“Men Hastening to be Slaves or Tyrants…”

07 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by Matthew Scarince in Christendom

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Anarchy, Illiberalism, Left, Liberalism, Right, Tyranny

Whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we [the devils] make Liberalism the prime bogey.

This quote, taken from The Screwtape Letters (those quite literally infernal epistles recorded by C.S. Lewis), struck me as something very telling about the Left, and the current opposition to it. The Left, understood as that which throughout the ages leads men further from Salvation, has indeed created “Liberalism” (as understood in the form condemned by the Church), but it has also created Illiberalism (understood as a disordered hatred of Liberty, as opposed to Liberalism as a disordered love). Leftism is both Nationalist and Internationalist, without the Patriotism and ordered love of nationality that the Right has, nor the Right’s concern for the greater good of Mankind.

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Reflections on Courage and Chivalry

19 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by Matthew Scarince in Christendom

≈ 2 Comments

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Chivalry, Courage, Holy Roman Empire, Just War, Right, Sacretemporal, The Right

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers…. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death…

-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Courage is the fundamental virtue of Chivalry, and one of the foundational virtues of Civilization. What exactly is courage? It is the unbreaking soul that has passed the breaking point of despair, firmness under the stress of every evil, resolve in the face of Death himself. And this ultimate Courage is only possible to him who has Love of True Life, Faith in what is Good and Free, and the Hope born of Faith in Final Victory.

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The Evil We Face: the Death of Civilization

04 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Matthew Scarince in Christendom

≈ 8 Comments

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Civilization, Death of Civilization, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Identitarianism, Left, Politics of Emotion, Politics of Reason, Reason, Right

Reason rather than sentiment is the distinguishing mark separating man from beast. Naturally reason, wrongly employed, perverted and under the yoke of emotions, is worse than mere sentimentalism-and this, precisely, was the “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. God created man, after all, in such a way that his head is above his heart.
–Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism

Politics have long ago ceased to be about reasonably serving the Common Good, and if anything the general trend of politics these days only proves this. Not only has the rejection of reason influenced the political sphere, but every other important aspect of life as well. Reality is constantly being denied and in its place our “feelings” are enthroned, when we know that this is clearly wrong. Yet how can we know what is Right when it certainly seems that these mass movements of emotional politics are our last hope?

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