social order arrangements. People who question whether or not 6 million Jews were killed are obviously people, so the multi-cultural story goes, who desire that 6 million more be killed and so must be socially ostracized for playing with the taboo. The reason that the number 6 million must be so adamantly defended is because that number becomes the bulwark against social orders that are not arranged multi-culturally. If people question the 6 million number the larger reality that is being questioned, in the multi-culturalist’s mind, is the foundation of multi-cultural social orders.

These two “truths” — (1) The absolute equality of all faiths, cultures, and ethnic groups, and (2) The number of 6 million Jewish dead who testify against cultures that are not organized multi-culturally — are at the organizational heart of the West’s social order. Challenge these truths and you can be put on trial (as Mark Steyn was in Canada or as Geert Wilders is in Europe) or put in jail as David Irving was.

But the problem with these two “truths” as a Christian is that (1) Christian do not and can not believe all faiths, and cultures are equally valid or that the evidence suggests that all ethnic groups function all societal tasks with equal proficiency, and (2) Christians do not believe that the death of any number of people at the hands of those who imbibed an anti-Christ world view (Nazi paganism) proves that we need to embrace another anti-Christ worldview (multi-culturalism) that is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions upon tens of millions of the unborn. Even if 6 million Jews died in the holocaust that does not justify supporting the multi-cultural social order that is responsible for the deaths of over 50 million unborn.

Then And Now

“So Southern belief in a Northern determination to transform the US into a consolidated nation, where the majority must always rule a central government endowed with large, indefinite implied powers, loomed as a grave threat to many Southerners’ most cherished ideals of society, of government, of life itself. When secessionists insisted that they left the Union to preserve states’ rights, they meant exactly that. In the last analysis, they seceded for an idea, the idea that they would not meekly submit to Northern rule. If they were rebels so be it. After all, it was a name their “patriot fathers bore.”

Ludwell H. Johnson
North Against South; The American Iliad — 1848-1877

People may wonder why I keep returning to this theme. I would hope that the answer is already strongly hinted at in what I said in the last post. A people’s understanding of their present is shaped by their understanding of their past. If, we as a people, continue to think of the Second War for American Independence as one in which the forces of good wore blue we will not be willing to fight for the issues that those who wore butternut and gray died for. They died fighting for Republican regionalism against the Federated Nationalism that was sought for by the army of the Potomac. We have come to the point that we must fight for Nationalism versus the New World Order that our political masters are trying to force on us. They died fighting for States Sovereignty against those who desired the sovereignty of the Nation State. We must fight for American Sovereignty against those who desire to the sovereignty of globalism. Men like R. L. Dabney and John Giradeau understood that the South was fighting for Christendom against pagan inroads. The desire not to be globalized, is much the same battle, even if people don’t understand that. If we don’t find the ability to sympathize with the Southern reasons for fighting Yankees we won’t find the ability to fight against the Internationalists.

It’s the same war folks, except that it is coming to another phase. If you believe that those toting a New World Order are the bad guys then you better realize that the Confederates are your intellectual heirs.