Ungrounded: An American Tragedy

What I offer in this brief essay is not intended to pass as definitively scholarly, although I write it as both a citizen of this country and as a political scientist. The essay is submitted to interested citizens for their due consideration.  As “We the People of the United States,” we share a common political and social fate. What we see, experience, and often discuss, in our fragmentary and occasionally troubled thoughts, is a sick body politic immersed in a highly decadent and destructive culture which is itself in an advanced stage of decay.  We are a part of Western civilization which has been, especially since the Reformation, Enlightenment, French and Russian revolutions, and seemingly endless world wars, not only changing, but in profound ways, dying, even as new forms of social and political life are emerging. The thesis in this essay is this: the United States of America, as it has existed as a people in history under God, may well be passing away, going “the way of all flesh.”  If it is not dying, it is passing into a form utterly different from our Founding and what emerged during the two centuries after the Constitution was established. In this essay we explore both the phenomena of this passing, and the probable causes for the decline. The only solution to our political death which I offer here comes from the diagnosis of our fatal illness. If we are to preserve ourselves and to thrive as a people in history, then profound changes are needed. Admitting our spiritual-political illness is a necessary first step towards genuine recovery—if indeed it is possible in this late stage of dying. The passing away of our country is a tragedy for various reasons, not least of which is the astounding richness and goodness of divine, human, and material blessings with which we began as a people, and which we have been throwing away. The dying of our body politic is also a tragedy because of the spiritual and mental suffering so many in our country and around the world are forced to experience as we undergo severe socio-cultural breakdown. And millions, even billions, in the world have been infected by the rotten fruits of our decaying culture.                                                         *** Nearly everyone with whom I speak in private, who expresses any thoughts on contemporary American life, is strongly concerned that America is in very serious trouble. Few go as far as to say that “our country is dying,” although what they feel and express points in this direction. When I have baldly stated that “Our country is dying,” no one has challenged the claim to my face. Most Americans with whom I have personal contact, or whom I read, do not draw out the likely consequences of what they experience and talk about, because to do so would require facing a painful truth which is foreign to our national self-understanding: that every political community has a beginning and an end in time.  Awareness of this truth is part of reality that Americans have never come to terms with, for it is contrary to our self-conception as “the new order of the ages,” a phrase holding out the possibility of being the final realm, or a final realm, on earth. This messianic belief in being a deathless community in time, divinely established as the Kingdom of God on earth, is deeply embedded in American political consciousness. Because it is an unreasoned and unreasonable belief, it is both erroneous and dangerous; indeed, the belief in America as a deathless, eschatological community is one of the seeds of destruction foolishly sown in our nation’s Founding. The ecumenic-global intentions of our Founders has been summarily enshrined in our name; it is not the proper name of a particular people, but points to the ambition of representing and ruling over at least one of the two hemispheres. (1) (1) An even more ecumenical-imperialistic name was seen in the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” which pointed to complete global expansion right in the name. Similarly, one can see in the title “universal church” global-ecumenical intentions.   The belief in ourselves as an unending, ecumenic community in time is indeed part of the sickness, for it hinders citizens from dealing with real political problems. Our widespread American habit of not facing reality and dealing with our common problems has been observed by political actors and thinkers at least since John C Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, and Walter Lippmann (in his Drift and Mastery, 1914), to name just a few. As the well-known scholar of political philosophy, Leo Strauss, wrote over fifty years ago, our leaders and educated elites do not know that “they are fiddling, and that Rome is burning.” As symptoms of approaching death show up, many citizens do not know how to interpret the “signs of the times.” No few of our citizens prefer not take a more meditative approach to political reality and give serious thought to what is happening to us as a people. Ignorance of our possibly fatal spiritual-political illnesses is in truth one of the foremost signs of approaching death. We do not smell our own fetidness. Despite not fully grasping the depth and breadth of our sickness, many complain about the failure of American political leadership, and the mess that both major political parties have created and embody. For years, I have not heard a single person speak highly of the quality of American politicians or elected officials, although occasionally one will hear appreciative words about a local elected politician, or even about a state governor, and so on. About the President and the Congress as a whole, one hears sharp criticisms. At the same time, these leaders—especially Presidents—present themselves as Messiahs, as God’s gift to America and to the world. In the famous words publicly proclaimed by Barack Obama when he first ran for President, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” The slogan, with its evident messianic coloring twisted from Jewish and Christian symbolism, points to a pathological consciousness in the man that is both Messianic and highly narcissistic. And yet, this very Messianism strongly appealed to millions of Americans, again revealing our desire for a political Messiah, and for us to “transform the world” under Obama’s leadership, as he promised.  America has a long history of trying to play Savior in the world, directly related to our self-interpretation as God’s Kingdom on earth, as “the last best hope for mankind.” Or in the words of President Woodrow Wilson, America had to “shed its blood on the battlefields of Europe for the sins of the world.” Examples of such messianic nonsense could be multiplied. In recent years, however, despite their naive or self-deceived efforts to believe in Obama’s magical promises, reality has slowly broken back into people’s consciousness. Reality has a disturbing way, shall we say, of re-appearing, despite our dreams and illusions. In numerous political conversations, I have not heard a single word of praise for President Obama since the earliest years of his reign. The fading praise one hears for the President comes from media journalists who long supported him, from officials in his administration, from leading members of his Party whose political fortunes and power-positions are linked to Obama’s, and of course from the President himself.  It is evident that American citizens have a highly different—and much lower—opinion of Obama than he has of himself. Again, a “disconnect” in reality is manifested, an abyss between stark truth and the magical thinking to which many long to cling. In the case of the American President, it is the familiar story: “the Emperor has no clothes.” Only in the present case, it is not just a small child who sees and exposes nakedly exposed reality for being naked, but the vast bulk of American citizens, the body politic. The President’s empty rhetoric and magical thinking have at last been exposed for what they are. Still, most Americans have difficulty accepting the truth hitting them in the face: that the majority of voters elected a word-magician in whom they wanted to believe.  Americans wanted a political savior. Unfortunately, I have not heard the disillusioned citizens ask themselves, “Why did we Americans want a magician-Messiah? What were or are we seeking in a political leader?” Such questions deserve thought. For the emptiness of the man’s rhetoric, his will to power, should have been obvious to discerning citizens in 2008 when Obama was asked about the fetus in the womb of the mother, and whether it was indeed human life. “That is above my pay grade,” Obama slyly and audaciously answered. And the popular Protestant minister who was interviewing him smiled blandly, failing to ask the obvious questions he should have asked: “You wish to be President of the United States, and yet you are unable to tell if it is a human life growing in the mother’s womb?  And if you claim that you cannot discern whether or not the fetus is human life, would it not be reasonable to err on the side of caution, and protect possible human life? You say that knowledge of the infant’s life is `above your pay grade,’ but you favor policies that permit killing whatever it is. Why? In short, why should the Americans choose as their leader a man who cannot or will not distinguish between human and non-human life?” Such questions were not asked by the minister. Why not?  Did this “man of God” wish to “play it safe,” and avoid alienating donors, or the American public? Was he currying favor, preferring popularity to truth?  Did he not want to hurt the sales ($$) of his hugely popular book? Is that not often part of “the American way?” In any case, Obama played the clever intellectual, and the minister played the fawning sycophant. Still, the fact that we have an elected Messiah-Emperor in the United States, and not a mere citizen President, has become increasingly clear to thinking adults. However, once again, people resist admitting what they see and feel: that the American Republic has in reality become the American Empire, ruled by an elected emperor and his dominating political clique. Although the rhetoric of democracy is widely used and accepted, in reality America is and has long been a combination of oligarchy with an elected monarchy, dressed up in democratic-mythical language, ruled by an elected emperor and a political class increasingly out of touch with “We the People.”We are dominated from Washington far more powerfully than Rome dominated its Empire. A difference is that Rome declared itself to be an empire, and we pretend to be a democratic republic. Again, not admitting the obvious truth and dealing with it are symptoms of our political disease. Other problems in our common political life stand out, and are frequently discussed, but again, without admitting that they may be symptoms of possible or probable fatal political illness. Complaints are often voiced about economic problems unemployment and underemployment; about the way so many (including our political leaders) scam the system; about the financial crises that loom (and could deny millions needed and earned Social Security); about the restrictive, even strangulating effects of bureaucracy and regulations; about recurring corruption and deceit in high places; about many manifestations of social unrest and disorder; about the shockingly low quality of American education; about the prevalence of disrespectful and unruly youths; and so on. At the same time so many complaints are voiced, nearly no one with whom I speak expresses confidence that America is “on the right track,” or that they believe that we are making sound “progress” in important areas of life. What stands out in the minds of most people with whom I speak on a regular basis is the depth and strength of spiritual and moral decay and collapse in our country. In addition to grievances already noted, some point to mental and spiritual illnesses: they express strong concern about drug and alcohol abuse, and the problem of misused prescription drugs; others feel agony at the widespread practice of abortion, and the political cover-up that surrounds brutal practices; others speak strongly about how their grandchildren seem out of control, absorbed in video games and such; others note the evident decline in religious faith and practice; and so on. These views are common among everyday working Americans, typically no longer in their youth, and who remember the past in which we were raised. Having experienced more ordered social-political life, we are able to detect its breakdown, whereas younger people have known only disorder, and take it as “normal.” Older citizens are understandably concerned for the well-being of their children and grandchildren, because to those who observe and think, the future of our country looks quite bleak, and is getting bleaker. Directly stated, there are very good reasons to be concerned about the spiritual-mental-moral health of America. Signs of decay and the breakdown of order are abundant. The unspoken diagnosis needs to be uttered: As a political community in history, America appears to be dying, and at the least, is in critical condition. As a political scientist, I must ask: How long can a political community continue on such a self-destructive course, and still exist? What happens to a people in history who have lost their roots, who have forgotten who they are, who have become so self-absorbed, and so disconnected from reality? Will the United States of America exist as a political community fifty years from now?  If so, how? In what form? What kind of government will be needed to govern people who display so many tendencies not to govern their own lives well? Can our country avoid becoming a totalitarian regime ruled by an emperor and political elite strongly disconnected from ordinary American lives? Are we not in fact becoming a totalitarian regime? Will the vast majority of people keep accepting the dominance in their lives of so much power concentrated in the hands of so few, often used for the own benefit of the powerful? Will our country succumb to a more vigorous, more disciplined political system, such as the Chinese could in time offer? Or will we just continue on the path of becoming what is in fact emerging: an increasingly totalitarian regime ruled by an Emperor elected by people baldly manipulated by the ruling elites? Will personal, social, and political order continue to break down, making more and more injections of naked power likely and necessary to maintain any semblance of order? As people will not govern themselves prudently and well, naked power, dominating nearly all aspects of our lives, will become all that will keep us from widespread social chaos. Is this not the reality we see emerging? The gap between democratic rhetoric and the political realities of oligarchy, imperial rule, and a totalitarian State are obvious to a political scientist, but to date, rarely admitted by citizens or political commentators inculcated with more or less naive beliefs in “democracy.” And the perpetuated myths of being a “democracy” are especially useful for rapidly expanding powers of the rulers. As with the belief in a deathless America, a major symptom of critical illness is the vast abyss between what people believe and imagine, and what in fact is actually happening. Calling ourselves a “democracy,” imagining that “We the People” rule, serves to anesthetize citizens from facing the harsh and disturbing reality of being subjects dominated by powerful and self-serving elites. A relevant question presses to be asked: Can the United States of America be revived, or have we “crossed the Rubicon,” and sealed our destiny by decay from within? Is it possible that we are becoming a regime more totalitarian and destructive than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Empire—with far more control over everyday citizens, and far more dangerous in the world? Do we Americans stop to consider what is happening to our country? “I did not know death had undone so many.” T. S. Eliot wrote these words that often come to mind when I observe our political-social-spiritual illnesses. The wasteland of disorder is within us and around us. Anyone immersed in American life, and especially living in our cities and mass urban culture, or under influence from these centers of power through the tentacles of mass media and propaganda, sees and feels overwhelming evidence of spiritual and moral decadence every day. (Again, many choose not to admit what they see, for to do so may raise the issue of making major changes in our lives.) Social-personal breakdown is the reality in which we now live. Drug abuse and mind or mood-altering drugs, and escapist forms of entertainment, evidence a society that is afraid to live, afraid and unwilling to face reality, and actually committing suicide. We are escaping from the mess within us and around us into drugs, endless entertainment, trivial social media, spectator sports, shopping, gambling, and the like. How many Americans truly seek to live sober, alert, well-balanced spiritual lives? How many of our citizens genuinely seek to cultivate the best that is within them through study, prayer, meditation? Based on observation, only a small proportion of our vast population. Death is undoing many, because many freely do those things that lead to spiritual and physical death. And the sicknesses of the spiritually and mentally ill affect everyone. As a political community and as individual human beings, we are responsible for our spiritual dying. As a people in history we are committing suicide. America is killing itself, and in the process, killing many of our own citizens and others in the world. The story of the United States of America cannot yet be written with certainty, for we have not yet come to an end in time. It appears that we are ending, but until this political society breaks apart, or dissolves, or is conquered, or is transformed definitively into something other than what was engendered by its roots, an accurate history of America cannot be written. The end remains unknown; it is not “written,” not predetermined by anyone, or anything, or by God. Our decisions and actions are unfolding our history. What we do, and what we fail to do, either enhances or dissolves divine order in personal and communal life. We are responsible for what we are becoming. Will our country turn itself around, return to its Founding principles and beliefs, or continue to try to change itself into another form of society? Even though the play is not over, and the story cannot be fully written, the evidence is strong that the history of America is becoming a tragedy, and we are the players. The tragedy of America is a political order breaking away from its rooted and unique past, with citizens escaping into imaginary private worlds, with a ruling class all-too-willing to seek ever-expanding control over the virtually uncontrollable. In a word, the American tragedy is the break from being grounded in reality: from the reality of who we are as a people in history; from the truth of reason; from openness to the reality of God in history. America’s story is becoming a tragedy, an ever-more nightmarish and outlandish tragedy. But because the end has not occurred, there remains some chance for restoration—for a return to our better selves, and to being the unique people in history we were founded to be. Furthermore, as in perhaps every tragedy and in all things human, one may detect comic elements. Listen to our political leaders with their self-importance, their arrogance, their pretensions, their stuffed suits and styled hair-do’s, their empty yet verbose rhetoric. And laugh. For many of our political leaders are so pathetic as to be comical.They are unaware of their own essential emptiness. They evidently take themselves all-too-seriously, because they lack humility. And they do not know how they have come to bore us. Lest we forget, however, that to an extent, our leaders are mirrors of ourselves, pieces of the same American fabric, we must see the wasteland within as well as around us. It is possible that we little people are as empty as our empty rulers. Overall, our common story is becoming increasingly tragic, as decadence and breaking from reality dramatically increase. How could one reasonably maintain that we are not dying? The story is unfolding, but one who wishes to do so may stoop to read the words written on the sand of the beach, as the waves of the sea roll in. The words read: We the People are perishing.                                                            *** A return to rational, sane order may still be possible. There is, however, a major obstacle to a genuine spiritual, moral, political renewal through returning to who we are, and have been, as a people in history under God. The obstacles come mainly from our elites, the ruling classes. The political, intellectual, educational, financial, and artistic elites in America are probably the most decadent part of our culture, and are leading the rest into spiritual and political death. The “little people,” especially those living outside of our decaying cities and urban sprawl, still display considerable common sense, although here, irrationalities of American mental culture at times surface. Many Americans are oblivious to the fact that our elites have deeply betrayed our people and our way of life as articulated by our Founders. How many citizens have studied the Constitution? How many have read the Federalist Papers? Political leaders, teachers, professors, clergy, bureaucrats, media journalists, the influential monied class, business leaders, artists of various types: these elites, who have become highly elitist in the sense of separating themselves from “We the People” (and especially from the “hicks” living in the “fly-over states”) are the major means—or at least the channels—through which our country and our citizens are being damaged, if not ruined. The powerful and influential, and especially the intellectuals, are in effect injecting into us attitudes and thoughts contrary to our Founding and our grounding in common sense and in God. Many of these destroyers of our minds and culture know well what they are doing. They want to “transform” us, and they claim to have “scientific knowledge” of what is good for us. It is not just the President and Congress, and the courts; it is not just school teachers and professional academics; it is not just media stars, journalists, sports figures, entertainers; it is not just the very wealthy with their ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogant power: it is all of them together, who serve as blind and destructive guides to an increasingly sick body politic. Above all, they seek to form and to reform the minds of the young—that is, remake them in their own image. Our elites are detached, not only from the masses whom they try to dominate, but from reality, from the truth of reason, and above all, from contact with God. Very few of these elitists seek to turn us to the truth of God. “What God?” they would quip in private. “That old belief is dead, you know.” And they smile mockingly, for they feel themselves to be far superior, more intelligent, more educated, more “scientific” than the masses of humanity, and most surely superior to people whom they think are stupid enough to believe in God. Our country began steeped in the teachings and symbols of Judeo-Christianity (mainly evangelical Protestantism); in Greco-Roman thought and culture (with a marked preference for Roman thinkers); and in English political culture. We were a people open to God in often simple but effective ways, grounded on common sense, faith in Christ, respect for the Bible as the single most important book to read, individual responsibility, and hard work. Much of this Christian culture has been lost, perhaps in some measure from the influence of so many Catholic immigrants, but far more effectively through the “acid of modernity” in the form of secularization and anti-Christianity. The loss of religious-spiritual culture is not the only major cultural change over decades in America. With the loss of spiritual disciple, we have increasingly become a fragmented society of self-indulgent, self-absorbed individuals, often acting like spoiled children. At the same time, our political order is being ripped from its roots by elitist, secular-progressive intellectuals who want to destroy this country’s Foundations. They especially seek to destroy our divine grounding, and remake America as a distinctly secular, anti-religious, and especially anti-Christian culture. To an extent, the “educated elites” know what they are doing; or rather, they know what they hate, and they seek to destroy what they find so distasteful. The American elites hate what we have been: a people conscious of owing our existence and life to God, a people in history favored by God, guided by God—if we but listen and obey. This very grounding in God (in our case, the God of Judeo-Christianity) is exactly what the secular elitist intellectuals in politics, academia, schools, and the mass media are trying to destroy. And they have largely succeeded. Needless to say, their war on Christianity, and especially on America’s Christian Founding, has been hidden beneath legalistic, secular, and “politically correct” language to mask their intentions. The power elites in America detest our own Founding (or radically re-interpret it), and our divine grounding, which they deny as “non-scientific” and “discriminatory” against unbelievers. The elites will say and do anything to uproot us from our grounding in God, in common sense, and in our American spiritual-political traditions. The cultural-educational-political elites are at war with who we have been, and who we truly are under God. Here is the problem with what they have successfully been doing to our political foundation: the United States of America has no enduring life apart from God. Had we been founded as a secular, anti-Christian regime, the problem would be less severe. In this country, however, the attempt to rip the divine grounding out of our political consciousness is suicidal. How do the cultural elites proceed to rip our body politic and individual citizens off of our grounding in God and our American theological-political traditions?      (1) First, they personally and publicly reject faith in God. They may use “God talk” in public as window dressing to get elected or to dupe the masses, but they themselves display close-mindedness to divine reality. Had they been open to God, our elites would not have forbidden our children to pray aloud in public schools, or forbidden the Bible to be read in public schools. Had these elites not hated God and divine justice, the Ten Commandments would not be banned from public display, as in schools, courts, public buildings. Their actions have been directly contrary to the intentions of our Founders as embodied in the Declaration of Independence—with its explicit reliance on God—and in the Constitution of the United States, whose first amendment forbad a single established religion for the whole country at a time when every state had an established church—which our Founding Fathers deemed both constitutional and necessary for political order.    (2) Second, these secular, anti-religious intellectuals teach and encourage activities that are strongly irrational, often immoral, and destructive of who we have been in history. The elites do not object to a drugged-up America, because a drugged America is not well grounded in reality or common sense. And a drugged America is much more passive, unquestioning, willing to be dominated by the elites. Mind altering drugs, mindless entertainment, disordered and sick music, promiscuous sex, and so on, have proven very useful for controlling the masses, because they continue the break from reality and increase political passivity. The masses are formed and controlled through nearly unbelievably low levels of cultural, moral, intellectual formation. It may not be the case that the elites intentionally set out decades ago to destroy our mental culture for their own gain, but they surely have used the spiritual-mental-moral impoverishment to enhance their power and control. The elites have benefitted from the vacuum in American spiritual life. Sane, healthy, well-balanced, well-educated, and morally upright citizens are far more likely to challenge the decadent elites than the people we have become. To put the matter in plain English: most Americans neither know nor care that the cultural elites are brain-washing them, and using our spiritual impoverishment to their advantage. “We the People” are being ripped off by those who should be helping to form us as good human beings and good citizens. They have failed utterly in their public duty. From what I have observed, the elites are ignorant of their duties, or do not care what damage they inflict on their fellow citizens, as long as they gain power, wealth, prestige, and radically change our constitution, our regime.     (3) Third, the political elites do in fact seek ever more political power, and try to dominate every aspect of American life from Washington, D.C., to the extent possible. Using democratic rhetoric, they are in fact neo-totalitarians who want to dominate every aspect of our political, social, and personal lives. In rhetoric and to an extent in law ours is a democratic republic, but in lived reality we are a mass democracy ruled by an oligarchic clique with totalitarian intentions. To further their end for dominance and mass manipulation, they want to break down traditional communities and bindings, such as traditional (man-woman) marriages, families, small towns, churches, neighborhood associations, local and state political traditions, and the like. The neototalitarians explicitly seek to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of national politicians and unreachable bureaucracies. They believe that they have the “knowledge,” or “science,” to know what is best; those without their expertise are deemed ignorant and incapable of making good political choices. Hence, the elites proudly see themselves as public benefactors, not as the power-driven manipulators that they actually are.     (4) Fourth, the elites seek to dominate the way Americans think. The elites with their secular creed dominate in schools, at universities, in the mass media, in propagandistic entertainment, all aimed at “re-educating” the masses, “raising consciousness,” and trying to change the thinking, attitudes, and beliefs of more simple, less “educated” Americans. In a word, we are being reformed in their image. As a citizen, I experience attempts to be brainwashed daily; as a political scientist, I observe it and analyze it; as a man under God and as a fellow citizen, I seek to warn our people against the diseases with which they are being infected, and killed. The ruling classes have betrayed us, intent to dominate us. In the words of one clever and highly placed intellectual-elitist, we need to be lobotomized (his term: dehomunculized), to have our “souls” removed in order to get “beyond freedom and dignity,” and become an enlightened, godless people.  For such teaching at a leading university, the man was rewarded with a high salary, tenure, renown, and praise from fellow academicians. Now, consider the content of what these elites pour down the throats of the American people. And remember that children and young adults are the most susceptible, so these manipulators work most assiduously on the young. What follows is a sketch of the secular progressive or liberal creed and program by which the elites seek to dominate and to destroy our American way of life. What is the anti-Christian, human-dominating, power-driven creed of the elitist “knowers”?    1. There is no God. “God” was an illusion, they claim, perpetrated by male patriarchy seeking to dominate human beings by fear, especially fear of “disobeying God’s Law” and getting punished by God, or fear of life after death complete with more divine punishments for being “sinful” or “bad.” The Ten Commandments, a weapon of manipulation by the clerical class (so they claim) have been banished from public consciousness to remake us in the image of anti-God, anti-Judeo-Christian secularists. The god of their creed is not God (whom they have declared dead or non-existent), but the gods of “Progress,” of “Humanity,” and of “Science.” Their treasured beliefs can be seen as they claim special knowledge about how to achieve “progress,” and prevent the destruction of humanity through “global warming,” or “climate change,” and the like. Their present fervent-religious craze is to “save the planet” from “anthropogenic climate change,” a tale useful for concentrating power in the hands of the elites in “scientific cultures.”    2. “Reason” and “common sense,” as talked about by the “extreme right wing” so hated by the Liberal establishment, does not exist. “Reasonable” is whatever agrees with the secular-progressive elites. Whatever is contrary to their thinking—which they deem to be “scientific,” of course—is declared irrational. All spiritual religions they declare to be “irrational” and “destructive of humanity.” As for “common sense,” it is worthless to these elites, who live within the framework of a humanly created world. They think that there is no “objective reality” in which to ground one’s life. These elites have replaced reality and reason with their own will to power, desires, and wishes to “change the world.”   3.  There is no real, objective right or wrong—except the evil of believing in God, of course. “Values” are relative; and of course the non-sense word “values” is often employed, precisely because “values” talk reinforces the belief that “it is all relative.” (How can one argue about “values”? One cannot. So they are useful to squelch examination of one’s moral choices.) According to secular thinking, each person has a right to decide for himself or herself what is right or wrong, what is just or unjust, and how to live—under the control of the governing elites, that is. Freedom means doing what you want, and that means “having fun,” following your whims and desires wheresoever they lead—unless one’s words make others “uncomfortable,” or provoke self-examination. In effect, each person gets to be his or her own god, and can “create themselves” by their life-styles and choices. The only exception: the State has the ultimate say on what is acceptable, because the State embodies the highest good: concentrated power. The State, mass “education” (as in propaganda) and entertainment (often carrying much propaganda) are the main ways for secular elites to dominate and “re-educate” the masses who may be stupid enough to believe in God, or in “religion,” or in “objective truth” other than “science.”   4. The “American way of life,” the set of common beliefs and practices in the past, is bad and destructive—or at the least, a relic of the past, left behind by “progress.”  Americans must be “re-educated” to think of themselves, not as “Americans,” but as “citizens of the world,” as internationally-minded, as part of the “family of humanity.” The elites want to see America torn off from its roots, and become “multi-cultural,” “pluralistic,” “internationally-minded.” These secular elites do not understand that every body politic embodies a particular way of life, and the attempt to make it “universal” or “all-inclusive” is inherently destructive of the common political good. It is possible that many of the more educated among the elites know exactly what they are doing, because they seek to have America dissolve into a “world government,” or “one world” without national borders. The actions of the Obama administration have often pointed and sought to move our regime in this direction: reject American particularism for “globalism.” “Open-borders” are a major step in that direction. The pattern is to have the traditional American way of life inundated by so many immigrants from diverse cultural backgrounds that the old way will be overcome by “multi-cultural pluralism.” The American emperors find such “pluralism” useful for their increased dominance.   5.  For these progressive elites, science is not only a way to acquire knowledge about the physical world, but it is useful tool for dominating the minds of the ignorant masses. It is not only science as a search for truth about physical reality that is taught, but scientism: the belief that “Science” is the highest form of truth; the belief that what is not “science” cannot be truth; the belief that scientists have the right answers about how to live, as they supposedly know what is best; the belief that there is no knowledge worth learning that does not come from Science; the belief that human beings will develop and mature, only as led by Science and Scientists.  Much of the “science fiction” genre of stories, books, and TV shows, and feature length films indoctrinate passive minds with "scientism." "Only Science can save the planet," or “save humanity,” and so on. “Science” as scientism is used as a weapon to dominate the minds of the masses; a good example can be seen it what is presently called “climate change,” although this movement changes names and forms on a regular basis. Several decades ago, it was the coming “new ice age” that would destroy human life on the planet; then came “global warming,” often stirring up mass hysteria led by charlatan politicians spewing out “scientific evidence;” and now we are served up “climate change.” In each case, the claim is made that “scientists know the truth,” that Science is always right, and alone can “save the planet.” And of course, governmental power must be vastly expanded in the process of “saving the planet.” One is not supposed to be conscious that the “truth” politically-minded scientists proclaim happens to change according to their whims and so-called “evidence.” That these scientists have considerable evidence is not the question; it is the exclusion of contrary evidence, and insisting that they do indeed “know the truth” that smacks of Gnostic arrogance. In America, as in western Europe (and previously in the Soviet Union), Scientists are in effect the new priest-class, with their “knowledge” to dominate the masses. Finally, note well:  the problem is by no means with science in itself, which is a highly valuable way to gain knowledge about the physical universe; the problem comes from non-scientific, anti-rational exclusion other forms of knowledge as irrelevant for the good of human life. Scientism is a mass ideology, fed historically by the French Enlightenment, restrictive irrational “rationalism,” genuine scientific achievements and their effects on human consciousness, secularism, and the ideology of “Positive Science” as launched by Comte in the mid-19th century.   6. The only views worth considering are those who agree with these basic beliefs: no God; Science as the sole truth; end of “American way of life” as particular or parochial; a democratic religion of “values,” “tolerance,” “humanity,” “equality,” and so on. Those who hold views contrary to these basic opinions should and must be isolated, kept from communicating, prevented from sharing their thinking to the extent possible. Only the “educated elites” know what is best, and have the right to rule politically and intellectually. Progressive elites must dominate mass education, the air waves, the mass media—and they do. Claiming to be “tolerant” of all “values,” in fact the American progressive elites seek to liberate Americans from their ignorant religious beliefs and practices, and from the particularism of the “American way of life,” as noted. There is in truth nothing “tolerant” about this progressivist ideology when it encounters any disbelief, questioning, or resistance. Rather than seek to understand the viewpoints of others, they are dropped into the oblivion hole of irrelevance as “superstitious,” “unbelievers in Science,” “fascist conservatives,” and so on. Speaking of “tolerance,” our elites do not tolerate what would undermine their monopoly of “truth” and power.  7. Activities that break one’s consciousness loose from reality are beneficial. For example, the use of mind-altering drugs—such as marijuana, cocaine, pain killers, antidepressants, and so on-is permitted, legalized, even strongly encouraged. The enlightened progressive elites do not want people grounded in reality; indeed they claim that reality does not exist or cannot be known, other than physical and social reality. Tearing human beings free from comprehensive reality is aided by mind-altering drugs. In addition to drugs, other means to “re-educate” the masses have proven invaluable: low-level, intellect-numbing mass education; suppression of classical learning with its grounding in reason open to the fullness of reality; mass mind-numbing media; large doses of spectator sports; and nearly constant bombardment by obscene, violent, mindless music and other forms of popular “entertainment,” aimed at children or nearly illiterate adults. People who are not immersed in media and entertainment are not free enough from the “reality” that the elites insist is not real anyway. The point is that any escape from reality will do: drugs, TV, movies, sports, mentally sick music, commercialism, frequent and luxurious vacations, etc. The Liberal-Progressive mentality does not want people living in silence, in solitude, thinking, meditating, or even walking in the woods—unless to draw attention to themselves and their “cause,” such as joining and supporting the Sierra Club to “save the planet.”  8.  The political leaders must be “knowers” in the sense of Gnostic intellectuals. They “know” what others need, what is “really good for the people.” They are convinced, as President Obama has often said, that they are “on the right side of History,” whatever such a meaningless phrase might mean. Actually, however meaningless the talk about “being on the right side of History” is, in fact it embodies the claim of these Gnostic intellectuals to know the course of history, its “progress,” and that they are the enlightened forerunners of their visionary future. Again quoting Obama, “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” as their imaginary future comes to fruition in their own epiphany. These knower-politicians “believe in Science,” and use their so-called “Science” as a primary weapon of power, and a means to control the minds and actions of the masses. Historically, this “belief in Science” and the benefits from having technocratic rulers were foreshadowed in the French Revolution, in the Communist Revolution in the Soviet Union, and especially in National Socialist Germany, in which scientists and technocrats played an enormous role in developing the efficiency to carry out the Party’s plan to “transform the world” and to conduct mass murder. In America, these “enlightened” politicians do indeed seek and grab power, but they are incapable of leading in a rational sense, because they are not statesmen, nor do they truly understand what is the common good, which they are actually destroying in their politics of division, of “divide and conquer.” These politicians are, indeed, “blind guides,” political hacks clever with words, too removed from common sense reality to act prudently. Some are just technocratic policy wonks who seek to micromanage others’ lives. These politicians and technocrats are self-declared “public servants,” in reality gorging themselves at the public trough. Their enemy is surely not radical Muslim jihadists, for example; their sustained enemy is whatever or whoever promotes the hated “American way of life,” as outlined above. They have come to liberate us from ourselves, from our own past, from the country in history that the United States of America has been.  9. The progressive intellectualistic elites use litmus tests to discern if one is with them or against them. The test presently held up before the American people is “climate change.” If one does not “believe in Science and climate change,” one is dismissed as an ignoramus and evil. The older, more established litmus test to see if one is truly with the Progressive elites or against them is abortion. For the anti-God, pro-Science, anti-American elites the test of one’s conformity to their ideology has been: “Are you pro-choice?” To be part of the in-club among American elites, to be “enlightened,” one must be “pro-choice,” meaning that one favors the practice of abortion as a “woman’s right.” The present coded test now is to be “pro-women,” or “pro-women’s health,” with its necessary inclusion of being pro-abortion as “an option.” As one of these death-dealing “knowers” declared in public, a woman is not “liberated,” cannot truly be “pro-women,” who has not had at least one abortion. The killing of the life in the womb is not only about “a woman’s right to choose,” but it is a ritualistic sacrifice to the god of Self, of Me, of being a “Liberated Woman.” In short, abortion is not just a public policy and practice favored by our elites; it serves as the acid test of loyalty to the anti-God, self-divinizing creed, to the Gnostic mass movement headed by our political elites. Killing the infant—and perhaps “harvesting its body parts” for money—is the new and improved “Declaration of Independence” from God, from reason, from right, from reality. Most unfortunately, millions upon millions of Americans have been won over to legitimizing this practice. And that should not be so difficult to see if one recalls that America has become a highly self-indulgent, self-centered culture, and that the masses are easily and readily “re-educated” by propaganda. For a self-indulgent, self-absorbed people, the killing of “unwanted” infants is widely acceptable. Killing infants in the womb proves the triumph of the will to power. Rather than merely accept the nihilistic and ideological sacrifice of infants to the god of Self-liberation and “social Progress”, one must return to common sense truth and ask:  If the killing of the infant in its mother’s womb is not morally wrong, and reprehensibly evil, what possibly could be evil?  If one has the “right to choose” to kill the pre-born infant, who is in truth fully innocent of any wrong-doing, why does not one have the “right to choose” to kill a two-year old who is “unsatisfactory,” “unwanted,” or “bad seed?”  Why stop at birth?  What essentially changes at birth? Is a new-born infant really “autonomous” from its mother?  Is it now a “conscious human being,” and before birth it was not?  In reality there are no rational grounds for pretending that pre-birth and post birth are radically different. There are various stages in development of the one human being. It makes no sense to stop annihilation of children at “the third trimester” of pregnancy, or even at the moment of birth. And these same intellectuals have often favored the practice of “mercy killing,” euthanasia, a practice by no means uncommon in hospitals or care centers, such as when it involves hastening the death of “defective” newborns, or especially the elderly, who are deemed to be no longer “socially useful.” In her studies of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explained in detail the ways in which concentration camps—the death camps of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—were models of the “new society” their leaders sought to create as they were “building Socialism.” In America, and no doubt in decadent European societies as well, abortion mills and hidden hospital wards are the models of the kind of society which Progressive elites seek to create, and have been creating. Abortion was not chosen by majority vote, as neither National Socialism nor Soviet Socialism were; this evil practice was foisted on an overly-passive populous by clever intellectuals on the Supreme Court who defended abortion as part of a so-called “right to privacy.” What happened to the “right to life” of all human beings, unless “found guilty in a court of law?” The highest reaches of our legal profession betrayed our people. For years now, the practice of abortion on demand has been promoted and defended by Progressive politicians, media stars, Hollywood, the scientistic community, and verbally gifted judges. In hidden and sterile environments, with practices not shown to the American people who can see virtually everything else on television, unwanted infants in the womb are deprived of their right to life, are brutally murdered, have their brains sucked out, organs harvested for sale, bodies disposed of through incineration, as practiced by Progressive forerunners in the Nazi extermination camps. In abortion death camps, agents of “Science” and Progressive elites dominate, control, destroy lives deemed “unwanted.”  Killing of millions has taken place behind closed doors. And the same continues under the guise of “euthanasia,” “mercy killing,” for thousands of other human beings.  Such is the new “universal society” of the Progressive intellectuals and our morally bankrupt politicians. Here we see how the neglect and even hatred for God becomes flesh and blood in the murder of innocent human life—wrapped up, of course, in spurious slogans about “a woman’s right to choose.” To choose what? To murder her infant? As foreshadowed by the Nazis and Communists, America is becoming a “politically correct,” publicly acceptable form of a totalitarian regime, led by the progressive elites with their utopian dreams. And lest one think that these claims are aimed solely at the Democratic Party because of references to Leader Obama, let the obvious be clearly stated: both major political parties in America are dominated by Progressive elites, and both parties have much blood on their hands for tolerating the evil of abortion, for their lust for power and domination, for damaging our country by their foolish and often destructive policies. The Republican elites have often used a public stance against abortion for political gain, but in reality done very little to limit and end the practice. “By their fruits you will know them.” Both parties have betrayed us; we have been deceived. In truth, these Progressive leaders, dominant in society and in both parties, are not grounded on reality; they are divorced from common sense reason, drunk on their love of power. To see what one such progressive looks like, observe closely President Obama, with his meteoric rise to power. He is often described as “cool” and “detached.” Obama is detached, but not in the spiritual sense of a Buddhist monk, nor in a general way of being unemotional. Rather, Obama is, to a degree rarely seen before in an American President, detached from reality and from common sense, adrift in an intellectualistic-nonsensical world of his own imagination. Much of his rhetoric is in fact nonsensical. Our country witnessed the phenomenon a century earlier in Woodrow Wilson, another intellectual without grounding in reality. One can observe how Obama talks without any passion or focused energy on mass killings by terrorists, whom he surely will not call “Muslim terrorists” for his own bizarre reasons. On the other hand, with much animation, anger, and evident disdain, Obama speaks about his American political opponents, some of whom may actually be seeking to reground America in God and common sense, or at least resist parts of his Progressive agenda to remake our country. Christian believers, Americans attached to our traditional way of life, and genuine pro-life conservatives are Obama’s public enemies, as he often displays, and on occasion subtly admits, demonstrated by the way he excoriates those who disagree with his elitist, dictatorial policies. The fact that American citizens would elect a man with such distorted, irrational thinking, and without any background in making important executive decisions, shows the effects the elite progressive propagandizers have had on everyday American citizens.  Part of the tragedy of America is that the majority of voters twice elected a man so visibly detached from reality, and more devoted to Marxist-progressive beliefs than to the traditional American way of life. “We the People” have been duped, because we have become increasingly blind ourselves. And our blindness is fed by self-indulgence, which these power-hungry elites are all-too-willing to keep feeding. They have the power, we get the goodies—the crumbs that fall from our masters’ tables.                                                             *** The American story is becoming the American tragedy. “We the People” are cutting ourselves off from reality, from reason and common sense, from the truth of the divine Whole, from taking responsibility for our own actions, from our own history, from our sense of being a unique people in history under God. We are being “transformed,” that is, manipulated, by men and women who believe and claim that they are truly “the ones we have been waiting for.” Not God, but self; and not anyone, but “educated” progressive intellectuals. We have become increasingly devoted to Messianic hot-air leaders who loudly proclaim, “We will transform the world.” Despite their rhetoric, look around, and see how we are crumbling outside and within. These irrational progressives want first and foremost to kill Americans’ self-understanding as a people under God. That belief was the central article of our Founding, and has been the centerpiece of our self-identity as a people in history. As these elites seek to kill our grounding in God, in reason, in our own unique identity, they are killing our body politic, and permit and encourage the murder of innocent human life. They are seeking to give birth to a “new nation”that is secular, anti-God, multi-cultural, pluralistic, tolerant of nonsense, utterly dominated by enlightened intellectuals, and totalitarian, dominating all aspects of life. How long America can exist, when so many “educated elites” are busy remaking us in their own distorted image, no one knows. Their work is already far advanced, furthered by American spiritual immaturity and self-indulgence. Our sense of being a unique people under God is being laid to rest.  We the People are being aborted. Having been ripped off of our Foundation, we will pass away in the flux of history.

In The Silence Of The Night

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” The Word is ever becoming flesh in each living being, present as we lovingly surrender, cooperate, attend to his presence. Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds: simple souls gazing in silence, hearts filled with wonder, awe, gratitude. The busy world does not stop to stoop down, to look into the manger. You are here now. So is the one you are seeking in the stillness of your heart.

                                            The peace of silence quiets troubled souls,

                                            It bathes the spirit, concentrates the mind;

                                            It stills the passions, consecrates, consoles,

                                            Refreshes energies, restores, refines.

                                            How much of me I spend in idle speech,

                                            And restless listening to programmed sounds;

                                            Yet all the while I'm longing to retreat

                                            Away from all distractions, to reground:

                                            To keep the body, soul, and mind at peace,

                                            To dive beneath the ocean's crashing waves,

                                            To wake alone when all the world's asleep,

                                            To still distracting thoughts and simply gaze.

                                            In silence I am happy, one, and free;

                                            In silence what becomes begins to be.

                                            Merry Christmas to each and to all.

                                            Fr. Wm. Paul McKane

                                            Christmas 2015

Who Are These Terrorists

Who are the men and women who are carrying out murderous acts of terror in numerous countries of the world? Are they simply men and women committing “acts of gun violence,” as the spokesman for the President of the United States recently described the murder of 14 men and women, and maiming of others, in San Bernardino, California? Again, for years, the Muslim Army psychiatrist who murdered fellow soldiers in Texas in a horrific assault was said to have committed “work place violence” by the same President’s Administration. And again, some months ago President Obama declared in a nationally broadcast speech that ISIL—as he calls the Muslim army conquering territory and setting up a regime in Syria and Iraq—is “neither Muslim nor a State.” So according to the President, ISIL or ISIS (the group has often changed its name) is not Muslim. Consider this claim: President Obama publicly declared that ISIL “is not Muslim.”

The American President presents himself as having the authority and the wisdom to declare who is Muslim, and who is not. Political and religious identifications are part of reality. Whom does President Obama think he is to define reality as he wishes? Well, it has been evident repeatedly that the President speaks as though he can redefine reality. In truth, however, an apple is an apple even if the President should declare that “apples are not apples.” Then again, this is the man who grandiosely proclaimed in 2008, when first running for President, “We will transform the world.” The world is what it is; the attempt to transform the nature of things is grounded on metastatic faith, a belief in magic; it is a form of spiritual sickness. In reality, the President’s declaration that ISIL is “not Muslim” is absurd. ISIL or ISIS is an army of self-proclaimed Muslim believers. Their public statements, available on the internet, make such a claim. President Obama’s obvious avoidance of using the term “Islamic terrorists” or an equivalent phrase points to at least three things: his own personal problem with ascribing any terrorist acts to Muslims; his belief that he can define and redefine reality, as he wishes; and his neglect to abide by the principle of interpreting human beings and groups as they interpret themselves. The President has been speaking and acting out of his own fantasy and distorted conception of reality.

What is this basic principle for understanding political reality, that needs to be applied to acts of terror committed by Islamic extremists, such as ISIS? It is the principle of “self-understanding,” or “self-interpretation.” To understand human phenomena, including politics, a fundamental question to ask an individual, a group, or a society is: “Who do you say you are?” “How do you interpret yourself?” To one who calls himself a Marxist, what makes one think that he has the right or authority to say, “No, you are not a Marxist; you are what I say you are?” Self-interpretation must be respected as a beginning point for understanding political reality. One’s self-interpretation is foundational; actions and words flow from it. Then, if the self-interpretation does not accord with reality beyond this person or group, then it can be judged misleading or fallacious. In the case of the terrorists who attacked Paris, or the Army Base in Texas, or most recently in San Bernardino, apparently each of these terrorists declared themselves to be Muslim. So by their own words and actions, they are Muslim or Islamic terrorists. To claim otherwise, or to avoid admitting the obvious fact, shows disturbing, perhaps pathological problems with reality.

Should the President or his administration wish to claim that ISIL / ISIS is not “really Muslim,” as Obama flatly asserted before the American public, then he must give objective reasons for his opinion, but he did not. Do the members of ISIL not profess faith in Allah and his prophet? Do they not claim to accept the authority of the Qur’an? Do they at least claim to observe Muslim practices? If not, give evidence for ways that these terrorists are not “good Muslims.” In the meantime, take them at their word: these terrorists—ISIL / ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Horam, and many other groups operating in the world today—interpret themselves as Muslim. Their claim should be taken seriously. The inability to recognize reality, to admit it, and to deal with reality manifests a serious mental or spiritual illness.

Now, to claim responsibly that these terrorists are not “true Muslims” or devout Muslims would require considerable evidence, beginning with proof that these men and women do not even interpret themselves as faithful Muslims (which is contrary to evidence). In this regard, it would be worthwhile to hear what Muslim clerics and scholars have to say about these terrorists, and for these Muslim spokespersons to judge the goodness or evil of their actions. Islamic terrorism, I submit, presents an extremely important and pressing need for leading Muslim spokesmen to address, interpret, and denounce as a betrayal of Islam, if they think that it is a betrayal; otherwise, silence towards the terrorists by Muslim clerics, theologians, and scholars expresses tacit agreement with their destructive activities. Silence from Muslim leaders could be motivated by fear of reprisal if they should speak out in condemnation of Islamic terrorism; in a phrase, they do not want to have their heads cut off. In either case, I submit, our own elected and paid political leaders should be far more aggressive not only in fighting Islamic terrorists, but in warning the American public of the grave dangers we are facing from radicalized Islam. Why has the President never warned us of the real dangers we are experiencing and facing from Islamic terrorists? Why the silence?

The failure of American political leaders to deal with Islamic terrorism is not one of mere “political correctness,” as is sometimes claimed, but evidence of a break from reality. This break manifests serious mental-spiritual problems, whether or not this unpleasant truth is recognized by most American citizens. In fact, the inability of the American political and educational elites to see its own intellectual blindness to reality, its own spiritual refusal to recognize and deal rationally and prudently with major political problems, shows how widespread mental-spiritual illness is among these American elites. Those with common sense, grounded on reality, must come to terms with the painful truth of how widespread such illness has become in the United States. President Obama’s break from reality, his inability to recognize and to deal with reality, is not the primary political problem facing our country. He will soon be out of office, but the profound illness in our people will abide. The President’s failures and rational shortcomings are obvious. What they have exposed is the lack of clear and grounded response to profoundly distorted thinking, to a break from reality. In other words, the blatant failures of American political leadership disturbingly show how disconnected from reality both the elites and the general American citizenry have become.

Simply and directly stated: As a people in history, we Americans have to a troubling extent cut ourselves off from a rational, common sense grounding in reality. America is increasingly divorced from God, from reason, from truth, from our own founding as a particular people in history. The loss of contact with reality is the fundamental problem of American political, social, and personal life.

Regarding the concrete problem of recurring acts of terrorism by Muslims, we can and must ask: “What is the connection, if any, between Islam and terrorism?” Or is there no ideological or historical connection? Did Muslims just suddenly appear out of nowhere who are willing to use violence and murder to spread their religion, or to gain political territory, or to damage the “Satanic Empire,” as several leading Muslim clerics have termed the United States? Are Islamic terrorists an extremely rare phenomenon among Muslims, and opposed by the vast majority of Muslims? Or are they more numerous, and supported by millions of Muslims?

First, note well that various religious and secular groups in history have used violence to spread their “religion,” including the United States of America; in our expansion across the North American continent, we killed off thousands of Native Americans, often deemed to be “less than human.” We enslaved a black population, declared by the Supreme Court to be “property,” and not persons under the Law of the land. The same Supreme Court has decided that the unborn child in the mother’s womb is not a person but in effect her property, at least up to some point in pregnancy that the courts determine; and the moment the same being is born, the infant suddenly becomes a “person,” so defined by the State. Who is playing with reality here? Our country has often used violence to spread its way of life. England, France, Germany, Russia, China and many other countries have done the same. So have various ideological and religious groups and societies in history. There were many years of murderous violence and even terror between Protestant and Catholic groups in Europe in the early modern period. Thousands of lives were destroyed in the name of God by Christians; and thousands of Christians were killed in the name of the Roman Empire and its god, Caesar. Similarly, millions of pre-born infants have been killed in the name of “a woman’s right to choose,” apparently a deity in the American pantheon, with other “rights.” So Islam is not alone in being willing to spread its way of life and political dominance by violence.

However, there is another fact which must be kept in mind in considering the relationship between Islam and violence. Whereas Jesus, from whom Christianity arose, eschewed and condemned the use of violence, the founder of the political-religion of Islam, Mohammed, who called himself, “the Prophet” (or, “the Apostle”) repeatedly justified the use of violence against “unbelievers” in his prophetic utterances, later written down as the Qur’an; and according to historians, Mohammed himself lead his army of Muslim believers into battle, slaughtering, among others, thousands of Jews in Arabia. Of course, booty was taken in battle, with a prescribed 20% given to the Prophet as Leader. President Bush’s assertion immediately after the terrorist attack on 9/11 that Islam is a “religion of peace” showed an utter lack of knowledge of the Qur’an, and of Islamic history. Much like President Obama, President Bush displayed a break from the truth of reality, or a desire to deceive citizens about Islam. What he should have claimed was, “Millions of Muslims desire peace with us; millions of Muslims want peace only within an Islamic empire. We must deal justly with both kinds of Muslims. We have no other choice if we wish to live in relative safety and to survive as a people.” Such truthful speech should not be expected from our leaders, accustomed to deceiving us, or being deceived themselves. To have made a distinction between Muslim terrorists and Muslims desiring peace with us may have been “politically incorrect,” or unpopular, or seen as “discriminatory.” But not to distinguish between good and evil, and their relative embodiments in human beings and societies, is a major symptom of spiritual sickness. Again, we are brought to the simple point: our political leaders misinterpret, ignore, distort reality. Being deceived, they deceive.

The problem of Islam is considerable, and must be faced: the Qur’an openly calls for and justifies the use of violence to spread its way of life, belief in Allah as God, Mohammed as his prophet. For centuries such explicit passages may have been ignored or overlooked, but they were like craggy rocks under shallow water. In times of crises, in storms, the rocks have jutted out above the surface of the water, and ripped open many a ship passing over them. Non-violent adherents of Islam must face this question: What should we do with passages in our sacred writing which teach the use of violence and deception against “infidels”? Should we seek to carry out a “holy war” to spread Islam around the world? Or should we rather expand the Qur’an’s teaching of mercy towards fellow believers to include how to treat every human being—including those whom we deem “infidels”? Islam must come to terms with itself, distinguishing between good and evil in its own foundation. As it neglects to do so, Islamic fundamentalists bent on the use of violence will continue to cause terror and death throughout the world—“in the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.” Muslims must choose: the compassionate and merciful God, or hatred and cruelty towards fellow human beings. Or do they see no contradiction in praising God for being merciful, and at the same time denying mercy to God’s creatures?

A note to secularists in our society, who think that “religion” is the real problem, is in order. To claim that the problem is with “religions” and “belief in God” is foolish. The word “religion” is not the best, and is a case of superficial labeling. The word “religion” is not used in the Hebrew Scriptures (the “Old Testament”) nor in the New Testament of early Christianity. Whether or not the Arabic word for “religion” was used in the Qur’an, I do not know; it appears in some English translations. “Religion” (religio in the original Latin) was coined by the Roman thinker, Cicero, to write about that to which people bound themselves, or committed themselves. Judaism, Christianity, Islam are ways of life: of faith, of worship, of virtues to be done and vices to be avoided. Similarly, Americanism, and particularly what scholars have called “the American civil religion,”is also a way of life; historically, the American civil religion derived from Judaeo-Christianity, especially from more “low church” Protestant sectarianism, with large infusions of Enlightenment ideology sewn into the fabric. America has had from our Founding a civil religion, a publicly sponsored way of life. Not all ways of life are equally good or noble, not all beliefs are equally true, not all actions are equally virtuous. We must state the obvious because ignorance of basic political truths is abroad in our land today.

Comparing the validity of different ways of life is left for another day. Suffice it for the present to raise to consciousness problems and questions that must be faced, especially in the United States of America, which has prided itself on such secular “values” as tolerance, pluralism, and civility to all, and has often failed to make needed distinctions (such as between good and evil): Which Muslims desire to live in peace with us, renouncing violence; and which ones seek to destroy our way of life in order to spread Islam all over the global ecumene? How can we tell the difference? Have our political leaders and governmental agencies genuinely attempted to discern the difference in each case of a man or woman seeking to come to the United States as a guest or as a permanent resident? If not, why not? Have we blindly assumed that all or nearly all Muslims desire peace, when their own holy book proclaims war against all “unbelievers”? Are our leaders that ignorant of Islam, or is something else at work?

The question must be asked: What kind of political order would allow—or even welcome—into its midst human beings who passionately seek the destruction of that order? What community willingly embraces those who seek its death? What does it say about the United States if we are unable, or unwilling, to discriminate judiciously between Muslims who want to live in peace with us, and those who are willing to murder us if we do not embrace their “religion,” their conception of God, become part of the umma, and observe Sharia law? Has the United States as a people lost, not only common sense, but its will to live? Are we as a people in history committing suicide? If so, why? And what, if anything, can be done to wake our country up, to move us to seek good and not evil, to protect our people from murder and violence, to deal with reality as it is, and not the way we would want it to be?

We see images on television, on the internet, of barbaric Muslim warriors cutting off the heads of innocent human beings. The atrocities are extreme, utterly inhumane, with the publicity employed, clearly intended to terrorize the public. We Americans feel disgust and outrage at such atrocities, and we should—and be willing to stop them by force, not by empty rhetoric, as if we can “change reality” by magic words. For years we have stood by and watched such murderous violence, and taken few concrete actions to stop it. Why? In part because of the President’s failure to lead, unwillingness to use force to check destructive force, failure to face reality as it is, and inability or unwillingness to understand Islamic terrorism. That much should be obvious to all by now.

On the other hand, it could be useful to consider the perspective of a devout Muslim who lives in a contemporary Western society priding itself on nonviolence and humanitarian ways. Is there no similarity between sawing off a man’s head, and sucking out the brains of an unborn infant in the womb? Is there nothing in common here? Is not murderous violence employed both by ISIS and Al Qaeda on the victims of Muslim terrorists, and by medical professionals on the hidden victims of “unwanted pregnancies?” Does not the American way of life both practice and justify the grotesque killing of innocent life in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of infants in the womb, and of children born and left to die because they are deemed “defective”? The candidate for President who publicly said that deciding if fetuses in the womb of their human mothers counted as human life was “above my pay grade” is the same man, now President, who has been unable to wage effective war on Islamic terrorists. Apparently, deciding how to act effectively, and even what the evil is against which to fight, is “above his pay grade.” Are we not seeing what a refusal to admit reality looks like? Are we not facing its deadly consequences?

The peace of silence

From: Sonnets, 1991
William Paul McKane

​The peace of silence quiets troubled souls,
It bathes the spirit, concentrates the mind;
It stills the passions, consecrates, consoles,
Refreshes energies, restores, refines.
How much of me I spend in idle speech,
And restless listening to programmed sounds;
Yet all the while I'm longing to retreat
Away from all distractions, to reground:
To keep the body, soul, and mind at peace,
To dive beneath the ocean's crashing waves,
To wake alone when all the world's asleep,
To still distracting thoughts and simply gaze.
   In silence I am happy, one, and free;
   In silence what becomes begins to be.

Waiting And Fulfillment

John the Baptist waits for the Jewish Messiah, without a sense that God is present here and now in a decisive way, except in his prophesying: for John, the “Kingdom” is in the future. For the Apostle Paul, a contemporary of both John and Jesus, the ultimate fulfillment is “coming,” but the reality of God’s Kingdom is already present in all the faithful. What is the difference?

The Baptist has the kind of faith in God common among ancient Jews, and later seen in Muslims: God is wholly beyond the world. The Incarnation of God is inconceivable to Jesus’ contemporaries, and to Mohammed when he began his Islamic political-religious movement six centuries later. For professing faith that God was present in Christ, and therefore in his people, the earliest Christians were expelled from synagogues, prevented from worshipping with their fellow Jews. The Quran of Mohammed went much further. The “prophet” declared that anyone who says that Jesus is “Son of God” is guilty of blasphemy, and deserving of death. There is no way for either ancient Jews or for Koranic Islam to admit the possibility of experiencing the presence of the living God. The God they proclaim is fully transcendent, that is, beyond the world and time. Note: Judaism and Islam were later modified through the influence of Christianity and other mystical movements, such as the Sufis from Iran.

The Apostle Paul’s experience, and that of the other authors of our New Testament, was radically different. Even though they waited for ultimate fulfillment beyond death (documented in Paul’s letters), or through Christ’s complete coming “at the End,” Paul and other early Christians were intensely aware of the presence of God in them. And that is the decisive meaning of “faith in Christ.” The God to whom they surrender in faith actually lives in their spirits, in their consciousness, and they are lovingly aware of God’s presence as “Christ” (personal) or “Holy Spirit” (impersonal, as in love, joy, peace).

In faith-union with Christ present to him, the Apostle gives the practical advice we hear today from Paul’s great Letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” That means, “Christ is present; rejoice in his presence.” Joy is the experience of the presence of one’s beloved. “Your kindness should be known by all; the Lord is near.” Because of Christ’s nearness, his indwelling presence, one should act in and with Christ, with love, kindness, mercy. “Have no anxiety at all.” God is with you; chill out! “With thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God, surpassing all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in union with Christ Jesus.”

Here you see the living difference in the spiritual experience of ancient Israel, waiting for its Messiah; and Koranic Islam, limiting its presence of God to prophets, especially to Mohammed, whom he himself declares to be the last and greatest prophet, greater than Jesus.

The good news of the Gospel is that the living God dwells not just in a few select prophets, but in every man, woman, child who allows God to reign in his or her heart and mind. Through faith in Christ, God’s Kingdom has come, is coming into hearts, will be fulfilled in God’s time and way.

The Joy Of The LORD

Advent is not Lent. The blue or purple on Advent vestments and altar cloth is for divine majesty, for the Coming of God, the true Ruler of humankind. The purple of Lent is for penance, for “repenting in dust and ashes.” Advent is the season of patient waiting for the Coming of God, and yet, we wait in joy. The first two readings today bring out the theme of joy, of rejoicing in the LORD, of praying with joy. John the Baptist has a more sober message of repenting as God comes, but we are to take these readings as a unit: Repent, indeed, and also let your hearts rejoice, as salvation draws near.

What is joy? It is the heart-felt response to the presence of the one you love. When your beloved is with you, you feel joy. To wait for the ultimate Coming of God with joy, and for the Church to encourage us to feel this joy, is possible for one reason: We are waiting for the One we love, and for the Lover who is already present with his people. We are not wailing and crying in our season of longing, but even now, rejoicing that the God we await is with us, waiting with us. He who is Coming is He who is already here. Otherwise, we are not waiting for God, but for someone else, something else. The LORD of all is present, and in him we rejoice; and yet, we long to become all the closer to God, for our ultimate joy to flood us completely.

Christians ought not to be an essentially mournful, unhappy, dismal people. Yes, we will suffer, and there are times for mourning, as when a beloved has died. We mourn with those who mourn, as we do with John Hill’s family now. But the Christian attitude remains hopeful in the midst of suffering, trusting that God the liberator is at hand, and as we surrender our hearts and minds to the God who is present here and now, we truly do “enter into the joy of the LORD.”

“Rejoicing in the LORD shall be your strength.” Take courage in the God who comes, and yet is with us every moment of our journey home. “Behold, I AM with you always, even to the End…”

I believe that Pope Francis would approve this message. He encourages us to be a joyful people, and to help others live in God’s peace and joy. Our Pope seeks to share joy, because he knows the healing power of the joy of the LORD—something the world cannot give.