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One Conservative’s Lament
Father George Rutler.
I’ve quietly withdrawn from the public square as I lament the sorrowful condition of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. If this is what winning looks like, then I’m not sure that it was worth it. Obviously “establishment” Republicans and conservatives would just as soon see a smooth-talking political party animal in the White House; they don’t know what to do with an unpredictable, inelegant, sometimes vulgar leader who despite his clumsy manner is trying to do what the majority of Americans want done.
I have to admire the Left. Like zombies, they just keep coming at you; they are relentless. Whether they win or lose, they never stop their pursuit of power. In the end they will win — that’s my fear.
The Left controls the media and the academy. They have polluted the arts, much of organized religion and the entertainment industry. There is hardly a crevice of classic American culture that is safe for true conservatives to crawl into. Maybe my biggest disappointment is with the Catholic Church, which has made a hard left turn, especially with the election of Pope Francis, who peddles his liberation theology all over the world and brazenly persecutes conservative ranking prelates.
My candle in the darkness is Fr. George Rutler, pastor of Saint Michael’s Church in New York City. He gives me what little hope I have for my country, culture and religion. Here is his latest issue, you’ll see what I mean.
Published in GeneralIn the nineteenth century, the poet Adam Mickiewicz dramatized the theme of his suffering Poland as the Christ of Nations and, in an image used by many others, Poland was crucified in the twentieth century between the two thieves of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. It was not the West’s proudest moment when President Roosevelt complained to Stalin at the Yalta Conference that Poland has been a source of trouble for over five hundred years. Pope John Paul II lamented Yalta in the encyclical Centesimus Annus. That will resonate in the annals of papal teaching more than recent magisterial concerns about the responsible use of air conditioning and the like.
On July 6 in Warsaw, the President spoke of a culture with which a generation of millennials have been unfamiliar: Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.
Comfortable journalists, for whom the “Christ of Nations” is an enigma, resented a tiny speech, a perfunctory racist speech, xenophobic and a catalogue of effrontery, and a comparison was made with Mussolini. Solzhenitsyn once was pilloried for similar themes, and Reagan was advised by his Chief of Staff and National Security advisor not to tell Mr. Gorbachev to take down the Berlin Wall.
The Warsaw speech mentioned three priests: Copernicus, John Paul II and Michael Kozal. The latter was the bishop of Wloclawek who was martyred by the Nazis in Dachau along with 220 of his priests in 1943.
Among the irritations in the Warsaw speech were these words: “We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives.” As that was being said, the parents of a gravely ill child, Charlie Gard, in London were tussling with government officials who did not want to release their infant to them.
A Polish philosopher, Zbigniew Stawrowski has written: The fundamental cleavage is not the West v. Islam or the West v. the rest, but within the West itself: between those who recognize the values of Judaeo-Christian, Graeco-Roman culture and those who use terms like “democracy, values and rights” but pervert the latter. So it means democracy of the elites, values of secularism, rights to kill Charlie Gard, marriage that has nothing to do with sex, sex that is a private matter to be funded by the confiscatory state and your duty to support this incoherence.
The Polish king Jan III Sobieski rescued Christian civilization at the gates of Vienna in 1683. That was one of the troubles that Poland has caused in the past five hundred years. We survive because of such behavior.”
Joe,
You are on the beam. It is the defense of Western Civilization that is of paramount importance. As we moved into the 20th Century the internal attack came from two different directions. Materialist Dogmatists who were antithetical to the entire mission of the West. They were anti-individual, anti-freedom, and anti-rights. The other attack, much more subtle, came from Formalist Nihilists. They undermined the core beliefs necessary to sustain the Western tradition.
The difference is between the actual bank robbers and the guy on the inside who leaves the vault open, the alarm turned off and the front door unlocked when he goes home from work. The Nihilists facilitate the Dogmatists by destroying our beliefs in core values. The newest version of the Nihilists are the post-modern deconstructionists who have overrun the universities. When Trump defended Western values in Poland, a truly great speech that affirmed everything that needed to be affirmed, the left called defending Western Civilization itself racist. This reveals the pure post-modern sickness. Once the Nihilists have won the argument the defenses are taken down and the real monsters the Dogmatists will be arriving. Hamburg got a mild taste of what that’s like.
Regards,
Jim
Like Zombies is right. Spiritually dead, clinging to dead ideologies, narratives that never lived, and relentlessly seeking to eat live flesh.
Don’t despair Joseph. The left are zombies right out of I Am Legend: relentless, pack attackers, unprincipled and destroyers of whatever they touch.
But the facts of the world, of human prosperity, and of human nature in full are conservative. A shorter and sweeter phrasing: the facts of creation are conservative. There’s a corollary which doesn’t need to be stated explicitly but still fills me with hope, especially on Sunday morning.
In moments, I share your despair Joseph. One thing gives me hope though. The American spirit loves freedom. Although most Americans are bereft of the historical foundations of that freedom, they sill have it in there heart. As the left and the nihilists continue to push their malarkey, they sow the seeds of rebellion. Rebellion of the 60’s has brought us to where we are. The future rebellion will move us back in the direction from where we came from. This is my hope anyway. Trump is evidence of that.
Thank you for this very thoughtful piece of writing; like others, I have also felt the same sense of deep despair you have felt. At times, recently, My despair has almost taken the form of physical symptoms, such as vaguely upset stomach, headaches, etc., but looking back on those times, I realize upon thinking of your analysis, that most of my upset has come not from the occasional little pesky disturbances which drive CNN and all of its fellow travelers simply out of their minds, but was really caused by the floods of Never Trumpism I see all around me– and I must say, quite a bit of it right here on this “right of center” site by some of the most prominent contributors and many of the members. Like you, @josephmoure, I get great inspiration from Father Rutler and thoroughly enjoyed his discussion of President Trump’s magnificent speech in Warsaw, which Roger Kimball compared to Pericles’ Funeral Oration and which the far left press called every thing in their lexicon of hate, as partially listed by Father Rutler in his sermon of today. How anyone can find “racism” in beautiful phrases like “We write symphonies” is so far beyond me I cannot even find words to describe how maniacal I find this kind of hate-filled writing. If I were pressed to take issue with anything said in this post, it would be with the sentence “If this is what winning looks like, then I’m not sure that it was worth it.” Every time I think of how close we came to having a person in the Oval Office who is a true Socialist and who was proven to be absolutely incompetent and totally without any moral compass whatsoever and who was a person driven by a level of bitterness and pettiness rarely seen in most of our public figures, I say a prayer of thanksgiving that we now have, instead, President Donald J. Trump. I, too, fear that the relentless leftists will eventually prevail, but I also think that with every day of their lunatic “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!” narrative, the more they are destroying whatever chance they may have had in 2018.
Finally, I will close with what, to me, at least is a most important question: Where did you get that great shirt? :-)
Great post, sir. I hit the ‘like’ button as soon as I finished it.
As I have mentioned to my friends, the people on the Right aren’t giving in this time. To put a crass point on it, we aren’t bending over for the Left any more. When they lie to America, we call them on it. When they publish unsourced articles, we yell “Fake News!” When they scream at us to try to get us to shut up, we scream right back at them. All of their tricks and plans are trashed now; have you noticed their total frustration? I haven’t seen one of them looking down their noses, Lois Lerner/Obama-like, at us in a long time. The Left simply does not know how to respond when you don’t capitulate to their demands.
Trump is the anti-Alinsky and nobody on the Right is asking our President to ‘back off’ this time. Instead, when he throws a punch, we jump right in there and throw a couple ourselves.
We’re giving as good as we get, and better, and anyone on the Right who doesn’t like it can go hide under the bed. If you aren’t helping us, you’re helping THEM.
^^^ ?? As I said in another post :MAGA or GTFOOTW.
@Jim George
The shirt is by Scully. It is actually made like a flag with embroidered stars. Check the Scully website, Amazon and ebay.
Jim, is this a Dark Tower reference?
The previous Pope, Benedict XVI, stated that the Church is about to capsize. Too true.
I signed up for Fr. Rutler’s email sermons and each week they are very powerful. I’m so glad you posted the latest one – he sees through the muck with 20/20 vision and soldiers on. We have to keep doing the same – it’s going to get more difficult.
Thank you for the post @josephmoure. It’s all too true.
Interestingly, the same people who object to characterizing the current struggle as a “civil war” are the anti-Trumpers. I think they’re having trouble believing this, too, — our great civilization — is passing away. The head-in-the-sandism would be sweetly charming if they weren’t getting in the way of the rescue operation.
Mary, Mother of the Church Militant, pray for us.
From the US Military flag code:
§8. Respect for flag
No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property…The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker’s desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
I didn’t make up the part about “never be used as wearing apparel”, I don’t even agree with it, but I do follow it.
AMEN!!!!!
Yes!! I agree. Fr. Rutler came to my attention last October, when he greatly clarified things, (for me at least) by stating: “In this presidential election, we cannot be indifferent – one side is flawed, but the other is EVIL”.
A real attention getter –
He is saying those “sides” are the political parties, not any individuals. Of course, the parties are all made up of us sinners, each with leaders that are more or less repentant sinners – or so it seemed.
Anymore, looking back at that cultural deterioration of the last few generations, it appears to have happened primarily at the hands of a few overtly unrepentant Democrat politicians – most recently the Clintons, et al; also, thank Ted Kennedy for his efforts. So, go ahead; list more to the party of evil.