“‘It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcome here.”  (Jamie Stengle, “Boy Scouts of America Changing Name to More Inclusive Scouting America After Years of Woe,” Associated Press (May 7, 2024))

“‘Perhaps you’ll tell me then,’ Tommy went on, ‘why you wormed your way into this camp under false pretenses.  You’re not a Boy Scout at all!’”  (G. Harvey Ralphson, Boy Scouts on Old Superior (1913)”

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Blooms come, they say, from April showers,
All else comes of the three powers,
Which I can name in a short list:
The purse, the pen, the pounding fist.

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“She bound the scarlet line in the window.”

  Joshua 2:21

A shibboleth is a special kind of password, which is to say a key or badge that opens a social door and grants admission to a social group.  As everyone versed in scripture knowledge knows, shibboleth was at first a word that the lisping Ephramites could not pronounce, and that the Sons of Giliad therefore used to identify the survivors of a shattered Ephramite army.  When a bloodied and bedraggled warrior staggered down to the ford of the Jordan, he was challenged to pronounce the word “shibboleth,” and thereby show his secret badge. Those who pronounced it “sibboleth” were immediately slain.

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 “We need to be stronger.  We need to fight back. It’s in the Bible.  If someone hits you, you hit them back, twice as hard, 10 times as hard.” 

Jason Burke, “Israelis Voice Sadness and Defiance over Gaza Protests on U.S. Campuses,” The Guardian.com (May 3, 2024).

This titbit of scripture knowledge is from Joseph Avi Cohen, a retired bank manager in Israel, who was recently asked for his man-on-the-street opinion of the American student protests.  I don’t suppose The Guardian is regular reading among Christian Zionists, but if it were they might be puzzled by Mr. Cohen’s words.  I suspect most Christian Zionists believe the book they call the Bible instructs God’s children to forebear, forgive, and, when all else fails, to hit back with tears and not even half as hard. Continue reading →

“Whom will ye, then, that I release to you?
Jesus Barabbas, called the Son of Shame,
Or Jesus, Son of Joseph, called the Christ?”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,  The Divine Tragedy (1871)*

Longfellow here draws on Origen’s remark, in his Commentary on Matthew, that “in many manuscripts it is not contained that Barabbas was also called Jesus, and perhaps rightly so that the name Jesus would not belong to any sinner.”  From this it is supposed that the circumcision name of the brigand known as Jesus Bar Abbas was suppressed in later copies of Matthew’s gospel, because pious Christians thought it sacrilegious for the Son of God to share his circumcision name with an infamous criminal.

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“The extraordinary Red stress on confession betrays the extreme importance they attach to it . . . . Something intrinsic in communism makes this confession phenomenon indispensable to it; it can’t exist without it.” 

Edward Hunter, Brainwashing (1956)

We normally associate the word confession with an admission of guilt, as when a criminal confesses to his crime, or when a Catholic unburdens himself in the confessional.  We may however begin to suspect that there is more to confession that this when we consider that many Christian churches use the word confession as a synonym for creed.  Thus, we have the Westminster Confession, or the Augsburg Confession.

This second usage is much closer to the original meaning of the word, which was to admit some truth together. Con (together) + fateri (to admit) = confession.

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“But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.  And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” 

Matthew 21: 38-39.

One event only has made the Holy Land holy.  It is an event that was in many ways odd.  It was certainly quite unlike conventional notions of a holy and sanctifying event.   Harps were absent; the air was most likely heavy and foul; diaphanous light was nowhere to be seen.  It was, to be frank, a shabby event, on a grubby day, in a squalid place.  And I am sorry to say that the conduct of every man who took part was disgraceful.

There may be other holy lands on other planets, reverenced by beings quite different than ourselves; but this is the Holy Land of men.  They say everyone gets the face he deserves.  I say all planets and beings get the holy land they deserve.

Ours, the holy land of mankind, is a shabby, squalid, grubby place of disgrace. Continue reading →

“It is absurd and deplorable for those who pretend to represent the political ‘Right’ to fail to leave the dark and small circle that is determined by the demonic power of the economy. . . . We must . . . uphold that beyond the economic sphere an order of higher political, spiritual, and heroic values has to emerge . . . an order [of] the things worth living and dying for.”

Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (1953)*

The Z-man’s latest post discusses the rise of a Romantic Right.  He wrote this post in response to an on-line kerfuffle over some video celebrating the mundane joys of contemporary Babbittry, or what might be called the Griller Dream.  Apparently some Griller posted a video of himself living the Griller Dream, and the new Romantic Right sent up a digital howl of derision.

“There’s more to life than Work and Grilling!  Or at least there ought to be!” Continue reading →