One who gets it, one who doesn't
(1) Gets it.

A harsh and sharp and precise column by Anthony Esolen in the Crisis Magazine website.

Let’s get straight to the point. We no longer live in a culturally Christian state. We do not live in a robust pagan state, such as Rome was during the Pax Romana. We live in a sickly sub-pagan state, or metastate, a monstrous thing, all-meddlesome, all-ambitious. The natural virtues are scorned. ....

We are not in partibus infidelibus. We are in partibus insanibus.

What shall we do now? The answer is both daunting and liberating. We do everything.
 That doesn’t mean that I do everything, or that you do everything. Suppose you find yourself in a bombed out city. There are all kinds of things to do, and all of them have to be done.

Esolen goes on to specify things that need to be done, not necessarily to repair the damage, but to maintain a segment of culture and society during the dark age. Some of his recommendations are theological and thus above my head. The parts I can grasp are precisely correct.

= = = = =

(2) Doesn't get it.

The mayor of Airway Heights, a suburb of Spokane mainly serving Fairchild AFB, is in drearily predictable hot water for twittering a really dumb comment about Michele and Barack Obama. It's not even a joke. It's the same sort of crude idiocy that every authoritative journalist and every responsible politician and every wise commentator said and broadcasted and printed every millisecond about Laura and George Bush, but the mayor fails to realize that we are in partibus insanibus now. We are in Pol Pot territory. Dumb jokes in the Correct Direction are rewarded with Pulitzer Prizes. Dumb jokes in the Incorrect Direction are CAPITAL CRIMES.

If you're going to get in hot water, you need to be doing it for a serious reason. Catholic hospitals, and businesses that provide weddings and cakes, are in hot water for serious reasons. They refused to shape their craft to suit an immoral purpose. Until now, refusing to commit a sin (by the standards of your own religion) was considered ordinary and normal. Now it isn't. Sin is required.

But not all sins and emphatically not all businesses. For instance. You can be 100% sure that kosher butchers will never be required to sell pork. You can be 100% sure that halal butchers will SOON be required to sell pork, and will be punished when they refuse. It's not the act that matters, it's WHO YOU ARE that matters. For Correct Castes all things are permitted. For Untouchables nothing is permitted.

The mayor was accustomed to the loose-limbed Old American system where Caste didn't matter much. He was blindsided by Satan's new Caste system.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, STRONG!

  ¶ 3:37 PM