Hillary is not going to be elected President, and neither is Ron Paulor any other Republican. The OTHER “peace candidate,” Barack Obama is going to be, and , since though he is died-in-wool liberal, he’s also a non-ideological pragmatisst, the , the Ron Paul movement will never come to power, but will only have a future as a third party, Republican splinter movement. As such, however, I wish it well, because, different from the neo-conservatives and Chrisitianist who now dominate the Republican Party, they are folks of vision and principle.

I completely agree!  Hence the Norman Thomas analogy.

Che?  k… Well, none of the folks in my meetup group seem to care about any of this.  All they care about is whether or not everyone has made sure to register as a Republican in order to vote in our open primary.  Just in case.

A good read.

As a long time Ron Paul supporter

I gotta ask the doubters:

“Are we real yet?”

The unwashed masses are going to take the Republican party away from the inept Scoop Jackson tainted usurpers currently in charge.

Watch…

It’ll be a thing of beauty.

The numbers for the above mentioned November 5th fundraiser, a 36 hour affair with a few early morning hours left, shout success. The MoneyBomb has toted up over four million and that ain’t hay.

What I am still stunned by is the total media blackout that seems to be declared by the msm regarding Ron Paul.  If you go on CNN you have to search to find things on Ron Paul.  It is amazing but there are still people who don’t know who Ron Paul is yet but invariably when you take a little time to explain things to them they totally agree with Ron Paul.  Most people don’t even know that the Patriot Act has stripped the constitution of the citizens rights.
An excellent article Jack and I do believe that you are right on with your comparison to the Russian Revolution, the original neo-con rise to power.  Most people don’t know it but the original Trotskyites were financed by bankers in the west, who then hedged their bets by financing Hitler as well.

“finally taking the cake when he called John Mearsheimer a man of the left. (For the record, a very good mutual friend of both Mearsheimer and myself tells me he is quite certain Mearsheimer voted straight Republican until 2004).”....

And this somehow serves as conservative credentials? The republican party was the earliest home for the “progressives” and has never been anything other than a socialist party with a false front.  Most straight republican ticket voters I know are socialists who fancy themselves conservatives, or at least pretend to believe that they are conservatives.  I have always regarded republicans as leftists, no matter what silliness they attempt to use to pass themselves off as anything other than what they are.

Presenting Dr Ron Paul as a Che look-alike is both misleading and foolish. Che was a murderous henchman for Fidel, whose specialty was the murder of unarmed political prisoners.

Images of Dr Paul based on Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, or James Madison would have been far more appropriate.

Ron Paul supporter here, reveling in this fine essay!

1. the Ron Paul Revolution [...] will accomplish the complete remaking and realignment of the spectrum of American radical politics—in other words, the death of the left, accompanied by the complete discrediting and repudiation of Beltway libertarianism, [...]- Randroidism, liberventionism, Catoism, and [...] the creators of South Park [...]

It will also be the death and repudiation of the “National Front” Right as well, suggested by the writer’s mentioning the dismissal of Buchanan .

Let us make sure that it’s not the death of Real Conservatism (Burke). Real Conservatives need to recognize that the new and best current political thinking is coming from the Mengerian School of libertarians, be it Misean, be it Rothbartian. Thus Real Conservatives would do well to divorce themselves from the dying racialists and nationalists – and their clerical fascist “useful idiots” and “kept women”.  Real Conservatives can then coalesce with the libertarians and Jeffersonians, and then with them assault the Hamiltonian Whigs (“neocons”) on one front, and on the otherthe Cultural Marxist-Social Democrat “Popular Front” coalition.

2. Gringos are poor about founding political parties, unlike Continental Europeans.  Gringos follow the Borderer Backcountry tradition of supporting charismatic candidates.  Put differently,
Gringos would rather party at rallies than do the nitty-gritty of running a party cell.  They would do better to form parties.

3. I like the writer’s analogy between World War I and 9/11.  The Hiss/Libby analogy is bad. “A Radical Whig in Chattanooga” has also seen the other bad analogy.

4.  Did the writer attend the John Randolph Club meeting last September?

5. The League of the South, by working with the Vermont Secessionists, is showing the way how to do coalition poltics.

equally radical is the medias playing down the movement.  dude raises 4 million and not a word about it on tv this morning except a brief mention on C Span that wasn’t followed up on.  symbollicly, two republican “experts” I saw were Dave Rifkin, arguing for torture and Mary Matelin, arguing against the stupidity and defeatism of the now 2.4 trillion in the hole american public.

The astonishing support to Ron Paul is not surprising at all.  He is simply returning Republicans to the small-government, pacifistic foreign policy ideas, which the party held before they were hijacked by the neocons.  These old ideas are still very popular among Americans—indeed, they may well be held by a majority of Republican rank and file—and Pauls is giving this group a chance to make their views heard.

As to the collapse of the Democratic anti-war movement, that was to be expected.  Look at the sources of Democratic party financing, and you will find the reason.

Good commentary.

Can’t y’all find another pic to represent this
commentary. though?

Che was a revolutionary blood-thirsty-thug, a murderer.
Revolutionary being the modifer to blood-thirsty-thug.

Che and us, the Dr. Paul supporters, have no use for Che.

Rebels to tyrants, obedience to God.

Although I find Che a murderer and a thug also, I found the picture ahumurous.  I think it is funny that in our modern times someone who refuses to be bought out by big monied interests is considered a revolutionary.  I think that was kind of the joke the picture was making, not a comparison between Paul and Che. 
It is really deliberate that the media are ignoring him.  They prefer that the majority of Americans not know anything about him.  The thought of real integrity in politics must be so frightening to them.  I wonder how far the media would go to ignore him.  It seems like Ron Paul could be marching down the streeets with 50,000 people blocking traffic and making a comotion and the local news would report traffic delays, or start to build hype for the next Patriots Colts game.

that was supposed to be humorous, not ahumorous.

Kari Konkola is correct about the return.  I would argue just a bit differently.  We once had a Jeffersonian Party in the Federal US. It was called the Democrat Pary.  It was a coalition of Catholic ethics, Southern Bourbon Democrats and Northern Copperheads, the British Border-Backcountry, Labor, and Farmers.  Wilson destroyed this party and replaced it with a Socialist-Social party that absorbed Farmer-Populist and big Labor.  After Wilson, the Jeffersonians were absorbed by the Hamiltonian Republicans.  Now the Jeffersonians are getting organized again.  Let’s pray they organize themselves into a party.

I’m a cynical bastard. I look forward to a
depression that hurts the upper classes and detroys
the fundamental and evangelical christians who have
been led into thinking they are conservaitives.

A Ron Paul nomination would be a pleasant surprise.

Has anyone else noticed the nationalist repubs who
post an anti-paul comment into every pro Paul
article/blog?

You mean Gottfried?  Seriously though, I have a reply to his rejoinder to me sitting with Taki now, and I just wanted to say that those of you who complained about the graphic, it was the editor’d decision, not mine.  I was a bit jarred by it myself.

Much better pic to represent the Paul Revolution:
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa194/bryanxt/ronpaulrev.jpg

Sid Condiff sed: “We once had a Jeffersonian Party in the Federal US. It was called the Democrat Party. It was a coalition of Catholic ethics, Southern Bourbon Democrats and Northern Copperheads, the British Border-Backcountry, Labor, and Farmers. Wilson destroyed this party and replaced it with a Socialist-Social party that absorbed Farmer-Populist and big Labor.”

I really think that your appraisal of the history of the Democrat Party is wrong. In the late 19th Century, the Democrat Party consisted of the southern landowning plutocracy and the corrupt urban political machines, the infamous “Tammany Hall” Democrats. I think you are confusing them with the Whigs. Originally, the Republican Party was the party of labor, of farmers and generally poor people…thus the opposition to slavery as it was a threat to free labor. After the Civil War, the party was corrupted by war profiteering, and slowly became captured by the Wall Street bankers, the wealthy “new’ class that benefited from financing the massive federal debts and industrial growth that the Civil War created.

Consequently, neither represented labor or farmers, and both the Republicans and Democrats were threatened by the agrarian populist revolt against the tyranny of the gold standard which was rapidly ruined the ideal of Jefferson Agrarian farmers as millions were bankrupted into becoming destitute sharecroppers.

The Democrats could never really convince the urban ethnic laborers to give up the patronage politics of the Democrat urban machines, while the Republican maintained what little support they had among the working and farming classes by constantly “waving the bloody shirt” while the Democrats appealed to the same lot by constantly evoking the “Lost Cause”. Thus the rise of the People‘s Party, the real populist revolt.

It would be true to say that the Democrats co-opted the People’s Party, the original agrarian populists on the issue of “free silver“, and Williams Jennings Bryan. But “free silver“ was never central to the real populist reforms.

Yes, the Democrats entered the 20th Century uniting farmers, urban workers and the Southern landed aristocracy, which is your Wilson illusion. .

For more info, see LAWERENCE GOODWYN’s book, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America

One of the things that you Ron Paul fans forget is that the roots of the neoconservative movement began with your so-called “Reagan Revolution” where Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Wolfowitz and others began their careers.

It was Reagan who ended Nixon’s detente with the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, and restarted the arms race, of which several incidents arose that came precipitiously close to nuclear war. Which is why Reagan reopened his talks with Gorbochov.

Your “Ron Paul Revolution” and political conservativism in general is all confused when they invoke the legacy of Reagan, who was the one who let the neo-cons into the positions of influence and power. It was the neo-cons which incited the reopening of the arms race!

Noone remembers that it was Nixon that followed the tenets that Raon Paul claims to have inherited from the founding fathers of trade with everyone and no entangling alliances with anyone.

If the Ron Paul “revolution” is envoking anything, it’s Nixon, noot conservatiism of the 20th Century.

Although I found this essay stimulating, and indeed, like most who
read the TakiMag, I’m supporting Paul for President, I really
don’t see the earthshaking sea change more or less implied in the
column. I’ve been active in two Buchanan campaigns, chairing the
1991-92 one in NC, and active in 2000. In the early stages in 2000
we had polling numbers that indicated that we might get anywhere
from 9% to 12% of the vote. Then the Bush operatives got going,
and the argument “us or chaos” was made (once again!), and those
folks who told us they wanted Buchanan ended up voting for Bush
(or in some cases, not voting at all).

If Rudy’s the GOP candidate and he’s facing Hillary, the Republican
operatives will use those same and similar tactics to scare those
voters back “into line.”

Let’s face it: we live in a therapeutic state, in which a large
portion of “good” men (and women) have been more or less programmed
into positions. Until we can break THAT, or until there is a
second great depression or some other catastrophic event, I don’t
see much change of cracking the mold.

I hope I’m wrong, and I’d like to think I am....but, experience
over the past three decades or so speaks louder, at least for the
moment.

The Popular Media dismisses Ron Paul because it has played a major role in the habituation of the ijit public to this entertaining nanny state for the underachieving lovers of irony. It very well knows that the majority of Americans are wholly unprepared to function in a civil society based upon Mr. Pauls political philosophy. Rest assured though that when the front runners awake in the middle of the night, one of the things they think about is the faint sound of drum and bugle music that is accompanying Mr. Pauls historically informed campaign.

Nobody should fret that Mr. Paul’s growing juggernaut is ridiculed by what passes for a news media in this drunken age because their dismissal is the best validation possible.

Still though, one hopes that there are enough diapers available for a senial public if and when Mr. Paul actually wins. Anyone owning any real estate anywhere near Washington should dread it,and this alone should be explanation enough

uhh, thats “senile”...now where are those Depends?

Joe Populist: Not to paint with a broad brush, right?

Y’all know that Ron Paul is a Texas Baptist.  He does have a brother with Holy Orders, though, in the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod. :-)

“The Democrats could never really convince the urban ethnic laborers to give up the patronage politics of the Democrat urban machines...”

The issue with those “urban ethnic laborers” was not that they were urban, ethnic, or laborers.

</i>...their clerical fascist “useful idiots” and “kept women..."</i>

Cut that out. Clerical fascism is not an issue in the English-speaking world. That’s as stupid as saying that Oliver Cromwell ordered the Abu Ghraib tortures.

Ron Paul and Nixon?...and freedom from entangling alliances?
Somehow, Mr. Nixon and his outlandishly funny
neo-Rennaissance White House Guard uniforms or his
pal Henry’s near lascivious love of entanglement...why
they don’t seem to be in Dr. No’s style.

Originally, the Republican Party was the party of labor, of farmers and generally poor people…thus the opposition to slavery as it was a threat to free labor.
Risible nonsense.  Joe Populist worshiping at the Hamiltonian Neocon idol called Lincoln, swallowing utterly the myth of super rich railroad lawyer as the supposed humble rail splitter.  The Republican party from Day One, as the Whig and Federalist before it, was the party of big business. It hasn’t changed its platform in its 150+years, if not since Hamilton:  1. the centralized supreme Federal State, with the 50 states as just franchises of the Federal. 2. Federal control of the currency with fiat money issued by a bank, and high National Dept.  (It was the Jeffersonians, from Jackson to Cleveland, who wanted the Gold Standard and a retired debt.  This began to change with Bryan.) 3. Corporate welfare: the sky-high tariff, “internal improvements”, easy money, etc.  4. Imperial expansion, starting with Dixie.  Read thomas DiLorenzo on Lincoln and Capitalism.

tyranny of the gold standard
More nonsensical.  Now Joe buy’s FDR’s moonshine.  In fact, if you had gone to work in 1870, and retired in 1911, you could have bought more for your dollar.  In other words, there was a general deflation without wages going down.  Why?  The Gold Standard.  We all know what happened to your dollar if you went to work in 1965 and just retired today.

Lawrence Goodwyn the Lefty is Joe’s favorite writer?  Now he’s a Cultural Marxist.  Farmers were doing badly in the 1890s because we had too many of them for a rapidly industrializing society.  Call them hayseed Luddites.

In short, Joe is every political direction except Real Conservative. And libertarian. And Christopher Lasch’s “populism” was really an ex-leftist’s Jeffersonianism.

I’m glad Boyd Cathey is supporting Ron Paul. I like his analysis and would add only two corollaries.  Gringos to date can’t think except in terms of two parties.  If one party does poorly, they vote for the other, which does even worse.  This might be changing.  Unlike 1992 or even 2000, the world is now sharply divided into the computer literate and the computer illiterate, those who get their news watching television, and those who get their news reading the internet.  The former will vote for the two major parties.  Less so the latter. The Internet is also a writeback and meetup medium.  We’ll see if this makes a difference. Second, too many Gringos to date live off the government, and thus vote their pocketbook, and thus vote themselves a paycheck out of the U.S. Treasury.  Now more are aware that The State isn’t a deus ex machina to solve economic problems as FDR and Mussolini taught, but is in fact causing the economic mess.  Ron Paul can win if he persuade people of this.

Oliver Cromwell didn’t torture people?  And I suppose that the Salem witch trials never happened.  Mr. Ramus also needs to put down his copy of Calvin’s Institutes and read some history.

“The bottom line in all this inside-baseball analysis of factions is that, in the end, while I am certainly optimistic about the potential of the Ron Paul Revolution, it simply can not and will not have a lasting impact on the Republican Party.”

Bull!

Do you think that those of us in the numerous Ron Paul Meetup Groups are confining our activities to marching, holding signs on freeways and donating money?  If so, you are sadly mistaken.

We are also plotting.  We are mobilizing to send members into post-primary Republican precinct meetings to take over as delegates and precinct Chairs.  We are planning to run Republican candidates in local races.  We are infiltrating local Republican clubs and organizations.

“History has never been dominated by majorities, but by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally upon their faith."--Rushdoony

Texas was much more conservative, and had been so for 100 years, by Democrats, than the northern conservatives [Harvardites such as Bush Sr. came to the state prowling for dirt farmers mineral rights] with its Blue laws.

“[Harvardites such as Bush Sr. came to the state prowling for dirt farmers mineral rights]” Actually Bush senior, as well as Junior, were Yalies.

We “Harvardites” (the expression actually used is “Harvard men”, as opposed to “Yale boys”) have plenty of bona fide Harvard men to apologize for. No need to add thers.

Damn!  It seems (and I’m not the first one to say this) that every time there’s a decent conversation (here or at Chronicles) Sid Cundiff comes along and hijacks it.  Being the Cultural Marxist he is, Sid wants to turn every thread into a “race doesn’t exist” tirade, or a David Brooks-style “let’s purge conservativism of all racialists” witch hunt.

Heaven forbid that a Christian white male have pride in his Anglo-European ancestors and traditions.  Heaven forbid that like a real conservative he wants to preserve Anglo-European people and their traditions!

Pure, 100% gold standard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9qSumINZ4Y

Ron Paul is one of the last hopes for the Great White Race.

Big government (the managerial state) has declared war upon the White Race, the white man’s traditions, and has criminalized whites’ natural feelings of kinship for their own kind.

A smaller government will give the White Race some breathing space and time to prepare to defend what’s truly in its interest.

Oliver Cromwell didn’t torture people?

He didn’t torture Iraqis, which was what I actually said.  I compare the foolishness of that statement to your claim that “clerical fascism” is a major problem today.

And I suppose that the Salem witch trials never happened.

They happened in 1692.  Cromwell died in 1658.  Mr. Cundiff also needs to put down his copy of First Things and read some history.

Heaven forbid that like a real conservative he wants to preserve Anglo-European people and their traditions.

Cundiff could care less about racism.  He is a racist himself, since he hates Anglo-American people.  In this way, he is faithful to his Roman Catholic forebears.

Big government (the managerial state) has declared war upon the White Race, the white man’s traditions, and has criminalized whites’ natural feelings of kinship for their own kind.

You white nationalists have it all wrong.  The managerial likes white people of a certain type.  You know, like Frank Sinatra, Ted Kennedy, Phil Donahue, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Martin Sheen, James Woods, Thomas Woods, Andrew Greeley, Mick Jagger, Rosie O’Donnell, Lawrence O’Donnell, John Kerry, Barbara Milkulski, Loretta Sanchez, Mario Cuomo, and Tom Ridge.

Sid sez: “In fact, if you had gone to work in 1870, and retired in 1911, you could have bought more for your dollar.  In other words, there was a general deflation without wages going down.  Why?  The Gold Standard.  We all know what happened to your dollar if you went to work in 1965 and just retired today.”

Oh horse poop! The people supporting the Gold Standard were the people who financed the Civil War. The people who always profit the most from War are the finance capitalists.  Simply, they wanted to increase the value of their debt-holdings with deflation. Inflation always benefit’s the debtor because you are paying back your loan with dollars that are worth less.

No, as usual, you’ve got it backwards---if you were working for wages, your wages were worth relatively MORE in an inflation. 

But ultimately, you’re just shouting into the bottom of the garbage can with all this nonsense about bringing back the Gold Standard.  Today’s finance capitalism LIKES the FED, Greenspan ran it for the benefit of the wealthy.  The “Chicago School” rules, the “Austrian School” is for the nut cases.

Look Silly, the only real store of value are ASSETS, not Gold. The definition of an asset is something whichi pays you an income.  If you own farmland or rental properties or strategically situation businesses like a McDonald’s fast food resturant--that’s an asset. Gold doesn’t pay you an income.

Which brings us back to the point I made before---the people who supported “sound money” after the Civil War were the banks holding the debt. 

As usual Sid, your arguments are always defense of plutocracy.

Jack Ross, where was all this excitement for Pat Buchanan?  Pat Buchanan had practically the same ideas that Ron Paul had.  What makes Ron Paul more acceptable than Pat Buchanan?  Pat Buchanan was more religious, catholic and that is why very little people came out for him?

I don’t get it.  We wouldn’t be in this mess if we voted for Pat eight years ago!

Why all this turnout for Ron Paul and not Pat Buchanan? Mr. Buchanan is more of a philosopher than Ron Paul.

Sid sez: “Lawrence Goodwyn the Lefty is Joe’s favorite writer? Now he’s a Cultural Marxist. Farmers were doing badly in the 1890s because we had too many of them for a rapidly industrializing society. Call them hayseed Luddites.”

Oh, more horse manure. You wouldn’t know a Marxist, cultural or whatever, from a hole in the ground.

I’d suggest you take a modern economics course and learn about the problems of commodity markets, the simple concepts of elastic and inelastic supply and demand before you wank off about the problems of the farmers in the “Gilded Age” of plutocrats that you so admire.

Of course, we had Neuter Gingrich and the Republican Congress with their “Freedom To Farm” Act, which removed government regulation of the commodity trade, and guess what…2 years later --- when the inevitable swings of farm commodity put the price of corn and soybeans and milk and meat below the price of production, YOU and YOURS were back with a program of direct subsidy to the farmers to prevent absolute disaster.

What a freaking fake the “free marketers” are…Neuter Gingrich is YOUR kind of Republican---a “libertarian” of the practical persuasion. When “Austrian Economics” screws up like it did with the “Freedom to Farm” Act, the result is WORSE and more COSTLY then the federal regulation it replaced.

Boyd Cathey goes from Franco to Ron Paul. Wow. He should back Rudy Giuliani, a nice Catholic boy who loves big obnoxious governments.  Rudy even looks a little like El Generalissimo.

Sid sez: “In short, Joe is every political direction except Real Conservative. And libertarian. And Christopher Lasch’s “populism” was really an ex-leftist’s Jeffersonianism.”

Christopher Lasch wasn’t a populist. He was a neo-Marxist and his social critic of modernism echoed the other neo-Marxist that defined the “conservative” movement, Burnham in his book, The Managerial Revolution.

Look there would be NO Republican victories without the white working class. The next election, it will be the white working class that decides the election. It’s as if you hadn’t heard of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” that gave the conservative “movement” a electoral base.

Why all this turnout for Ron Paul and not Pat Buchanan?

Bay Buchanan spent too much time trying to win over the Teamsters and Ross Perot.

the other neo-Marxist that defined the “conservative” movement, Burnham in his book, The Managerial Revolution

Burnham was no conservative, but he was a great theorist anyway.  He led to Samuel Francis, who was the closest thing we had to a Calvinist voice on the American Right.

It will also be the death and repudiation of the “National Front” Right as well...

The Front National is in France, dummy.

“Ed Burke III” [sic] doesn’t know that race is an invention of 19th Century imperialist, led by Arthur de Gobineau.  The real Burke never used race the way this racialist uses it.  It is “Ed”, not I, who is anachronistic and ahistorical. The real Burke when out of his way to defend the rights of the people of India. Our village racialists take Burke and Kirk completely out of context and ignore their first principles, among which race wasn’t.

“Dr. Johnston “ with his “hijacking” is another who probably flunked the analogy section of the SAT.  Hijacking is coercive.

“Conservative Catholic” is neither.  Racialism is a Catholic heresy. And it is not a Conservative first principle. And Ron Paul doesn’t have a racialist bone in his body. 

Mr. Ramus showed some promise last week.  Now he’s just another practitioner of name-calling, ad hominem and straw man fallacies—just another demogogue and religious bigot.  And many of the Clerical Fascists of the 20s and 30s were Protestants. 

But the real Mussolini impersonator has yet to speak: The people supporting the Gold Standard were the people who financed the Civil War [sic—it wasn’t a civil war]. No, they issued fiat currency to finance Lincoln’s War.

if you were working for wages, your wages were worth relatively MORE in an inflation. Just the opposite.  In an inflation, your money becomes less valuable. My goodness, the American educational system is really bad!  And remember, the Fascists and the Nazis were very, very anti-Capitalist.

Fun to watch our racialist nationalists and religious bigots reduced to sputtering rage—proof positive that they are dying. Maybe they’ll go back to Stormfront, where they use might their real names.

</i>The Front National is in France<i>.  That’s why I used quote marks, illiterate.

The Front National is in France, dummy.  That’s why I used quote marks, illiterate.

Sid is obviously missing the point.  Where exactly does Edmund Burke say “race doesn’t exist”?  From the above quotes, Burke seems to argue that race does exist.

Duh!  Burke obviously didn’t hold Sid’s politically correct views so, like a good Trotskyite, Sid is going to whitewash him with a politically correct revisionism.

“Fun to watch our racialist nationalists and religious bigots”—Sid “PC Enforcer” Cundiff

“Don’t you give it a break, Sid?  Are you going to hijack ever single thread so you can go off on some “race doesn’t exist” tirade?

If you are criticizing “racial nationalists,” then you are only criticizing about 15% of racialists.  The vast majority of racialists are not nationalists.  In a recent Yahoo Poll (on a major racialist group) only 15% identified as nationalists, and about 80% of the others are backing Ron Paul.

Not that Ron Paul is a racialist - he is not.  But many racialists are supporting him because they see that a smaller federal government would be better, in the long run, for the white race.

And even more importantly, if one thinks that race is important, he doesn’t have to be a racialists to believe in the importance of genophilia, kith and kin, or the Burkean notion of primal ancestral loyalties.  One, like most paleoconservatives, can just believe in the importance of helping his own.  As Thomas Fleming points out in _The Morality of Everyday Life_, traditional Christianity does not require one to forsake kith and kin loyalties.

Sid, your position is essentially that of 1950s liberalism:  “race doesn’t matter” or “race doesn’t exist.” And anyone who disagrees with you, you, like a good leftist, brand as a “neonazi” or “racist.”

And many of the Clerical Fascists of the 20s and 30s were Protestants.

Name them.

As Thomas Fleming points out in _The Morality of Everyday Life_, traditional Christianity does not require one to forsake kith and kin loyalties.

If so, why did he repudiate his Lutheran baptism to join a religious pressure group that promotes universal human rights and social justice?

I’d had that this youth movement was easily the equal of Gene McCarthy’s.

That movement ended with the Democrats treating McCarthy like a red-headed stepchild. He was blacklisted for the rest of his life.

Sid is just carrying water for the SPLC and other left-wing groups.

Let’s see who can first answer correctly this brief multiple-choice exam.:  MATCH THE LEFT-WINGER WITH HIS QUOTE

A.  “Gringos would rather party at rallies than do the nitty-gritty of running a party cell.” “Too many Gringos are killed by success.”

B.  “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”

C.  “Around the year 2040, whites will become a minority in the United States and, believe me, it will be ‘payback time’.”

D.  “We intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed–not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.”

E.  “We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.”

F.  “The white race is a disease, and the only cure is a bullet.”

_____ 1. Ramesh Sharma

_____ 2. Sid Cundiff

_____ 3.  Jose Angel Gutierrez

_____ 4.  Kamau Kambon

_____ 5.  Jorge Sanchez

_____ 6.  Noel Ignatiev

A. William Bennett
B. Tom Monaghan
C. George Weigel
D. Mother Angelica
E. Michael Novak
F. Richard Neuhaus

Peter Ramus:  Lorettz Sanchez is not white; she is Mestizo.  With the small exception of an upper class of pure European blood, 30% of Mexicans are Amerindian, and 60% are Mestizo (mostly Amerindian with a little Spaniard blood).

Peter,
Just one moment!...please go back and re-read some of the earliest
postings I made RE Franco and Spain. Recall that I was very
critical of Franco, while praising Spanish Carlism (about which
I have also written somewhat extensively). The Carlists supported
a traditional monarchy, regionalism, and were opposed to both
liberal democracy AND over-centralized government (which was, in
effect, another product of liberalism). So, I don’t mind you
criticizing me, but don’t put words in my mouth, okay?

There are, I would certainly agree, times when dictatorship is
a legitimate option, in fact, perhaps the only option. But after
the conclusion of the Spanish “Cruzada” of 1936-39, and perhaps
a short period of transition, the Generalissimo should have turned
authority over to a constituent Cortes, elected in the traditional
manner (by professions and classes), to complete the instauration
of a traditional Catholic monarchy. Instead, he turned Spain into
a bureacratic pyramid, that, beginning in 1953, plaqued its troth
to the Masonically-controlled destinies of NATO and American
foreign policy. Pedro Cardinal Segura denounced the arrival of
both Ameican-style mangerial “democracy” and “coca cola” culture
at the time, and was ridiculed...but in the long run, he was
proven correct. And now, the logical conclusion of this process:
a left-wing socialism in power, gutting what is left of Spanish
tradition.

I will admit that I am uneasy with both extreme libertarianism and
unfettered capitalism, just as I am with big-scaled centralized
government. But just as anti-democratic Carlists, Action Francaise,
Integralismo Lusitano, etc. partisans in Europe favored an historic
regionalism, so I favor--like the Southern Agrarians---regionalism
and a kind of “Ameican Distributism” here on this side of the pond.

Ron Paul is certainly not perfect, but he comes closer than
any of the other candidates from any number of viewpoints.

Finally, that you could suggest me supporting Rudy Giuliani, as a
Catholic [!!!!], simply boggles the mind. You certainly intended
that comment in jest...Giuliani is an apostate, big government,
pro-abortion, pro-gay, “Israeli First,” globalist democrat. No way
in or on God’s green earth....

Listen to all of you.  Seems like a classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. 

All of this “history” you are debating about.  These shifts and all that. That’s great and all but I have news for you, the rEVOLution cares not about these things.

Did you happen to miss the one post in these replies where the latest strategy re: The rEVOLution was explained to you as clear as crystal?  A trip to the RonPaulForums will confirm it. 

I am ignorant about a lot of these you all are talking about, but what I have sees is this.  I see people listening, learning, adapting, and growing.  Not only are they organizing things from the money bomb to giving Laura Ingraham flowers for saying something nice about Paul, they are doing what needs to get done where it counts.  Becoming delegates, captians, etc., waving the GOP flag while, doing whatever it takes. 

In fact, everyone’s favorite reactionary Devvy Kidd wrote an article about the importance of delegates some months ago, and it looks like the rEVOLution was paying attention.

Loretta Sanchez is not white; she is Mestizo.</i?

I said above that the issue was <i>not ethnicity.

As some say above, Ron Paul is the only hope for the White Race.

Only a small federal government will save the white race - since the federal government has slowly worked to destroy the white race since the 1950s. 

And if a small federal government won’t work, then secession may be the only answer.

This was a most intresting article regarding Ron Paul.
I believe that the diversity of Dr. Paul’s appeal is
that Americans have lost all confidence in the 3
branches of Government without exeption. Their hope is
that the “Constitution” will be an absolute vaccination
rather than a continuation of party bickering over which
bandaid to use. They trust Paul, because he trusts the
founding fathers. Others have shown that they trust the
“Corporate Doners” which is perceived as treason!

I shouldn’t pick on you, Boyd, because you’ve made a good faith effort to interact with my points.  I know that some Catholics write decent things about subsidiarity. but I don’t see it in real life.  Whenever Catholic populations reach critical mass, they call for some sort of big managerial state that uses the social control to keep the masses in line.  There are exception, such as 1950s America and Kuyper’s Holland, but these were times when protestants held the reigns of power. 

By contrast, Kirk’s Anglo-American culture of prudence and transcendent order was fueled by low-church Anglicanism.  The Outer Hebrides that he used to write about is a Presbyterian archipelago (where I hope to retire some day).  When he needed a Catholic example of his ideal, he used an obscurity, Brownson.

For whatever reason, Catholics like political theatre, romanticized politics and class division.  The phenomenon predates modernism.  It even predates the Reformation.  I see why those German princes and English MPs wanted to be free of it.

And if a small federal government won’t work, then secession may be the only answer.

The Old South isn’t coming back.  The New South lost its Calvinism, gained self-hated, but kept the old militaristic fantasies, so it LOVES the empire.  Many a VMI grad heading off to Iraq thinks he follows in Stonewall Jackson’s footsteps.  Disgusting.

Ah yes, Senor Ramus. And all those wonderful, Protestant countries have done SUCH a good job of maintaining subsidiarity and Christian culture. Like, say, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, England, Holland, Bimarckian Germany, and Canada, for instance? Lincoln’s Leviathan? The only example of decent decentralism one can find in Europe today is Switzerland--where the Protestants crushed the Catholic cantons’ attempts at maintaining greater decentralism, in 1840. Still, it preserves more of that spirit than anyplace else--perhaps because the two faiths have kept each other in balance. The real culprit here is the necessity which the Reformation pressed upon churches of BOTH confessions to cozy up to the state for support, instead of remaining a counterbalance to state power. Of course, in England, the state wasn’t Protestant ENOUGH for many, which forced them to dig up forgotten, medieval Catholic principles (long dead on the Continent, in countries of both confessions) of Common Law and resistance to central authority.
But as a good Paul Blanshard anti-Catholic obsessive, you can’t accept that--and you must find a way to blame the statism of Alabama Baptists rallying around George Wallace’s big (white) government populism on the Jesuits. Have fun, but those of us with a knowledge of history and a sense of humor are just sitting here chuckling at you.

Damn, I was just going to hand Zmirak a beer while
we both chuckle from the sidelines.  (But here’s
a beer for you anyway.)

Just a quibble:  Sorry but when you get into
legal history and comparative law you’re veering
into my area of expertise.  Continental Europe
never developed anything quite like the English
Common Law, although to be fair the development
of continental law from the shreds of Roman law
(mixed with a mish mash of pre-Christian Germanic
customs) DID bear some resemblance to the development
of English common law.  But only some.  English
common law was a stepchild of Henry II, and a blood
child of Anglo-Saxon custom - yes with some overlap
with the church, but please don’t overestimate
that in revisionist ways.  Wise King Henry realised
that allowing the English to maintain their own customs/laws
would be easier and more effective than imposing an alien
legal system upon them; the “common” law was the effect
of Henry’s endeavours to establish some consistency
in the laws of the land, and to subject them ultimately
to his central authority.  Catholicism has very little to
do with it; pragmatism did.

Like, say, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, England, Holland… and Canada, for instance?

All of these countries are better places to live than anywhere south of San Diego, even with Socialism.  England, Holland and Canada have plenty of Catholics fighting for social justice, just like here.

But as a good Paul Blanshard anti-Catholic obsessive,

Who?  Look, you belong to a globalist pressure group that peddles universal human rights, mass immigration and western suicide.  As long as it can dangle a Latin Mass in your face, you will put up with it.

and you must find a way to blame the statism of Alabama Baptists rallying around George Wallace’s big (white) government populism on the Jesuits.

They’re Anabaptists, but I’d rather be ruled by the Southern Baptist Convention that the Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Once again, I see a racism accusation.  Nice to see how a paleocon turns Bolshevik when somebody criticizes Mother Socialist Church.

Have fun, but those of us with a knowledge of history...

...know that Apostolic Succession proves nothing. :-)

<i>a good Paul Blanshard anti-Catholic obsessive/i>

I looked him up.  He was a left-wing rationalist.  He and your clerics want the same thing; they only disagree over strategy.

Nice thing about being Anglo-Catholic is that it can tend to inoculate one against extremes of hostility to Protestants or Catholics.  (Something I tried to demonstrate in my recent friendly Donnybrook with my friend Zmirak, which reminded me of the proverbial Irishman who said, “Is this a private fight, or can anyone join in?” :-)

So now contra Ramus (to Zmirak):  “you belong to a globalist pressure group that peddles universal human rights, mass immigration and western suicide.”

Um, no.  The Catholic Church is universal and transnational - as all Christianity ought to be - but the only “universal human right” it peddles is the right to life, which is fundamental to all real Christianity.  (Isn’t it, Peter?) Neither the Vatican nor the hierarchy, nor any but a handful of Priests and laymen, peddle “mass immigration”; sympathy for the plight of immigrants is not the same thing; and the
practicing Catholics of France and Italy and Belgium aren’t inviting masses of Muslims to invade their countries, rather their secular enemies are.  As for “Western suicide”, nothing would bring on Western suicide faster than the diminution of the Catholic Church’s influence over the minds and morals and civilisation of the Catholics of Europe.
Or even worse, the end of the Papacy - which I don’t see coming anytime soon (thank God) - and there again I have a subtle, English Christian attitude to the Papacy:  I think it’s a great institution (who am I to wish for the end of the Bishopric of Rome?), I just think the Papacy ought to have no ultimate control over the internal politics of any
nation, such as England, which refuses to accept it (not to mention refusing to accept the Papal Bull which authorised King Philip of Spain to invade and conquer England - to Hell with that!) And I won’t accept the Pope’s ultimate authority over my conscience, but that’s another story.  But the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome are indispensable to our civilisation.

And Ramus called the RC the “Mother Socialist Church.” Good God, man, whatever YOU’re smoking, no I DON’T want any, because a mind is a terrible thing to waste on hard-core hallucinogens.  SOCIALIST?  The Church whose leader, Pope John Paul, did more than any other person in history to destroy Russian and European Communism?  When Pope John Paul visited Poland and said, “Be not afraid”,
he restored and reaffirmed the credibility of the Roman Catholic Church
(at least as an authentically Christian Church and force for good in the world) in the eyes of many Protestants, of whom you, Peter, evidently are not a traditional one - because traditional Protestants don’t necessarily object to the existence of the Roman Church or the Papacy, but just want it to keep its political power in its place, in Rome. 

But as an old Philadelphian I’ve known quite a few Quakers and Anglicans who were very sympathetic to Marxist-style socialism during the Cold War.  On the other hand I love William Penn and a certain KIND of Quaker, the kind who made my city the most religiously tolerant one in all the 13 colonies - a legacy which I would like to think I personify.

Personal gloss:  My mother and hers and hers etc for several generations, were all baptised in William Penn’s baptismal font (imported from London) at Old Christ Church in Philadelphia, where several signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried.  I say that proudly, and am equally proud of old St Mary’s Catholic Church just a few blocks away (near 4th and South), where a Catholic mass was said in celebration of the American victory at Yorktown.  AND Philadelphia has the oldest Jewish cemetery in America, begun in 1742, where several Jewish heroes of the American Revolution are buried, and so is Rebecca Gratz who was the model for the virtuous Jewess in Scott’s “Ivanhoe”.

Mr Ramus, I share your grievances over the assaults upon America’s English and Protestant roots made by so many American Catholics of non-British descent.  But as an old Philadelphian I believe in William Penn’s kind of ecumenicalism and tolerance, which, in my view, was and is an example of the greatest gifts the Reformation has given to the world.

I believe in William Penn’s kind of ecumenicalism [sic] and tolerance

This isn’t a matter of tolerance. I don’t expect the RCC to die or even shrink, but just get weirder and weirder.  It will continue abusing its loyalists for years to come.  And it will remain a friend of social justice.

I don’t see Catholicism as conservative because I see what the followers actually DO, rather than what apologists want to believe.  Catholic influence is going strong south of San Diego.  It isn’t pretty.  By contrast, the European Right seems to be weakly religious or downright anti-Christian.

My point is that a tiny group of ultramontane romantics now claim to be the true American right.  Supposedly real conservatives convert to some traditionalist sect, whine about the “state of the Church,” and dream about Latin Masses.  This is as absurdly fetishistic as the neocon’s obsessions.

(The dream died in 1965, people. The “state of the Church” sucks and will continue to suck. Get over it!)

Some of these people can’t hide their resentment of the Old Republic that they pretend to admire.  Thomas Fleming doesn’t even bother faking his populism anymore.  And when your drinking buddy, the professional paleoconservative, starts whining about racism and the evils of George Wallace, I smell a rat.

the right to life… is fundamental to all real Christianity.

Osama has no right to life.  Neither did Ted Bundy.  Neither do enemy combatants in a just war.  Abortion is wrong because it is essentially the same act as murder.  There’s a difference.

I believe in William Penn’s kind of ecumenicism and tolerance.

I support tolerance.  I just don’t think liberty and multinational bureaucracy work well together.

nor any but a handful of Priests and laymen, peddle “mass immigration...” Socialist?

The church knows about it, permits it and funds it, just as it knows about Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry. A church is people, not just romantic dreams about former glory and dead languages.

Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

Mr Ramus challenged me:  “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

Fair enough.  I lived and taught in post-Communist Russia and currently “Communist”, and horribly atheist, China for the past nine years, and during my years in China - even while I obeyed the law of China (walking a razor’s edge), I evangelised the Gospel in China.

I did so as a combination of Faith AND works.

So, Peter Ramus, tell me, what works of spreading the Gospel in hostile nations have YOU ever done?  HMMMMM?

I am Catholic, although we belong to a sect that recognizes not the validity of Vatican II.  We celebrated the Latin Mass long before an unauthorized Roman dictator told us we could celebrate what our people had been celebrating for over 1,000 years.

Much of what Ramus says is correct.  Within our lifetime there will be a Third World Pope, and like in Camp of the Saints, this Third World Pope will support the Third World invasion of the West, and the gradual (racial) extermination of Western man.

Where will the “conservative” Catholics be then?  Happy they have a Latin Mass and cheering the death of Western man and his 10,000 other ancestral traditions?

The current Catholic Church is so wed to universal human rights there is no chance it will ever champion any sort of real traditionalism, any attempt to preserve Western Man and his traditions.

PS (to the Jack Chick groupie Peter Ramus, as well as (in a more friendly way) to all of our Christian friends, Catholic and Protestant):

Here is a song, by Johnny Cash and his family, which I sent to all of my friends in Communist China a few days before I left - and I sent it to them along with an expression of my hope for them to consider converting to Christianity. 
I did this very strategically - after I had lived in China for several years, during which I gained the confidence of hundreds of high-ranking Communist Party members - it was part of my long-term plan, first to gain the trust and respect of Communist Party members, and THEN, in the end, to profess my Christian faith to them when and where I was free to do so, AFTER I had sewed the seeds of evangelising the Gospel to them over several years.

And so, in the end, AFTER I gained the trust and respect of many high ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party, then after I returned to the free world (Australia, ruled by the Christian Queen Elizabeth), then I sent this old song, by the evangelical Protestant Johnny Cash, I sent this song (and video) to HUNDREDS of high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JLFbUbmH7To

...and I know, because I know the Chinese so well, that THAT song will do more to convert them to Christianity than any abstract Papal Bulls could ever do.

And I evangelised China in that way, above and beyond the internecine conflicts between Western “Catholics” and “Protestants”.  Mr Ramus, MOST Chinse Christians are Protestants, and I urge you to pledge your support to THEM, in opposition to our mutual enemy, the Communist Party who are enemies of ALL Christians!

We Christians, Catholic AND Protestant, need to stick together now against our enemies.

Anyway, I hope some of our TakiMag community will like this song by Johnny Cash, a song I sent to HUNDREDS of my former colleagues and students in atheist China as my farewell gift to them - it’s a Protestant song, but it’s a song in which, I hope, Catholics AND Protestants can believe, in these times when our Christian Faith is in peril.  Here’s that BEAUTIFUL, PROTESTANT Christian song, again:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JLFbUbmH7To

Mr Ramus challenged me:  “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

John Ball: Nope, I quoted the Book of James.  I was referring to the works of Roman Catholicism, which tilt leftward.  You deny said leftism, which does not make it go away.

A random hit:
“Sowers of Justice is a membership organization for Catholics in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area who are committed to changing hearts and changing social structures on behalf of justice.  Sowers is a network that helps its members to act on behalf of justice in their personal life, their family life, their work life, and their political life.”

Ugh.  We don’t have anything like that in my presbytery.

to the Jack Chick groupie Peter Ramus

Both Jack Chick and Johnny Cash were Anabaptists, as are most so-called Evangelicals, the Christian Zionist dispensationalists and almost all fundamentalists.  They don’t have sacraments and they don’t baptize babies.  This is the opposite extreme from Rome.

We Christians, Catholic AND Protestant, need to stick together now against our enemies.

What about the zillion or so Catholics in Boston, Chicago and Baltimore who just love the managerial state?  They are just as Catholic as the people who post here, yet they are far more numerous. What common fight does the Old Right have with Yellow Dog Democrats?

Amen to John Zmirak; why do John Ball and Peter Ramus continue to hijack every thread with their long winded ignorant rants?

Peter Ramus said,

“Both Jack Chick and Johnny Cash were Anabaptists, as are most so-called Evangelicals”

True, and I am on their side

“the Christian Zionist dispensationalists and almost all fundamentalists.”

That’s a lie, to group them all together.
MOST of those Protestant American Christians have a very simple, uncomplicated faith in the Gospel, as I have too.

The vast majority of American Christians who call themselves “Fundamentalists” (et al, the myriad sects of American Evangelical Christians) have a very simple faith, in accord with the best lights of the Reformation:  They believe in the Gospel, in a very simple and basic way, and I agree with them - although YOU, Peter Ramus, seem to be EQUALLY caught up in as much abstract doctrinal bullshit as any fanatical Roman Catholic!

HA!  So, Peter Ramus, it seems that you are MORE OF A CATHOLIC THAN I!  Because, unlike me, YOU, Peter, aspire to some kind of doctrinal purity which I - being a very old fashioned Anglo-Catholic - I just don’t give a flying f--- about doctrinal purity.  But evidently YOU do, Peter - and that’s why you are NOT a good Protestant - you are just a very lost Catholic.

HA!  HAHAHAHA!  (Now I invite John Zmirak to drink and laugh with me more!
HAHAHAHA!  :-)

Peter,
I thank you for your compliment (which you offered way back in
this thread, after my message clarifying my positions on big
government, subsidiarity, etc. and Franco, Spain and Ron Paul).

Actually, some of Peter’s criticism of contemporary Catholicism--
its muddled-headed, socialist, humanitarianism, is---sadly--not
far off the mark. For those of us who are called “traditionalists”
derisively in many cases, this modernist Catholicism is inimical
to what we hold to be true and right and taught to us by the Church.
Much of what we see today that purports to be “Catholic” is littel
more than ersatz Catholicism that has made peace with “the times”
and with the political Left.

What does, however, need to be distinguished here, I think, is
that what we see and experience, especially here in the USA and
in Europe is praxiological, and does not actually reflect the
traditonal and doctrinal teaching of the Church. In a real sense,
what we have seen, certainly since the early 1960s in the USA,
has been the triumph of “modernism,” which can be defined theologically
as an admixture of truth and error such that in the realm of
practice any number of varying actuations may be based in a
particular bishop’s “statement,” or a “ruling” from a Roman
Congregation, or, as I have previously discussed, even from
certain documents of Vatican II, itself. It is the equivocal nature
of such statements and succeeding praxis (plus the destruction of
orthodox Catholic seminary training, catechetics, etc) that have
not only permitted the confusion--and error--but encouraged it.

We have seen Pope Benedict XVI begin to wrestle with these questions
himself. For example: The Old Latin Mass we were told by both
the ICEL and the various bishops’ conferences in the 1970s, was
abolished and forbidden. Even Paul VI implied as much. Yet, Benedict XVI now, echoing what Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and others said from
1969 on, has stated forthrightly that that NEVER was the case;
and indeed, in at least some of his writings, he suggests that
the Old Mass could never be “abolished”...which is what some of
us have said for years.

A week after Summorum Pontificum (re-establishing what had never
been un-established in liturgy), Benedict also in forma specifica
approved the issuance of a declaration on the faith and the univoal
nature of the Church...UNAM, sanctum, apostolicam, ecclesiam. It
was a body blow to the irenicist “ecumeniacs” who would like to
downplay, erase, and/or compromise away “differences” in belief.  The Church,
the declaration stated unambiguously, contains the “fullness of
truth,” and other “communities” cannot be considered “churches” in
a real sense and do no possess that fullness. What outrage from
liberals, both Catholic and Protestant, followed! The Church
actually believes that it has the Truth! And that others...shudder…
are in, dare I say it, “error.”

While these are significant signposts, there is much more to do to
right the Barque of St. Peter. What must, however, be remembered
is that truth does not change, and the doctrines of the Church
taught for centuries remain just that, despite what Bishop X
or Father Y or Episcopal Conference Z might say, or even if a particular
pope is derelict in his duty as Pastor, either through omission or
throught commission....

Now, back to Ron Paul, as this is what this thread is supposed to be about.. I believe firmly in subsidiarity and regionalism, and I think he comes closest to embodying an approach that appreciates those modalities. I believe in states’ rights, and reforming our managerial and therapeutic state, back towards the concepts of the Founders. I think Paul would be much better at attempting
that. Is Paul my perfect candidate? No. I remain a bit uneasy with
some of the libertarian aspects. But I think I can, both morally
and positively, vote FOR him, and I don’t see how I can do that
for just any of the others candidates running.

talk about a hijacked thread

@ lester, “talk about a hijacked thread”

No it’s not hijacked (you spelt that incorrectly), and Dr Cathey’s way of bringing this discussion back to Ron Paul, proves that.

“Lester”, if you want to confine discussions within strictly defined boundaries, then you would just LOVE Communist China, a country I was ecstatically happy to leave.  The Chinese Communist Party’s “Department of Propoganda” (yes it still exists) works VERY hard to keep all internet discussions within very strictly limited boundaries.  But Taki’s blog is not like that.

PS, sorry, lester DID spell “hijacked” correctly, but many have spelt it incorrectly ("highjacked") when they bash Sid Cundiff.  Sorry about my error.

To call Baptist (General or Particular), Arminians denominations, Church of Christ, and other Evangelical groups “Anabaptists” is simple wrong.  These groups were the product of 17th Century English anti-Calvinist Dissenters, and of the first two Great Awakenings.  Even the Zwinglians aren’t Anabaptists.  The Anabaptists are the Dunkers, Hutterites, Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and the Amish. All these groups are from Middle Europe, and have a distinctly different theology.  The only point of similarity is the rejection of pedobaptism and the acceptance of memorialism in the Eucharist.

Re: John Ball,
Thanks for the expertise… but if the development of Common Law was accomplished by pre-Reformation jurists in England, and mirrored in the local liberties of Imperial cities in Germany and Italy, and cantons in Switzerland--and found echoes in the Spanish fueros, the claims of the French parlements, for instance, doesn’t this suggest how SILLY it is to credit English Protestantism with inventing the ideas of limited government, decentralism, or resistance to royal authority?
Elsewhere you wrote that the Holy See had become “politicized” by the time of Henry VIII’s Y chromosome shortage (actually, Catherine bore him at least two sons, I believe--who died of the syphilis he picked up, perhaps from one Boleyn sister, before passing it on to another)....  Perhaps a better word is “independent.” Unlike the sadly subjugated Patriarchate of Constantinople under the Byzantines, or the Archbishopric of Canterbury under the Tudors et cetera (John, what do you think it MEANT when Henry dug up the body of Thomas Becket and threw it in the river????), the Vatican retained a political independence. This entailed it in ugly things like Italian politics, but prevented a repeat of the Babylonian Captivity in Avignon.
No doubt, the current nominal independence of Vatican City is a wise and prudent solution--and it helped Pius XII personally save thousands of Jews from the German occupiers in 1944. But the popes of the 16th century, to maintain the spiritual independence of the Church, had to act as rulers--or else be ruled. They sinned, made mistakes, committed crimes--but nothing on the order of the enormous cultural crime of the Reformation, from which Europe has never recovered. Remember that it was Protestant churches (beginning with the Anglicans) who accepted artificial birth control, emptying the cradle to be filled by the children of Allah. They were followed by nearly every Protestant denomination--and by the Protestantized Catholics of Europe and America. The results are easy to predict, sadly: A Mexican North America, an Islamic Europe, and the last few Anglo-Saxons (my descendants, I hope, included) hunkering down in Iceland.

You are all nuts.

It’s not a bad thing.  Just sayin’

@John Zmirak,
You think it will be Iceland? Could we have a Second Avignon
Exile there, too? The digs wouldn’t be as historic or as aesthetic
as Rome, but neither was Covadonga comparable to the Alhambra or
medieval Toledo, Spain, when the Reconquista began in Spain.

Actually,I’d been thinking about New Zeeland...I love the South
Island.

What would be commendable, foreign-policy-wise, in a putative Ron
Paul adminstration would be an close alliance with Russia. I would
prefer allying with the “Third Rome” than sticking with a corrupt
and decadent NATO. We share some of the same enemies and have
similar interests.

The news media is reporting that Pat Robertson today endorsed Rudy Guiliani. So why is Robertson endorsing a socially liberal, pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate? The answer is he wants Armageddon. Of all the candidates, Rudy is the one most committed to starting WWIII (or WWIV, in Norman Podhoretz’s formulation) which Robertson and his Armageddonite followers desire more than anything else. God forgive them for their lunacy.

Claiming, like John Ball, that Continental Europe never developed a common law similar to the Anglo-Saxons flies in the face of facts and is one of those myths anglophiles like to promote. He obviously never heard of the German “Sachsenspiegel” which was the first comprehensive listing of the various “Volksrecht” or common law standards the Germanic tribes including the Anglo-saxons lived by. As much as it may hurt their pride, Anglosaxons are a small subset of Germans who emigrated to an offshore island and as such are not differing from the fatherland- majority very much.

These groups were the product of 17th Century English anti-Calvinist Dissenters, and of the first two Great Awakenings.

Except for a remnant of “Reformed Baptists,” old British Baptists like Gill, Bunyan or even Spurgeon would not recognize the Southern Baptist Convention.  They would never have supported dispensationalism, megachurches, self-help or much else that is called “evangelical” today. Also, the Southern Baptists officially teach the Gnostic heresy of soul competency, which is a cancer eating away at America.

I’ll still vote for Ron Paul, because the state is not a church. I voted for Buchanan too.

Protestant churches… accepted artificial birth control

Look, Calvin and Luther opposed contraception.  And the tide is shifting.  I go to church and families with 6+ kids are everywhere.

Amen to John Zmirak; why do John Ball and Peter Ramus continue to hijack every thread...

I got tired of every thread turning into a conversation about Tridentine Catholicism.  The Latin Mass fetish is especially annoying.  So I struck back, reminding people that the reactionary tradition and American constitutionalism are not parallel lines.  You can say you want to restore tradition, but, to quote Richard Weaver, “whose tradition?”

Besides, I think Ball is witty; I’d buy him a beer if I could.

Thanks for your answer on Buchanan, Mr.Ramus.

Peter,
I’d buy you and John, both, a beer! Rather, I’d treat you
to some genuine Johnston County (NC) white lightning (and
maybe some of the rye, as well).

One more word: about the Mass, for me (and for orthodox
Catholics) it’s a normal means of receiving grace. Therefore
its supreme importance, spiritually. And for traditionalists
the 1500 year old traditional Latin Mass is a theological locus
as well, that teaches the faith. Lastly, it is perhaps the most
sublime ingredient of our Western culture, serving as a vehicle
and inspiration for great art, architecture, music, and literature
Without it our culture...just on that level alone...would be
immeasurably poorer and more barren.

On all of this, I recommend Dietrich von Hildebrand. Even my good
Protestant friends recognized this, at least from a cultural
perspective.

Not to understand this, I fear, impoverishes a person (Catholic or
not), intellectually and culturally.

Well, Mr. Ramus, one of the leaders of Protestant America just endorsed Giuliani. You won’t find one of our bishops doing that. Oh, I forgot--now it will turn out that Robertson isn’t a REAL Protestant, but a Prestidigitarian Quasinatalist--and hence you won’t have to take credit for him. Whenever an entire denomination goes bad--Methodist, Episcopalian, Evangelical Lutheran, it doesn’t matter because then they’re not REAL Protestants--the whole body of whom apparently all live in Moscow, Idaho. That’s the convenient thing about being part of a man-made church… you can always just walk away and start a new one. Because you’re not leaving anything that was founded by Christ. You or your ancestors left that long, long ago.
Yes, Luther and Calvin opposed birth control. Name the Lutheran and Presbyterian leaders who still do. At least the Catholic Church had the courtesy to tear itself apart and lose the allegiance of hundreds of millions over this question--and still held firm to its principles (can’t imagine why they bothered, huh?). If you think the Church sold its soul at Vatican II over religious liberty--an issue that was hardly driving people out of the pews--isn’t it CURIOUS how some mysterious Force seemed to force the catastrophically incompetent, petty and cowardly Pope Paul VI to issue Humanae Vitae?  Must be Satan, disguised as an angel of light. Yeah that’s the ticket. Pardon me, I’m going to go handle some snakes. (Oops, they’re not real Prots either, right?)

Zmirak, you hate me more than the neocons.  Interesting.  Are you going to whine about racism and George Wallace again?

Whenever an entire denomination goes bad--Methodist, Episcopalian, Evangelical Lutheran, it doesn’t matter because then they’re not real Protestants.

Look, we have the promise of a gospel, not an infallible bureaucracy that lasts forever.  Every church is a man made church. The real Holy Mother Church is people, not titles and bishoprics.  You should do to Rome what Ron Paul wants for Washington: downsize everything.

the catastrophically incompetent, petty and cowardly Pope Paul VI to issue Humanae Vitae

Call me when Mr. Ratzinger tells more than 13 Million illegal aliens to pack up and get out.  Or when he condemns multiculturalism and affirmative action. Or when he calls on nations to shut down the welfare state.

Mr. Ramus just keeps on trying to bait me; I criticized Wallace’s supporters for their big-government addiction, which seems more germane to the discussion. I don’t hate him, but I am repelled by his weird animus toward the Catholic Church, which he blames for a wide variety of social ills. Immigration policy? Name a church that favors a tough stand? Name one. The Southern Baptists are officially… neutral. Every other denomination of which I’ve heard (ALL the mainline Protestant sects, for instance) is far more PC than the Catholic Church. Ever read the policy statements of these groups? Take the U.S. Catholic bishops’ statements, and remove any trace of traditional Christian morality, but leave all the sentimental junk.
Is it Catholics who are responsible for big government? Okay, a lot of us voted for the New Deal. (Forgive us--we didn’t support the party co-founded by the Nativists, which had just crammed Prohibition down our throats.) What exactly were the policies passed in rock-ribbed Protestant countries like… Sweden? Germany? England? Was it the fault of Catholics that the Puritans turned into Unitarians, then Transcendtalists, then Buddhists? Yes, Teddy Kennedy sponsored the infamous Immigration Reform Act… which was passed by the Congress of an 85% percent Protestant country. It’s just weird to hear the hierarchy of a small minority of the country blamed for dominating its politics--at the very time that abortion laws were being passed left and right, divorce laws were being made absurdly lax, and birth control was jumping to our side of the Tiber. It reminds me of the people one sometimes finds on the Web who would, if given the chance, blame bad weather on the Jews. (To be fair, I once did convince an elderly Latin Mass lady to blame bad weather on the Freemasons, just to see if she’d bite. She bit.)

I am repelled by his weird animus toward the Catholic Church, which he blames for a wide variety of social ills.

The hierarchy supports it, tolerates it and encourages it, then starts new programs about combating racism and social injustice.  It’s not weird. It’s in front of my nose.  You claim “the Church” teaches one thing, while the actual teachers say something else.

Forgive us--we didn’t support the party co-founded by the Nativists, which had just crammed Prohibition down our throats.</i?

<i>Was it the fault of Catholics that the Puritans turned into Unitarians

I don’t say Catholics are responsible for everything.  I say they push abstraction and centralization.  Millions of Catholics openly resent the old Anglo “nativist” republic, so they support a big, centralized, managerial state, which makes them feel comfortable. If Catholicism supports self-determination and decentralization, I don’t think the parishoners get the message.

It’s just weird to hear the hierarchy of a small minority of the country blamed for dominating its politics

You’re putting words in my mouth again.  I didn’t say “control.” I say American Catholics overwhelmingly support big, abstract government because they find it comfortable—and to dilute the old American “nativist” influences.  You claim Catholicism is this rich conserving force, yet I see no evidence that it works here, now, in real life.  Protestantism may be as bad as you say, but that still does not demonstrate the RCC’s virtues.

I say they push abstraction and centralization.

Oh, so that is the definition of subsidiarity.

Wading through all the pontifications, theories, and extrapolation of those who posted comments, I’ve come to the realization that most (if not all) miss the point entirely.  Our republic is in its death throes, thanks to the majority of our non-responsive politicians.  Dr. Ron Paul is the only one who has the prescription for reviving the patient.  Believe it!  Any of the front-runners in either party, if elected, will deliver the coup d’gras to the U.S.

Holy navel gazing, Batman!

Call me when Mr. Ratzinger tells more than 13 Million illegal aliens to pack up and get out.  Or when he condemns multiculturalism and affirmative action. Or when he calls on nations to shut down the welfare state

I thought you didn’t want him interfering in other nation’s politics (or was that Mr. Ball?).

c matt, it was me but I was referring mostly to the conduct of the Popes around 400 or more years ago.  Pope Benedict doesn’t attempt to overthrow foreign governments by force, and he’s a fine moral
leader, and not just for Catholics.  And I don’t object to Popes trying to influence the morals or even the politics of other countries, as long as they no longer do things like sending the Spanish Armada, laden with instruments of torture to convert unwilling nations by force.

But the Popes kicked those bad habits centuries ago.

Oh and I owe this to John Z, who asked,

“John, what do you think it MEANT when Henry dug up the body of Thomas Becket and threw it in the river????”

It was a sacrilege, not so much because of Becket’s (perhaps arguable) virtues, but because it’s just evil to disinter the corpse of a Christian from holy ground and to desecrate both his body and Canterbury Cathedral.  I have no argument with you there.

And for what it’s worth, JZ, when I moved to London in 1994 (to live there for some years), one of the first things I did was to visit Canterbury and to light a candle at the Cathedral, in memory of Becket.  And THEN I walked over to the (very small) RC Church almost next-door to the Cathedral, because whatever remai