Mission driven: Americanism, Christian ethics, and counter-dialectic.
In what ideas and beliefs is the spirit of the Fourth of July, Independence Day, ordered liberty, and the rights of men rooted?
With due respect for those championing that root as "Scottish Common Sense Realism," or SCSR for short, as we consider many as friends, this SCRM most certainly was not the root of that good tree. Rather, SCSR was one of the first vines that arose to strangle the tree of liberty.
This can be proven in three distinct and damning ways. The first two of these proofs is rooted in the internal logic and consequences of ideas, and in the character of the "fathers" of SCSR. The "fathers" of SCSR were all, by confession, Presbyterian - more than mere Congregants, many were ordained ministers ("Shepherds" and "Elders" by Scriptural standards). As such they stood on the shoulders of giants of the faith, and of the Scottish Reformation, such as John Knox.
The first principle of the Reformation, generally, and Scottish Reformation, particularly, was Sola Scriptura: Scripture, alone, is God-breathed, inerrant, and the standard by which all else is measured. As such, Reformers, generally, and Scottish Reformers such as John Knox, particularly, wholly rejected the manmade, Pagan philosophy of Aristotle, the importation of this philosophy by Aquinas, and the Scholastics broadly. Put plainly, Natural Law cannot coexist with the Reformed doctrine of Sola Scriptura. It was on the doctrines and works of these Reformers, not of SCSR apostasy, that the virtues of ordered liberty, government-subordinated-to-God, spheres theology, and the earnest pursuit of His blessings over the nation "who's God is Yahweh" stood.
This doctrine of Sola Scriptura was foundational to the Presbyterian, Reformed faith the SCSR proponents, such as Reid, paid lip service to, but they did so while knowingly undermining this cornerstone doctrine with the importation of Scholastic Natural Law, and the outright rejection of the plain language of Scripture. His Word is overwhelmingly clear that it is God's Law, not man's reason, that is a firm foundation for our lives.
Why did they do this? Because they were concerned not with keeping the faith for which those just 150-years prior had died Martyrs, but rather with synthesizing the Scottish Enlightenment - arising in the aftermath of the Scottish Reformation, which swept Europe with it's "enlightened" ideas tied, largely, to esotericism and Romanticism - and Greek philosophies with their bequeathed Presbyterian faith and culture.
In other words, the SCSR founders character can be seen in contrasting what they professed with their mouth - the faith of their fathers - with their deeds as they actively undermined their profession. This ought to be seen as damning, as the foundations of SCSR do not lie in the moral fortitude of those such as Knox and the Martyrs, but in the subterfuge of liars who knowingly perverted their faith.
The internal logic of the overturning of Sola Scriptura in favor of SCSR during the Scottish Enlightenment was that of unmooring a ship in harbor during a storm. What once was guided by His Word and the limited number of reasonable alternative interpretations of that universally accessible Word was now guided by the infinitely possible paths of gnosis, as people began to turn inward to interpret their autonomous moral code - subject, fully of course, to the Scripturally-documented propensity of man to lie to even himself to excuse his sin.
The third proof arises in the timeline of events that aligns with the rise of SCSR and the Scottish Enlightenment that was immediately proceeded by moral degradation, the abandonment of God's Law and substitution with mans autonomy, and the uninterrupted slide into precisely what Scotland has become today.
This same timeline was mirrored in America. Even by the time of the Founding Fathers some of them, and a significant slice of the culture, had abandoned the bequeathed good order and virtue of the Puritan Faith (itself hugely influenced by the Scottish Reformation, not SCSR) of their fathers in syncretism with "enlightenment" ideals. They, like the Scottish before them, had handed to them a society formed by a moral order as ordained by the Lord Himself, but in their rejection of His Word as the sole basis for their law they set us off on an unsure foundation.
Nonetheless, the founders of America retained enough of the foundational basis of this faith of their fathers within our founding documents to slow the decaying march of esoteric enlightenment ideas - such explains our more limited and slower slide into abject tyranny as compared to the Scots. However, we do now see what the ultimate result is of rejecting His Law for our own, as derived through the gnostic sense of "Natural Law," wherein the moral order is sought not in His Good Book, but by divination of the intellect, as though contacting the mind of God directly in interacting with His creation.
Prophesy that mankind is made to and capable of comprehending Him through all that is around us is not something you will not find a basis for in His Scriptures. It is something for which you must turn to the Greeks for support of, and there's a reason their empire is no longer with us today.
Our new series (what we must then do) on tackling the very many existential threats we face, individually and thoroughly, and what minimum standards ought to look like to resolve them in our favor. Subscribe above, as most will be subscriber-only in this series (some may be spicy).
"Population Dynamics and Demographics
Low birth rates are here – this is particularly true among generational Americans – that sort with strong ties to our history, form of government, Christian heritage, and normative behaviors. This means that the character of America has been changed and is changing.
That is not merely a product of American cultural Marxists, or our subversive colleges, but to a significant degree this is due to mass immigration. While it is true that not all change is bad, and change for the good ought to be welcome, this change we have is most certainly not that. Very many of the immigrants of modern years are not coming to us from cultures that are compatible with ours, and the formation of taboo ...
How seemingly small differences will be the difference between victory and defeat.
"We appreciate the patience you, our dear listeners and readers, have had with us of late. We have delved deep into serious matters of philosophy, religion, ethics and more, and, at times, you might not have fully understood the why of it. We offered up a lot of conclusions, lots of rules and heuristics, but little of explanation that links fundamental beliefs to their very tangible effects socially, governmentally, religiously, and more.
Today, we will try to do what we probably should have started out with: explaining the consequences of ideas. In this you will come to learn why it matters what others believe, deep down, even when it appears the outworking of their ideas are in agreement with your preferred outcomes – often, there’s something dark just beneath the surface that has yet to rear it’s ugly head. More often still even the seemingly smaller differences in ideology will, when brought to their logical ends, mean the difference between...
Let’s just cut straight through the noise to find some signal. The latest war in the Middle East is being lost in faulty narratives at home. How should we view this?
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Iran
The dialectic is at work again, and the present moment has the potential to create problems going forward. Where the on-the-ground reality of the Middle East is Israel versus Iran, the narrative “reality” of the American information environment has little to do with Iran at all, as it is represented by the pro-Israel versus anti-Israel contingent. This is an important distinction, as the gap between the narrative environment and reality means that the reality of the situation is not being adequately addressed, and the narrative is causing people to take a position on Iran that has nothing to do with Iran at all, but only which “side” they take on Israel.
This represents a classic master-slave dialectic, where the Zionist side is held up as representing “the West,” and the ant-Zionist side as the anti-colonialist, anti-oppressor of ...
How the Biden Regime Brought the War Home.
Apologies for the delay. Due to the size of the file and technical restrictions on this platform please find our latest video here:
With the release of the newly declassified internal strategy and policy document on “countering violent extremism” from DNI Tulsi Gabbard we have an opening to provide in-depth analysis on “how the sausage was made” in terms of turning America into a authoritarian police state, targeting decent Americans as “terrorists” and “extremists,” and more.
We undertake this analysis with the purpose of tying it all to the prior lessons we’ve gone through with our audience. It can sometime be difficult to envision how the abstract lessons on esoterica, political theory, and more that we provide translate directly to the reality we see around us. This analysis follows on the prior analysis, years ago, ...
We are excited to announce a new messaging campaign building on (and coopting, in part) current efforts to establish “Liberty” as a bedrock American principle going forward. This effort is made possible by our subscribers. Please consider subscribing to support this and future efforts.
For those active in these social media circles you’ll likely recognize the structure of what we now present as being similar, though divergent from, other efforts that are ongoing. We undertake this for several reasons:
Liberty is, was, and ought to be a bedrock principle of Americanism.
Recent efforts have, unintentionally (we believe), alienated numerous groups of persons that ought to be allies of Liberty by undertaking a messaging effort that, on its face, transgressed foundational Christian principles due to misunderstanding in theology.
To establish “Liberty” not as a good in and of itself, but as a necessary precondition to adequately pursue goodness, and as an affirmative command from our Lord ...
