A video discussion with Eric Metaxas:
After telling of his experiences in China where he was born in the 1940’s, Guinness speaks of a moment when a civilisation loses touch with its roots. He suggests, there then are three alternatives: renewal, replacement or decline.
As the modern jacobins rise up again, our civilisation faces that choice, at kairos; with lawful, ordered freedom in the stakes as 1776 [not, 1619 — a toxic slander driven distraction] clashes with 1789, so, too, frankly, 1917 – 49. And we need to recall the challenge to not throw out the baby with the bath water. END
PS, ponder
Os Guinness: The Magna Carta of Humanity — our civilisation’s roots lie in Jerusalem/Mt Sinai too (not just Athens and Rome)
KF
Listened to that just last night, really good. Also highly recommend “Is Atheism Dead” and “Letter to the American Church”
His experience with Marxism was chilling and he was dead on about Marcuse’s long march. The left over the last 50 years has captured every institution from education, media, military, security agencies, etc. People like me are doomed and powerless.
A side note how crazy is this Chinese spy balloon? They must have a lot of leverage over Biden
Vivid
Already bought one of his books only in paper back.
Os has several Kindle books. Will purchase one for trip home. Amazing that I never heard of him till Animated Dust quoted him. He has almost 30 books.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Os-Guinness/author/B001ILOC6I/allbooks?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Jerry
FYI the author of the books I mentioned is Eric Metaxas
Vivid
I watched a few days ago. Learned men. Socrates in the City is a treasure of wonderful thinking. I intend to catch one in person when the right guest pops up. Glad that they aren’t all in Manhattan either.
From Guinesse’s blurb on The Magna Carta of Humanity:
If those are the choices, sign me up for Paris, all day, every day.
Personally I prefer Athens, as being both literally and figuratively between Paris and Mt. Sinai.
“If those are the choices, sign me up for Paris, all day, every day.”
To be clear this is what Mr/ Ms feint and meager is signing up for.
“The Reign of Terror, or simply the Terror (la Terreur), was a climactic period of state-sanctioned violence during the French Revolution (1789-99), which saw the public executions and mass killings of thousands of counter-revolutionary ‘suspects’ between September 1793 and July 1794. The Terror was organized by the twelve-man Committee of Public Safety, which exercised almost dictatorial control over France”
Vivid
Vivid, you forgot the repeat performance, 1870 – 71. KF
KF
Os Guinness: talks a lot about what Maher pointed out
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/02/04/maher-woke-revolution-is-a-lot-like-maos-cultural-revolution/
We are in an ideological war-with huge implications going forward, a war that quite frankly we have lost. The American people are to blame, to think this [SNIP] is going to end well is a pipe dream.
Vivid
someone who hasn’t a clue about history let alone the history of ideas.
But there’s Google to try and catch up and drop a few names along the way. Just ask ChatGPT who today knows something about the French Revolution.
Aside: I’m getting a few vibes that Os is a liberal but I’m only at the beginning of Magna Carter of Humanity.
It is fascinating and just frankly bizarre to hear someone say that, out loud, as if it were a perfectly obvious, factually correct statement.
I mean, I’m on the left, and people like me don’t control anything.
PM1 at 11,
I watched American, and Western, society gradually decay starting around 1967.
“I mean, I’m on the left, and people like me don’t control anything.”
The average person, Left or Right, does not control anything. However, in the United States, the 10% of the population that is the most wealthy controls 72% of our wealth. That means people with millions and billions of dollars can do what they want.
I grew up in a society that promoted religious moral values and God – yes, our Government promoted our “Judeo-Christian Heritage.” I was proud to be an American. There was order and conformity to that order. Then, radicals, Anarchists, Marxists and Communists appeared. They promoted sex, not marriage. They promoted illegal drug use. Also, there was a coordinated push to repeal abortion laws and promote contraception. In the 1970s, stores selling graphic pornographic images appeared. In 1973, in a very wrong decision, The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion.
“Puritanical values” were shouted down. Radical Feminists appeared on TV. Feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, had this to say about men: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
These Total Strangers had no interest in helping women. Their only interest was terrifying them. ‘That man you’re married to will kick you to the curb when he finds a more attractive woman. He will leave you with the kids.’ Eventually, men – all men – became the enemy. No need to date, just approach any men you want to have sex with. This poisonous thinking was meant to destroy the family. And to provide fertile ground for so-called No-Fault Divorce.
I opened the newspaper in the 1980s to the Classifieds and saw ads like this: “No kids? $75 and you’re out. Call 800-DIVORCE.”
No respect for marriage or the proper relationships with men and women. The family is the basic building block of any society. Harm that and you harm society. So what do we see today? Attempts to normalize sexual perversion. And a generation that does not even know how to talk to people face to face.
All is not lost. A faithful remnant is always left. People who refuse to follow the dictates of Total Strangers and the current Woke Mob.
Colleges – even Catholic colleges – became more secular, abandoning good teaching for prestige and funding. The corruption has spread to the government but not entirely. If your kids are being taught Marxist principles in college then guess what? They will try to put what they learned into practice. The harm for living life the wrong way has been documented and by using secular sources.
https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Wisdom-Catholic-Church-Controversial/dp/1621644162
Vb at 2,
What the heck are you talking about?
“A side note how crazy is this Chinese spy balloon? They must have a lot of leverage over Biden”
The military, NOT BIDEN, spotted the balloon and shot it down over open water. The President wanted it shot down sooner but was advised against it by the military. Why? It was carrying equipment that could have landed in a populated area. It was shot down by the Carolina coast and the instrument package landed in shallow water. Navy and Coast Guard vessels are recovering whatever they can find.
It is fascinating and just frankly bizarre to hear someone say that, out loud, as if it were a perfectly obvious, factually correct statement.”
Of course you would think it’s bizarre after all your the one who thinks ideas don’t have consequences, that the BLM and Antifa riots that resulted in billions of dollars in property damage, that burned down buildings, that resulted in something like 18 dead, was feint and meager.
Vivid
Related at 13
Are you so naive that you believe the stuff coming from our military and politicians mouths? Why wasn’t it shot down when it crossed into our airspace over the Pacific? Why not over Alaska? They allowed that thing to fly clear across the continental United States. Whatever info the Chinese wanted they got from the bus like array attached to it, that info was beamed to the CCP. At this point they could care less that it got shot down.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/01/24/bombshell-biden-family-scored-31-million-from-deals-with-individuals-with-direct-ties-to-the-highest-levels-of-chinese-intelligence/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/24/peter-schweizer-hunter-biden-made-a-deal-with-china-that-nobody-else-has/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/05/21/nyt-confirms-hunter-biden-bank-of-china-deal-leaves-out-key-details/
Vivid
Vb at 15,
I’ve spent many years studying the military. What did the Chinese get? We don’t know. But I doubt people in high-security installations just got out and waved at the balloon as it passed overhead. Why wasn’t it shot down earlier? We don’t know. And I am convinced that whatever it was carrying will never be revealed.
Speculation is not a list of facts. The “array” attached to the balloon appeared to include solar panels to power anything it was carrying. And we will never know what that is.
By the way, in 1956, the CIA, under Project Genetrix, launched 516 balloons that traveled over the Soviet Union – and they flew at the same altitude.
Related
“I’ve spent many years studying the military”
Then you should know better than to believe the military.
They lied about the Vietnam war, where 57k soldiers gave their last full measure.
They lied about the Iraq war, remember the WMDs?
They spent 17 ffin years in Afghanistan, left in disgrace, left billion upon billions of advanced military hardware to the Taliban, botched a withdrawal and sacrificed 13 Marines dead and NO ONE, NO ONE has been held accountable!!! And the Taliban they were supposed to defeat are in a stronger position today than when we got there.
So please do not ever respond to me with “ Well the military says this or that” as some kind of authority to be believed.
Vivid.
Vb at 17,
I never said the military said anything. Whatever this Chinese balloon was carrying will never be known. The Russians were in Afghanistan for 10 years. Why was that? They made no progress and left. Or do the actions of the ‘bad guys’ not count?
I doubt the Taliban will get on boats and attack the U.S.
Power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. BTW, your last slide is crooked……
Any idea coming from the left is by definition wrong.
They are appealing but 100% wrong. If they were right then they would be adopted by conservatives and reflexive action by the left would deny it as true. The motivation of the left is against not for. So they have no ideology that is positive. They are definitely not interested in truth.
Just started Magna Carter and Os while having good intentions is out of touch with reality. Os Hasn’t a clue as to what is wrong or how to correct it. He knows something is terribly wrong though.
At least so far.
Folks, how did we get from Metaxas and Os Guinness [BTW, one of Francis Schaeffer’s proteges and so VERY aware of grand cultural trends analysis and iconic/epochal cases and events . . . and a descendant of THE Guinness (as in, is good for you) himself!] to debating how the military lies etc? KF
PS, have a look at the PS to OP, it will help us use Overton Window analysis informed by the issue of lawless oligarchy. Speaking of which, I think I need to put up another long form video interview, with a historian.
People are here to rant not understand.
The Magna Carter points out that the word rant means nonsense and that describes a lot of UD.
Aside: further into Magna Carter Excellent on history – points to 5 major revolutions – English revolution of 1640s, American Revolution of 1776, French Revolution of 1789, Russian Revolution of 1917 and Chinese Revolution of 1949.
First two led to a better world, the latter led to chaos and death but it is the latter three that are winning. interesting that the civilized world is choosing death for themselves and their children based on lies as opposed to freedom and flourishing.
People really are ignorant. Being well educated doesn’t change that.
KF 21
I apologize it was my fault.
More on topic have you heard of the book “Beautiful Trouble “ ? Supposedly it is a Saul Alinsky for radicals for the 21st century, the tactics to be used to expand the window. The link is only around 10 minutes. Basically it is not about the actions it is actions designed to get reactions.
https://newdiscourses.com/2023/02/action-reaction-and-beautiful-trouble/
Vivid
Vivid, thanks. Slander by framing. For example, pushing yourself and your hand inside a person’s personal space is extremely provocative harassment. The case of Nicholas Sandmann shows that even restrainet can be mischaracterised. The complicit media are party to the slander, and the cultural marxist scale of victimhood is part of the cynical tactics. And right now the US had better wake up to a Reichstag fire incident and where it points, i/l/o the issue of lawlessness. The agit prop turnabout projection tactic needs to be exposed, e.g. it was Poles who attacked German radio stations in Sept 1939. In reality, concentration camp prisoners were dressed in false uniforms and murdered. The rule in response is simple: lawlessness will not be tolerated, including slander — and including grooming etc. KF
Relatd, they don’t need to host a traditional naval assault. 21 years ago, they hosted those who went to flight school then used utility knives to turn civil airliners into hostages loaded cruise missiles. Have we forgotten already? KF
KF 24
Unfortunately as Jerry has noted the American people drink the kool aid served to them by the press ( the propaganda arm of the left). They do no independent fact checking or seem to care. After so many exposed lies you would think at some point they would wake up but sadly I have concluded they are not ignorant they want to be lied to. In todays world the press get Pulizers for printing lies but fire journalists for telling the truth ( NBC reporter on Pelosi) etc.
The biggest contributor to the agit prop is the press and the media who have totally discarded their role as a check to lies and disinformation, the holding of the powerful to account., they have become an arm of the govt, the rich and powerful spewing lies and propaganda 24/7. We’re seeing it in real time as more lies by the media are being perpetuated on the American people about the balloon which I only bring up as an example of real time propaganda.
Vivid
Vb at 26,
Jerry did not back up his claim with anything. Tell me, what should the people do when the mainstream media lies to them?
Do you conclude that people want to be lied to? I am a professional researcher. I do a lot of fact checking from multiple sources. A number of them not being the mainstream media.
Propaganda happens all the time but it’s not invisible.
If you think people want to be lied then tell us why they would like lies instead of the truth. Another thing. People need true and factual information to live their lives. I don’t guess about things, I find out. Most people are like that. They distrust the media and continue on with their lives as best they can.
Correction the NBC reporter was suspended.
Vivid
Related 27
I don’t want to derail this thread anymore than I have already. I do want to apologize to you for going off on the military in response to one of your posts. Unfortunately I am so sick and tired of our young men being sacrificed in senseless wars and I took it out on you, that was not fair to you.
What should people do? The only power we have is to exercise our displeasure by our vote and our money. We must fight for election integrity. More importantly we must focus our energies where we can actually affect outcomes ,that is locally, specifically school boards, state legislators, state Governors. We need to identify those news agencies that repeatedly lied to us, cancel subscriptions, don’t support Hollywood movies or entities like Net Flix ,Disney etc, etc.
Yes I do conclude people want to be lied to. People want reasons regardless of whether it is true or not to justify their respective positions.
“I don’t guess about things, I find out. Most people are like that”
You are like that but most people don’t as evidenced by their vote and wallet. I believe what people do not what they say.
Vivid
Vivid at 29,
Thank you for your response. I do understand your position on senseless wars.
Regards,
relatd
Wow talk about moving the Overton Window. From tonight’s Grammys sponsored by Pfizer
https://twitter.com/tpostmillennial/status/1622449931121479680?s=61&t=fVGKERI2NtIFXF_YAESuKA
Vivid
Relatd: I am a professional researcher. I do a lot of fact checking from multiple sources. A number of them not being the mainstream media.
What can you tell us about the nature of your research and your clients/employers?
JVL, if his day work is anything like mine, confidentiality is a condition of sustainable success. You have to have a reputation for trusted information security, which is very hard to restore once broken. In a day of the lawless, ruthless, and anti civilisational, that means liars and slanderers have advantages. KF
Vivid, worshipping the father of lies. KF
PS, part of the geostrategic problem is that the heart of the US was settled by people fleeing long term power rivalries and wars expressing strategic contests, e.g. Britain and France had 600 years of wars. The US Navy is replacement for the Royal Navy in guarding sea lanes, an inherently long term comitment, but the US mentality is not long term/strategic. Checkers, not Chess, Baseball, not Test Cricket. There is reluctance to admit to WW IV, a slow burn, nukes age global geostrategic contest of 4th gen character, just as no one admitted that WW III — the cold war — was a world war in progress. That is how Jamaica had an unacknowledged 4 year civil war. In key cases, if you go in, it is for the long haul. The alternative is punitive expeditions, plural, and you will be propagandistically portrayed as baby killing bullies. So, there is need to open to a geostrategic paradigm shift. BTW, Britain won the Irish war by taking disproportionate casualties to contain it until there was someone who could make a bargain that would stick. Sometimes, the alternatives are the bad and the worse than merely bad. For example China’s Taiwan push is a blue ocean breakout push similar to the Kaiser c 1900 – 1918. If they seize Taiwan, Japan, S Korea, Australia and possibly Singapore will go nuclear. India is nuclear, so is N Korea. Nuclear war will be all but inevitable. What is the reality of a disaster averted? Where are the credible statesmen of serious integrity?
Relatd, lies are rewarded, truth is punished, people do not want to face high conflict with the nasty, powerful and ruthless or cruel. There is such a miasma of lies that it is hard to discern truth, cf Rom 1. Meanwhile, the BATNA of lawfulnes is being eroded by those wanting to precipitate lawless ideological oligarchy with their side in charge. They are suicidally anti civilisational but imagine they are part of a wave of progress. Such does not end well, but many have been led to despise sound history. That, too, is no accident.An empire of lies will eventually collapse. KF
The Magna Carter is full of short expressions of the world’s conundrum. Some are
so far truth is not an issue. Is it just what he believes. But still only at the beginning.
Aside: it seems every paragraph has a new idea, observation, conclusion or fact. The introduction is the most content full reading I have seen. But it is not so far a book of ultimate truth. If it was, it might get in the way.
Os Guinness seems to believe a religious change is necessary to save the current world.
While this maybe true, it is a non starter because people reflexively reject this. They might not reject an analysis of what is winning, namely Paris or progressive ideas.
but this will only buy a short fix.
Jery at 37,
If you’re going to quote Os Guinness, do it right. Especially for those who never heard of him.
Progressive? Progress for who? Those who want to overthrow thousands of years of right living for momentary gain?
Things have been tried but why? Boredom? A desire for pleasure? A lack of understanding about why some people live a certain way? In the United States, so-called Progressives only want permission to do what they want. Example: “Abortion on demand and without apology.” Who are they asking about “apology”? Nobody?
Wake up everybody. No one should just do whatever. That is why we have laws. That is why people seek the truth. That is why some seek to hide behind elaborate arguments to avoid the truth. Something that is yellow cannot also be blue. Every child needs to be brought up in the truth.
Os Guinness is a wise man and he desires the good of all. Endless “disagreements” should not stand in the way of doing right.
Interesting comment by Guinness
too many people look to material progress as the solution. Was that what Trump was promising and delivering?
I lived through the Great America period. The economy was strong, the military was strong, and God and religion was strong. Most of the people had what they needed. The three pillars of God, family and country were firmly established.
“Modern individualism, which is divorced from the moral foundations of Christianity and surrounded by a hedonistic society, has produced a way of life that is neither beneficial to individuals nor productive to society at large. Individualism used to be expressed positively within the context of the family, the community, the church, and the government. Personal rights were subjected to the overall good of society. But individualism today no longer observes such boundaries. The cry is, ‘I want what I want when I want it!’ Such selfish individualism weakens the very underpinnings of a nation built on strong moral foundations. (Holiness and the Spirit of the Age, [page] 78)” by Floyd McClung as quoted in Storm Warning by Billy Graham.
Relatd/40
In the 1960’s I was fascinated by the Apollo Moon missions. I collected books, wall charts, magazines and articles and followed all the TV coverage. It promised a future led by science that I naively thought would be free of the oppression of religious and racial prejudice.
Imagine my shock and surprise when I saw the movie Hidden Figures. Nowhere – nowhere – in all the material I collected was there any reference to the black women who had performed all the manual calculations that made the landings possible.
Much later, we learned of the Tulsa Race Massacre that had been carefully expunged from the history of that city that was not taught to local students. We also leaned that it was far from the only atrocity committed against black individuals and communities over the preceding decades.
If some white people experienced the early 1960’s as some sort of “golden age” it was because the experiences of many black people were largely whitewashed out of the picture.
Jerry 39
“too many people look to material progress as the solution. Was that what Trump was promising and delivering?”
If I am reading you correctly you have got to the root of the problem which has nothing to do with policy rather the problem is ideology.
Vivid
yet the US became least racist major country in the history of the world.
The Tulsa massacre happened over 100 years ago. Why aren’t there other examples.
Reference my previous comment, the US under Trump did well with minorities in term of economic opportunity. Why didn’t Seversky mention this?
Will Seversky have a discussion about the truth of anything? Don’t bet on it. It hasn’t happened in the 16 years he has been commenting here.
Seversky at 41,
“It promised a future led by science that I naively thought would be free of the oppression of religious and racial prejudice.”
And what else did science do? From the late 1950s till the early 1990s, I along with the other citizens of the United States lived under constant threat of Soviet ICBMs. You know what? I had a great time in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I had no illusion that I would survive a nuclear attack but life was great. Not perfect – great.
You, on the other hand, view every non-colored/black person as a racist, don’t you? I convinced my mom to buy me every magazine or book on astronauts and spaceships as I could get. The people that landed men on the Moon were Wernher von Braun and his team of German specialists who were brought here after the war.
You, on the other hand, see only what you want to see. I remember going to the Farmers’ Market and seeing normal black families. I had no problems with black/colored people. My first girlfriend in college was Native American. So get off your high horse.
Sev: “It promised a future led by science”,,
100th Reminder for you Sev., Darwinism is NOT a hard science!
it always has been.
Guinness lays it out in detail but the problem is there is too much detail and the solution is Old Testament politics. Not going to fly.
Sev: “It promised a future led by science that I naively thought would be free of the oppression of religious and racial prejudice.”
Moreover Sev, besides Darwinism not being a hard science, Darwinism literally has pseudo-scientific racism built into its foundation.
To see just how deeply imbedded systemic racism is built into Darwin’s theory you have to go no further than a natural history museum. Systemic racism is literally built right into the imaginary ‘artistic reconstructions’ of the “march of man” fossils that Darwinists offer to the general public in museums as supposed proof for human evolution.
Moreover, there is far less science behind these ‘artistic reconstructions’ that purport to show man evolving man evolving from some ape-like creature than most people realize,
In May of 2020, via an article from the American Museum of Natural History, (which is certainly no creationist organization), it was stated, ““Humans are storytellers: Theories of human evolution often resemble “anthropogenic narratives” that borrow the structure of a hero’s journey,, but unless grounded in testable hypotheses, they are no more than “just-so stories”,,,, “When you look at the narrative for hominin origins, it’s just a big mess — there’s no consensus whatsoever.”
Thus Seversky, in his quest to embrace science and anti-racism, has embraced neither. He has instead embraced a pseudo-scientific atheistic religion, i.e. Darwinism, which literally has blatant racism built into its core.
Verse:
The Woke Mob is the current God replacement. They establish the rules. They are the official accusers. And they apparently operate from some place of perfection where they, the self-chosen, can look out and judge others. As the “modern” guides of men, they demand attention. Not your church or your parents or your relatives – they have replaced them as well. And they have chosen certain groups of people over others as worthy of their protection. ONLY they can save them. No one else.
The rest of us are labeled. We are automatically guilty. Of whatever the Woke say we are.
But if we bow before them and follow their dictates, we might, maybe, fall into the OK category.
Or we can ignore them entirely, since a lot of us have not hurt anyone in their groups of protected peoples. But I suspect that will still not stop them from accusing Every White, Heterosexual Male of something. (How those Woke who are white, heterosexual males deal with their whiteness is beyond the scope of this commentary.)
Sev, has it registered that oppression is generally an expression of lawless oligarchy, that such comes in all sorts of guises including progress and science — ponder dirty uni politics if you doubt — and that much of the heart softening and reform that opened up lawful state, constitutional democracy was religiously rooted or strongly influenced? KF