Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
You know, Octavian, it’s quite possible that when you die . . .
you will die without ever having been alive.
Mark Antony to Octavian, Cleopatra, 1963
FFrreeeeddoomm ! ! !
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
“This is my own, my native land!”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
Sir Walter Scott
Kissinger does not give humans credit for having an inner necessity, which AI lacks (Kandinsky)
Kissinger does not give humans credit for having a soul, which AI lacks, that is a part of the everything-ness/eternal-ness that is God and thereby has the inclination of choice without current knowledge/experience, which AI lacks (Boethius)
Kissinger acknowledges that he cannot see the truth, but rather than doing anything about it, he attempts to define the problem over and over again (Plato)
Kissinger is more comfortable with rules (ethics…the law) than freedom (morals…self discipline) because I do not doubt that he believes that human beings are inherently evil, but can be tamed by other humans (influence of, Lord of the Flies)
A Writer Who Shall Remain Anonymous
Algorithms, having no everything-ness, no eternal-ness, have no inclination of choice without inputs of current knowledge or experience. Algorithms cannot make decisions without inputs. They have no direct experience of the objects of their inquiries. Humans, on the other hand, have direct experience of anything to which they turn their attention and they can make decisions without inputs of current knowledge or experience. This is a profound and energizing insight by the aforementioned anonymous writer. It bears directly on the matter of freedom.
It’s On: A Trade War With Our Allies, Paul Mirengoff, Power Line Blog
Mr. Mirengoff believes that freedom comes from rules, just as Kissinger does. Very low view of man, very Talmudic and Medina Koranic. Christianity, all the national Enlightenments, and the US Constitution say exactly the opposite. Very high view of man, very Biblical and Mecca Koranic.
In yet another way does the national genius affect the growth of sea power in its broadest sense; and that is in so far as it possesses the capacity for planting healthy colonies. Of colonization, as of all growths, it is true that it is most healthy when it is most natural. Therefore, colonies that spring from the felt wants and natural impulses of a whole people will have the most solid foundations; and their subsequent growth will be surest when they are least trammelled from home, if the people have the genius for independent action.
Men of the past three centuries have keenly felt the value to the mother-country of colonies as outlets for the home products and as a nursery for commerce and shipping; but efforts at colonization have not had the same general origin, nor have different systems all had the same success. The efforts of statesmen, however far-seeing and careful, have not been able to supply the lack of strong natural impulse; nor can the most minute regulation from home produce as good results as a happier neglect, when the germ of self-development is found in the national character.
There has been no greater display of wisdom in the national administration of successful colonies than in that of unsuccessful. Perhaps there has been even less. If elaborate systems and supervisions, careful adaptation of means to ends, diligent nursing, could avail for colonial growth, the genius of England has less of this systematizing faculty than the genius of France; but England, not France, has been the great colonizer of the world.
Successful colonization, with its consequent effect upon commerce and sea power, depends essentially upon national character; because colonies grow best when they grow of themselves, naturally. The character of the colonist, not the care of the home government, is the principle of the colony’s growth.
A. T. Mahan, The Influence Of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, p 55-56
It takes tremendous courage to resist the lure of appearances. The power of being which is manifest in such courage is so great that the gods tremble in fear of it.
Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be
Epitaph, Richard Fernandez, PJ Media
Fernandez has been a prescient and perspicacious historian and strategic/systems thinker for many years. Two or three years ago he began losing grasp of the big picture. Here he has lost it completely but also instructively. I commented on Epitaph:
With respect, and FWIW, I cannot concur with the premise of this post: that the Hussein people were trying or even wanting to maintain a passing order (Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama’s liberal democratic order). At heart, they were Iranian agents with American security clearances. Domestically, they were trying to dismantle a very ancient and very American order: democratic republican government. Internationally, they were trying to uproot the impulse for national sovereignty altogether.
These were active actors, not passive ones. Legions of the same remain after them. They stepped back from red lines — mere lulling and gulling propaganda to begin with, nothing sincere — because it served their purpose of facilitating suffering and chaos in pursuit of destroying national sovereignties.
They accomplished less than they could have done thanks mostly to their stupidity, their indolence, their insufficiency of grit, and their personal dependence on psychotropic substances.
Don’t do stupid sh-t showed a remarkable — and for by-standing normal people, salutary — degree of self-awareness. They did not even really stand up for their friends, the Iranian ayatollahs, the way they could have done. I thank God for their commissions and even more for their omissions in the stupid sh-t department.
OFT EVIL WILL SHALL EVIL MAR
(Thank God!)
The so-called Newburgh Conspiracy occasioned General George Washington’s famous speech to his Officers, in which he disabused them of the impulse to undo what they had accomplished by making him Supreme Commander of the Army and King of the Country in place of civilian (Congressional, at that moment in time) control of the Army and Country.
The backstory is that the British, having lost the war, yet kept some twenty thousand troops in New York while diplomats wrangled terms of a peace treaty. This obliged Congress and Washington to keep the Army nearby, at Newburgh/West Point. But Congress stopped paying the Army and was not expediting a pension formerly promised Officers.
Anonymous importunities against Congress circulated in the Army at Newburgh. Artful ones, according to Washington. But scurrilous and seditious.
Washington answered these entreaties with this speech, which brought tears to many an Officer’s eyes and arrested the disquiet. Officers returned to their units and told their Soldiers to do their duties while awaiting Congress’ determinations. When these latter finally arrived, they satisfied essentially all but the conspirators.
Notable aspects of this speech are its high moral, rhetorical, intellectual, historical, philosophical, governance, and military sensibilities and refinements. Another notability is that his Officers were comfortable with Washington’s elegant and erudite manner of discourse. These too were Soldier-Scholars. We are so lucky they are the root of our nationhood. We must emulate them regardless the derision doing so elicits from doubters.
A landed aristocracy is not exposed to the exigencies of commerce and in consequence is not prone to the political timidity of those whose property is exposed and business threatened — the proverbial timidity of capital.
Freedom is the jugular of life. Space, air, electricity (fire/light), liquid, and ground — aka geography — move freely or life ceases to exist. Universe (turning to one) cannot cease to exist because it is always folding back upon itself, always enveloping itself, always turning in upon itself, agglomerating, fusing, compressing and thus generating, as in a warm womb, and throwing forth individual specificities of itself.
A rude people consider freedom to be the opportunity to act without consequence to one’s self, without responsibility affixing to one’s career, and/or, to declare reality to be whatever one desires to declare reality to be.
A sophisticated people consider freedom to be the opportunity to be who they are as given by the conditions of their birth and to do as they can by the inner necessity with which they, personally, as a unique and unrepeatable individual, came into this breathing world.
The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously observed that man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. The English political philosopher John Locke, Hobbes’ junior in years, famously observed that man is capable and even obliged to toleration — excepting with the intolerant (!), whom he enumerates as atheists and Roman Catholics — and governments are capable of and obliged to consent by the governed.
The two Bacons — Englishmen both — empirical philosopher Roger, a Franciscan, and learned courtier Francis, a Viscount — and both regarded as Father of the Scientific Method — famously decreed that any observation following experiment that could not be observed following recapitulation of the experiment by others could not be sustained as accurate. In other words, wisdom and truth must be guaranteed by replicable experience.
At work here is a struggle between a high view of man and a low one. Following the high view of man which prevailed during the High Middle Ages in Europe (times of Knights of the Temple, Francis of Assisi, and Dominic of Castile), European intelligentsia and generality gradually lost self-confidence. The Reconquista and then the Reformation were, respectively, Iberian and then West (France, Germany, Holland) and North (Scandinavia) Germanic efforts to get moving again, to reassert the Law of Expansion in spiritual as well as mundane matters, just as had been done during the High Middle Ages. The Law of Expansion rests on a high view of man, as do Christianity and a gifted iteration of Islam now rejected by most Moslems: Mutazilite Islam, which is Meccan Koranic.
A century after the Reformation, stultifying rigidity — aka morbidity, lethargy — set in among both Reformation and Roman communions. Movement slowed and nearly ceased. Bloody wars between Protestant Catholics and Roman Catholics depopulated Europe north of the Pyrenees by roughly half. Vast carnage and savagery prevailed in the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War. Secular authorities had to step in to arrest the insanity, a lesson Europeans have not forgotten and one that accounts very much, though not entirely, for the absolutist posture of the secularist European Commission and their EU bureaucrats’ being shielded from approval by citizens of European nations.
Bloody irrationality among Christians — or anyone — is not a friend of their freedom. See Washington at Newburgh.
For rhetorical purposes, I suggest that the words natural, rational, organic, and geographical be employed as synonyms. In contemporary conditions, that rhetorical coincidence in writing and speech has power, similar to sonic cleaning, to jar lose conceptual encrustations that retard insight and invite infection and release from bondage novel idea flows, which are always salutary.
Luke 4:18-19
Spiritus Domini super me propter quod unxit me evangelizare pauperibus misit me praedicare captivis remissionem et caecis visum dimittere confractos in remissionem praedicare annum Domini acceptum et diem retributionis
Latin Vulgate, St. Jerome
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Wherefore he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the contrite of heart, To preach deliverance to the captives, and sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of reward.
Douay-Rheims, 1899 American Edition
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Isaiah 61:1-2
spiritus Domini super me eo quod unxerit Dominus me ad adnuntiandum mansuetis misit me ut mederer contritis corde et praedicarem captivis indulgentiam et clausis apertionem ut praedicarem annum placabilem Domini et diem ultionis Deo nostro ut consolarer omnes lugentes
Latin Vulgate, St. Jerome
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me: he hath sent me to preach to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, and to preach a release to the captives, and deliverance to them that are shut up. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God: to comfort all that mourn:
Douay-Rheims, 1899 American Edition
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good tidings to the afflicted;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Freedom seems easy to describe, and it seems easy to challenge one’s wanting of it. Neither is the case. For starters, there are several dimensions of freedom, all integral, but far from all the same. Then there is the reality that freedom is essential nature and not only of humans but of all creatures and even of inanimate nature. Freedom is the inalienable character of creation as geography. Even stripped of it spiritual dimension, freedom is the inalienable character of matter itself.
When we deal with anything, anything at all, we deal with the power of being we see, recognize and denominate as freedom. Something inside everything, inorganic and organic, wants to be itself and will be itself one way or another. That is freedom, the universal substance and therefore activity . . . and therefore the prime variable factor, as Bucky put it, in any situation whatsoever.
Jesus’ first act of ministry is to preach freedom to the mewed up. That is His last act of ministry as well, to mandate expanding (feeding) the freedom (hunger) of His devotees (John 21:17). God arrives to give man not just what he wants but what he needs that is what he really wants: freedom to be himself, and self-confident in that presentment regardless of circumstances. God arrives to restore man’s grasp and enjoyment of his own divinity, his intrinsic nobility.
Respecting just humans, there is political freedom. This is like the rind of an orange. It is needed but bitter. There is social/economic freedom. This is like the pulp of an orange. It is needed and desirable and not bitter, but also, it is not the reason one delves into the orange. There is religious freedom. This is like the juice of an orange. It is a reason one delves into an orange but not the ultimate reason. Finally, there is spiritual freedom. This is like the sweetness of the juice of an orange. This is the reason one delves into an orange in the first place, diving through rind, pulp, and juice to achieve one’s actual objective: the ecstasy of sweetness.
Political freedom, social/economic freedom, and religious freedom are widely and deeply treated by others over centuries of profound and perfunctory thought and experiment regarding those phenomena. My interest here is spiritual freedom. That is the interest of the Prophetic and Evangelical passages just referenced. It is the universal theological interest.
Powers human and superhuman aim to crumple not only animal but also human spirit. They develop stratagems to accomplish that objective. Basically, their happiness is got by instigating, observing and perpetuating others’ unhappiness. Such powers say to us: I own you, you belong to me.
Spiritual freedom is repose in one’s essential nature, which is divine. The spiritually free are relaxed. Careful. Childlike in their interior life. Wise as serpents and simple as doves. Always aware that they can be called home at any moment.
Not even religious freedom imbues one with a high view of man. Spiritual freedom does that. And until one has a high view of man, one is not free.
Man is the capable heir not to perfection but to participation in the divine life. And that is because human life is divine life. In fact, all life is divine life, but only humans have an opportunity to realize that fact, to grasp their sublime importance in the universal drama and savor its sweetness.
Man, in point of fact, is essentially a Child of God, not a Brute. Who is a brute is not man, not human.
Political, social/economic, and religious freedoms can be constricted. Not spiritual freedom. Spiritual freedom is where a human personality lives. If one has not yearned for, sought and been gifted spiritual freedom, one has not been alive.
Spiritual freedom is the engine, the beating heart and heaving lung, of religious, social/economic and political freedoms. Spiritual freedom is man’s natural home and anyone who wishes to degrade that home or deprive man of it is trying to force man into unnatural conditions and acts.
Spiritual freedom creates human geography, and not only intangible human geography but the tangible bits as well. For indeed, the psychic, organic and inorganic dimensions of life descend from the spiritual dimension of life. First things first. And history and its transcendent telos (goal, Who is God) first of all.
I am sorry — not really — you Leftist, Progressive marabouts. What you call the arc of history bends forward and upward towards God, not sideways and over towards you.
Do something truly and lastingly edgy: become a Christian. Follow the Master. Face the Devil. Fight to the End. Finish the Game.
The sublime controls the mundane. It is a conceit of the mundane that it can control the sublime.
If you want respect, lash your consciousness to the political reality of nation states, and in particular, the nation state who birthed and reared you, until your consciousness and that political reality fuse into one.
If you want freedom, lash your consciousness to the soteriological reality of your chosen Name of God, and in particular, the Name of God which birthed and initiated you, until your consciousness and that soteriological reality fuse into one.
Do this and you will have a happy life.
The Name of God is a cruise liner chartered for you to carry you safely over the sea of life to the haven of Heaven. You have permission to come aboard. Use it. The Name of God, alone, stands between you and slavery.
FFrreeeeddoomm ! ! !
Is a Name of God
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God
Update 1: Gov. Candidate Blames ‘Progressive’ Policies for Making Calif. a Poverty-Stricken Racist Dystopia
Update 2: Épater la bourgeoisie
Update 3: China Eyes Its Next Prize: The Mekong River
Update 4: Richard Fernandez: The Rocket Man And The Dotard
What went horribly wrong for Soros in 2018 was the future he believed in and poured his fortune into creating disappeared. The real future, to the anxious anticipation of Angela Merkel and many ordinary citizens, is about to make its appearance. What will it be?
FFrreeeeddoomm ! ! !
Update 5: When Jews, Moslems and other Secularists speak, one hears in the background the dry thump of rule books, the dull rattle of aspirational laws.
When Christians speak, one hears in the background the freshening breeze of the Holy Spirit, the gay charm of actual freedom.
Update 6: In short, the ongoing epidemic in the UK, Scandinavia and elsewhere—whereby Muslim men sexually target white women—is as old as Islam, has precedents with the prophet and his companions, and, till this day, is being recommended as a legitimate practice by some in the Muslim world.
Update 7: Ed Luce: Kissinger: ‘We are in a Very, Very Grave Period for the World’
Update 8: Online program offers easy, cheap way to ‘earn college credit for what you already know’
Update 9: Avner Zarmi: The Truth About George Soros
Update 10: Roger Kimball: Don’t Celebrate Bastille Day
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
