Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Sunday Morning Sermon: Stay Calm

Stay calm. Take some deep breaths. Be careful what you say. Quietly prepare.

If you are a Democrat, ask yourself whether Joe Biden's open-border policy might have something to do with a breakdown in civil order, and who will profit from such a breakdown.

Rod Dreher's take. 

Victor Davis Hanson on Assassination Porn and the Sickness on the Left.  It is this sort of thing that Hanson has in mind.

Jonathan Turley weighs in, making  a point Dmitri made in the combox.

Trump Defiant

This image by Evan Vucci of the AP is quickly becoming an iconic one.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Donald Trump, his face bloodied by a bullet, raised a fist and said, "Fight! fight! fight!" on Saturday as Secret Service agents helped him from his rally stage. In doing so, he "struck one of the iconic poses in US history," writes Nico Hines at the Daily Beast. The sentiment is a common one:

  • "Make no mistake, the image of a bloodstained Trump standing with one arm aloft instantly takes its place alongside the greatest photos in American history," writes Hines, up there with Neil Armstrong on the moon and the Times Square kiss. In his view, the moment is historic in part because it all but seals Trump's victory in November. [A naive prediction which shows a failure to grasp just how vicious and vile the cadre Left is. There will be further attempts to stop him, either by assassination or by some other means.  As a defender of the American republic, Trump stands in the way of the Left's relentless effort to "fundamentally transform" (Obama) our country. It's a war over the soul of America. If you don't see that, you are a fool, whence it follows that Milquetoast Mitt and the nattering nabobs of his ilk are fools living in the past — to put it charitably.  Time to ask yourself a serious question: Which side am I on? If you give the Right answer to that question, then you must ask yourself: what will I do to help insure that the Right side wins?]

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Bill Vallicella

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9 responses to “Sunday Morning Sermon: Stay Calm”

  1. Dmitri Avatar
    Dmitri

    Nobody in his right mind is surprised that there was an assassination attempt on Trump. Such things happened in the US history more than once. People should be really surprised at many obscene leftists reactions and leftist media coverage. Let’s hope “democrats” receive their due when Trump wins with a landslide and restores some law and order in the great democracy that almost lost its way.

    Reply
  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Right, Dmitri. I wasn’t surprised. What is surprising is that a sniper could get within 150 yards of the target given the present state of technology.
    The Left has blood on its hands due to their vicious/delusional comparisons of Trump with Hitler. The attempts on Hitler’s life were all well justified. So if Trump is made out to be Hitler 2.0, then his assassination is justified as well– or so thinks the mad dog Trump hater.
    By the way, I am now studying Michael Millerman, Inside “Putin’s Brain”: The Political Philosophy of Alexander Dugin. Fascinating! Have you read it?
    Dugin’s own works seem to be blocked from Amazon. So exactly how free are we here in the “Land of the Free”?

    Reply
  3. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Thomas Becket was murdered in just such a way in A.D. 1170. Words find their actors. Many on the Left are very, very guilty in the eyes of God.

    Reply
  4. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill,
    As I am sure you realize, we should not assume that this assassination attempt, one in which the shooter was curiously able to gain access by a ladder to a roof only 150 meters from the stage and fire multiple rounds before being killed, is a terminal point in the Left’s vendetta against President Trump, now in its eighth year and characterized by lies, slander, cheating, two impeachments, and a series of bogus civil and criminal cases. They are already at work mapping out their next moves. Today, we must give thanks to God that the he was not killed, and I pose the question if there was something rather extraordinary in the turn of his head at exactly the right second. After all, Cyrus, no saint, was chosen as deliverer, so why not Donald?

    Reply
  5. Dmitri Avatar
    Dmitri

    Just read in WSJ that the assassin had explosives in his car, so a greater tragedy was prevented.
    I have not read Millerman’s book. I have read some Dugin in original and I consider myself well enough informed about the latter’s theories and about Russian/Soviet politics and history in general. But your fascination with the book is a strong reason to read it.

    Reply
  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    Vito,
    I agree. See the comment in blue that I appended a few minutes ago.
    Your theological speculation cannot be dismissed out of hand. I too have toyed with the notion that “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” How odd of God to choose the Jews! This guy, a carpenter’s son from a dusty outpost of the Roman empire, is the Messiah?? And now the Lord has fingered an inarticulate, gauche, egomanaical sybarite to save the country and the world??
    One thing is certain: DJT is the political phenomenon of our lifetime. That ‘iconic’ photo that i reproduced suggests that future generations — if there are any — will look upon him as wearing the mantle of greatness.

    Reply
  7. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dmitri,
    I know Heidegger well, having published a half-dozen articles on him in the professional journals. And I have been studying Leo Strauss for some time. So I am eager to see how Dugin formulates a Heideggerian political theory with the help of these two seminal thinkers. I am also impressed by Dugin’s Emersonian identification of philosophy with Plato.
    Dugin’s project as you probably already know is to work out a fourth political theory, “ultimately based in Heidegger’s philosophy” (Millerman, p. 88) one that avoids classical liberalism, leftism-communism, and fascism-Nazism.
    You can help me by explaining the exact connotation of such Russian words as ‘narod.’ It means something like the people, das Volk.

    Reply
  8. Dmitri Avatar
    Dmitri

    Hi Bill
    Simply speaking “narod” means “people”, but you are right in emphasizing the complex texture of this concept in general and for Dugin in particular. Dugin tends to discuss “narod” in conjunction with a particular geography and culture. Here is an example of Dugin talking at an academic meeting in Moscow State University on the role of Ossetian and Alans people in Russian and world history (2009): “The numerically small Ossetian people and the huge Russian people are very symmetrical. Our destinies were different, but at different stages they reached for a merge…”
    And for additional colour: “Ossetian culture, which is a living culture, is associated with Indo-European heritage. This heritage is an extremely interesting thing. Some of its elements were investigated down to small nuances, unlike the heritage of nomadic Aryan tribes, the creators of entire giant empires from the Pacific Ocean to Manchuria. This is an unfair and unbalanced gap in our historical education. Scythian peoples, Sarmatians, created a gigantic culture that fertilized the cultures of those peoples who lived in the south – including the Iranian culture, and they significantly influenced the culture of Afghanistan ”
    Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20170426163212/http://iratta.com/osnews/6555-aleksandr-dugin-osetinskij-narod-sdelal.html

    Reply
  9. Malcolm Pollack Avatar
    Malcolm Pollack

    In the past year or so I’ve been paying attention to a young man named Auron Macintyre, who is an astute political analyst and commentator currently working at The Blaze. He’s a Christian, well-read in political theory, and is in many ways carrying forward the torch of the “NRx” community that got going in the early 2000s (and to which I made some contributions).
    MacIntyre did an excellent series of interviews with Millerman on Dugin’s ideas earlier this year; you can listen to them at Spotify, here. (They’re also on YouTube.)

    Reply

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