Tests used by hysterical sociologists show conservative Presbyterian who says the church should stay out of politics to be a Christian nationalist

 Like economics, sociology also is not much of a science.

If a conservative Presbyterian who has long argued that the church should stay out of politics tests positive for Christian nationalism, someone could wonder if sociologists need an equivalent to what epidemiologists have in asymptomatic carriers of COVID. Can a class of Christian nationalists exist who have no strong symptoms of this political virus? If so, do they need to be in political isolation?

Story.

Hillsdale College professor is hopeful because Roman Catholicism dominates the intellectual wings of modern conservatism and nationalism

I'm hopeful because 72 million Americans sided against Joe Biden.

From "A Review of Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History by Gillis J. Harp (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019)", here :

Still, perhaps there is more reason to hope than Harp lets on. Neither Modern Conservatism nor the new nationalism shows signs of a distinctly Protestant political perspective. To the extent either one has a political theology, it is dominated by Roman Catholics, who occupy the lion’s share of both movements’ intellectual wings.

Yeah, sure, buddy, it wasn't Catholic priests who used their pulpits to call the men to arms in the revolution against the English king. It wasn't Catholic priests who then doffed their robes and grabbed their rifles and joined them in the field. It was Presbyterians.

Joe Biden, a Catholic, preaches a return to normalcy, which amounts to acquiescence to the status quo of liberal dominance of most American institutions. That is the default position of Catholicism, acquiescence to authority, submission to hierarchy, rule by elites. By definition they'll revolt against nothing and adapt themselves to every nutty innovation which comes along in the spirit of taxation without representation.

The Loyalists have made a comeback, largely on the backs of Catholic immigrants to the United States since 1850.

Is anyone surprised they are for open borders, mass immigration, and globalism, especially if it augments their dominance in America?

Donald Trump, in his feeble way, was a resounding No to all this.

We're still out here.

Atheist Adam Savage, Speaker Nancy Pelosi constituent, Humanist of the Year and myth-maker, not very happy with the Republican US Senate's 11 Presbyterians, 9 Catholics, 9 Baptists, 7 Methodists, 6 Evangelicals, 3 Lutherans, 3 generic Protestants, 1 Church of Christ and 2 Mormons who voted against having to do the job the House wouldn't do

A Catholic America is a supine America

Catholicism breeds incapacity for rebellion. The American Revolution wasn't called the "Presbyterian Rebellion" for nothing.

LOL: David French declares war on the mice in the walls of your country house

The idea that there are millions of alt-righters in America is preposterous. Red State's streiff in 2016 laughably came up with 1-3% of the population, as if that were a small number. But there is no way that the alt-right is as numerous as the LGBT population of the United States.

In the year 2000 the forerunner to today's alt-right, Patrick J. Buchanan, received just 0.43% of the popular vote, fewer than 500,000. And unlike David French or Richard Spencer, Pat was the likeable candidate!

David French is a Presbyterian. He has lit his hair on fire. That the recent shooters were white nationalists is kooky on its face. French is literally communicating hysteria.

Conservatism Inc. is deeply threatened by alternative ideas because it is uncertain of itself, even as alt-righter Richard Spencer is uncertain of himself. Both of them need an enemy, and both exaggerate its size.

There's more than Trump derangement syndrome afoot in the land.

If you're a Christian who doesn't want to be murdered at church on Easter, you're a Presbyterian packing heat

In Nigel Farage's mind the rioters in France are the Tommy Robinsonites who co-opted his UKIP

Feelings of bitterness can overpower reason and cause one to engage in false equivalencies, as in blaming the American Revolution on the Presbyterians.

Things haven't changed much.

BREXIT is the new chartered right of Englishmen. Unfortunately for them the result of the democratic process matters as little to the duly elected government of Britain as colonial representation mattered to George III.

Nigel is nothing if not a loyalist.

 

Nothing sank NeverTrump lower in the estimation of the voters than its "blithe indifference to the Clintons' gangsterism"

Yes indeed.

Here:

"Trump’s base was fighting a war; these guys were sipping tea." 

The article insists much of NeverTrump is Jewish, agnostic and libertarian, which is true, while failing to mention its many Christian, especially Catholic, representatives, the very same crowd which mercilessly destroyed conservative Presbyterian minister Todd Akin of Missouri. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The narrowness of Trump's 2016 victory continues unexamined in the cold light of reason. Though badly outnumbered, Protestant America proved it isn't dead yet. Trump's partisans naturally would rather talk about why their winner won than why the loser lost. But Hillary lost primarily because 5 million former Obama voters failed to show up, a fact Trump himself acknowledged in the immediate aftermath. They were as disgusted with her as the rest of us were. Had just some of them shown up in the right places, we'd be in year ten of the biggest political disaster this country has faced since FDR.

Trump proves the dictum that one man can change history when all the rest cannot. And for this they hate him. He might as well be Martin Luther. 

Funny how Enlightened England became hostile to American Presbyterianism, and so ruined itself

The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.

-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Claes Ryn shoots one across Rod Dreher's bow

Here.

He comes as close as a Catholic can to recommending that conservatives stand and fight.

Meanwhile a certain Presbyterian has been hard at it already since June 2015.

His name is Donald John Trump.

Catholics are late to the party, again.

You will search this New York Times Hillary Clinton health "conspiracy" story in vain for the words "blood clot", caused by dehydration, caused by, you know, alcoholism

Here. 

Flashback here to the New York Times January 2, 2013:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose globe-trotting tour as secretary of state was abruptly halted last month by a series of health problems, was discharged from a New York hospital on Wednesday evening after several days of treatment for a blood clot in a vein in her head.

Mrs. Clinton, 65, was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital on Sunday after a scan discovered the blood clot. The scan was part of her follow-up care for a concussion she sustained more than two weeks earlier, when she fainted and fell, striking her head. According to the State Department, the fainting was caused by dehydration, brought on by a stomach virus. The concussion was diagnosed on Dec. 13, though the fall had occurred earlier that week.

The clot was potentially serious, blocking a vein that drains blood from the brain. Untreated, such blockages can lead to brain hemorrhages or strokes. Treatment consists mainly of blood thinners to keep the clot from enlarging and to prevent more clots from forming, and plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration, which is a major risk factor for blood clots. ...

Dr. David J. Langer, a brain surgeon and associate professor at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, said that Mrs. Clinton would need close monitoring in the next days, weeks and months to make sure her doses of blood thinners are correct and that the clot is not growing. Dr. Langer is not involved in her care. ...

The fact that Mrs. Clinton had a blood clot in the past — in her leg, in 1998 — suggests that she may have a tendency to form clots, and may need blood-thinners long-term or even for the rest of her life, Dr. Manley said. ...

Laugh of the day: Tom DeLay says Donald Trump is a novice who needs to learn from first term novices Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

Here in Trump's Liberty U Performance Was Insulting to Christians Everywhere:

'Is Donald Trump a "novice" Christian and "novice" conservative? "Know those who labor among you," says First Thessalonians 5:12. Do evangelical and Catholic Christians, along with conservatives in general really know Donald Trump? ... Trump would do well to learn from Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and other candidates who speak evangelical Christianity with fluent ease because they really do have God deep in their lives, and not just as a political facade.'

Memo to DeLay: Trump is a mainstream Presbyterian, not an evangelical, who incidentally has dominated the race since he entered it while the novices from the Senate lag far behind him.

Trump doesn't get why Carson is ahead in Iowa citing religion when it's support for ethanol giving Carson the leg up

Trump, quoted here:

'“I love Iowa, and I honestly believe those polls are wrong,” he said. “I’m a Presbyterian, I’m a great Christian.”'

Forty percent of Iowa corn gets diverted to ethanol production, without which food prices would drop as feed prices normalize. All of which would mean harder times for Iowans.

Carson wants to add ethanol infrastructure and increase its share in gasoline to 30% instead of the current 10%:

'“Therefore, I would probably be in favor of taking that $4 billion a year we spend on oil subsidies and using that in new fueling stations" for 30 percent ethanol blends, he added.'

If Trump were smart he would exploit the unpopularity of ethanol with the American people revealed in polling to marginalize Carson nationally on the issue, but that will never sway Iowa voters tied to ethanol for their livelihood, sort of like preaching against gambling in Vegas.

Trump can afford to lose Iowa, and probably will.

He should move on.

Infected Texas Ebola nurse shouldn't have been allowed on a domestic flight, but it's OK for Liberians to travel to the USA

Thomas Frieden, MD, director of the CDC and red diaper doper baby graduate of Oberlin College and Columbia University, quoted here today:

The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that a second Dallas nurse who has been infected with Ebola shouldn’t have traveled halfway across the country on a commercial flight the day before she reported her possible illness. New measures are being put into place to ensure that other health-care workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas who had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the first victim of Ebola in the U.S., are restricted from travel as long as they are being monitored for symptoms of the disease, said CDC Director Tom Frieden. “She [Amber Joy Vinson] should not have been on that plane,” Dr. Frieden said to reporters of the health-care worker, who he said had a temperature of 99.5 the day she flew.

But here he was on October 3 arguing for an open border with West Africa:

“Even if we tried to close the border, it wouldn’t work,” the top health official added. “People have a right to return. People transiting through could come in. And it would backfire, because by isolating these countries, it’ll make it harder to help them, it will spread more there and we’d be more likely to be exposed here.”

Oh, but closing borders within the US will work? And people here don't have a right to return home, which is what Ms. Vinson was doing?

If Duncan had never come here, we wouldn't have all these problems in Texas and now Ohio today, and two Americans with infections with a disease which is a death sentence wouldn't have them.

Frieden and Obama should be in jail, where we can limit the infection they spread.

Pittsburgh Tribune Review Agrees Obama Is Essentially A Fascist

According to an editorial in Saturday's Pittsburgh Tribune Review, here, agreeing with John Mackey the CEO of Whole Foods, Obama is essentially a fascist. The editorial approvingly quotes this definition of fascism by libertarian Sheldon Richman:

“As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. For those with the hubris to think they, not free markets, could better serve society, ‘fascism‘ (or as we prefer, 'fascistic economics') was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone (classic) liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism.”

Just when you thought there's been no progress defining for the public who and what is Obama, a businessman and a newspaper provide some:

"The general parallels to Obamanomics are glaring. Throw in the specifics of ObamaCare — then consider forays into national industrial policy and state protection of organized labor cartels — and the parallels are blinding", the editorial says.

Not that America's odd mixture of socialism and capitalism is something new.

It was Herbert Hoover, as far as I know, who was the first liberal to identify the American phenomenon of a mixed economics. Hoover located it in the blended strongman presidency of FDR, which was based more on Roosevelt's admiration for Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler as leaders than it was on substantive convictions about the dismal science. The alphabet soup of government which we take for granted today is the direct descendant of Roosevelt's impulse to try something, try anything, until it worked. Well, they're still trying.

Under Roosevelt, perfectly good food was deliberately destroyed by government to keep it from reaching the market in order to support prices in a deflationary economy even as people went hungry all across the country. Today we deliberately devote half the corn crop to produce an expensive, politically correct fuel boosting the cost of food animals while the number of people on food stamps is at an all time high and consumer demand has fallen like a rock. In the immortal words of Curly, if at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed.

But Hoover the loser was on to something, even if calling the man who beat him an un-American dictator lover was beyond the pale for some people. History eventually proved Hoover right when FDR broke with American tradition dating from the founding by running for a third term, and then a fourth. It took until 1951 for the American people to wake up and put a stop to that, with the ratification of the 22nd Amendment. Some dictators are assassinated, others just end up in the circular file. In many ways, Roosevelt simply out-Hoovered Hoover's own liberalism. People forget that FDR ran on what amounted to a repudiation of Republican liberal economic interventionism in the economy, and promptly ramped it up beyond anyone's imagination after he was elected.

But the blended system in America surely began much earlier. We could dial it back probably all the way to Lincoln himself, which would be fitting if only because the current occupant of The White House who practices fascism goes to such great pains to style himself after him, the president who chose to make the principle of national union over sovereign States the new definition of America. That fact of working a revolution, of remaking the country, should trouble everyone who has an ounce of independence left flowing through his veins, which is what troubles so many people who hear Obama speak of transforming the country. For half of us, one such revolution was enough.

This year we might do well to reflect on a later example, however, seeing that it is the anniversary of the abolition of private banking 100 years ago. It's strangely coincidental. The Federal Reserve Act was signed into law in 1913 by a fanatical progressive Presbyterian named Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who hated the encumbrances placed upon government by the constitutional order and wanted to forge a new world where nations disarmed, lived in peace and cooperated toward a common goal, with the US not at its then natural place, at the head. The Federal Reserve Act was passed in thoroughly partisan fashion by Democrats who had swept to power in the election of 1912 and rammed it through the Congress without Republican support. Their dollar then is now worth 4 cents.

If Woodrow Wilson doesn't yet remind you of Obama and ObamaCare, maybe its because after 100 years of the pernicious effects of American style fascism, you're just too poor to pay attention.

Rush Limbaugh Adopts The Class Warfare Of Obama/The Wall Street Journal

Today, here:

The middle class still is, in an aggregate sense, where all the money in the country is. That's where all the money is in the economy. The rich do not hold all the money.

This is the voice of a very rich man who is under attack by a leftist president and a leftist consensus which says that the rich do not pay their fair share, the voice of a man who is not reasoning as a conservative but emoting as a rich man. If he reasoned as a conservative, if The Wall Street Journal reasoned as conservatives, we would be seeing something other than the suggestion that the leftists go victimize the middle class. Like the bank robber, this thinking, if it can be called thinking at all, maintains that you should tax the middle class because that's where the money is.

As such what Rush says is not conservative, but purely reactionary in the worst sense of the term: it responds to an historical development in which it finds itself the victim and seeks escape instead of statesmanship. This is what you get from a Rush Limbaugh, who abhors learning. You wouldn't get that from a William F. Buckley, Jr.

It goes without saying that it is absurd to suggest that all the money is in the middle, but apparently we must insist that it is not so.

The middle quintile of households made a median income of almost $50,000 in 2011. Generously speaking, this approximates to every single income in the country in 2011 making between $35,000 and $65,000 annually, 35 million workers, accounting for $1.7 trillion out of $6.2 trillion in net compensation, just 27% of the total pie. The bottom end of the richest quintile, on the other hand, begins somewhere just north of $100,000 annually, 10 million workers, accounting for $2.1 trillion out of $6.2 trillion in net compensation in 2011, significantly more at almost 34% of the total pie.

But this is no way for a conservative to look at it.

The founders of the country envisioned equality of contribution from taxation, which the original constitution required to be direct, apportioned according to population. This is why taxation was always very low, because the poor could not afford it. This is also why we have a census in the constitution, not so that we may learn how many Americans are of Italian descent, but simply how many there are, for tax purposes. If it is pleaded that the constitution has been changed to permit indirect taxation, it is still more originally American to insist on equality of treatment under the tax code. The real problem with America is that originalist principles were thrown under the bus in the early 20th century by progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, and enshrined in constitutional amendments under people like Woodrow Wilson.

Equality of treatment under the law is the principle conservatives should be trumpeting. But you will listen for that in vain from Rush Limbaugh.

The progressives like Wilson, a Presbyterian whose grandiose ideas bordered on the fanatical and are reminiscent of no one so much as George W. Bush, misused Christianity by insisting that "to whom much is given, much is required" in arguing for progressive taxation, and forgot that "no one can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that he has". The actual price of Christian discipleship was everything you had, whether you were rich or poor. But in the secularized, immanentized bastard version of this under progressivism, the price became distorted so that the richer you were the more you owed, the poorer the less. It is little wonder that for that the rich demanded more, and eventually got it, in special rules in the tax code designed especially for them, which since that time have evolved into the elaborate distortions and complexities of the tax code we face with trepidation and consternation today.

In a very real sense when it comes to the tax code, The American Century has been the most un-American one of all, and the crying need of the time is to reverse it and refound the country anew on the original American principle of equality of treatment.

Roman Catholics Avoid Abortion Hypocrisy Of Republicans, Slam Libertarianism Instead

Most of the commentary I'm reading from Catholic critiques of the Republicans is avoiding the manifest hypocrisy of the "life of the mother" and "cases of rape" excuses for abortion advocated by many Catholic Republicans and the Romney campaign.

Those excuses are contrary to Catholic teaching, yet there they are, so-called Catholics, so-called conservatives, hounding out of the Republican Party a man whose point was that pregnancies resulting from rape are rare, which they manifestly are, and that allowing them to come to full term and enjoy life isn't an "option" in some policy world. It's a moral imperative. In this Rep. Todd Akin, a conservative Presbyterian from Missouri, is a better Catholic than the Catholics.

Instead, the critiques are focusing on the libertarianism of Rep. Paul Ryan.

This makes excellent sense, after some reflection, for the simple reason that Catholicism sees in libertarianism a rival ideology, not unlike what Bolshevism saw in National Socialism. The point says more about Catholicism than it does about libertarianism. Catholicism fell victim to the ideological habit of mind long enough ago that Spengler in the 1930s could say:

"[A]ll Communist systems in the West are in fact derived from Christian theological thought . . . Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism."

This observation makes the history of political economy necessarily a topic under the study of the history of religion. The concept of the church, which was totally foreign to Jesus, took the place of the failed imminent coming of the kingdom of God in his teaching, and immanentizes the eschaton he expected before the disciples had finished preaching in Israel. That false kingdom is now administered by popes, cardinals, bishops and priests. As such the church has been responsible for spinning off rival, "heretical", ideologies ever since. And if not the ideologies themselves, at a minimum the ideological habit of mind.

The conservative response to this is most certainly not to keep thinking ideologically. A dead Catholic named Russell Kirk also tried hard to tell us these things before he died.

Like Spengler's, his remains a voice crying in an impoverished wilderness of idealisms.