It’s a border war between two shithole countries in a region where wars like this have been going on for a thousand years. Russia actually has a very good historical case for reacquiring the Donbas and Crimea, and that’s all they wanted to start with. But the situation has gotten out of control—courtesy of the US Deep State.
International Man: What important trends do you see unfolding in 2023?
Doug Casey: Perhaps the biggest turning point in recent modern history will turn out to be 2020. Governments and their minions found novel ways to gain huge amounts of control. These things were well underway before 2020, but since Covid, they’ve all gone hyperbolic. That trend will accelerate this year—albeit with some much-delayed pushback.
Four areas stand out.
First, a relatively inconsequential flu, followed by a vaccine hysteria, got far more voluntary compliance to all manner of extreme measures than most anyone could have imagined. The powers that be found that the public is vastly more likely to do as they’re told if the rationale is health rather than politics, ideology, economics, or the like. So we can count on many replays of this tune, including mandatory vaccine passports and lockdowns.
Second, the drumbeat against the newly-minted enemy element, carbon, has reached manic levels. A substantial part of the population, and a large majority of youth, have been convinced that Global Warming will destroy the planet unless we go Green, stop using fossil fuels, and attempt to run an industrial civilization on windmills and sunshine. It stands a chance of destroying civilization.
Third, central banks are racing to impose CBDCs, while governments run multi-trillion dollar deficits and bailouts, doubling and tripling debt levels with little discussion. This is unprecedented.
Fourth, the widespread acceptance of Wokism, racial quotas, aggressive LBGT++ promotion, ESG, and DIE. There are serious discussions of race reparation payments and a Guaranteed Annual Income. It’s part of an accelerated general collapse of traditional moral values.
What’s happening will, I think, be seen as a turning point greater than either WW1 or WW2. And there’s an excellent chance we’re looking at something akin to WW3 in the bargain. I don’t doubt that the era before 2020 will soon be referred to as the “Before Times,” a phrase that’s been used in dystopian science fiction. And the future could resemble dystopian sci-fi.
The future is what this discussion is about. But I’m not a fortuneteller and don’t have a crystal ball. All I can do is look at the facts. Ideally, facts that not everybody is paying attention to—interpreted through a lens that not everybody else is using.
Let’s briefly run down trends in the major markets.
The search for solutions to both the meaning crisis and our loss of liberty will eventually come to the same place: the necessity of natural law ethics.
I have started watching a video series entitled “Welcome to Negative World.” That would be our world. The speakers are Aaron Renn, Joe Rigney, and James Wood. I am only into the second video of seven, so I cannot speak to the value of the entire series. However, I am so far finding it of value. I discovered the series via a video by Paul VanderKlay, where he examines the first video in the series.
The second video in the series is a talk given by Joe Rigney: The Three Worlds and the Tao. He presents the case for natural law as what has been broken in our society – yes, there was always sin, but it is today where the sin is codified, celebrated, even mandated by the law.
Toward the end of the talk, he cites from a letter by CS Lewis to Clyde Kilby of Wheaton College (beginning here):
The Tao is the necessary expression in terms of our temporal existence of what God by His own righteous nature is. One could even say of it that it was begotten, not made. For is not the Tao simply the Word itself, considered from a particular point of view.
It is a powerful statement. Paraphrasing Rigney: The Tao is God’s nature in creation. Behind the Tao is the Word, the logos – Jesus Himself.
Yes, natural law was there from the beginning; per Lewis, it was begotten as the Son was begotten. As Doug Wilson often says: our choice is Christ or chaos. While natural law doesn’t contain the salvific value that comes with Christ, one could also say – in this temporal world – our choice is natural law or chaos.
Conclusion
As I have written often, the search and struggle today is because we no longer hold that it is proper to act in accord with the Tao – objective reality, or, dare I (and CS Lewis and Joe Rigney) say, natural law. This meaning crisis discussion, held by people like Jordan Peterson, Paul VanderKlay, John Vervaeke and Jonathan Pageau, among others, will come to realize and explore this point or it will never be more than a passing intellectual exercise in a little corner of the internet.
Yes, there has been positive impact on individual lives via this online discussion; this is not a small thing. But this is only because the conversation is occasionally speaking to natural law ethics and objective reality without acknowledging it is doing so.
The search for solutions to both the meaning crisis and our loss of liberty will eventually come to the same place: the necessity of natural law ethics. I outline this here, in two books.
In the current unrestricted war by globalists seeking to dismantle human civilization, there may be no indispensable men at this time. Or at least none has arisen. I’d have to imagine if Washington were alive today, he’d have organized a sort of Continental Army by now, and we’d know who he is. Soldiers marched barefoot and bloody, at the tail end of the mini ice age, into the battle of Trenton. We aren’t seeing that type of courage yet. Although, there have been some heroic medical doctors that have resisted at great expense.
Contemplating infinity causes one to recognize both the miracle of life as well as the absurdity of life. If you imagine an outward expansion through an ever expanding Cosmos, as well as an inward expansion to an ever expanding subatomic world, it increases the awe. Of course, if we are dealing with infinity, we have to recognize the possibility that it is not expanding and has always existed. Still, there is then the issue of whether the idea of expansiveness is simply consciousness, whatever that is, creating an illusion of expansion by focalization. Potentiality becoming reality. The limitations of perception clearly come to play when discussing these topics, let alone the limitations of linguistics or mathematics, and their inability to encapsulate higher levels of truth.
The above exercise can bring on the sense of awe. How about the absurdity of it all?
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Keeping in mind the above, imagine sitting at a desk peering into a high powered microscope and discovering a universe, then as you adjust your lens you see this tiny planet. As you adjust further, you see this tiny little world with this thing we call civilization. The apparent infinite number of subatomic particles and infinite solar systems, galaxies, and so on, that exist to support this thing called life, is both a miracle and absurd at the same time. Yes, I know the Cosmos and the subatomic world can be considered alive too, but let’s not digress.
As you adjust your microscope further, you see a battle initiating on Christmas night 1776.
Why not? Why should you be bound by time in this thought exercise?
General George Washington was leading his troops undetected across the Delaware river launching a bold surprise attack on British occupied Trenton. This bold attack initiated on Christmas night was a deliberate attempt to catch the Hessians (German Mercenaries) off guard after a day of Christmas drinking and celebrating.
This bold attack on Christmas night was born out of necessity. British troops occupying America had reached 43,000 soldiers. To make matters worse, a once 25,000 soldier strong Continental Army, had dwindled to 4,300. As if this was not bad enough, on December 31st most of the Continental Army’s enlistment terms would end. This would of course mean the end of the American Revolution and likely the end of a rope for Washington and the Patriots that were signatories to the July 4th Declaration of Independence.
“This vast difference between independent reporting and the DOD investigation raises concerns and undermines DOD credibility on civilian casualty reporting,” Warren and Jacobs stressed.
Civilian populations always take the most heat. what makes it worse is when the wrong countries are invaded. Iraq and Afghanistan for 9/11 to name two.
As U.S. military forces continue to kill and wound civilians in multiple countries during the ongoing 21-year War on Terror while chronically undercounting such casualties, a pair of Democratic lawmakers on Monday asked the Pentagon to explain discrepancies in noncombatant casualty reporting and detail steps being taken to address the issue.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) – who have both led calls to hold the military accountable for harming noncombatants – said they are “troubled” that the Pentagon’s annual civilian casualty report, which was released in September as required by an amendment Warren attached to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), again undercounts noncombatants killed by US forces.
“In this year’s report, the department reported that approximately 12 civilians were killed and five were injured in Afghanistan and Somalia as a result of US military operations during 2021,” the lawmakers wrote. “However, the report did not admit to any civilian deaths in Syria, despite credible civilian casualty monitors documenting at least 15 civilian deaths and 17 civilian injuries in Syria in 2021.”
The U.K.-based monitor group Airwars counted between 12 and 25 civilians likely killed by US forces, sometimes operating with coalition allies, in Syria alone last year, with another two to four people killed in Somalia and one to four killed in Yemen.
Airwars does not track civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan, where all of last year’s casualties acknowledged by the Department of Defense (DOD) occurred. These incidents include an errant August 29 drone strike that killed 10 people – most of them members of one family – including seven children.
“The report also appeared to undercount additional civilian casualties from Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) that occurred prior to 2021,” the lawmakers’ letter continues, referring to the anti-Islamic State campaign launched during the Obama administration and ramped up under then-President Donald Trump – who infamously vowed to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS militants and “take out their families.”
“For example, the report… only disclosed four civilians killed and 15 civilians injured as a result of the March 18, 2019 strike in Baghuz, Syria,” the lawmakers noted. “But The New York Timesinvestigated this strike in 2021, finding evidence that the military concealed the extent of the civilian casualties, and according to Airwars, local sources alleged that the strike resulted in at least 160 civilian deaths, including up to 45 children.”
“This vast difference between independent reporting and the DOD investigation raises concerns and undermines DOD credibility on civilian casualty reporting,” Warren and Jacobs stressed.
The truth is that we are sustained by stories – oral, written, existential – not by things, as a commercial civilization would have us believe. From infancy to old age, we crave stories that will allow us to make sense of our lives, to give them shape and spiritual significance. And the greatest gifts we can give each other are stories that draw on the mystery and sacredness of existence, stories that express, in ravishing language and a musical spirit, clarification for our lives. Stories that help us resist the nihilistic ethos of our times, the violence and deceit that defines them.
“The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.”
– Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths
Things, possessions, life on the installment plan or credit card. This is the season to buy, to accumulate more folderols, to give things to one’s children and each other, which, we like to believe, will bring joy. It’s make-believe, of course, an adult lie conjured up out of guilt and fear that our lives, the stories we live, the stories we dream, and those that dream us, are insufficiently meaningful to bring our children and ourselves the joy we say we seek.
Driven by a pure sense of guilt devoid of any sense of redemption in a capitalist materialist culture, we buy and buy, accumulate and accumulate, in the vain hope that such tangible “gifts” will bring a magic that we can possess. Our exchange of gifts is a consumer culture’s parody of the true meaning of a gift: that gifts are given to be given away, to be passed around, like the peace pipe of native American Indian tribes.
As Lewis Hyde writes in his extraordinary book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, “… a gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is its constant donation.” What we are given, in the inner and outer world, must be shared, allowed to circulate.
But we like to own, to stop the flow. As a result, we have become stuck, selfie people who can’t understand that to possess is to be possessed.
Stop, pose, click. Got it!
Describing art as a way of life, or walking life’s way as an art, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke put it thus:
Not any self-control or self-limitation for the sake of specific ends, but rather a carefree letting go of oneself; not caution, but rather a wise blindness; not working to acquire silent, slowly increasing possessions, but rather a continuous squandering of all perishable values. This way of being has something naïve and instinctive about it, and resembles that period of the unconscious best characterized by a joyous consciousness , namely the period of childhood.
The truth is that we are sustained by stories – oral, written, existential – not by things, as a commercial civilization would have us believe. From infancy to old age, we crave stories that will allow us to make sense of our lives, to give them shape and spiritual significance. And the greatest gifts we can give each other are stories that draw on the mystery and sacredness of existence, stories that express, in ravishing language and a musical spirit, clarification for our lives. Stories that help us resist the nihilistic ethos of our times, the violence and deceit that defines them.
For example, long ago a Jewish boy was born in a stable because his parents couldn’t get a room anywhere. The parents then had to flee with the boy because the government was murdering children and was out to get him. Later in life, this child Jesus, became a radical opponent of church and state, preached peace, love, non-violence, and living by faith, not money; he embraced the outcasts, condemned the hypocrites, and was finally executed as a radical criminal by the state. But his spirit was undefeated; he conquered death; and his name has become synonymous with love and kindness to such a degree that we celebrate his birth as the light of the world as the darkest days of the year turn brighter.
It’s a beautiful story from beginning to end, and if heeded, would bring massive resistance to the way things are throughout the world. No wonder it has touched the hearts of so many for so long.
Sadly, however, Wordsworth put it perfectly when he said that, “getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” And the consumer-gift-stories we indirectly tell our children by participating in the madness of holiday shopping are tales unfit for young ears.
To live to buy is to tell them lies.
Our children (and all of us) wish not things but stories that will help them face life with enthusiasm and courage. When I was a young boy, my father would ease me to sleep with “Jiminy Cricket Stories,” imaginary improvisations on Pinocchio and his conscience. They were in no way trendy like the most recent Pinocchio film adaptation, but fundamentally sound as in the song As Time Goes By – it’s still the same old story.
I can’t remember any of his stories today, but what stays with me is their underlying theme, their spirit: to become a real boy, a genuine person, one must determine to tell the truth. One must be brave, truthful, and unselfish. Yet even more, when I think of them, I feel my father’s unconditional love and the timbre of his lilting voice.
These stories about truth and bravery contained hard but vital lessons for a father to pass on to a son, but he did it in such an entertaining way that I took the lessons to heart. Ever since, in gratitude and wonder, I have been trying to make my story adhere to that spirit of truth. Trying; for as we all know, truth is a hard taskmaster. We never hold it, only seek it, and can only approach it if we are possessed by language and allow its musical spirit to carry us on into the unknown.
When I became a father myself, I tried to pass on to my children a love for stories and the words we use to express our lives. Without words, and the ability to use them meaningfully, we are lost in the world of things, a place where consuming replaces creating. So from infancy onward, my wife and I would read to them, and eventually I began to tell them imaginary stories of my own, “Willy Daly Stories,” inspired by a boyhood pal. They would hang onto each word, and swing into depths of reverie as I strung them together into tall tales.
“At the bottom of each word/I’m a spectator at my birth,” wrote the French poet Alain Bosquet.
Entering into this creative spirit, Susanne and Daniel would ask me. “Is that really true?” And I could not lie and say no. So they would laugh, I would grin, and we would go on.
Like all children, they loved these stories, the ones I told and the ones we read. They entered into them, and they, into them; their inner worlds germinated. When they were very young, each started to read, not haltingly but fluently and with amazing comprehension. “Out of the blue” something clicked (and neither was “taught” to read, but was read and talked to by my wife and me as though they comprehended everything, even the most abstruse words), and from that day on the words that they previously heard became theirs. They received the gift, even when they didn’t understand the meaning, they grasped the music.
Now it has passed to my grandchildren, Sophie and Henry, who are children of the word, lovers of the epiphanies stories can disclose.
“The bright book of life,” as D.H.Lawrence called the novel, opened to them. Novel: New. New life forever arising out of the old. Miraculously (is there any other word for it?), they were in possession of the gift of words that they could pass on; they had the power to hear and tell their own stories, to understand their lives, not as the pursuit of things, but as the pursuit of meaning. They felt proud and I felt blessed.
“Art tells the truth,” wrote Chekhov. Indeed. And the wheel of life turns with the seasons. The gift of stories is passed on. Christmas turns to New Year’s. People pass on, but so do stories. The things are forgotten.
The wordsmith Leonard Cohen sang in his song, “Famous Blue Raincoat,” that “I hope you are keeping some sort of record.” The words stick on the page, but the beautiful melody carries them into our present and into the future and we imagine stories carrying us on as the music and the words don’t stop and we keep humming the tune and imagining as we move along to that which cannot be said and about which it is impossible to be silent, to paraphrase Victor Hugo.
While the gift described above is not on par with the gift of salvation and the one true perfect sacrifice we celebrate at Easter, or the incarnation of God that we celebrate at Christmas, it is a wonderous gift to all men Christian or not. For it is through the lens of what was previously discussed that we can form a world where religion and science are not in conflict with one another, where the discovery of the laws of nature is seen as good, for this leads to the discovery of God through his wondrous creation.
With the Christmas season at hand, who is Christ? In English, we describe Christ as the “Word Incarnate,” the Alpha and the Omega, the Son of God. In the Nicene Creed, Christ is described as follows:
The word is a weak translation of the Greek word Logos. The Greek word Logos has a much deeper philosophical meaning than the English word. The meaning of the Greek word logos takes up pages in a Greek-to-English dictionary. Logos was used to express the underlying rationality of the universe, reason, speech, words, and many other things, before it was used to describe the Second person of the Godhead in Christianity by St, John.
The Greeks and Logos
While we think of the Ancient Greeks as worshipers of many gods, starting with the pre-Socratics, the Greek philosophers concluded that there was one God and this God was a transcendent mind (Nous). Heraclitus has been credited as the first Greek philosopher to use the word logos. According to the pre-Socratics the universe was governed by universal principles that were called Logos. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and later Greek Philosophers expanded on this concept. It culminated as God as the unmoved mover in Aristotle. But all the philosophers had a problem that could not be solved through reason alone. If God was, as Aristotle thought, an omniscient, omnipotent, mind that existed in a state of unchanging perfection, why would he create the universe and man? He didn’t need it, nor could his existence be improved by it. Why would He engage in creation?
Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.
Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.
Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.
The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.
In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.
This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.
Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.
The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.
In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “Identity Politics,” “political correctness,” “critical race theory” and the war against “white culture.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life.
Christianity is being gradually marginalized. Each year it becomes more difficult to find a Christmas card that says “Merry Christmas” instead of “Seasons Greetings.” In place of Christmas carols we get Hollywood Christmas songs. In some churches Christianity is being transmuted into Christian Zionism and the worship of Israel. Others fly LGBTQ and BLM flags. We are approaching a time when a Christian Christmas cannot be celebrated as it is not inclusive in a diverse society and therefore is politically incorrect if not a hate crime.
Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.
Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.
All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.
Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by wars that served the ambitions of political leaders and ideological movements. Many were murdered simply because they were members of a class or race that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to serve the neoconservatives’ agenda of extending Washington and Israel’s hegemony.
Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.”
Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.
Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.
As we enter into 2023, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny and degeneracy, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?
Translation: We are your “protectors”, therefore we can do whatever we want. Anyone that calls us out on our corrupt operations is crazy and a liar regardless of evidence. Discrediting the agency puts the public at risk. We are too big to fail.
I have been working within the liberty movement for almost 17 years now. In that time I’ve been involved in numerous organizations that all generally fought the same battle, or the same war – The war against encroaching centralization and authoritarianism. Each group and each institution has had different ideas about how to go about solving the problem of incremental tyranny.
Some of them focused on politics, others on preparedness, and still others on convincing police and military to stand on the side of freedom. Some of them had focused goals, some of them were scattered. Some had decent leadership, while the leadership in others was lacking (or self sabotaging). None of them, however, had malicious intent. None of them sought power over others, only to prevent power from being abused.
In some cases the effort became confrontational because that was the only option, as with Bundy Ranch. Liberty activists vowed never to allow another Waco or another Ruby Ridge in which federal agents violate the due process of targeted citizens, or outright murder them. And we should continue to hold to that promise. As we have seen time and time again, agencies like the FBI, ATF, CIA, etc are corrupt beyond all reckoning and there comes a point where the only solution to deal with a bully is to punch him in the teeth.
The Jan 6th event is also something that has been highly misrepresented on both sides – Leftists argue that it was an “insurrection” worse than anything seen since the Civil War in the name of installing Trump as a dictator. Many conservatives argue that it was a “honey pot” or “false flag” which was completely controlled by feds and informants. Neither claim is accurate.
Yes, there were obviously feds present at the event and yes, Capitol Police let protesters into the building as video evidence proves. But, the vast majority of people that showed up to the capitol that day were not feds. They were normal Americans seeking to air their grievances, as is their constitutional right. It is a mistake to pigeonhole very single major event as nothing more than a false flag; it’s lazy and it ignores the greater reality that many millions of people in the US are unhappy with the declining state of our nation.
As for those that claim it was an insurrection, they don’t know what an insurrection is.
Inconveniencing the government for a couple hours is not an insurrection. Protesting at the Capitol Building is not an insurrection. A real insurrection would be led by armed groups that would not leave the capitol voluntarily, and many people on both sides would die during such an action. As it stands, not a single person was killed by a Jan. 6th protester. Not one. This is not something that can be honestly said for the BLM protests which caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage across the country.
If it had been BLM that day marching into the Capitol Building, the media would have nothing but applause and positive things to say. But because it was a show of conservative strength, they call it an insurrection and they seek to imprison the people involved. The media response to BLM vs their response to Jan 6th tells us one thing – The establishment wants to destroy conservatives and elevate leftist movements.
This debate, however, ignores the bigger question: Why is half the country angry? Why does half the country mistrust the government to the point that a potential civil war seems like the only viable option?
The establishment controlled media and the Biden Administration would argue that it is our fault. We are “conspiracy theorists” suffering from delusions of rising totalitarianism. We supposedly misinterpret everything we see as something more nefarious than what it is. We are dangerous because we are willing to lash out over changes that serve the greater good but disadvantage us in some way. Or, we are “white supremacists” and the evolving demographics of the country are triggering our inherent toxic ideology.
None of these claims are true. All of them are easily debunked propaganda, but they represent a narrative that is repeated ad nauseam on every mainstream outlet, on every social media website and by every leftist politician. There is no conspiracy theory, there is only conspiracy reality.
Almost every single “conspiracy claim” made by liberty groups over the past two decades has turned out to be true. There is indeed an authoritarian agenda at the core of our government today, and it has been gestating for many years. We saw this agenda enacted right out in the open during the pandemic lockdowns. the federal government and some state governments sought to erase nearly every protection outlined in the Bill of Rights, including free speech.
Most recently, we have seen the exposure of the Twitter Files by Elon Musk, which contain hard evidence of collusion (direct communications) between government agencies and Big Tech companies to silence the 1st Amendment rights of American citizens.
Multiple agencies have been exposed this year in a conspiracy with the old Twitter management (and undoubtedly all other large social media platforms) to censor and ban targeted individuals or groups that discuss information that is contrary to the establishment narrative. Whether it is info on Jan 6th, or info on the covid pandemic or vaccines, or info on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the FBI, DHS, the DNC, etc were all engaging in a joint effort to erase dissent and hide the facts according to internal documents and communications with Twitter staff.
The FBI in particular has even been caught PAYING Twitter staff millions of dollars to process their requests (censor people). This is proven TREASON, a violation of several elements of the Bill of Rights, and the FBI should be eliminated for it. Not reprimanded, but eliminated.
The FBI’s response to being caught was predictable. They state:
“The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
War had already been waging in Europe for months when Pope Benedict issued a plea from Rome on Dec. 7, 1914 to leaders of Europe: declare a Christmas truce.
Benedict saw how badly peace was needed, even if it was only for a day. The First Battle of Ypres alone, fought from October 19 to November 22, had resulted in some 200,000 casualties (mostly German and French soldiers, but also thousands of English and Belgians). The First Battle of the Marne was even worse.
In light of this carnage, the pope asked “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.”
The European leaders ignored his plea.
Then something miraculous happened on the eve of Christmas. From No Man’s Land—the area between the trench works of Allied and Central forces—German troops, in a spontaneous act, put down their weapons and invited English soldiers to celebrate Christmas with them. It’s remembered today as the Christmas Truce.
The British cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather was one of many who chronicled the event. A machine gunner in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Bairnsfather was shivering in the muck of a three-foot trench on a cold night, munching on stale biscuits and chain-smoking, when he heard a noise at about 10 p.m. Via History:
“I listened,” he recalled. “Away across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices.” He turned to a fellow soldier in his trench and said, “Do you hear the Boches [Germans] kicking up that racket over there?” “Yes,” came the reply. “They’ve been at it some time!”
The Germans were singing carols, as it was Christmas Eve. In the darkness, some of the British soldiers began to sing back. “Suddenly,” Bairnsfather recalled, “we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen. The shout came again.” The voice was from an enemy soldier, speaking in English with a strong German accent. He was saying, “Come over here.”
After some back and forth talk, British troops laid down their weapons, climbed out of their trenches, crossed the barbed wire, and joined the Germans. They traded handshakes and songs; they chewed tobacco and drank wine and laughed together—these men who earlier that day had been doing their best to kill each other.
Some accounts describe German and British soldiers playing “football” (soccer) on makeshift fields. Others mention British soldiers setting up barbershops and offering haircuts in exchange for cigarettes. The one thing all the accounts have in common is a general feeling of merriment among the soldiers.
“There was not an atom of hate on either side,” Bairnsfather recalled.
Afterwards, not everyone was pleased with the gaiety. Some military leaders reportedly seethed over the Christmas truce. But Bairnsfather suggests the soldiers themselves cherished the moment, which they sorely needed.
“For those who participated, it was surely a welcome break from the hell they had been enduring. When the war had begun just six months earlier, most soldiers figured it would be over quickly and they’d be home with their families in time for the holidays. Not only would the war drag on for four more years, but it would prove to be the bloodiest conflict ever up to that time.”
I’ve always found the Christmas Truce moving, and also telling. While the leaders of Europe may have loathed one another, the German and English people clearly did not, at least not once they met one another.
On that Christmas night, the nationalism that had divided German and British soldiers evaporated when they met face-to-face, traded, laughed, drank, and discovered their common humanity.
I recently read Stille Nacht (Silent Night): The Story of the Christmas Truce—a new children’s book written by Rory Margraf—to my youngest son. He had many questions, but mostly he wanted to know why the soldiers were fighting in the place. (I suspect many soldiers—Belgians and Germans, French, Englishmen, and beyond—themselves wondered this very same thing many times during that war.)
I didn’t have a good answer for him. But I’ve thought on the matter some since, and I think the Christmas Truce holds a clue about why we fight.
People who for weeks and months had been shooting and bombing one another found themselves laughing, singing, and trading—and they did so because they defied their orders. The sad truth is nation-states—which throughout history have done a magnificent job of convincing humans that people they never met are their enemy—often are not particularly interested in peace.
“War is the health of the state,” the radical writer Randolph Bourne famously noted.
The truth is waging war is what government does best, and the people who wage them and win are the ones lauded in the history books. The losers, of course, are not; which makes winning a war that has begun all the more important. (It’s also important to point out that the people who declare wars rarely see their own blood spilled during them.)
I don’t wish to oversimplify something as serious and terrible as war, but I do wish to demonstrate there is another way. The Christmas Truce shows us that peace is achieved by rejecting statism and nationalism and collectivism in all forms; it is won by embracing our common humanity and the things that bring us together.
Even bitter enemies can become friends when we reject violence and see people as they truly are—as individuals. (Especially on Christmas, a holiday that celebrates the birth not of a conqueror, but of a lamb.)
The British and German troops who on Christmas Eve enjoyed one night of joy amid the carnage of 1914 could attest to that.
MCViewPoint 