1. Sorry for the break in posts of late. I took the Van out for a spin and parked it next to a different body of water for a while. But I’m back in my home-base parking spot now. Home sweet home.
2. Yes, I saw that Karl Denninger announced that he is going quasi-Galt. By the sounds of it I don’t think he has declared a tax strike per se, but only committed to voluntarily reducing his income in order to minimize his tax liability, but will still be filing returns, etc. I personally do not think this goes far enough. I think that a bold refusal to even file is what is required. The regime clearly doesn’t care if a person or persons reduces their income – heck, the Cloward-Piven strategy and Marxism in general are all about destroying small businesses and the middle class, getting as many people out of work as possible, and running up debt until the system implodes. Voluntary reduction of income without the clear refusal to recognize the IRS and the FEDGOV as legitimate by refusing to file, it seems to me, isn’t really sending a message of fearless resistance to the tyrannical regime. By filing at all, there is still the acknowledgment of a deference to and a fear of the regime. So at that point, the reduction in income is only hurting the individual and any employees, because as many have pointed out, the FEDGOV will just print that which it does not collect because currency debasement is a feature for these people, not a bug. This question isn’t about money per se. It is about refusing to acknowledge or fear an illegitimate state. It is the act of moral courage and defiance that is the weapon – not the reduction in economic activity. The analogy would be as if the man in Tiananmen Square was standing in front of the tanks in order to force the Chinese government to have to incur the cost of cleaning his blood and squished guts off of the tank tracks, and NOT making the moral statement that he was not afraid of the state, even unto the point of death, and thus the state had no real power over him. But, having said that, I have mad respect for KD and certainly wish him well.
3. Thanks to one and all who have sent emails sharing their experiences in the janitorial arts field. We all agree that it is a wonderful, contemplative mode of work and time well spent. I actually knew this before, as I cleaned the house of a neurosurgeon and his family when I was a teenager, and the quality of the “thinking time” was second only to the deep thinking that goes on in the shower. Having a repetitive or routine task to keep the body occupied sets up the mind the soar. I pretty much planned out my life, meaning education and career path, vacuuming those folks’ house. I still remember where all of the electrical outlets are in that house!
4. I heard a rumor about a month ago that I alluded to in the last post but sat on, but I think I’ll go ahead and post it here because it looks like it may be coming to fruition within the next few days. The Pope is probably going to dissolve the College of Cardinals, and perhaps even the Cardinalate itself. Now given the individual men who comprise the college of Cardinals today, one might be tempted to say, “Yipee!” Indeed. Roger Mahoney should be arrested and die in prison. Timothy Dolan is a politicking imbecile who missed his calling as a third rate Mexican game show host. I could go on and on. There are literally only three or four Cardinals today who could be called “decent”. So what’s the problem if in fact Francis dissolves the Cardinalate?
We have to understand Bergoglio’s politics first. Bergoglio is a Peronist-Fascist. You all know the Argentinian strongman Juan Peron and his wife Eva Peron from the musical Evita. The closest comparison one can make of the Peronist milieu is to Mussolini’s Blackshirt Italy. Yeah. Charming. Bottom line, we are talking about a Marxist variant that demands state control of private business. Peronist-Fascism is also rabidly, rabidly anti-aristocracy and anti-clerical. This is why when I heard the scuttlebut that Francis was going to dissolve the College of Cardinals, I thought it a very plausible scenario. The Cardinals are an aristocracy – they are literally the Princes of the Church.
IF Francis does this, it will gin up populist support – but don’t be fooled. This is a very common maneuver among Marxists. What the strongman does after dissolving a body is to then reform a new body populated entirely with his own hand-picked men. Same song, second verse.
We must also remember that Bergoglio is a Jesuit hippy straight out of the 1970s. Hippies are defined by their hatred of authority. Thus, as I have said from the beginning, Bergoglio has always and still does hate the central authority aspect of the Church. This is why he referred to himself from literally his first moment as Pope not as “Pope” but as “Bishop of Rome”. We have a pope who in his heart rejects the papacy itself. Bergoglio does not believe that the Church should be governed by a central authority and instead should be broken up into local synods and bishops conferences who then basically “vote” on what their local “churches” hold as truth. In short, Francis wants to turn the Catholic Church into the Episcopal “church”, which is to say, to destroy the Catholic Church from the inside-out. If you don’t believe me, just look at this quote from his now-infamous interview with the heretical Jesuit magazine America published two weeks ago:
“The image of the church I like is that of the holy, faithful people of God. This is the definition I often use … the people itself constitutes a subject. And the church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows. Thinking with the church, therefore, is my way of being a part of this people. And all the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibilitas in credendo, this infallibility in believing, through a supernatural sense of the faith of all the people walking together.”
This is not Ratzinger talking. This is the not-terribly-bright South American Jesuit Bergoglio talking, so we must unpack this statement as such. This is Bergoglio falsely painting the popular will of the people as infallible, and truth as a derivative of the people. The Truth is Jesus Christ, and the Church and every person that ever has or will exist is a derivative of HIM.
Francis wants to de-centralize the Magisterium, reduce to nothing the teaching authority of the Church, and essentially put things up to a vote in order to make himself and the post-Vatican II “newchurch” popular in the world, which is his entire metric of success. Souls attaining the Beatific Vision or being lost to hell? Not so much. Stop and think about that. 90+% of ethnic Catholics of breeding age contracept, which is a mortal sin. 53% of ethnic Catholics in the U.S. voted for an antichrist in the 2012 election. It is now thought that more than 50% of ethnic Catholics in the U.S. and Europe favor sodomite faux-marriage, and reject the notion that sodomy is even a sin. Fewer than 20% of Mass-attending Novus Ordo Catholics in the U.S. and Europe know or believe that Jesus Christ is physically, substantially present in the Eucharist.
And now a truth that many of you will find deeply unpleasant. Democracy is a terrible system that rapidly devolves into the tyranny of the mob who then, without fail, install a tyrant. The founders of the now-dead American republic were quite open about this. Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Yup. And the American republic didn’t even survive 240 years. The best system of government is a meritorious aristocracy that elects a monarch. Think about it. Shouldn’t the good, moral, intelligent people be elevated to positions of power irrespective of their family ties? And then, shouldn’t those people elect from among their ranks a “chief executive” who serves as a final authority when needed? Because as we all know, SOMEONE has got to be in charge; the buck has to stop with someone or else utter chaos ensues. Remember the term “subsidiarity”?
Bergoglio and his Jesuit-hippy milieu reject this truth. They gin up popular support by declaring that the “poor” are intrinsically morally superior to the “rich”, and that the “poor” should call the shots and the “rich” should be suppressed. The problem with that is that a healthy society does tend to stratify in terms of economics, academics and administration along intellectual and/or moral lines – note I said a HEALTHY society, which our modern society clearly is not. Today in the West imbeciles and psychopaths prosper in business and government while intelligent people of morality are marginalized if not destroyed, and genuine academia is destroyed while a faux-academe becomes a propaganda arm of the state.
While I will be the first and loudest to concede that the College of Cardinals today is a wretched hive, the STRUCTURE is good. The unworthy men inside the College should be purged and replaced with men who actually MERIT the title “Prince of the Church”.
IF Francis actually does dissolve the Cardinalate, don’t kid yourselves – there will still be a ruling body – in fact, the new ruling body will be far, far more “powerful” and compact, and will be composed entirely of a close circle of pure idealogues hand-picked by the top man who will be hailed and glorified as a hero of the people, and will, no doubt, attempt to impose their modernist agenda, all the while trumpeting that it is all the “infallible will of the people”, and being done for “the good of the people”, and the world and its Prince will love them for it. There is nothing new under the sun. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes without fail.
Sweet Jesus, please let me be wrong, and please grant your Church relief from the Gates of Hell which are pressing down on us harder every day, even though we richly deserve hell for our faithlessness and tepidity.