The Voice of Common Sense

John Beeler put this on Facebook:

A good word from Brian Hoostal:

“There are a lot of people calling for kindness and peace following the historic Trump victory over the Clinton political machine. The argument is that we need to start working on healing the wounds of division.

“I strongly disagree with this sentiment.

“The wounds of division are the hallmark of the progressive political strategic arsenal. Progressive contempt for the American people, their hatred for middle America, is on full display. These people hate the common man. Progressives look down their elitist noses at those Americans that sweep floors, wait on tables, drive heavy duty trucks, work construction, wrench on vehicles, work in factories, work in coal mines, work as electricians and plumbers, volunteer at churches, and donate their time and money to help the poor. These are the people that did not want Hillary Clinton and her husband to waltz back into the White House in order perpetuate an economic climate that makes their lives that much harder. These are the people that did not want to see their sons die overseas in a war that Mrs. Clinton was sure to force onto the nation. In the twisted mind of the secular progressive, and in the evil darkness of their heart, they view such people as racists. Not because they have done anything racist, but because many of them are white. For the progressive, actions don’t determine the label a person earns, it is the categories invented by the left. If you are white, you are a racist. That is the depth of progressive analysis. They view these hard working, dedicated, patriotic, caring, loving, American citizens as uneducated and stupid. Let me say this loud and clear, there is more critical thinking taking place on a shop floor when a diesel mechanic is working an overhaul, than four years of courses in gender studies classrooms.

“Letting down our guard is exactly what progressives want us to do. The Trump victory has forced their ugliness to emerge for all to see. Progressives don’t love democracy, although they shout it it in your face from their safe-spaces. They hate democracy when they don’t get what they want, which is why you see them protesting a completely legitimate presidential election. They see their ideology being defeated by the very people they have shouted down for the last 40 years.

“Now is not the time for peacemaking.

“You cannot make deals with the devil.

“Now is the time for vigilance.”

Despite my own distaste for the person of Donald Trump, I was concerned for the deteriorating state of the world to some extent caused by American interventionist foreign policy and systematic “regime change” – that was causing the run-up to World War III. My own wife complains that Putin too is a despot. What do we do? Declare war against him or try to work with him until things evolve differently. But he’s like Hitler! – they complain.

What’s the alternative in today’s world, especially as neither Putin, nor Assad nor Trump plan on putting anyone in a gas chamber? The alternative is global rule by private interests, secret societies and the kind of people who financed Hitler in the 1930’s. Orwell saw it coming, when language becomes no more than euphemism and newspeak.

There is more critical thinking taking place on a shop floor when a diesel mechanic is working an overhaul, than four years of courses in gender studies classrooms.

That shook me. In September 2014, François Hollande called poor people les sans-dents (people with bad or missing teeth), implying that they do not have enough money to get proper dental care (and that it is their fault). This, here in France, epitomised the contempt of “champagne socialists” for people on modest incomes. We truly live in a world where only money matters, not virtue or talent, but raw cash. This is the kind of thing people are through with. Every time I get into a political conversation with an “ordinary” person (I consider myself as ordinary too), I hear the same tiredness of being taken down the garden path and treated as cash-cows for programmes designed to waste money. There is no such thing as Socialism as it was conceived in the nineteenth century and promoted in its Christian version by some very good and selfless people.

The agendas against which ordinary people have reacted show a deep malaise and a shallow understanding of the world and human nature. Time and time again, I hear and read about working for unity and against division. It depends what has caused the division: a cry for justice or another human sin. I came across the same rhetoric in church circles, but what is the point of unity when the reasons of that unity are false. This is the drama of truth and unity. We read in the Gospel that Ciaphas and Pilate were united in iniquity as were the Nazis and Stalin at one time. We need not to heal division but the causes of division. That doesn’t even enter their heads!

Champagne socialists are even more capitalistic than the old conservatives. For them, money is everything – when they have it. They are elitists and think they know better than anyone else. Their intelligence is darkened when their concerns are about gender-neutral language, unisex bathrooms and all the other nonsense. They remind me of Robespierre and his notion of “virtue”, a kind of “virtue” that was to leave no one indifferent and which was to be mandatory for all. In the end, that “virtue” was simply the power he enjoyed and which went to his head, turning him to total evil. It is also what happened with the Nazis and their devotion to the deepest depravity ever imaginable. It was the same with Stalin and his torturers.

Language has become euphemism. They would look a black or Chinese man in the face and call him a racist – until they realised that the person they were talking to was of a different race. Many black people and women voted for Trump – or rather against the champagne socialists.

It isn’t just the American epitomised by Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. It is all of us who can understand that we are being conned. Their standards are double standards – no integrity or honesty. This is the difference between ideology and herd thinking, “political correctness”, the stuff of Big Brother. Orwell understood it, and that was in the 1940’s after the defeat of Hitler. I really hope that the shake-up will thoroughly discredit this ideology that stifles us all and despises poor and ordinary people.

True nobility isn’t money or power, but virtue and talent, the ability to be ourselves and think for ourselves.

I don’t know how it’s going to turn out with Trump – or Brexit – or Le Pen here in France next May. We have been brainwashed to fear strong leaders, and our collective memory has not forgotten Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and any number of banana republic clowns in South America who had people shot by firing squads. Strong and firm leaders are perhaps just what we need just now at this time, just as long as we are free in ourselves and our art and able to burrow down deep.

We may come to a hard period of our history, but people who fear Trump are exaggerating. He is going to crack down on Muslims and Latinos – but those who have a criminal record. That last bit is not mentioned. I haven’t looked into his domestic policies more than very superficially. A lot of it makes sense, with his emphasis on his own country rather than policing the world. The elites in positions of power will manipulate the stock and financial markets and bring Trump down, unless Trump starts getting them arrested like in Iceland. The swamp he wants to drain has been threatening our world for too long – seventy long years since the defeat of Hitler. It all makes me feel rather angry.

I pray that Trump has the courage, and that the burden of being President of the US will bring him virtue and the gravitas of a statesman. I do believe that the American Constitution is something great, born of many unrealised European ambitions to affirm the unalienable rights of human persons. Common sense has prevailed in letting people without criminal records have guns for self-defence. I think we are soon going to need them over here in Europe too, but the historical context of the USA is unique and different. Owning a gun implies integrity and responsibility for a device that can be used to kill or injure justly (in self-defence or defence of another person against a criminal aggressor for example) or unjustly. Political bureaucrats are uneasy with our freedom to tell the difference. The majority is punished for the wrongdoing of the minority, rather than having a criminal justice system that works properly.

Well, I can’t solve the problems of the world, but we seem to have some people who are trying to do something to contribute to a freer and safer world. One major tenet of Anglican Catholicism was to care for the poor and to tell them that their value is not that of their money (or lack of it), but their ability to live and work in freedom according to their God-given talents. Yes, that included the guy fixing the diesel engine or doing his garden!

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See President Trump Is A Wake Up Call, But Not For The Reasons You Think

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2 Responses to The Voice of Common Sense

  1. James Morgan says:

    Father Anthony, you make a whole bunch of sense here, more than many people in the USA who are more on the ‘firing line’ as it were. I think we have got to rethink the USA position in the world and it is long overdue! Are we, with diminishing resources and (seeming) intellectual and spiritual) abilities, going to run the whole universe, or are we going to take a diminished but probably rightful place as one member in the family of nations? To me that is the overarching question, more than some of the domestic quandaries we in the face here in the US.
    Thank you for your thoughts and hopefully your prayers in these troubled times.

  2. J.D. says:

    This American thinks we ought to take a diminished position,perhaps one satellite among many in the multipolar world of the neo Eurasianist ideology. We have no real moral or spiritual capital to speak if,and if we continue to meddle in the affairs of others than eventually we ourselves will eventually be invaded and slaughtered once our money or influence runs out. We ought to change tack while we can, before it’s too late.

    We need a bit of America First toughness when it comes to taking care of our own, but we ought to stop meddling in others affairs.

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