The intentionality of consciousness toward objects would not in itself lead to fallacious images of reality if man’s participation were automatic, producing in consciousness correct images of reality and nothing beyond that. Consciousness has a dimension of freedom, however, as it designs its images of reality. In this dimension are found such disparate phenomena as … private worldviews of the liberal bourgeois, and constructions of ideological systems. Within this wide range of problems we are here directly concerned only with the possibility of the separation of form and contents of reality, for it is in separation that the phenomena of the loss of reality originate.

Eric Voegelin, “What is Political Reality?”

Many Americans, especially politicians, suffer from a form of insanity. They continue to turn a blind eye to the military preparations of Russia and China. These preparations should be front and center, but they are not. The attentive citizen glimpses the danger out of the corner of one eye, now and again. A series of “little” warnings trickle in from abroad. For example: “Japanese official warns U.S. of potential surprise attack on Hawaii – from Russia and China.” More alarming than this, a source in Ukraine (which I will not name) says that Russia’s military has secretly agreed on a price for Mexican cartels to smuggle Russian Spetsnaz commandos across the U.S.-Mexican border. This, of course, is consistent with the following Russian war preparations: “Russian jets practice bombing enemy ships days after threatening to sink HMS Defender amid NATO war games” and “Putin approves new National Security Strategy preparing Russian economy for war.”

Going back to May 8, we read the headline: “China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons – including coronavirus – SIX years ago, according to dossier produced by the People’s Liberation Army in 2015 and uncovered by the U.S. State Department.” In early May, according to information acquired from a Hong Kong businessman with contacts in Beijing, the Chinese Communist leadership has been expecting war with the United States within “months” – not years. As if to confirm this information, China is planning for mass conscriptions and for the return of demobilized veterans to active duty. As if to blame the behind-hand United States for all these Russian and Chinese war preparations, Russian news sources are attempting to blame America: See, especially, “US Actively Prepares for War with Russia” | New Eastern Outlook (journal-neo.org).

For those who have been paying close attention, none of this is news. China and Russia were making small telltale war preparations twenty-two years ago. Almost nobody noticed. A thoughtful observer might have understood (back then) the intent behind China’s longstanding stockpiling of gold, or Russia’s extensive underground Urals construction program during the 1990s, or China’s growing interest in places like Panama, the Strait of Malacca and the Cape of Good Hope. Strategy is not a difficult subject if you are willing to dispense with liberal illusions (i.e., belief in the “end of history”) or conservative illusions (“Reagan won the Cold War”). Early indications of Russia’s long-planned military buildup were seen in the testing of new prototype weapons during the Second Chechen War. But who bothered to notice?

Today, we are confronted with a sudden shift in the balance of power. Sadly, this is a fact that the American public has yet to absorb. There has been a massive Russian-Chinese military buildup for many years. We have not matched this build up. We do not seem interested in acknowledging it. The Russians have obtained a strong qualitative edge. The Chinese have increased their forces in quantity and quality. On its side, the United States is unready. Europe is also unready. Australia is showing courage, but cannot stand alone. Japan is trying to fill the gap, but must rely on America. India is ready to join with us. Through all this, despite significant changes in the strategic balance, America’s leaders talk and act as if America is still number one. They are still fixated by the same misbegotten notions, fooled by the same disinformation themes that have plagued our political discourse since the 1960s. To speak plainly, Americans are not living in reality.

Anyone who watched the Democratic Party presidential debates of last year would not know there was a threat from Russia and China. All these presidential hopefuls, from the left side of the spectrum, told the country that the main threat to America was from global warming and Donald Trump. This kind of thinking is literally insane. But tens of millions of Americans bought into this nonsense. Most of the news media fed into it – with the exception of Fox News. After the election, many who thought differently were kicked off Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.com. The call for outright censorship is growing.

We now find ourselves in a ridiculous situation. We live in the most advanced technological society the world has ever seen. We have machines that can do almost everything for us. We have “science” to provide answers. Despite all these advantages we have lost touch with reality. In one of Dr. Carl Jung’s later works, The Undiscovered Self, the old psychiatrist pointed to a growing rift between what modern man thinks and what is real. Linking this problem to a decline in religious belief, Jung warned, “You can always take away man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.” [P. 36]

What does the taking away of the gods have to do with America’s break from reality? As it happens, human beings relate to reality through a big picture narrative that often goes back to Sunday school. Whether we believe in God or not, we tend to believe in something that is the equivalent of God; something that serves the same function as God within the psyche. That something might be very dysfunctional – like believing that you yourself are God.

According to Eric Voegelin and Carl Jung, our present break with political reality owes everything to what Voegelin called “the murder of God” and the assumption of God’s office by totalitarian politicians. As everyone can see, the old Christian teaching has declined. The new secular teaching has taken over. Jung thought the secular psyche was prone to neuroticism. In fact, the secular mind, turning to politics for its ultimate salvation, is headed for a total break with reality; for ultimate salvation can only be spiritual. This veil of tears, this world of “solid” objects and treacherous politicians, has nothing of final salvation in it. Salvation belongs to a non-material dispensation; that is, to the realm of spirit. There is no such thing as worldly salvation except when we are momentarily taken out of danger. Yet danger always returns, and death remains inevitable. The madness of today’s politicians thus appears: Believing there is a secular path to salvation, their policies betray the soul as it leads mankind down a false path, toward false understandings. The spiritual mechanism of man’s psyche is then perverted, looking for God in all the wrong places; that is, in politics – seeking salvation in a “socialist revolution” or the “liberal welfare state” or by transforming one’s tribe into the “the master race.”

These are paths to madness, to mass murder and more. If there is no divine order, if there is no God, then man is alone in the universe. In that event, the world of cause and effect is all that is. How, then, do we escape from the absurdity of existence? The only remaining solution is “the State.” Man becomes God through the mechanism of the State. And it is through state power – through the revolutionary seizure of power – that the Marxists (and other revolutionaries) hope to save mankind. In other words, the Marxist becomes Jesus Christ. Only he is not the one who is crucified. Mankind as a whole is crucified.

The former communist espionage courier, Whittaker Chambers, famously wrote that communism “is not simply a vicious plot hatched by wicked men in a sub-cellar. It is not just the writings of Marx and Lenin … the Politburo, the labor theory of value, the theory of the general strike, the Red Army, secret police, labor camps, [or] underground conspiracy….” No. These, he warned, are merely “expressions of Communism, but they are not what Communism is about.” [P. 8]

Chambers then quoted Marx’s complaint that philosophers merely explained the world; the point is to change the world. Marx wanted to remake the universe (for which human society serves as an analog).  One might say, in Marx’s view, God did not create the universe; rather the universe was in the process of creating God out of man.

Whittaker Chambers had a more Biblical way of explaining this. Communism, he said, is man’s second-oldest faith: “Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as Gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind.” Chambers added, “It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man’s liberated mind, by the sole force of rational intelligence, redirecting man’s destiny and reorganizing man’s life and world.”

But here is the problem: Man’s intelligence is not up to the task. Man cannot become the “creative intelligence of the world.” He cannot remake creation or remake himself. He does not possess the necessary wisdom to play God. Any attempt at such a project is bound to produce fatalities. It is bound to draw man into megalomania – a form of madness brought on by the lust for power. As Othello reacted to the demonic Iago at the end Shakespeare’s play, Carl Jung might have reacted to Marx:

I look down towards his feet; but that’s a fable.
If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee

The devil, of course, has no feet but cloven hoofs. And Karl Marx, like the villain Iago, was never killed off. Everyone said Marxism died, but it is still in the world, laughing at us. Marx’s ideology, his evil spirit, walks the land. The pious believers in Christ, in God, have not been able to defeat Karl Marx – the demidevil, the antichrist, the breaker of nations. Yes, we lied to ourselves on that score. Communism is not dead.  

In 1957 Jung wrote: “Hence, it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in, a dissociation of personality analogous to the splitting of the world today by the Iron curtain. This boundary line bristling with barbed wire runs through the psyche of modern man, no matter on which side he lives. And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his shadow side, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbor or in the man beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of the one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking within.”

Marx said the capitalists were devils. Conservatives and Christians identifed Marx as the devil. Yet the demonomania of modernity has spread to both camps. Of course, there are sincere “humanitarian” socialists, and there are sincere Christians. Yet the mania for power on both sides infects the whole. Just as there are self-aggrandizing socialists, there have been and there will continue to be self-aggrandizing patriots and pious frauds. God made man in His image and “holy” imposters have been trying to return the favor ever since. Indeed, they would have God for their creature, serving as His ventriloquists – by the arts of puppetry.

What we now have is madness on the left and madness on the right. How can humanity escape? The public’s understanding is now so muddled that the whole of humanity has lost its bearings. If the public is not being duped by the Marxists, they are nonetheless ready to vomit up yesterday’s swill about the “banksters,” or the “Illuminati,” or the “Jews” – an ill-digested regurgitation of conspiracy theories that trace every evil deed back to the Rothschilds or the Bilderbergers or to reptiles from Zeta Reticuli. But the common problem, the central problem of the age, is a deficit of soul – and a consequent deficit of reality.

Eric Voegelin wrote about this “loss of reality” in the sphere of politics. But not only in the sphere of politics. After all, we are told that a girl is not a girl and a boy is not a boy; that each can decide to be the other on a whim. Having inverted all identity, have elevated the inferior on a pedestal of envy, the plan is now to breach the walls of a weakened civilization – if only to level that civilization to the ground. And that is exactly where we are headed.

When we hear politicians speak of global warming (or climate change), we are hearing madness. When we hear politicians say that everyone should be vaccinated against COVID-19, even those who have natural immunity, we are hearing madness. When we hear talk of “the end of history” and “the end of the Cold War,” once again, we are hearing something that is completely nuts. But the politicians who have uttered these slogans really do believe in what they are saying. And this is catching up with us. Today’s “loss of reality” in the sphere of politics is going to cause millions of deaths.

A few weeks ago, I had an unpleasant exchange with a retired CIA officer who gasped in outrage when I referred to communism as a problem. “Communism?!” He said with an incredulous ring. “What is communism? Communism is nothing!” Well, I replied, you may think that; but try telling it to the people in China who are living under it. “China is capitalist,” was his mad reply, as if communist-led countries would never use money or engage in trade to advance their schemes. China, therefore, could not be communist in his view.

This former CIA official had confused the final achievement of a communist society, which Marx said would occur only after a successful world revolution, with a society ruled by communists who were trying to bring about that world revolution. In other words, he apparently knew nothing about communist theory, communist objectives, or communist methods of organization. Looking out at the broad world, he did not see a communist threat to America – a threat centered in Beijing and Moscow, a threat from Americans who were following the program of the Communist Party. He only saw corrupt domestic politicians. That, he said, was our only problem. In other words, he had already suffered from a catastrophic “loss of reality.” He could not see the larger problem our civilization faces, and so he could not see reality.  A solitary fact is not reality. On its own, it means absolutely nothing. Truth and its meaning require a connection between fact and reality as a whole. If one has no sense of the latter, one cannot make use of the former.  

This is the ground of madness: to have only facts and no clue about the larger reality. This is called “not seeing the forest for the trees.” Only by seeing the big picture can we properly grasp the significance of today’s headlines. But who is paying attention? Most of our people have no idea how dangerous the situation has become. Citizens everywhere have long been persuaded by a half century of lies, disinformation, and false narratives. The political reality of the average citizen is no reality at all. What is written on this website, for example, must appear fantastical to the average American. How could some outlier – outside the mainstream media, outside the government – present insights and truths that the mainstream media have missed?

Here is what I say. The mainstream media is mad. Its themes are crazy. Please understand what has happened and what is to come: Our society, our government, our culture, our leaders, were deceived by their enemy. And even now, almost nobody has figured it out. How did the communists fool everyone? They made up a story about communism going away, about the Cold War being over. But it was not over. Communism went underground and now, for those who are beginning to notice, the trap is visibly closing – from Antifa and Black Lives Matter burning buildings and looting stores, to Russia and China openly preparing for military strikes. Furthermore, we have been attacked by a Chinese biological weapon. We have a corrupt leftist president who was elected by fraud. We have a Justice Department that will not investigate crimes committed by Marxists.

Many readers will be incredulous. America could not have been fooled, they say. America could not have been tricked. The country is not stupid, after all. Americans have eyes. We read the press. We watch TV. But I say, there are none so blind as those that will not see. The facts have always been there. We just did not want to admit them.

Voegelin’s insight

The Austrian-born political scientist, Eric Voegelin (1901-1984), fled to America following Austria’s absorption into Hitler’s Reich in 1938. Being born of a Lutheran father and Roman Catholic mother, Voegelin was raised as a Lutheran and saw with what ease the Nazis corrupted mainstream Lutherans and Catholics. This led Voegelin to the realization that Christendom is not altogether Christian. Voegelin’s later indifference toward institutional Christianity derived, according to Eugene Webb, “from disappointing experiences with its representatives.” Living in Vienna during the 1930s, Voegelin found that “all the clergy he knew except one were Nazis, and his contacts with clergy in Eastern and Western Europe since the war seems to him to indicate a similarly opportunistic attitude on their part toward the communist powers.”

This is a dismal report, but an important part of the larger picture. Consider the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, whose final years were taken up in an attack on the Church of Denmark – written out under the title, Attack Upon Christendom – in which he called the institutional church “a knavish trick.” The Church of Denmark, he explained, no more resembled the Christianity of the New Testament than “a square resembles a circle.” Truth is something that belongs to the spirit, to the soul. It does not belong to an institution. It is does not belong to the State, or to the minions of the State; or to those who chase after money. That which is merely plausible, readily understood and profitable, is not truth.

Kierkegaard objected that “the eternal is not a thing which can be had regardless of the way in which it is acquired.” His point being, “The eternal is acquired … in the difficult way which Christ indicated by the words: ‘Narrow is the gate and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it.’”

Voegelin’s concept of “political reality” is spiritually grounded, resting outside of institutional understandings and institutional “creatures.” Therefore, the path to “political reality” is also narrow. The truth about politics is not upheld by political parties, state institutions or schools of political science. The gate of truth is a narrow one, and few are they that find it. One might ask why any institution, given what institutions are, should value the truth above what is expedient for its administrators. The sad answer is, no institution can be found that values the truth for its own sake; for institutions and the creatures within them value only what immediately serves their interests. And as we all know, lying often serves such interests more readily than the truth.

People everywhere want the truth to be simple, so they can claim to understand it. People everywhere want the truth to flatter their own prejudices, so they can feel good about it. People everywhere expect the truth to be profitable, so they can make money from it. Yet the truth is none of the above. You want the truth? – then pick up your cross.  

We all like to imagine we are on the side of truth. Look at the Germans in 1939. They thought they were justified in following Hitler. And Nazi Germany was a churchgoing nation. The Germans, in fact, thought of themselves as “decent.” But there was something amiss in this decency. There was something corrupt in it. The same is true of America’s decency today. I am not saying that America is a Nazi country. No. But America is inwardly corrupt – on the right and on the left. This is not to say that other countries are better. Merely, all of humanity – especially in these modern times – suffers from a kind of degeneracy, and there is no use being defensive about it.

– To quote that line again: “Narrow is the gate and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it.” Our civilization is collapsing because we suffer from a “loss of reality.” Our civilization is collapsing because we have lost our way. We are caught in a net of lies because we prefer lies.  Richard Weaver was correct when he blasted modern skepticism regarding objective goodness, truth and beauty. We are not concerned with truth, he wrote. We are not focused on goodness. Our loss of reality is doubly accounted for here; for those who do not care about the truth might well be driven to madness by a readiness to embrace lies; and those who care not for goodness, by nature, succumb to that special madness called “evil.”

Even the pagan philosopher, Julius Evola, wrote that “a transcendental realism” is the basis of all civilizations – Christian and pagan. Only today, under secular society, we deny that transcendental realism is possible. According to ancient Sanskrit texts, the era we are now living in was foretold as a “dark age” in which spiritual truth would be eclipsed by mechanical skill and technical knowledge. This age was then described as one of “falsehood, evil, or unreality.” Here, again, we encounter Voegelin’s theme – that we suffer from “loss of reality.” And here is the root cause of modern totalitarianism.  

The greatest darkness, according to Voegelin, comes from those who claim absolute knowledge – who talk of “absolute proof” of things that cannot be known. Voegelin referred to such people as “gnostics” (small g). These include the chiliastic true believers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, who established false messianic political movements “in terms of the Judeo-Christian apocalypse.” These were fanatical communistic sects – precursors to Marxian communism – as described by Igor Shafarevich in his magnificent book, The Socialist Phenomenon.

In his introduction to Shafarevich’s book, Aleksandr Solzehnitsyn explained that “no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach.” In other words, socialism is a reaction against the harsh realities of the world. Voegelin wrote, “The soul’s rebellion against the order of the cosmos, hatred of the gods, and the revolt of the Titans” was known to the ancient Greeks. We have, in our Christian teachings, the story of Satan’s rebellion against God. This is what Marxism represents. It is the old story of rebellion. This is what totalitarianism signifies. According to Voegelin, the totalitarians who claim “absolute” knowledge must also claim “absolute power” in their “revolt against God.” The whole process is advanced by a series of lies. Nothing here opens the soul to wisdom, but to “persistence in the deception, where revolt against God is revealed to be its motive and purpose.”

It is bizarre, of course, that atheists should want to assume God’s office. But as Jung said, “You can always take away man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.” The new gods, of course, are the builders of man’s communist future. They want to be God, says Voegelin, “for inscrutable reasons.” But here I turn to Kierkegaard’s book, The Sickness Unto Death. The whole problem can be resolved, suggests Kierkegaard, when we realize that the atheist has committed the “sin of despair”; for this is the opposite of faith and the origin of what Kierkegaard called “intensified defiance: sin as the intensification of despair.” Here is the ultimate error – the error which permeates modernity. It is at the core of the revolutionary’s being. It wills to be itself “out of spite,” says Kierkegaard. It adheres “out of malice.”

Kierkegaard further relates: “Rebelling against all existence, it feels it has obtained evidence against [existence], against its goodness. The person in despair believes that he himself is the evidence, and that is what he wants to be … in order to protect against all existence….”

Those who have seen the Marxist revolutionary up close can testify to the reality of Marxist despair. Voegelin, of course, is correct in saying that the revolutionary’s self-deception involves the pretense of striving for a superhuman ideal. In truth, the revolutionary is not forward-looking. He is not spiritually contented or happy. He is self-pitying. According to Voegelin, Nietzsche’s Dionysian dance is therefore a mask. His “superman” is a fraud. The ideal of the Soviet man was also a fraud. All of Marx’s lies, and Lenin’s lies, and all the socialist lies are masks behind which sits black despair. The will to power, the craving for political power by way of revolution, is merely a narcotic used to chase away this despair.

Why are they so despairing? Why have they “lost reality”? Because these people have no faith, no real interest in the truth, and are possessed by what Voegelin called a “demonic mendacity.” It is an interlocking web of self-deceit, rooted in spiritual arrogance. Consequently, these people are in need of psychiatric medications. Depression is a correlate of their narcissism and their psychopathy. From these people we are not going to hear the stoical refrain of the ancient philosophers; namely, that philosophy is above fate, uncorrupted by desire or self-delusion. The many fine gifts of our despairing intellectuals are lost to the poor sportsmanship of these jilted “lovers of humanity.” What did they expect? If they had loved God, instead of “the people,” they might have discovered faith, they might have discovered truth. But no, they had to love “humanty.”

What can one say? Unrequited love is a bitch.

Alas, this melodrama is yet another chapter in the book of self-deceit. If you listen to the modern rebel, he easily switches between his love of “the people” and his love of self. This brings us to Nietzsche’s famous statement: “If there were gods, how could I endure not being a god?” Marx went even further. His secret thought was, “Whether there are gods or not, how could I endure not being one?” The mad project of replacing the old world of God with the new world of man – as a work of man – is the “principal point of Marx’s gnosis,” wrote Voegelin. Marxism, therefore, is not merely a pack of intellectual swindles; for the murderer of God is also a mass murderer of men. The logic of this could not be more obvious – whether one is atheist, pagan or Christian.

To believe a lie, to make the world in the image of that lie, is the sense in which Marx sought to be a creator in place of God. The kind of world he promised to create, according to Voegelin, is a “second reality,” a “swindle” born of spiritual pathology (i.e., the sickness unto death), which reinforces the revolutionary’s original despair while doubling his malice.

Here is the ground of today’s political insanity. Carl Jung, writing over sixty years ago, said, “The change must begin with one individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look around and wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.” Jung then tells the story of a Rabbi who was asked why God showed himself in olden times and nobody sees him now. The Rabbi replied, “Nor is there anyone nowadays who could stoop so low.” Jung went on to say that God really does speak to us, even today. But he doubted whether there were many willing to “stoop so low” as to “consider the possibility that the vox Dei might be perceived in a dream.

Links and Notes

Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, Volume 6 (University of Missouri Press, 2002), p. 366.

Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 36, pp. 36-37.

Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Washington, D.C., Regnery, 2001), pp. 8 – 10.

Eugene Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History, (Kindle version) Location 3826.

Søren Kierkegaard, Attack on Christendom (Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 100.

Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Washington, D.C., Regnery, 1997), p. 34, p. 23.

Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 73-77.

Please note: Zeta Reticuli is a binar star system in the southern constellation of Reticulum.

The man who is grounded in history knows something of the ever-present tension between the ideal and the prudential, so that his judgment should reflect wisdom rather than cleverness or fantasy.

Richard Weaver

Quarterly Subscription (voluntary)

JRNyquist.blog

$15.00

Read my latest book, The Fool and His Enemy: Toward a Metaphysics of Evil: Nyquist, J.R.: 9798666501382: Amazon.com: Books

Follow me at GETTR @jrnyquist

267 thoughts on “Political Insanity: A Diagnosis”

  1. My gods, Mr. Nyquist, you write so beautifully and so compellingly. I love how you weave historical, philosophical, and literary themes into your posts. You are like a beacon in the dark these days, with your warnings of a Sino-Rus’ alliance and what that will do to the West. I am paying attention to that.

  2. I don’t mean to get into a religious discussion; but that would have made a great sermon. Thank you.

  3. Jung and Voegelin, with your own personal outworking or synthesis of their thought. This is the ”crisis of the west”, looked at from within the orbit of western thought itself of course. A lot to unpack. I have trouble with these concepts, always have, prefer a more poetic or cultural/spiritual mediation to get my understanding (or lack thereof) across. My suggestion is that these Satanic and Gnostic undercurrents to modernity are anti-human and anti-God, antithetical to life itself, constitute a foreign body in a living system that is bound to produce an immune response. Communism appeared to be such a response to modernity. Fascism is another apparent response. Both though partake of the illness in more than a homeopathic dose. I don’t have all the answers, so again I fall back on this Satanic and Gnostic modernity being like a journey to a foreign land, except that the ”foreign land” is something overlaid upon reality, imposed on people as being real instead of what it truly is, an inversion or denial of reality;

    ”Brothers, we are tired of Foreign Land”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX6ooOXIO_4

    Key to this of course is the measure of personal complicity in this unreal fiction imposed on reality, acceptance of this dark magick. .

    1. Voegelin is difficult and it helps to have a social science background (and to read his autobiography, which is exceptional). Voegelin’s references to Gnosticism are often misunderstood because he is not using the term in the sense of historical Gnosticism, as he spells the word with a small “g.” To some extent he is using Christian symbols to explain the fact that we are all living in the dark; that is, we have to find our way in a world that will always remain — at bottom — a mystery. Add the fact that he is, in his cosmology, a mystic who entertains certain metaphysical concepts that are no longer in favor. I believe there is a deeper philosophy here. Everyone who claims to “know” is, for Voegelin, a gnostic with a small “g.” He made this point obscure on purpose, because I suspect he despised a certain set of religious folks who claim knowledge they do not really possess. By making his point sufficiently obscure, he was protecting himself from their wrath (as such people are not philosophically clever enough to grasp what he was really saying, or how much it applied to them). This point is actually alluded to in Eugene Webb’s excellent book on Voegelin. Imagine, then, how delicately he had to frame his epistemology, built as it was on Christian symbols, yet reserving a subtle criticism for those he did not consider worthy. What else his esoteric philosophy conceals I do not know. There are so many technical points my learning is inadequate. It suffices to say that Voegelin was incredibly knowledgeable on ancient and modern history and literature, religion and sociology. His main dislike, it seems to me, was people who lie to themselves. This would include certain religious people who are as capable of atrocity as atheists, and political ideologists.

      1. People who read about Christ calling people ”Hypocrites” often have little understanding of the exact meaning of what He is saying. A Hypocrite back then was an Actor, and in Christ’s Incarnational time, wore masks and were entirely covered, even speaking through a tube which changed their voice, playing a part whether a stock part, the chorus, or major player. Nobody knew who the actors were or what they really looked and sounded like. That’s my preface, this observation….

        Voegelin’s primary insight to me is the raising or lowering of consciousness via the mediation of symbols, whether written spoken, or communicated in some other manner. With the raising of consciousness leading to greater personal and collective order, and the lowering leading to decline and chaos. That’s where politics and ideology come in, with the ossification and loss of belief in the truths which are mediated by symbols. It’s a sign of collective decline in Voegelin’s sense, for example, to see ”Madonna” on an album cover wearing lingerie and a crucifix…. How much longer will the facade drop altogether, and other symbols replace the crucifix around a person’s neck? People cannot handle contradiction; either they transform the symbolic meanings of things or they discard the symbols and take on new ones. In Voegelin’s thought, this is the corrosive effect of ”Gnosticism”; he’s not saying ”Gnostics” overthrow the collective order, but that they are the sign of that overthrow, the symptom. The ”ferment of decomposition” to paraphrase Werner Sohmbart.

        But then you mentioned Jung and his insights. Funny, because I didn’t believe that Jung thought that one really could wipe away the symbolic archetypes from the human mind, not fully. But it results in a clear apprehension (at least to foolish people like me) that Leon Bloy was right when he said;

        ”There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do, what his acts correspond to, his sentiments, his ideas, or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the register of Light…History is an immense liturgical text where iotas and dots are worth no less than the entire verse or chapters, but the importance of one and the other is indeterminable, and profoundly hidden.”

        That is, a liturgical text written in Heiroglyphics, a forest of Symbols telling a story we dimly comprehend.

        Modernism then is taking the Symbol for the Reality, the Surface for the Meaning, until a point is reached where there is no more meaning perceived at all. Then comes the day of the Liberal Bourgeoisie… Again, Leon Bloy;

        “Bourgeois are by nature people who hate and destroy heavens. When they see a beautiful site, they have no more pressing dream than to cut the trees, dry up the springs, build streets, shops and urinals. They call this seizing a business opportunity.”

        This is where, in my opinion, the political insanity comes from. It has existential roots

      2. Voegelin writes about the lust for power, and the will to power, that drives the gnostic to say that he has all the answers (ultimate knowledge). Because the gnostic has all the answers, he claims all the power. He wants no checks on that power. He wants no opposing views. Because of this, he is very dangerous. His role as a purveyor of science is a modern pose. It is revolutionary because it denies all the wisdom that has gone before. Knowledge starts with him. Of course, this is usurpation. It is fraud.

  4. Really a great article Jeff. Your reportage of the situation relative to political philosophy, history, and theology is spot on. But reportage without a concrete plan to reclaim society is simply a collection of beautiful words. Time to move on to Conservatism 2.0 that actually moves beyond reportage. Anyone listening to you for a short period of time understands these things now. Now what?

    1. Wow, Robert! You are back and at “it” again. What about doing something yourself to help to spread Jeff’s word on the internet? As I wrote few weeks ago, I, at least, try to write about Mr Nyquist in the most popular conservative blogs like Breitbart, Instapundit, Gateway Pundit, Legal Insurection and few others, however, my posts are usually drawn in the raging torrents of ‘conservative” lamentations and the responses from others commenters are so rare that it throws me into a semi depressive mood.
      Unfortunately, I haven’t got neither a Facebook nor Twitter accounts as I feel the uppermost contempt for those PARASITIC entities.
      Recently,my YouTube account was blocked because of my sharp conservative views that I used to express over there.
      What about you? What about contacting Jan Jekielek from Epoch Times and his excellent American Thought Leaders vlog via his twitter and advertise Jeff to him.
      What about Crossroads With Joshua Phillip, fantastic Valuetiment vlog, Steven Crowther, Mark Dice, Mark Stein and so may others?
      As I also wrote, do something constructive and courageous and share your experience with Jeff.
      Regards – Bogdan

      2. Bogdan, I don’t share on this thread things that I do, since this post is about Mr. Nyquist’s writings and historical viewpoints. But what I will say is that no matter how brilliant an analysis is, it’s like saying “the British are coming, the British are coming. Their intentions are to capture us and hang us, they are coming up the main Avenue, they’re 9 miles away, the fate of the republic is in jeopardy.” And then beyond that there is no intention,
        and no plan. It is completely a defensive state that Mr. Nyquist is proposing. Everybody now knows what is happening if they have the intention to know, the “ears to hear.” Mr. Nyquist is afraid to state the things that he feels should be done now. He feels it is sufficient to inform people of the exact situation, which indeed is his expertise. But it is though insufficient to save our republic. He has the ability and the connections to make actual plans, but he is too afraid of the FBI. In fact, he feels that I probably am an FBI agent sent to push him into illegal speech, and ultimately into prison. So he hunkers down in safety, and merely reports “the British are coming, the British are coming.” And then retreat to his home and leaves his rifle and powder on a shelf, and encourages others to do the same. The pen without the sword today is not sufficient to save us. I suggest you look elsewhere for your answers to our political salvation, and use Mr. Nyquist’s context as your reasoning for why you then act.

      3. Make a plan with other like-minded and well-connected individuals within the political right, our Congress, and our military. Use your expertise to not just describe what is happening to the republic, but to save the republic and then I will be happy to never ever bother you again! Stay off the social media platforms when you do it, and use carrier pigeon if you have to. But we don’t need more information; we have plenty to know that the British are coming. We need a band of men to stop them cold on the road to us. But for some reason you have settled on the fallacy that a lack of kinetic force will turn back a communist insurgency.

    3. Why dont you come up with a plan of action? Maybe that is your destiny. You are like a broke record.

      1. This comment was to Robert Malins, by the way. I thought I was replying to a comment he made.

      2. I think this article has merit, and pretty much sums up my belief relative to potential future kinetic action by armed U.S. citizens against our tyrannical government. I think the fatalism and defeatism that gentlemen such as Jeff Nyquist and Trevor Loudon purvey are misguided and freeze portions of the populace into inaction and passivity. I prefer to think positively in regards to our ability to actually save this republic! https://medium.com/the-sword-and-shield/citizens-would-win-against-the-u-s-military-heres-how-ff336bd22bc5

      1. An action with the intention of preserving the republic is difficult to define as ugly. In fact it would be the culmination of speaking words; the fulfillment. Words without resultant action are empty. Speaking well of her then refusing to defend her…

      3. Dipping into ad hominem is not necessary; buffoon, empty head, etc. I have never degraded to that with you, I only use descriptors of what I feel to be the incomplete nature of your work. But maybe one of the other posters is right; everybody has their strength, their place. Yours is clearly setting historical precedents and deciphering the communist mind. Thinking out loud about these issues in order to find the right approach has always been my intent. But an approach without teeth is not worth following. Communists rarely roll over unless kicked hard.

      4. You insult me every time you post here, telling everyone how inadequate my work is because I do not not have an approach “with teeth” — as if the thing to do is to bite someone. We live in a huge country with a massive military establishment and government, thousands of schools manned by well-paid leftists, and you want me to go on a chomping spree? In terms of our institutions, nearly everything is in the hands of people who disagree with what I am writing; and you want me to pick a fight with them? There is only one way to fight this: — Show our poor misguided countrymen how mistaken they are, how dangerous their policies have been, and how terrible the destruction will be if they do not turn the country around. There is no other approach. If I cannot persuade anyone with words, I will not succeed by biting them like a rabid dog.

      5. I approach what I feel to be deficits to the simply reporting method that you employ, and you degrade me personally with ad hominem. Big difference. I have never once insulted you personally, nor would I. Pointing out deficits in approach is not a character attack. I now understand all the reasons that you feel that a forced reset of our society could not be done. I feel that with the overwhelming forces arrayed against us that it is the only practical option, to come up with a plan that would indeed work. I don’t feel that your work, even in combination with other intelligent communicators, can stand against the media, Hollywood, academia, etc. That is why I feel that your work is fruitless unless combined with something that puts more teeth into the solution. And no, I don’t mean that you should go around biting others! That was another subtle ad hominem you employed…

      6. Robert: readers are going to be confused by your writing under the name “someone.” And yes, I degrade you because your remarks are exasperating and I have asked you to stop. I have told you that advocacy of civil violence is not welcome here. I believe the truth is the key to everything. And I despise anyone who says the truth is “fruitless,” as you do. You do not seem to understand that wars are won or lost before they are fought because of ideas inside peoples’ heads. You cannot win by playing a right-wing Robespierre, advocating “kinetic action,” and saying I need to have “teeth.” That is dangerous nonsense. A forced reset of our society will not end well for any of us. The enemy prefers this solution and would like us to try it.

    5. Robert Malins: The problem (as I see it) is the moral, spiritual & intellectual collapse of the American People. We lie because we don’t want to face Reality and the Truth and shape up and do what’s Right. We want to stuff ourselves with junk food and blame our “glands” or “the medicine my doctor made me take” for our morbid obesity.

      The solution is a moral, spiritual, and intellectual Regeneration of the American People.

      Some 60 years ago, I read Robert Graves’ novel, “I, Claudius”. It describes the mind-boggling debauchery of the people of the Roman empire under the Caesars. THAT is what we have today – that kind of debauchery.

      The only way to fix that is for Americans to man-up and find their long-lost spines and virtue and minds and act accordingly. Stop believing lies – stop acting on them – ridicule those who lie – and start resisting the evil where ever you find it.

      1. From “Live not by Lies”, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies

        “….And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!

        And this is the way to break out of the imaginary encirclement of our inertness, the easiest way for us and the most devastating for the lies. For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person…”

        But WE in America can still “step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think”.

        Remember Hans Christian Andersen’s “The emperor has no clothes”.

      3. A vast swath of the American citizenry does not act nor live in this way.

  5. China’s Xi Takes Dig at U.S. in Speech to Political Parties Around World

    By Reuters
    July 6, 2021

    https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-07-06/chinas-xi-takes-dig-at-us-in-speech-to-political-parties-around-world

    By Yew Lun Tian

    BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday urged political parties worldwide to oppose any country that engages in “technology blockades”, an allusion to the United States which views China as its strategic competitor.

    As U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has sought support from like-minded democracies including the European Union and Japan to coordinate a tougher stance against China, Beijing has doubled down on seeking support and affirmation from friendly nations such as North Korea and Serbia.

    “Together, we must oppose all acts of unilateralism in the name of multilateralism, hegemony and power politics,” Xi told a virtual gathering of representatives of 500 parties from 160 countries such as Russia, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Burkina Faso.

    “Looking from the angle of ‘My Country First’, the world is narrow and crowded, and often full of fierce competition,” Xi said in apparent reference to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy.

    Xi renewed a call to work towards “building a community with a shared future for mankind” and said any country that engages in “technology blockades” and “developmental decoupling” should be rejected.

    Chinese diplomats have often criticised the United States for allegedly trying to hamper China’s development by cutting off its access to U.S. technology.

    In a speech last week to a domestic audience in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Xi said foreign forces trying to bully China will “have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people”.

    Xi, also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, was on Tuesday speaking at the CPC and World Political Parties Summit, one of many events held by Beijing to commemorate the centenary of the ruling party.

    The virtual gathering was meant to help the international community “adjust more quickly to the rise of China” and for Beijing to gain more “understanding, support and companionship,” said Guo Yezhou, vice minister of the International Department, which organised the event.

    China is increasingly worried about its international image, tarnished by anger towards its initial handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, its maritime and territorial assertiveness towards neighbours, its clampdown in Hong Kong and treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, and its “wolf-warrior” diplomats who engage in a war of words with critics.

    A survey of 17 advanced economies released last Wednesday by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center showed that views about China have remained broadly negative and confidence in Xi near historic lows.

    (Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

    Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters.

    1. I only read it now. This kind of behavior from China is occurring all over the map, especially in Africa — and it is not winning friends. China’s neo-colonialism is highly effective.

      2. China now has a foothold in the Mediterranean, among other places, as they have come to virtually own the port of Piraeas in Greece. Also, they have built a port along the Atlantic in West Africa. Now it would be easier than ever for them to assault the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, if they so desired.

        All of this new infrastructure is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative–this is serious stuff that is passing under the radar of the general public, and even of Fox News. I can’t recall ever hearing the network report on the BRI.

        Most Americans are probably not aware of the BRI–even if they were, they’d probably dismiss it like, “Who cares if a port in Sri Lanka has signed over a 99-year lease to China? Won’t affect us.” https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/02/26/sri-lanka-finds-deal-to-hand-china-port-for-99-years-actually-runs-nearly-200/

        It’s brilliant, in the most calculating and most shrewd way, for China to seize land–as “collateral”– from these countries that have the misfortune to default on the loans that they take out with China.

  7. Robert, then show us your Glamdring, Guthvina, Orcrist or Aragorn’s broken sword that has been reforged and we shall follow you into the hell if necessary.
    Until then, your own yapping is simply pointless.
    Regards – Bogdan

    1. That was good Bogdan! I believe Robert is trying to set a trap for Mr. Nyquist. Probably a member of one of our corrupt, three-letter agencies.

      1. Greyknight, I can understand why you would think I might be F.B.I., and there is nothing I could say to you to dispel this doubt, so I will just let it stand. Because maybe I had the F.B.I. visit me after I published my article The Case For Christian Militancy as a ruse to establish credibility within the conservative movement, in order to enable me to move more freely within it, and help the agency to attack it with insider information. This would be something that an intelligent agent might pull off, and if I were a member I could certainly probably do it! Many conservatives I have spoken to also believe that David Horowitz is a double agent, working for the communists within the conservative movement as a trusted voice, who only breaks from the conservative line when Diana West proves that the primary motivation of communist infiltration in our government is to actually influence American policy, not just to spy to gain intel. And David may well be a double. So there is an unlimited amount of intrigue available, and assumptions can be made on evidence that turn out to be true or false as time reveals it. That is the difficult nature of seeing through deception. Either way, I should probably have been an intelligence agent, as it fits well with my nature. Or maybe I actually did enter the service, and that statement is ruse and deception. And maybe I’m opening my site soon called American Renewal in order to draw in vulnerable conservatives to a kinetic action plan from which they can then be prosecuted. Who the hell knows really in the end? Only time will tell…

  8. You have to laugh when you read that Russia is now saying the plague is a bio attack by America against it, amidst rising pandemic figures of late:

    https://jamestown.org/program/moscow-says-us-waging-biological-war-against-russia/

    Translation: We know it’s of low lethality and our Sputnik vaccine is window dressing to maintain the psyop, but hey, lets milk this for what it’s worth in priming the Russian people for war. And let’s get China off the hook while we’re at it.

    1. There are people in every country who will both spread, and believe in, conspiracy theories. Yours is an assumption that the powers that be knew that COVID-19 has a relatively ”low” fatality rate,and an illogical premise that believes governments will spend immense amounts of money on vaccines that they ”know” are ”window dressing”, a fake.

      Don’t believe in conspiracy where stupidity and human error are far more likely.

  9. Jeff, could you illuminate further on this indication (i.e., belief in the “end of history”)? thanks.

    1. At the end of the Cold War, Sovietologist Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay and then a book titled “The End of History.” It was a self-congratulatory exercise in accepting the collapse of communism as genuine.

      2. Did you note when reading Fukuyama’s ”the End of History and the Last Man”, the extensive references to Hegel and (if I remember correctly) Alexander Kojeve? Particularly the whole ”master/slave” talk of Hegel?

      3. Fukuyama is very twisted. I have only thrown two books in the garbage my whole life. One was “The End of History” and the other was “The Tropic of Capricorn.” Both are pornography — but of two very different varieties.

  10. Jeff, you mentioned “Yet the mania for power on both sides infects the whole.” and that the right suffers the same corruption as the left. I agree that “the right” does not see—and has been blinded and hoodwinked by glittering trinkets of mainstream media. On “the right”, the church can be busy about piety, and attempting to do what is good. Some on “the right” are indeed busy with resisting the madness and exposing it…but in general are busy with work, family, soccer, holding two jobs, trying to enjoy aspects of life and passing this on to the next generation. We ask to be left alone. I think what the right suffers of is weakness of vulnerability, the want of small luxuries and not seeing or apprehending “big picture” as you say. I guess I am not seeing the open gleeful corruption that is visible in the left—purposeful perversion, corruption and unmitigated pursuit of power. Please elaborate? Thank you.

    1. Jeff
      I re-read my question at the end of my 7:58am posted item. I wrote it poorly.

      What I meant to say is this:
      I guess I am not seeing what the corruption is on “the right”. Can you please elaborate? Thank you.

      1. Corruption is everywhere, especially on the right. The dishonesty is thick. These people wanted to win public approval. They wanted to make money trading with China, giving support to Russia. They did not want to study, or think, or investigate. Intellectual corruption is found in our willingness to believe the Russian and Chinese lies. We wanted to go along to get along. How can you not see it? All these conservative pundits looked the other way. How was that honest? Please explain it to me. All these politicians wanted to take credit for winning a war they did not win (the Cold War). Why didn’t Rush Limbaugh warn people about communism after 1991? Why won’t Hannity stop saying Reagan won the Cold War? Newt Gingrich spoke of the “peace dividend” and said, “I’m a hawk; but I am a cheap hawk.” Cheep, cheep, cheep! This is corruption — in the form of plausible talk to make people feel good and sell pillows (or junk from Walmart). The bouncy optimism of the “compassionate” conservatives is squarely plugged in to our extensive trade with China! All our “conservative” leaders sat down with these mass murderers, sung their praises and opened our country to them. Look at the compromises everyone has made. The conservatives are not corrupt? Really? You think those people would tolerate my message for five minutes? No. They plugged their ears, closed their eyes, and opened factories in China.

      2. So true Jeff. There has been a mass reliance on past American strength, as if it would never end, in the blind acquiescence to China and Russia. And all the majority of the right cares about is selling pillows for an ex-crack addict. It is truly pathetic. But don’t forget; Trump is coming back into office just as soon as Mike Lindel’s critique sweeps away the left and takes away their power! Your perspective has traditionally been absolutely spot on, as has that of Diana West and Trevor Loudon. I appreciate your setting the context. But it’s now simply not enough. We must move on to a next phase before it’s too late. Millions of Americas have been propagandized beyond repair, and each one of them votes. There is no hope now in the old American method of winning political power.

      3. Trump is coming back into office because of Lindell? Don’t you watch Bullwinkle and Rocky? The next exciting episode is coming. Sorry to say, the only kinetic action you are likely to manage is when you are hopping around on one foot, screaming, after stubbing your toe on a poorly made piece of Chinese furniture.

      4. I was being sarcastic. It is a Mike Lindell’s claim that when he releases his information on 2020 voter fraud that the Congress and the left will have to yield and give Trump back the presidency. This is the kind of lunacy that strange right wingers are selling know, and myriad right leaning talk show hosts accept my pillow advertising money and then promote his ridiculous assertions as if they are fact. I already emailed you the main tenets of my website American Renewal which will be open in the next month or so.

      5. The Pillow Man has taken up all the bandwidth. There is very little left for serious people. Perhaps time will amend this. Right now, nothing can be done. It is all a clown show. All circus.

      6. thanks Jeff for clarifying what you mean by “on the right”. i interpret “the right” as those who understand what is going on and willing to stand against the left. To me, what you are describing as the middle ground, Jesus referred to a similar group in a biblical context as “the lukewarm”. AF

  11. Jeff, I love your work. I’ve followed you, Diana West, Cliff Kincaid, and Trevor Loudon for years. This article puts the essential issue in front of us. God or man? I’d like to focus on one of the quoted Kierkegaard statements.

    “The eternal is acquired … in the difficult way which Christ indicated by the words: ‘Narrow is the gate and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it.’”

    “The eternal is acquired” is not the same as “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”.
    Luther would have remained, as did Erasmus, a Roman Catholic if the forgiveness of his sin could have been accomplished by his personal efforts to “acquire” salvation. Religion of all kinds is the effort to acquire acceptance with God, the gods, the great spirit, etc. by striving to follow a list of dos and don’ts. Luther rediscovered the true gospel: salvation is by the grace of God alone, from Christ alone, through faith alone. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no man should boast.” Ephesians 2: 8,9

    Eternal life is present reality for those whom God has graced with this gift. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” 1 John 5:13

    25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. 27 The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
    29 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

    31 They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” 32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. Acts 16

  12. Jeff, I missed this article but it may be more significant than first thought.
    The arrival of the current solar minimum may be driving China much more than we thought, they really may be feeling the pressure of time, and some of this is revealed by their administrative changes.

    “China Is Becoming a Military State” | Opinion
    Gordon G. Chang. 1-14-2021

    “Amendments to China’s National Defense Law, effective the first of this year, transfer powers from civilian to military officials.”
    “The changes signal the growing clout of the People’s Liberation Army inside the Communist Party and highlight the militarization of the country’s external relations. The new law, most significantly, contemplates the mass mobilization of society, presumably for war.”
    “The amendments reduce the role of the central government’s State Council in making military policy, transferring powers to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission (CMC). Specifically, the State Council will no longer supervise the mobilization of the People’s Liberation Army.”

    …..

    https://www.newsweek.com/china-becoming-military-state-opinion-1561300

    https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3115988/chinas-military-takes-charge-war-powers-new-defence-law (paywalled)

    Really superb article, by the way, very deep and illuminating.

      1. So am I. I may not be able to take on the woke world at this time, but I can get me and mine as ready as possible for that which looms on the horizon. Pray for the impossible and prepare for the probable.

      2. Jeff,

        Another “thank you” for educating me on the actual way nuclear weapons would be deployed in a major conflict. It made me realize, for example, that the civil defense efforts of Russia were indeed serious preparations to make nuclear war survivable.

        As to those of us urging you to advise them about what to do: They should first keep in mind (paraphrasing Clausewitz) that “No battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy.” So much for a Plan of Action, especially one bruited on a blog. So what to do, then? Take to heart Eisenhower’s words, “The Plan in nothing. Planning is everything.” Should the misfortune of war on American soil occur, we’ll need a detailed knowledge of the terrain on which fate has decreed we make your stand. Instead of a Plan, there’ll be a thousand moment-by-moment decisions–and the better the prior planning we’ve done, the better the decisions we’ll make. And in doing that planning, there’s another maxim: “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.” We need to ask ourselves: where is this our that critical resource located in our local area and how can be best assure we have them when we need them? War planning is a first-cousin to disaster planning. If we’ve done serious prepping against the possibility of a hurricane or major earthquake, perhaps as first responders, then we’re much further along the road of preparing for war on our doorstep.

        Jeff is not an expert on our particular neck of the woods, but he has shown us the shape of the overall forest and the fires that are converging on it. In fact, Jeff has helped me realize that much of what Russia and China have been doing (thus far) is eroding our logistical capability. Our modern-day industrialists have done Lennin’s prediction one better: We didn’t sell them the rope they’d like to hang us with, they relocated the rope-making plant in enemy territory.

        The most serious logistical erosion our enemies have fomented is spiritual: encouraging us to disconnect from the Divine. “I am the Vine and ye are the branches,” said Jesus. Time to reconnect, and pronto.

  13. To Robert Malins:

    Your own metaphor comparing Jeff’s essays to Paul Revere’s warning that the “British are coming” — and suggesting that Jeff is somehow ineffective — is baffling. Paul Revere is “revered” today because he carried out his mission of warning, thus allowing the patriots to mobilize and fight.

    Revere’s job wasn’t to come up with a detailed plan or to fire at the British. Nevertheless, he did his part. Jeff has laid bare the conspiracy. Now it is OUR job to plan and prepare for what’s coming.

    We’re past the point of any easy off-ramps. The fit’s gettin’ ready to hit the shan!

    1. VC1 you make a good point. My only counter would be that there are so many people who are reporting reality and calling out what is happening, and do it so very effectively, but there is virtually no one with a solution behind them. It’s like Paul revere crying “the British are coming” and the British came and no one stood to resist them. It would render Revere useless in the end. We like the colonists now have no representation, so our situations are virtually the same. It’s time to move on to the next chapter.

      1. But, again, the point was that Revere’s job wasnt that of the local militia. If they weren’t organized and ready to fight, that wasnt Revere’s fault. He had done his job.

        Are you FBI, CIA, or just some nut trying to persuade someone to be your temporal savior?

      2. RM this repeated nagging is so very tiresome. What does history say about the man who sits in the galley carping at others to do something?

        For heaven’s sake take some responsibility.

        There will be no “plan” in the way you seem to mean it. There will be no organized show of force by the people against a gathering attack — it would be absolute folly, playing into the hands of the enemy, which is obvious if you think it through.

        The battle is ultimately spiritual, hearts and minds, neighbor to neighbor. It’s a battle of will and patience for the truth, feet on the ground, eyes to God. And if that sounds hopeless, I recommend going back to your Bible and getting right with God. YOU matter. We all do. Jeff’s doing his part, including by getting you stirred up. What are you doing?

        Buck up.

  14. WOW, blown away yet again!! I even sent this around before/ as I was reading it. And several discussions broke out. “Facts and Reality “. Comes out of my mouth all the time along with “Truth”.

    Stupidity and Ignorance are the Pandemic the CDC should be looking at. I could make a fortune if I could come up with a Vaccine for that 🤔🤓

    1. But who will make your vaccine for stupid idiots? Stupid idiots, of course. And so the cure will be another iteration of the disease.

  15. Excellent article. One thing to add; what to do about it? As Jeff intimated, “pick up your cross,” and the important rest of the verse, “and follow Me (Jesus)”. If God is judging this nation with blindness etc., then we cannot save her. As the Lord once said, “let the dead bury their dead, you follow Me.” Help those around you, learn from the difficulty.

  16. @Robert Malins: I suspect you have a plan for the ‘next chapter’ – would you please share a link to it?

      2. Some of the things that you say to me in response Jeff seem to indicate that you are triggered. Ad hominem and ridiculous references to Bullwinkle cartoons and other inferences to degrade me. It would serve you far better to look inside and answer the question; why do my contentions drive you to this? You completely break out of your objective analysis and enter into the emotional response arena. Why is that? I would contend that you know in your heart that my suggestions that your analysis is insufficient, and that your answers are based in inactivity and a kind of indolence that is the answer to nothing effectively is what is bothering you. That being said, I would predict that your banishing me from your thread is your next step.

  17. Communist Takeover of America in Progress – LTC Robert Maginnis
    By Greg Hunter On July 6, 2021 In Political Analysis 225 Comments

    https://usawatchdog.com/communist-takeover-of-america-in-progress-ltc-robert-maginnis/

    By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

    Retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert Maginnis is a military expert and author of a brand new book explaining how Marxists and globalists are trying to take down America and turn the country to a godless communist state. Maginnis explains, “In my book, I go into the details why Marxism is really a proxy of Satan. All you have to do is read his (Karl Marx) writings or ask his own family. I have a chapter about Marx’s father saying Marx was governed by a demon. His son called him ‘my dear devil’. . . . This insidious ideology came to this country after World War l, and it was brought here by the progressives.”

    The tip of the spear for the communist takeover of America is China. Maginnis says, “We, by their own definition, are at war with China. Even the Washington Post, interestingly, just a day ago, editorialized about how serious the threat comes from President Xi. He stood there in Tiananmen Square a couple of days ago and declared to the world we are ready for you. We are the world dominate power. If you threaten us we, are going to put your blood against the steel wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people. He didn’t hold back. He made it very clear that we are indeed at war. . . . Keep in mind, when communists take over, they have a very serious agenda. They do away, first of all, with religion, and any civil liberties are tanked as soon as they come into power.”

    Who are the willing treasonous helpers to the Chinese? Look no further than the Democrat Party along with some Republicans, too. Maginnis says, “They have pulled out all the stops with going after us with their control over media, to include the New York Times, Washington Post and others. There is their transmission media, television, radio and the Internet. The evidence is very, very compelling, and, of course, the Democrat Party has blood all over their hands when it comes to pushing this insidious agenda. This is now far worse than any progressive would have wanted. The Chinese are very persuasive. . . . They control Hollywood. The buy off the Washington Post through ads, the New York Times and even the China Daily goes to every member of Congress for free, and it’s pushing propaganda. The propaganda is up to your eyeballs thanks to the Chinese. . . .They buy off politicians, and we see this left and right. . . . The Chinese set a ‘honey trap’ for Congressman Eric Swalwell. . . . The list goes on.”

    In closing, Maginnis says, “This is very dangerous if we don’t turn this around and turn it around quickly. . . . We have to get involved. I am writing members of Congress daily . . . and I am speaking out as much as I can. I am contributing to legal funds, and I am contributing to candidates that will support what I believe to be right. These are things we have to do and not sit on our duffs and watch this country be destroyed, and that is what they are doing.”

    Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Lieutenant Colonel Robert Maginnis (Ret.), military expert and author of the new book “Give Me Liberty, Not Marxism.”

    (To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here)

    After the Interview:

    If you want a copy of the new book “Give Me Liberty, Not Marxism” by LTC Robert Maginnis, you can buy it from the Christian media organization called SkywatchTV.com. You can also order by phone at 844-750-4985 (24 hours a day in the USA).

    The book is also available at places like Amazon and Target as well.

    You can follow Maginnis on his Facebook page by clicking here.

    Other top selling books by Maginnis are:

    Collision Course: The Fight to Reclaim Our Moral Compass Before It Is Too Late

    The Deeper State: Inside the War on Trump by Corrupt Elites, Secret Societies, and the Builders of an Imminent Final Empire.

  20. Mr. Nyquist, having spoken to me again about the ”Gnostic” rebellion of the modern age in context of Eric Voegelin, I was struck by a couple things you said;

    ”Voegelin writes about the lust for power, and the will to power, that drives the gnostic to say that he has all the answers (ultimate knowledge). Because the gnostic has all the answers, he claims all the power. He wants no checks on that power. He wants no opposing views. Because of this, he is very dangerous. His role as a purveyor of science is a modern pose. It is revolutionary because it denies all the wisdom that has gone before. Knowledge starts with him. Of course, this is usurpation. It is fraud. ”

    Ah yes, the denial of all the wisdom that has gone before, and a ”science” so-called. And yet if you read the actual ”scientists” of the modern age in moments of candor, people like say, Ernst Mach or even Albert Einstein,they could not honestly provide a basis for such a revolution, only provisional and contingent ideas for the modern age. As Albert Einstein once wrote;

    ”Since the time of Copernicus we have known that the Earth rotates on it’s axis and moves around the Sun. Even this simple idea,so clear to everyone, was not left untouched by the advance of science. But let us leave this question for the time being and accept Copernicus’ point of view….”

    Or even more frankly, Einstein also said;

    ”The struggle,so violent in the early days of science,between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either Coordinate System could be used with equal justification. the two sentences: ‘the sun is at rest and the earth moves,’ or ‘the sun moves and the earth is at rest’, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different coordinate systems”.

    But did he or anyone else from the new modern priesthood tell the masses this? Are they truly frank about what the alternatives are if Einstein and others are wrong, what with the results of the 1887 Michaelson-Morely interferometer experiment? Sagnac? What are we to make of the modern epistemological theory about scientific theories-is it really true that if a hypothesis saves the appearances, it is identical with truth?

    Or how about the Marxist and alleged scientist, Stephen Jay Gould? He said once in an interview in 1996;

    ”….The common component of all major revolutions …Revolutions that smash [the] pedestals… of our cosmic arrogance… [has been] the cosmological shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe, ‘when [humanity] realized that our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable…”

    Nietzsche, that poor sad man knew the score, what is and was at stake, read him again in ”the gay science”;

    “Where has God gone?” [the madman asked] “I shall tell you. We
    have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we
    done this? How were we able to drink up the seas? Who gave us the
    sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we
    unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now?

    Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually
    falling? Backwards, side ward, forward, in all directions? Is there
    any up or down left? Are we not straying as though through Infinite nothing?

    Where is God? God is Dead. God remains dead. And we have
    killed him. How shall we, murders of all murders, console ourselves?”

    As I think I have said before, how can we stop Communism if almost all of us Moderns in the Western world are at least half in their camp ourselves, with what we are compelled to believe in by the tremendous weight of modern social convention?

    1. Nietzsche is a very important questioner of everything, who stumbled into many insights. Scientists are often — but not always — ontological retards. They do not seem to understand that the physical world is necessarily derivative and depends on mind/spirit for its very existence.

      1. Voegelin wasn’t the only esoteric writer, indeed. Nietzsche was as well. There is a hidden wisdom that is hidden not so much because of one’s membership in an arcane brotherhood dispensing secret knowledge, but because one has been exposed to existential crisis and suffering (of course those like Nietzsche cannot go past a certain point) and transcended it;

      2. Nietzsche is actually quite clear, but you have to be Protestant and from a German or Scandinavian religious family with direct experience with female relatives who were born before 1890 to fully understand where he is coming from. Walter Kaufman of Princeton, who did such brilliant translations, did not really understand Nietzsche. My Catholic friends generally don’t either. My Orthodox friends never seemed to have read Nietzsche, or spoke only if his madness.

  21. NIETZSCHE: “Self loathing is the purest form of narcissism.”

    KIERKEGAARD: “Irony is a cleansing baptism that redeems the soul.”

    2. Seems narricism stems from subconscious self loathing. I understand Nietzsche’s quote better when phrased like this.

      2. I’m of the opinion that self-loathing begins in childhood and is fostered through high school as a result of harassment for being nerdy or different. During this time the individual aspires to achieve a position of control whether by violence or authoritarian power. The adult is always cognizant of his own weakness and must align himself with others of like mind for mutual support. They must constantly seek the approval and adulation of others. On the other hand is the mass of humanity seeking comfort and support from the group in which it can remain anonymous and thus feel safe. Meanwhile, the individual who is able to stand and die alone becomes either a hero or a pariah. In more modern times, those whom see no viable solution either commit suicide or go on a shooting spree.

      3. There are variations to this, as well. Our society has now become a strange mixture of misfits and people who are very conformist. Leftists are now both at the same time.

  22. Ashton Kutcher shares concerns about China’s social media influence on Americans:
    Actor claims that TikTok can be used to create ‘an anti-US propaganda’, and an ‘anti-Taiwanese propaganda effort’:
    https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/ashton-kutcher-tiktok-south-china-sea-b1880969.html

    Ashton Kutcher says China can ‘create a problem’ via TikTok in the South China Sea:
    The ‘Open Season’ actor said he might bar his children from using social media:
    https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/ashton-kutcher-china-create-problem-tiktok-south-china-sea

    Actor Ashton Kutcher warns that China could use TikTok to push ‘anti-US propaganda’ and ‘create a problem’ influencing young Americans:
    https://www.theblaze.com/news/ashton-kutcher-tiktok-warning-china

    Ashton Kutcher feels China can influence Americans via TikTok, can ‘create a problem’ in the South China Sea:
    https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/ashton-kutcher-feels-china-can-influence-americans-via-tiktok-can-create-a-problem-in-the-south-china-sea-396668

    Sent from my iPad

  23. Mr Nyquist, concerning that uneasy feeling about Fukuyama, you said;

    ”Fukuyama is very twisted. I have only thrown two books in the garbage my whole life. One was “The End of History” and the other was “The Tropic of Capricorn.” Both are pornography — but of two very different varieties. ”

    Very twisted, yes, I agree, generally because his stance remains so revolutionary in his own way, even after over 20 years of his ending of history. He’s the sort too that would justify any order which paid him sufficiently.

    1. There is a general weakness of personality, an inner vacuum in the man, which he did not have the decency to cover. The latter section of the book is a shocking confession of an inner depravity I would not have realized was there. How naive I was.

      3. I can’t justify buying his book to find out what that depravity was. But you’ve mentioned his books for over ten years in your writings. Can you sum up his depravity other than his focus on money?

      4. I did not say anything about a focus on money. I chose my words very carefully. The depravity is in what I described — in his self-deceit.

      5. Jeff, I mistook Vladmirs sentence for yours.”He’s the sort too that would justify any order which paid him sufficiently.” Sorry.

  25. Mr. Nyquist, you said of Nietzsche that;

    ”Nietzsche is actually quite clear, but you have to be Protestant and from a German or Scandinavian religious family with direct experience with female relatives who were born before 1890 to fully understand where he is coming from. Walter Kaufman of Princeton, who did such brilliant translations, did not really understand Nietzsche. My Catholic friends generally don’t either. My Orthodox friends never seemed to have read Nietzsche, or spoke only if his madness.”

    My exposure to Nietzsche was originally filtered by way of Lev Shestov;

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Shestov

    Before I read Nietzsche himself. Of that I am glad, looking back.

      1. After a fashion, Shestov has no human hope, but in God believes that ”all things are possible”. Not sure you can build or maintain a society on his skepticism against reason.

      4. Interesting. I see Shestov despairs over the possibility of knowledge. Perhaps he should have considered the downside of omniscience and written a letter of warning to the gnostics.

  26. Mr. Nyquist, on despair,on Shestov’s despair, his ”despair” is that against Necessity, Reason, what the Greeks called ”Ananke”, their seeming omnipotence rivaling God Himself. Here to explain somewhat is Shestov, railing against Seneca the Roman Philosopher;

    ”Although Seneca may not have been an original philosopher, he succeeded quite well at times, as is known, in expressing the thought of others. Everything discussed in our preceding chapters was formulated by him in a few words that have become famous: Ipse omnium conditor et rector… semper paret, semel jussit (The founder and guide of all things… always obeys, but has commanded only once). So thought Seneca, so thought the ancients, so all of us think. God commanded only once and, thereafter, He and all men after Him no longer command but obey. He commanded a long time ago, an infinitely long time ago, so that He Himself has forgotten when and under what circumstances there occurred this absurd, unique of its kind, and consequently unnatural, event. Perhaps, having taken on this habit of passive and submissive existence, God has even forgotten how to command; perhaps, like us ordinary mortals, He can only obey. In other words, the will to act that He once manifested forever exhausted His creative energy, and now He is condemned, like the world that He created, to fulfill His own prescriptions, prescriptions that He Himself can no longer violate. To put it still differently, the Creator of the world has Himself become subordinate to Necessity which He created and which, without at all seeking or desiring it, has become the sovereign of the universe.”

    I happened to be reading selections from Lev Shestov, when these issues came up, probably not a coincidence as my studies on Dostyoevsky draw on Shestov’s analysis to a degree…. Dostyoevsky is a genuine prophet of human freedom to be sure.

  27. Mr. Nyquist, on Shestov and his ”despair” against Gnosis;

    ”Interesting. I see Shestov despairs over the possibility of knowledge. Perhaps he should have considered the downside of omniscience and written a letter of warning to the gnostics.”

    Indeed, he pretty well had done so in his ”Athens and Jerusalem”. A similar thinker is the Church Father Tertullian,who really did ”warn” the original Gnostics of his day. Tertullian has no use for philosophy, aslearned as he is himself, coining the phrase; ”what has Athens to do with Jerusalem!” Likewise, for Shestov, Faith (which is not just ”belief”) comes out as the power which draws a man out of his systems and reasonings and his miserable ethics.

      2. Shestov’s book ”Athens and Jerusalem” very much is in my opinion, and all his work is provoking. One thing is certain; Socrates, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Hegel come off particularly bad.

        Interestingly, Leo Strauss tried to write a rebuttal to Shestov called ”Jerusalem and Athens”, but ironically, Strauss confirmed Shestov’s thesis of the esoteric Atheism of much of ancient and modern philosophy. Strauss affirms it esoterically, while stating that such deception was and is necessary for the preservation of the modern world order….

  28. I see no way to reply to your comments except at the end of the thread, which I will do. I posted as anonymous because when it asks for an e.mail address, I started typing it, and the suggested full e.mail address populates, which I then clicked on, and it closed the post before I could post my name. Usually I had ignored the auto populate function, but I thought I would try it this time. I never purposely post anything without putting my name to it. As to intelligence people eating me alive Jeff, I guess this is just a continuation of your elevating the other side above our side, thinking the preponderance of force and intellectual prowess is on the other side, that they have us backed into a corner, and we can’t win. That the 60,000,000 American gun owners could never take down a tyrannical American government that had in the future been converted into an un-constitutional state, etc. You state that they want us to try this (as if this scenario would be a walk in the park for them.) Can’t you sense their justified fear? Why do you think they have so badly overreacted to the incident at the Capitol? They want to stamp out any uprising before it overwhelms them. The alphabet agencies and the military would be no match for our armed citizenry should we organize. This citizenry consists of 60,000,000 gun owners, millions of which are skilled hunters, and 20,000,000 ex-military members, who of course are well trained. There are a total of 2,500,000 police and military available to the government, of which a significant portion would desert their leftist commanders, whose policies they inherently hate. So you have a full contingent of tens of millions of citizens against at best one million supporting the un-constitutional government. It would be ugly, but we would clearly win, and quickly. You see the glass as half empty Jeff, and I see it as half full. I see us capable of reclaiming our virtuous society, and restoring it to its previous glory. Your current conclusions are like a ball and chain on the leg of that potential. Your intelligent and illuminating missives, along with those of Diana West, Trevor Loudon and others, have enlightened millions of citizens to the exact nature of the threat we face, which is a great service to the nation. I would only ask that you don’t actively hinder those who will in the future step forward into the gap to actually move beyond philosophy and into action. there is no other solution, and I think in your heart you know that.

    1. We all need to work together for the saving of this nation. The nation needs to turn from our delusions, hubric and deceptions of progressive magic. This will take repentence and turning back to the God who brought this nation into existence for the explicit purpose of affirming and proclaiming the Lordship of Christ believing in the principals of freedom and liberty and the gospel. However, in our hubris, we have thrown it away for trinkets. We are paralysed and are incapable of action due to our nations’ sin and the compromise within the churchs of America. 80 years of non stop luxury and narrcicism has brought us to this point. The way it looks to me is that we will not be motivated to action until enemy forces are landing in invasion strength or after the dollar collapses us into rubble or an EMP strikes. AFishman

    2. You talk like one of the Whites at the beginning of the Russian Civil War.

    3. Trying to bait people into conspiracy of insurrection would damage Jeff’s message. Association of the message with counter productive extreme action would castrate the REAL for the IDEAL. I think you know this. We aren’t winning WW3 by means of civil war.

  29. Great article. It made me think of an essay entitled “Christendom and Revolution” put out by Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara of the SSPX. I am not a member of the SSPX, but he is right on the money. Really re-iterating many points you have made. The section “Revolution” is particularly illuminating. He mentions revolution as fundamental change ( sounds like Obama ). See link for full article.

    http://archives.sspx.org/against_sound_bites/christendom_and_revolution.htm

    When you mention Whittaker Chambers’s comment that ” these are merely expressions of Communism but not what Communism is about” it really is similar to Iscara’s quoting of Gaume ( a French thinker I guess ). Being very eloquent here is the quote from Gaume :

    I am not what men believe. Many talk about me, but they know me little. I am not Carbonarism… I am not the street riots…or the change of the monarchy for a republic, or the substitution of one dynasty for another, or the temporary perturbation of the public order. I am not the howls of the Jacobins, or the fury of the “Mountain,” or the fight in the barricades, or pillage and arson, or the agrarian laws, or the guillotine and the massacres. I am not Marat, or Robespierre, or Babeuf, Mazzini or Kossuth [or Hitler or Stalin…]. These men are my children, but they are not me. Those actions are my works, but they are not me. These men and those actions are passing events, while I am a permanent state….I am the hatred of any order that has not been established by Man himself, and in which he is not king and god at the same time. I am the proclamation of the rights of Man without any regard for the rights of God. I am God dethroned and Man put in his place. For that reason my name is Revolution, that is, reversal.15

    1. The “insanity” of Satan. Satan should know that his Creator can best him. Yet he still tries to overthrow Him. Satan is convinced he can win. In Satan’s mind there is a way to kill God.

      1. I disagree. Satan already knows he has lost the battle. His mission has always been to take as many souls to hell with him thus depriving God of those that might be saved. Satan never accepted God’s slap in the face when God made a human who could demonstrate more respect and allegiance to his Creator than Satan and his minions. That is why Satan set about to encourage man to become like the gods that are not gods but are, in fact, masquerading as gods.

      2. For Bedlamsbard;

        ”Even the Devils believe and tremble”…. ”For he (Satan) knows that his time is short”.

        The Devil is not so deluded. He has to ask God for permission even in his rebellion and in the attempts to ruin souls.

  30. So I would say the wayout is humility and Biblical virtue. To the humble and virtuous man this Spirit of Revolution is not at all appealing.

  31. Thank you, Jeff. As always, providing a foothold in the struggle to climb the mountain of understanding.

  32. Mr Nyquest I’m a farmers wife in Yorkshire Northern England thank god I found you only a month ago don’t give up the good work everything in UK is screwed as well most of population blind to anything that’s coming I’m trying to spread the word even round here everything corrupt from the bottom up

  33. Sometimes I wonder if I should even enter this fracas. Even so…I respect the mental acuity of many on this site. You are correct that, “A forced reset of our society will not end well for any of us.” And I can’t remember the commentator or his words; so I’ll paraphrase. If you should be successful in resetting the republic you are then responsible for its welfare. First and foremost to remember is that we would no longer exist under the format established by our founders. Jeff said in a previous post that we cannot go backward only forward. With that in mind I have a few observations.

    Understand that I am not an intellectual gymnast. I am not the well-read mental giant in competition with the rest of you. I’m an old man, ex-military, physically broken observer of events that have taken place in my lifetime. Here then are my thoughts.

    1963 began the post beatnik era that saw the assassination of JFK and the beginning of earnest Viet Nam involvement followed by Johnson’s “great society” that culminated in the emergence of the “flower children,” the “commune-ists,” the “anti-war protesters,” the “black militants,” the “Jesus coffee houses,” the “women’s lib movement,” the “affirmative action/welfare state” among the many other actions that were soon to bring America to its knees. Please consider that among the rebels opposing government at that time many and their offspring are now the government. Some of the more notable are the Clintons and Obamas whereas the Bushs fall into a different category though no less subversive.

    As I watched events unfold I made a comment during a lunchtime bible study in 1974 that America will fall. I gave a number of reasons and was met with laughter. I still hold to that statement. Yes, I realize this was all planned long ago; but the mindset prior to the end of WWII held was able to keep a Communist takeover in check. Education at all levels prior to 1965 was still worthwhile in the majority of fields. After that only the scientific, medical and technological fields prevailed.

    As for a plan to satisfy Robert, I will proffer some things on which to mull. I am and always have been a hawk. I’m also a biblical Christian who quit going to church preferring instead to follow the bible. I fully understand the desire to right the wrongs to counter the pervasive evil that exists in America. So, where do we start? Know this immediately that the enemy is everywhere. It exists within our own families, our communities and neighborhoods, in the states and federal government. It is so pervasive that you can wonder where to begin cleansing. And the answer is nowhere. Of course, if I were God…. But I’m not. You may wonder why God hasn’t intervened. He already has…indirectly. It isn’t time for Him to be involved directly.

    America is in an untenable position at the moment. The opposition consists of the following beyond the obvious government, media, education, social etc. entities. We have managed to import an assortment of groups unable and unwilling to assimilate into American culture – groups that hate America and its people. They receive all the benefits at our expense and operate subversively with impunity. Amongst our own are those that have either an anti-American/anti-white attitude or a criminal attitude or both.

    There are three options at our disposal. We can ethnically cleanse and seek and destroy all opposed to our way of thinking (whatever that entails). Or, we can deal with the ensuing chaos, which will certainly occur, on a defensive basis in which case we will be the bad guys who will be tried and/or eliminated. Or, we can wait for the invasion and see how many will rise to resist en masse openly or underground.
    My preference would be to let the invasion begin before acting in other than a defensive mode against our own. We are pretty much in a defensive mode now. It isn’t pleasant; and we are still considered the bad guys. Understand that I have no problem with wholesale destruction of this America we love so much. But how else does one cleanse her of the evil within. China and Russia would not deal favorably with our traitors since they are only using them temporarily. This is the Lord’s way of cleansing a perverse and sinful nation like it or not.

  34. Dear Mr Nyquest when I was 10 yrs old I’m 55 now my grandfather told me you’ll see in your life time world powers going to go from East to west you’ll live to see what those Chinese will do communists those Chinese cruel bastards my grandfather was half Jewish how he knew this I don’t know but god was he right

  35. Vladimir
    Thanks for your musical postings. It helps us to remember that there are real people on both sides as our nations prepare for war.

    1. Preparation for war is always good,especially for a nation which lost more than 27.6 million lives in the most recent world war. Sad truth. But America and Russia need not nor will not go to war in my opinion. Better for our nations to be allies,ideally-anything else only benefits the Islamofascists and the Asiatic despotisms.

      1. VLADIMIR. Lol. This is your best reveal yet. “But America and Russia need not nor will not go to war in my opinion. Better for our nations to be allies,ideally-anything else only benefits the Islamofascists and the Asiatic despotisms.” Russia built Asian Communism
        And it’s military. Russian Gru Fsb KGB built PLA and al Qeadea etc. The threat comes from Russia and China. They have the bio and nuke weapons. Did someone else that was operating the “Vladimir”account split up? You’ve just suggested the 🇺🇸 ally itself against its enemy.

      2. Vladimir hopes his country will not be on China’s side. I hope he is right. Yet I see the two countries coordinating their moves. Golitsyn has been right in his predictions. Now we see how the end-game unfolds.

      3. Alliances have always been meant to be broken. It is a chess game in which the last man standing wins. In this case it is a form of Russian roulette. I see the Sino/Russian alliance as a convenience that favors Russia. It is unfortunate that America aligned herself with the wrong side as it will result in her destruction. Politics and greed sees not the future – only the present. Patton and MacArthur saw the handwriting on the wall. As a result, one was murdered and the other exiled. America lost the future at the close of WWII. Present day reality sees America dying in flames. China will ultimately spend thirteen months conquering India while moving westward to secure resources in an effort to thwart Russia’s dominance in the middle east. America will already be history and Russia will prevail only to fall at a later date in a fight to the death with the Lord God Almighty. Two reasons for America’s demise revolve around her rejection of God and removal of her support for Israel. Had America continued to align herself with God things would have been different. But as Israel rejected her Messiah and suffered the consequences so, too, will America. We could have done a lot worse, and did in fact, than aligning with Russia. It might have been easier to deal with them than China. But that’s water over the dam.

      4. It depends on how much weight you assign to the Marxist world outlook. If power is all that matters then every triumvirate becomes two and the two fight it out. Caesar vs. Pompey, Octavian vs. Mark Antony, etc.

      5. Russia wants to destroy the 🇺🇸. China wants to destroy the 🇺🇸. Why Would the 🇺🇸 ally with Russia to destroy the the threats to the 🇺🇸 that Russia itself cultivated?.

      6. If communism is still alive, if world Revolution is still the goal, if Russia is still the motherland of the Revolution, coordinating its moves with China, and if the Russian people cannot break free of it, because the Marxist idea (however modified) remains the ruling principle, then the United States has much to suffer.

  36. JEFF, YOUR THOUGHT ON THIS PERSONAL OPINION ARTICLE BY ANDREW SULLIVAN. IS IT A NOTHING BURGER, OR EYE WIDE SANDWICH?

    What Happened To You?
    The radicalization of the American elite against liberalism:
    https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/what-happened-to-you-e5f

    Andrew Sullivan – July 9

    “What happened to you?”

    It’s a question I get a lot on Twitter. “When did you become so far right?” “Why have you become a white supremacist, transphobic, misogynistic eugenicist?” Or, of course: “See! I told you who he really was! Just take the hood off, Sully!” It’s trolling, mainly. And it’s a weapon for some in the elite to wield against others in the kind of emotional blackmail spiral that was first pioneered on elite college campuses. But it’s worth answering, a year after I was booted from New York Magazine for my unacceptable politics. Because it seems to me that the dynamic should really be the other way round.

    The real question is: what happened to you?

    The CRT debate is just the latest squall in a tempest brewing and building for five years or so. And, yes, some of the liberal critiques of a Fox News hyped campaign are well taken. Is this a wedge issue for the GOP? Of course it is. Are they using the term “critical race theory” as a cynical, marketing boogeyman? Of course they are. Are some dog whistles involved? A few. Are crude bans on public servants’ speech dangerous? Absolutely. Do many of the alarmists know who Derrick Bell was? Of course not.

    But does that mean there isn’t a real issue here? Of course it doesn’t.

    Take a big step back. Observe what has happened in our discourse since around 2015. Forget CRT for a moment and ask yourself: is nothing going on here but Republican propaganda and guile? Can you not see that the Republicans may be acting, but they are also reacting — reacting against something that is right in front of our noses?

    What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.

    We all know it’s happened. The elites, increasingly sequestered within one political party and one media monoculture, educated by colleges and private schools that have become hermetically sealed against any non-left dissent, have had a “social justice reckoning” these past few years. And they have been ideologically transformed, with countless cascading consequences.

    Take it from a NYT woke star, Kara Swisher, who celebrated this week that “the country’s social justice movement is reshaping how we talk about, well, everything.” She’s right — and certainly about the NYT and all mainstream journalism.

    This is the media hub of the “social justice movement.” And the core point of that movement, its essential point, is that liberalism is no longer enough. Not just not enough, but itself a means to perpetuate “white supremacy,” designed to oppress, harm and terrorize minorities and women, and in dire need of dismantling. That’s a huge deal. And it explains a lot.

    The reason “critical race theory” is a decent approximation for this new orthodoxy is that it was precisely this exasperation with liberalism’s seeming inability to end racial inequality in a generation that prompted Derrick Bell et al. to come up with the term in the first place, and Kimberlé Crenshaw to subsequently universalize it beyond race to every other possible dimension of human identity (“intersectionality”).

    A specter of invisible and unfalsifiable “systems” and “structures” and “internal biases” arrived to hover over the world. Some of this critique was specific and helpful: the legacy of redlining, the depth of the wealth gap. But much was tendentious post-modern theorizing. The popular breakthrough was Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay on reparations in the Atlantic and his subsequent, gut-wrenching memoir, “Between The World And Me.” He combined the worldview and vocabulary of CRT with the vivid lived experience of his own biography. He is a beautifully gifted writer, and I am not surprised he had such an emotional impact, even if, in my view, the power of his prose blinded many to the radical implications of the ideology he surrendered to, in what many of his blog readers called his “blue period.”

    The movement is much broader than race — as anyone who is dealing with matters of sex and gender will tell you. The best moniker I’ve read to describe this mishmash of postmodern thought and therapy culture ascendant among liberal white elites is Wesley Yang’s coinage: “the successor ideology.” The “structural oppression” is white supremacy, but that can also be expressed more broadly, along Crenshaw lines: to describe a hegemony that is saturated with “anti-Blackness,” misogyny, and transphobia, in a miasma of social “cis-heteronormative patriarchal white supremacy.” And the term “successor ideology” works because it centers the fact that this ideology wishes, first and foremost, to repeal and succeed a liberal society and democracy.

    In the successor ideology, there is no escape, no refuge, from the ongoing nightmare of oppression and violence — and you are either fighting this and “on the right side of history,” or you are against it and abetting evil. There is no neutrality. No space for skepticism. No room for debate. No space even for staying silent. (Silence, remember, is violence — perhaps the most profoundly anti-liberal slogan ever invented.)

    And that tells you about the will to power behind it. Liberalism leaves you alone. The successor ideology will never let go of you. Liberalism is only concerned with your actions. The successor ideology is concerned with your mind, your psyche, and the deepest recesses of your soul. Liberalism will let you do your job, and let you keep your politics private. S.I. will force you into a struggle session as a condition for employment.

    What happened to me? You know what I want to know: What on earth has happened to you?

    I have exactly the same principles and support most of the same policies I did under BarackObama. In fact, I’ve moved left on economic and foreign policy since then. It’s Democrats who have taken a sudden, giant swerve away from their recent past.

    At the moment, I’m recording an audiobook for a new collection of my writing, from 1989 – 2021, “Out On A Limb,” to be published next month. (More to come on that next week.) It covers the Obama years, including my impression in May 2007 that he’d be the next president and why I found him so appealing a figure. It’s been a shocking reminder of how our politics has been transformed since then:

    My favorite moment was a very simple one. He referred to the anniversary of the March on Selma, how he went and how he came back and someone (I don’t remember who now) said to him: “That was a great celebration of African-American history.” To which Obama said he replied: “No, no, no, no, no. That was not a great celebration of African-American history. That was a celebration of American history.”

    How much further can you get from the ideology of the 1619 Project — that rejects any notion of white contributions to black freedom? In his Jeremiah Wright speech, the best of his career, this is what Obama said of Wright’s CRT-inspired words, damning America:

    They expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America… The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

    This is what I still believe. Do you?

    A plank of successor ideology, for example, is that the only and exclusive reason for racial inequality is “white supremacy.” Culture, economics, poverty, criminality, family structure: all are irrelevant, unless seen as mere emanations of white control. Even discussing these complicated factors is racist, according to Ibram X Kendi.

    Obama was a straddler, of course, and did not deny that “so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.” I don’t deny that either. Who could? But neither did he deny African-American agency or responsibility:

    It means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

    To say this today would evoke instant accusations of being a white supremacist and racist. That’s how far the left has moved: Obama as an enabler of white supremacy. You keep asking: what happened to me? I remain an Obamacon, same as I always have been. What, in contrast, has happened to you?

    Check out this really insightful interview of Wes Yang by Matt Taibbi. Yang beautifully explains the radical shift in elite opinion. He notes the ascending rhetoric: “So there’s a line in an n+1 essay, where the person is saying, ‘Oh, we are now menaced by whiteness and masculinity.’ Whereas in the past, we would have said, ‘Oh, we’re menaced by racism and sexism.’” He sees what this movement is about: the end of due process, the rejection of even an attempt at objectivity, a belief in active race and sex discrimination (“equity”) to counter the legacy of the past, the purging of ideological diversity, and the replacement of liberal education with left-indoctrination.

    Yang sees the attempt to dismantle the entire carapace of liberal society and liberal institutions: “[The proponents of the successor ideology are] not trying to be malicious, but they are trying to basically annihilate a lot of the foundational processes that we depend upon and then remake them anew. You operate from the starting point that all the previous ideologies, methods, and processes are untrustworthy, because they produced this outcome previously, so we’ve got to remake all of them.” Precisely. This is a revolution against liberalism commanded from above.

    Look how far the left’s war on liberalism has gone.

    Due process? If you’re a male on campus, gone. Privacy? Stripped away — by anonymous rape accusations, exposure of private emails, violence against people’s private homes, screaming at folks in restaurants, sordid exposés of sexual encounters, eagerly published by woke mags. Non-violence? Exceptions are available if you want to “punch a fascist.” Free speech? Only if you don’t mind being fired and ostracized as a righteous consequence. Free association? You’ve got to be kidding. Religious freedom? Illegitimate bigotry. Equality? Only group equity counts now, and individuals of the wrong identity can and must be discriminated against. Color-blindness? Another word for racism. Mercy? Not for oppressors. Intent? Irrelevant. Objectivity? A racist lie. Science? A manifestation of white supremacy. Biological sex? Replaced by socially constructed gender so that women have penises and men have periods. The rule of law? Not for migrants or looters. Borders? Racist. Viewpoint diversity? A form of violence against the oppressed.

    It is absolutely no accident that this illiberal ideology has no qualms whatever with illiberal methods. The latter springs intrinsically from the former. Kendi, feted across the establishment, favors amending the Constitution to appoint an unelected and unaccountable committee of “experts” that has the power to coerce and punish any individual or group anywhere in the country deemed practicing racism. Intent does not matter. And the decisions are final. An advocate for unaccountable, totalitarian control of our society is the darling of every single elite institution in America, and is routinely given platforms where no tough questioning of him is allowed. He is as dumb as Obama is smart; as crude as Obama is nuanced; as authoritarian as Obama is liberal.

    Or check out Kevin Drum’s analysis of asymmetric polarization these past few decades. He shows relentlessly that over the past few decades, it’s Democrats who have veered most decisively to the extremes on policy on cultural issues since the 1990s. Not Republicans. Democrats.

    On immigration, Republicans have moved around five points to the right; the Democrats 35 points to the left. On abortion, Republicans who advocate a total ban have increased their numbers a couple of points since 1994; Democrats who favor legality in every instance has risen 20 points. On guns, the GOP has moved ten points right; Dems 20 points left.

    It is also no accident that, as Drum notes and as David Shor has shown: “white academic theories of racism — and probably the whole woke movement in general —have turned off many moderate Black and Hispanic voters.” This is why even a huge economic boom may not be enough to keep the Democrats in power next year.

    We are going through the greatest radicalization of the elites since the 1960s. This isn’t coming from the ground up. It’s being imposed ruthlessly from above, marshaled with a fusillade of constant MSM propaganda, and its victims are often the poor and the black and the brown. It nearly lost the Democrats the last election. Only Biden’s seeming moderation, the wisdom of black Democratic primary voters,and the profound ugliness of Trump wrested the presidency from a vicious demagogue, whose contempt for our system of government appears ever greater the more we find out about his term in office.

    But as Wes Yang notes, Biden has also aided and abetted and justified this radicalism. He has instituted a huge program of overt government race and sex discrimination throughout every policy and area of government; he backs decimating due process for sexual accusations on campus; he favors abolishing religious freedom as a defense of anti-gay discrimination; he believes that gender identity should replace sex as a legal category, and gender identity should rest entirely on self-disclosure; he favors expediting and maximizing mass immigration, not stemming it. In Yang’s rather brutal assessment, for the hard left, “what they saw is that with Joe Biden, who’s this throwback figure, the activists could all rush to him and get most of what they wanted from him anyway.”

    Does that mean we should support an increasingly nihilist cult on the right among the GOP? Of course not. Does it mean we should ignore its increasingly menacing contempt for electoral integrity and a stable democracy? Absolutely not. But one reason to fight for liberalism against the successor ideology is that its extremes are quite obviously fomenting and facilitating and inspiring ever-rising fanaticism in response. I fear the successor ideology’s Kulturkampf is already making the 2022 midterms a landslide for a cultish, unmoored GOP. In fighting S.I., we are also fighting Trump.

    But I am not making a tactical argument here. I’m making a deeper moral argument. We can and must still fight and argue for what we believe in: a liberal democracy in a liberal society. This fight will not end if we just ignore it or allow ourselves to be intimidated by it, or join the tribal pile-ons. And I will not apologize for confronting this, however unpopular it might make me, just as I won’t apologize for confronting the poison and nihilism on the right. And if you really want to be on “the right side of liberalism,” you will join me.

    —————————-

    (Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my review of the HBO miniseries “Mare of Easttown”; my conversation with “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua on the resilience of immigrants and the fragility of college students; yet more reader dissents over my writing on CRT; a few notable quotes from the week; a few notable views from reader windows; eight notable pieces from other substackers; your weekly dose of Mental Health Break; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)

    1. I do not think this shift to the left is sudden. It has been coming at us for decades. I could see it coming. Why does Sullivan think it was “sudden”? Because he was neither astute nor attentive. Sorry.

      1. Sully thinks it was sudden because it suddenly came for him. Til then, he happily lapped up praise from the elite while waxing poetic about establishment darlings Bush and then Obama.

  37. Mr. Nyquist, you said concerning the Whites in the Russian Civil War that;

    ”The White Army never had a chance. ”

    As we’ve touched upon lightly before in conversation, they didn’t have a chance. Too many foreign interests with the Whites for regular people to trust them not to sell the Motherland to foreign occupiers and exploiters, too much brutality and the perception among the people of the Whites aiming to restore the Romanovs or some other bastard Oligarchic family to the throne of the Tsars.

  38. Mr. Nyquist, on Leo Strauss and Lev Shestov you said that my description of Strauss’ philosophy rang true,regarding esoteric philosophy and it’s essential Atheism.

    Well this is something that in my opinion is a cancer eating away at humanity in this modern age. But it’s a Nothing. and Something will fill the vacuum left in Atheism’s wake, in the breakdown of civilization made by this infidelity-and not necessarily anything good.

    You and I differ in some respects as to analysis, some of that difference to me being that China is at the core of all this, an alliance of the Middle Kingdom with Islam (which I also attribute far more of a role, and the whole Uighur thing is false narrative)

      1. It is. Whether it remains so for a time longer is still up to us I think

  39. Jeff, you made a comment to another poster, ”Bedlamsbard”, about Francis Fukuyama, about his depravity being his self-deceit. And earlier, how this was a kind of political pornography,serious enough to compare to Henry Miller’s ”Tropic of Capricorn”. And I compared it to Michel Foucoult, whose proclivities were well known but who also was tremendously deluded in a socio-political and philosophical sense,a sado-masochistic one..

    So what am I saying? Is there a level of political self-deception that is caused by philosophical and moral/spiritual deception? Absolutely.

    A bit of my own personal philosophy on this; an evil but highly civilized man is insulated from everyday realities by their comforts and wealth and diversions, isn’t going to risk any of that if they can’t help it, even as he siphons off the wealth of others by devious and crooked schemes. Therefore, evenas they decieve they are easily duped themselves. An evil but essentially barbaric man is not insulated from everyday realities and will dare much to seize what others have, often in a brutal and direct fashion without serious pretenses.

    Fukuyama can talk about Hegelian ”Masters” and Nietzsche’s ”’Ubermensch”, but he wouldn’t know the real categories of mankind to save his life.

    God gives men over to self-deception for their chastisement, it’s a punishment from Heaven before the Hammer of God falls, as Luther might put it.

    1. It was pornography, as I said, because Fukuyama philosophically undressed, and his mind was oh so indecent (i.e., indicating an unclean spirit). He admitted to being a “last man,” in essence, and dismissed Nietzsche’s critique of liberalism with refrains identical to those that a “last man” would use. It was a disgusting moment of self-parody. He admitted that Nietzsche was probably right about where liberalism was taking us, but then said that this idea was too unpleasant to bear, and that he preferred a self-deceiving optimism. On rereading those paragraphs, having seen to his core, I promptly tossed a large and beautiful bound edition of his book in the waste basket of my study.

      1. Mr. Nyquist,it strikes me as particularly obscene, that one would WANT to be one of the ”hollow men”, the ”men without chests”,the ”last men”. But then with Fukuyama,we’re dealing with a man who was Japanese ethnically but raised without any Japanese language or culture by his parents,raised as an imitation upper-class WASP…. Pathetic.

  41. The legal profession has renounced Truth.

    Justice has long been personified as a beautiful woman wearing a blindfold and holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other.

    The blindfold represents the Biblical precept that Judges are not to consider whether one is rich or poor, low born or highborn – they are to judge justly.

    The scales signify that Justice WEIGHTS THE FACTS AND THE LAW and comes to a Judgment.

    The sword signifies the power of the Judge to render Judgment.

    This was the ideal standard of Justice in the English speaking common law countries.

    But in 1970, one of my law professors told our Class that JUDGES DON’T DECIDE A LAWSUIT BASED ON THE LAW AND THE FACTS. Instead, they decide on the result they want – and then write an opinion to justify that result.

    And that is the mindset of our time: The issue is not “what is true, what is false?”; “what is rational, what is irrational?”; “what is right, what is wrong?”

    Oh no, the issue is, “What do I want?”.

    And that is what almost everybody in America does today. Their highest value is to “feel good” – they believe whatever makes them “feel good”.

    In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Q-Anon bots still insist that the US Military is going to reinstate Trump as President; that the traitors and pedophiles will be arrested, tried & convicted and sent to Guantanamo (where they will face firing squads); and that the new global monetary system [which I touched upon here: http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/huldah/191002%5D will usher in a new global monetary system based on gold & silver and that it will bring about the “Jubilee”.

    The pre-trib rapture people aren’t worried about the issues you speak of because they believe they are going to be raptured out of here before the stuff hits the fan. Never mind that the mess they hope to be rescued from resulted in part from their own refusal to act to stop the evil overtaking us. [This 100 year old doctrine really was a master stroke of the Devil – he neutralized “Christians” just as Q-Anon has neutralized conservatives who believe their lies].

    Every day, all day, Americans decide on what they feel like doing or don’t feel like doing and then make up a rationalization which justifies their decisions. Watch what people say! And when you confront them with what they are really doing, they get angry. They can not understand why they should place anything above their feelings. “Truth” to them is as irrelevant as the scores of a high school basketball game played 50 years ago in another State are to me.

    In the mid-late 1800s, Americans began to be indoctrinated with Pragmatism – which altogether rejected the concept of objective Truths and Transcendent Principles.

    What can we of today do? Each of us must tell the Truth ourselves – regardless of our feelings or our perceived personal interests – and demand that others within our spheres of influence do the same.

    Also, we must publicly celebrate Truth [like Justice] as an inherently beautiful thing in her own right. One of my favorite authors, the Scottish Victorian era writer George MacDonald, said somewhere, “Truth sheds her own light”. When we put Truth above all else, lights really do come on and illuminate our thinking.

    1. Pragmatism, under our shopping mall regime, has indeed become hedonism in practice. The corruption of character today is absolute and both sides of the political spectrum here are corrupted. This is one of the key reasons we are going to suffer. Our enemies abroad are corrupted through a different process. They have retained the ability to reason strategically. We have not. We reason as if we have just walked into a store with a new credit card.

      1. And in this country, we’ve thought for decades that consumerism is our strength. Interesting.

    2. You need to leave theology out of your argument. You neither know what you are talking about, nor have you been able to relate it to the discussion in a manner which is germane without doing serious violence to the doctrines you denigrate.

      It was the mainline Churches that surrendered the public square to pagans and communists, not Evangelicals. The mainline churches also abandoned the Gospel, which allowed the country to reach the very point it is at now. The influence of Evangelicals did not start to rise until after WW2, and their influence did not reach its peak until well after the damage was already done.

      1. You wrote of miracles,seers,and auspices a while back.The quoted newsarticle reminded me of a David Wilkerson book i read 30 years ago:Set the trumpet to thy mouth.

        In 1985 he not only predicted that the Arabian oilfields would go up in flames and colour the sky black (as happened in the Gulf War) but he also outlined the coming war on the US.

        According to him (if i remember correctly) ‘fear and something that looks like a supernatural impulse will make the enemy strike first’.

  43. Mr Nyquist you make me feel like a total ignoramus – thank you for that. It makes me realise that one is never too old to learn! I saw the madness you refer to at the beginning of this essay here in South Africa when the Afrikaners were convinced by clever politicians and the media that communism was “dead” and that they could now make a deal with the ANC. There were many of us who warned against the madness but alas, to no avail. We now have a situation where the communists of the ANC and their useful idiots are planning to amend the Constitution to allow for expropriation without compensation. Worst of all is that the madness you refer to is once again at work. People have been led to believe that the amendment is about farmland but the amendment refers to “property”! The madness prevents them from realising what “property” means – it means everything you own. The government has also come up with a proposed amendment to the Firearms Control Act. They propose to abolish self defense as a reason to have a firearm! They propose to totally ban the reloading of ammunition by any private person. The conservatives with their eyes wide open are warning of a catastrophe, the mad ones who refuse to see and acknowledge reality thinks that these changes will reduce gun violence….

      1. “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” I did and I’m in that pot…

    2. Hard to believe now,but 50 years ago (and before) Dutch schoolchildren were taught ‘Sarie Marais’.Then before you knew it we were harbouring a terrorist in our Pretoria embassy.What a disaster,what a betrayal.

      Btw my name is also Willem and i too feel an ignoramus reading this blog.

      1. I too feel very mentally underdeveloped when reading this blog, lol

      1. You see – even The New American is missing the real intention of that expropriation bill. It actually reads “property” and not “land”. The ANC has stripped the financial reserves of South Africa and to keep their cadres (and ignorant voters) happy they need more money. The tax base is shrinking fast due to productive entrepreneurs (read: whites) leaving the sinking ship and the destruction of the economy due to Black Economic Empowerment / Affirmative Action policies (read: racial discrimination). The last reserves they can plunder are retirement funds, personal savings, private medical aid reserves and property (!) like shares, precious metal holdings, farm implements etcetera. It is not just about land/farms – they want the farm and all the equipment on it for free.

    4. Mr. Grobler, that New American article, which was written by a South African, did mention that it’ll be about property in any form:

      “With this ‘custodianship’ concept set to nationalize all land, South Africa’s vital agricultural sector is likely to become as poor an investment as its mining sector. And if this mechanism of ‘deprivation’ has been effectively implemented in both the mining and agricultural sectors, what’s to stop the ANC from extending it to important pools of private capital, particularly with the inclusion of subsection 25(4), which defines ‘property’ as ‘not limited to land’? The ANC would be legally permitted to take custodianship of all private medical savings for the proposed National Health Insurance Fund. Private pension funds could similarly be vested in the custodianship of the proposed National Security Fund. Equally as concerning is the prospect of private savings being vested into the custodianship of a new state bank for the funding of government infrastructure projects.”

      And Obama has been following the Mandela script from day one. Will “un-woke” Blacks at some point be “necklaced” like they were in South Africa, with Michelle Obama perhaps aquiring a role akin to that of crazed and blood-thirsty Winnie Mandela?

  44. Mr. Nyquist, you said;

    ”If communism is still alive, if world Revolution is still the goal, if Russia is still the motherland of the Revolution, coordinating its moves with China, and if the Russian people cannot break free of it, because the Marxist idea (however modified) remains the ruling principle, then the United States has much to suffer. ”

    Russia and America both have much to suffer, 20th century Communism of the Marxist-Leninist variety left it’s marks on both to be sure. I am no oracle, but men with enough foresight in both lands should see the mortal peril from the Asiatic despotisms and Islamic revival.

    I know what I see, I know what I feel, in the land and in the people. We cannot be broken, we cannot be turned or swayed or bribed. No, I fully trust the wisdom of the people.

  45. Mr. Nyquist, on Russia and ”Golitsyn”;

    ”Vladimir hopes his country will not be on China’s side. I hope he is right. Yet I see the two countries coordinating their moves. Golitsyn has been right in his predictions. Now we see how the end-game unfolds. ”

    Golitsyn had many interesting things to say, and a perhaps missing context,”missing” in that it might be lost to a more Westernized reader. One aspect is that we have to remember the period from 1914-1945, and we have to remember the oppositional figures of Stalin and of Trotsky. Modern readers of a younger generation might not understand, doesn’t change the importance in my opinion.

    1. Trotsky was assassinated by one of Stalin’s minions in August 1940. Stalin was then hoping to own all of Europe. Hitler’s June surprise in 41 was a setback. Since Stalin failed in his direct approach 1941-1945, the post-Stalin team thought a long-term deception strategy — with decades of subversion and end-game European convergence — had better prospects. They did not know the ways their own strategy would distort the left and empower the right, hampering their own strategy with its mixed success. But the far right was an old channel, a strange standby, kept open since the days of Martin Bormann. Religious themes could even be introduced. Context?

      1. Fascinating analysis, Mr. Nyquist.

        I watched a documentary recently that profiled Stalin and Hitler and their respective similarities and differences in personality, psychological characteristics, and ideologies, among other matters. This show also described Hitler’s “June ’41 surprise” march on Stalin’s Russia, and that it was ultimately a failure.

      2. Yes, Hitler failed to take down Stalin; but Stalin was so damaged in the process he found that he could not win without American help — and sharing his victory with the Americans was very inconvenient, especially since most of Europe eluded his grasp. Hitler may have attempted to extend an olive branch to Stalin with his December 1944 “Bulge Offensive” — and Stalin seems to have played along; but America became the great post war power.

      3. “He (Stalin) found that he could not win without American help”– hence the Yalta Conference, yes?

      4. The war was already won by the time of Yalta. That meeting, in the final weeks of the war, ratified Russian control in Eastern Europe.

  46. ”EddieHNatko”,you said;

    ”…..America will already be history and Russia will prevail only to fall at a later date in a fight to the death with the Lord God Almighty….”

    Not going to happen,ever.

  47. Hi Jeff,
    I came across this article, thought it may interest you from a strategic point of view:
    https://koopclr.wordpress.com/2021/07/06/why-do-government-officials-want-to-ban-ham-radio-ham-radio-is-the-single-most-reliable-and-effective-means-of-communication-in-any-emergency-and-has-been-for-over-100-years-2/
    Here’s the stand out quote from the final paragraph:
    “If California is truly leading the charge against HAM Radio operators with this move, they are making the nation less secure, not more secure. HAM Radio is the single most reliable and effective means of communication in any emergency and has been for over 100 years. Cutting it off at the knees, in the name of progressivism isn’t progress, it’s putting your own people at danger, in the name of ideology. Oops.”

  48. Mr. Nyquist, you said in reply that;

    ”Trotsky was assassinated by one of Stalin’s minions in August 1940. Stalin was then hoping to own all of Europe. Hitler’s June surprise in 41 was a setback. Since Stalin failed in his direct approach 1941-1945, the post-Stalin team thought a long-term deception strategy — with decades of subversion and end-game European convergence — had better prospects. They did not know the ways their own strategy would distort the left and empower the right, hampering their own strategy with its mixed success. But the far right was an old channel, a strange standby, kept open since the days of Martin Bormann. Religious themes could even be introduced. Context? ”

    Yes,I’m glad you mentioned the Rightist trend. Especially as you mention Martin Bormann. Fascism has always been a universal option for the Elites of the modern world. And in my opinion FWIW, Islam is the perfect means of social control over the masses,once broadly introduced in a society, from the perspective of these Oligarchic Elites.

  49. The type of person in military, civilian, and corporate that needs to see this does not have time to read New York Times style meandering, mellifluous narrative pieces, and ‘our greatest ally’s’ security establishment was from its inception Soviet infested: stating as much one needn’t flirt with Godwin’s Law — Chinese ‘forced’ tech transfers from friendly transnational business interests already within their state borders and Kissinger’s BIRD BARD BSF et. al. domestically are nothing compared to the high end technology theft these ‘allies’ in the near east undertake, and subsequently sell on to Russia/China. No UFOs or ‘Learned’ Protocols, just this secular expression of an ethnoreligion downstream of its apostate creator. If you are going to lobby, the IP insecurity due to soft- & hardware backdooring is how you turn self-interested near-sighted heads– what’s a Pearl Harbor seen coming months in advance compared to a glacial Tet Offensive where they can turn your hardware off on a whim; where does this fit in with the German invasion of Norway model? Most will understand the business angle’s effect on their wallet, others will appreciate the amount of private contracting going on that facilitates a leaky ship as a national security issue.

    “Cyber is the real domain of power.” — Former PM Bibi, 2019
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1uiwJ3m9KM

    A mixed race Australian that ran afoul of reporting on this outlines it here
    https://www.bitchute.com/video/MvI91rGkJTxD/

    Gates/Microsoft & Intel having the largest R&D/Manufacturing centers in the Levant guarantees however stealthy things like the F35 are on paper, they will be compromised by ‘expatriot’ Soviet diehards inserted into tech firms; these Ring Zero seminars give indicators to how endemic it is:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH0F9r0siTI

  50. GK Chesterton:

    ” The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.”

    Agreed, it starts with, “Ye shall be as gods”. The collective extension of this is in equal parts beguiling, poisonous, ironic and fatuous. The “chosen” narrative has extended at one time or another to many races and nations, whether it is chosen by God, by ideological Truth or by exceptionalist jingoism and the Hidden Hand God of the market. They all bear the mark of the devil, the blasphemy of tragedy, the fraudulent substitution of destiny by fate, and ultimately, suicide. But only ultimately – their greatest secret is that they wish to drag down the whole of Creation with them, and this is their greatest secret, the thing which makes them invincible in their own eyes. To deal with that is to defeat the problem of the Ages, and this is what Jesus alone has done.

    Oh dear, I went full-Christian. ‘Never go full Christian!’
    Really?

  51. “Political Insanity” = ignoring reality?

    https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/06000/Review_of_the_Emerging_Evidence_Demonstrating_the.4.aspx

    “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19”
    May/June 2021 – Vol 28 – Issue 3 – p e299-e318

    “In summary, based on the totality of the trials and epidemiologic evidence presented in this review along with the preliminary findings of the Unitaid/WHO meta-analysis of treatment RCTs and the guideline recommendation from the international BIRD conference, ivermectin should be globally and systematically deployed in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”

  54. “They live in their own world, within God’s world, which makes a world of a difference.” I heard this quote from Os Guiness.

    So I understand your essay. According to Barna’s surveys, only about 6% of U.S. citizens have a Biblical world view, the rest live within their own worlds. The corruption goes back centuries.

    In a previous thread, I mentioned Luther and the Reformation. What I meant then, and will emphasize now, are the “secular” effects of the Reformation. These include the development of modern science, universal education, the idea of a constitutional government, and we can’t forget the arts, the paintings of the Dutch masters and in music the compositions of Bach, Händel and Mendelssohn, etc.

    The corruption started early. Already about a generation after Luther died, prominent “Lutheran” theologians had returned to neo-Aristotelianism after Luther himself had explicitly rejected it. They thought they could baptize the underlying paganism by papering it over with Lutheran terminology, giving it the symbols and appearance of orthodoxy. Fortunately most laymen including scientists, educators, politicians, artists and others didn’t bother with those heavy theological tomes rather stayed reading their Bibles.

    Starting in the first decade of the 19th century, theologians went a step further, basing their work on Aristotle’s teaching of evolution, they started teaching that the Bible itself was a late fiction. Their teaching has gone by different names, including JEPD Theory, Documentary Hypothesis, and what else? Darwin made a direct attack on modern science with his popularizing of Aristotle’s teaching of evolution. Today, how many “scientists” still practice modern science? Education has deteriorated to indoctrination turning out semi-literate drones. The Reformation brought in modernism, so what do we call this present age that rejects and attacks the Reformation? Many call it post-modernism.

    Luther emphasized “go to the source.” For theology, that meant study the Bible directly instead of the neo-Aristotelian theologians popular in his day. For scientists, that meant ditching studying Aristotle’s writings in favor of studying nature directly. Studying nature directly means that any phenomenon that cannot be repeatedly observed, cannot be studied by science. Yet most “scientists” today insist on the fiction that the creation of the universe, which no one can observe, can be accurately mapped out by “modern science”. Many “scientists” today insist that “science” can prove other phenomena that cannot be directly observed by human senses, such as the non-existence of God, angels, devil, demons, even the human soul. Today’s “scientists” have tossed out the mooring of direct observation of nature itself, including human nature, for the lie that “science” can prove anything. Society follows that lie.

    Reality is often messy, with loose ends that we don’t understand. Some things we have to accept on faith. Did God create the universe in six days? That teaching can only be accepted or rejected on faith, do you trust that as accurate history? It can neither be proven nor disproven by our senses today. But the lie is that those loose ends can be cleaned up by rejecting reality then following the siren call of modern neo-paganism, elevating man to the position of a god. Instead, he has become a devil.

    Sorry this comment has turned out so long. It’s based on my training as a scientist and not philosophy. Add to that some references to history.

    Three times God commanded Jeremiah not to pray for the good of his people, Jeremiah 7:16, 11:14, 14:11. Has the U.S. sunk to the same level? I fear that it has.

    1. I do not understand your misreading of Aristotle. Aristotle was not an advocate of Darwinian evolution. I have read, in previous threads, with bewilderment, the false assertion that Aristotle was a materialist philosopher. Yet his reference to the possibility of the soul’s continuance after death (as the “noetic soul”) is not something a materialist would ever suggest. You are perhaps unaware that Aristotle authored one of the best arguments for the existence of a Creator (or unmoved mover) — and for the Creation of the universe — of all time? Have you ever bothered to read Aristotle? Regarding the corruption of civilization being traced to paganism, please note: the pagans developed a civilization that lasted longer than ours. Egyptian civilization existed, along the banks of the Nile, from the fourth millennium BC until the birth of Christ and beyond. There was even a prophecy about the destruction of the Egyptian religion, saying it would lead to atheism and the extermination of mankind — which oddly suggests, to the mind of a reader familiar with history, the passage from polytheism to monotheism followed by monotheism’s gradual slide toward atheism. It is hard for Christians to wrap their minds around this, but Ancient Greek and Egyptian writings laid out a theory of spiritual corruption far more elaborate and far older, than yours. They viewed the world as an earthly reflection of heaven. They thought that a secular worldview was, in itself, a portent of man’s extermination. And so it seems to be.

      1. First of all, I never claimed that Aristotle was a materialistic philosopher. But one doesn’t need to be a philosophical materialist in order to believe in evolution. And the histories I’ve read on the theory of evolution mention Aristotle as a prime expositor of the theory, even to the point of mentioning natural selection as the mechanism that propelled evolution. All Darwin did was to take out Aristotle’s theory of evolution and apply it to his atheistic materialism. That he and his followers call evolution “science” is a direct attack on modern science.

        Evolution, the theory, predates Aristotle. One of the histories I read on evolution mentioned that when Jewish missionaries traveled throughout first century BC Roman empire, evolution was one of the polemics against those Jews.

        One of the features of ancient paganism, and modern religions like Hinduism, is syncretism. There are no absolutes. All religions are equal. A statement attributed to ancient paganism claimed that all philosophers believe that all religions are equally false, the common people believe that all religions are equally true, and politicians find that all religions are equally useful. One of the reasons Christians were persecuted was because they refused to practice syncretism and accept the Roman emperor as a god.

        The recognition that there are absolutes was a component of modern science that I was taught at the university. It is part of the research I do today. Today there are new definitions for “science” that lack absolutes. Absolutes are necessary for a recognition that communism is evil.

        The lack of a recognition of absolutes is one of the reasons that people don’t see communism as a threat. They think that communists are just as wishy washy in their thinking as they are. They will be shocked when the invasion comes.

        What is your definition of a civilization? Does it include the present CCP ruled China? Do you realize that China is corrupt from top to bottom? That’s how the communists were able to grab power. Now they too are corrupt. Does evil make a civilization?

      3. Precisely. The only way to know what Aristotle wrote is to read Aristotle. If a secondary source asserts that Aristotle held certain views – and doesn’t cite chapter & verse where Aristotle said it, I’d stop reading and dismiss the secondary source as worthless. And if the secondary source does cite chapter & verse, one must look it up in the original to see if Aristotle actually said it. Secondary sources often get it wrong – sometimes deliberately so. And they usually get away with it because few people question them.

        Commentaries can be useful – I found that Wilhelm Windelband’s history of Philosophy was helpful. However, one must always remember that one is reading a secondary source. And if Windelband said that Aristotle held certain views – and I hadn’t read the original – all I could properly say is, “according to Windelband (cite), Aristotle held that ….

        I’m aware that Mr. Nyquist knows this – but most people don’t: they routinely repeat what others have told them as a Fact. Ayn Rand warned in 1957 that the public schools were destroying the minds of American children. She was right. Americans have been conditioned to accept whatever “authority figures” tell them as fact.

      5. Oh, and I think Ayn Rand said that in Atlas Shrugged – if I recall correctly, the context was the homeschooling Moms when Dagny was in Galt’s Gulch.

      6. This is fascinating. It does make me want to read Aristotle’s work. I have old copies of Plato’s “Republic” and “Dialogues,” which I should take a look at.

      7. Mr. Nyquist,

        I would say that all this is quite true, I don’t disagree. I assiduously try to live in that world,where everything is alive (Hylozoism) and surrounded and penetrated by numinous spirit. But, I would also add that everyone prior to say 1500 in the Pre-Modern era shared pretty much the same worldview throughout human history (”viewed the world as an earthly reflection of heaven”,etc…), relative to the humanity that lived after that year. What triumphed then and afterwards in the Modern era was Philosophy, not Monotheism.

      8. Would you make a hard cut-off date for what is, in essence, a Hermetic doctrine?Was a secret monotheist esotericism within the Egyptian priesthood as one Hermetic text claimed?

  55. I meant to direct my comment to Mr. Nyquist, I should clarify, not to the poster whose response is immediately above mine.

  56. As to reading Aristotle myself and not secondary sources,I’ve read ”Politics” and the ”Nicomachian Ethics”.I’ve read more Plato; the Republic and the Laws, and Timaeus, a few other snippets here and there. I have however read St. Dionysius the Areopagite and Plotinus, and among followers of Aristotle, Gennadius Scholarius.

    Earlier I mentioned Lev Shestov the Anti-Philosopher or Philosophical Critic. I do not go as far as him in his critique perhaps ,or Tertullian and some others. Although, I am getting there…

      1. This is true, Mr. Nyquist; Aristotle was right in taking the ”Golden Mean” between extremes, to his credit.

  57. Political insanity indeed, across the board! I watched a brief Sean Hannity interview with Mark Levin the other day, who just published a new book titled American Marxism (the layout of which looks almost like stolen from Diana West’s American Betrayal). Anyway, opening the conversation, proud icon of televised “conservatism” Sean Hannity comes up with a definition of conservatism. Here’s what he said:

    “… And, conservatism, if you break it down to what we believe as conservatives: We believe in liberty, we believe in freedom, we believe in capitalism, we believe in our Constitution, we believe in low taxes, less government regulation, Constitutionalists on the bench, we want free-market solutions for issues like health care and, yes, protect pre-existing conditions, we believe in law and order, and safety and security so people can pursue happiness, we want choice in schools, we want energy independence, for national security reasons and for the economy, for economic reasons, we want our borders secure, we want free and fair trade, and we believe in Peace through Strength. I might have missed one or two things.”

    Hannity mistakes the indispensable precondition for conservatism for the essence of conservatism itself. Not a word about tradition, morals and principles, righteousness, sincerity, let alone piety and faith. Hannity’s version of conservatism reflects a libertarian, not a truly conservative view. He is yet another “conservative with nothing left to conserve.”

    1. Yes. Hannity said nothing that is conservative. These are the old liberal (now libertarian) ideas. It is as if freedom were a stand-alone thing. It is not. Freedom is not free. It is a by-product of getting other things right. This kind of talk makes Hannity an ideologue, and it shows how unintelligent he is. Nothing here has been thought through. No care has been taken. If this is what he thinks is going to win; then who is going to save him from all those businessmen who want to make money off China. What about their freedom? Oh yeah. Say good-bye to your economy, too.

      1. I have heard it said that peace is not a cause but a consequence. To at least some degree the same can be said of freedom.

  58. And here is Laura Ingraham’s latest, analysing the disease of political insanity in her own, fabulous, and as-ever refreshingly common-sense style:

    “… Right now, we have a national defense apparatus, the Pentagon, and Intel agencies, that are spending inordinate time and resources on satisfying the wokesters on the Left and too little on the real threats bearing down on the United States, mostly from China. Oh, and let’s not forget that their ties to Big Tech and giant military contractors are a huge ongoing problem, more on that in a moment. All Republicans on the Hill need to demand that our military leadership and Intel officials return to their proper roles – and get out of politics. Do some soul-searching, because you are doing a massive amount of damage to your really important institutions. And then what happens when America faces a serious challenge to our security? What happens when we need national unity to prevail? And that*s The Angle.”

    1. Her colleague, Tucker Carlson, devoted a segment to how the military and apparently ICE are following out obviously unlawful directives to transport illegals covertly to destinations all over the country in staggering numbers. Unlikely that these actions have anything to do with protecting the country from enemies foreign and domestic.

      1. They did the same (and still do) to Western Europe. We don’t have governments any more representing us. Instead, what we have is puppet governments serving Moscow and Beijing’s World Revolution…

      2. Importing large numbers of indigent aliens into the country causes massive financial problems for cities, counties and states. It brings crime and poverty. I have seen what this has done to California. That state is headed for collapse and bankruptcy. Community requires that people share the same background, culturally and in other areas. You take that away and you introduce division. Then add the idea that white people are racist for not wanting millions of indigent foreigners coming into their communities. This is a very sick game, and it is being used to destroy us by multiplying our problems to an extent that only a communist dictatorship can promise a solution.

    2. The active duty generals and the intelligence community have been politicized. That is obvious; and it puts is in a serious hole.

      1. Every dictatorship muse have a KGB/Stasi element. Those elements always attract volunteers due to the security of the occupation (food, housing, weaponry, paycheck, clothing and whatever can be appropriated (spoils of conflict).

      2. Secret police are essential when a people loses its unity or shared values. Dictatorship is the only course that then remains. This is the end to which all multiculturalism tends.

      3. I’ve been calling our current Administration “the Directory” at times, after the notorious French regime of “Directoire Executif” of the mid-to-late 1790s. That was another failed, weak-willed and short-lived government with terrible policies for its people. And what happened to France after a few years under such a disastrous leadership? One of history’s most famous despots, Napoleon Bonaparte, seized power in 1799.

      4. You are paying the current government too high a compliment. We are not talking high-grade fertilizer here. And there is no Bonaparte here.

      5. I didn’t mean “the Directory” as a compliment to the new Administration. I use it with contempt. I gave that era in French history as an example in support of your (Mr. Nyquist’s) statement that ineffectual leadership often causes authoritarian rule to follow shortly afterward.

        Perhaps our own Napoleon, whoever that may be, has not shown up yet.

      6. They are even weaker and more corrupt than the Directory. To find people of this caliber one has to go back to Elagabalus or Nero.

      7. The Emperor Elagabalus was a really debauched and a very bizarre individual. Perhaps even more so than Caligula.

      9. Good gods. And he married a Vestal Virgin, which, to the Ancient Romans, was a form of sacrilege. All this before he was eighteen!

  59. Mr. Nyquist,you asked me;

    ”Would you make a hard cut-off date for what is, in essence, a Hermetic doctrine?Was a secret monotheist esotericism within the Egyptian priesthood as one Hermetic text claimed? ”

    I would say that the answer to the second question also answers the first. The more or less official scholarly cut-off point for Hermetic Doctrine (and I’m somewhat reliant on Francis Yates in this) brackets Hermetic teaching from around 4th-3rd centuries B.C during the Hellenistic era. to the beginnings of the ”Renaissance” period, as Cosimo Medici began scouring Europe for ancient manuscripts and Greek scholars like Gemistos Plethon fleeing the collapsing East Roman Empire of the middle 1400’s AD;

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemistus_Pletho

    ”Plethon’s own summary of the Nómoi also survived, amongst manuscripts held by his former student Bessarion. This summary, titled Summary of the Doctrines of Zoroaster and Plato, affirms the existence of a pantheon of gods, with Zeus as supreme sovereign, containing within himself all being in an undivided state; his eldest child, motherless, is Poseidon, who created the heavens and rules all below, ordaining order in the universe. Zeus’ other children include an array of “supercelestial” gods, the Olympians and Tartareans, all motherless. Of these Hera is third in command after Poseidon, creatress and ruler of indestructible matter, and the mother by Zeus of the heavenly gods, demi-gods and spirits. The Olympians rule immortal life in the heavens, the Tartareans mortal life below, their leader Kronos ruling over mortality altogether. The eldest of the heavenly gods is Helios, master of the heavens here and source of all mortal life on earth. The gods are responsible for much good and no evil, and guide all life towards divine order. Plethon describes the creation of the universe as being perfect and outside of time, so that the universe remains eternal, without beginning or end. The soul of man, like the gods is immortal and essentially good, and is reincarnated in successive mortal bodies for eternity at the direction of the gods”

    So ”his” doctrine is a close approximation of the genuine Hermetic Doctrine of Egypt, with one easily trading the names of Greek gods for their corresponding Egyptian counterparts.

    I would say that the esoteric teaching in fact is almost as old as the world itself, it’s essence being that taught in the Mystery Schools of the Pagan civilized world, Egypt and Babylon to Greece and Rome, and then resurfacing in the West. I would not then call it so much a ”Monotheism”, but rather a Panentheism hidden behind the popular Polytheism of the masses. Solon and the other ”Seven Sages of Greece” traveled and were taught the doctrine and carried it over to the Philosophers (note that Aesop is not counted among their number, but Christ recognized him).

    1. Dear Mr Nyquist its Jayne Sunter in England just to let you know a man has posted a doc off UK gov. UK website dated 10 June 2021 asking for tenders to be submitted for 4 sites in london to made into morgues in the event of excess deaths this agreement will be for 4 years and no expense will be spared for the successful applicant. Something bads coming Jeff UK gov purchased many thousands of body bags from China before brexit
      It could be a killer strain of covid or vaccine deaths or war whatever it is its preplanned I’m worried dick for us all every morning I wake and think wonder what the hell is going down in the U S today we need God more than ever

      1. Thank you for the report, Jayne. That is very sobering. Four sites being made into morgues in London is an indicator. Of what, exactly? I know that meetings have been taking place to the level of Prime Minister in different Western countries on the subject of Chinese war preparations. Many governments are worried about what they are seeing out of China. This London story could be a readiness prep for the unleashing of another organism. On the other hand, the vaccine deaths may be increasing.

      1. Sure, yes, enough at least to have used an allusion to one of Aesop’s fables.

        Aesop;

        ”A WOLF clothing himself in the skin of a Sheep, and getting in among the flock, by this means took the opportunity to devour many of them. At last the Shepherd discovered him, and cunningly fastened a rope about his neck, tying him up to a tree which stood hard by. Some other Shepherds happening to pass that way, and observing what he was about, drew near, and expressed their admiration at it. What, says one of them, Brother, do you make hanging of Sheep? No, replies the other, but I make hanging of a Wolf whenever I catch him, though in the habit and garb of a Sheep. Then he showed them their mistake, and they applauded the justice of the execution.”

        Our Lord Jesus Christ in Gospel of Saint Matthew chapter 7 verses 15-16;

        “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.”

        Aesop being a barbarian slave in the Classical world, it’s a kind of preparation inwardly for the Christian Faith; very often slaves and servants…suffering hollows out a space in a man’s heart that only God can fill it. Egypt, the land of Slavery, cannot….But oh,how many have been the justifications!

        Somewhat related to this; are you familiar with the work of Anthony Ludovici?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Ludovici

        I meant to ask you but didn’t get a chance before.

      2. As I read some Huxley and Darwin, and some Spencer in my youth, and found them unconvincing, I had no interest in reading Ludovici (who was influenced by Spencer). I found something by Ludovici in a used book store in the 1980s. It seemed interesting at first, and read a few chapters, felt sick and would not pay the five dollars for something I did not care to finish. Did I miss something by not reading him?

  60. Jeff, I know this subject might be completely irrelevant to this discussion, but i was just curious if you have followed any of the news coming out of the baltic region recently? This is news regarding the new findings that have been done concerning the sinking of The Estonia. Estonia was sunk in 1994 under mysterious circumstances and recently more and more evidence has surfaced showing that the post-soviets most likely sank the boat because of smuggling of soviet military hardware from Estonia.

    Do you have any thoughts or knowledge of this situation? I know its an old story but it seems to indicate some very “active” Russian forces protecting soviet secrets at a time when the Soviet interests were supposedly no longer relevant…

      1. It was headed to Sweden, the “conspiracy” theory is that Nato was trying to gather as much soviet-intel and tech as possible through “neutral” countries like Sweden.

        The sinking of Estonia as I recall is the largest maritime disaster after ww2… so it is a big deal.

  61. While thinking about this thread, I just remembered a statement from ancient Greece, I don’t remember who said it: those whom the gods wish to destroy, the gods first strike them with madness. (I don’t think I quoted that exactly, but close enough.) I don’t know of any other way to say it, but our country has descended into collective madness. Boys can become girls, men become women, biological facts be damned—absolute madness. The chief enemy of the country is not one that has called for our destruction and has already unleashed a biological weapon against us, but those of its own citizens who strive for justice, real, personal and societal justice—how can that not be madness? How many other examples of madness do we need to cite?

    Please bear with me as I go Biblical. The Bible teaches that God is a God of love, and he is. And so Jesus is often pictured as a kindly hippy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. One who invites children to flock to him. Everyone is welcome. That’s not the whole picture. The Bible also pictures God as a God of justice for love cannot thrive in a milieu of injustice. As a just God, he executes judgements against wicked individuals and even nations who have made injustice part of national policy. He sometimes delays judgment to give peoples opportunities to repent and avoid judgment, but his patience isn’t unlimited.

    Just one example, our country has “legally” murdered over 70 million innocent lives since Roe v. Wade. If God merely requites life for life, then 70–100 million Americans will die in the coming troubles. Don’t think that because you’re personally just that you will escape, for when God judges a nation, the just suffer alongside the unjust.

    If China is judged at the same time as the U.S. and with the same standard, then China would lose 800+ millions of its population. Russia would lose 200 millions. These are staggering losses for the world in the coming world war. The mind can hardly comprehend it. Those are not the only losses. War is one of the ways that God unleashes judgments. Other means are famine and disease. Who on this list doesn’t recognize that war is coming? Disease is all around us.

    The Bible doesn’t mention madness, only wickedness.

    We here in the U.S. recognize the madness in our society. We can see that that madness is unjust and wicked. But is not the CCP also mad in its pride? How about the leaders in Iran, an ally of the CCP? How about their other allies? Has not the whole world indulged in madness?

    1. If you listen to Michael Wolff, Trump is “a fruitcake.” I think Wolff might be a fruitcake. It might well be that everyone is now crazy (all the above). I see crazy coming in every kind of package. The problem is, of course, that we do not think for ourselves. We all succumb to group narratives. My contention would be that all group narratives are tinged with madness. Why? Because group narratives appeal to the lowest of common denominators. This is my problem with the populist right as well as the demagogic left. Truth is always lost in the lurch.

      1. I vastly prefer a Thomas Jefferson or a Daniel Morgan or a George Washington when dealing with matters of the intellect. The first and third were true intellectuals who then committed to fighting with rifles, as did the second, who was a great leader but more a common man. But all three of them have more intellectual force than this entire thread, which is committed to intellectually theorizing about Hegelian Dialectics and interpretations of the writings of Xi Jinping, while warriors recognize their adversary’s intentions inherently and immediately, and fight and defeat them kinetically without delay. This thread reminds me of a group of participants who prefer to analyze a football game avoiding ever have to play in one. There is nothing more boring than intellectual self stimulation. True intellectuals use their minds to interpret what to do; faux intellectuals use their intellects to avoid having to put themselves on the line. That is why such a fine intellect as Jeff Nyquist’s has so few followers. They sense that there is nothing but avoidance of conflict in the words here, so they quickly tire and tell no one of their attempt to participate, and then blindly move on searching for what they know not that they seek; their own courage. The reason that I torture Jeff so incessantly is because a true intellect in service of bold action is such a valuable asset, and one that I cannot suffer to see wasted. Minds like Jeff’s should be gathering in private, under penalty of hanging as did the colonialist intellectual leaders, finding the best way forward in order to prevail and overthrow the current power of the left as did the colonialist intellectuals and common men with the British. But alas, so far, we will have to rely on our Daniel Morgans more, for their courage is not overshadowed and muted by their intellects. Jeff fears the deep state and the alphabet agencies more than he loves courage. But then again, maybe I say this as a plant who seeks to draw Jeff out into illegal arenas of conversation in order to silence his powerful voice, in the service of the left. Who knows for sure? Maybe I made up the story of the F.B.I. visiting me for an article I wrote. Maybe it was all illusion and deception. You all should know, but you probably don’t, as you are fully invested in this intellectual self stimulation without effect. What good does it do you to know that the left is advancing in America, and to know all the attendant tributaries historically that have lead up to this great river threatening to wash us all away in its flow? Without true courage, all knowledge is in vain. That’s why courage is the seminal virtue, for without it, all the others are impossible to attain.

      2. Buzzing us again? Gone kinetic have you? In a brainless frenzy? Do tell. What brave thing have you done, Malins? Did you swat a horse-fly? — No! Not fratricide! But alas, there are no flies here. The road apples are that away —->

      3. For Robert Malins – So you want to see some action. Well, so do I. However, let’s look at what we have to work with. Granted, I’m not as intellectually proficient as many on this blog but; as an observer and thinker, I can offer some insight. We have two classes of warriors in America – ex-service members from both the Viet Nam era and those from the various Gulf wars. That’s one group. The other is comprised of hunters. I have no doubt both are well equipped unless they are too disabled to bother. On the ex-military side many are aged and broken down with limited fighting ability. I’m sure they would fight when the door breaks down in the middle of the night only to die in the process as will likely happen in my case. That’s fine. We expect that. The more recent warriors have been disillusioned fighting wars of no value only to be maimed and killed for nothing. The hunters, on the other hand, are expert shooters. Unfortunately, many have not really become trained trackers preferring to set up and wait for their prey to arrive at a pre-assigned location where a shot is taken.

        A number of strategies have been put forth by some astute individuals to deal with our problem. Most of that centers on prepping of one form or another. Prepping is temporary at best or of no value at worst. Most folks do not even have access to locations suitable for surviving. They have to make the best of the situation in which they live; and most will fall quickly as seen in the violence over the past year and a half. One of the strategies involves organizing communities for self-preservation. That, too, is a temporary measure; and in most cases it can’t even be done. The reasons are varied but, for the most part, it is difficult if not impossible to garner interest in such measures. Folks with a job of any sort aren’t interested or don’t have the time to bother. They will likely come to a realization when it reaches their door.
        While there has been a surge in first time gun buyers for some time now, it is readily apparent that the buyers are reactionary and have little understanding regarding their adversary and how to deal with it. It is certain they cannot be depended on in a confrontation. So, let’s see who the enemy is.

        Within America there exist numerous groups dispersed throughout the country that have a mission to destroy (a fifth column if you will). Muslims were imported and they have complete impunity to operate outside the bounds of law. Many are proficient terrorists that have been groomed (i.e. indoctrinated) from birth and, in my opinion, will be activated by signal (aka as hypnotic suggestion) to proceed with their plan. They are formidable adversaries willing to die for their god (Satan). These folks are well- funded and are able to procure whatever they need.

        BLM/Antifa is another well-funded organization. Considering that most do not work, may never have worked or don’t want to work you have to wonder how they can afford their cell phones, uniforms, placards, food, housing and armament. Like I said, they are well funded. They are an ignorant mass of expendable excrement that will be disposed of when they have served their purpose.
        The police have the unfortunate responsibility to obey unlawful orders in order to preserve their financial integrity. A job is a job after all. Too bad some of them are friends I would be reluctant to harm. The military is no longer our friend and protector. It may not be the force we once enjoyed; but it certainly is well equipped and under control by the lawless dictatorship.

        The border surge has provided a mixture of enemy forces all of whom despise Americans. They have been and are being distributed to multiple locations and will be amply supplied with the means to start ethnic cleansing (git whitey). Some of that repository of evil consists of foreign troops. But speaking of foreign troops, many are already here in disguise ready to act on a moment’s notice.
        As for the government, there is no end to the number of agencies ready to engage the resistance of “domestic terrorists.” And we know whom they have labeled as such. Of course, they are already doing this; and it will continue full steam ahead. So, let’s look at logistics.

        Since the ideal time to have done anything is decades past (fifty years ago), what might be a course of action today. It would be necessary to knock out all communication and services (utilities) thereby bringing everything to a level of barbarism. Sounds rather drastic though necessary. Technology must be completely interrupted. Surveillance must be shut down. Such a venture is a humongous task requiring local coordination. This puts everyone on the same playing field with the possible exception of military. Collateral damage? Who cares? Suppose it were even possible to regain control of our country. Do you still want all the perverted, criminal elements for neighbors? No? What would you do with them? Everything is fair in love and war though I’m not so sure about love. Maybe love OF war.

        Since we don’t have a sugar daddy that benefits our opposition, all resources must be appropriated by hook or by crook. Know beforehand that everyone will be of the same mindset. I can tell you there will be a resistance at some point. My assessment is that it is doomed to failure. There are many reasons why; but I won’t enumerate them except to say this has already been foretold and ordained. The only way to eliminate the evil is through massive destruction. Until then we are pretty much on our own in a defensive mode; and I haven’t even scratched the surface.

        Mr. Malins…You want war? Good luck. I respect Jeff and all that we see on this blog. All he can do is sound the trumpet. If no one cares their blood is on their own hands. We can never go back. It’s too late. I would like and even welcome a fight; but I have no authority. NONE!!!!! Where would I start? I used to pray for our country. No more. It needs to be cleansed. If that cleansing includes me, so be it. I know where my strength lies.

      4. Thoughtful post Eddie. All that you mention about the opposition is true. But to take a fatalistic approach is not in any way helpful to our cause. To follow your train of thought to its conclusion, we are doomed. If one starts from this point, his mind is thereafter closed to ideas and strategies that can ultimately win the day. Steve Jobs famously said: “The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.” Realizing that there are 70,000,000 gun owners, 20,000,000 veterans, and a few million active military and police that mostly side with us is a good start in the realization that our force is actually the dominant one, and that if it can be organized effectively the dark side of the equation will be soundly defeated. Why do you think that the left is trying so hard to marginalize and criminalize the Capitol demonstrators? They know that with a few tens of thousand more they are doomed. In analyzing medals of valor recipients historically, in most every case the result of the battle was already decided against us, and then that one individual refused to accept the foregone conclusion, and through sheer audacity changed the course of the battle and of history. We all need this spirit on our side, but it must be adopted and cultivated. Though I respect very much and have benefitted from the work of Trevor Loudon and Jeff Nyquist, they are purveyors now of why we cannot win. Trevor told me recently as I asked him what chance he gave the continuance of our country as a republic, that he would put it at 2%. This of course incensed me that someone I had supported both philosophically and financially, and relied on for good information and perspective, would take such a defeatist and fatalistic tact. Jeff Nyquist seems to me to be of the same ilk; a truly great reporter of the positioning of the left historically and present day, but a fatalist also, waiting for some potential alignment of the cultural and political stars to elevate our chances into possibilities, which may never come, leaving us then to be overwhelmed and subjugated. I refer now to this type of conservative as the “Two Percenters,”as they in no way embody the fighting spirit of either our colonialist ancestors nor our Medal of Honor recipients, and for this reason are not suited to lead the conservative movement forward out of the serious mess we are in. Their strong purpose is the context setting that is crucial to any counter-revolutionary movement. These men along with others have shown us clearly who the enemy is and what he intends. But that is as far as they can take us. Others have to step forward now and lead the charge.

    2. Man is man, RO. So we all deserve judgement from God. But He is merciful and loves mankind. In His justice and for His Glory He punishes the wicked, while the elect He sometimes chastises for their eventual repentance.

  62. My final phone call with the FBI’s Jim Kallstrom
    Exclusive: Jack Cashill recalls sitting on the Mediterranean as G-man ‘carpet F-bombed me’
    Jack Cashill
    Published July 14, 2021

    On July 3, the FBI’s Jim Kallstrom died at 78 of a rare cancer of the blood. This was just two weeks before the 25th anniversary of the destruction of TWA Flight 800. In its opening sentence, the Washington Post summed up Kallstrom’s public role.

    Kallstrom, wrote Emily Langer, “became a familiar presence on the nightly news as chief of the criminal investigation into the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island in 1996, a confounding disaster first suspected to be an act of terrorism but ultimately attributed to a fuel tank explosion.”

    For years, I thought Kallstrom would be the one person to finally come clean about the real cause of this “confounding disaster.”

    I got my hopes up in the fall of 2016 when Kallstrom regularly blasted Hillary Clinton from his perch at Fox News where he served as something of an anti-terrorism expert.

    A few weeks before the election, I got his home address from a PI friend and sent him a registered letter. In short, I said that if he were truly serious about keeping Hillary out of the White House, he would tell the truth about the missile attack on TWA Flight 800.

    After sending the letter, I voted absentee and headed off to France to sit out the election. Living in a liberal neighborhood, I had seen all the Hillary signs I ever wanted to see.

    About a week before the election, I was sitting out on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, looking out over the Mediterranean, when my phone rang. The call came from Connecticut. It was Kallstrom.

    I had heard he was a profane bully, and he more than lived up to his reputation on both counts. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to vent. I had to hold the phone away from my ear. I was hoping the people sitting nearby did not speak English.

    He was a Marine. I wasn’t. He served in Vietnam. I didn’t. How dare I question his judgment? Reminding him we were on the same side politically, I got him to calm down.

    “So are you trying to tell me that terrorists shot down the plane?” he barked.

    “No,” I said. “I wish that were the answer, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the U.S. Navy shot the plane down—I hope by mistake.”

    Now, Kallstrom carpet F-bombed me. The French people nearby had to know that one word.

    “You know who you sound like?” he asked.

    “No, who?”

    “That f***ing Pierre Salinger. He held a f***ing press conference on the f***ing French Riviera accusing the f***ing U.S. Navy of shooting down that plane.”

    At this point I almost laughed out loud, thinking, “Thank God I didn’t tell him where I was!”

    Salinger, JFK’s legendary press secretary, was right. A loyal Democrat, Salinger spoke at an aviation conference in the French resort city of Cannes two days after the Nov. 5, 1996, presidential election.

    There, Salinger told the assembled executives that he had “very important details that show the plane was brought down by a U.S. Navy missile.”

    He added the obvious, “If the news came out that an American naval ship shot down that plane, it would be something that would make the public very, very unhappy and could have an effect on the election.”

    American authorities did not care what role Salinger had played in Camelot. They were quick to swat him out of the Kennedy pantheon. The FBI, the White House, the Navy all took a shot.

    Salinger was unready for the assault. The documents he had were sketchy, and his knowledge base was shallow. The media found the subject irresistible.

    In the month of November 1996 alone, the New York Times ran four articles with headlines that mocked Salinger. George Johnson was particularly merciless. “It was all linked to Whitewater,” Johnson wrote, “unless the missile was meant for a visiting U.F.O.?”

    Johnson’s reference to “Whitewater” was not uncommon. He made slighting illusions as well to Waco, Ruby Ridge, Arkansas state troopers, Vincent Foster and other sources of amusement in Clinton-era newsrooms.

    What Johnson was attempting to do, and he was hardly unique in so doing, was to paint TWA 800 as one wacky anti-Clinton conspiracy out of many. What he did not do – no one at the Times did after the first two days – was speak to any of the 258 FBI witnesses to a likely missile strike.

    After my contentious call with Kallstrom, we did speak one more time. It was, appropriately enough, on All Souls Day, 2016, still a few days before the election. I was just coming out of a choral presentation at a local church when “Connecticut” flashed on my screen.

    “Who’s this?” Kallstrom demanded. “Who’s this,” I shot back. “You called me.” He butt-dialed me. That was awkward.

    Here’s hoping that if Mr. Kallstrom gets to heaven, the 230 souls who preceded him by 25 years are more forgiving than he ever was. Au revoir, Jim, bon voyage.

    https://www.wnd.com/2021/07/final-phone-call-fbis-jim-kallstrom/

  63. JEFF: YOU MENTIONED LAST NIGHT IT WAS RAINING “CATS & DOGS“ LAST NIGHT WHERE YOU LIVE. GIVE THANKS THAT YOU ARE NOT LIVING IN GERMANY RIGHT NOW:

    The New York Times

    BREAKING NEWS
    There were 1,300 people unaccounted for after flooding in Germany led to frantic rescue efforts, authorities said.
    Thursday, July 15, 2021 7:11 PM EST
    Swift-moving water from swollen rivers surged through cities and villages in two western German states, where the hardest-hit regions said that 58 people were known to have died and other fatalities were expected.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/world/europe/flooding-germany-belgium-switzerland-netherlands.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20210715&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta&regi_id=127946122&segment_id=63581&user_id=c04b5ee9f828b9a8528a5a264bab77fc

    THE VIDEO IN THE NY TIMES ARTICLE IS A DISTURBINGLY STUNNING VIDEO TO WATCH. IT HAS BEEN UPDATED IN THE ABOVE REPORT VIA THE HEADLINES BELOW:

    By Melissa Eddy
    July 15, 2021
    Updated 8:08 p.m. ET

    Hundreds Missing and at Least 69 Dead as Raging Floods Strike Western Europe
    Strong rains caused rivers to burst their banks and wash away buildings in Belgium and Germany, where at least 1,300 remained missing. Homes and streets in the Netherlands and Switzerland also flooded.

  64. Mr. Nyquist, you replied thusly as to my question about if you read Ludovici;

    ”As I read some Huxley and Darwin, and some Spencer in my youth, and found them unconvincing, I had no interest in reading Ludovici (who was influenced by Spencer). I found something by Ludovici in a used book store in the 1980s. It seemed interesting at first, and read a few chapters, felt sick and would not pay the five dollars for something I did not care to finish. Did I miss something by not reading him?”

    I must say Mr.Nyquist, your instincts in this area are better than mine, I often continue to read where my heart tells me otherwise, and Ludovici was no exception. I guess I suffer from a particular concupiscence, the desire to know, to address every contingency, to go down every rabbit hole wherever I might be led.

    Ludovici’s extreme hatreds remind me of another American writer, Revilo P. Oliver, or of the Belgian Rexist Nazi who Hitler said he’d be proud to have a son like,Leon Degrelle.

    1. Well, at least Oliver had an excellent prose style and Dagrelle had intellectual charisma. If one can get past their obnoxious ideas there are a few interesting historical tidbits to be found. My evaluation: The whole Darwinian/racist thing is yesterday’s pseudoscience. So boring.

      1. This is also true. Degrelle in particular in another age and for a less loathsome cause, could even be considered heroic after a fashion.

        But it is all so vulgar, dreary, tawdry and lacking in any real grace or perfections, yes.

  65. Memory is the cure for insanity, political or otherwise. Remembering what we were told.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LObLaozKUk&list=LL&index=238

    ”Christ with his disciples leaves the Temple
    before His death on the Cross,
    With sorrowful words full of sorrow
    He taught his beloved friends.”

    “Tell us, Teacher, the last word,
    While you are still living with us.
    Tell us, Teacher, when will it be,
    When will you come to judge us?”

    “Hear war, rumors of war,
    The people will rise against the people;
    Diseases and famines and pestilences
    will come , And brotherly blood will flow.
    When you see the abomination in the temple,
    Then know that the Judgment is at the door.
    See that the door does not close before you,
    Hold the lamp in your hands!”

    ”Faith will diminish , hope will fade away, Love will grow cold in hearts,
    And then many people will be tempted,
    Spill innocent blood”

    ”Severe sorrows will be poured on the earth,
    And grievous torments will come;
    Then people will say: “Cover us, mountains” –
    But the mountains will not fall on them!”

    ”And in these minutes look for death,
    But death will run away from people.
    And whoever works in the field, not at home,
    let him not rush home.”

    ”The sun will darken, the moon and the stars
    will fall from the firmament;
    Earthly peoples
    will rise from the dead, Go to the Divine Judgment.”

    ”The Cross will appear illuminated by the rays
    And it will shine like the sun, The
    chosen children will rise from the beginning
    And they will gaze joyfully.”

    ”Crowds of people will follow them,
    From edge to edge of the earth,
    And all earthly nature will tremble
    Before the Terrible Face of the Judge.”

  66. Robert Malins, you said;

    ”I vastly prefer a Thomas Jefferson or a Daniel Morgan or a George Washington when dealing with matters of the intellect. The first and third were true intellectuals who then committed to fighting with rifles, as did the second, who was a great leader but more a common man. But all three of them have more intellectual force than this entire thread, which is committed to intellectually theorizing about Hegelian Dialectics and interpretations of the writings of Xi Jinping, while warriors recognize their adversary’s intentions inherently and immediately, and fight and defeat them kinetically without delay.”

    But people are not even clear as to the ”adversary” to be fought. No warrior is lacking in that perception; knowing who the enemy is and why they are the enemy. People give all kinds of different pseudo-reasonings, but they merely have strong but unthinking prejudices, not reasons.

    ”This thread reminds me of a group of participants who prefer to analyze a football game avoiding ever have to play in one. There is nothing more boring than intellectual self stimulation. True intellectuals use their minds to interpret what to do; faux intellectuals use their intellects to avoid having to put themselves on the line. That is why such a fine intellect as Jeff Nyquist’s has so few followers. They sense that there is nothing but avoidance of conflict in the words here, so they quickly tire and tell no one of their attempt to participate, and then blindly move on searching for what they know not that they seek; their own courage.”

    Again,who is the enemy and why?

    ”The reason that I torture Jeff so incessantly is because a true intellect in service of bold action is such a valuable asset, and one that I cannot suffer to see wasted. Minds like Jeff’s should be gathering in private, under penalty of hanging as did the colonialist intellectual leaders, finding the best way forward in order to prevail and overthrow the current power of the left as did the colonialist intellectuals and common men with the British. But alas, so far, we will have to rely on our Daniel Morgans more, for their courage is not overshadowed and muted by their intellects. Jeff fears the deep state and the alphabet agencies more than he loves courage.”

    Stupidity is not courage, it is lunacy given wings.

    ”But then again, maybe I say this as a plant who seeks to draw Jeff out into illegal arenas of conversation in order to silence his powerful voice, in the service of the left. Who knows for sure? Maybe I made up the story of the F.B.I. visiting me for an article I wrote. Maybe it was all illusion and deception. You all should know, but you probably don’t, as you are fully invested in this intellectual self stimulation without effect.”

    So you brag about your dishonesty, like a robber among friends, while harping to have others go do something.

    ” What good does it do you to know that the left is advancing in America, and to know all the attendant tributaries historically that have lead up to this great river threatening to wash us all away in its flow? Without true courage, all knowledge is in vain. That’s why courage is the seminal virtue, for without it, all the others are impossible to attain.”

    Telling others to have courage and do something….This is a joke,or ravings from a mental institution.

    1. Jesus Jeff, at the end of the day you are an intellectual that seems somewhat like one who diverts away from truth they are afraid of. We all know very well who the enemy is; no more missives are required to know that. Godless globalist communists and their allies are clearly the enemy. No more conversation required. They are the ones seeking to undercut the traditional underpinnings of our republic. Can we agree on this? Or would you like to debate its implications for a few more years? Your definition of stupidity is somewhat different from mine, which is delay when a mortal threat is sufficiently understood.
      And if you take my jest that I might be a deep state subversive trying to implicate and then silence your voice as actual, and then would actually use this basis to suggest action from a basis of admitted dishonesty; I thought you were an intellectual! Nice ad hominem about the mental institution by the way. I have not implicated you as mentally ill for failing to exercise your God given courage; but you are quick to use this tactic in response to most anything I post, in an attempt to deflect what I suggest you know in your heart to be true. You can do so much better Jeff; please do so soon before people like you are later intellectualizing about the fall of the American Republic and mentioning your name as a reason! Now have I forgotten any seminal commas that you might use against me, ones that are crucial to the understanding of our standing?

      1. You do not even understand that you are not talking to Mr. Nyquist, and yet you want others to go out and take actions based on your perceptions of what ”courage” is? When your perceptions are already so flawed on an elementary level? Maybe you should stop and prayerfully think and have respect for the wisdom of others. I know that that takes humility, which is hard for man to do sometimes. But consider the light that others have,perhaps it is more than your own.

      3. You finally reveal more of your nature. You have condemned the posters on this thread basically
        as cowards and dumb. Wow! You
        definitely come across as narcissistic, prideful, arrogant, and appear to have a few screws loose. You are so much more intelligent and braver than the rest of us, and see so clearly what must be done….and yet, here you are ridiculing everyone here for “not doing anything”. How do you even know what anyone is doing or will do? Has it not dawned on your infinite intellect, that we are in totally different times than we were in the American War for Independence? That our enemies are already entrenched on our shores, in every locale? That they also have us surrounded, and control, or have greatly infiltrated, every institution? That our society is so degraded that we dont hold a candle to our forefathers? You, sir, by your last two posts, have lost any smidgen of credibility I might have given you. You are definitely either an informant for FIB, or of that ilk, or just plain nutty.

      4. I will quote Edmund Burke to you, from his famous “Reflections on the Revolution in France”: “I see that your example is held out to shame us. I know we are supposed a dull sluggish race, rendered passive by finding out situation tolerable; and prevented by mediocrity of freedom from ever attaining to its full perfection.” He later says about revolutionaries: “But let them not break prison to … sweep the earth with their hurricane, and to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us.” — we are not the revolutionaries. Try to remember that the enemies of the country are the revolutionaries. Indeed, a civil war may happen all the same, but we must be as rocks in the storm. We hold because we are not flighty or inwardly unprepared; having thought things through to the end. One must not judge a thing by what it is, but by what it is becoming. This is part of “learning how to see.”

      4. Indeed. I have a love for two lands and two peoples, America and Russia,which inform my thinking. I may not always agree with your assessments entirely because of my own politics and philosophical perspective (although the basic idea of a spiritual and cultural malady of blindness, blindness to an enemies strategic deception which is ongoing and which will bring down modern civilization,is all-too-correct in my opinion,”enemy” in the sense of Schmidt), but some kind of extremist revolution is not the answer. Counter-Revolution is the opposite of Revolution in every way; Peace not War, which is the fuel for the engine of Revolution. What this man suggests and annoyingly insinuates constantly is madness.

      5. I agree. In the end the malady is a modern materialist dogma that negates spiritual understanding. Russia and America are infected at leadership level. How to gently to bring healing? How to avoid a conflagration — or mitigate one.

      6. Th enemy is the criminal regimes, not the people.
        Both cultures have been irreparably damaged to the point of making score cards absurd.
        Yet I see no way forward without Faith in Jesus Christ.
        It will not be gentle.

  67. Mr. Nyquist, have you ever read any of Xenophon’s works? Like “Anabasis?” I’m interested in reading his works at some point, especially since he wrote about Greek military history.

    1. I have read Xenophon’s continuation of Thucydides’ history. The contrast between the two authors is so striking that I developed — like many others — a tremendous respect for Thucydides, who is unique in all history for his depth. Xenophon also wrote an Apology of Socrates which is of interest.

  68. Word of mouth organizing of new elections. No secret ballot. Voters must show identification. Everyone makes a mark on the wall of the candidate of their choice for all to see. Establish Common Law courts and quit using public services. Get members of the armed forces to join in the process, and honor the elected President. Eliminate Democrat and Republican parties. Reinstate the Anti Masonic Party. The Marines will resist, and will become enemy combatants to the People.

    1. Actually, official looking identification is not to be trusted. On voters fluent in English with no detectable accent will have votes that count. If they are old enough to reason, they can vote.

  69. Jeff, not sure if you can comment, during the last few months there has been serious allegations from people who participated in the Hong Kong Protest in 2019 that Nathan Law gave the Chinese Communist Party information on participants who took part and there are people also saying that a lot of participants who took part and are in jail due to the actions of Nathan Law:

    https://twitter.com/Lukernether/status/1392741034698940420

    https://twitter.com/Lukernether/status/1407427006157967362

    According to the person on the above Twitter, Carrie Lam had a secret meeting with Nathan Law to dismantle umbrella movement and also a Chinese Communist Party backed organization sponsored Nathan Law’s scholarship during his time at Yale.

  70. Mr. Nyquist, you said to me;

    ”I agree. In the end the malady is a modern materialist dogma that negates spiritual understanding. Russia and America are infected at leadership level. How to gently to bring healing? How to avoid a conflagration — or mitigate one.”

    The answer lies in the Heavens with the God and the gods His messengers and saints, and with the Earth, the people,and their memory and their hardships;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL-BaOQKZiA

    Dew Drops (Russian Folk Song)

    ”If I only knew
    When I would die
    Ah, my Lord, my God
    I would’ve hired a carpenter
    To build me a coffin
    Ah, my Lord, my God

    I’ll just lie down and die
    I’ll fly up to God
    Ah, my Lord, my God
    I’m with our God
    With great concerns
    Ah, my Lord, my God

    My silken grass,
    Oh, my dew drops of pearl

    Take me down, my dear God
    From heaven – and back to earth
    Ah, my Lord, my God
    From heaven – and back to earth
    Onto the yellow sands
    Ah, my Lord, my God

    My silken grass,
    Oh, my dew drops of pearl”

    And the pictures to the video-it was said that the Germans have one foot in ”Atlantis”, well, Russians have their whole self in ”Hyperborea”, in ”Fairie”. Maybe hard to understand…We are not the West, no matter how hard some try to be,or to force others to be Westernized.

    I just want us to be ourselves, all of us.

Comments are now closed.