"Barbarians are people without historical memory. Barbarianism is the real meaning of radical contemporaneity. Released from all authoritative pasts, we progress towards barbarianism, not away from it."
Philip Rieff as quoted by Rod Dreher in The Benedict Option"; pg. 154
A young friend of mine posted this on his Facebook page today. Josh has found the words and analogy to express the sentiments of a number of my Evangelical friends as well as myself. He has given me permission to re-post his words here. Note the above title is mine, but though it is a declaration of independence from the bondage of men, it is also a declaration of dependence on Almighty God. It is to God Himself we commit our lives and cause.
For me this election has been the moment when I escaped from the abusive, alcoholic husband that is the GOP. For the past twenty years of my adult life, I’ve put up with his cycles of verbal and physical abuse, lies, broken promises, and promiscuity clinging to the hope that he can and will change and at least he puts a roof over my head and feeds me. This year is the last straw. The arrogant, self-assured bravado with which the party threatens me has no hold over me anymore. Yes, I know the alternative is to live on the street. Yes, I know I may have some very bad times. But I do it from my own free will. It is my choice for once. I can and will find people just like me who have broken away and do what I can with them. And, ultimately, my home is in heaven, not this hell of codependency and clutching at the false specters of unrequited and unearned hope in the corrupt politics of man.
So, I have broken free. My conscience is clear. When the ‘greater’ of two evils wins in three weeks, do not come to me blaming me for the outcome. You as a codependent enabler of the bloated corpse of the GOP are as much to blame as me… at least according to your logic. At least my conscience is clear. My vote matters, and I will now withhold it from those who in NO WISE deserve it.
That’s my political statement. My spiritual statement is this: Brace yourselves Christian. Persecution is here. We have been given a rare respite from it in comparison to the historical mean. Buckle up and stand firm on Christ. Love one another.
~ Josh Hall
From time to time in the universe of Internet one may come across some comment or discussion of the possibility or probability of a second American civil war. For some, such comments come from a perspective holding to a romanticized "lost cause" view of the first American Civil War of the 1860's; a view that engages in the vain yearning or perhaps more accurately the vain conceit that the "South" will somehow "rise again..."
For some time now, I have viewed such romantic conceit as totally out of touch with the reality of modern warfare and the changing face of what modern civil war has become. My classic case in point for that assertion is the Spanish Civil War of the mid-1930's. I recently started reading Stanley G. Payne's account of the Spanish Civil War published in 2012 by Cambridge as part of their Cambridge Essential Histories series. The following is an extended quote from Payne's introduction on pages 1-4 in which he deals with how the nature of civil war changed in the 20th century.
"By 1918, civil war had broken out in Finland and Russia, and it was not the traditional kind of civil war in which two contestants engage in a power struggle with equivalent goals and similar values, but a new kind of revolutionary civil war of the sort first essayed in France during the 1790's and in 1871. In the new civil wars, sharply contrasting revolutionary and counterrevolutionary programs vied for power, aiming not merely at political domination, but at imposing totally contrasting programs in society, economics, culture, and even religion--two completely antagonistic ways of life, virtually two different civilizations. These civil conflicts were fought with unprecedented bitterness and violence, extending far beyond the field of battle. Red terror and its counterrevolutionary counterpart during the Russian civil war sought not merely to conquer, but to some extent to eradicate the opposition completely, rooting out antagonists physically as well as politically, as though they represented contending religious or metaphysical principles, forces of absolute good or evil that had not merely to be conquered but completely extirpated. The result was unprecedented political violence in many different parts of the former Tsarist empire, while violent internal conflict also broke out in central and southern Europe..."
"...In this perspective, civil war in Spain was not a complete anomaly, but rather the only massive internal conflict to break out in Western Europe during the 1930's. It would reflect all the tensions, hatreds and ideologies found in these other conflicts, while adding further features of its own, characteristic of Spain and to some extent Europe as a whole during the decade before World War II."
Simply put, a modern civil war in the United States would not look much at all like the Civil War of the 1860's. Further more, we have very ample reason to believe that a modern civil war in the United States would very likely make the first Civil War look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison in terms of the level of violence and terror from both sides of the conflict. Also a modern civil war in America would very likely involve two antagonists of whom both would be repugnant and despicable, but in their extremism, there will be no allowance for any middle ground or moderation. In the Spanish Civil War there was nothing to like in either the Franco party on the one hand or the so called Republicans on the other. Both sides had repudiated the democratic process and both sides engaged in their share of violence and terror.
There may very well come a time in the future when the United States falls again into the scourge of another civil war, but if it does, it will have little or nothing to do with the "South rising again..."
Here are a few of the what I consider some of the significant books I have read this past year. They are not in any particular order.
The Aeneid by Virgil:
A friend whose knowledge of literature I respect had recommended reading Virgil. Also one of my favorite quotes from Willa Cather's "My Antonia" mentions the poetry of Virgil. I picked up a copy of a reprint of a respected English translation at Barnes and Noble, and worked my way through it. Given the beauty of some of the passages in the English translation, I wish I had taken Latin so I could read it in its original language. It is an epic story and an exposure to classic literature is not complete without reading "The Aeneid".
O' Pioneers! by Willa Cather:
"O Pioneers" along with "My Antonia" and "The Song of the Lark" comprise a trilogy of Willa Cather's more prominent novels. I was captivated by Cather as an author a number of years ago when I read "My Antonia". I have seen the movie adaptation of "O' Pioneers", and for some time have had this on my list of "must read" books. I was not disappointed. Cather's description of the prairie and the interplay between the land and the immigrant pioneers that settled on it is exceptional. I am now looking forward at some point in this coming year to reading "Song of the Lark".
The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D. A. Carson:
I consider this my most significant theological read of the year. It is a relatively short book, but in my mind of significant importance. Carson discusses how God's love becomes distorted, what it means in a Biblical context to say God is love, the issue of God's love and God's sovereignty, and concludes with a discussion of God's love and God's wrath. In that last chapter there is a very helpful section where Carson deals with the love of God and the intent of the atonement.
Prison Nation by Jenni Merritt(Kindle Edition) and Kingdom by Anderson O'Donnell (Kindle Edition):
The first dystopian novels I ever read were George Orwell's "1984" and A. Huxley's "Brave New World". There were a few others along the way, but it has been a number of years, even decades, since I have seriously revisited the dystopian genre.
A dystopian novel takes a specific trend or cultural current in society and follows that trend or current to a logical extreme. This challenges the reader to look at those trends and currents with a more properly critical scrutiny. To write a dystopian novel in a way that makes it "realistic" and "believable" takes some real writing skill. Both of the above titles meet the challenge.
"Prison Nation" will challenge your view of "law and order" issues. Of the two titles, it is the more Orwellian.
"Kingdom" challenges the governmental-industrial complex and the extremes of DNA research and DNA manipulation. It is in some respects reminiscent of "Brave New World". I need to warn you that "Kingdom" gets an "R" rating for language and sex. As such, I do not give it a full unqualified recommendation even though it is of a relatively high literary quality. Read at your own discretion.
The dystopian genre is not one I would ever want to fixate on. The genre by definition can be pretty dreary and bleak. Some dystopian writings such as "1984" don't leave the reader with any thought that there may someday be hope for positive change in the bleak new world order. "Prison Nation" and "Kingdom" in contrast do leave the reader with a faint glimmer of hope that something better will eventually come; think "V for Vendetta". Though the genre is not one to fixate on, it is a literary genre worth visiting every now and then.
The Aristotelian by Steve Poling (Kindle Edition):
I want to also mention my friend Steve Poling's first published work "The Aristotelian". In this short novel Poling explores the influence of Mycroft Holmes on his younger brother Sherlock. Steve has since also published a Sci-Fi collection titled "Finding Time" (available on Kindle) which is on my "to read" list for this next year.
