A Moral Chasm
Those who live by Western tradition, Judeo-Christian values, and American core principles mourn their heroes with respect, dignity, and courage.
The memorial for Charlie Kirk was remarkable for numerous reasons. It was superbly organized and overwhelmingly attended by young people. It was mournful, yet uplifting. Perhaps what impressed me the most was the composed and respectful tone of the event and the powerful message of hope and faith. When Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s assassin, the bottomless precipice dividing American values and woke radicalism could not have been more evident and impassable.
Those who live by Western tradition, Judeo-Christian values, and American core principles mourn their heroes with respect, dignity, and courage. They celebrate life and peacefully honor the departed hero’s legacy.
Those who live by woke radicalism worship criminals instead. There is no sorrowful solemnity. There is no dignified respect in their demeanor after the death of their symbols, who often perish as a result of a lawful arrest or self-defense. Instead, their reaction is marked by vandalism, arson, violence, and the revolutionary chaos of unhinged crowds, intent on dismantling the system. The woke mob does not respect human life but celebrates death. Its goal is the destruction of the status quo at any cost.
This moral chasm is getting wider and deeper. It is not simply between political convictions. It is between civilizations, or more precisely, between civilization and its antithesis — modern globalist barbarism, disguised as a nightmarish anti-Western utopia that leaves only misery and oppression in its wake.
In his speech of June 18, 1940, titled “Their Finest Hour,” Churchill uttered a memorable revelation and warning:
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.
The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”
The movement to stand up to destructive ideologies and their pernicious results is well on its way. On its success depends our civilizational survival. The West needs to rise to the occasion and relive its “finest hour.”
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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Comments
I like Western values but the memorial struck me as aggressive. Humiliate your enemies by a public show of superior virtue.
Look at the comments it got about wiping out the other side.
Hannah Arendt: virtue that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil.
Germany was filled with high values: decency, love of family, love of country. It was just a matter of getting rid of the Jews.
Virtue that doesn’t go public is the thing to want. There’s no clickbait value in it though.
You could look at the ongoing challenge to every race or sex based advantage here, for an example of quiet virtue. No crushing of the enemy, but no clickbait value either. Just slowly improving things.
Yeah, because praying and singing and remembering a young man who did not wish harm on anyone is “aggressive.”
The trolling by rhhardin continues.
Not brought out, that perhaps or perhaps not Kirk would say, is that you have an obligation to your enemies, and without that you have nothing. Being willing to be civil to his opponents suggests he knows it but perhaps not explicitly. It might just have been a rhetorical trick. But it’s one not incompatible with actual virtue.
Augustine has it as charity. Think the best of people instead of the worst. He rates it as soul-saving. Charity later came to mean money.
The only obligation I have to my enemies is hatred and no quarter.
Not sure where you are getting that from as Kirk never believed that.
Kirk believed, as does the Christian world, that you have an obligation to God – not to men. You are called to do certain things, including loving your enemies, but that calling is from God and not men.
You hypothesize that Kirk did not know civility to enemies “explicitly.” That’s an interesting theory without foundation. Even so, Kirk walked the walk and treated his enemies with love, even though they hated him and as he would admit, sometimes lose his temper with them and not be “civil.” (For which he would apologize.)
The only thing that “saves souls” is belief in Christ.
You are also misleading in the word “charity.”
Augustine wrote in Latin in the 6th century. His writings were based on the Latin Vulgate, “Charity” is an old English translation of Latin and not a Greek translation of “agape.”
Once again, you are simply trolling.
I like to put Augustine’s soul-saving “thinking the best of others instead of the worst,” with a poem by Martin Luther
Er ist auf Erden kommen arm,
He is on earth come poor.
Dass er unser sich erbarm,
that he on us has mercy
Und in dem Himmel mache reich,
and in the heaven makes (us) rich
Und seinen lieben Engeln gleich
and his beloved angels like.
my word for word translation, note the German rhymes.
The thing to notice is it makes sense if it refers to this life, not the next.
Which is how to read Christianity. Before it was literalized.
Poem is in the Christmas Oratorio by the way.
On that soul that is saved, a clip from Stanley Cavell “The Claim of Reason,” testing where the word “soul” turns up and how it’s come to be a truncated picture of the interests that gave rise to it
“It may be that the sense of falsification comes from the way I understand the phrase “have a body.” It is really a mythological way of saying that I am flesh. But I am not satisfied with this myth, for it implies that I also have something other than a body, call it a soul. Now I have three things to put together: a body, a soul, and me. (So there are four things to be placed: I plus those three.) But I no more have a soul than I have a body. That is what I say here and now. People who say they have a soul sometimes militantly take its possession as a point of pride, for instance William Ernest Henley and G.B.Shaw. Take the phrase “have a soul” as a mythological way of saying that I am spirit. If the body individuates flesh and spirit, singles me out, what does the soul do? It binds me to others.”
As usual, you don’t address specific points and instead shift the goalposts.
Your interpretation of “Christianity” is contrary to the words or Christ, the writings of the Apostle, and the very people you try to quote.
I know that doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to some people that not only are you a troll, but a deceitful troll at that.
Kirk believed, as does the Christian world, that you have an obligation to God – not to men.
Trying hard to find where rhardin said the obligation came from man, not God..
Doesn’t seem to be there. In fact, YOU point out the obligation, from God, to ‘love your enemies’ –which means that you understand that your obligation does, in fact, exist and that it undermines your argument.
Fortunately, my gods are not insane. I am under no obligation to do aught for my enemies but vanquish them.
I do not hate my enemies, that takes far too much effort on my part and takes away from my ability to do well. I also offer my enemies truth in the face of the real world, what they do with it is on them.
Charity? Charity to them is, while having the power to do so, not destroying them to the last. Charity to my family, and to my fellow believers, on the other hand, is making every effort to destroy the work of my enemies who, in absolute fact, want to destroy my country, want to destroy all things Christian, and want to destroy me and everyone who understands who they really are.
You are pathetic and I pity you.
Kirk knew it explicitly.
We’ll never know what Kirk may or may not have said since violent nazi-like opponents wearing animal sex costumes forgot to apply your high-horse bullflop regarding “obligations” and “virtue” and simply shot their erstwhile debate opponent in the face.
And then you drag out Hannah Arendt’s philosophical corpse and misuse it – in the worst sense. You’ve flipped Arendt on her head.
The threading is goofed.
Response to rhhardin the ossified 1960’s libertard.
The overt Jew hatred is in the Dem party and the left not in the Charlie Kirk supporters
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
– A. Lincoln
“Mikey hates everything.”
Just go away.. forever
Aggressive is a pretty odd term for what basically turned out the be part memorial, part revival.
This is 100% the wrong take and I have a hard time believing a serious person wrote it. Your activity reeks more suspiciously of trolling by the day.
You aren’t even a good troll.
The memorial struck me as aggressive? Frankly, I don’t think you watched much if any of the memorial. It you thought it was aggressive, how could you have managed to watch the whole thing. I watched the whole thing – live. But let’s see. I constantly see elected Democrat Politicians, Democrat Hack ‘talking heads’ in the Establishment Media, various unhinged and angry Leftist Progressive, neo-Marxist types, and full blown Democrat Marxist on social media – heck – Democrat Bolsheviks; all of them, constantly, incessantly screaming and yelling, CALLING Trump, Maga Supporters, and all Republicans these vile and nasty slurs – “Hitler, Nazis, Fascists!” This has been incessantly going on for years – every Republican candidate for President has been call a Nazi by the Democrats since good old Wendell Willkie in 1940. Fact. It happens every day.
Now the vast majority of the Democrats using these vile slurs have not the first clue, no historical knowledge at all about Hitler, Nazis, and Fascists. Personally, nobody in the world can detest and abhor Hitler, what the German National Socialists became, and the concept of Fascism as much as I can! But I know the real history about them, so I know exactly why, all the reasons, I abhor and detest them! I know them for what they really were. Most Democrats have no clue, Ask them to define Fascism, and it drives them insane because they can’t.
But the Democrat haters that fling these words around as a slurs, basically to virtue signal that they are ‘cool kids’ to the rest of their Democrat haters – they don’t have the first clue. The greatest irony is this.
If one believes that the Government should centrally plan the economy; that the Government should redistribute vast amounts of money: level all ‘outcomes’ as much as possible. And believe that ones ‘race, ethnicity, whatever’ is the most important thing about them, and that Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality are a fact, and determine what they can do, say, think, and how they must vote; And one also believes that the Government gets to decide what is disinformation and misinformation, and censor the media. But they also DO NOT believe that the Government should legally expropriate any and all ‘private property’ they feel is necessary. Well, this is what the large majority of Democrat seem to believe. It’s what they say they believe. But now you also have the real Marxist Bolsheviks like Mamdami who come out for indeed appropriating private property.
Well, get ready, because if you believe everything in the above paragraph, you are a Fascist. A Fascist version of a Marxists. Yep – Fascists are all a type of Socialist/Marxist. Fact.
It boggles the mind. Those who profess to hate Fascists, acting and talking just like a Fascist, without the first hint of self-awareness. They don’t have a clue what the word really means – they have just absorbed the Bolshevik Propaganda about it. So, that strikes me as really truly aggressive! It has been drummed into peoples heads that Nazis are the ultimate evil, and they were, but I actually know why – most Democrats have no clue. So every time some Democrat Politician or taking head tell one of the ‘Big Whopping Lies of all time,’ and call all Republicans ‘Hitler, Nazis or Fascists’ – they are giving their followers permission to murder them. So Democrats facilitating end encouraging murder IS NOT aggressive? So please spare us the ‘on the one hand and the the other hand’ balderdash. We know now that the Democrats hate us ‘normals’, and insist that we meekly surrender and submit, or that we cease to exist – as in not be alive! We take you at your word, and believe you want us to sort of disappear, as in not be around. I wonder how the Democrat intend make that happen? So with all due respect – spare us the ‘claptrap.’ Wanting all us ‘normals’ to disappear sounds pretty ‘aggressive to me.’ But I get it, when their victims resist and fight back, it makes Democrat Bullies really mad!
“It boggles the mind. Those who profess to hate Fascists, acting and talking just like a Fascist, without the first hint of self-awareness. They don’t have a clue what the word really means – they have just absorbed the Bolshevik Propaganda about it.”
Our history is ripe with the need to change definitions to better fit “our” needs – I thought the following definition”s” and change reflect what you are driving at:
Fascism 1921 dictionary – “one of a body of Italian nationalists organized in 1919 under Benito Mussolini to oppose Bolshevism. Hense Fa scism, their principles and organization.”
1960, post-WWII dictionary – “Fasicsm. 2. Any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
Nothing on TV can be termed aggressive. You have the ‘OFF’ button under your control.
As a followup to another post and perhaps part of a “moral chasm,” organizers of the cycling race Giro dell’Emilia decided to ban the cycling team Israel Premier Tech from the upcoming event.
This is in response to what happened in the Spanish Vuelta where protestors forced the end or shortening of 7 of the last 11 stages.
What is hard to believe is these comments:
Apparently support for Hamas in Palestine / hatred of Israel is a “shared value.”
The Israel Premier Tech team is expected to rebrand within a week or so.
Until the idea of merit determining which team is allowed to race, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI,) (the governing body of cycling) should suspend the license of any race that allows actions like this.
source: https://www.espn.com/olympics/cycling/story/_/id/46399335/israel-premier-tech-excluded-cycling-race-safety
“Apparently support for Hamas in Palestine / hatred of Israel is a “shared value.””
The whole aim of the propaganda spewed by the noisy leftist 5% is to imply great grassroots support, and that if you are not in line with it you are othered.
Calling the GWOT a clash of civilizations is a misnomer. To have a clash, first you need two civilizations. The terrorists are not even close to civilization. Nearly pure evil!