Saturday, October 6, 2007

Terms of Surrender, Terms of Victory

In my humble, the piece at the Center for Vigilant Freedom entitled, "Terms of Surrender, Terms of Victory," is a vital read:

Virtually everything we do is in coalitions, and that emergence of effective coalitions — often ad hoc, for single rallies, or over months over a piece of legislation, or locally as activists find each other from groups with common interests — is an important trend from the last year. A lot of our work is in helping to incubate those coalitions, both by supporting other groups, and also by helping to incubate single-issue sites that can become battlegrounds in this war of ideas.

If you think of this in terms of war gaming, we need more pieces on the board (my emphasis). Our Islamist adversaries have a lot of pieces on the chess board, pieces they have been building with petrodollars for over a generation — new Islamic organizations like NAIT and ISNA (Wahhabi forces), pseudo-Western organizations to enforce the separation of Muslims from mainstream integration, such as CAIR, MAS, and MSA (Muslim Brotherhood forces), groups to effect infiltration and intimidation into existing Western NGOs and government agencies of Muslim Brotherhood supporters (FBI, U.S. Peace Institute, CIA, White House, Transportation Security Agency, Department. of Justice) .

A lot of Islamist dawa is about putting hundreds of organizations and individuals in place in each country’s civil and governmental institutions — not just in the USA. The strategy is one of colonization under Islamic Imperialism — for these Islamist groups to act as Muslim Brotherhood front groups, creating the parallel society of Shariah which will then be in place to take over as national sovereignty is corrupted and preoccupied with the chaos of civil war and terrorism. Gramsci, Qutb, Mao — various theorists of insurrection and colonization of the West have written on this. Our side is beginning to look at this now too, especially over the last half decade.

So much of what needs to be done right now is building up our own organizational capacity, finding people who can work together, and targeting key areas of weakness in our adversaries. Many groups are starting to do this.

I’ve worked with Muslims professionally over the years in various IT projects. Many train expertly as engineers, systems analysts and systems modelers. I wish I could see — because it exists somewhere — the system dynamics model that has been built, perhaps even by people I once knew, to model the Islamization of the West. It’s implicit, but given the skills and that Islamic cultural interest in the design of complex, internally referential systems, I suspect several models are out there competing for strategic dominance as the most useful tool. Our adversaries are wargaming our terms of surrender; it is up to us to build the wargames to define our terms of victory.

This is where our political leaders have failed so miserably, in failing to understand dawa, jihad, supranational terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, the whole set of tactics as a single system. It doesn’t need a single political entity governing it, to function systematically. You can build these things fairly loosely and they still keep functioning. Read all. [HT: Gates of Vienna]

Those who desire to fill their meaningless lives with "something more" by giving in to slavery to the primitive Sacred in Islam will, undoubtedly, parrot the themes, justify their violence, and even fall into murderous rivalries within it. But, as Christine shows, the outline of the structure can have a world-wide scope, a seamless quality, and magnificent elegance. Don't credit superior intellect or approval by their deity. Credit the power of the primitive Sacred.

Want to see a glimmer of hope? Here is a magnificent witness to faith and evangelization.

10 Christians Dead in Cartoon Rampage

”This is a lie created to have a reason to attack us."

Natural Law Basis of Freedom

ZENIT reports that Benedict XVI reiterated the foundation of truth, beauty, and goodness recently, affirming that natural law is actually a guarantee of freedom.

He explained: "When fundamental essentials are at stake: human dignity, human life, the institution of the family and the equity of the social order -- in other words the fundamental rights of man -- no law made by men and women can subvert the norm written by the Creator in man's heart without society itself being dramatically struck ... at its very core.

"Thus natural law is a true guarantee for everyone to live freely and with respect for their dignity, protected from all ideological manipulation and from all arbitrary abuses of the powerful.

"No one can disregard this appeal. If by reason of a tragic clouding of the collective conscience, skepticism and ethical relativism managed to annul the fundamental principles of natural moral law, the very democratic order itself would be profoundly undermined at its foundations."

This, of course, was what C. S. Lewis warned of in The Abolition of Man. As it is, such relativism has created at once a bloated hive of neo-paganism and milk-sops of its leaders, trying so hard to avoid the land mines of the politically-correct multiculturalism of the West.

Extreme examples of how such positivist relativism can destroy right judgment are rampant. It creates pagans of individuals unable to appeal to natural law, nattering nincompoops, and societies where might IS right for those with the money, savvy, and wherewithal to gain the upper hand through the democratic processes founded upon natural law in the first place. Read the ZENIT article here.

Friday, October 5, 2007

No Hijab ... Hmm Por qué?


Finger on the pulse: Many Muslim couples this evening at Tysons Mall speaking in Arabic, arm in arm. No Hijab adornments, feminine hair revealed and gorgeous (see "X'ed" behavior in left hand box above). What does this signal? A new level of deception? A gal driving her hijab adorned mother in a quite nice Jaguar enjoying the night air.

We've got to get a better network up and running, Christian gals! Hello? Christian gals? Hello? Hello?

Mary's Dowry

In the annals of Church history, probably no event still reverberates in the West with such catastrophic power as the so-called Protestant Reformation. Dear old Hilaire Belloc, in the final chapter of his essential book, How the Reformation Happened, encapsulates the English experience tightly:
In England the rigid government of the wealthy organised minority, led by William Cecil and his son Robert after him, succeeds (note well: Belloc knows that Elizabeth was truly powerless unlike mythic movie depictions). Mary Queen of Scots, the Catholic heiress to the throne, is put to death, the rebels against Spain in the Netherlands are supported, a Spanish expedition to succour the Catholic Church in England fails, and at the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, perhaps half the people are detached from Catholic tradition; two years after, the Gunpowder Plot, nursed by the second Cecil (NB again: And you thought Guy Fawkes worked alone? Shame on you. Belloc took a 1st in History at Oxford and worked from documents. Get your history from "V for Vendetta"?), turns the tide. After that date, 1605, the mass in England becomes definitely anti-Catholic, and the essential part of the struggle may be said to be over. [264, hb]
At the time Belloc wrote How the Reformation Happened he was optimistic about Europe in general maintaining and perhaps rebuilding upon its Christian roots. Yet in other works, he foresaw the uprising of both Islam and paganism -- our present two-front war foes.

May we all pray mightily to Our Lady that Hilaire Belloc's optimism was not wholly misplaced. The Camelot myth is a pale parody of the greatness of pre-revolutionary England. May we reverently remind Her that once merrie England had another name lovingly bestowed and lovingly remembered by a remnant: the Dowry of Mary.

Mustard Seeds, Fear, and Faith

Marcellino D'Ambrosio has something to say via Spero News:

We all admire the heroes of faith like St. Francis (feast day, October 4). Absolutely nothing stopped him in his pursuit of God’s glory. When, during the Crusades, he was captured by the Saracens, St. Francis challenged the imams to a duel to prove which was the true religion. “Light a bonfire,” Francis said to the Sultan, “and have your imam enter the fire along with me. Whoever emerges from the flames unhurt, his God is the true God.” The Sultan thought it was a good idea. His imam did not. But from that moment on, the Sultan gave Francis and his friars safe passage passes to travel anywhere in Muslim territories unhindered so much was he moved by Francis’ faith.

So how about us? We identify more with the apostles’ request in this Sunday’s gospel. “Lord, increase our faith! (Luke 17:5).

Read All:

Thursday, October 4, 2007

The West & Ent Wives

Sadly, in The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard tells us that the Ent Wives (without whom which no entings shall ever come about for obvious reasons of sexual differentiation) have taken a hike. Gone. Vamoosed. Outahere. He can't even recall their appearances, poor fellow.

As Mark Gordon noted, commenting on my post, 600-Pound Gorilla, "A burkha-clad woman driving in Virginia should see the Western man in her windshield as the 600-pound gorilla, but she doesn’t. Why? Because on some level she is intimately involved in the building of a civilization, while the Westerners around her are either actively dismantling theirs or allowing it to crumble into dust."

This is frequently how I feel when I notice a Muslim woman dutifully behind her Muslim husband adorned in hijab with a gaggle of children in tow. Do I long for a spouse captivated by the primitive Sacred, in mortal fear and peril of Honor Killings, per se?

Hardly. What I pine for is a unified West, beginning with the "domestic Church," the family: husband and wife sacramentally committed to lifelong sacrificial self-giving. Islam, albeit a veritable hive of characteristics of the worst of human nature, understands the indelible stamp of our human nature in the importance of the family. (And, of course, there is the demographic theory of war.)

If the West remembers nothing else, may Our Lady of Guadelupe, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (pray for us) intercede and help the West remember this.

Braying A** Becomes High Priest

Girard's mimetic theory, if nothing else (and there is), teaches that the one accused has at that precise moment an enormous amount of prestigious power. That is, when the mob all turns its multitude of eyes upon their intended victim to kill or cast out, that one can, if he plays his cards right, turn that attention into the power of a newly ordained priest or king or shaman. The "lightning bolt" meant for him can be deftly bounced onto another: "No, he's the one to blame!"

Witness Dr. Omeish, the president of the Muslim American Society (MAS), who was forced to resign last week from his recently-appointed position on Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's immigration commission when videos featuring Omeish posted by Little Green Footballs and the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) were brought to the governor's attention.

Steve Emerson lays out the scenario of how Omeish used his "victim" power to become the mouthpiece of the primitive Sacred in this piece from The Investigative Project on Terrorism, “When Islamists Get Caught: MAS Edition”. It is worth reading in its entirety. And if you want the good Dr. Omeish's own word on it ...

Only the Church

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. …

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

Albert Einstein, TIME, 23 September 1940
[Hat tip: Andrew Cusack]

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Bored to Terrorism?

Eow. If we'd only known earlier. Build more youth clubs, rec centers, and pool halls! An expert (...) now tells us that "boredom is a common trait" among Jihadists.

Marc Sageman, former CIA officer who worked with the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s and early 1990s and now practices clinical psychiatry, reports:

"If there's one thing they have in common … it is that they have had very insignificant lives.

"You have a lot of people who are bored out of their minds.

"Joining this movement brings significance to their lives."

"They live a parallel life, a virtual fantasy life. They assume an online persona that's more violent and significant than real life. Exaggerating the terror threat only (feeds) terrorists by enhancing their sense of power."

Jihad Watch has a different take on their motives:
Here's a ... hint: None of the jihadists are Methodists. Or Hindus, Unitarians, Catholics, or Buddhists. And yet, there are plenty of Methodists, Hindus, Unitarians, Catholics, Buddhists, and others who are either bored, feeling stuck in rut in life, or who feel a need to seek out and serve a higher purpose in life than material success or the well-worn routine of their possibly quite comfortable existence. How many of them are carrying out bombings and other crimes in the name of their religion?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

"Girl on a Rock" (Plus Truth & Goodness)

Maxfield Parrish is, I hope, considered an infidel because of his depictions of the human form in contradistinction to the Koran. I leave you, gentle reader, with the assurance that, in the words of my personal hero, Sam Gamgee, there is good in the world, and it is worth fighting for.

12th Imam Only Emerges

"... After the world has been plunged into chaos"
An essay too vital not to read via Western Resistance, Islam and End Times: The Confrontation Of Ideology And Culture. If Americans are too fat, dumb, and addicted to prime time drivel to wake up, those who want to destroy your way-of-life with their eschatological and scatological ravings-in-action will find it all the easier.

Sheep or Shirelings?

One of the most difficult aspects of defending the Shire is that so many hobbits living in it and elected or hired to govern it have fallen prey to what Mark Shea correctly discerns as the curses of the book of Leviticus:
But if you do not heed me and do not keep all these commandments... I will make [them] so fainthearted that, if leaves rustle behind them, they will flee headlong, as if from the sword, though no one pursues them; stumbling over one another as if to escape a weapon, while no one is after them--so helpless will you be to take a stand against your foes! (Leviticus 26)
In addiction to slavery to disordered passions, the prophet Isaiah speaks well of the post-modern denizens of the West: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way" [Is. 53,6]. Hooray. "I did it meh-eh-eh-eh-eh way..."

Have you ever, even in your wildest dreams, pictured sheep turning and fighting attackers, predators? Neither have I. Therefore, my hope for the defense of the Shire is not built upon a massive uprising from the common species of the ovis genus any time soon or late, for that matter. The defense must come from the uncommon species of "sheep," but one that has precedent in the West: those who know the Good Shepherd "who lays down his life for the sheep" [Jn 10,11b].

There is only One Who has the "ontological substantiality" of God who can lead us sheep: the Word made flesh [Jn 1,14], Jesus Christ the Eucharistic Lord of the Church. He has shown us what true life is, given us the means of grace to live it, and promises to be with us till the end of time [Mtt 28,20]. He's told us love our enemy, and so we shall; enough to propose Christ to them, and not kowtow to a batch of writings from redactor of Jewish, Christian, and Persian scripture. Love will even need to take the form of legitimate defense [CCC Nos. 2263-2267].

Sheep may begin remembering in Whose image they were made, repent of their cowardice and lack of faith (and hope and love), and begin living as Shirelings once again.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Last of the Mohicans

One need not watch the entirety of this Youtube clip. Out to about 4:00 will suffice to see a corollary juxtaposition of present-day Jihad on the Christian West. My fullest recommendation for the film itself.

Hamas Bans Violence! Oh. Violins

Hamas has done it. They've pushed me over the edge. It's official: they've banned violins, piano, & flutes -- only drums are allowed. Why? You guessed it. Only drums are mentioned in the Koran (I'll stick to the anglicized word, thank you.). And drums are most appropriate to an institutionalized religion so dependent on warring against its foe.

Girard, in Violence and the Sacred points to anthropological data of rival communities whose "program of entertainment included a series of 'chest pounding duels,' ostensibly of friendly intent and traditional to the occasion. At the moment when the imminent defeat of one team threatened to turn the contest into a bloody battle, 'the women and children began to cry, knowing that the situation was getting serious, and they grouped into the farthest corners of their houses near the exits" [140].

But have you ever heard of a "violin-scraping match"? a "piano-thrubbing smackdown"? or a "fearsome flute-flummoxing"? (Okay, okay - "Dueling Banjos doesn't count; neither does Donald and Daffy's piano-duel in "Roger Rabbit") No? But the drum, if chest-thumping gets a bit old, fits perfectly! You even have a club in your hand.

The violin, piano, and flute, on the other hand, are the West's highest expressions of musical instruments. They work in concert (sorry) under the baton of a conductor, and each can evoke perhaps the most splendid works of individual mastery and beauty known in the history of the human race.

Keep the drum. We'll keep the Strads, Steinways, and Pearls. But in a pinch, we'll get out the bag-pipes. Then you're really in trouble. Ever seen Braveheart?

Bomb & a Burqa, Two Bits

The Velvet Hammer lady reports and editorializes on today's Religions of Peace death-tally, now in Peshwar, Pakistan. (Wait, wait ... I thought Pakistan was a Muslim nation, ipso facto. Oh, well. Tell me more.) The report states as follows:
A burqa-clad woman blew herself up and killed at least 15 people Monday at a crowded police checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan, police said. It was believed to be the first time a female suicide bomber has struck inside the country.
The bombing, which injured 22 others, apparently was in a rickshaw that was being examined at a police checkpoint around 8:25 a.m. local time in the town of Bannu, said police officer Habib Khan.

Bannu police chief Ameer Hamza Mahsud said that investigation of the bomb site confirmed that the attacker was a woman who was riding in the rickshaw. He added that police had prior intelligence about the possibility female suicide bombers would strike in the town.

I posted last week on driving in northern Virginia and seeing a full-body burqa-beclothed driver behind me in a vehicle in 600-pound Gorilla. Mark Gordon, at Suicide of the West commented on my tale of seeing the burqa in my rear-view mirror thusly: "A burkha-clad woman driving in Virginia should see the Western man in her windshield as the 600-pound gorilla, but she doesn’t. Why? Because on some level she is intimately involved in the building of a civilization, while the Westerners around her are either actively dismantling theirs or allowing it to crumble into dust." Oddly (and happily, I might add), acquaintances and colleagues of mine are beginning to sense a nagging and growing need for unity among Christians, regardless of what the ontologically-challenged nihilists of the West are busy being about. And I sense an opportunity for the work of René Girard's mimetic theory in the air.

Case in point: burqas! What? Are males so sexually obsessed that we can't keep our mitts off gals otherwise clad? The burqa is relatively recent development in ladies' apparel in Scimitar Land. So, why the bone of contention?

Girard can help. The template of Islam is purely and simply that of what he calls "the primitive Sacred," anthropologically speaking. The burqa obscures, stiff-arms any truly human interchange, and hides. The acceptability of being devious by Jihad standards is becoming commonplace and even honorable by their practitioners -- anything that fools the enemy can be easily justified in hindsight. "I did it for Allah" is a good enough rationale so long as the blood of the enemy is shed.

And this is a key component of the primitive Sacred: it is born in doubling rivalry with the other, either individually or culturally, and thrives on retributive violence, even to the point of self-annihilation ... so long as THEY perish as well. Christianity is not innocent of such slap-dash behavior, but (as usual and God bless us!) we feel remorse and contrition after such goings-on, repent, and seek to love our enemy better the next time. Saint Peter is our main-man here, setting the template at the crowing of the Rooster [Mk 14, 72].

Does Islam have any such precedence regarding remorse and repentance? Please, name it for me. It simply isn't there, never was, never has been ... but hope prays it shall one day by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Meanwhile. trust a burqa-bedecked person at your own risk.

Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus +

An essay of the little way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux by Rev. Jean C. J. d'Elbeé, Humble Confidence.

The Hubris of Alchemical Gnosticism

Or, How I Learned to Love Dionysus
Pity two people: the 64-year old retiree who followed his disordered passions to become a "woman" surgically, and the writer of this story, "Woman Suing IRS Over Sex-Change Tax Claims":

After years of painful soul searching, Rhiannon O'Donnabhain -- a former construction engineer from a devout Irish Catholic family in Boston -- decided to surgically change his sex to female in 2001. The struggle was equally tough financially -- hormone treatments and medical procedures set her back $25,000, a burden she felt could be partially offset by taking a $5,000 tax deduction for medical costs.
Talk about alchemical Gnosticism at its finest pagan expression. It's all here: years of succombing to the vertigo of the disordered imagination, better living through chemicals "treatments", elective neutering. All at the small cost in monetary terms of $25,000. Did I mention the hubris of re-designing what God the Creator had already given this Rhiannon O'Donnabhain in terms of a teleological purpose for being in the universe with his precious, unique, and vital person, made imago dei?

But no. He decided to "become a woman," and the benighted IRS disagrees with the decision and action being a tax claim. And what does the scientific community say about this?
"When did the IRS suddenly become physicians?" said Marshall Forstein, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "It's absolutely clear that transgender identity is a condition discussed in diagnostic manuals. It seems the IRS is now in the business of practicing medicine without a license."

And, according to O'Donnabhain's lawyers from the Massachusetts-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the case is expected to set a precedent on whether such procedures will be considered tax deductible.

So since GLAD is now on-top of the situation, we know that the human Gnostic project with its emphasis on power of individual choice of lifestyle over God's silly designs so regrettably put into each person without consulting us about our choice in the matter -- for heaven's sake, what kind of a life-giving Creator is this anyway? Gees! -- the tax claim will set a precedent and go through with flying colors. Hooray, human hubris wins!

Sarcasm aside: Catholic truth is in a two-front war. Ostensibly, the human hubris crowd thinks in self-satisfaction that they are pleasing themselves. In reality, they are bowing at the altar of Dionysus. On the other hand, the Scimitar is the other side of the same coin: paganism cloaked in pharisaical Koran-rules that catch new victims for sacrifice. To whom? Same god: Dionysus. Fancy that.

Continue to pray for the Holy Father, the Church, and all who hold antinomy toward this basion of sacramental grace and truth. +


Must Read List: Why Matter Matters by David Lang

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Annie Dillard, Sub-creator*

I will close this 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time by Catholic Shire reckoning with a blessing that truly is worth defending. In 1975, Annie Dillard was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction with her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. There certainly are equally famous and rich descriptions of the glory of God's creation, but none struck me, a young college kid, quite so much as this long-legged, long strawberry-blond-haired, piercing eyed author/naturalist sitting on a boulder in the rear-cover picture. That got me reading, and then I was hooked by her stunning prose, keen wit, and theological temperament.

Read Eudora Welty's review of Pilgrim in the New York Times. And Dillard’s own website that she maintains.

*J. R. R. Tolkien's coinage for creative human art, music, literature that reflects the creativity of the Lord in whose image we are created, imago dei.

Jihad - Definition

What Jihad really means. Key quotation by Douglas E. Streusan at the Middle East Quarterly:

Muslims today can mean many things by jihad-the jurists’ warfare bounded by specific conditions, Ibn Taymiya’s revolt against an impious ruler, the Sufi’s moral self-improvement, or the modernist’s notion of political and social reform. The disagreement among Muslims over the interpretation of jihad is genuine and deeply rooted in the diversity of Islamic thought. The unmistakable predominance of jihad as warfare in Shari’a writing does not mean that Muslims today must view jihad as the jurists did a millenium ago. Classical texts speak only to, not for, contemporary Muslims. A non-Muslim cannot assert that jihad always means violence or that all Muslims believe in jihad as warfare.

Conversely, the discord over the meaning of jihad permits deliberate deception, such as the CAIR statement cited above. A Muslim can honestly dismiss jihad as warfare, but he cannot deny the existence of this concept. As the editor of the “Diary of a Mujahid” writes, “some deny it, while others explain it away, yet others frown on it to hide their own weakness.”

The term jihad should cause little confusion, for context almost always indicates what a speaker intends. The variant interpretations are so deeply embedded in Islamic intellectual traditions that the usage of jihad is unlikely to be ambiguous. An advocate of jihad as warfare indicates so through his goals. A Sufi uses the term mujahada or specifies the greater jihad. Bourguiba clearly did not advocate violence to improve education and development in Tunisia. When ambiguity does exist, it may well be deliberate. In the case of Arafat’s statement about a “jihad for Jerusalem,” he intended his Muslim audience to hear a call to arms while falling back on the peaceful definition to allay concerns in Israel and the West. Only his later actions reveal whether he was co-opting Islamists by adopting their rhetoric or duping Israelis by hiding his violent intentions. [Tip: LGF]

The Crusades - Don't Be Ashamed!


A good read and looks good on the coffee table too is Crusades – The Illustrated History [2004], Thomas F. Madden, Gen. Ed. And, if the book budget is a wee bit meager, you can read Madden's article, "The Real History of the Crusades," here.

Welcome to the New Michigan

Anti-Jewish and Anti-Christian fliers found on windshields. "Kill Jews and Christians if they don't believe in Allah and Mohammad." And I thought Jack Chick tracts were problematical. Read more.

Let's print up a few reams of these, shall we?

Lan astaslem - I WILL NOT SUBMIT

Oh, and by the way, I will be happy to forgive others their trespasses as soon as I am sure I can keep them from beheading me and plundering the Shire. Pax et bonum. +

Lost Horizon - The Meek Shall Inherit

Chronicles of Atlantis is about, ostensibly, "things worth fighting for." I mentioned elsewhere a film called "Excalibur" -- John Boorman's depiction of the heroic pagan tragedy. Its soundtrack leans heavily on Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," a pagan paean if ever there were one. But I want to make the case that a finer film (in black and white, unlike the movie poster here), is Frank Capra’s LOST HORIZON (1937), based on James Hilton's book of the same title. Dimitri Tiomkin's musical score is an even finer evocative work, tinged with a note of loss, sadness, and "beyondness".

The High Llama of Shangri La invites Robert Conway, unhappy but patriotic British Foreign Secretary and visionary, to stay and lead the monastic-like order. Here is the High Llama's rationale:
It came to me in a vision long, long ago. I saw all the nations strengthening, not in wisdom, but in the vulgar passions and the will to destroy. I saw their machine power multiplying until a single weaponed man might match a whole army. I foresaw a time when man exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and culture that I could and preserve them here against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! What unintelligent leadership! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other, compelled by an orgy of greed and brutality. The time must come, my friend, when this orgy will spend itself, when brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. Against that time is why I avoided death and am here and why you were brought here. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. For here, we shall be with their books and their music and a way of life based on one simple rule: Be kind. When that day comes, it is our hope that the brotherly love of Shangri-La will spread throughout the world. Yes, my son, when the strong have devoured each other, the Christian ethic may at last be fulfilled, and the meek shall inherit the Earth.
LOST HORIZON -- a far-away place of civilization for your DVD collection.

"Shire Strategy"

As I posted at the 4M blog, James Pinkerton has produced in his essay, The Once & Future Christendom, to my mind the only feasible paradigm for rescuing the Christian West; namely a "Shire Strategy." Pinkerton utilizes Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for terminology and even policy in a way that honors the beliefs of a prime adversary of the West qua "the Shire" without a desire to quash, destroy, or subsume that adversary.

For another analysis of Pinkerton's notion, see A Conversation with James Pinkerton in "View From the Right."

The Dionysus Mandate


Marilyn Manson, performance/mort-rock artist of the neo-pagan West (pictured left) was an important influence in my fictional take on a recrudescence of the primitive Sacred, The Dionysus Mandate – A Fable of Desire & Death. One must realize, however, that the book denotes events that might take place in the West, where the influence of the Gospel is still to be found. Where the primitive Sacred still takes the form of a billion-strong Islam today, we see officer-class practitioners of it.

An Important 28 Minutes

Erwun Caner Shares His Journey Through Islam.

Expect More Without the Gospel Influence

In his tape series, "The Dionysus Revival," Gil Bailie speaks of the West's infatuation with the élan of the Dionysian. Those who saw and felt first hand and tasted of its heady false-freedoms, say, in the 60's, know of what Bailie speaks. What no one then knew then was that, anthropologically speaking and what René Girard has made so clear, the first intoxicating buzz of the Dionysian throwing-off of mores and prohibitions leads to the place of blood sacrifice. This is the primitive Sacred.

The mythos that silences concern for the victims of such regressive religious and neo-pagan behavior now attempts to throw a cloak called "choice" over our sanitized altars of Moloch -- read abortuaries -- in the West. But those whose hearts and minds have been formed in the ethos of the Gospel -- however little "Christ-hauntedness" remains in the West -- can still see clearly and feel the revulsion of the Sacred in all of its crowd-powerful glory when it comes to us from a non-Gospel influenced culture.

Let us consider an example. LGF reports on an "honor killing" shown on Youtube. And a question: If you were an anthropologist from the West who happened upon such brutality, what would you do?
(a) Observe closely, take notes, and later write an ethnography to publish in a professional journal.
(b) Watch in stunned horror, walking closer to the action, and later wonder, starring at your hands, "Where did this blood come from?"
(c) Roar in indignation, throw yourself upon the girl's attackers in a mad adrenalin rush.
(d) Slink back, look at your watch, and retire to your hotel room feeling depressed, diminished, with memories of going to Confession as a boy. Choose one.

جهاد, djihād

Battle of Lepanto
Walid Phares lays it on the line regarding Preventing the West from Understanding Jihad:
In Arab Muslim history, a Hiraba (unauthorized warring) was when a group of warriors launched itself against the enemy without orders from the real commander. Obviously, this implies that a "genuine" war against a real enemy does exist and that these hotheaded soldiers have simply acted without orders. Hence this cunning explanation puts "spin" on Jihad but leaves the core idea of Jihadism completely intact. The "spoilers" depart from the plan, attack prematurely, and cause damage to the caliphate's long-term plans. These Mufsidoon "fail" their commanders by unleashing a war of their own, instead of waiting for orders.

This scenario fits the relations of the global Jihadists, who are the regimes and international groups slowly planning to gain power against the infidels and the "hotheaded" Osama bin Laden. Thus the promoters of this theory of Hiraba and Mufsidoon are representing the views of classical Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood in their criticism of the "great leap forward" made by bin Laden. But by convincing Westerners that al Qaeda and its allies are not the real Jihadists but some renegades, the advocates of this school would be causing the vision of Western defense to become blurred again so that more time could be gained by a larger, more powerful wave of Jihadism that is biding its time to strike when it chooses, under a coherent international leadership.
Compare the last notion that Phares warns of -- a "larger, more powerful wave of Jihadism ... under coherent international leadership" -- with the goals of a Christendom with borders and boundaries in James Pinkerton's ”Shire Strategy.” The latter is humble by comparison.

Islam and Paganism

Jeff Mirus posits an interesting notion regarding Islam and Paganism in the online journal, Catholic Culture. Mirus says, "...it is no good denying Islam’s devotion to the One, which Mohammed derived indirectly from Revelation; clearly, he was a passionately committed monotheist. But it is critical to realize that Islam is not based on any sort of special revelation given by the One to his people, except insofar as it borrows imperfectly from Judaism and Christianity."

I recall Gil Bailie saying in his tape series on Carl Jung that the time came when he realized that Dante could understand Jung but Jung could not understand Dante. May the many who suffer downstream of "the Prophet" under the pharisaical quasi-revelations of the Koran come to realize the same thing about Islam.

The Key to Ecumenism, the Pope Says

...And There Is Strength in Numbers