Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

To start his famed biography of Christopher Columbus, Admiral Of The Ocean Sea, Samuel Eliot Morison establishes the context of Columbus’ career: Europe dispirited, dissolute, bored and generally lacking in get up and go.  In other words, Europe bereft of self-confidence.

Comes an Italian Mariner of spectacular competence to the Spanish Court, itself recently flushed with victory in the Reconquista.  In an effusion of self-confidence, the Court stakes Columbus an expedition to China — the easterly route being unavailable, the northerly route known to be impossible, and the southerly route not easy — by a westerly route.

Columbus runs into unknown islands and then an unknown continent, not China, but rich in gold, silver, slaves, and other tradables.  And, most importantly, colonizable with minimal expense in blood and treasure.

European self-confidence soars.  Come Luther and Calvin, in one mode, and Ignatius and Theresa in another, and European power expands in all directions.  The engine of that phenomenon is simple and direct: self-confidence.  A spiritual virtue, not a moral, intellectual, political, social, or economic virtue, self-confidence is straight-up, unalloyed spiritual virtue, with a twist.

Freedom is always present but often latent.  Freedom is patent when self-confidence is rampant.  For this reason do power-freaks, manipulators, autocrats abominate and attack others’ freedom and self-confidence.

Tillich describes the ideal condition of culture — self-confidence inducing self-satisfaction inducing self-sacrifice aka agape love — as where and when the impulse for autonomy (individual freedom) and the impulse for heteronomy (peer pressure) make together a dynamic balance, tipping neither to the one nor to the other, but rather, fostering both impartially.

Tillich calls that cultural condition theonomy.  Its epiphany is rare and fleeting.  Cities and nations of the Latin Church last experienced theonomy during the High Middle Ages, the times of the early Crusades, of Francis of Assisi, Dominic of Castile and Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres.

The same era held the suppression of Mutazilite Islam by Asharite Islam.  And that development summoned the Christian Crusades, to sustain European trade, pilgrimage and intellectual communications with the Middle East and Far East.

The theme of Morison’s classic is the indomitable power of self-confidence, especially when widely shared among a population, and the destructive power of its absence.  Indeed, the self-confident are recognized by their enthusiasm, carefulness, and competence.   The un-self-confident are recognized by their envy, secreting, snobbery, recklessness with respect to properties and persons, fecklessness with respect to productive labor, and defaults to autocracy.

The key to having self-confidence is to know — Greek Gnosis, Sanskrit Jnanam = ecstatically in full unite, fuse with the consciousness — that you are a crippled Child of God, begotten not made, on your way home to God.

The United States recently underwent eight years of cynical rule bereft of self-confidence in every direction but especially as regards being American and Christian.  That state of affairs was not a little prepared by decades of Communist, Soviet and CIA subversion, the goal of which was to shred Americans’ self-confidence as Americans and as Christians to the extent that they could not discern what was in their interest and what was not and thus could not defend themselves against an hostile force, whether internal (CIA, foundations, professoriate, clergy) or external (Soviet, Chinese, Latin American, Arab/Pan-African).

Foreigners — mostly but not entirely Russian — did successfully affect the election of a POTUS.  It happened in 2008, when a huge cohort of Americans, and virtually the entire institutional executive cadre, together with heavy partisan (for abnormals, Democrats) voting fraud, eagerly imbibed the narcotic of third generation Socialism (which is of CIA manufacture, BTW) to send Moslem Brotherhood and Iranian agents with USA security clearances to manage their affairs from the White House and Congress.

The result was predicted and it manifested in quick time: gray, dismal, desperate but quiet cynicism for most and gloating, glaring, brassy, and breezy sententious insouciance for some.  In other words, for this reason and that, Americans lost confidence in themselves as Americans and as Christians.  They let themselves be gulled into putting psychopaths in power over their affairs.

The Soviet subversion theorists were right: one need not defeat a nation at war in order to control their affairs.  Inducing a nation’s citizens to lose self-confidence is sufficient unto the day in that regard.  Control of her and them is then a walk-over, and behind a myriad of triumphal blasts of the Trumpets of Progress, aka propaganda.  . . . at least for a while.

A very few looked over the geography, intellectual and spiritual, and prepared against the day knowledge, which is freedom, would be asked to reorganize theology, religion, and culture, and with that, politics.

Meanwhile, those without wish to regain self-confidence but with intense desire to perform in the power-junkie profile of the un-self-confident are senescent, passing away, and causing in their dotage as much harm as they can generate.  Thus:

In light of received doctrine that one should expect one’s enemy to do what they should do to annihilate one, and in light of Robert Mueller’s record of prosecuting innocent persons to the point of [apparent] suicide and [definite] worldly ruin (the reason Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller SC), I posit the following:

Robert Mueller and his Terrorist Team seek warrants for their FBI cohort to arrest President Trump and his entire family.  They see an acute need to accomplish that objective, to include, among other reasons, preventing President Trump from campaigning in the mid-term elections and successfully nominating a Justice of the Supreme Court.

They will move to execution probably sooner than later.  They will find a judge to issue the warrants and will plan to raid the White House and residences of immediate family members when they believe they have the advantage of surprise and the opportunity to inflict maximum degradation upon the persons of POTUS and FLOTUS Trump and the Trump family.  They will plan to incarcerate the Trump family whole for the rest of their lives and execute as many of them as they deem seemly (Jack Ruby, Ruby Ridge, Waco).  . . . as a warning to any and all against questioning their supreme authority . . . ever again.

Then begins the war against Robert Mueller and his Terrorist Team and their supporters.  A hot (shooting) war, with elements of the USG shooting at one another, and citizens shooting at one another and elements of USG, state, and local governments.

In addition, note this post by Sundance and my response, below, to a third party post referenced by a fellow Sundance commenter:

I just read that.  To me, it is the easiest explanation of what is going on.  And it correlates with reports — leaks? — that Mueller is casting about to hand off his little enterprise to a patsy.

The alternative, that I can see anyhow, is that AG Sessions and DAG Rosenstein are prepping Mueller to swing the FBI over to the White House and other Trump family residences, a surprise simultaneous raid, to arrest all Trumps, based on a warrant they have obtained from some judge for the purpose, thereafter to incarcerate the entire family and lose as many of them as lead IC personalities deem seemly.

I do not see as occurring here an alternative to one of those two scenarios.  I am certain Mueller and significant others devoutly wish for justification and opportunity to execute scenario two above.  After all, not only would they want to prevent POTUS Trump from campaigning in the mid-terms, more so even would they want to prevent him from successfully appointing an SC Justice.  However, were they to attempt scenario two past obtaining a warrant, self-confident citizen — to include USG — fury would soon confront them with the error of their ways.

As I see it, the main weakness of scenario two as candidate for the actual phenomenology is evidence that the energy of the country — and of the world — is moving in the opposite direction, away from oligarchic technocracy (tyranny by the venal and stupid) and forward toward free, independent citizens protected inside their sovereign nation states.

My career, at least since the 1950s, has focused ever more clearly on calling to remembrance and articulating, using tools of the arts, the consciousness of truth and the bliss of consciousness.  For this reason Political Philosophy (NOT political science) has attracted my attention since early teen years at least.  I find it entirely natural and monitory that the great Scottish Sage of economic phenomenology, Adam Smith, was in point of fact a Professor of Moral Philosophy, at Glasgow.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ADAM SMITH: Born on June 16, 1723 (NS). “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

My theological mentors, St. Jerome, Martin Luther, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Paul L. Lehmann, and par excellence, Paulus Johannes Tillich, each in their own ways, drove my sense of priorities in the ordering of affairs: that a wise person drills through phenomena until they reach the absolute, undrillable Who behind them all.  Or, put another way, one submits every concept, insight, principle, theory, and assumption to total destruction until something actually survives that ordeal.  Then you put that something through as much ordeal again and more as one can muster just to make sure it is indestructible

If it survives all you can do to destroy it, you knows it is the truth.  And knowing it is the truth, you also know it is bliss . . . and to tie your consciousness to it with bonds indestructible.

Truth can withstand any trial and welcomes any whatsoever.  Truth fears no outcome . . . because any outcome is going to be itself.  Nor does truth need protection.  St. Augustine observed that the truth is a lion, just let it loose and it will take care of itself.  I have spent my life trying to let the truth loose, and in particular, the truth that matters most to the welfare of Christian civilization.

Now, believe it or not, the subject of this post is Russia and, specifically, her strategic situational self-awareness, and desires vis-a-vis the USA.  What is this dance about, what is its rhythm, and how can/should it consummate?

We have observed that Russia has the world’s most chronic and sometimes acute border maintenance problem.  We have observed, also, that Russia has formidable difficulties with internal lines of communication.  Her commercially navigable rivers are few compared to the extent of her lands, and her commercially navigable rivers do not intersect handily.  Weather restricts movement by rail and road, as does unequal distribution of arable land that is already scant relative to total Russian landmass.  Russia, moreover, comprises two general cultures and three characteristic civilizations, one Greek Christian, one Slav Talmudic, and one mixed Mongolian and Turkic Moslem, who descend from Nestorian Christians, BTW.  Currently, Russia’s GDP is less than California’s.  Her Christian population’s numbers are in decline.  Her history of corruption and authoritarianism is in minimal decline.

Yet for all this and more, Russia is a major presence among the nations.  Why?  Well, obviously, a plethora of nuclear weapons and ability to deliver them is a reason.  Valuable natural resources are a reason.  A long and strong history of producing brilliant personalities in the arts, sciences, and engineering, right up to the present day, is a reason.  The gift of ingenuity in the face of hardship and the spirit of never-give-in and-instead-invent (aka resilience) which underlies it is a reason.  And Russians today benefit from centuries of Imperial and seventy odd years of Soviet participation in chancellories in both hemispheres.  She also has a deep, very deep feeling of Christian leadership in the affairs of anywhere to which she casts her gaze, and especially in re Europe.  And Russia, uniquely with India and the USA, is a successful multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation enjoying internal political strength that decentralization confers upon a nation.

In 1952, The Soviet opened the Volga-Don Canal, linking the Caspian Sea with the world’s oceans, at least for moderately long and deep bottoms.  Russia now contemplates increasing the commercial and military throughput via water between the Caspian Sea and the world’s oceans.  Already, Russian naval forces can deploy to the Mediterranean from the Caspian via the Volga-Don Canal.  Her best and newest such assets patrol the Caspian Sea facing Iran, which tells you something important about Russian strategic situational self-awareness in the Southern Caucasus and points west from there.  This is called the advantage of internal lines of communication, and, in the case of the Volga-Don Canal, the need felt for it dates from the Ottomans in the 16th Century and from Peter the Great in the 17th.  The Soviets started the project before World War II and completed it after.

The ability to move modern naval force between the Caspian and Black Seas strengthens Russia’s ability to fall on Constantinople not only from the east (Nagorno-Karabakh) but also from the north (Sea of Azov and Crimea).  It may be pointed out that were the USA alone or with India and, say, Iraq, to consume the attention of the Iranian Mullahs, Russian naval force in the Caspian Sea would be free to wheel west and south, to sweep up the Volga and down the Don, through the Strait of Kerch, and on to the Bosporus.

Related: L. Todd Wood: WWIII Anyone? The Crusades Are Returning To Caucasus As Violence Rages In Nagorno-Karabakh

Russian grand strategic objective contemplates establishing the Third Rome, the Third Seat of Caesar (Tsar), in part with the preliminary of purifying the Second Rome, the Second Seat of Caesar, Constantinople, of non-Christian admixture.  Historic Constantinople rests on the west bank of the Bosporus.  It is part of Europe, as is Moscow.  Asia starts on the east bank of the Bosporus and the east slope of the Urals.

Russia has a mind for Catherine the Great, not The Soviet.  The so-called American foreign policy establishment imagines President Putin and associates yearn for return to the glory of The Soviet.  They could not be more blind and stupid.  Just look at the geography, physical and otherwise, boys and girls [he said fruitlessly].  Russians are patriots, not piners.  They were friends of President Lincoln’s, who kept Russia’s fleets in US harbors, safe from British hunter-killers.  In return, Russia gave Secretary Seward favorable terms for the purchase of Alaska, a great treasure, and quit California.  There is natural friendship, not enmity, between Americans and Russians, USA and Russia.

Never underestimate Russians, no matter under what name, with respect to their ingenuity and assiduity.  And survivability.  They have experience.  They can compare experiences.  Even though — as Communists do intentionally whenever, wherever they can — the Communist Revolution extirpated Russia’s educated leader cadre, her warrior-scholars, reducing Russia to that pan-optic vulgarity common to Leftists, who celebrate their own stupidity, Russians have managed to rear, gradually, popular intelligence sufficient to maintain their estimability, their prestige, in the councils of nations.  They will get where they want to go.  Period.  And this even though the Communists lopped off Russians’ head, as Communists do always and immediately upon seizing political power and enforcing political correctness (their term for their control of mind, mouth and hand).

Theology is the root of Russian national spirit.  Greek Christianity.  Theology is the root of American spirit as well.  Latin Christianity.  And theology is the root of Indian spirit also.  Greek and Latin Christianity, Mutazilite Islam and Hinduism.  These three nations share a root, theology, and the theology they share is integral to them.  Russian, American, and Indian spirits rise from and  return to the Vedas.  We speak the same language, we three.  We share a root.  Even Islam, traced as it should be from Christianity and Talmudism, rises from and returns to the Vedic root.

And what is the inner sweetness of that root?  What does it absorb from the earth, make its own, and impart as sound theology to its trunk, branches, leaves and fruits?

FREEDOM !

Alba gu bra !

Andrew Breitbart famously and accurately observed that Politics is downstream from Culture.  Well, Culture is downstream from Religion.  And Religion is downstream from Theology.  And Theology is downstream from Freedom.  That is how this works.

Politics is theological squabbles by other means.  Never for an instant doubt that discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is a serious, consequential politico-existential struggle.  It goes to the very heart of accurate soteriology and political philosophy.

That particular discussion, for example, is about relationship — already a frought subject — between material and the immaterial, and ultimately, between finitude and the infinite.  Upon accurate description of that relationship rests effective soteriology, yearning for which motivates every human activity and indeed every activity whatsoever.  So, angels on pin heads is no pinheaded exercise.

If you want to improve politics, unleash freedom.  If you want to improve religion, unleash theology.  If you want to improve culture, unleash religion.  Culture is the form of religion and religion is the substance of culture.  The end of the ways of theology is politics and the end of the ways of politics is freedom.  Freedom starts everything and ends everything.  You want to right the world?  Be free and set your world free.  In a word: detach.  Get your filthy mitts off the world, relax, and be content.

Russia has need, existential need, of USA and India.  USA and India have need, existential need, of Russia.  This is the big one.  Don’t blow it.  Russia, USA and India can rely one upon the other.  They are brother nations sharing a common parent, the Vedas.  Modernly, self-confidence twists straight-up just so.  This is how the dance progresses and consummates.

Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God

Update 1: Don Surber: Peter Fonda wants Barron Trump raped.  No Democrats denounce Peter Fonda

Update 2: Don Surber: Germans Capitulate To Trump

Update 3: A Tragic Irony By A Generation Of Vipers

Update 4: Scott Johnson: Actually, Socialism Does Work

Update 5: 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 6: Adam Mill: The DOJ Has Turned The Russia Investigation Into A Puzzle Designed Never To Be Solved

Update 7: Roger Kimball: Don’t Celebrate Bastille Day

Update 8: Jacob Nordangard: The Elite Technocrats Behind The Global ‘Great Reset’

Mark David Hall: How Reformed Theologians’ Commitment To Self-Rule And Resisting Tyranny Helped Form America

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA