Month: November 2023

Edward Winslow and His Friend, Massasoit

Richard Barnes

Much history concerning the New England Pilgrims is relatively unknown. This is unfortunate, especially given the flagrant tergiversations of American history by those whose mission is to teach our children to hate their country. 

This short post on this Thanksgiving Day, of 2023, will tell a little about Edward Winslow, who is inextricably bound not only with the Plymouth Colony but with the Wampanoag Chief, Massasoit. Although he was one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact, his name nevertheless remains relatively obscure.

Winslow was one of the best educated among the Pilgrims. He was the son of a prominent merchant in the salt industry in England; a Puritan as distinguished from a Pilgrim Separatist. However, in Holland, he became acquainted with William Brewster and Winslow himself joined the Pilgrim congregation which eventually sailed to the New World. 

Winslow’s education and temperament propelled him to eminence among both the Pilgrims and the Indians. He was chosen to greet Massasoit on the chief’s first visit to the Plymouth Colony. They became immediate friends and Winslow became the primary author of the Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty that was signed on April 1, 1621. This was a notable accomplishment as the treaty remained in force for over 50 years, outlasting the lives of William Bradford, Winslow, and Massasoit. 

It is the only such treaty to have been honored throughout the lives of its signatories. “It established the longest-lasting and most equitable peace between natives and immigrants in the history of what would become the United States.” Put another way, in the face of bloody conflicts between other colonists and tribes, such as the Pequot War in Connecticut, the Pilgrims had no such conflicts. A most unusual and worthy feat for which we can be grateful to Edward Winslow and Massasoit.

Winslow wrote about the Plymouth colony that it was a community “not laid upon schism, division, or separation, but upon love, peace, and holiness; yea, such love and mutual care of the Church of Leyden for the spreading of the Gospel, the welfare of each other and their posterities to succeeding generations, is seldom found on earth.”

Winslow lived what he wrote.

In 1623 word reached the colony that Massasoit was very ill, near death. Winslow, accompanied by a Pilgrim and an Indian, immediately departed on a 40-mile journey, by foot, to his friend. He did what he could, including chicken soup. “There is a wonderful relation by Winslow about going to Massasoit’s home and making chicken broth for him,” a historian writes. “It’s very tender.”

Massasoit recovered and said, “Now I see the English are my friends and love me.” 

Winslow was also able to nurse back to health several other Indians who seemed to have been stricken with the same disease. As a result, Massasoit bound himself more firmly with the Pilgrims.

Winslow’s comments about the foundation of love undergirding Plymouth Colony were true. This love enabled tolerance towards those who did not subscribe to the Pilgrim tenets and, most importantly, towards the Indians whom they served and sought to help, even as they, the Pilgrims, had been helped.

Winslow proclaimed the success of the Pilgrims in England, earning the respect and admiration of Oliver Cromwell who assigned him to various diplomatic tasks, the last of which was Cromwell’s appointment of Winslow as governor of Jamaica.

However, the Lord had a different purpose. Edward Winslow took ill and died on the open seas, on his journey to Jamaica, in 1655.

Our early and colonial history is rich with truly remarkable men and women. It is critical to know that history and teach it to our children.

With that very brief background about one of the individuals on the Mayflower and his Indian friend, it is most appropriate to conclude with President Ronald Reagan’s last Thanksgiving Proclamation, given in 1988:

“In this year when we as a people enjoy the fruits of economic growth and international cooperation, let us take time both to remember the sacrifices that have made this harvest possible and the needs of those who do not fully partake of its benefits.

“The wonder of our agricultural abundance must be recalled as the work of farmers who, under the best and worst of conditions, give their all to raise food upon the land.

“The gratitude that fills our being must be tempered with compassion for the needy.

“The blessings that are ours must be understood as the gift of a loving God Whose greatest gift is healing.

“Let us join then, with the psalmist of old: O give thanks to the Lord, call on His name, Make known His deeds among the peoples!

“Sing to Him, sing praises to Him, Tell of all His wonderful works!

“Glory in His holy name; Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 24, 1988, as a National Day of thanksgiving, and I call upon the citizens of this great Nation to gather together in homes and places of worship on that day of thanks to affirm by their prayers and their gratitude the many blessings God has bestowed upon us.”

Edward Winslow (1595-1655)

Massasoit (circa 1581-circa 1661)

Signing of the Mayflower Compact; Edward Winslow is standing at center, right hand on the table, left hand holding the ink bottle.

Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty, April 1, 1621

President Ronald W. Reagan (1911-2004)

Nothing New Under The Sun III (Conclusion)

Richard Barnes

About 15 years ago, I jotted the points below from a lecture or from a book but neglected to write the source. If a reader knows the source, I would very much appreciate hearing from him or her so that I might give due credit.

The author or lecturer demonstrated that all great peoples or nations usually run a familiar course, which roughly followed the experience of the ancient Jewish people:

  • God rescues a people from slavery giving them faith
  • Faith gives great courage to a people
  • From great courage, the people obtain great liberties
  • From great liberties the people obtain great abundance
  • From great abundance the people become selfish
  • From selfishness the people fall into complacency
  • From complacency the people fall into apathy
  • From apathy the people fall into moral decay
  • From moral decay the people fall into dependence
  • From dependence the people fall into slavery

What we see around us is nothing new. Every great nation or empire or people has seen the same regression — including ancient Israel, as even a cursory reading of the Bible will attest: a time of great faith and great courage; a time of great liberties and prosperity; and then a time of complacency, degeneracy, dependence, and slavery: immorality and pleasure-seeking never produce growth or wealth — quite the opposite.

In the case of America, we have something additional that, although not unique, is nevertheless noteworthy: we have been busy indoctrinating several generations to hate themselves and their native or adopted land. This too has historical precedence, as, for example, the Romans refused to defend themselves from the hordes of invaders. In our case, we have been trained to hate our history and fathers. But that doesn’t mean we end up loving nothing. As someone somewhere has put it, “history abhors a vacuum”. 

We now love “the other”: that which a mere generation ago was thought immoral, indecent, degenerate, tyrannical, and worse, is now what our upcoming generations are taught to “love”. We hate ourselves, but we love something completely opposite to our history and heritage. It follows that we will not defend, let alone fight for, something we hate. 

And “the other” doesn’t just sit there basking in our “love” for it. No, it becomes the viper we have nursed to our bosom; it becomes our master. And nothing good can come of that.

The recent congressional brouhaha over the discovery that Communist China has been influencing the curricula in American elementary schools was much ado about nothing because we knowingly have been teaching the very same atheistic claptrap for generations, without China’s help. Her involvement now ought not to be occasion to clutch our pearls.

So, what is to be done?

There is an example in history of not too long ago which ought to give us hope.

Eighteenth Century England was a moral disaster. There are journals of proper Englishmen registering their having gone to church and successfully “feeling up” a lady or two. Drawings exist of pubs with “clean hay” or simply “hay” to sleep off drunken stupors. The “clean hay” meant that it had no vomit, as opposed to the other, which did, but was cheaper and many resorted thereto. The dog returning to his vomit proverb was very real to 17th Century England. Pornography was rampant.

The North American colonies were well aware of England’s degeneracy: the third bill of right reads:

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

During the War for Independence, British soldiers and foreign mercenaries took over private homes, in many cases assaulting or otherwise ravishing the wives and daughters. Drunken rampages were not uncommon, even among ranking officers.

England was the place where apostates like Voltaire caught the atheistic urge to spew hatred towards Christianity and took that pornographic bacteria back to France where it produced oceans of blood and violence. 

Why did England not go the way of France in the 18th Century?

Well, in her fields and street corners, men such as John and Charles Wesley were preaching the Gospel and thousands were convicted and their hearts opened. George Whitefield preached in both England and also the colonies, although he died before the fruits of his ministries became visible in England.

The Lord used the preaching and teaching of His Word and Law to turn England around. A turnaround the likes of which are rarely seen — Ninevah after Jonah’s preaching comes to mind. And in the following century, she led the greatest evangelical missionary outreach in history, other than the Apostolic age. King George lost his colonies, but gained the world.

From debauchery to world conquest in one century.

Of course, this is not something wrought by human ingenuity or power. It is the work of God. But we know that many mothers and fathers in England were praying for their sons and daughters, that they would return to the old paths.

And that is the course we must ask God to help us take if we hope to see a return to the old paths here in our country, a country whose history irrefutably was founded upon eternal spiritual values which in turn made us a great nation.

John Adams said, “Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.” However, he overlooked Nineveh … and also England.

Let us listen to Jeremiah as he rebuked Judah:

“Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.”

May we say, “We shall walk therein.”

All the while, knowing that without the intervention of God, nations will decline and cease to be.

John Wesley, left (1703-1791) and Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

George Whitefield (1714-1770)

Voltaire (1694-1778)

The Barbarian invasions and sackings took place in the face of little to no opposition.

Nothing New Under The Sun II

Richard Barnes

Contrary to the hopes of millions of peoples around the world, the fall of the Communist Soviet Union did not mark an end to the state’s ages long, relentless offensive to bring all humanity and her activities under the state’s total control.

Nor did Soviet Communism mark the beginning of that quest. The previous post noted that Marx and Engels assumed Communism to be the Jacobins’ program a century before; Lenin himself said the Jacobins’ fatal error was to stop the terror, a mistake he (Lenin) was determined to not repeat.

However, going back to the Jacobins is not going back anywhere near far enough.

In the Middle Ages, there was a real tension within the church as to which was the more important or critical: the particulars or the absolute? How this question was answered would also lead to determining the standard by which the church should be governed: by men and their traditions or by the full authority of the Bible? Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live has an interesting narrative on this point, as does R. J. Rushdoony’s The One And The Many. 

This was a very real debate which “swung” one way to the other and back, with consequences for centuries thereafter.

Over time, those who pushed for men and their traditions won out over those who pushed for the authority of the Bible. The humanist victory was accompanied with absolutism, which is usually the case when the authority of the Bible, the Word and Law of God, is minimized or otherwise not recognized. According to St. Peter, judgment must begin in the house of God. As goes the church, so goes the rest. So the tension within the church devolved into a tension between the church and the state. After all, both claimed authority on the basis of men and traditions, not on the basis of eternal Law.

Interestingly, most folks believe that the church in the Middle Ages was running things. That’s a dangerous oversimplification. The church may have opened the door for the tyranny that followed; however, she ended up being blamed for crimes which she actually opposed. She clearly preferred to be the one running things, however the fact is that she was not.

In the battle to determine who was the supreme manifestation of man on earth, church or state, the state clearly won out. Yes, many in the church fought and argued for her supremacy, while many in the kings’ courts argued for the supremacy of Caesar.

Very few argued for the supremacy of God over both church and state. That was inherent in Augustine’s phrase, “The One and the Many” — God is One in Three Persons. Wherever the Trinitarian faith prevails, not only in creeds, but in sincere belief and practice, there is freedom. There is a recognition of individual liberty and desires (the Many) but also of community and communion, acknowledging the need for unity (the One). And there is the recognition that there are spheres in life, of which church and state are two. Others include family, school, work, etc. But all are under God and none is to usurp the sphere of another.

An example of the state’s tyranny for which the church is usually blamed is the case of John Hus. At the Council of Constance (1414-1418 in Bohemia) the church declared that John Hus was not a heretic. The members of the council disagreed with his focus on the Bible, but this was not heresy, according to them.

Emperor Sigismund had promised safe conduct to Hus. But that was a lie: as soon as Hus arrived he was arrested and was not permitted to defend himself; he was only permitted to renounce his faith, something he would not do. Regardless, Sigismund declared that even if Hus recanted his faith, he would be executed.

Hus declared, “I appeal to Jesus Christ, the Only Judge who is omnipotent and wholly Just. In His hands I place my cause, not on the foundation of false witnesses and councils, but on the foundation of truth and justice.”

He was cruelly burned at the stake, by Caesar’s orders and henchmen. Hus’s example can be multiplied by the thousands.

The state requires conformity, whether it be 21st Century health mandates, 20th Century Soviet Union, or 15th Century Bohemia. And for total conformity to become a reality, total control is necessary: everyone is to think the same and to do the same. For this to be so, the state must control even our thoughts and our beliefs. 

This is nothing new, not even in the 15th Century.

Incidentally, throughout the Inquisition, a program in which the Church did not execute anybody, the state did, sober estimates of executions range from a low of 2,000 to a high of 20,000. Compare that to the deaths chargeable to atheistic Communist regimes in the 20th Century alone, where the numbers go into the tens of millions and even up to 200,000 million, depending on your sources. I am most certainly not excusing the church’s role in this nefarious period of history; however, the tale needs to be told truthfully.

The important point for the purposes of this post is to realize that the battles of the Middle Ages revolved around the question: Christ or Caesar? The 16th Century Reformation decidedly proclaimed the Crown Rights of Christ the King — which became the cry of the English Puritans of the 17th Century, which conviction they brought to the Americas. This meant that Christ was over both the church and the state.

To the Reformers the solution of The One And The Many was the Trinitarian faith under which men were free to govern themselves according to the Bible, the only Rule for life. Under that faith, all legitimate institutions were under Jesus Christ. This meant that the state had no business regulating the church nor did the church have any business performing duties delegated by God to the civil authorities. So, for instance, the administration of justice was a civic duty. But the church could and should proclaim the justice of God including rebuke of a State which would deviate from God’s Law. This was a church duty and she had the liberty to freely exercise that duty.

With the passing of the decades and centuries, Americans increasingly inclined towards a more Erastian persuasion, meaning that as the state grew, citizens saw it as god, without actually saying so. For example, the federal income tax laws “exempt” charitable organizations, into which they lump the church. However, the 17th Century understanding was that the church was a separate sphere or kingdom under God’s Kingdom. The income tax authorities (if there had been any back then), would have absolutely no business determining if a church met their definition of charitable organization or not, much less demand a certification or registration to that effect.

The Erastian view is that the church must indeed “prove” to the state whatever the state demands. And that’s where we are today: a spot where the church is seen as “under” the state. The past three years where churches were shut down or ordered to cease communion or to wear masks or to practice social distance clearly demonstrated that the state, and many churchgoers, do not believe that Jesus is the Head of His Church, let alone King.

But, again, even that is not something new under the sun.

Way back in the Garden of Eden, man was tempted to be his own god; a god who determines what is right and what is wrong. He was tempted to not obey the Triune God Who had told him that He, God, tells him, man, what is right and what is wrong. R. J. Rushdoony has written much about this and any reader who is interested is encouraged to look into his writings.

Practically all of history is man’s quest to be god. The City and Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) is collective man attempting to be god. The attempt failed.

All such schemes will fail, whether they be Sigismund executing John Hus, whether they be Communist China seeking to control what her people think, whether they be federal and state officials telling churches how to worship and when, or whether it be the World Economic Forum predestinating us to a solitary, nasty, brutish, and short life.

All will fail.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Jan Hus (1370-1415) statue in Prague, Czech Republic

Emperor Sigismund (1368-1437)

Thomas Erastus (1524-1583)

Nothing New Under The Sun I

Richard Barnes

Recent posts have cited verifiable examples of major early to mid-20th Century United States and England policy decisions that have had cataclysmic impacts on our lives, not to mention the lives of tens of millions of human beings across the earth.

For decades, the media, academia, and government had poo-poohed the nefarious birthings of these policies, even mocking high officials who sought to raise the alarms or sound the warnings. Such were characterized as “wild-eyed”, slanderers, conspiracy nuts, and worse. 

When the evidence — in our own files and archives, in the released Venona transcripts, and much more — was finally widely available, the media exhibited curious disinterest at best, dishonest obfuscation at second best. Names long associated as unjustly tarred, turned out to have been Soviet agents or knowing facilitators or avid “believers” intent on doing as told by their Soviet heroes.

For example, Elizabeth Bentley’s revelations, all corroborated, amounted to over 50,000 pages in the FBI files alone. And this was only a fraction of the Communist infiltration in the executive branch of the federal government, which was known at the time but loudly denied by the executive branch, the media, and others who knew better. 

To cite just one FBI memo from December, 1945:

“It has become increasingly clear in the investigation of this case that there are a tremendous number of persons employed in the United States government who are Communists and strive daily to advance the cause of Communism and destroy the foundations of this government … Today nearly every department or agency of this government is infiltrated with them in varying degree. To aggravate the situation they appear to have concentrated most heavily in those departments which make policy … or carry it into effect … There has emerged already a picture of a large, energetic, and capable number of Communists who operate daily in the legislative field, as well as in the executive branch of government ….”

The raw files are unbelievably extensive; they indicate a vast network throughout our agencies and, later, as our appointees in the founding of international bodies such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, and much, much more. We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of individuals, at the very least. Plus the thousands who were trained and who worked under their aegises. 

Again, as noted here and here, just a fraction of these not only effectuated our wartime alliances but also the destinies of Eastern Europe and China. 

This was a big deal. And it continues to be downplayed to this day. 

For example, Maurice Halperin, a United States diplomat, was a Soviet agent who provided Moscow sensitive information on governments in exile, such as Poland. This enabled Stalin to maneuver in a way that ensured only his henchmen were installed, post war in Poland, while murdering those opposed to him. After the war, Halperin moved over to the State Department where he advised the head of the department on policy towards Latin America. To avoid having to testify, he eventually fled to Moscow in the early 50s, and then to Havana, and finally absconded to Canada where he died. His actions were deadly to millions.

How does Wikipedia document his treason to his fellow countrymen?

“After Halperin’s death, the release of the Venona project decryptions of coded Soviet cables, as well as information gleaned from Soviet KGB archives, revealed [sic!] that Halperin was involved in espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union while serving in an official capacity with the United States government.”

So, basically, we have a conflict of interest case and not much more with this fellow, who was finally found out with the public release of Venona after his death.

However, the aforementioned archives from the 40s and 50s are voluminous in their record of attempts to warn the executive branch that Halperin was a Communist agent doing immeasurable harm, with the real life blood of millions on the line. These warnings were ignored, to put it charitably.

Multiply Halperin by at least hundreds if not thousands and you get the picture.

Why is this important today, when the Soviet Union no longer exists?

Because those policies, primarily foreign but with very real domestic implications, were set in concrete and are followed, with emendations or amendments to this very day. We continue to be haunted by the Halperins of Christmases past.

But that is not the most important reason for us to care about these matters.

I hinted at the critical reason in the last post. What is the “Guide” that those who love liberty follow? In my prior post we quoted Philip Jaffe as he openly admitted that his guide was Communism.

The Communist Manifesto was published in 1948. Its authors, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx acknowledged that Communism was not new. For example, it was embodied by the French revolutionaries.

Ideas and demands such as:

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.”

“Communists desire to introduce … an openly legalized community of women …..”

Perhaps the most famous passage includes the following prescriptions for all modern societies:

  • Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
  • A heavy progressive or graduated income tax [the United States had no income tax until 1916]
  • Abolition of all right of inheritance.
  • Confiscation of all property of all emigrants.
  • Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
  • Free education for all children in public schools [elsewhere in the Manifesto the authors make clear that parents must not be allowed to educate their children].

Prior generations were rightfully aghast at these demands and were naturally opposed to anyone proposing them. Hence the deceitful, undercover approach to such matters by politicians, bureaucrats, academics and educators, entertainment mavens, “public servants”, and more. 

But they have all — without exception — to some degree or other — worked their way into our policy prescriptions, politics, education, and even religious denominations.

The opponents are right in their observations. However, they are wrong in thinking this is something new under the sun. 

It is not new. And by not seeing its origins, we fail in our battles against it.

For there is indeed nothing new under the sun.

Originally published in 1848, continues to have avid followers

Elizabeth Bentley (1905-1963). Communist agent who defected, at great risk to her life. Her revelations were astounding back in 1945 and are astounding even today. She was denounced as a traitor, a liar, and a criminal by her old comrades and their enablers. The president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, denigrated her testimony as a “red herring”.

Maurice Halperin (1906-1995)

The Guide

Richard Barnes

In the prior post I quoted Philip Jaffe, one of many American operatives, agents, or otherwise “true believers” who, although they did incalculable harm to the United States and her allies, that harm was nothing compared to the tens of millions who were tortured, starved, and murdered plus the hundreds of millions who were enslaved under the Communist utopias they helped usher in and maintain in power.

Let us read again part of what Jaffe wrote:

“It was through Chi Chao-ting, a cousin of mine by marriage, that I accepted the Communist version of Marxism as a guide to the contemporary world … For a period of more than fifteen years, Chi Chao-ting and I were intimate personal friends and close personal associates…. (emphasis mine)”

Like Jaffe, many 20th Century Americans and Europeans had lost the “Guide” that previous generations had taken for granted: Christianity.

For example, a Wall Street Journal survey, published in March, of this year found that “America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It: Patriotism, religion, and hard work hold less importance”. 

“Since 1998”, it found drastic declines in importance of patriotism (70% to 38%), religion (62% to 39%),  childbearing (59% to 30%), and more. What is truly alarming is that these categories had already suffered steep downturns throughout the 20th Century, especially from the late 1950s onward. To experience such additional declines “since 1998” is indicative of a country that has been transformed more deeply than most of us care to acknowledge.

I believe that all men are religious; we are religious because we are made in the image of God. Even atheists such as Jaffe concede the religious need for a “guide” through which to see the world. Of course, he would have denied that need to have been “religious”, but it most certainly is. His bible was Communism and he acted upon it. His gods were Marx and Engels and Chi Chao-ting, his cousin by marriage.

In the 1990s during business trips to Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Italy, I would seek opportunities to talk about American history with professionals in financial and general management executive positions of power and influence. They all had higher education and above average intelligence. Without exception, not one of them mentioned Christianity or religion when I’d ask them what they knew or had learned about the history of the United States. Instead, their confident, matter-of-fact replies would go into great depth on issues such as autonomy, material wealth, distrust of monarchy, hatred of taxation, with the Boston Tea Party thrown in for good measure.

They were genuinely surprised when I would steer the discussion to historical facts such as the Mayflower Compact; the great Puritan migration; the “Presbyterian rebellion”; the Great Awakening; the influence of Puritan, John Winthrop in the colonial era, which was the foundation of the constitutional republic, founded over a century later; the pervasive role of Calvinist Presbyterian, John Witherspoon, in the founding of the republic and his influence on our Founders; and much more.

The distressing thing about the ignorance about the true causes of liberty and our love thereof was that much of their learning had come from American sources taught in their European schools. It is a false teaching, which has had profound, baleful effects on Europe to this day.

So now, in both Europe and the United States, individual rights and personal autonomy are glorified and idolatrously exalted. All forms of collective identity — family, church, community, “mom and pop” commercial or agrarian entrepreneurship — are mocked, downplayed, and, where possible, destroyed. Did you notice that during the recent years of “crisis”, the “Big Boys” — Walmart, Sam’s, Costco, etc. — were deemed “essential” but small businesses, homes, farms, and church were not?

By seeking to supposedly unshackle ourselves from any religious guidance, we end up pursuing freedom from even biological certainties — men and women denying their physical realities and actually harming their bodies in doing so; mothers doing the same to their own children(!). We now hear about “transhumanism” where some seek to take us beyond the reality of being human. 

In my boyhood, I had the privilege of being in the presence of general managers and even high executives of  Bethlehem Steel. They saw themselves as “belonging” to their country; as leading a company that was “an American company”. They were not perfect, but at least they had an identity you could sink your teeth into. Movies such as 1954’s Executive Suite with William Holden merely reflected the reality on the street in that era.

But now, we hear of CEO’s and President’s who consider themselves to be “citizens of the world”. They pay more attention to Xi Jinping than to Middle America. 

Their pragmatic, cold, decisions tell us they are uncaring because they are unmoored. 

It is refreshing to read about Poland and Hungary who, seeing the devastation such rootless atheism has wreaked on their countries, have openly questioned the wisdom of modern liberal democracy, so called, and have called instead for a return to the old paths. In 2012, Hungary passed the Fundamental Law, a way of law based on Christianity. The liberal Guardian, practically beside itself, promptly went on the attack, mocking Hungary’s appeal to “values such as family, nation, fidelity, faith, love, and labor,”  and its recognition of marriage and childbearing as foundational to society, and Christianity as inseparable from nationhood.

Hungary simply announced that a Christian democratic model entails the separation of church and state but not that of church and society. She rejects the compulsory atheism now prevalent in America and Europe. And for that she has been attacked to this very day. I wish them the very best and hope we take a page from her gutsy valor. Because it is a page from our own founding.

We all need a Guide. We all need a framework, or spectacles through which we see and measure our lives and the world we inhabit and in which we act. Jaffe was honest in admitting this and his guide led him to embrace the antithesis of the principles which formed our founding and our liberty and in so doing, it led him to a very real, palpable, costly, and bloody betrayal of those principles and of the very real people who believed in those principles. People not only in America, but in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

What is most distressing is that Jaffe’s guide is what has been being inculcated in America’s universities and in her elementary and high schools since the early and the mid 20th Century, respectively.

It is an Erastian indoctrination, one that insists on giving the state (government) all power and authority, even above the church. That is not our heritage. Our founding, which includes the century and a half colonial era, presupposed a Triune God under Whom all else lives and has its being. The state is merely one sphere of several, which include the family and the church. But all are under God, our Guide.

Any sphere which rejects this ends up usurping what belong to God alone. And the results are not pretty.

“Between 1629 and 1640, no fewer than twenty thousand Puritans fled from England to America. This was an astonishing number, considering the distances and the hazards of the journey (M. Stanton Evans).”

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) and Karl Marx (1818-1883). Engels was a wealthy industrialist who pretended to tell the rest of us what was good for us; Marx was a truly despicable, hateful character (see Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals) whose personality is rampant in all Communist regimes. Their apologists have a very tough row to hoe: they must overturn the words of Jesus: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Mayflower Compact  (1620) — America’s history, including the constitutions of the 13 colonies, the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the constitutions of the states simply cannot be understood if we ignore the covenantal nature of our founding.

John Winthrop (1588-1649), first governor of Massachussets, whose sermon, known as “The City Upon A Hill” resonates even today.

John Witherspoon (1723-1794) was a very influential Founding Father of the United States. He was a minister of the Gospel and the president of Presbyterian College of New Jersey, now Princeton.

Viktor Orbán (born 1963), Prime Minister of Hungary. Having lived under Soviet Communism, he now refuses to live under EU totalitarianism.

Iconic view of the “stacks” in Bethlehem, PA. Bethlehem Steel Company no longer exists (1857-2003)

The cast of 1954’s classic movie, Executive Suite