Istambul - la prise de Constantinople par Mehmet II « le Conquérant » le 29 mai 1453

Actualité de l’empire ottoman


Une gigantesque parade a marqué hier à Istanbul le… 563e anniversaire de la prise de Constantinople. Ce n’était pas un centenaire, mais un anniversaire lambda, pourtant célébré devant un million de personnes transportées gratuitement par autocars et par ferries, devant la plus grande scénographie du monde, nous dit-on, retransmise en six langues, retraçant la prise de Constantinople par Mehmet II « le Conquérant » le 29 mai 1453. Avec les acrobaties de l’armée de l’air, un feu d’artifice, etc., et bien entendu un discours d’Erdogan. Le même jour avait lieu la « fête de la Jeunesse et de la Conquête » à la Corne d’Or, avec divers concours sportifs.

Difficile de marquer plus clairement et de façon plus spectaculaire que la Turquie reste la Turquie, la puissance ottomane conquérante, qui a vaincu l’empire chrétien et peut toujours vaincre l’Europe des croisés…

La veille a eu lieu devant Sainte-Sophie une « prière » conduite par un imam de La Mecque, c’est-à-dire une manifestation de plusieurs milliers de musulmans demandant que la basilique redevienne une mosquée. « La demande de prier à la mosquée Sainte-Sophie (sic) est faite au nom de centaines de milliers de nos frères », disait le président de la Jeunesse anatolienne. Une pétition circule. Ses auteurs espèrent réunir plusieurs millions de signatures.

Source: yvesdaoudal.hautetfort.com

https://youtu.be/8fX9VTLRmmA

https://youtu.be/sVomB5fEnBo

US Army Major General: Erdogan wants to resurrect Ottoman Empire and create controlled Islamic state
https://youtu.be/g37Yj9c5rYA

In un mondo fortemente secolarizzato è avvenuta una “graduale secolarizzazione della salvezza” ...

Ebrei e islamici, conversioni non gradite

di Riccardo Cascioli


Redemptoris Missio: «La mentalità indifferentista, largamente diffusa, purtroppo, anche tra cristiani, spesso radicata in visioni teologiche non corrette e improntata a un relativismo religioso che porta a ritenere che “una religione vale l'altra”» (RM, no.36).

In fondo come avverte san Giovanni Paolo II il vero problema, il nocciolo della questione è la mancanza di fede: «La missione è un problema di fede, è l'indice esatto della nostra fede in Cristo e nel suo amore per noi. La tentazione oggi è di ridurre il cristianesimo a una sapienza meramente umana, quasi scienza del buon vivere. In un mondo fortemente secolarizzato è avvenuta una “graduale secolarizzazione della salvezza”, per cui ci si batte, sì, per l'uomo, ma per un uomo dimezzato, ridotto alla sola dimensione orizzontale».



Pochi giorni fa il cardinale Kurt Koch, presidente del Pontificio Consiglio per la promozione dell’unità dei cristiani ha tenuto una conferenza a Cambridge, nel Regno Unito, che gli è valsa diversi titoli di giornale. Koch avrebbe infatti detto che il dovere di evangelizzare è nei confronti di tutti i non cristiani, musulmani inclusi, ad eccezione degli ebrei. Quanto a questi ultimi, i cristiani - ha detto ancora Koch - riconoscono il patto stipulato da Dio con il popolo ebraico, cosa che non si può applicare all’islam. Da ultimo Koch è andato ben oltre la definizione di “fratelli maggiori” e ha detto che i cristiani dovrebbero vedere l’ebraismo come una “madre”. Per questo non si deve convertire gli ebrei, mentre al contrario si deve evangelizzare i musulmani.

Queste parole hanno ovviamente fatto rumore, tanto che un sito ufficioso del Vaticano, Il Sismografo, che cura quotidianamente una rassegna stampa in diverse lingue, è andato a chiedere chiarimenti al portavoce vaticano, padre Federico Lombardi (clicca qui). Il quale si è mostrato piuttosto irritato per quella che lui considera una manipolazione delle parole del cardinale Koch, mettendo in rilievo come alcuni titoli di giornale non corrispondessero al contenuto. Il riferimento è al fatto che in alcuni titoli si è letto “dovere di convertire” i musulmani mentre nei testi di parla di “dovere di evangelizzare”, due concetti in effetti un po’ diversi. Non tali però da sollecitare un intervento del portavoce vaticano, che infatti poi passa ad affermare il vero punto della questione: «È chiaro quindi che non è corretto attribuire al cardinal K. Koch un invito al proselitismo nei confronti dei fedeli musulmani».

Riassumendo: nessun tentativo di evangelizzare gli ebrei, dice Koch. Ma neanche i musulmani, precisa Lombardi. E tutto dando ovviamente per scontato che con le altre confessioni cristiane non si deve neanche pensare lontanamente di ricondurle alla Chiesa cattolica.

Ad aggravare la situazione bisogna aggiungere che si tratta di affermazioni che ormai non stupiscono più nessuno, tanto sono considerate ovvie. Solo che a questo punto, bisognerebbe chiedersi seriamente: «Ma allora chi è Gesù Cristo?». È ancora l’unico Salvatore che è morto e risorto per salvare tutti gli uomini, come è stato proclamato per duemila anni? È il Vangelo ancora da considerare «la pienezza della Verità che Dio ci ha fatto conoscere intorno a se stesso», come si legge nell’enciclica Redemptoris Missio (RM) di san Giovanni Paolo II? Crediamo davvero che «aprirsi all'amore di Cristo è la vera liberazione» (RM 11)?

Se fossimo davvero convinti di questo, come potremmo anche solo concepire di escludere parte dell’umanità da questo annuncio? Non si tratta di portare tutti spada in pugno a sottomettersi al “nostro” Dio, ma di fare tutti partecipi di una grande gioia: la morte è stata sconfitta, siamo liberati dal peccato, il Mistero si è fatto presenza, compagnia all’uomo, come recitiamo ogni giorno nell’Angelus.

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Leggi tutto: www.lanuovabq.it

If I am dying of thirst, no one has any doubt about what it is that I want and need.

The Great Thirst


by James V. Schall, S.J.


In The Range of Reason, Jacques Maritain wrote: “The world is prey to a great thirst, an immense mystical yearning which does not even know itself and which, because it remains without objective, turns to despair or neurosis.” Most people easily comprehend the notion of a great “thirst.” Thirst concentrates our attention. If thirst is great, we do not ask: “What quenches our thirst?” We know. The “object” of our physical need is “water, cool clear water,” as the Sons of the Pioneers used to sing.

Other beverages, like lemonade, can also subdue our dry throats. Chesterton said that people, after a long, hot, walk on a dusty English road, do not drink beer because of its alcohol. Beer is a drink. We are thirsty. In normal thirst, what we most want is simply water. It is because beer is mostly water that it can do the trick. A martini or a brandy, in the same circumstances, would not do the trick. Indeed, either would probably increase our thirst for water. We might wonder: “Why is there both water and thirst in the universe?”

What is interesting about Maritain’s remarks is the analogy to another kind of “thirst,” one for something other than water. This is not an argument from desire to existence, but from existence to desire. This “mystical yearning” does not know itself. Unlike normal thirst, this deeper thirst does not know its object straightaway. What is it that will satisfy us?

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Read more: www.thecatholicthing.org

Christians have a mission to convert all Muslims, according to one of Pope Francis’s senior aides.

A Christian response to Europe’s crisis
by Joseph Pearce

These are troubling times. Europe is apparently on the verge of meltdown. Unable to withstand the heat caused by the growing friction between the European Union and its member states, especially as the former tries to force an open-door immigration policy on its member nations, there are fears that the melting pot might be melting. Such fears have been exacerbated by the rise of the new right, or what many would call the far right, in Europe.

In Austria, the Freedom Party’s candidate, Norbert Hofer, won the first round of Austria’s presidential election last month. In the second round run-off on Sunday, he will go head-to-head with an independent candidate aligned to the Green Party. Ominously, this is the first presidential election since World War II in which the two main parties failed to qualify for the presidential run-off, their candidates coming fourth and fifth in the poll.

Hofer’s victory follows in the wake of his party’s success in last year’s local elections in which the Freedom Party gained 30 per cent of the vote in Upper Austria, largely due to its stance against immigration.

In Bulgaria, the current prime minister, Boyko Borissov, has adopted a hardline stance on immigration. In Slovakia, the anti-immigration People’s Party did well in this year’s election, winning 14 parliamentary seats, the first time any of its members has ever been elected. In Sweden, the Swedish Democrats, a party similar in tone to Ukip, more than doubled its number of seats between 2010 in 2014. Now the third largest party in Sweden, it is anti-immigration, as well as being critical of the EU.

In Finland, the Finns Party (previously the True Finns) came second in last year’s general election. Party leader Timo Soini is Finnish foreign minister in a coalition government. The party advocates strict immigration controls and argues that Finns, not migrants, should take priority for social and healthcare spending. Its roots lie in rural Finland and it has championed welfare policies that give it a populist dimension.

The wave of Middle Eastern immigration into Europe has massively boosted support for the Danish People’s Party (DPP). In the 2014 European Parliament election the DPP came top, doubling its representation. In the 2015 general election the DPP received 21 per cent of the vote, becoming the second largest party in the Danish parliament, with 37 MPs, up 15.

It is now in government in coalition with the conservative-liberal Venstre party. The coalition has carried out a radical tightening of Danish immigration and asylum laws, which are now probably the strictest in the EU, except for Hungary, which, under populist conservative prime minister Viktor Orbán, has taken the singularly radical step of erecting a great fence round the whole country. Orbán also fuelled controversy and touched a historically sensitive nerve by alluding to Hungary’s historic role bulwarking Europe against the forces of Islam.

In Poland, the Law and Justice party achieved surprise victories in the 2015 presidential and parliamentary elections, largely due to the EU’s callous mishandling of the migrant crisis and the threat this was perceived to pose to Poland’s control of its own borders and society. Tellingly, support for Law and Justice, and other similar parties, is coming mostly from young people. Polls showed that two thirds of students who voted in the parliamentary elections in October had cast their vote for parties with markedly Eurosceptic and anti-immigration policies.

Closer to home, the Front National (FN) in France has grown in popularity since its leader, Marine Le Pen, distanced herself publicly from her more uncompromising father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the FN’s previous leader. The FN won 6.8 million votes in regional elections in 2015 – its largest ever score. It was only stopped from taking control of its two target regions after the Socialists pulled out and urged supporters to back Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservatives.

In 2014 the FN won the French European Parliament election. Marine Le Pen is now considered a serious contender in the 2017 presidential election. Needless to say, immigration and Islamist terrorism such as the Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks have boosted support for the FN.

In Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has adopted an anti-immigration stance since Frauke Petry took over as leader of this Eurosceptic party in July 2015. Petry’s victory led to several prominent members leaving, claiming that the party had lurched to the right. They have polled very well in state elections in 2015 and also in this year’s elections. This year they came second in the Saxony-Anhalt elections.

AfD MEPs initially sat with the Danish People’s Party and Britain’s Tories in the European Parliament but recently have aligned themselves with the Austrian Freedom Party. At its party congress this month the AfD adopted an explicitly anti-Islamic position, calling for a ban on burkas, minarets and calls to prayer under the slogan “Islam is not a part of Germany”. Members cheered when Hans-Thomas Tillschneider told the congress: “Islam is foreign to us and for that reason it cannot invoke the principle of religious freedom to the same degree as Christianity”. Few would seek to argue that the rise of AfD is part of the fallout from Angela Merkel’s migration policy.

In a way, I could claim to have a more keen sense than most people of the way things are going in Europe. As an angry and disaffected youth back in the 1970s and 1980s, long before my subsequent change of heart and conversion to Catholicism, I had been a leading member of the National Front, which would later metamorphose into the British National Party. I was a member of the National Front’s executive council and its national directorate and was chairman of its youth movement, the Young National Front. I was sentenced to prison twice, in 1982 and 1985, for “publishing material likely to incite racial hatred”, an offence under the Race Relations Act. One of my closest friends was Nick Griffin, later to become notorious as the leader of the BNP. I was best man at his wedding and co-edited a magazine with him. Perhaps, therefore, it could be suggested that I might have a sense of déjà vu as I observe the turbulent times in which we live. In some ways I do. The similarities are striking. And yet in many ways, and perhaps in the most important ways, things are very different today.

Racism is always evil, as is any other manifestation of hatred towards our neighbours or our enemies. Christians can never espouse racism, nor can they support with a clear conscience parties that advocate racism. It is, however, unfair to suggest that anyone who is concerned about the Islamisation of Europe or about the endemic corruption and overarching imperialism of the European Union is either a racist or a xenophobe. Such language is the sort of thoughtless knee-jerk reaction that is the death of rational discourse.

Furthermore, it is the sort of demonising and stereotyping of opponents of which the racists are themselves guilty. Against such dumbing-down of the real nature of the problem, I would argue, with Benedict XVI among others, that there are three mutually incompatible and inimical forces at work in the international arena: secular globalism, radical Islam and Christian orthodoxy. As Pope Benedict highlighted in his prophetic Regensburg address, the clash between these forces is at the troubled heart of our darkening world.

This struggle for the heart of Europe was encapsulated by a young priest, Fr Jacek Międlar, at an Independence Day rally in Warsaw in November. Considering efforts by the European Union to force Poland to accept large-scale Islamic immigration, he likened the EU’s coercion of the Polish people to the oppression of the Soviet occupation.

“Dearly beloved,” he said, “we’re not afraid of the peaceful Muslims, but they’re a minority. We’re afraid of fundamentalism. We do not want violence, we do not want aggression in the name of Allah … We must oppose it. We do not want the hatred that is in the Koran, in Surah 5 [expressed for Jews and Christians], but we want the love and truth of the Gospel. We want to fight with the sword of love and truth, to which St Paul the Apostle calls us in the sixth chapter [of the Epistle] to the Ephesians [6:14-17]. The Gospel, and not the Koran!”

“The Gospel,” the thousands in the crowd roared again and again. “And not the Koran!”

Fr Międlar continued: “Leftist and Islamic aggression aimed at everything Christian and national makes us very afraid. But we’re also afraid that our fear will turn into hatred. And we, as Christians, cannot let this happen. That’s why we, the Christians, want dialogue. But no one wants to talk to us, instead calling us fascists, racists, xenophobes, and infidel dogs. We can never allow this [succumbing to hatred]. We don’t want to fight with the hammer of hate they want to push in our hands … We want to fight with the sword of truth. With the sword of love! With the sword of the Gospel! With the Sword that is Jesus Christ, our living Lord and Saviour.”

Fr Międlar is a controversial figure in Poland. His congregation, the Vincentians, banned him last month from public speaking because of his links to extremist nationalist groups. But though many of us are unaccustomed to such stridency, especially on the part of the clergy, and though many of us might baulk at the crusading language, the words of this priest are nonetheless a challenge for us all. In a world of rising secular fundamentalism and rampant Islamic fundamentalism, what are we, as Christians, called to do? Do we say and do nothing? Wouldn’t such inertia and inaction in the face of the forces of evil and their destructive consequences constitute a mortal sin of omission? Might it not be mortal, not only to the individual soul who refuses to resist the evil, but mortal also to the culture he is called to defend? Isn’t a refusal to resist the culture of death itself deadly? Do we have the right to do nothing?

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Read more: www.catholicherald.co.uk

The security of co-dependence ?

Could Russia REALLY go to war with NATO?

By Ian Shields

The novel is reminiscent of Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and the excellent "The Third World War: August 1985" by General John Hackett.
A new book by General Sir Richard Shirreff, NATO's deputy supreme allied commander for Europe between 2011 and 2014, evokes a potential scenario that leads to a devastating future war with Russia.

The book, "2017 War with Russia," (1) is clearly labelled as a work of fiction.
But it portrays a fairly convincing manufactured incident that the fictional president of Russia uses as a causus belli for a clash with NATO.
In his account, Russia rapidly expands its war aims by invading the Baltic States, which areNATO members, and world war ensues.

Perhaps more worryingly, the author has since told BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme that such a conflict is "entirely plausible."

U.S. launches long-awaited missile defense shield

Fact vs. fiction

I do not want to give any more away about the book (it is a good and authentic, if gloomy, read).

But the general's underlying political message -- clearly articulated in the book's preface -- is that the hollowing out of defense capabilities across the West and its reluctance and inability to stand up to Russia is making war ever more likely.

Is this an accurate assessment of the real world?

The novel is reminiscent of Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and the excellent "The Third World War: August 1985" by General John Hackett.
The latter, written at the height of the Cold War, was conceived as a "future history," supposedly looking back at the outbreak and subsequent unfolding of a full-blown NATO vs Warsaw Pactwar.

Shirreff's book, however, is a far more overtly political piece, and is deeply critical of the West's reduced defense spending and its unwillingness -- and inability -- to stand up to the Russian threat.

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Read more: edition.cnn.com



(1) Amazon review:

'You fail to read this book at your peril' - Admiral James G Stavridis, US Navy, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe. 

Closely modelled on his NATO experience of war gaming future conflicts, 2017 War With Russia is a chilling account of where we are heading if we fail to recognise the threat posed by the Russian president. 

Written by the recently retired Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe and endorsed by senior military figures, this book shows how war with Russia could erupt with the bloodiest and most appalling consequences if the necessary steps are not taken urgently. 

President Putin said: 'We have all the reasons to believe that the policy of containment of Russia which was happening in the 18th, 19th and 20th century is still going on...' And 'If you press the spring, it will release at some point. Something you should remember.' Like any 'strongman', the Russian president's reputation for strength is everything. Lose momentum, fail to give the people what they want and he fails. 

The President has already demonstrated that he has no intention of failing. He has already started a lethal dynamic which, unless checked right now, could see him invade the Baltic states. 

Russia's invasion and seizure of Georgia in 2008 was our 'Rhineland moment'. We ignored the warning signs - as we did back in the 1930s - and we made it 'business as usual'. Crimea in 2014 was the President's 'Sudetenland moment' and again he got away with it. 

Since 2014 Russia has invaded Ukraine. The Baltics could be next. 

Our political leaders assume that nuclear deterrence will save us. 

General Sir Richard Shirreff shows us why this will not wash.

Est-il possible de rétablir dans une certaine mesure la liberté du commerce ? Oui, c'est possible. C'est une question de mesure.

12 mars 1921- Lénine lance la Nouvelle Politique Économique (NEP)

par Alban Dignat

Le 12 mars 1921, Lénine surprend les communistes de son parti en annonçant uneNouvelle Politique Économique (en russe : NEP).

Échec du communisme de guerre

Après son coup de force d'Octobre 1917, Lénine a dû lutter tout à la fois contre les partisans du tsar déchu, les nationalistes, les démocrates et les socialistes. Il a pour cela instauré dès 1918 un communisme de guerre.

Supprimant la monnaie et le commerce intérieur, il a imposé des réquisitions en nature aux paysans. Il s'en est suivi une famine de plusieurs millions de morts et une chute sans précédent de l'activité économique. La révolte gronde chez les soldats fidèles auxbolcheviques.

Le 28 février 1921, les marins de la citadelle de Cronstadt se révoltent au nom de la démocratie et du socialisme. Ils sont massacrés par l'Armée rouge de Trotski.

Lénine lâche du lest

Dans son rapport de mars 1921 au Xe Congrès du PC, Lénine avoue : «Les faits sont là. La Russie est menacée de famine. Tout le système du communisme de guerre est entré en collision avec les intérêts de la paysannerie (...). Nous nous sommes trop avancés dans la nationalisation du commerce et de l'industrie, dans le blocage des échanges locaux. Est-il possible de rétablir dans une certaine mesure la liberté du commerce ? Oui, c'est possible. C'est une question de mesure. Nous pouvons revenir quelque peu sur nos pas sans détruire pour cela la dictature du prolétariat.»

En dépit de l'opposition de Trotski, son principal adjoint, le dictateur sacrifie le dogme marxiste en donnant un peu de liberté aux paysans, aux commerçants et aux petits entrepreneurs.

Mais il s'en tient à une libéralisation des rouages économiques et maintient intacts les rouages de la dictature. Il n'était que temps...

Le 16 mars 1921, le Xe Congrès du Parti communiste russe adopte le rapport de Lénine.

L'État reste propriétaire de la terre et des moyens de production, il garde le contrôle des banques, des transports et du commerce extérieur ; il regroupe les grandes industries nationalisées au sein de trusts d'État systématiquement favorisés par les investissements publics.

A côté de ce secteur étatique, la NEP autorise l'ouverture d'un secteur privé en rétablissant la liberté du commerce intérieur. Les paysans sont les premiers bénéficiaires de la réforme. La fin des réquisitions et le remplacement des impôts forcés par un impôt unique en nature, fixé chaque année, les encouragent à écouler leurs surplus.

En outre, un code agraire édicté l'année suivante, en 1922, permet aux communes rurales de redistribuer les terres et d'en déterminer le mode d'exploitation (location, fermage, métayage) en vue d'un rendement optimal.

Toujours dans le dessein d'améliorer les conditions de vie de la population, l'industrie lourde cède le pas à l'industrie légère. Le 7 juillet 1921, les entreprises de moins de vingt ouvriers sont dénationalisées.

Les révolutionnaires font même appel aux capitalistes honnis en instaurant le 13 mars 1922 des sociétés mixtes au capital fourni pour moitié par l'État et pour moitié par des groupes occidentaux (beaucoup d'Américains y répondent favorablement).

Un peu plus tard, le secteur public lui-même renonce à l'égalité des salaires dans les grandes usines et restaure une hiérarchie fondée sur la compétence.

En restaurant partiellement l'économie de marché, la NEP va sauver le pouvoir léniniste. Sa réussite sera spectaculaire. Paysans, commerçants et petits entrepreneurs reprennent goût au travail et aux échanges. Le chômage est résorbé. Qui plus est, les communistes russes gagnent la confiance des capitalistes américains. Capitaux et techniciens occidentaux s'investissent dans la «patrie du communisme réel» pour reconstruire les infrastructures.

Dès 1926, la production industrielle dépasse de 8% le niveau d'avant guerre. La production agricole rattrappe à son tour ce niveau en 1928 !

Lire la suite: Source: www.herodote.net

Les guerres religieuses et ethniques au Moyen-Orient et en Afrique laissent augurer une décennie plus meurtrière que la précédente.

2001-2011 : la décennie la moins violente depuis 1840


Ouvrons le journal, allumons la télé. Nous voilà inondés de mauvaises nouvelles. Serait-ce que le monde va de mal en pis ? Nous avons voulu y voir plus clair et nous avons mesuré la violence guerrière de Napoléon à nos jours.

Surprise. Nous découvrons que les attentats du 11-Septembre, si spectaculaires qu'ils fussent, ont inauguré la décennie la plus pacifique qu'ait connue le monde depuis 1910, voire 1840, avec une baisse significative du nombre de victimes par rapport aux décennies antérieures...

Notre enquête porte sur la violence d'État. Elle inclut toutes les violences qui résultent d'une décision politique ou idéologique : guerres civiles, invasions, famines organisées, terrorisme et attentats.

Elle exclut les violences domestiques et la criminalité ordinaire, ainsi que les autres sources du malheur humain : misère, injustice sociale, violence économique (pour cause de sous-développement, d'oppression ou d'exploitation), sans compter les catastrophes (tremblements de terre, accidents d'avions...).

Pour une comparaison pertinente de décennie à décennie, nous nous en sommes tenus au nombre de tués imputables à cette violence (civils, militaires, francs-tireurs, mercenaires). Cet indicateur est le seul qui soit à peu près objectif et fiable. Notons que c'est de ce même indicateur que l'on se sert pour mesurer aussi la criminalité ordinaire, la violence routière ou encore l'importance relative d'une catastrophe.

Les sources auxquelles nous nous référons donnent des évaluations approximatives, dans des fourchettes plus ou moins larges. Même en considérant le haut de la fourchette, notre constat est sans appel : la violence d'État a causé moins d'un million de tués en 2001-2010 ; nettement plus dans chaque décennie antérieure depuis 1840 (à l'exception de la décennie 1900-1910).

Les drames de l'année 2011 n'ont pas inversé la tendance : très médiatisés, les conflits en Côte d'Ivoire, en Syrie, au Yémen et en Libye ont fait au total quelques milliers de victimes « seulement ». C'est beaucoup moins que par exemple la criminalité ordinaire au Brésil (50 000 homicides) ou en Afrique du Sud dans la même année.

Voici le décompte des victimes de la violence d'État, décennie après décennie.


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Lire la suite: www.herodote.net

Liberals worship individual will. Their complimentary belief is in voluntarism

Liberalism: An Established Religion


By John Andra

Governments have often minimized religious conflict by establishing one religion and granting it privileges even where others are tolerated. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution left such power to the states, saying only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….” Following the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, the United States Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment to prohibit an establishment of religion at any level. How can government now minimize religious conflict?

Many who defend the current interpretation of the First Amendment offer liberalism as the answer. Liberalism proposes to minimize religious conflict by granting individuals liberty in the matter. Individuals must remain within the bounds of public order, but public order is similarly arranged to permit the maximum exercise of individual will.

Liberalism meets the challenge only if it does not thereby function as a religion. If it does, we have a bait and switch. The First Amendment will have been used to disestablish traditional religion in preference for another, albeit nontraditional, religion.

To know whether liberalism functions as a religion, we have to define the term. It is very difficult to define religion based on belief. Religions teach all sorts of things, many of which are inconsistent with religion as known in the West.

It is easier to define religion based on practice. The fundamental practice of religion is worship, and worship is a response to reason. Some are probably amused at the suggestion of worship as a response to reason, but it is so. Non-rational animals do not worship, and rational animals do.

Human reason is both limitless in its range and limited in its power. We can see the immense universe and even discern from it the existence of God, but we cannot comprehend either, i.e., we cannot fully understand what we apprehend. This disparity between apprehension and comprehension compels us to search for something beyond our own consciousness, something often called “meaning.” Realizing at some level that we are creatures, we cast about for the Creator. Our compulsion to worship distinguishes us from other animals, who untroubled by reason remain at the level of pure instinct. No rational human can do so.

The necessity of worship is obscured by the partial definition of it liberals (and other moderns) tend to use. For example, liberals might only adopt the Webster’s College Dictionary definition that defines worship as, “reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power.” Yet these same liberals would ignore the equally valid definition of worship as, “extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem.” Experience shows humans worship in both ways, but Scripture warns they conflict: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24).

Liberals might object at this point that while religion is a broad category, it does not include all objects for which people have an extravagant respect, admiration, or devotion. So although one can loosely say a person worships sports, one cannot compare such an interest with religion as typically understood. To do so, liberals might argue, would either render the First Amendment meaningless or prohibit government from enacting laws governing ordinary things like sports.

Such an objection would be clever, but it would also change the subject. The subject is whether liberalism can minimize religious conflict without functioning as a religion. Wherever the line might be drawn between worshipful and non-worshipful interest, can liberalism diffuse conflicts on the worshipful side without invoking worship?

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Readmore: www.crisismagazine.com

A healthy culture will manage some characteristics of human culture, getting most of them done most of the time

What is a Healthy Culture?

by Anthony Esolen


How should we judge the health of a culture?

We might do it by pointing to its greatest virtues. The Greek city states between 500 and 300 B.C., though they were not especially densely populated, gave the West the architectural “language” it still employs for everything from grand hotels to private homes. The colonial house, in this sense, belongs to a Greek colony before the American. Athens gave us the ideals and some of the techniques of democracy. She invented the drama; and the great troika of tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, are unsurpassed by anyone to come—except for Shakespeare himself. Without Greek sculpture there is no Michelangelo, no Rodin. All philosophy, said Alfred North Whitehead, is a footnote to Plato.

We might do it by pointing to its greatest vices. In Victorian England, if the physical grime from industry was thick, the moral grime of “scientific” approaches to education and human welfare was a veritable crust—over the molten rock of licentiousness, violence, and greed. Think of the women and children recruited for miserable and dangerous work in the mills just because they would agree to work for lower wages than the men, who for their part might go hang, or drink away their idle lives. Across the water, in the United States, men prided themselves upon their love of liberty, while accepting as an accomplished fact the enslavement of some millions of their fellow men; and then they erupted into a war that cost the nation seven hundred thousand souls, from which she emerged with a moral mission to take her liberty to the rest of the world, by force if need be. As for us, well, more than a million children are snuffed out every year, as we make violence to the innocent pay the price for our lusts.

But perhaps we should do it by pointing to the ordinary things, those things that are characteristic not of the particular culture, but of all cultures.

How do we bring together, in a healthy way, young men and young women, so that they will learn how to forbear with the shortcomings and be grateful for the virtues of the other sex; so that they marry and then have children, raising them in the haven of a home that will be “home” even for their children’s children, should God grant them to live so long?

How do we teach children the history of their nation and their civilization, so that they will both admit their failures and honor their achievements? How do we instill in them a kind of patriotism that is as natural as a sapling sending down its roots deeper and deeper into the soil? How do we foster a love for the peculiarities of our home, its “rocks and rills,” simply because it is our own, our native land?

How do we adorn our homes and our public places with art that comes from the people and is for the people? What whimsical craftsmanship is to be found on the steps of the post office, or the balustrade at the courthouse, or the eaves of the dry goods store? Do we build what is simple and sweet, or rather what is dull and drab? Do we build what is colorful and bold, or rather what is garish and obnoxious? Do we build what is noble and grand, or rather what is gigantic and inhuman?

What songs do we sing? If our captors asked us to sing the songs of Sion in an alien land, would we know any? How many of us could pick up a guitar or a fiddle nearby and play a love song passed down from ear to hand to ear to hand, from one generation to the next? What music brings together grandparent and grandchild?

What are the children doing when they are not in school or at work? Where is the child-culture that flows like a boisterous stream parallel to the great slow river of what the grown men and women do? What games do they play, whose origin no one knows? What wisdom and skill do they pass along beside or beneath the notice of their parents? With what kinds of gangs or teams, if any, do the streets swarm?

When we get together with all of our neighbors, what do we do? Do we build a house, raise a barn, glean the corn, bale the hay, march in parade, listen to patriotic speeches, play music, compete in games of skill or speed or strength, sing songs, honor the dead, or fall to our knees in prayer? Do we in fact do anything with our neighbors?

When we gather to determine a course of action for securing the common good, can we eventually put aside our differences of opinion and get something done? I am speaking here about localities. A bridge needs repair. Can we find a way to repair it expeditiously? Are there ministers of public order on our streets? Do we know the names of a few of them? Are they well integrated with the people they serve? Can quarrels be settled by policemen without recourse to law?

How hard is it to begin a small business? Can a young man with a strong back and skilled hands and a willingness to work set himself up without much ado? Are craftsmen easy to find and their work apparent to all? How many young men, who are not going to be doctors or lawyers or professors, can earn a sufficient wage to begin a family? How many young married women need not farm themselves out for a middling wage, but can do the intimate and necessary work of family life and even culture itself?

What do the people do with their leisure, if they have any? Have those with an inclination to read been trained in the appreciation of good books? What are the stories that everyone knows?

How do they worship together? Are the churches and synagogues full? Do people have a shared sense of their place in the world before God? Are their lives as parents, children, teachers, students, workmen, businessmen, neighbors, and citizens integrated at all with their lives as mere human beings standing in the light of eternity? Which is more likely to be heard, a church bell or a police siren? What stirs the heart? What causes people to set aside their enmity?

These are not extraordinary things.

They are also, I am coming to believe, interrelated things. I am not saying that each one implies every other one, necessarily. I am saying that they are characteristics of human culture, and that a healthy culture will manage to get most of them done most of the time.

So when we ask, “Why are the churches empty?” we might also ask, “Why are our public buildings so ugly? Why do we no longer have any folk art to speak of? Why do neighbors not know one another? Why are there no dances for everyone of all ages to enjoy? Why is the sight of a young lad and lass holding hands as rare now as public indecency used to be? Why is no one getting married? Why have family trees turned into family sticks, or family briars?

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Obama - Defending Communist terror and demeaning American sacrifices.

Obama and Ho Chi Minh: embracing evil


by Daniel Greenfield

On his visit to meet with Communist leaders in Vietnam, Obama criticized the United States for having, “too much money in our politics, and rising economic inequality, racial bias in our criminal justice system.” He praised Ho Chi Minh’s evocation of the “American Declaration of Independence” and claimed that we had “shared ideals” with the murderous Communist dictator.

Shortly after the “evocation” that Obama praised, his beloved Ho was hard at work purging the opposition, political and religious. When Obama references these “shared ideals”, does he perhaps mean Ho’s declaration, “All who do not follow the line laid down by me will be broken.”

Perhaps he means the euphemistically named “land reform” which may have killed up to a million people. Like Stalin and Mao, Ho Chi Minh seized land and executed property owners as “enemies of the state”. The original plan had been to murder one in a thousand. But the relatively modest plan for mass murder was swiftly exceeded by the enthusiastic Communist death squads.

Obama has consistently called for wealth redistribution. This is what it really looks like. It’s men being hung from trees or lying in dirt dying of malaria. It’s death squads coming in the night. It’s a declaration that you are to be executed because you are the wrong class in a class war. It’s a man condemned to hard labor in a New Economic Zone and a family starving to death because the regime has commanded that they must be made an example of to other peasants.

What’s wrong with a little wealth redistribution anyway?

As Obama said, on his visit to the brutal Communist dictatorship in Cuba, “So often in the past there’s been a sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist... And especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate, right? Oh, you know, you’re a capitalist Yankee dog, and oh, you know, you’re some crazy communist that’s going to take away everybody’s property... you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it neatly fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory — you should just decide what works.”

Does Vietnam’s Communist dictatorship work? Obama seems to think that it does, talking up the, “skyscrapers and high-rises of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and new shopping malls and urban centers. We see it in the satellites Vietnam puts into space”. What’s a million dead when you’ve got satellites in space? What does it matter if you don’t have freedom of speech when there are skyscrapers in Ho Chi Minh City?

Unlike Pol Pot, whose genocidal crimes leftist activists like Noam Chomsky tried and failed to cover up, the Communist butchery in Vietnam that took place even long before the Vietnam War has largely been erased from common history. The victims of Ho Chi Minh and his successors have become non-persons not just in Vietnam, but in Washington D.C. Instead Obama associates one of history’s bloodiest Communist butchers with Thomas Jefferson.

What of the Declaration of Independence was there in Ho’s concentration camps? The brutal Communist regime whose ideals Obama praises, sent political dissidents to camps. Are those the ideals he shares with Uncle Ho?

Obama praises the “Vietnamese constitution, which states that ‘citizens have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and have the right of access to information, the right to assembly, the right to association, and the right to demonstrate.’ That’s in the Vietnamese constitution.”

The Soviet constitution had the same empty guarantees.

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If I find myself marooned on a desert island, I would take ten Great Books, ten poems, ten novels, ten plays, and ten works of non-fiction.

Top Ten Books for My Desert Island

by Joseph Pearce

G.K. Chesterton was once asked what he would most like to have with him if he found himself marooned on a desert island. He replied, somewhat whimsically, that he’d like to have a book on practical shipbuilding. In this, if not in too much else, I’d like to beg to differ with the great man. If I find myself marooned on a desert island, and leaving aside for the sake of the fantasy my anxiety at being separated from my wife and children, I’d like to surround myself with my favourite things and indulge myself in their enjoyment until a ship came (not too soon, I hope) to rescue me.Losing myself in the fantasy, I set about thinking what I would take with me, making a list of my ten favourite works in various categories. I would take ten Great Books, ten poems, ten novels, ten plays, and ten works of non-fiction.

I began, appropriately enough, with the Great Books, those canonical tomes without which our civilization would be significantly impoverished. 

I would take the Iliad and the Odyssey, Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Metaphysicsand Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine’s Confessions and City of God, Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, Dante’sDivine Comedy, and last but obviously not least the Holy Bible.

Moving on to the ten poems,

I would take Beowulf in Tolkien’s translation, “Decease Release” by St. Robert Southwell, “The Phoenix and the Turtle” by Shakespeare, Coleridge’s “Hymn Before Sun-Rise in the Vale of Chamouni,” “The Wreck of The Deutschland” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (an appropriate theme for one marooned on a desert island!), “Twelfth Night,” “Tarantella,” and “The End of the Road,” all by the indomitable and inimitable Hilaire Belloc, and “The Waste Land” and “Four Quartets” by the less indomitable but equally inimitable T.S. Eliot.

Next are the novels. 

I could not contemplate being without Jane Austen, and would take Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility with me. A life without Dickens would be equally unthinkable, though I would restrict myself, under great self-restraint, to A Christmas Carol, my indubitable favourite. I would have to take Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and would accompany it with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by that other great Russian, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I could not contemplate being without at least one of Chesterton’s novels and, forced to choose, would select The Man Who was Thursday, though I would be sorely tempted to smuggle The Ball and the Cross as an illicit addition to the library, if I thought I could get away with it. I would also take one of the novels by Chesterton’s great friend, Maurice Baring, probably C, though other worthy titles from his scandalously neglected pen would serve equally well. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh could not possibly be left behind, nor could either The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, even though neither of these prose epics by Tolkien could strictly be considered novels. Some rules are clearly meant to be bent, if not broken, and the thought of excluding classic trans-genre titles, such as Tolkien’s, simply because they cannot be neatly pigeonholed, would be patently absurd.

And so to the ten plays. 

I would take the Three Theban plays by Sophocles, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, andOedipus at Colonus, the only works of drama in the entire canon that come close to the genius of Shakespeare,me judice. And as for Shakespeare himself, one hardly knows where to start, or finish, in selecting which of his plays should accompany me to the desert island. Since I can never make up my mind whether my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays is Hamlet or King Lear, oscillating between one and the other, depending on the day of the week, or the direction the wind is blowing, or the phases of the moon, I would clearly need to bring both with me. I would take two comedies, The Merchant of Venice and The Merry Wives of Windsor, one dark and problematic, the other light and rambunctious, and would complete my handful of the Bard’s plays with The Tempest, a singularly appropriate choice for a shipwrecked man. This leaves me two other selections, both of which would be plucked from the twentieth century: Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot and A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt.

My final selection of books in this desert island desiderata are the works of non-fiction. 

This selection would be dominated by that most marvelous of monsters, the Chesterbelloc, without whom I would not have reached the state of mind in which all the other works on this list became accessible or desirable. Without Chesterton and Belloc, I might not be a Christian today and would in consequence be wasting my time and life on the trivia and trash that the Zeitgeist dishes out to it subjects. The Great Books would be unknown to me and I would be wallowing in the shallows of fashion and its twilit shadows. Today, I see by the light of Christ (thanks be to God!) but my eyes were opened to such light, under grace, by Chesterton and Belloc. I would, therefore, be both foolish and ungrateful – and lonely! – were I not to want them with me on my desert island.

I would take two books by Belloc, 

The Path to Rome and The Four Men, both of which are elegiac in character, waxing with whimsy and waning into wistfulness, and are therefore so poetic in quality that they cannot be considered strictly non-fiction. Since, however, they are not strictly poetry, and are plainly not works of fiction, they will have to be squeezed into the non-fiction section of my desert island library, in much the same way as the works of Tolkien had been squeezed into the fiction section. Perhaps there is a need for a separate trans-genre section to the library but I will stay clear, at this time, of such a controversial suggestion!

I would select six books by Chesterton, none of which I could imagine being without. 

These are Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, his Autobiography and In Defense of Sanity, the last of which is a recently published selection of the best of  Chesterton’s essays. I would also bring with me to my island a copy of Have You Anything to Declare?, a rarely read gem by Maurice Baring. The concept of this book is not unlike the idea for this article, being a selection of what Baring calls the “literary baggage” he had travelled with during his life and which he would declare as luggage he would like to take with him after death. Since Baring is much better read than I, and since he was a polyglot, conversant in several languages and cognizant of many others, ancient and modern, I feel in his presence what Chesterton felt in the presence of the Dominican, Father Vincent McNabb, that he walks on a crystal floor above my head. This being so, why would I not want such a mentor on my island with me, guiding me through his own literary luggage so that I could benefit from a man so much better dressed in terms of culture than I could ever hope to be?

My final selection would be Blessed John Henry Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, a book which impacted me greatly when I first read it, oh so many years ago.

Assembling such a gathering of books around me, marooned in blessed solitude, I’m not sure that I would be in any hurry to be rescued. In fact, were a ship to arrive before I’d had time to read all of these volumes multiple times, I think I’d ask the captain to come back later, in a year or two, bringing with him all those books I’d left behind, which were now weighing on my conscience as sins of omission. How could I have left C.S. Lewis behind? What on earth was I thinking? Or Boethius? Or Bede? Or Chaucer? And what of the many works of Dickens?

As I watched the ship sail off into the sunset, leaving me behind, I’d spend a moment or two wondering how things were in the world of wasted time, the world where needlessly created wants whirl around like a dust storm in a desert. Leaving such idle thoughts behind I’d return to my own little world in which time is well spent and not wasted, a world where time is made for the permanent things and the important things. I would take up the volume I’d been reading when I’d been rudely interrupted and would find myself once again in the presence of giants who had become my friends.

Read more: www.theimaginativeconservative.org