Category: Current Events

Christmas Thought 2018

One of the more special things about Christmas is the songs. They are beautiful, meaningful, and some, very special. Many of them get to the heart of the season, proclaiming the reason Christmas is such a happy time of year.

I have several favorite carols. ‘Joy to the World’ has long been a favorite. Its joyous words proclaim the kingship of Jesus, over men and nature both, and shouts the new life promised in redemption. The modern song ‘Mary Did You Know’ never fails to invoke in me the sense of awe that comes from trying to wrap my head around the incarnation.

‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’ fills me with a longing for the peace that was promised, even while it agrees with me that that peace is little evidenced on earth today. But then it hurries on to remind me the story’s not over yet, that hope is as much a part of Christmas as joy.

But this year – perhaps because I’ve been thinking more about the subject while teaching Walk In It, and contemplating expanding on it – the one carol that speaks most to my area of passion is ‘Oh Holy Night.’ It too expresses the joy, the hope of a new day fulfilled. But then comes the verse that expresses the hope and joy in the socio-political realm too.

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

Let all within us praise His holy name.

Sadly, the song seems to be falling out of favor. I haven’t heard it much this year, and that particular verse even less. Maybe it’s because the world doesn’t want to hear it today. Liberalism and its Left-leaning off-spring do not want to be reminded that the love and peace they seek, the promise they stole from Christianity, was promised first by God, and comes only from Him. Most Christians don’t want to hear it because they don’t want to be reminded that Jesus came to change lives and culture, not just our emotions and hope for the future.

But we must follow the example of the author who ended the above verse with the words:

Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,

His power and glory evermore proclaim.

Re: the Revolt of the Masses

Circumstances in an organization to which I belong were such that my mind went back to the book The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset to help understand the situation. It is one of the most prescient books of the last century. In it, Ortega seeks to understand the cultural implications of the rise of what he calls “mass man.”

“Europe is suffering from the greatest crisis that can afflict peoples, nations, and civilization….It is called the rebellion of the masses. … This fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power.”

The ‘mass man’ “does not want to give reasons or be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing: the right not to be reasonable, the ‘reason of unreason.’” As he said elsewhere, “the vulgar proclaims and impose the rights of vulgarity, or vulgarity as a right.” The spirit of the masses “inevitably leads it to one single process of intervention [in social affairs]: direct action [i.e. violence,] … the Magna Carta of barbarism.”

What happens when mass man takes over the state? The mass “has a deadly hatred of all that is not itself. … When the mass acts on its own, it does so only in one way, for it has no other: it lynches.” Ortega goes on to say, the mass man “sees it [the State], admires it, knows that here it is, safeguarding his existence; but he is not conscious of the fact that it is a human creation invented by certain men and upheld by certain virtues and fundamental qualities which the men of yesterday had and which may vanish into air tomorrow.” Eventually, this lack of consciousness will strangle the state.

A similar process spells the end of science. And civilization dies.

Ah, the wonder of democracy as a philosophical ideal!

[Quotes from chapters 1, 8 and 13]

Opium for the Masses

One of the better known quotes (actually it’s a paraphrase) of Karl Marx is this statement about religion. “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” By it, he meant to castigate religion as a means used by the elites to pacify the masses, to make the ills of this world bearable.

A statement by Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish poet who lived under both the national and international forms of socialism, shows a much better understanding of the issue. “A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders are not going to be judged.” (from a review of Milosz: A Biography in World magazine, 12/8/18 issue.)

Like almost everything Marx said, his statement was wrong. Religion, with its call for justice and an end to oppression and a hope for a better life, kindled a fire for freedom and justice in the hearts of man, not dreamy illusions. That cry for justice, fairness, the realization for God’s promises of peace and prosperity has been part of man’s yearnings since earliest times. So has the desire to see wrongs righted, to see violence and oppression recompensed. A hope and belief in the ultimate prevailing of justice is a necessary part of a healthy psyche.

It is the fondest dream of the blackguard that their betrayals, greed, and oppressive activities will go unpunished, that using others for their ends will be okay, that Nietzsche’s superman ethics are true, and death proves that truth. If death ends it all, then the antics of blackguards — from the political strong man to the dictatorial boss to those using others as their stepping stone — will, most likely, never be judged, never punished. What a solace for their souls! Now that’s a most powerful opiate!!

But as World concluded the article: “Real solace comes from believing in life after death, with a righteous and compassionate Judge.” Blackguards beware! Opiates generate illusions!

The Swiss Look in a New Direction

Every once in a while, a news article allows a glimmer of light to shine through. One such story a few days ago (sorry, I don’t have the url) discussed the Vollgeld Initiative in Switzerland. The initiative would eliminate fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is the policy that allows banks to ‘create’ money, by allowing them to loan out several dollars for each dollar of reserve (i.e. savings) they hold.

Fractional reserve banking is, thus, a major part of the impetus behind inflation. (Inflation is the expansion of the money supply, which causes evils such as the dilution of the purchasing power of each dollar and the initiation of the business cycle of ‘booms and bursts’ that has caused so much havoc during the last century.)

The news’ nickname for this was called the Sovereign Money initiative, so obviously – although it didn’t give specifics that I saw – the state would still exercise control over the money supply. While the state controls the money, evils such as inflation would only be mitigated, at best. But it seems like a step in the right direction.

I mention and discuss briefly the moral reasons for an end to fractional reserve banking, as well as to state control of a country’s financial system, in my book Walk In It, (still available from Amazon.) Every once in a while, ideas that are right philosophically and morally are proposed politically. When it happens, such ideas deserve our consideration and support.