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lunes, 30 de octubre de 2017
I CATTOLICI E L’IMPEGNO POLITICO: DA DOVE COMINCIARE? - Questa sera, lunedì 30 ottobre 2017 alle ore 20,45
domingo, 29 de octubre de 2017
Cent ans d'abominations communistes . colloque du 14 octobre 2017:
Guillaume de Thieulloy
Introduction de Guillaume de Thieulloy au colloque du 14 octobre 2017:
"1917-2017: Cent ans d'abominations communistes"
https://youtu.be/RM10tTX1RWU
Bernard Antony
"Terreur rouge et résistance"
https://youtu.be/UlJg5X77M0Y
Marek Jurek
"Résistance de la Pologne catholique"
https://youtu.be/2cmCJLr583c
Isabelle Ti Thuyet
"Pourquoi j'ai quitté le Vietnam"
"Résistance de la Pologne catholique"
https://youtu.be/2cmCJLr583c
Isabelle Ti Thuyet
"Pourquoi j'ai quitté le Vietnam"
https://youtu.be/QZfdeJc17n4
Didier Rochard
"Nazisme et communisme"
https://youtu.be/hyGPln64A40
Stéphane Buffetaut
"La complaisance des intellectuels français pour le communisme"
https://youtu.be/E0TbgnR_v2A
Jean-Pierre Maugendre
"Le multiculturalisme, mutation du communisme"
https://youtu.be/H20crxXAh5s
François Billot de Lochner
"Le "grand soir" par d'autres moyens"
https://youtu.be/gWIcTwu8gqk
Billon Ung Bun Hor, veuve du dernier président de l'assemblée cambodgienne
"La terreur au Cambodge"
https://youtu.be/K33WAuxVDC8
Conclusion de Bernard Antony
"Pour un procès international du communisme"
https://youtu.be/oNKxzFHle9U
Conclusion de Guillaume de Thieulloy
"Actualité du combat anti-communiste"
https://youtu.be/JSA1pnZj45U
Italy remains a target by default for many radical Islamists.
How Long Will Italy Weather Europe’s Rising Terror Threat?
by Dario Cristiani
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A Potential Target
To date, these factors have allowed Italy to remain free from Islamist terrorist attacks. However, Italian analysts and experts on counterterrorism are increasingly worried these buffers are now eroding. Second- and third-generation immigrants are set to become numerically more prominent in the coming years, complicating prevention and control efforts.
Meanwhile, economic problems, the rising centrality of right-wing xenophobic and populist parties, the return of openly fascist groups (something forbidden by the Italian constitution) and a public discourse that is increasingly centered on an anti-migration focus have the potential to dismantle the micro-culture of inclusion that has so successfully mitigated against radicalization.
Finally, as a consequence of Italy’s reliance on expulsion, militants are becoming increasingly aware that any overheard word or taped conversation could be used against them, and as such may reduce their public exposure. These changes may diminish Italy’s ability to stave off an Islamist terror attack, a concern since by virtue of its geographic position and its political role in the world, Italy remains a target by default for many radical Islamists.
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Read more: jamestown.org
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A Potential Target
To date, these factors have allowed Italy to remain free from Islamist terrorist attacks. However, Italian analysts and experts on counterterrorism are increasingly worried these buffers are now eroding. Second- and third-generation immigrants are set to become numerically more prominent in the coming years, complicating prevention and control efforts.
Meanwhile, economic problems, the rising centrality of right-wing xenophobic and populist parties, the return of openly fascist groups (something forbidden by the Italian constitution) and a public discourse that is increasingly centered on an anti-migration focus have the potential to dismantle the micro-culture of inclusion that has so successfully mitigated against radicalization.
Finally, as a consequence of Italy’s reliance on expulsion, militants are becoming increasingly aware that any overheard word or taped conversation could be used against them, and as such may reduce their public exposure. These changes may diminish Italy’s ability to stave off an Islamist terror attack, a concern since by virtue of its geographic position and its political role in the world, Italy remains a target by default for many radical Islamists.
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Read more: jamestown.org
viernes, 27 de octubre de 2017
China - saturation and diminishing returns of the central-planned model
Crisis or Stagnation: Why China Cannot Develerage
by Daniel Lacalle
The latest figures of the Chinese economy show a third quarter GDP growth of 6.8%, suspiciously in line with the government mandate and consensus estimates. However, it is not the top line that worries me. It is the evidence of debt saturation and diminishing returns of the central-planned model.
Chinese total debt has surpassed 300%. In the first nine months of the year, money supply has increased by 9.2%, significantly above estimates.
China has added more debt in the first nine months of 2017 than the US, Japan and the EU combined.
The private sector debt increase is a major concern. The vast majority of the largest quoted companies (c60% of the Hang Seng Index) have published results with returns significantly below their cost of capital, looking at Bloomberg figures. According to the Financial Times, zombie firms have soared as growth fails to catch up debt and interest increases. Additionally, in a situation that mirrors the reckless international buying spree of European conglomerates in the early 2000s, the results of foreign capital investments at ludcrously high multiples have generated a backlash for Chinese multinationals. The central government’s legion of zombie firms (those unable to cover interest expense with operating profits), is comprised of 2,041 large companies with assets worth some $450bn.
The concerns over the mountain of debt is only comparable to the atrocious returns in a fast growing economy. A glance at the Hang Seng Index shows a leverage of 122% (total debt to equity) and 17.5x debt to assets, with an abismal return on assets of 1.33% and return on capital of 4.5%.
It does not improve significantly by sectors. Even if we look at what has been optimistically called “new economy”, Chinese companies boost a similar combination of weak fundamentals and poor capital allocation. The “new economy”, driven by high productivity sectors, is heavily dependent on strong capital markets in order to finance growth via bonds and equities. A surprisingly low non-performig loanb ratio of 1.74% is widely questioned, and Fitch, for example, estimates that the real figure is ten times greater than the official one. A weaker stock market and contagion effect of rising non-performing loans impacts the weak and obsolete dinosaurs and the nascent, thriving sectors alike. We saw it in Taiwan, Japan, and the EU.
Can you imagine what would happen to these extremely low returns if growth was reduced to a more sustainable 4%? A complete collapse of the economy. This is one of the reasons why -despite public messages suggesting the opposite- the government cannot and will not likely put deleverage as a priority.
“China requires 6.5 units of capital to create one unit of gross domestic product growth, double the ratio of a decade ago”, according to UBS and the Financial Times.
The situation worsens with households. Household debt to GDP has multiplied by four in the past ten years. China, once supported by strong household savings, is on a debt binge that, by 2020, where the ratio of mortgage payments and disposable incomes in China will match the peak level in the US before the financial crisis.
This is the second reason why China cannot put deleverage as a priority. The Chinese economy is unable to tackle a social crisis if house prices moderate -let alone fall-, pricking the housing bubble. China does not have a welfare system that allows a social cushion if a domino of bankruptcies happens in the household sector, and the social crisis would be unmanageable.
These factors make China’s mirage of deleveraging impossible. At best, we will see a monster increase in public debt when the private sector stops its “running-to-stand-still” strategy. However, public debt is not small. The “optically” low level of 46.2% has to add the public sector companies, which puts public sector liabilities at close to double the official debt to GDP figure.
China has few options. Most of these imbalances and liabilities are financed in local currency with local banks, and the government could devalue the currency drastically, but that would hurt its economic growth, sending a questionably low inflation (also estimated to be three times higher than official rates) to socially unacceptable levels. China also has a strong saving ratio, at 39%, but the myth of the country’s high savings is debuked by the extent of its debt and the link to speculative bubbles and poor returns. If China decides to tackle its imbalances tapping into those savings through financial repression -like Japan did-, it would massively impact its growth, consumption and send the country to stagnation.
And that is the positive outcome. China can endure the end of its vicious circle of poor capital allocation, high debt and rising imbalances through stagnation avoiding a social collapse and massively increasing public debt. But that is all it can do. If it wants to avoid a giant financial crisis that would clean the system and resume sustainable growth, but at the same time create significant social challenges, it will have to accept high-debt-zombified stagnation the way that Europe, Brazil or Japan ended. There is no magic solution that will sort these enormous imbalances while delivering world- leading growth.
Daniel Lacalle has a PhD in Economics and is author of Escape from the Central Bank Trap, Life In The Financial Markets and The Energy World Is Flat.
Ichtus - Colloque Catholiques en Action - Paris 18 novembre 2017
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http://www.ichtus.fr/
Chers amis,
Notre colloque annuel, Catholiques en Action, dont le thème est "Et maintenant, que faire ?" approche et il est grand temps de vous inscrire !
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Et maintenant, que faire ?
Une intelligence de la situation pour agir.
Les cartes politiques sont profondément rebattues, un nouveau cycle s’ouvre, avec son lot d’incertitudes. Beaucoup de catholiques engagés se posent la question : « Et maintenant, que faire ? » Recomposer les partis ? Refonder une droite ou une gauche ? Poursuivre un combat de résistance culturelle ? Agir en profondeur pour reconstruire la société par le bas ? Déployer un nouveau catholicisme social ? Les questions sont multiples… Pourtant la France a particulièrement besoin de l’apport spécifique des catholiques pour répondre aux défis contemporains. Quelle peut être cette contribution particulière des catholiques ? Quelles sont les priorités ? Les catholiques ont besoin de déployer une intelligence de la situation pour agir : quelle prospective, quelle vision, quelles initiatives pour les catholiques en action ?
« Les situations nouvelles, dans les réalités sociales, économiques et culturelles, exigent aujourd’hui, de façon toute particulière, l’action des fidèles laïcs. Il n’est permis à personne de rester à ne rien faire. »
Saint Jean-Paul II, Christifideles laici
Nous réfléchirons ensemble à ces questions lors du colloque Catholiques en action de Paris le samedi 18 novembre 2017.
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Luther tourna le dos à tous les principes de la foi catholique, de l’Ecriture Sainte, de la Tradition apostolique et du magistère du Pape et des Conciles, et de l’épiscopat
La Réforme protestante constitue un bouleversement total des fondements de la foi catholique
Alors que le secrétaire général de la conférence des évêques d’Italie, Mgr Nunzio Galantino vient de qualifier la Réforme de Luther d’« événement du Saint-Esprit », le cardinal Gerhard Müller vient de tenir sur la rupture protestante il y a 500 ans un langage beaucoup plus… catholique.
Dans une tribune publiée ce mardi par La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, répondant directement et ouvertement à cette assertion, le cardinal Müller a souligné qu’il ne s’agissait pas d’une réforme, mais d’une révolution. Jeanne Smits a traduit l'article ici. Extrait :
Source: lesalonbeige.blogs.com
"Il y a une grande confusion aujourd’hui dans le discours sur Luther, et il faut dire clairement que du point de vue de la théologie dogmatique, du point de vue de la doctrine de l’Eglise, il n’y eut pas en réalité une réforme mais une révolution, c’est-à-dire un bouleversement total des fondements de la foi catholique. Il n’est pas réaliste de prétendre que son intention était de lutter contre certains abus relatifs aux indulgences, ou contre les péchés de l’Eglise de la Renaissance. Les abus et les mauvaises actions ont toujours existé dans l’Eglise, et pas seulement à la Renaissance, – il en existe même de nos jours. Nous sommes la Sainte Eglise par la grâce de Dieu et des sacrements, mais tous les hommes d’Eglise sont pécheurs, tous ont besoin de pardon, de la contrition et de la pénitence.
Cette distinction est très importante. Dans le livre écrit par Luther en 1520, De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae, il semble tout à fait clair que Luther a tourné le dos à tous les principes de la foi catholique, de l’Ecriture Sainte, de la Tradition apostolique et du magistère du Pape et des Conciles, et de l’épiscopat. En ce sens, il a travesti le concept de développement homogène de la doctrine chrétienne, tel qu’on l’a explicité au Moyen Age, en venant jusqu’à nier le sacrement, signe efficace de la grâce qui s’y trouve ; il a remplacé cette efficacité objective des sacrements par une foi subjective. Ce faisant, Luther a aboli cinq sacrements, et il a aussi nié l’Eucharistie : le caractère sacrificiel du sacrement de l’Eucharistie, et la transformation réelle de la substance du pain et du vin en la substance du corps et du sang de Jésus-Christ. Et encore : il a qualifié le sacrement de l’ordre épiscopal, le sacrement de l’ordre, d’invention du pape – défini comme l’Antichrist – et comme ne faisant pas partie de l’Eglise de Jésus-Christ. Nous disons au contraire que la hiérarchie sacramentelle, en communion avec le successeur de Pierre, est un élément essentiel de l’Eglise catholique, et pas seulement un principe d’organisation humaine.
C’est pourquoi nous ne pouvons pas accepter que la réforme de Luther soit définie comme une réforme de l’Eglise au sens catholique. Est catholique une réforme qui est un renouvellement de la foi vécue dans la grâce, dans le renouvellement des coutumes, de l’éthique : un renouvellement spirituel et moral des chrétiens ; pas une nouvelle fondation, une nouvelle Eglise.
Il est donc inacceptable d’affirmer que la réforme de Luther « était un événement du Saint-Esprit ». Au contraire, elle était dirigée contre le Saint-Esprit. [...
On entend beaucoup de voix qui parlent de Luther avec trop d’enthousiasme, sans connaître exactement sa théologie, ses polémiques et les effets désastreux de ce mouvement qui a séparé des millions de chrétiens de l’Eglise catholique. [...]"
Source: lesalonbeige.blogs.com
Les communautés chrétiennes de l'ex-Union soviétique commémoreront les persécutions
100 ans après la révolution bolchévique, les catholiques russes se souviennent de leurs «martyrs du goulag»
Les chrétiens pouvaient se demander pourquoi Dieu avait permis un tel mal. Mais il y avait eu la persécution auparavant, et l'Eglise avait toujours été soutenue par Dieu.
"Je me suis rendu compte à quel point les tentatives de l'homme ou du gouvernement pour détruire le royaume de Dieu étaient vaines", "vous pouvez fermer des églises, emprisonner des prêtres et des ministres. même les hommes et les églises se battent entre eux, mais vous ne pouvez pas déraciner la bonne semence ... Qu'est-ce que j'étais, par rapport à la puissance et au pouvoir du gouvernement soviétique? autour de nous, avec tous ses organes de propagande et de persécution, et pourtant, dans la providence de Dieu, nous étions ici - c'était l'endroit qu'il avait choisi pour nous. »
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Lorsque le centenaire de la révolution bolchevique tombera début novembre, les communautés chrétiennes de l'ex-Union soviétique commémoreront les persécutions qu'elles ont déclenchées. Mais ils se souviendront aussi des méditations religieuses nées dans les prisons et les camps de travail, dont certaines méritent d'être classées parmi les meilleures de l'histoire chrétienne. Mgr. Igor Kovalevsky, secrétaire général de la Conférence des évêques catholiques de Russie, déclare :
Bien avant les événements de 1917, l'écrivain Dostoïevski avait prévu prophétiquement :
Appeler la religion «l'opium du peuple» était trop bon, avait écrit Lénine en 1909, paraphrasant Karl Marx. C'était plutôt "une sorte de boisson toxique, par laquelle les esclaves du capital noircissent leur figure humaine et leurs aspirations à une vie humaine plus digne".
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Lire la suite: lesalonbeige.blogs.com
"Les souffrances de l'ère soviétique ont affecté non seulement les églises, mais toute la société, y compris les athées". "Les écrivains laïcs comme Alexandre Soljenitsyne et Nadhezda Mandelstam sont peut-être devenus les plus célèbres, mais les thèmes du témoignage et du martyre se retrouvent aussi dans la littérature du goulag et sont universellement reconnus et respectés."Bien que souvent considérée comme une époque de vide culturel et spirituel, la domination soviétique produisit de profondes œuvres chrétiennes de prose et de poésie, offrant des réflexions vitales sur une foi résiliente.
Bien avant les événements de 1917, l'écrivain Dostoïevski avait prévu prophétiquement :
"Les prédicateurs du matérialisme et de l'athéisme, qui proclament l'autosuffisance de l'homme, préparent des ténèbres et une horreur indescriptibles pour l'humanité sous l'apparence de la rénovation et de la résurrection". "Ils conçoivent d'arranger les choses avec justice, mais ayant répudié le Christ, ils finiront par inonder le monde de sang."Le cerveau de la révolution, Vladimir Lénine, avait juré d'émasculer le clergé orthodoxe russe - ces «agents en soutane» qui avaient été utilisés par le tsar pour «adoucir et embellir le sort des opprimés avec de vaines promesses d'un royaume céleste».
Appeler la religion «l'opium du peuple» était trop bon, avait écrit Lénine en 1909, paraphrasant Karl Marx. C'était plutôt "une sorte de boisson toxique, par laquelle les esclaves du capital noircissent leur figure humaine et leurs aspirations à une vie humaine plus digne".
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Lire la suite: lesalonbeige.blogs.com
jueves, 26 de octubre de 2017
The centenary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 should be an occasion for understanding Marxism’s amoral and pseudo-religious nature
When evil triumphed: The 100th anniversary of Russia’s October Revolution
by Dr. Samuel Gregg
One hundred years ago on October 25 (Old Style Calendar), a Marxist political movement led by an intellectual political activist named Vladimir Lenin mounted a successful coup d’état against Russia’s ailing Provisional Government. Most believed the Bolsheviks would themselves be overthrown quickly. Scarcely anyone recognized that it marked the beginning of one of the world’s most diabolical regimes, one which lasted until the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
The implications of what came to be known as the October Revolution weren’t really grasped at the time. That’s partly because, as the historian Richard Pipes wrote in his epic The Russian Revolution(1990), “the West considered Russia to lie on the periphery of the civilized world,” one which was “in the midst of a World War of unprecedented destructiveness.” Yet it didn’t take long for Russia’s new Communist masters to show just how far they would go to maintain and extend their rule as they sought to realize the Marxist dream.
A cult of amorality
The toppling of Russia’s Provisional Government by Lenin and the Bolsheviks turned out to be an exercise in pushing down a house of cards. Contrary to later Communist myths, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg was never stormed. After token resistance, it was overrun by mobs of looters. Moscow was a different matter. Fierce house-to-house fighting lasted until November 2.
In his account of the Bolshevik coup, Pipes points out that most of the population paid little attention to what was happening. This owed something to Lenin and his colleague, Leon Trotsky, successfully portraying the Bolshevik coup as a takeover by the Soviets of workers and soldiers: organizations which had functioned as a type of parallel government in the months leading up to the coup.
That was hardly the first lie propagated by the Bolsheviks. From the beginning, Communism has held, and Marxists have believed, that the ends always justifies the means. By this, they mean they don’t recognize any moral constraints whatsoever when it comes to seizing and using power to realize their goals.
Lenin himself exemplified this. The effects of Lenin’s willingness to lie, sanction mass theft, and authorize the execution of those deemed a threat to the Bolshevik Revolution only differed from Stalin in terms of scale. Like Stalin, Lenin was, to use Pipes’ expression, “A stranger to moral qualms.”
But from where did this essential amorality arise? Lenin himself was no sadist. He wasn’t the type of functionary which you find in all totalitarian systems: those who take pleasure in torturing or killing people or supervising such goings-on. Lenin was, Pipes maintains, simply apathetic about the suffering of others; his unconcern with their pain reflected his Communist beliefs.
This is one reason why I’ve always regarded claims that “Juanita is a sincere Communist, but she’s a good person” to be as naïve, ignorant, and dangerous as suggesting that “Hans is a sincere Nazi, but he’s a nice chap.” For to be a Communist is to embrace views of humanity just as reprehensible as those of a convinced Nazi. The phrase “Marxist humanism” (which you still hear today in the faculty-lounges of Western Europe and California or on parts of the political left) is as self-contradictory as “Nazi humanism.”
Sympathetic and hostile biographers of Lenin agree that his embrace of Marxism involved whole-hearted acceptance of Marxism’s combination of philosophical materialism and a deterministic view of history. This mixture of ideas leads to clear and disturbing conclusions.
First, the true philosophical materialist doesn’t think there’s anything special about human beings. Expressions like “dignity,” “rights,” “responsibilities,” etc., are empty constructs in a materialist’s world. Instead people are just “material.” Thus like any other material object, they can be shaped—and disposed of—as others will. And the only way to determine who gets to do the molding and terminating in this world is whoever possesses the power to do so and who is least squeamish about using it. The parallel here between the implications of Communism’s philosophical materialism and Nazism’s nihilistic glorification of the Nietzschean will to power is clear.
So where does the Marxist view of history fit into this? Orthodox Communist thinking holds that history is driven by changes in the means of production and its ownership. At some point, we will arrive at the end of history: the Communist utopia which will emerge after the proletariat inevitably achieves dominance and abolishes private property, money, class-differentials, and the state (and, yes, there is an anarchist dimension to Communism).
The misery experienced by people as part of this process is precisely that: merely part of a process. Humans are just material through which history works.
This is why Lenin was unmoved, for example, by the suffering of peasants affected by a famine which broke out in the 1890s in the Volga region where his family lived. Lenin opposed helping starving peasants because he thought such assistance would impede their movement to the city in search of food and work. Anything that speeded up their absorption into the urban proletariat which would be the engine of inevitable revolution was to be welcomed—even a famine. All Lenin added to this was the conviction that a vanguard led by people like himself could accelerate the inevitable if the right set of conditions emerged.
It’s in this sense that subsequent developments under Communist regimes—Lenin’s Red Terror; Stalin’s purges and gulags; the millions slaughtered during Mao’s Cultural Revolution; the genocide engineered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; Castro’s concentration camps and the firing squads presided over by the Argentine-born contemporary leftist-icon Che Guevara, etc.,—were not aberrations. They flowed logically from Communism’s integration of philosophical materialism, its view of history, and Lenin’s conviction that the party could hasten the inevitable. Lenin was only more at ease with this trajectory than some Marxists were, and are, willing to admit themselves to be.
A pseudo-religion
In its rejection of morality and its willingness to do evil—lots and lots of evil—to achieve desired goals, Marxism’s criminal and terroristic character is laid bare. Lenin himself would have been familiar with Karl Marx’s own lack of inhibitions in this area. As Marx wrote in Neue Rheinische Zeitungin May 1849, “When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”
Yet for all its essential materialism, the Marxism espoused by Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders who took over Russia was always more than that. It also amounted to a type of religion: indeed, a deeply intolerant faith which brooked no dissent.
This insight is well-explained in Benedict XVI’s second encyclical, Spe Salvi. This was published in November 2007, almost 90 years to the day that the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. The timing, I suspect, was not coincidental.
As the encyclical’s title suggests, it focuses on the meaning of Christian hope. At one level, this involves distinguishing the Christian understanding of hope from the way it is understood by others.
According to Benedict, Marx effectively took the ultimate horizon of hope offered by the prospect of eternal life with God, and turned it into a very this-worldly salvation theory of history, politics, and economics. Marx then applied himself, in Benedict’s words, “to the task of launching this major new and, as he thought, definitive step in history towards salvation.” There is, Benedict writes, a straight line between the development of this secular religion and October 1917. “Real revolution followed,” observed the pope, “in the most radical way in Russia.”
To this, we can add other areas in which Marxism apes Christianity. Communist regimes had sacred books such as Das Capital, and prophets like Marx and Engels. They possessed their own ecclesial organization (the Communist Party) with its own hierarchical clergy (party-members, the Central Committee, the Politburo, the General Secretary), theologians (Marxist theoreticians), saints (Che),and its own doctrines from which party-members could not stray without compromising their orthodoxy. Communist systems even had their own version of the end-times: the New Jerusalem of Communism. The more you look, the more obvious the parallels with Christianity.
But there were, Benedict comments, two fatal flaws in all this. The first was that Marx’s vagueness about how to transition from what was supposed to be an intermediate state—the dictatorship of the proletariat—to Communism. “Lenin,” Benedict states, “must have realized that the writings of the master gave no indication as to how to proceed” (SS 21). That opened the door to the intermediate becoming permanent: i.e., systematic and lasting terrorism and criminality.
More fundamentally, Benedict states that Marxism’s Achilles heel turned out to be its core beliefs. For if you are a true philosophical materialist, you cannot believe in free will or free choice. Why? Because these are distinctly non-material features of human beings. You can’t touch free will. Yet we know that it exists whenever we make a free choice for one thing rather than another.
Hence, thanks to his philosophical materialism, Marx—and all his followers, past and present—lost sight of something. “He forgot,” Benedict wrote, “man and he forgot man’s freedom.” Hence, Marx also “forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil” (SS 21).
Benedict’s point is that the possibility of error and human sinfulness is part of the price-tag that goes along with the liberty to choose between good and evil. This not only means that there are no heavens-on-earth. It also means that striving to create the earthly utopia promised by Marxism and its fellow travelers always leads to destruction.
Terror, terror, and more terror
Death and devastation didn’t take long to follow Lenin’s seizure of power in 1917. The Bolsheviks were not the originators of state terrorism. But the depth and extent of the terror implemented by Lenin and his followers far exceeded that of France’s Jacobin dictatorship, which murdered thousands of “enemies of the Revolution” between 1793 and 1794.
The Red Terror wasn’t solely a result of the Civil War which engulfed Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. Terrorism was a matter of state policy for the Bolsheviks. As Trotsky (himself an advocate of mass terror who proclaimed that “our enemies will face not prison but the guillotine”) later related, Lenin opposed and successfully reversed the death penalty’s abolition. His reasoning was simple: “How can you make a revolution without executions?”
The same cold-bloodedness was on full display during a Cabinet meeting in February 1918. During a discussion about how to deal with “counterrevolutionaries,” Lenin turned to Isaac Steinberg, the non-Bolshevik Social Revolutionary Commissar for Justice, and asked: “Do you really believe that we can be victorious without the cruelest revolutionary terror?”
As the debate continued, Steinberg’s anger about Lenin’s proposals to replace due process of law with “revolutionary conscience” grew. Eventually Steinberg exploded and exclaimed, “Then why do we bother with a Commissariat of Justice? Let’s call it frankly the Commissariat for Social Exterminationand be done with it!” Lenin’s response was telling: “Well put . . . that’s exactly how it should be . . . but we can’t say that.”
Herein we come face-to-face with the true nature of the evil of Marxism which was unleashed by the Bolshevik Revolution. Communism authorizes and even celebrates the suspension and suppression of moral norms that absolutely prohibit certain actions like lying—or theft or killing or being envious. It’s one thing to be, for instance, dishonest but acknowledge you are doing evil. It’s altogether different to say that no such moral absolutes exist: that morality is in effect a fiction, a mere set of customs to be dispensed with, whenever convenient.
A century ago, people who believed such things took over an empire which was on its knees. That event marked the beginning of choices that, according to the Black Book of Communism (1997), resulted in the deaths of anywhere between 85 and 100 million people in the 20th century. The amorality that lead to such oceans of blood, and the real character of the Marxism from which this amorality flowed, are what we should be remembering on this centennial of the October Revolution.
Sometimes, it turns out, evil does win.
Dr. Samuel Gregg is Research Director at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He is the author of many books, including Becoming Europe (2013) and For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good (2016).
Read more: www.catholicworldreport.com
National Socialism and Democratic Socialism are much the same as Marxist Socialism — behind a façade.
Communism — A Centennial Celebration of Tyranny and Terror
by Mark Alexander
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)
In 1987, seven decades after Russia’s Communist Revolution and the generations of misery, mayhem and murder that it seeded worldwide, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate where John F. Kennedy had delivered his condemnation of communism a quarter-century earlier.
Reagan, whose administration is credited by all fair-minded historians as engineering the 1991 fall of the Evil Empire, issued this challenge: “There stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. … General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Those iconic words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” did indeed set in motion the demolition of the much-hated Berlin Wall, just as it signaled the beginning of the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and freedom for its subordinate satellite states.
Russia’s “Red October” Revolution was inspired by the Communist Manifesto, published by Karl Marx in 1848. Marx wrote, “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. … Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily destroyed.”
That same year, historian Alexis de Tocqueville offered a different perspective: “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
As history would have it, Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin sided with Marx: “The goal of socialism,” he said, “is communism.” But instead of a utopian socialist “workers’ paradise,” a succession of brutal communist tyrants unleashed seven decades of global terror — at an incalculable human toll.
The resulting ideological Cold War between East and West was delineated by what Winston Churchill described as the “Iron Curtain.” In 1949, Harry Truman noted, “We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God. From this faith we will not be moved. … Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters.”
Three years later, Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, warned, “The Bill of Rights contains no grant of privilege for a group of people to destroy the Bill of Rights. A group — like the Communist conspiracy — dedicated to the ultimate destruction of all civil liberties, cannot be allowed to claim civil liberties as its privileged sanctuary from which to carry on subversion of the Government.”
But while Truman and Eisenhower expressed our nation’s largely bipartisan disdain for communism in the post-WWII era, the ideology had its stateside supporters: “I am for socialism,” Roger Baldwin insisted. “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”
Is it any wonder that Baldwin went on to co-found the American Civil Liberties Union?
In 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told Eisenhower’s Cabinet Secretary Ezra Taft Benson: “Your children’s children will live under communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”
In the two decades that followed, communism and socialism metastasized around the world, until three electoral events changed the course of history in a matter of months: the election of Pope John Paul II on October 16, 1978; the election of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on May 3, 1979; and the election of President Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1980. Together, these three champions of Freedom would wage an all-out ideological war on communism.
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)
In 1987, seven decades after Russia’s Communist Revolution and the generations of misery, mayhem and murder that it seeded worldwide, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate where John F. Kennedy had delivered his condemnation of communism a quarter-century earlier.
Reagan, whose administration is credited by all fair-minded historians as engineering the 1991 fall of the Evil Empire, issued this challenge: “There stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. … General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Those iconic words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” did indeed set in motion the demolition of the much-hated Berlin Wall, just as it signaled the beginning of the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and freedom for its subordinate satellite states.
Russia’s “Red October” Revolution was inspired by the Communist Manifesto, published by Karl Marx in 1848. Marx wrote, “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. … Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily destroyed.”
That same year, historian Alexis de Tocqueville offered a different perspective: “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
As history would have it, Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin sided with Marx: “The goal of socialism,” he said, “is communism.” But instead of a utopian socialist “workers’ paradise,” a succession of brutal communist tyrants unleashed seven decades of global terror — at an incalculable human toll.
The resulting ideological Cold War between East and West was delineated by what Winston Churchill described as the “Iron Curtain.” In 1949, Harry Truman noted, “We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God. From this faith we will not be moved. … Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters.”
Three years later, Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, warned, “The Bill of Rights contains no grant of privilege for a group of people to destroy the Bill of Rights. A group — like the Communist conspiracy — dedicated to the ultimate destruction of all civil liberties, cannot be allowed to claim civil liberties as its privileged sanctuary from which to carry on subversion of the Government.”
But while Truman and Eisenhower expressed our nation’s largely bipartisan disdain for communism in the post-WWII era, the ideology had its stateside supporters: “I am for socialism,” Roger Baldwin insisted. “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”
Is it any wonder that Baldwin went on to co-found the American Civil Liberties Union?
In 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told Eisenhower’s Cabinet Secretary Ezra Taft Benson: “Your children’s children will live under communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”
In the two decades that followed, communism and socialism metastasized around the world, until three electoral events changed the course of history in a matter of months: the election of Pope John Paul II on October 16, 1978; the election of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on May 3, 1979; and the election of President Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1980. Together, these three champions of Freedom would wage an all-out ideological war on communism.
For the record, between 1917 and 1991, there were almost 150 million civilian casualties of communist dictatorships, the three largest dictatorial offenders being China (73,237,000), the USSR (58,627,000) and Germany (11,000,000). Where those dictatorships exist today, the slaughter continues.
That appalling history notwithstanding, The New York Times, the statist journal of record, is celebrating the centennial of Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution — the advent of communism — with an extensive series “The Red Century.” The Times pretends to explore the ideological failings of communism in an effort to rehabilitate, if not romanticize, the ideology’s reputation, which The Times bravely notes is “morally complex.”
The murder and planned starvation of more than 150 million civilians over the last century is not“morally complex.”
As an antidote to the Times’ communist coddling, John Stossel and Jonah Goldberg provide two far more succinct and vigorous perspectives on communism.
Of course, National Socialism and Democratic Socialism are much the same as Marxist Socialism — behind a façade. Leftists would like you to believe that there’s a clear distinction, but Adolf Hitler was certainly a socialist.
In his autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote of his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the “NAZI Party”), “The party should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master.” On the socialist state versus individual Liberty, he wrote, “The unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.”
Of course, despotism has always been an element of evil human behavior. In John Locke’s 1690Second Treatise on Civil Government, he wrote, “Despotical power is absolute, arbitrary power of one person to take the life and property of another against their will.”
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Read more: patriotpost.us
"Les Amoureux de la France": il ne s'agit pas de créer une nouveau parti ou de lutter contre les partis, mais de forger un programme commun.
Lancement de la plateforme participative "Les Amoureux de la France"
Source: lesalonbeige.blogs.com/
Plusieurs responsables politiques ont lancé aujourd'hui une plateforme numérique participative sur internet :Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Jean-Frédéric Poisson, le député Emmanuelle Ménard, Nicolas Dhuicq, le sénateur Jean-Louis Masson, Julien Rochedy, Véronique Besse.
Constatant la recomposition politique avec Emmanuel Macron et Jean-Luc Mélenchon à gauche. Mais quid de la droite ? L'initiative "Les Amoureux de la France" n'est pas partisane mais de coalition. Il ne s'agit pas de créer une nouveau parti ou de lutter contre les partis, mais de forger un programme commun.
Un site est en ligne sur lequel vous pouvez faire des propositions et voter pour celles en ligne (voir le mode d'emploi). Extrait :
"Ce qui unit tous les Amoureux de la France est bien plus fort que ce qui les sépare. Nous pouvons rassembler les Français autour de 8 volontés essentielles pour l’avenir de notre pays :
- La volonté de faire respecter une France libre et indépendante dans une Europe des nations forte.
- La volonté de protéger les Français face à l’insécurité du quotidien et au terrorisme islamiste.
- La volonté de lutter contre l’immigration massive et affirmer notre modèle d’assimilation.
- La volonté de récompenser le travail, l’initiative et les talents.
- La volonté de garantir l’intérêt général face aux excès de la mondialisation, de la finance et de lutter contre la pauvreté.
- La volonté de transmission et d’excellence par la famille et l’école.
- La volonté de défendre notre identité, promouvoir notre culture et notre langue dans le monde.
- La volonté d’engager des projets d'avenir innovants, écologiques et durables.
Oui, nous ferons gagner la France en dépassant les faux clivages et les appareils partisans car nul ne pourra gagner seul. Prenons les choses en main ! Seule la mobilisation du peuple peut obliger les partis à dépasser leurs divisions artificielles !"
To sing a song implies, somehow, to “conquer” an aural space
Conquering aural space: the musical wars of the Reformation
Songs to spread the faith and rouse the spirits among opposing factions.
by Chiara Bertoglio
English composer Wiliam Byrd set to music poems and prayers about the Jesuit martyrs
Both in my book on Reformation music and in this series for MercatorNet my aim has been to focus on ecumenism and recovery of the Church’s lost unity. Nevertheless, it is my duty as a scholar (and as a Christian…) not to deny the truth, even when it is unpleasant; moreover, I believe that only those who are fully aware of what has happened in the past may truly work for reconciliation. Nobody can forgive what they don’t know.
So this tenth installment of my series on sacred music in the 16th century deals with the rather painful topic of music as an instrument of confessional opposition. At the time of the Reformation and for many decades after it, Christians of different denominations fought in words and deeds in order to establish their confession to the detriment of others; and, of course, the powers of politics and economy were quick to exploit religious rivalries and transform them into riots or warfare when they found it convenient to do so.
While music is possibly the perfect human embodiment of peace, coexistence and “harmony” (in my next article I will develop this more fully), it did take part in the confessional wars and oppositions of the early Reformation era. Some of these conflicts ended in bloodshed, and many believers of all confessions were martyred by members of other confessions. Indeed, the very first Lied penned by Martin Luther – and thus the seminal root of the vast repertoire of Lutheran chorales – is a “martyrdom song”, in the tradition of the songs of deeds in the Middle Ages.
Martyrdom songs
This song tells the story of two Augustinian monks of Brussels who had adhered to Luther’s movement very early, and were burnt at the stake for their refusal to recant. Song became the instrument through which their heroic resistance was praised, their story was told, and the sentiment of outrage and rebellion was kindled among the hearers. While the Protestant Reformations tended to downplay such themes as the intercession of saints and their veneration, it undeniably fostered admiration for the actions of heroic witnesses to the new faith.
Songs about martyrs are found in all other confessions. The English Catholic William Byrd set to music various poems and psalms which refer, more or less clearly and directly, to the fate of the Jesuit missionaries who were sent to England with the purpose of re-Catholicizing it. Among such works, one of the most touching, in my opinion, is Why do I use my paper, ink and pen, where the moving lyrics written by another Jesuit who would be martyred in turn are set to Byrd’s sweet and sorrowful music.
While works such as this song by Byrd were primarily destined for the private devotion of Catholic recusants, in order to strengthen their resistance and foster their piety, songs such as Luther’s Ein newes lied on the Brussels Martyrs had the purpose of spreading the new faith among the masses. This was the goal of many other polemical or propaganda songs of the era, penned by zealous apostles of all confessions. Such songs were disseminated as broadsides (or broadsheets), which peddlers brought to marketplaces and sold for modest sums.
These broadsides were frequently illustrated with woodcut engravings, which added to the impact of the words and music (particularly for those unable to read). If broadsides helped the dissemination of songs, the very act of singing them was even more efficacious as an instrument of propaganda. When a song was learnt by memory, it could not be seized or destroyed; it could travel virtually limitlessly, and its spread was not limited to those who were able to read its lyrics and music.
Conquering aural space
Moreover, to sing a song implies, somehow, to “conquer” an aural space, to plant a musical flag within a physical or human territory. Confessional songs were used as weapons in this context: for example, Catholics frequently used open-air devotions and processions with sung litanies as a means for appropriating a zone, but these same services could be disrupted and disturbed, in turn, by Protestant singing. The opponents could either sing the songs of their own denomination, or else create textual contrafacta (change the words of pre-existing religious songs) which could mock and ridicule the competing confession. Some Protestants warmly invited their Catholic counterparts to go home by chanting the corresponding German words to the melody of the ora pro nobis, the traditional response to Catholic litanies; in turn, Catholic polemicists penned parodies of the Te Deum and Victimae paschali with derogatory texts against Luther and Calvin.
Riots and unrests were frequently accompanied – if not encouraged – by religious singing; and some religious songs were so well-suited to the purpose of rousing the spirits that they quickly became the “war hymns” of the new confessions. Such was the fate of the well-known Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, the “Mighty fortress” which still constitutes the musical flag of Lutheranism; the Huguenots, in turn, had their own Psaume des batailles, the “psalm of wars”. It is very difficult for us to imagine the emotional power of these songs; none of today’s national anthems probably has the same force to move and excite which these religious songs possessed.
While it is saddening to contemplate how God’s praises were intermingled with horrible violence, it is thought-provoking to realize that the very fact of singing religious songs was a common feature of almost all Christians of the era. Religious singing was forced, so to say, to bend itself to the needs of confessional opposition and to turn itself into a weapon; but its true nature, as I hope to show in the next article, was that of an instrument of communion and unity. And this task it did fulfil, even in those harsh times of conflict and opposition.
All the more now, when the path of ecumenism is being steadily pursued by the different Christian denominations, it should become a formidable instrument for achieving unity.
English composer Wiliam Byrd set to music poems and prayers about the Jesuit martyrs
Both in my book on Reformation music and in this series for MercatorNet my aim has been to focus on ecumenism and recovery of the Church’s lost unity. Nevertheless, it is my duty as a scholar (and as a Christian…) not to deny the truth, even when it is unpleasant; moreover, I believe that only those who are fully aware of what has happened in the past may truly work for reconciliation. Nobody can forgive what they don’t know.
So this tenth installment of my series on sacred music in the 16th century deals with the rather painful topic of music as an instrument of confessional opposition. At the time of the Reformation and for many decades after it, Christians of different denominations fought in words and deeds in order to establish their confession to the detriment of others; and, of course, the powers of politics and economy were quick to exploit religious rivalries and transform them into riots or warfare when they found it convenient to do so.
While music is possibly the perfect human embodiment of peace, coexistence and “harmony” (in my next article I will develop this more fully), it did take part in the confessional wars and oppositions of the early Reformation era. Some of these conflicts ended in bloodshed, and many believers of all confessions were martyred by members of other confessions. Indeed, the very first Lied penned by Martin Luther – and thus the seminal root of the vast repertoire of Lutheran chorales – is a “martyrdom song”, in the tradition of the songs of deeds in the Middle Ages.
Martyrdom songs
This song tells the story of two Augustinian monks of Brussels who had adhered to Luther’s movement very early, and were burnt at the stake for their refusal to recant. Song became the instrument through which their heroic resistance was praised, their story was told, and the sentiment of outrage and rebellion was kindled among the hearers. While the Protestant Reformations tended to downplay such themes as the intercession of saints and their veneration, it undeniably fostered admiration for the actions of heroic witnesses to the new faith.
Songs about martyrs are found in all other confessions. The English Catholic William Byrd set to music various poems and psalms which refer, more or less clearly and directly, to the fate of the Jesuit missionaries who were sent to England with the purpose of re-Catholicizing it. Among such works, one of the most touching, in my opinion, is Why do I use my paper, ink and pen, where the moving lyrics written by another Jesuit who would be martyred in turn are set to Byrd’s sweet and sorrowful music.
While works such as this song by Byrd were primarily destined for the private devotion of Catholic recusants, in order to strengthen their resistance and foster their piety, songs such as Luther’s Ein newes lied on the Brussels Martyrs had the purpose of spreading the new faith among the masses. This was the goal of many other polemical or propaganda songs of the era, penned by zealous apostles of all confessions. Such songs were disseminated as broadsides (or broadsheets), which peddlers brought to marketplaces and sold for modest sums.
These broadsides were frequently illustrated with woodcut engravings, which added to the impact of the words and music (particularly for those unable to read). If broadsides helped the dissemination of songs, the very act of singing them was even more efficacious as an instrument of propaganda. When a song was learnt by memory, it could not be seized or destroyed; it could travel virtually limitlessly, and its spread was not limited to those who were able to read its lyrics and music.
Conquering aural space
Moreover, to sing a song implies, somehow, to “conquer” an aural space, to plant a musical flag within a physical or human territory. Confessional songs were used as weapons in this context: for example, Catholics frequently used open-air devotions and processions with sung litanies as a means for appropriating a zone, but these same services could be disrupted and disturbed, in turn, by Protestant singing. The opponents could either sing the songs of their own denomination, or else create textual contrafacta (change the words of pre-existing religious songs) which could mock and ridicule the competing confession. Some Protestants warmly invited their Catholic counterparts to go home by chanting the corresponding German words to the melody of the ora pro nobis, the traditional response to Catholic litanies; in turn, Catholic polemicists penned parodies of the Te Deum and Victimae paschali with derogatory texts against Luther and Calvin.
Riots and unrests were frequently accompanied – if not encouraged – by religious singing; and some religious songs were so well-suited to the purpose of rousing the spirits that they quickly became the “war hymns” of the new confessions. Such was the fate of the well-known Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, the “Mighty fortress” which still constitutes the musical flag of Lutheranism; the Huguenots, in turn, had their own Psaume des batailles, the “psalm of wars”. It is very difficult for us to imagine the emotional power of these songs; none of today’s national anthems probably has the same force to move and excite which these religious songs possessed.
While it is saddening to contemplate how God’s praises were intermingled with horrible violence, it is thought-provoking to realize that the very fact of singing religious songs was a common feature of almost all Christians of the era. Religious singing was forced, so to say, to bend itself to the needs of confessional opposition and to turn itself into a weapon; but its true nature, as I hope to show in the next article, was that of an instrument of communion and unity. And this task it did fulfil, even in those harsh times of conflict and opposition.
All the more now, when the path of ecumenism is being steadily pursued by the different Christian denominations, it should become a formidable instrument for achieving unity.
Dr Chiara Bertoglio is a musician, a musicologist and a theologian writing from Italy. She is particularly interested in the relationships between music and the Christian faith, and has written several books on this subject. Her new book, Reforming Music: Music and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century, was published earlier this year by De Gruyter. Visit her website.
Earlier articles: (1) Reforming music: harmony and discord in the 16th century (2) Pre-Reformation church music: plainchant, polyphony and popular songs (3) Polyphony? Or cacophany? Prelude to a reformation in church music (4) Reformation music: how the Word became words. (5) Lutheran songs: a musical gift for all Chistians (6) The Genevan Psalter: Calvin’s musical reformation (7) Musical chairs: monarchs and church music during the English Reformation. (8) ‘God has a good ear for music’: the Catholic response to Reformation music. (9) Jesuits, founders and dukes in the shaping of post-Tridentine music
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