“Men Have Forgotten God” – The Templeon Address- Solzhenitsyn’

  “Men Have Forgotten God” – The Templeon Address

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     More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

    The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century. The first of these was World War I, and much of our present predicament can be traced back to it. It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever. The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them. Only a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.

     The same kind of defect, the flaw of a consciousness lacking all divine dimension, was manifested after World War II when the West yielded to the satanic temptation of the "nuclear umbrella." It was equivalent to saying: Let's cast off worries, let's free the younger generation from their duties and obligations, let's make no effort to defend ourselves, to say nothing of defending others-let's stop our ears to the groans emanating from the East, and let us live instead in the pursuit of happiness. If danger should threaten us, we shall be protected by the nuclear bomb; if not, then let the world burn in Hell for all we care. The pitifully helpless state to which the contemporary West has sunk is in large measure due to this fatal error: the belief that the defense of peace depends not on stout hearts and steadfast men, but solely on the nuclear bomb...

    Today' s world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to preceding centuries, would have called forth the cry: "This is the Apocalypse!"

    Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it.

     Dostoevsky warned that "great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared." This is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that "the world will be saved only after it has been possessed by the demon of evil." Whether it really will be saved we shall have to wait and see: this will depend on our conscience, on our spiritual lucidity, on our individual and combined efforts in the face of catastrophic circumstances. But it has already come to pass that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five continents of the earth...

In its past, Russia did know a time when the social ideal was not fame, or riches, or material success, but a pious way of life. Russia was then steeped in an Orthodox Christianity which remained true to the Church of the first centuries. The Orthodoxy of that time knew how tosafeguard its people under the yoke of a foreign occupation that lasted more than two centuries, while at the same time fending off iniquitous blows from the swords of Western crusaders. During those centuries the Orthodox faith in our country became part of the very pattern of thought and the personality of our people, the forms of daily life, the work calendar, the priorities in every undertaking, the organization of the week and of the year. Faith was the shaping and unifying force of the nation.

     But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter's forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened.

     It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that "revolution must necessarily begin with atheism." That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot.

The 1920’s in the USSR witnessed an uninterrupted procession of victims and martyrs amongst the Orthodox clergy. Two metropolitans were shot, one of whom, Veniamin of Petrograd, had been elected by the popular vote of his diocese. Patriarch Tikhon himself passed through the hands of the Cheka-GPU and then died under suspicious circumstances. Scores of archbishops and bishops perished. Tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns, pressured by the Chekists to renounce the Word of God, were tortured, shot in cellars, sent to camps, exiled to the desolate tundra of the far North, or turned out into the streets in their old age without food or shelter. All these Christian martyrs went unswervingly to their deaths for the faith; instances of apostasy were few and far between. For tens of millions of laymen access to the Church was blocked, and they were forbidden to bring up their children in the Faith: religious parents were wrenched from their children and thrown into prison, while the children were turned from the faith by threats and lies...

     For a short period of time, when he needed to gather strength for the struggle against Hitler, Stalin cynically adopted a friendly posture toward the Church. This deceptive game, continued in later years by Brezhnev with the help of showcase publications and other window dressing, has unfortunately tended to be taken at its face value in the West. Yet the tenacity with which hatred of religion is rooted in Communism may be judged by the example of their most liberal leader, Krushchev: for though he undertook a number of significant steps to extend freedom, Krushchev simultaneously rekindled the frenzied Leninist obsession with destroying religion.

     But there is something they did not expect: that in a land where churches have been leveled, where a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of a century, where the clergy is utterly humiliated and deprived of all independence, where what remains of the Church as an institution is tolerated only for the sake of propaganda directed at the West, where even today people are sent to the labor camps for their faith, and where, within the camps themselves, those who gather to pray at Easter are clapped in punishment cells--they could not suppose that beneath this Communist steamroller the Christian tradition would survive in Russia. It is true that millions of our countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an officially imposed atheism, yet there remain many millions of believers: it is only external pressures that keep them from speaking out, but, as is always the ca se in times of persecution and suffering, the awareness of God in my country has attained great acuteness and profundity.

      It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity.

     The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West's own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.

     Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the "pursuit of happiness, "a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism. If a blasphemous film about Jesus is shown throughout the United States, reputedly one of the most religious countries in the world, or a major newspaper publishes a shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what further evidence of godlessness does one need? When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?

     Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis--race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain "equality"--the equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today's free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance--the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.

     This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himsef in the place of God.

     Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.

      With such global events looming over us like mountains, nay, like entire mountain ranges, it may seem incongruous and inappropriate to recall that the primary key to our being or non-being resides in each individual human heart, in the heart’s preference for specific good or evil. Yet this remains true even today, and it is, in fact, the most reliable key we have. The social theories that promised so much have demonstrated their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end. The free people of the West could reasonably have been expected to realize that they are beset · by numerous freely nurtured falsehoods, and not to allow lies to be foisted upon them so easily. All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today's world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain. The resources we have set aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us individually, and within every society. This is especially true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose...

     Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.

    To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.

    Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone. 

(World copyright ©1983 by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn; translator: A. Klimoff; reprinted by kind permission of the author.)

[OA/_private/oabot.htm]

http://www.roca.org/OA/36/36h.htm    where this copy paste is derived.

Are humanist principles enough?
Can humanist principles hold against other threats today?

Chamberlain's devotion to England

Churchill buries Chamberlain June 14, 2011

Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback

http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/06/14/churchill-buries-chamberlain/

In winning the Nobel Prize for literature Winston Churchill was placed among writers of the calibre of Thomas Mann, W.B. Yeats and Rudyard Kipling. This is probably – as Churchill was the first to admit – to overstate his talents as an author: there is something to Evelyn Waugh’s bitchy description of Churchill’s ‘pseudo-Augustan prose’. But Churchill had the journalist’s gift of the soundbite and, in some of his war time orations, he created sustained masterpieces that kept up the spirits of an anxious nation and the various captive populations of continental Europe. A minor Churchillian classic that is often overlooked is his obituary on Neville Chamberlain, interesting both as a piece of writing, as parliamentary theatre and as a reflection on the nature of history.For Beachcombing, anyway, it rivals Churchill’s Dream.

In the second half of the 1930s Churchill, as Tory rebel, and Chamberlain, as prime minister, had bitterly fought each other in the Commons over Britain’s attitude towards Germany. Chamberlain followed a policy of detenté and containment: called, perhaps, unfairly ‘appeasement'; while Churchill saw, he believed, deeper into Hitler’s soul and wanted defiance and rollback. When war finally came Churchill served under Chamberlain as First Lord of the Admiralty and here there was some reconciliation between the two: the Chamberlains and the Churchills even shared dinner together at number Ten. Then, when Chamberlain resigned and Churchill became Prime Minister Chamberlain remained in the war cabinet and accommodation between the two men continued despite their very different instincts. However, this phase too ended as 9 November 1940, Neville Chamberlain passed away after a brief battle with cancer.

By the time of Chamberlain’s death Churchill had reconciled himself to his old foe. He personally asked the King that Chamberlain be given access to Cabinet papers in his last days and in Churchill’s bumptious Boy’s Own universe Chamberlain himself was able to see that Britain was going to make it through: ‘I think he died with the comfort of knowing that his country had, at least, turned the corner’. It goes without saying that nobody could have guessed that Britain had ‘turned the corner’ in late 1940, that moment would not come until Japanese bombs fell at Pearl Harbour a year later. But Churchill had the habit of deforming reality so everything fit around his personal mythology of romance and redemption. It is one of the reasons that his Second World War reads so very well and is so often a poor historical source. Still these qualities were always going to make the great man’s speech on Chamberlain’s demise a cracker. Imagine the wartime House quiet with curiosity to hear whether Churchill could bury his old rival without damning him for the sins (as Churchill saw it) of attempting peace with Germany.

At the lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgments under a searching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.

What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour.

It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart – the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned… Herr Hitler protests with frantic words and gestures that he has only desired peace. What do these ravings and outpourings count before the silence of Neville Chamberlain’s tomb?

Beachcombing is always on the look out for Second World War curiosities: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

***

15 June 2011: Umbriel writes in ‘I’m not sure I agree that ‘nobody could have guessed that Britain had ‘turned the corner’ in late 1940’ – By the fall, the climax of the Battle of Britain was past, and with it imminent threat of invasion.  The ‘Destroyers for Bases Agreement’ had taken some of the pressure off in the Battle of the Atlantic. Most importantly, Churchill had by that time forged a strong working relationship with FDR (whose reelection occurred only a few days before Chamberlain’s demise, but was never in serious doubt), guaranteeing that the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ would provide increasing support. While all that might have been of limited comfort to the folks in London enduring the Blitz, the merchant and naval sailors in the Atlantic, and the troops in North Africa, I think the top-level planners realized that the long-term odds were as much in their favor as they’d been in World War I. For additional perspective on this, I highly recommend the recent book, The Wages of Destruction – an economic history of Nazi Germany, it puts in perspective a lot of the industrial and economic factors that drove the war.’ Thanks Umbriel!!

Liberalism lies

15 Lies of Liberalism.

Liberalism says that….

1) …it’s all about choice –

– unless you want to choose which gun or lightbulb to use, which school your child will attend, or you’d prefer more freedom and smaller government.

2) …it cares about the environment –

– when in practice, not only do liberals like Al Gore live some of the most resource-wasting and ostentatious lifestyles on the planet, but they hurt the environment by blocking environmentally friendly energy production here in favor of energy sources from nations that care little about pollution.

3) …you can have lots of free government services and somebody else will pay for them –

– The trillion dollar deficit we’re running every year that will have to be paid back says otherwise.

4) …as long as you use birth control that someone else is forced to pay for, there are no consequences whatsoever to having lots and lots of sex –

– Meanwhile, more than 50 million children have been killed by their own mothers via abortion and 1 out of every 4 adults in New York City has herpes.

5) …. “government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn –

– Do you know anyone with crabgrass on his lawn? DO YOU?

6) …it’s all about compassion and taking care of the less fortunate –

– unless liberals have their own money on the line, in which case they give less to charity than those stingy, greedy, heartless conservatives.

7) …you shouldn’t take your Christian faith seriously, that political correctness matters more than the Bible, and that mocking God has no consequences –

– Ever heard someone say, “Don’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel?” Well, if liberals were smarter, they wouldn’t be picking a fight with an omnipotent God who buys lightning bolts by the barrel and has a well earned reputation for getting fed up every once in awhile and dishing out “Old Testament style wrath” on His enemies.

8) …how much our country spends can be dictated by our wants, as opposed to what we can afford –

– Of course, if the world really works this way, Greece would be fine, nobody would have ever heard of the word “bankruptcy,” and the banks wouldn’t even bother to write down your name when you borrow money from them.

9) …liberals want unity and bipartisanship –

– which they apparently believe they can accomplish by spewing pure hatred and smearing, demonizing, threatening, and lying about anyone who disagrees with them.

10) …it’s going to deliver equality of outcomes for everyone, which is true, if by “delivering equality of outcomes” you mean “make everyone poorer.”

11) …it cares about women —

– unless they’re conservative women, in which case liberals will insult them in the vilest of terms, attack their children, call them whores and laugh and hoot at the most grotesque sexist attacks against them. Every last insult ever hurled at someone like Sandra Fluke probably wouldn’t amount to what women like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, and Ann Coulter put up with on any given week with the full support of the same liberals who run off at the mouth about a “war on women.”

12) ….it’ll help the poor —

– and it does. Liberalism helps poor Americans live in ghettos with just enough food and money to survive so they can stay dependent on liberals. It’s the same sort of help a farmer gives a chicken while he harvests its eggs and waits for the right time to wring its neck and toss it in the frying pan.

13) …liberals are the only people who care about black Americans and want to help –

– which doesn’t seem to square with the fact that just about anywhere and everywhere liberals have been in charge for decades, like Detroit or New Orleans, most black Americans are in dire straits.

14) …small business owners were able to build their businesses because they were lucky –

– But of course, if that’s true, why do we have such a high unemployment rate? Why doesn’t everyone who loses his job just set up his business and grab that easy money? Since bankers don’t deserve the big salaries they make, why doesn’t the Occupy movement set up its own bank and show the “banksters” how it’s done?

15) …you can fix crime by taking away guns –

– but by definition, the people who will voluntarily give up guns are law abiding citizens who have no intention of committing a crime in the first place. Besides, if that can work, why doesn’t Barack Obama set the example by asking his Secret Service agents to disarm?

http://rightwingnews.com/john-hawkins/15-lies-of-liberalism/

Is it chasing all the small things in life? and missing the big  picture? Are they true? like a fact? or are they just feelings?

To take down Chesterton's fence?

Fletch (7,393 comments) says: 
July 18th, 2015 at 4:19 pm

ps, interesting reading is the parable of Chesterton’s fence, in which he asks: if you came upon a fence in the middle of the road, would you take it down? Would you not first ask why it was there to begin with? Especially if it had been there a very long time.

The Parable first appeared in his 1929 book The Thing:

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

“This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.”

Put very simply: don’t destroy what you don’t understand.

What is Conservative thought?

“In any society, order is the first need of all. Liberty and justice may be established only after order is tolerably secure. But the libertarians give primacy to an abstract liberty. Conservatives, knowing that “liberty inheres in some sensible object,” are aware that true freedom can be found only within the framework of a social order, such as the constitutional order of these United States. In exalting an absolute and indefinable “liberty” at the expense of order, the libertarians imperil the very freedoms they praise.”

― Russell Kirk

“The conservative “thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.”
― Russell Kirk

“There are six canons of conservative thought:

1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. “Every Tory is a realist,” says Keith Feiling: “he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man’s philosophy cannot plumb or fathom.” True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.

2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls “Logicalism” in society. This prejudice has been called “the conservatism of enjoyment”–a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot “the proper source of an animated Conservatism.”

3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.” With reason, conservatives have been called “the party of order.” If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic levelling, they maintain, is not economic progress.

5) Faith in prescription and distrust of “sophisters, calculators, and economists” who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.

6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.”
― Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind

Attorney and witness, questions and answers

Michael (4,440 comments) says: 
June 30th, 2015 at 10:32 am

TOO FUNNY NOT TO PASS ON!!
How Do Court Reporters Keep Straight Faces?

These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while the exchanges were taking place.

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, ‘Where am I, Cathy?’
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
_______________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
_________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget..
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He’s 20, much like your IQ.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children , right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death..
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral…
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

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And last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No..
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

An old vision with warnings

 It seems like Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech although given (written?) in 1944 by an American Samuel Barret Pettengill U. S. Congressman 1886-1974 and appropriate here:
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In 1944, Democratic U.S. Congressman Samuel Pettengill warned America that socialists would endeavor to have the U.S. spend itself into bankruptcy, with a view to making citizens totally dependent on a centralized government.

Pettengill detailed TEN POINTS of the socialist manifesto that would destroy free government. Almost 50 years later it is disturbing to reflect on Pettengill’s 10 points.

1) People must be made to feel their utter helplessness and their inability to solve their own problems. While in this state of mind, there is held up before them a benign and all-wise leader to whom they MUST look to the cure for all their ills.

2) The principle of local self-government must be WIPED OUT, so that this leader or group in control can have all the political power readily at hand.

3) Constitutional guarantees must be swept aside. This accomplished in part by RIDICULING them as outmoded and an obstruction to progress.
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4) Public faith in the legal profession and respect for the courts must be undermined. The law making body must be intimidated and from time to time rebuked, so as to prevent the development of public confidence in it.

5) Economically, the people must be ground down by high taxes, which under one pretext or another they are called upon to pay. Thus they are brought to a common level and all income above a meager living is taken from them. In this manner, economic independence is kept to a minimum.

6) A great public debt must be built so the citizens can never escape its burden, making government the virtual receiver for the entire nation.
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7) A general distrust of private business and industry must be kept alive so the public may not begin to rely on its own resources.
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8) Government bureaus are set up to control practically every phase of the citizen’s lives.

9) The education of the youth of the nation is taken under CONTROL so that all may be indoctrinated at an early age with a spirit of submission to the system.
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10) To supplement and fortify all the foregoing, there is kept up a steady stream of GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA designed to extol all who bow the knee and to vilify those who dare raise a voice of dissent.

Samuel Barret Pettengill U. S. Congressman 1886-1974 Reprinted from an article in Ken Hamblin ‘Talks with America’ News letter Feb. 19. 1996
P.O.. Box 562 Castle Rock, CO 80104

Is this happening today?  Has it always been the same through history?

Virtues; endeavor to follow

When a society abandons these virtues, the people become corrupt, and unwilling to abide by the rule of law. A viciousness blankets the people, which leads to violence and lawlessness

A Virtuous Society

By Douglas V. Gibbs -- Bio and Archives  May 30, 2015 
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Benjamin Franklin emphasized that without virtue, free societies could not properly function.  He said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

With freedom comes responsibility.  The responsible society is one that is virtuous.  A man with virtue is a man that possesses “sacred honor.”  It is for the sake of a free society that men must deny the evils of human nature, and implement the principles of being virtuous into their own lives.  It is best for society, and for one’s own existence, to strive for betterment, to strive to improve oneself each and every day.  To be civilized, and be restrained from the temptation of mob rule, is among the cornerstones of a free society.
Benjamin Franklin established that the journey to being a moral culture is anchored in thirteen virtues.  Franklin worked daily to achieve a moral life by pursuing these thirteen virtues.  He even kept a journal and charts to assist him in keeping track of his progress in living his life with each of the virtues as his guide.  Franklin admitted that perfection is unattainable, agreeing with biblical doctrine that “all have fallen short of the Glory of God,” but he believed that being in constant pursuit of a moral life would make him, and anyone else that pursued this kind of life, a better and happier individual.  If society was filled with such people who sought a moral life, society would remain prosperous and free, and liberty would be maintained.
The thirteen virtues were; Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity and Humility.

Temperance:

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
With temperance comes self-discipline, a trait necessary to obtain all of the virtues.  If one could achieve temperance, the other virtues, therefore, would be obtainable.  The virtue calls for one to restrain oneself from overindulgence in food or drink.  Food and drink are primal urges, and conquering overindulgence assists one in building the confidence to make improvements across the board.  Notice that the call was not for abstinence from alcohol, or to constantly diet.  Eat as necessary, and drink when one desires to, but have the self-discipline to resist being overindulgent.  Understanding where the line is before one becomes overindulgent is self-evident to a person that is virtuous.

Silence:

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; Avoid trifling Conversation.  
Thanks to technology, we live in an information age.  However, the information we seek can often be trivial chatter, and nonsensical noise.  As our culture changes, we have lost the polite manners or etiquette that defines a civilized society.  Now, we not only don’t think before we speak, but we put our entire lives on social media seeking our fifteen minutes of fame, or to put out a message of how well we are doing at something, or how cool we are in whatever setting we have snapped our “selfie” at.  We speak to prop ourselves up, or act in a manner that would be normally unbecoming to gain an opportunity to act like an animal in front of a television camera.  There are old sayings that remind us that sometimes things are better left unsaid.  My dad used to tell me, “God gave you two ears, and one mouth, for a reason.”  Sometimes, it is best to listen, and then respond in a manner that benefits the situation, rather than react in a manner designed only to narcissistically benefit oneself.

Order:

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
John Locke wrote that we live under the laws of nature, and that those laws are self-evident.  Our rights are God-given, but even though they are naturally given, without us working to maintain those rights for ourselves, they will eventually whither away.  An ordered society left to itself without purposeful action to maintain order will eventually descend to the lowest common denominator.  To prevent a culture from descending into chaos and disorganization, we must ensure that we work to ensure order remains in place.  James Madison recognized that “men are not angels,” therefore we need government, but because men are not angels, that government must be constantly checked or else it will become a tyranny.  To be orderly, we must recognize a standard that demands order, and in successful societies the order maintained is rooted in a moral foundation.  Small adjustments as society wavers must be made by virtuous people.  If the people are not virtuous enough to recognize the deterioration of their culture, and if they let go of their moral code, the society will become corrupt and vicious, and an order of totalitarian control will fill the void in order to maintain order.  Without seeking order as a virtuous people, the populace will become no different than a pack of animals, destroying their own neighborhoods in an angry rage, which will eventually lead to bloodlust, and then the collapse of the free society as the leaders use tyranny in an attempt to stave off the collapse.

Resolution:

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
To be tempered, or to maintain order, we must have the resolution to accomplish the task, and do so in a moral manner.  Even when the odds seem to be against us, we must have the resolve to carry through, to carry on, and to optimistically endeavor to maintain our virtuous society.  If we don’t have the firm determination to accomplish the task at hand, how can we maintain a virtuous society?  Resolution is a result of determination, and confidence.  Determination and confidence, when joined with the understanding that we must do what is right to resist evil, enables us to develop the resolution to accomplish the task at hand.  Improving our own resolve in life to do what we ought to do for ourselves leads to a community that works to use that resolve together to help maintain a virtuous society through our own participation in our community or political arena.  When enough people resolve to perform what they ought to do in their own lives, the overall community benefits, and the culture remains a virtuous one.

Frugality:

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
This is not a call to avoid the incentive to improve one’s lot in life, or to pursue a better lifestyle, but it is instead a recognition that waste or excessive living can lead to undesirable consequences.  In other words, be it in our own lives, or on a grander stage, we must ensure we spend less than what we earn, and save excess if you can for when conditions are not as favorable.  Have nice things, enjoy your life, but not so much that it causes you to dig yourself into debt, or for you to not be properly prepared when times of difficulty approach.  Frugality is easily obtained if one has self-discipline that accompanies temperance and silence, order in their lives, and the resolution to ensure that the morality that accompanies these virtues remains in place, even when one’s station in life increases and it becomes easy to forget where we came from.

Industry:

Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.  
Self-reliance works best when one is efficient in one’s endeavors, eliminating wasteful actions, and employing industriousness in order to best achieve one’s goals.  Unfortunately, many seek quick fixes, easy schemes, or unrealistic wages for entry-level work.  A virtuous person works though the processes, and travels through the stages one must navigate to accomplish their objectives.  I told my daughter when she was a student that to succeed all one has to do is more than everyone else.  Go for that extra effort, and be honorable when going about your tasks.  Even if the job is one that is not something you really want to be doing, tackle it with your best effort.  The value of working hard is better than the habit of hardly working, for it will train us to accomplish in life what we seek when the opportunity arises.  We must also work smart, seeking endeavors that are purposeful, and useful.

Sincerity:

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.  
Gossip is the number one attention-getter in social media and in the media.  Everyone wants the dirt on what people are doing.  We have become a culture of people who want to pry into everyone else’s affairs.  We are sarcastic, and “truth” has become a radical concept.  The same kind of insincerity has begun to emerge in the world outside of the internet and media, and that kind of activity does not build up a society, but instead tears it down, harming people, creating animosity between people and groups, and breaking down the civility in a society.  If we can personally avoid such a vice in our lives, the virtue of sincerity will spread to those around us.  Being a virtuous society begins with how we act in our own lives, and how we interact with the world around us.  Sincerity also means that we ought to be “genuine,” rather than providing a false image for those to see.  We must be honest, and honorable.  If we are not, our words will betray us.

Justice:

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.  Justice is not something forced upon a society by a tyrannical government, or a condition achieved by the redistribution of wealth.  Justice begins with each individual.  As individuals we must voluntarily decide for ourselves to do what we can to stand up for those that we can stand up for.  This must be the voluntary choice of individuals, however, not something that is forced upon those through the dictates of government, or the redistribution of wealth through taxation.  When we act in a just manner, we must remember to be sincere, and moral.  When we strive to do right in our personal life, it sets a standard for society.  Justice is achieved in a moral society because a virtuous people do not seek to force injustice upon anybody.  Inaction, however, can be as unacceptable as unjust actions.  Apathy has grabbed our society by the throat, and we have become voyeurs that observe injustice, shake our heads at the horror of what we’ve seen, and then turn our backs upon it without seeking to set right the situation.  A virtuous society remains virtuous when the people are moral participants who strive to maintain the standards that made the society successful.

Moderation:

Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.  
We live in a society that chases lawsuits at every opportunity, or is quick to violence when we feel we’ve been wronged.  We must remember to not react on a hair-trigger, nor should we “Make mountains out of mole hills.”  Extreme reactions that are not proportionate to an offense are not the mark of a virtuous society.  Granted, extreme actions are sometimes necessary.  Benjamin Franklin welcomed the extreme condition of revolution against British Rule because it was necessary in the context of the time period, and regarding what the colonists were attempting to achieve.  But, extremes for the sake of being extreme are not necessarily a good course in a virtuous society.  We always want “more,” and sometimes “more” can be a good thing…but, more of what?  What is the motive behind our desire for more?  Is it possible to have too much of something?  And if it is, where is that line between not enough, and too much?  The answers are supposed to be self-evident when a people are virtuous.  If we are not maintaining the aforementioned virtues in our lives, how can we determine where the region of moderation truly exists?  How can we, if we are not virtuous, and if we are subject to chasing extremes, determine the difference between good and evil, or excess and folly?

Cleanliness:

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
Cleanliness is something that encompasses more than being one that is attentive to personal hygiene.  Yes, it is wise to be bathed, to keep our clothing laundered so that we are not wearing soiled garments, and to ensure that our homes are kept up in a manner that is not chaotic or filthy.  Cleanliness also covers being appropriate, and paying attention to detail, discipline, and order.  The presentation of ourselves to our surroundings are an important part to how society views us.  How can we maintain that our society must be a virtuous one if we cannot even maintain the simple virtue of cleanliness?  If one is tempered, self-disciplined, orderly, resolved, frugal, industrious, sincere, just, and not subject to extremes, the virtue of cleanliness will come naturally, for one will desire to offer a proper presentation of themselves to others, be it in hygiene, dress, one’s home, or the other belongings that reveals the character of our condition of virtue upon first examination by others.

Tranquility:

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.  
This is a second virtue that borrows from the old adage, “Don’t make mountains out of mole hills.”  In this case, however, the virtue is one that approaches one’s temperament.  Do we allow the irritations in life to anger us, and do we then lash out in response?  Do we dwell on the unavoidable, and allow our anxiety over those unavoidable situations to dictate our actions and decisions?  Do we react to situations, or respond to them?  Are our emotions in control of our actions, or are we?  Controlling, and tempering, one’s anger, is a sign of a virtuous individual that is composed and confident.  Avoiding stress, and maintaining one’s cool, also has a number of social and health benefits attached.  Relationships are more easily maintained when one remains “under control” in regards to his anger.  Stress has also been determined to lead to a number of medical conditions that are neither beneficial, nor preferential.  When individuals maintain tranquility, society benefits.  When individuals allow their anger to guide their lives, society ceases to be virtuous, and reduces itself to mob-rule, and ultimately violence and chaos.

Chastity:

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.  
A good sexual relationship is a healthy part of a marriage, and is necessary to produce offspring.  Chastity is not used here to mean that we must abstain from sexual activity, but to use the gift that God gave us in the manner it was originally intended.  With sexual promiscuity and sexual deviance follows a long line of consequences that can range from irritating to life-threatening.  Today’s society has abandoned this virtue, engaging in a system that uses sex in every nook and cranny of our culture.  Sex is used to sell, to entertain, and as a political weapon to silence certain groups and label them as unwilling to get with the so-called evolution of humanity.  A once sacred act designed for the intimacy of a God-ordained marriage has become just another tool to gain consumers, be cheaply used in entertainment, or as just another function in our everyday culture.  The “hook-up” is seeking to be as common as one’s decision to have a meal.  Chastity requires the same self-discipline necessary to maintain the other virtues, and if one refuses to give in to the urges of sexual desire that reach beyond the context through which such an activity was originally designed to be, how can we maintain an ordered society with the other virtues?  A society unable to abide by the moral standards that accompany a chaste society will also be unable to also abide by the standards put forward by the rule of law, be they Nature’s Law by Nature’s God, or the principles and philosophies set forth by a written political standard such as we have in the United States Constitution.

Humility:

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.  
In a Christian society, the goal of every member of the culture is to be more like Jesus.  The endeavor is impossible on the surface, because Christ was perfect, and our human nature demands that we will continually fall short of the Glory of God.  However, in our desire to seek the virtues necessary to imitate a figure like Jesus, or Socrates, we improve ourselves and the world around us.  Change must start from within, and when, as individuals, we seek to be the best we can be based on the moral standards set forth by a virtuous society, we improve the culture around us, as well.  When we seek to be virtuous, those around us have the choice to either grow with us, or be left in the dust.  When examples of virtue are on prominent display, and a person’s life is bettered because of it, those around the person seeking to imitate such a virtuous life are encouraged to do the same, and seek a virtuous life as well.  In a society where the standard is based on morality, and the members of that culture actively seek to improve their adherence to the virtues they would like to attain, we begin to use the positive side of our natural attributes.  Rather than be arrogant, we become confident.  Rather than be bossy, we become leaders.  Humility is a trait shared by the greatest of men, because humility accompanies an internal confidence that does not seek to allow our words to speak for us, for instead reminds us that it is best for our actions to speak for themselves.
When a society abandons these virtues, the people become corrupt, and unwilling to abide by the rule of law.  A viciousness blankets the people, which leads to violence and lawlessness.  In response, unable to restrain the mobs, the people in the position of power feel the need to crack down on the people that are partaking in violence and disorder in order to attempt to restore peace and safety.  Laws become more strict, and the servants in place to govern become masters that rule over the populace.  Then, the vicious debauchery that caused the society to become a violent mob infects the society throughout every portion of the culture, and throughout every hall of law enforcement and government, leading the society to no other way out than to commit suicide, and die a bloody death through societal collapse, a bloody revolution, and the chaos of transition into bondage.  We are now beginning to see the early stages of that death, and though the Constitution is the political solution, we are incapable of restoring the republic or abiding by the principles of the Constitution if we refuse to return to the moral standards that built his nation, and made it a virtuous society in the first place.  Without having a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, the moral standards necessary to maintain an orderly and virtuous society is impossible.  Without God, people are not capable of freedom, and therefore, if we do not restore our society as a virtuous one, liberty will be lost.