I wanted to update you that the Origins III pencils, inks, and letters are complete and they look AMAZING!
I really think this is going to be the best Voluntaryist comic issue yet!
With that good news, I also want to keep you apprised of the fact that we are running SLIGHTLY behind schedule on finishing colors.
Jesse Hansen of Cornerstone Creative Studios takes ownership of this delay and is appreciative of our generous time extension so he can wrap up colors per our agreement.
SO, with that in mind, I don’t think this will lead to a delay in the delivery window. Things should still wrap up close to on-time if not still as expected.
And to thank you for your trust and support, here is another teaser of the comic:
Looking forward to getting you the digital copy of the comic this month! (And then on to print for 2020!)
The “Ok Boomer” meme has been an ongoing joke in alternative media for a while now, but corporate media just recently caught wind of it and predictably had a tizzy, saying it “marks the end of friendly generational relations.”
“You can’t stereotype like that,” lectured the apparatchicks while tightly clutching their pearls. “Those seniors deserve our respect. That’s the generation that gave us Civil Rights and Roe v. Wade and the Great Society and liberalized immigration. You can’t criticize them. Where would America be without their progressive values?”
But I wholeheartedly agree with historian Tom Woods, who wrote this in a recent newsletter: “Boomers should be exercising some kind of leadership role today, as our elders. They should be giving us something to look up to.”
“Instead,” he continued, “even the Boomers who consider themselves cheeky and anti-Establishment just repeat slogans and talking points handed to them by talk radio or the Heritage Foundation.”
Boyd ain’t no typical Boomer
Patterns should never broad-brush 100% of a group, but they are patterns none the less. Well, Dr. Boyd D. Cathey busts the Boomer mold. He is a wise and learned man who uses his endless fount of knowledge in an eloquent and outspoken way to defend truth against its varied post-modern enemies. Cathey’s book, “The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage,” is an intellectual sledgehammer against the Establishment however it may manifest itself.
The book, an anthology of previously published articles, is comprised of Cathey’s essays smashing the very “conservative” movement that defines so much of his generation. These neoconservatives claim to be patriotic defenders of First Principles, yet they promote an “inversion of American history.” They are the inheritors of the “Lincolnian Revolution,” which was “the real triumph of the 19th century ‘Idea of Progress.’”
To him (and me) there is no difference between the “leftist crazies” razing Confederate monuments, and the alleged “peace demonstrators” violently attacking law-abiding citizens in the street (with little to no recourse), and the “Wall Street billionaires” who fund them, the Conservative Inc. charlatans who work at National Review or Fox News, and the normie foot soldiers who empower them all. They’ve made a business of “demonizing the South [in order] to purify the nation.”
The neocons have built their careers on the same egalitarian principles as the perpetual revolutionaries of the left. So, they ridicule and attack (always verbally and sometimes even physically) the “unwashed, rednecky ‘Southern conservatives’” who hold a mirror up to progressivism’s historical inconsistencies and fundamental fallacies.
Cathey knows that if you get the “War for Southern Independence” wrong, you get America wrong. If you don’t grasp the true history of 1861-1865, your ideology, your principles, your worldview, and your institutions are built upon sand.
What’s there to conserve if you don’t understand states’ rights and self-determination, Jeffersonianism and the anti-federalists, sectionalism and the South? At best, you half-ass buttress leftism because you think “America is an idea,” and at worst, you wanna destroy it all. Either way, it’s a cultural genocide meant to silence “backwards” thinking and ring in the age of “progress.”
History is in his bones
Cathey is the product of 10 generations of loyal Tar Heel stock. An ancestor on his mother’s side was a provincial delegate at Halifax when on April 12, 1776, the Halifax Resolves were adopted, “making the colony of North Carolina the first to call for independence from Great Britain.” (I bet most of today’s NC residents – I hate to call them “North Carolinians” since so many of them are identityless transplants from Yankeedom or even more foreign climes – know the bottom of the state’s flag features a scroll emblazoned with that important date.)
Family on Cathey’s father’s side “were some of the first settlers west of the Yadkin River,” by way of Scotland, through Ulster, and “down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania … eventually [making] it to almost every Southern state.” His roots run deep.
Both Cathey’s paternal and maternal great-grandfathers served as privates in different regiments of the Confederacy’s North Carolina Troops and his great-great-grandfather as captain of The Onslow Grays. His father was a private in the 101st Cavalry in WWII.
Cathey’s paternal grandmother was born in 1865, but lived until 1962 and “remembered vividly as a girl the years after that war and Renconstruction. “When I was a boy,” he wrote, “she recounted and passed on those memories and stories to me.”
It was this rich familial history that served as a “seedbed” for Cathey, who earned a master’s degree in intellectual history from the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow) and a doctorate in European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain (as a Richard Weaver Fellow). He went on to serve as State Registrar of the NC Division of Archives and History, and a long-time leader in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
But Cathey didn’t just earn fancy degrees and work quietly behind the scenes in preservation organizations. He writes. And writes. And writes. Passionately and prolifically. Sometimes about opera or classical music or even his beloved Cocker Spaniels. But it’s his politically incorrect works, of course, that draw him so much ire.
Resisting barbarism
The War is a “window into your view of Western Christian heritage,” Cathey explains, so you cannot understand America without the Southern tradition. People used to understand that. But no more. Gone are studies on brilliant statesman John C. Calhoun and gentleman warrior Robert E. Lee. Enter in the worship of new “conservative icons,” like the heretical MLK and tyrant Lincoln.
Thus, Cathey’s book includes succinct essays to straighten this devolving historical bent. Because “a people without a past have no future,” Cathey elucidates the lives of some of the greatest but long-forgotten Southern heroes, such as Nathaniel Macon, James Johnston Pettigrew, Robert Lewis Dabney, and Jefferson Davis.
The book also features a 1985 interview with Eugene Genovese, whom Cathey describes as an “objective Marxist, a leftist scholar, and a Yankee gentleman.” Genovese would go on to shed his progressive precepts, and become a conservative in the most authentic meaning of the word, as well as one of the South’s most ardent defenders.
Another chapter is a personal story about philosopher Russell Kirk, author of the seminal work “The Conservative Mind” and contributor to the nonconformist Southern Partisan magazine. In the early ’70s, Cathey was the personal assistant to Kirk, “who founded back in the 1950s what became American Conservatism (which has now been so perverted).”
Cathey also digs into the controversy surrounding another anti-progressive stalwart, Mel Bradford, whom Cathey says is “perhaps the greatest historian and man of letters that the South produced in the 20th century.” In the ’80s, Bradford was deemed to have unacceptable opinions by the “newly dominant neoconservatives who were rapidly establishing their control over the ‘conservative movement.’”
Bradford’s crime? The distinguished scholar simply “did not worship at the shrine of Abraham Lincoln.” Therefore, the power-hungry progressives within the budding Conservative Inc. juggernaut “torpedoed” his candidacy for two humanities positions in the Reagan administration. Cathey powerfully decries the injustice perpetrated against his “dear and close friend” by “intellectual terrorists” who today still claim the mantle of upholding Constitutional principles.
“Defending our story is not backward and provincial but is a part of the defense of civilization as we have known it,” comments Southern historian Dr. Clyde Wilson in the book’s foreword. “Herein [Cathey] has erected a sturdy wall where we can gather to resist the barbarism of our time.”
The triggered barbarians
In an era of leftist outrage mobs and neocon skulduggery, speaking such candid truths can be dangerous business. Having been in the progressive cross hairs for 35-plus years, Cathey knows the risks.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which I’ve heard more aptly described as the Soviet Political Lying Center, has longtime labeled Cathey an “extremist,” a “hater,” and a “Neo-Confederate” – all meaningless character-assassination charges of the race pimps. But it’s not just Cathey’s pro-Southern writings that trigger the SPLC subversives, it’s also his traditional Catholicism. He’s a believer in Christian dogma and time-honored liturgy. Gasp!
When Cathey found out the introduction to his book would be excerpted in a forthcoming issue of Confederate Veteran and that the magazine would also include a book review by the ultra-unReconstructed Donnie Kennedy, he joked, “That may get my status as one of Morris Dees’ ‘hatemongers’ raised a bit!’” Cathey offers reflections on the scammin’ SPLC and its grifter co-founder Dees in two riveting essays. You simply won’t believe the shocking levels of corruption until you read it for yourself.
In more recent days (and since the book’s publishing last November), Cathey was targeted by “anti-fascists” because he hosted the annual Confederate Flag Day event held inside NC’s Historic 1840 Capitol. The anarcho-tyrants, who organized through the social-media handle @CrushConfederates, claim the historian wants to “reignite a civil war.”
The unhinged ignoramuses from Smash Racism Raleigh, Capital City Democratic Socialists, and World Workers Party of Durham shrieked that they must “rally against white supremacy” and stop the gathering of people with “known ties to the KKK.”
“About 50-75 vile Marxist demonstrators serenaded us from outside, and when we left we had to have police escorts!” Cathey explained in an email. He wrote about the February 2019 experience here.
Home is never a lost cause
“Racist, go home!” chanted the protesters while flipping the bird to this Carolina son and his Southern brothers and sisters in arms (and their children and grandchildren). One man interviewed by the local press remarked that Flag Day attendees were “interrupting what we already got going on. We ain’t got no drama. Keep it where you’re at.”
Translation: We progressives run the South, and you traditionalists better beware. Wow, such hubris that the bullies consider themselves morally superior to anyone, much less proud Confederate descendants. And even more astounding that these intolerant clowns feel entitled to dictate where Southern-without-apology folks can go and what they can do … and in their own damn home!
Well, Cathey is not going gentle into that good night. And he is inspiring others to the fact that we must begin “rejecting progressivism by recovering the fullness of the American past.”
As Wilson noted, “History is not a science, it is a story.” And Cathey is indeed one of the preeminent American storytellers of our time. He is a leader, and that is precisely why the barbarian Establishment hates him so much.
I will continue discussing “The Land We Love,” as well as Cathey’s influence on me in a followup to this post.
But in the meantime, be sure to pick up a copy of the book, which is available through Scuppernong Press, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. It would make a fantastic addition to your home library and a great Christmas present (or two!) for a Southron compatriot, an open-minded history buff, a neocon family member, or a leftist friend. Real education is the gift that keeps on giving.
Did y’all catch Ben Shapiro’s diatribe in Cal a few weeks ago?
It’s utterly deceitful and petty, but so beautifully illustrates the war on true conservatism as waged by neoconservatives who seek to conserve absolutely nothing.
Here are some of the best tricky gems from the king of contradictions:
Don’t act like victims, alt-righters. But … don’t forget that Jews are the biggest victims on the planet, and anyone who disagrees is a “white nationalist alt-right troll.”
Stop obsessing over something that happened 50 years ago (the USS Liberty); it’s ancient history, fascists. But … we should never forget the holocaust is the only human genocide that matters. Ever.
“Judeo-Christianity” is America’s heritage. But … you really must stop believing in that Jesus-centered Christianity, haters. Just worship in the Temple of Conservatism Inc., where we’ll reeducate you on the proper moral laws and statutes.
America is an “idea.” But … we neocons get to decide what that ethos is, not actual non-leftist Americans whose ancestors fought and died defending freedom and family.
Whiteness isn’t even a thing, dummies; it’s only melanin. But … whitey must ignore demographic changes which are marginalizing him, and did I mention how great it is that Jews get to have their ethno-state?
“Conservativism” is a big tent with plenty of room for sodomite Republicans and various melanin-level-based identities. But … we have no room for pro-traditional-family bigots and racists who don’t embrace multiculturalism.
Identity politics is for white losers who live in their mom’s basements. But … Zionism is for liberty-lovers and identifying as white is for Nazis! And don’t forget the biggest identity of all: Murica, one nation-state under God, indivisible but always growing, from regime-change war to regime-change war, with empire and tyranny for all.
Supposedly, Stanford students gnashed their teeth and twitched in the fetal position before Little Benny’s campus speech, saying it would put “people at risk.” And even though his high-speed rant that included no Q&A was a simply a “sustained attack on the alt-right, the left still attempted to shout him down.”
Unfortunately, my critical-thinking skills and logical sensibilities were definitely put at risk, but progressives were safe within Shapiro’s neoliberal neoconism. But it was also Shapiro who was at risk of being challenged by Groypers, which is why he spent his time offering up a migraine-inducing verbal screed from his bully pulpit against American-firster Nick Fuentes, instead of attacking the leftism he allegedly detests.
In his predictable fashion, Benny didn’t even have the cojones to mention Fuentes by name. (Let’s not forget that Shapiro is the same stalwart “conservative” who immediately bashed the Covington kids, but deleted his negative tweets, offered no apology, and then pretended to defend the boys only when it seemed politically palatable. Total shyster.)
Yep, Shapiro – who is editor of the Daily Wire, a contributor at PragerU, a syndicated columnist, a podcaster and host of a live radio show, a mover-and-shaker within big-money college outreach groups like Young Americans Foundation and Turning Point USA, and pin-up boy for normies from sea to shining sea – found it necessary to take on a YouTuber with less than 70,000 subscribers. Why?
We must understand that Shapiro has earned the reputation of being a take-no-prisoners debater. Yet, he makes a habit of using these supposed super-human rhetorical skills only to “smash” and “destroy” and “shut down” the arguments of college leftists.
Hell, I could deconstruct all the idiocy that social-justice warriors spew at universities, and my verbal skills aren’t even that hot. I mean, these cultural Marxists aren’t called “snowflakes” for nothin’. Just disagree with their worldview and their fabricated PTSD kicks in good and hard. After all, simply saying “No!” to just one of the left’s many ever-evolving demands is how Jordan Peterson launched to fame.
As a former lefty and Big-10-university-kool-aid drinker, I am well-versed in the language of progressive-ese, so I know what the automatons are going to say before they even utter their initial rote talking points. My guess is that high-IQ Shapiro is rarely if ever stumped by the mindless Millennials and their dead-eyed dogma either.
Wow, did you see Shapiro take down that blue-haired feminist? Man, he really showed her. Did you catch Shapiro tearing that pro-abortion activist a new one? Gosh, he’s so bold and articulate … we’d better thank our lucky stars that we have him on our side against those meany liberals.
I think there are a good many people who could out-debate Shapiro, that is, if he’d stop filibustering and just breathe for one damn second and actually engage in a conversation. (Never trust a fast-talker, I always say, especially one who wants you to buy his overpriced “patriotic” ideology which includes paying – and maybe even dying – for Israel’s wars. Talk about a lemon.) In fact, one of Shapiro’s best-known meltdowns was when he fled the scene after being outwitted by a BBC reporter.
“The left has run out of aggressors to target,” Shapiro wrote in 2016. “Instead, they’ve become the aggressors, self-righteous morality police dedicated to wiping out dissenting thought.” But that is exactly what Shapiro and his neocon tribesmen do.
Shapiro rightly claims that progressives are horrible, but he’ll “debate” them. However, he says alt-righters are just so loathsome that they must be censored for the sake of civility. Yep, the guy who the corporate press calls a “radical” young leader of the “right” won’t even take on the most serious questions from the right.
Unlike the Millennials, who see America as a playground for materialism and wanton sexual pleasures, and think the traditional folks are a punching bag for their fictional and never-ending intersectional oppressions, the Zoomers are pissed because they see the load of crap left for them by previous generations.
“It’s a sin for people to conflate mainstream conservatism with that kind of garbage,” he barked at a Fuentes supporter at Boston University. Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be taking seriously moral pronouncements from a dude who claimed that Jesus was “a Jew who tried to lead a revolt against the Romans and got killed for his trouble.” It’s no wonder that someone who thinks Christ was just some rootless political activist also pushes America as a “propositional nation.” Heritage and true history mean nothing to Shapiro.
Groypers, many of whom are outspokenly Catholic, grasp the gravity of the social degradation, political tyranny, debt bondage, and identity-less-ness that has been foisted upon them. And these informed and energetic young men know they’re being marginalized and blamed for the divisive culture for simply existing as who they are. They understand that they’re the archetype.
Maybe it’s their privilege, or their whiteness, or their heterosexuality, or their Christian faith, or that they grew up in a nuclear family (or at least plan to create one of their own, since many themselves are the product of Gen-X divorces and the trauma that creates for children), or the fact that they grasp that Zoomers are being demographically displaced through both illegal and legal immigration.
So, Shapiro is taken aback whenever he gets challenged by these Gen-Z realists who aren’t as brain-dead and gullible as are the Millennials. These Groypers are skeptical, articulate, and frustrated as hell at the status quo. They have legitimate questions and concerns; they question and seek proof for what Conservative Inc. is selling. And lil’ Benny doesn’t like that.
“First of all, I’m happy to address any ideas,” Shapiro told another Groyper. “I’m not happy to debate somebody who has joked about murdering me.” Yep, sensitive Benny – who once told a pro-Palestinian protester, “Well, Israel will just carpet bomb you so” – is now offended by Fuentes once bantering about the holocaust.
After censoring the Groypers’ freedom of expression, the Red State headline reads that Shapiro “Lays It Out on the Alt-Right and Racism Among Conservatives.” So stunning and brave to call people racist for simply not conforming to every anti-American edict that the neocons decree from on high. Maybe red is dead.
The Groypers resistance to Conservative Inc. has been effective, which is why the corporate media is going after them so hard. In discussing Shapiro’s feud with Fuentes, The Hill assures us that the “new alt-right [is] seeped in anti-Semitism,” whatever that is. But at least they admit that Conservative Inc. seeks to stifle the young and fiery rabble-rousers of Gen Z.
And the Washington Post describes the “‘Alternative right’ as a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state. It appears that fewer people identify with the term since the deadly Charlottesville rally cast a spotlight on alt-right and neo-Nazi demonstrators.” And they say Fuentes attended Unite the Right in 2017, which in 2019 equates to burning a cross on trans black woman’s front lawn or shooting up a synagogue.
And grifter Shapiro, the supposed rebel standing tall against leftism, is playing right along with the progressive narrative. “Are you protesting the part where I’m condemning the Nazis?” he asked the leftist protesters when trying to regain control of the room at Stanford. Let me translate: Please, cultural Marxists. Just let me continue bashing a young conservative who is a common-sense voice for 20-somethings. I think he and his followers are Nazis, too!
Shapiro shills have even celebrated that Fuentes was deplatformed from Reddit and iTunes, while other neocons have managed to get him banned from “conservative” events like CPAC and Politicon. “These Hate-filled gremlins are NOT conservative,” Tweet the neoliberal cry babies who cannot tolerate free expression, much less the healthy exchange of ideas with actual smart, competent people asking the hard questions.
Michelle Malkin has already been purged by Conservative Inc. for not throwing Fuentes under the bus. All the typical Big Con charlatans, like David French, Matt Walsh, and Guy Benson, continue the drum beat that Fuentes is a “holocaust denier” and an “open anti-Semite” and assure the milquetoast masses that there is “no room for racism and hate” on their neocon watch. “We defeated your special brand of pasty uber-hyper nationalism in 1945. We’ll do it again.” Oy vey, the retarded rhetoric really is too much to bear.
Honestly, Fuentes is a little too rah-rah Murica for my tastes. Although he did attend the now-career-destroying Charlottesville rally, I’m pretty sure the Chicagoan doesn’t care two hoots about the destruction Confederate history. In fact, he said he went there to “demonstrate against mass migration.” And his followers are all too happy to bash the South and North Carolina in particular just because they can. Nice, coalition-building there, fellas.
Still, Fuentes and his Groypers give me hope about the future. First, they’re intelligent and nonconformist enough to be influenced by the deep, rich traditional conservativism of Southern stalwarts like Drs. Boyd Cathey and Clyde Wilson. I pray these youngsters wake up to the fact that the reconstruction they abhor was born of Union conquest in 1865. It is the Yankee mindset that is the enemy.
But in the meantime, they’re inspiring other young non-leftist men and women to hold neocons’ feet to the fire. They could be playing video games or doing drugs or having lots of deviant sex, or criticizing leftists from the comfort of their home computer, but they’re out there in real time, challenging a “famous” politico who’s on Fox News. They’re willing to withstand with public derision, security hassles, demonetization, and I’m sure social shaming and other risks in their own personal spheres in order to break the neocon hypnosis.
Shapiro and his ilk are loyal opposition. On face value, they seem like they oppose leftism, yet they’re really loyal to the same fundamental interests as the progressive power structure ruining it all. They are committed to the perpetual revolution, this is why they scream about racism and bigotry while anti-whiteness and mass immigration reign supreme, and Rome burns.
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We tackle “Cast Away” for our Thanksgiving episode this year as Tom Hanks’ final words in the film are “Thank you”. We want to express our gratitude for our listeners and the abundance afforded us by the vestiges of capitalism that raise the standard of living so that luxuries of the past are taken for granted in the present.
Our guest is Keith Knight of “Don’t Tread on Anyone” and “Liberty Weekly”. This guy can talk a mile a minute, so we’ll try to keep up. We act like nature, with this force of nature, and oppress the shit out of Tom Hanks in “Cast Away”.
Here is our appearance on his show where we play the role of statists trying to squirm out of his arguments for freedom:
Keith’s interview with the great, Ron Paul:
Here is the famous Super Bowl commercial from 2003 with items in the packages that would have saved him: https://youtu.be/alSQpinagp0
If you would like to get (occasional) early access to future shows, join us on Patreon and support us at the $3+ per month level at: http://www.actualanarchy.com/patreon
Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to get new episodes as they become available.
November 21 is Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos. We Orthodox celebrate this event, when as a small child Mary was brought by her parents to the Jerusalem Temple to be raised among the consecrated virgins in service of God until the time of marriage.
The Temple community, headed by Zacharias (father of John the Baptist), welcomed and nourished her. It’s a commemoration comprised of a glorious morning of Divine Liturgy, accompanied by the previous night’s Great Vespers with Litya.
Such stark contrast to the world, it is. Consider a news item I stumbled upon just a few hours after leaving church: “Playful guide” teaches kids how to conjure demons. Simply called “A Children’s Book of Demons,” it’s marketed to kids ages 5-10 and promises that “summoning demons has never been so much fun.”
When looking up the aforementioned kids’ demon book, I stumbled upon this treacherous tome from 2011. The desensitization of the occult has been ongoing for a long, long time.
This got me thinking about the rise and mainstreaming of Satanism within the pluralistic nightmare known as Murica. Remember the “Hail Satan” prayer that opened a governmental meeting in Alaska a few months ago?
Or what about the Baphomet statue that was erected on the Capitol grounds in Arkansas last summer? Or what about Xochi Mochi, a demon-dressed drag queen who went viral after reading to children at the Michelle Obama Library in California in 2017?
Bet you haven’t heard about The Satanic Temple being accommodated at the U.S. Naval Academy. Despite the name, the followers of the growing tax-exempt “religion” assure us that they don’t actually believe in Satan. It’s all about “reason.”
Maybe this is the “dramatic mix of talent, of all races, religions, backgrounds and genders” that a 3-star general recently touted in pursuance of “diversity as a war-fighting necessity.” I suppose the army of one is more like one nation under Moloch, y’all.
Here’s an occult plush toy for your gender-dysphoric-nurtured newborn. Adorable. I think Xochi Mochi not only wants to “normalize all the letters in LGBTQIA+ in everyday lives,” but he aims to normalize the devil.
What about Dr. Eric Sprankle, an associate professor at Minnesota State, who is an unabashed member of the Satanic Temple? Honestly, that’s probably not that shocking of a thing coming from academia these days. Heck, it’s probably part of the tenure process at most universities. Maybe he’s an Navy vet. Hmmm.
But what really makes Sprankle stand out in his evil is that he accused God of raping the Virgin Mary. Seriously.
After getting push back, the ivory-tower Satanist, psychologist, and “certified sex therapist” and pervert tweeted this.
“I’d never force you to be in a relationship with me, but I will destroy you and everyone you love if you aren’t,” Sprankle tweeted as a “proof” of his assertion that God would have punished Mary had she not agreed to bear Christ. It’s obvious that the social-media provocateur has no understanding of biblical history or of Christian theology.
If God were to simply smite people who disobey Him, Sprankle would have already been reduced to ashes.
“The Nihilist takes an active role in the work of Satan (for such it is) that can by no means be explained away by the mythology of the ‘innocent victim,”’ wrote Father Seraphim Rose. “No one, in the last analysis, serves Satan against his will.”
Likewise, as Father Peter Gilquist explains, the Lord “will never conscript us apart from our consent. This is why He is called ‘the God of grace’ (1 Peter 5:10). We are to choose freely to obey Him and do His will.”
It turns out that we humans so often smite ourselves because of our own free will. It is our actions or lack thereof which separate us from God and His blessings. Nothing we can do merits our salvation, other than giving Him our entire lives. And this is exactly what Mary did. As the first Christian, Mary is a model for all followers of Christ, which is one of the reasons why we Orthodox consider her the greatest woman who ever lived.
Mary says “yes” to the Archangel Gabriel, who tells her that God has chosen her to bear Christ. “Let it be to me according to your word,” she proclaimed, identifying herself as “maidservant of the Lord.”
God wants us to be “temples of human flesh” and “God’s first step to that end was His dwelling in the flesh of Mary, for through Christ He came to dwell in her womb, living in her body as He once dwelt in the Temple.”
It’s not just ill-informed, hardhearted elitists like Sprankle who dismiss, degrade, or downplay Mary. Billy Graham once admitted, “We evangelical Christians do not give Mary her proper due.” I used to hear about “Mary worship” often in my years as a Protestant.
By contrast, it’s common to see in an Orthodox parish an icon of Mary with arms stretched out as the Christ child is emblazoned before her (as seen in the architectural picture at top). This reverent image is often even placed on the apse, the center of the wall just beyond the Royal Doors of the iconostasis (the altar screen) and directly above the altar where the Eucharist is prepared.
We Orthodox magnify her during every Divine Liturgy when we sing “The Hymn of the Theotokos,” describing her as “ever-blessed and most pure.” And our reference of Theotokos is Greek for “God-bearer” or “Birth-giver to God.” At the Third Ecumenical Council in 431, this title was given both to honor her, as well as to emphasize that her Son was both fully divine and fully man.
How awesome is that?! Although not the source of the Godhead, the Theotokos literally carried the Creator of the cosmos in her womb. And she did so while remaining undefiled. So logically, how can one be raped if she is still a virgin?
The Great High Priest Zacharias receives Mary into the Holy of Holies so that she can become a temple: “the dwelling place of God.”
We also believe that Mary herself became the “the living Temple.” In the Orthodox hymns we’ve sung over the past two days, we say she was the “hallowed Tabernacle, the living Ark, that contained the Word who cannot be contained.” We joyfully pronounce that the Theotokos has “become the divine Throne of the Master of all, His palace, His resting-place, and His dwelling filled with light.”
As the “Receiver of Divine Light that no man can approach,” Mary contains the power of God – an immense, overwhelming, and mystifying force that previous Old Testament heroes could not even tolerate seeing. Thus, she becomes a “spiritual Lamp” to give light to those who “sit in darkness of ignorance.” She is the “Queen of all” who has “opened the Kingdom of Heaven to us.”
Just as Eve, who the brainless feminists claim was “framed,” was the mother of the Adamic race of humankind, the Theotokos has become the mother of the Body of Christ: we the Church. She was the vessel which held the New Covenant.
We Americans dishonor so many things that actually matter – like marriage, the traditional family, agape love, parenthood, childhood, modesty, chastity, true charity, self-control, patience, biology, selflessness, miracles, ancestors, roots, and history – yet we choose to show reverence for the worldly and nihilistic “purity tests” which utterly please Satan.
Why not nurture yourself in the purity of the Theotokos? She was a living sanctuary to the Son and she can be ours, too. I pray we all willingly turn away from the many chains of darkness that bind us from every quarter of our dying culture. I pray we choose the light and freedom offered to us by Christ. Mary did it, and so can we.
I used to be Protestant. Its teachings are what helped school me away from atheism and bring me much closer to the light of Christ than I’d been since I was a Catholic-church-going girl in my youth.
You know, small children really do have such a faithful and pure belief in God, that makes us adults seem so spiritually bankrupt. We overthink. We second guess. We reason too much and trust too little. We become jaded by this world, and that can seep over into our walk with Christ.
But this doesn’t mean that adult Christians shouldn’t be resisting evil when it’s propagated by their perceived spiritual authorities. It doesn’t mean that they should conform to every pulpit-pushed notion and then use out-of-context Scripture as a bludgeon against all who dare to question. Case in point: critical race theory (CRT) preached as the Gospel.
And most informed conservative Protestants know of these wolves in the sheep’s clothing. They know that Ameridox Christianity is just brimming with charlatans and that some brave folks are trying their best to hold these tricksters to account for their extra-biblical positions. Consider this online petition demanding that Malcom Yarnell, professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, must “resign to install more diverse leadership” within the Southern Baptist Convention due to his recent social-justice tweet.
It’s such brilliant optics on the part of the petition creator, don’t ya think? By demanding that Yarnell “immediately vacate his position at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to be replaced by a non-Anglo male candidate,” the politically incorrect faithful are insisting that the virtue-signaling professor take a good dose of his own bad medicine.
So much for diversity of thought, eh, Professor Yarnell? Uh oh, according to the CRT view, Twitter blocking a black theologian may just be a straight line to hell.
This creeping-then but now in-your-face anti-whiteness and nonsensical POC adulation is one of the reasons I fled Protestantism. As is always the devolution of this racist scheme, it begins with demeaning and banning a Southern symbol, then continues to grow in skulduggery and scope, and finally ends in unabashed black privilege and white-hot hatred for whites. In other words, it’s about power.
CRT isn’t being preached by only liberation theology spin-doctors at Barack Obama’s church in Chicago. It’s being pedaled at America’s most prestigious Baptist seminaries, including Southwestern, Southern, and Southeastern. White man devil! Black man angel!
Conservative evangelicals must understand the roots of the cancer known as CRT. They must be well-versed in the history of the Frankfurt School and know about the secular-humanists who concocted this revolutionary cultural Marxism which is tearing apart any vestige of cohesion that remains, both in our churches and in society as a whole.
And that they do this in the name of the Cross, supposedly for the sake of Jesus, is simply blasphemous. At least atheist leftists are honest about their hate for Jesus. Today’s Pharisees are less concerned with eternal life for all mankind, and more concerned with manifesting hell on earth. They are either voluntary or involuntary tools for the destruction of God.
Mainline American Christianity is to the tipping point so much so that it’s really not a matter of not getting fooled by the evil-doers, but rather a matter of assuming that nearly everything once good and pure has become corrupt. It’s the powers that be who should have the burden of proof.
Take CRU.
I’ve had my doubts about the college ministry for some time. I was asked by a smart friend of seven years to financially support her family’s pending CRU mission. So, my husband and I had her and her devout family over for supper when they were trying to raise funds for a move and full-time ministry. We asked pointed questions and listened intently to their heartfelt answers.
(I already had my suspicions, though, having had conversations with another CRU-mom acquaintance and hearing her “white privilege” talk and use of other critical-theory buzzwords, and her framing with “social justice” precepts nearly everything she talked about.) But after honest and sometimes uncomfortable inquiry with our CRU-in-training friends, it became crystal clear that we could absolutely not provide charity to a radical and revolutionary movement veiled in love. It was weird and awkward to say no, but it was a decision made in true love of both my faith and my family.
So, I say you keep protesting the “reformers,” Protestants. Say no. Protest through word and deed. Nail your own 95 Theses on the church door. Yell from the rooftops that race hustlers are selling CRT indulgences to both duped white and black Christians. And fervently support those who are loudly bucking the PC heresies of these self-proclaimed Protestant popes.
Protest until you’re blue in the face. Maybe then they’ll stop hating you for being white. It’s time to the out-reform the critical-race reformers and smash their culture-destroying, faith-diminishing activism. It’s time to go Martin Luther on their asses.
Today is patron-appreciation day for the financial backers of independent content-creators such as myself. So, I wanted to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to my small but loyal Patreon crew – who consistently fork over a pledge every month – as well as to those who have made generous one-time (or even couple-times) donations to the DM enterprise by way of PayPal and even snail mail. Here’s a little #ThankYouPatrons video I made last year; all the words still stand true, so I hope the love shines through!
My husband and I are in the planning stages of finally creating some Patreon-only content. If we can get it all figured out, we hope to provide audio of my deep-dive pieces, so that you can be weeding your garden or brushing your teeth or cooking supper while listening to (instead of reading) my lengthier blog posts. Just a little extra something to show my gratitude for you consistent DM pledgers.
But to everyone who has taken the time to support my rhetorical adventure, I say THANK YOU! Sure, the money’s nice. Believe me, I am thrilled even by those $1 donations. But what’s as satisfying is knowing that I’m doing something that pleases you all: the unreconstructed remnant. Without you smart and fiery rebels having my back, being a dissident voice in the wilderness would be a lot more desolate and frustrating. The West sure wants us going out with a whimper and not a bang, but I say we keep on making a fuss for truth. God bless!
My children recently re-read C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” for our homeschool book club. In today’s class, part of our discussion focused on courage and how it isn’t a feeling, but is rather a behavior. We decided that good people will find they have untapped courage and fortitude when faced with trying times.
Then after class, I discovered that Chick-fil-A had decided to cease charitable giving to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, simply because these nonprofits have the gall to oppose homosexual “marriage.” Don’t these charities know it’s 2019?
Yep, American Christians’ favorite chicken restaurant has now opted to throw two Christian charities under the bus for their Christian principles. I’d say that’s pretty much the opposite of courage. But why the weak move?
On first glance, it seemed like it wasn’t for 30 pieces of silver. After all, Chick-fil-A is the third most profitable fast-food restaurant in America, in spite of corporate media’s tireless efforts to equate the chicken chain with “homophobia.” Even after CEO Dan Cathy said in 2012 that he supported “the biblical definition of the family unit,” and added that it was “prideful” and “arrogant” for people to tinker with traditional marriage, sales grew.
Upon closer inspection, though, you can see that the writing has been on the wall for a while. For instance, the same year as Cathy’s “controversial” comment, Chick-fil-A stopped financial giving to political groups, most notably the Family Research Council because the conservative organization had been decreed a “hate group” by the puritanical-progressives at the SPLC two years prior.
Even though this past spring, the VP of “corporate social responsibility” explained that Chick-fil-A had a “higher calling” beyond just the bottom line, it was around this same time the company cut charitable ties with Paul Anderson Youth Home, which espouses that same-sex marriage is “rage against Jesus Christ.” Gasp, biblical truth … run for the hills!
Turns out, Chick-fil-A’s Judas move is about chain expansion to larger markets and even foreign countries. It’s about the almighty dollar, not Almighty God.
The restaurant’s sad-sack sell-out is also about re-branding the chain’s image. But in whose eyes?
Turns out this stunt is meant to placate the loud-mouth, glitter-bedazzled, public-fornicating, anti-business bullies in the Rainbow Mafia. Yep, the very same people who claim that “Chick-fil-A just can’t stop talking about LGBTQ issues.” I mean, restaurants just love bad press, biased reporting, constant hit pieces, high-profile protests, and banishment from cities and airports.
He/she/they/them continues, “It’s almost as if they realize the more they continue to push the idea, the more conservatives will flock to their fast food outlets while progressives beat their chest and rend their garments on social media.” Well, here, the tyrant does have a partial point, not in that the lavender mob are hapless victims without a voice. That is outright absurdity, even for a globohomo goon.
But it is indeed true that the chicken chain did have extremely loyal patrons. It is the beliefs of those customers which are being ignored.
Like the Babylon Bee‘s headline read, “Chick-Fil-A Trades Adoring Christian Fans For Outraged Mob That Won’t Be Appeased Until Their Every Demand Is Met.” The satirical article said, “Sometimes you just want to be loved by a group that protests you for years and calls you a bigot.”
Why stay closed on Sunday in observance of the Sabbath? If you no longer think marriage is Holy, neither is Sunday. It’s just another day, just like marriage is another word and love is just a godless act between people of the same sex and gender is whatever you want it to be.
You may as well bend toward the whims of the “animal rights” freaks, too. It’s not man who’s created in God’s image, it’s chickens.
Why not become a 24-hour vegan restaurant where drag queens hastily take your order, HIV-infected porn actors cook your meal, and gay-indoctrinated adolescent boys twerk the soy-burger over to your table. And the special day of the month will be Glory Hole Sunday, where you can get half-off if you’re a card-carrying member of the Satanic Temple.
In a Narnia analogy, Chick-fil-A would most certainly not be the brave and faithful Lucy. The turncoat chain represents the selfish and deceitful Edmund, who’s willing to back-stab his siblings at the White Witch’s behest and all for a little Turkish Delight.
Looking forward to finishing up colors and letters soon!
