Naturally Absurd, part seven: Naturalism Produces Demagoguery and Totalitarianism Over Time

Hundreds upon hundreds of protracted commentaries on this website have discussed the absurdity of naturalism, which is the ideology that bases all upon human actions and social policy upon merely natural considerations without regard even the existence of a supernatural order no less the immutable truths contained therein.

Naturalism is a tool of the devil to convince even believing Catholics that there is a way to retard the evils he advances in individual souls and thus in societies-at-large other than the reform of lives in cooperation with the graces won for us by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

Naturalism leaves no place for the face of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity in the public lives of men and their nations, and it leads inevitably to abject religious indifferentism that gives truth and error equal rights and paves the way for the triumph of atheism in fact if not in name as the lowest common denominator of social life.

As it is of the nature of man to believe in something above him, however, the naturalism begotten of Judeo-Masonry, itself the fruit of the Protestant Revolution and the rise of the so-called Enlightenment, spawns all manner of secular belief systems (secular ‘isms, if you will) that are premised upon ignoring the simple facts of Special Creation, Original Sin, Actual Sin, and Our Lord’s Incarnation and Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross. These secular belief systems become the means to “improve” the world by a strict adherence to various dogmas that are pronounced by various “wise men” as beyond question, and it is the conflict between these belief systems that gives rise to all the endless agitation and strife that characterize social life and public policy in the United States of America and elsewhere in the so-called “civilized” world.

A nation founded on principles that admit of no higher law other than the falsehood of the “sovereignty of man” will be reduced to a pile of rubble under the weight of errors that lead men into becoming rebels whose only god is their belly and whose glory is their shame.

Moreover, most Americans believe in the Pelagian falsehood of self-redemption by embracing the  the American “exceptionalist” myth that “Americans can do anything they want to do as long as they set their minds to a given enterprise. Not even Catholics care about the simple words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, “Without Me, you can do nothing.”

There is a particular irony in all of this as “constitutionalists,” “federalists, “originalists” and “conservatives talk and write incessantly about adhering to the true meaning of the plain words of the Constitution of the United States of America without realizing that a document that admits of no higher authority than its own text will be as easy for legal positivists, relativists and institutionalists (see, Roberts, John Glover) to distort, misinterpret, misrepresent, deconstruct or ignore altogether as it has been for Protestants and Modernist Catholics to distort, misinterpret, misrepresent, deconstruction altogether the plain words of Sacred Scripture, to say nothing of doing the same with Sacred (Apostolic) Tradition.

Catholics must be good citizens. Granted. However, it is very important to remember that the American founding was the secular byproduct of the Protestant Revolution and the subsequent rise of the naturalist ideologies that continue to serve as the sterile substitute for the true Faith as the only guiding light and common bond for men and their nations. All the errors of Modernity have paved the way clear for what I have long called the “illusion of secular salvation,” an illusion that now turns every headline into a cause of major division involving the use of vile invectives hurled at the “unenlightened” by the “woke.”

From Authoritarian Protestant England to the Totalitarian United States of America

The abuses of power by English monarchs, including the subjugating of Ireland and the persecution of Catholics in the Land of Saints and Scholars who refused to defect from the true Church, a persecution that would last until 1921 and still persists in Northern Ireland, led to all manner of social unrest in England, especially as those Anglicans who were followers of John Calvin sought to eradicate all remaining vestiges of Catholicism from Anglican "worship" and "doctrine" (removing Latin from certain aspects of the heretical Anglican liturgy, smashing statues, eliminating high altars in favor of tables, things that have been undertaken in the past forty years in many formerly Catholic churches that are now in the custody of the counterfeit church of conciliarism). This unrest produced the English Civil Wars of the 1640s and the establishment in 1649 of what was, for all intents and purposes, a Calvinist state under the control Oliver Cromwell that became a Cromwellian dictatorship between the years of 1653 to 1660 until the monarchy under the House of Stuart was restored in 1660. Oh yes, King Charles I lost his head, quite literally, in 1649 as the "Roundheads" of Oliver Cromwell came to power in 1649 following seven years of warfare between "parliamentarians" and "royalists." Revolutions always wind up eating their own. The English monarchy itself was eaten up by the overthrow of the Social Reign of the King of Kings by Henry VIII of the House of Tudor in 1534.

King James II, who had converted to Catholicism in France in 1668 while he was the Prince of York under his brother, King Charles II of the restored monarchy, acceded to the English throne on June 6, 1885, following his brother's death, which occurred after Charles II himself had converted to the Faith on his deathbed. Suspicious that the property that had been acquired and the wealth that had been amassed as a result of Henry VIII's social-engineering land grab of 150 years before would be placed in jeopardy, Protestant opponents of King James II eventually forced him to abdicate the throne in 1688, his rule having been declared as ended on December 11 of that year. The abdication of King James, whose second wife, Mary of Modena, had been assigned Blessed Father Claude de la Colombiere as her spiritual director when she was the Princess of York, is referred to by Protestant and secular historians as the "glorious revolution," so-called because it ushered in the penultimate result of the Protestant Revolution, the tyranny of the majority.

 It was to justify the rise of majoritarianism that John Locke, a Presbyterian (Calvinist) minister, wrote his Second Treatise on Civil Government. Locke believed, essentially, that social problems could be ameliorated if a majority of reasonable men gathered together to discuss their situation. The discussion among these "reasonable men" would lead to an agreement, sanctioned by the approval of the majority amongst themselves, on the creation of structures which were designed to improve the existing situation. If those structures did not ameliorate the problems or resulted in a worsening of social conditions then some subsequent majority of "reasonable men" would be able to tear up the "contract" that had bound them before, devising yet further structures designed to do what the previous structures could not accomplish. Locke did not specify how this majority of reasonable men would form, only that it would form, providing the foundation of the modern parliamentary system that premises the survival of various governments upon the whims of a majority at a given moment.

In other words, England's "problem" in 1688 was King James II. The solution? Parliament, in effect, declared that he had abdicated his throne rather than attempt to fight yet another English civil war to maintain himself in power as the man chosen by the parliamentarians to replace him, his own son-in-law William of Orange, who was married to his daughter Mary, landed with armed forces ready to undertake such a battle. The parliamentary "majority" had won the day over absolutism and a return to Catholicism.

Political ideologues capitalized on the divisions caused the Martin Luther’s, John Calvin’s, Ulrich Zwingli and Henry VIII’s respective breaks from Rome.

A writer of the Italian Renaissance, Niccolo Machiavelli provided the “philosophical muscle,” so to speak, that was used by political ideologues (those who subscribed to the allegedly “salvific” power of a political belief system, whether it be liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, fascism, utilitarianism, statism, materialism, legal positivism, libertarianism, etc.) to do away with all reference to the supernatural in order to emphasize the merely natural aspects of human existence. By doing this, you see, the political ideologues sought to empower individual rulers with a “blank check” to rule as they believed that had to rule in order to acquire, retain and increase their own raw political power.

To this end, Machiavelli wrote two works in the late-Fifteenth Century that were instrumental in shaping the minds of political rulers after Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church and thus made it possible for princes and kings and emperors to rule without what they saw as the sort of “interference” from a pope or a kingdom’s local bishops to observe the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. Those two works were as follows: and A Discourse on Livy.

The essence of Machiavelli’s teaching was to separate the practice of politics from all objective moral norms. Machiavelli believed that there was no need for a prince to agonize over the morality of particular decisions. All that such a prince needs to do is to determine what is expedient for his own ends. In other words, a prince may use whatever means he deems, including, lying, cheating and, if necessary, killing, to realize whatever end he has set for himself. This is known as “amorality,” the belief that human actions can be undertaken without regard to their inherent morality or lack thereof. “The ends justify the means.” If one has to cheat, cheat. If one has to lie, lie. If one has to kill, kill. This is the foundation of the policies of almost every country in the world today as those in public office seek to advance their own ends by using whatever means it takes to realize them. We see this with particular clarity in the conduct of election campaigns and in efforts by presidential administrations to cover-up crimes that “had” to be committed in order to preserve their “legitimacy” and “credibility” with the public.

No matter the influence Machiavelli, however, it was John Locke who was the father of political ideology. Locke is the father of the political ideology of “liberalism,” which contends that social problems may be resolved by the creation of structures, sanctioned by the majority, and that such structures may be reformed or enlarged by subsequent majorities over the course of time. All political ideology is, as Russell Kirk noted in The Roots of American Order, inverted religion, an effort to replace Christianity as the foundation of social life by convincing mere creatures that they, by their own unaided powers, can make the world “better” without ever addressing the root causes of those problems.

As noted above, John Locke wrote The Second Treatise on Civil Government, which established his understanding of democracy as being a form wherein the people voluntarily relinquished their claim to total liberty in order to enjoy the protection of their basic rights and liberties (life, liberty and property) by a government they create, elect and participate in.

Locke based his philosophy upon the following premises:

1. The human being lived originally in a “state of nature,” where there was to be found no law, no organized society and thus no order. In such a situation, the human being was incapable of realizing the protection of his basic rights of life, liberty and property.

2. As noted above, in the state of nature everyone was “free” to do as he pleased.

3. Such “freedom,” though, carried risks within the “state of nature” as some human beings used their freedom to violate the rights of others.

4. Lacking any organized means to deal with the risks that existed in the state of nature, Locke hypothesized, without specifying when this happening or how, that a majority of “reasonable” men gathered together to perfect the state of nature in which the human beings were at risk of losing their rights to life, liberty and property.

5. These “reasonable men” conclude that the state of nature was defective and that the human being had to be taken out of it in order to be governed by a government created by and with the consent of those to be governed.

6. The price of protecting basic rights and liberties would be the forfeiture of the claim to total liberty. That is, human beings must voluntarily relinquish (give up) their claim to “total liberty” in order to enjoy the protection of their rights to life, liberty and property by a government of their own creation.

7. Thus it is that Locke believed government was not part of the very nature of things, that is was an artificial “imposition” upon the human being that could, if left unchecked, serve as a threat to the human being.

8. The supposed “safeguard” in Locke’s construct would be the creation of a government by a “majority” of reasonable men, who would devise, whether in a formal (or written) manner or an informal (unwritten) manner a “social contract” to bind the community together in a set of rules to be administered by elected officials serving in government structures.

9. If, however, the problems sought to be ameliorated or resolved by the government created by the social contact continue or, worse yet, worsen, then another reasonably majority of men could arise to revised or expand existing structures and/or to create new ones to “fix” that which had gone unresolved.

This is the essence of liberalism, therefore, and its influence is vast on both the so-called “left”
 and “right” in the United States of America today. Lockeanism also influenced some, although not all, of the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America. Lockeanism convinces human beings, who are mere contingent beings, that is, beings who did not create themselves, and whose bodies are destined for the corruption of the grave until the General Judgment of the living and the dead on the Last Day. In other words, political ideology convinces men that they are “gods” who can decide for themselves how to “improve” or “perfect” a world brought into disorder caused by their own sins. Remember, even Plato and Cicero, pagans who did not believe in Divine Revelation, understood the connection between order in the soul and order in society.

The flaws of the John Locke’s ideology are as follows:

1. The “state of nature” never existed. There never existed a time when human beings lived in a moral vacuum, devoid of hierarchy and of any means of external governance over them. Again, even pagans understood this from the use of reason. Christians understand that God Himself, the Most Blessed Trinity, is the true Governor of men Who has ordained laws to govern the physical properties of the universe and Who has ordained laws to govern men in the moral choices they make. The “state of nature” is pure mythology.

2. All human problems, therefore, are the result of man’s fallen nature, something that many of the founders understood:

A principal difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution was this: the American revolutionaries in general held a biblical view of man and his bent toward sin, while the French revolutionaries in general attempted to substitute for the biblical understanding an open optimistic doctrine of human goodness advanced by the philosophes [the false philosophers] of the rationalistic Enlightenment. The American view led to the Constitution of 1787; the French view, to the Terror and to a new autocracy [Napoleon Bonaparte]. The American Constitution is a fundamental law deliberately meant to place checks upon will and appetite. The French innovations would endure no such checks upon popular impulses; they ended under a far more arbitrary domination. (Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p. 29.)

3. Importantly, Locke confused liberty with license. Having the physical ability to perform an act does not mean that one has the moral right to commit it. Thus, one does not have the freedom morally to push his neighbor in front of an oncoming subway train. How can it be said, therefore, that one is giving up his “freedom” not to commit an act that is of its nature morally wrong.

4. Locke thus conclude erroneously that government is an artificial imposition upon human society that takes men out of the state of nature in order to protect their rights to life, liberty and property that he said were at risk in the state of nature. Government is not an artificial imposition upon human society. As noted in number two, supra, government and hierarchy are simply part of the nature of things.

5. Locke trusted naively in the infallible reasonableness of the majority. Locke could not conceive of a circumstance whereby a majority would be composed of anyone other than reasonable men. As we know, of course, the crowd is often wrong. The crowd on Good Friday, motivated by our sins having transcended time, cried out for Barabbas and called for the Crucifixion of their very Redeemer. The mere fact that a majority supports or opposes something at a given point in time means nothing if what is supported or opposed is wrong in and of its nature. Democracy is not about giving the “majority” whatever it wants. This is same as mobocracy.

6. Locked believed wrongly in the ability of mere structural reform to solve perfect the “state of nature,” that is, to “resolve” social problems once and for all. Such a belief, while held most sincerely by most people alive today, treats the symptoms of problems rather than the root cause of those problems. Without understanding that the root cause of social problems is fallen human nature—and hence remediable only by constant conversion to holiness on a daily basis), the human being becomes convinced that he can create THE solution to the problems of war, poverty, homelessness, economic injustice, racism, greed, environmental pollution, and the like. The fact that such problems remain, if not worsen, does nothing to convince Lockeans of the rightness of their position.

Similarly, there are those who believe that the mere expenditure of funds on social problems will result in the resolution of those problems. The failure of such programs to work (urban poverty remains high, teen unemployment rates, especially in urban areas, remains high, drug abuse is on the rise across all segments of society, many schools produce students who are functionally illiterate and are unable to speak in grammatically correct English, being ignorant, through no fault of their own, in basic facts of world and American history) does nothing to cause such ideologues to rethink their basic premises. The same is true of those who believe that the mere expenditure of money will produce a stronger defense of the nation (or those who think that the elimination of weapons by itself will produce peace). There were wars long before there were modern weapons.

The belief in structural reforms as the means to resolve social problems leads the human being to believe in self-redemption. This is the same thing as the heresy of Pelgianism, the belief that human beings can more or less “save” themselves by stirring up within the souls graces necessary to “do” whatever it is they set their minds to doing without any type of supernatural assistance.

7. Locke’s system leads to frustration. If one believes that structural reform in and of itself is the means to resolve social problems, then one is bound to lead a life of utter frustration. The person who believes that “others” are responsible for their problems are rootless and restless, constantly searching for “external” solutions to ease their sense of unhappiness (an unhappiness that originates interiorly within themselves). Similarly, a society seeking in good faith to deal with serious problems will find itself quite frustrated when the problems remain despite the “best” efforts to eradicate them. New solutions are therefore proposed as the “next step” to resolve problems that will only worsen over times. Karl Marx, for example, saw the failure of liberalism while living in London, England, and proposed what he thought was the ultimate solution: communism, which was to produce “peace and justice” by killing off the bourgeoisie (the capitalists) and redistributing their wealth so that a “classless” society could emerge wherein all no cause for envy, war or competition would exist.

Locke’s influence on modern thought is profound even though most of the men who framed the Constitution of the United States of American had made a break with some of Locke’s simple-minded majoritarian formulae for secular self-redemption. As a practical political matter, however, Locke’s ideas—and those of the French Revolution—became the basis of American politics, public-policy making and jurisprudence.

Unfortunately for Locke, you see, social problems cannot be ameliorated merely by the creation of structures devised by “reasonable men” and sanctioned by the majority.

All problems in the world, both individual and social, have their remote causes in Original Sin and their proximate causes in the Actual Sins of men. There is no once-and-for-all method or structure by which, for example, “peace” will be provided in the world by the creation of international organizations or building up or the drafting of treaties. 

There is no once-and-for-all method or structure by which, for example, “crime” will be lessened in a nation by the creation of various programs designed to address the "environmental" conditions that are said to breed it.

The only way in which social conditions can be ameliorated is by the daily reformation of individual lives in cooperation with the graces won for men by the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. And to the extent that social structures can be effective in addressing and ameliorating specific problems at specific times in specific places, those who create and administer them must recognize their absolute dependence upon God's graces and that there is no secular, non-denominational or inter-denominational way to provide for social order. Social order and peace among nations depend entirely upon the subordination of the life of every person and the activities of every nation to the Social Reign of Christ the King as it is exercised by the Catholic Church.

The modern state is founded on the specific and categorical rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it is exercised by the Catholic Church. There is thus the need for modern man for find sterile ideologies or philosophies to substitute for the true Faith so as to guide him in the course of daily life. The failure of the social structures fashioned after the Lockean model to effect an amelioration of the problems they were intended to address does nothing to deter “true believers” from continuing to persist in the blindness that led them to reject the true Faith and to trust in their own cooked-up schemes.  

No, the “true believers” in liberalism or conservatism or capitalism or socialism or communism or fascism or Nazism or utilitarianism or pragmatism or positivism (or any and all other brands of secular “isms”) must spend their entire lives searching for a “better way” to realize the goals of their particular ideology or philosophy or economic system. It cannot possibly be, they have convinced themselves, that their initial premises were wrong from the outset. No, the problem must be in the implementation and/or in the communication of their ideas, not in the false nature of the ideas upon which they have based all of their truly delusional hopes.

The Lockean construct for the resolution of social problems is but one part of the Revolution, as it was termed by Popes Pius VI, VII, VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Saint Pius X, against the Faith. The Lockean construct preceded the rise of contemporary Freemasonry in England by twenty-nine years, fitting in nicely with the Judeo-Masonic desire to obliterate the necessity of subordinating all things in personal and social life to the reality of the Incarnation by stressing the conviction that the “universal brotherhood of men” can put aside “denominational differences” to pursue the “common good” Locke's belief that men could resolve their social problems by the creation of structures, in essence the self-redemptive heresy of Pelagianism, also dovetailed into the Judeo-Masonic belief that men can pursue “civic virtue” on their own without belief in, access to or cooperation with sanctifying grace. These false beliefs lead men and their societies into complete and utter chaos, which is the goal of the chief revolutionary, the devil himself, who desires the minds of men to be locked up by the blindness engendered by their narcissism and pride.

The Lockean construct leads to many mutations, all of which have one common theme: the ability of man to better his lot in life on his own without subordinating himself to the Deposit of Faith that the God-Man has entrusted to His true Church.

In the United States, for example, the Lockean construct has produced a situation where liberalism had to give way to the socialism that has been creeping up on us in the past century since the administrations of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, and, at the present time, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

The failure of incremental, structural “reforms” to improve social conditions led to an increase in the size and the power of government at all levels (state, local, national) and a reduction in the legitimate natural law rights of citizens to be free from the tyranny of governmental leaders possessed of the notion that secular salvation comes from the state.

Thus, the New Freedom of Woodrow Wilson was actually a descent into statism, especially as represented by the creation of the Federal Reserve System, expedited by the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and by many of the policies of his immediate predecessor, Herbert Clark Hoover), and expanded by Lyndon Baines Johnson's “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” programs. The attempts to “engineer” the better society through government programs has reached such a stage that even though itself is being punished at the state law (and laws are pending on the national level to make criticism of the behavior of certain people a “hate” crime). A land born in the delusional belief that man can ever be "free" without Our Lord and His Holy Church produces all to logically and inexorably a new caste of slaves, most of who are so diverted by bread and circuses that they protest nary a bit as their legitimate freedoms and property are taken away from them bit by bit under one pretext or another. All of this, however, was but a prelude to the socialism of the present moment, including stimulus packages, ObamaDeathCare, Biden’s “infrastructure” boondoggle, and the pork-barreling that squanders so many billions of taxpayer dollars (pork-barreling goes by the more commonly known name of “earmarks” today).

Elsewhere, however, the Lockean construct leads to a degree of violent frustration. That is, the failure of structural reforms to, say, “end” poverty or to “end” wars convinced a number of visionaries that violent, bloody revolutions were necessary to overthrow the remaining vestiges of Catholicism in order to replace it all at once with a man-made paradigm for peace and justice on earth. The French Revolutionaries, the Mexican Revolutionaries, the plotters of the Italian Risorgimento, Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf in Germany, the Bolshevik, and Maoist Revolutionaries—and scores upon scores of others—believed that their revolutions would bring about a new age for mankind. The failure of even those “once-and-for-all” revolutions, however, to produce their expected results led to attempts to revitalize the revolutionary zeal, a "reform of the reform," if you will. And it will ever be thus in the minds of those who have rejected the simple truth that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order as they have been shaped by the demonically inspired naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, semi-Pelagian delusions of Modernity.

When “Democracy” Means a Tyranny of Ideology That Must Repress All Others by the Brute Force of the Civil State

Tyranny can take many forms (one man, a ruling elite, a military junta, a particular political party, popular or legislative or judicial majorities). However, the Protestant Revolution was indeed a recipe for all contemporary forms of statist tyranny, which now includes defining “democracy” as meaning denouncing efforts to secure election integrity as “racist” in se in order to make it appear that anyone who opposes the “received” agenda of the moment is a “threat” to democracy whose henforcement and national security bureaucracy. includes requiring Catholics and others who oppose sodomy to submit the new order of things or risk some kind of penalty, including the closure of their very businesses.

As one who was the target of many “leftist” colleagues who could not abide my teaching of undergraduate and graduate political science courses from the perspective of Catholic teaching, I have long known that those of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” believe that all opposition to their dogmas is illegitimate, thus making necessary, as they see it, ad hominem attacks upon those who profess “proscribed” beliefs and ideas. All the talk of “saving democracy” at this time means one thing: making it possible for the degenerate process called elections in the United States of America to produce permanent one-party rule that is premised upon the silencing, if not imprisonment, of opposition voices once and for all.

A secular commentator discussed the matter as follows recently:

The Democratic Party’s message ahead of the 2022 midterms appears to be simple: Vote for us or democracy gets it.

“I’m worried that if Republicans win in the midterm elections, that voting as we know it in this country will be gone,” warned California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell during a recent MSNBC appearance. “This is not only the most important election. If we don’t get it right, it could be the last election.”

Across the progressive Democratic messaging infrastructure, the party and movement have rebranded themselves as the protectors of the democratic ideal, which, in their telling, is on the verge of extinction.

President Biden has warned that GOP election laws that would, among other things, require voters to write down their state ID number on absentee ballots, are the equivalent of “Jim Crow on steroids,” while more or less comparing Virginia’s Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin to a Capitol rioter.

Heads of influential progressive political action committees worry aloud that we will see a swing of “power to Republican politicians, which ends American democracy.” Liberal opinion columnists lament that the GOP is plotting to “take control of more and more of the apparatus of voting to ensure that Republicans can never lose.”

But if you sincerely value liberal democracy—not just majority rule but open debate and the protection of individual and minority rights—it can be hard not to notice the irony: A political movement that has worked so hard to censor and marginalize its opponents in virtually all institutions is claiming that it now represents the vanguard of democracy.

I’m not pointing this out to prove to progressives that they are just a bunch of hypocrites who don’t really value liberal democracy.

I’m writing this because I am worried about democracy in the United States. I won’t validate Biden or Swalwell’s outlandish claims about democracy ending in the next election or Jim Crow reasserting itself in GOP-run states, but I do think it’s deeply unhealthy that so many people in our country distrust the news media, public institutions, and their elected representatives.

Take Swalwell, who ominously predicted that a GOP victory in the midterm elections—leaving the Democrats in control of the executive branch, of course—would mark the extinction of American democracy.

When Twitter decided to ban Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because she espoused skepticism toward COVID vaccines, genuine advocates for free speech and open debate were outraged. How can a private company that runs the modern public square, the equivalent of a public utility, unilaterally decide to silence an official elected by the people?

Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has been skeptical of bipartisan congressional oversight of Silicon Valley, criticized Twitter for shutting down what he called “constitutionally protected speech.” But Swalwell was unsympathetic to Greene losing her right to speak on the platform. “Kevin McCarthy hates free markets. He wants government to have absolute control over private businesses,” he thundered. “Is there a word for this?”

Suddenly, the defender of democracy transformed into an advocate for corporate control of public debate, using an argument that wouldn’t be out of place in a Milton Friedman tract. As hypocritical as it was, it was hardly surprising.

Last year we saw Twitter work with Facebook to suppress the spread of a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The announcement that the story would be throttled on Facebook came from Andy Stone, a Facebook communications staffer who previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

No prominent Democratic elected official protested the suppression of the story, which quickly became a bigger story than the content of the Post article itself. And why would they? It was clear that, in this case, the Democrats weren’t after democratic legitimacy but political hegemony. They stood to benefit more from having the world’s most powerful digital communications companies actively suppress speech that could assist their political opponents than from standing by the principle of freedom of expression.

It was clear that, in this case, the Democrats weren’t after democratic legitimacy but political hegemony.

It was hardly the only anti-democratic move that benefited the Democrats in 2020. Just ask the Green Party. The minor left-wing group fielded its own presidential candidate that year, a trade unionist and environmental activist named Howie Hawkins.

In state after state, Hawkins and the Green Party faced legal challenges from Democratic Party-linked operatives and attorneys trying keep him from even appearing on the ballot. With a 5-2 Democratic majority, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned a Republican judge’s ruling that Hawkins could stay on the state’s ballot, due to Hawkins’ “failure to closely follow nomination procedures,” according to CBS. When I asked Chris Robinson, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Green Party whether they thought the Democrats were sincere in their embrace of democracy, I got a brief response: “The answer is, ‘No!’”

One piece of evidence the Democrats use to claim that democracy is on its death bed and the Republicans are to blame is the widespread conservative denial of the legitimacy of Biden’s election victory. It’s certainly true that former President Donald Trump unleashed and perpetuated a storm of falsehoods about the integrity of Biden’s victory. There were not mountains of fraudulent ballots cast in the 2020 election.

But denying the legitimacy of the elected president is a more common partisan feature of America’s messy democracy than Democrats would like to admit. A University of Massachusetts Amherst/YouGov poll from December 2021 found that just 21% of Republicans believed that Biden’s victory in last year’s election was “definitely” or “probably” legitimate. Overall, 68% of Americans shared that view (and 91% of Democrats).

But a July 2001 Gallup poll found that just 48% of Americans believed Bush won the 2000 race “fair and square”; among Democrats, that number dropped to 15%, and among African Americans, it fell to 8%. Democratic rejection of the legitimacy of the incoming Republican president skyrocketed again after the election of Trump. Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis said in January of 2017 that he didn’t consider Trump a “legitimate President.” The same month, millions of Democratic-leaning Americans launched a “resistance” movement designed to urge their elected officials to obstruct Trump. By November 2018, YouGov found that two-thirds of Democrats believed that it was “definitely true” or “probably true” that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President.”

Much has been made of the riots of Jan. 6. While these riots did in fact represent a deadly rejection of the results of the 2020 election, the way some Democrats responded exemplified the anti-democratic, pro-hegemonic tendencies of the party. Dozens of Democratic members of Congress backed a resolution to expel House Republicans who voted against certifying the election results—an anti-democratic move aimed at taking away the right to choose one’s federal representative from the citizens of those districts.

What was long understood as a symbolic protest vote suddenly became tantamount to treason, provided that it was Republicans doing it this time rather than Democrats—some of whom voted against certification of the Republican president-elect in 2000, 2004, and 2016.  (It’s Coups All the Way Down.)

While the secular commentator who wrote the column above believed that “free speech” and “free elections” can be “saved,” it is certainly true that the members of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” want election procedures that guarantee granting poll access to illegal immigrants (which is why President in Name Only Biden has, in effect, opened the borders and had illegal immigrants flown to various parts of the nation so that they can register to vote and/or have their illegal votes “harvested” in a manner that occurred because of the plandemic in 2020—see 47,705 migrants released with instructions to report to ICE have gone missing under Biden and The Left is trying to erase the meaning of citizenship), ending all laws requiring voters to identify themselves even though cities with “vaccine mandates” require people seeking entry into various facilities to have “vaccine cards” with them at all times and that no one can board a plane or open a bank account without some kind of government-issued form of identification, and not requiring signature matching for mail-in ballots. Biden does not care about election security, whatever that has ever been in the United States of America; he cares only about election hegemony.

Another secular commentator focused on President in Name Only Joseph Robinette Biden’s rank demagoguery that was on display in a divisive speech he gave in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, January 11, 2021:

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden gave a speech asserting that people who oppose his plan for a federal takeover of elections are domestic enemies and racists.

“Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” Biden asked in his speech falsely claiming that the “right to vote” was in doubt throughout the country.

Biden is lobbying to end the Senate’s legislative filibuster in order to push through his plan for a radical takeover of elections. The election bill would unconstitutionally empower the federal government to control state election procedures, and help make permanent the decreased election safeguards that caused so many problems throughout the country in 2020.

The response of the old guard of the Republican Party this week has been to wholeheartedly endorse the media narrative that the 2020 election had no significant problems, while also opposing Biden’s plan to run elections. It’s a politically insane approach.

The 2020 election was riddled with problems. Voters know this. Republican voters know this very well. Time Magazine described what happened with the election as “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” They added that it was a “revolution in how people vote.”

The rigging of the election included changes to hundreds of laws and processes in the months prior to election day, flooding the system with tens of millions of mail-in ballots even as scrutiny of those ballots was decreased. Mark Zuckerberg spent $419 million to finance the private takeover of government election offices — primarily focused on the blue areas of swing states — to enable Democrats to run their Get Out The Vote operations from government offices. The funding was significant enough to affect the outcome of races, independent analysts have concluded. And that’s to say nothing of Big Tech’s election meddling in the form of censorship and algorithmic persuasion nor of corporate media’s move into straight-up propaganda.

On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos — formerly President Bill Clinton’s press secretary — asked in his usual biased way for Republican Sen. Mike Rounds to opine against election integrity:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You voted to certify the election last year. You condemned the protest as an insurrection. What do you say to all those Republicans, all those veterans who believe the election was stolen, who have bought the falsehoods coming from former President Trump?

Even the dumbest Republican should have been able to answer this question without accepting the premise of the biased Democrat reporter. Knowing that the filibuster and election integrity are on the line, even a lowly, distracted Republican precinct person should have been able to respond by talking about fighting the federal takeover of elections, fighting the private takeover of government election offices, fighting the unconstitutional changes of voting laws, and fighting the second-class treatment of Republican voters by the media and Big Tech.

Instead, Rounds made bizarre claims about looking at “accusations” in “multiple states,” saying that while there were “some irregularities,” none were significant. Then he claimed — ludicrously — “The election was fair, as fair as we have seen.”

I mean, heck, if the election was as fair as any in history, why not join with Democrats in their push for a federal takeover of elections to make permanent the “revolution in how people vote”? But also, why say something that is not true?

The 2020 election was not the fairest in history, not by a long shot. It was riddled with problems, whether it’s the Zuckerberg funding or the coordinated Democrat campaign to weaken election security. The man who ran that coordinated effort was Marc Elias, the same man who ran the 2016 Russia collusion hoax. His partner was recently indicted by John Durham for just some of his lies associated with that hoax that did so much damage to the country and which itself was an attack on the 2020 election’s fairness.

As soon as Rounds showed himself subservient to Stephanopoulos, the Democrat media went wild. They amplified his comments, knowing how helpful they were to their cause of decreased election security and opposition to Republican victories.

One corrupt media outlet that excitedly amplified Rounds’ comments and used them to advance their political agenda was CNN. Russia hoax co-conspirator Manu Raju, known for pestering Republicans to get them to support Democrat narratives, wrote an article gleefully headlined “Top Republicans stand up for Rounds after Trump’s attack: He ‘told the truth’.” Some lowlights:

• “I think Sen. Rounds told the truth about what happened in the 2020 election,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN on Tuesday. “And I agree with him.”
• Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican who contended Democrats took advantage of more voting rules eased during the pandemic. “I’ve moved on a long time ago, and most members of Congress have, including Mike.”
• Other Republicans said it was time to focus on something other than 2020. “I say to my colleague, welcome to the club,” Sen. John Thune, the senior South Dakota Republican, said of the Trump attack on Rounds — something he has endured himself in the past. “I don’t think re-litigating or rehashing the past is a winning strategy. If we want to be a majority in 2023, we’ve got to get out and articulate what we’re going to do with respect to the future the American people are going to live and the things they’re going to care about when it comes to economic issues, national security issues.”

It is absolutely charming that Cramer has the luxury of “moving on” from the important election integrity battle, but Biden sure hasn’t moved on. Pelosi hasn’t moved on. Chuck Schumer hasn’t moved on. The entire corporate media hasn’t moved on. Why has Cramer moved on?

North Dakota is a state that voted for Trump in 2020 by 33 points. Its senator should probably be able to use some of his political capital to tackle the top issue of the week for American voters.

Thune says the politically wise thing to do is to not relitigate the past but work on issues people are going to “care about.” Someone should tell him that one of the top issues Republican voters care about is … election integrity.

The Washington Post this month reported that at least 69 percent of Republicans are seriously concerned about the 2020 election. Perhaps the worst thing a party could do if it cared about serious political power would be to signal that the issue means so little to them. This pathetic cowardice and incompetent weakness are exactly what Republican voters are sick to death of.

In previous months, Biden has falsely claimed that the country is experiencing “Jim Crow” resistance to the right to vote. He asked corporations to boycott the state of Georgia after Georgia’s legislature passed a bill to mildly improve its election security. Some of them bowed to the pressure. Major League Baseball, for instance, pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Biden’s request, causing untold economic damage to the Peach State.

All of this is clearly an effort to keep Republicans from stopping Democrats’ 2020-style assault on election security. It works precisely because too many Republicans are too scared to fight. What if instead of Stephanopoulos easily pressuring Rounds into spouting Democrat talking points, Rounds had instead fought hard against these attacks on election security? What if he knew the facts about what actually happened enough to speak knowledgeably about what Republican voters want their leaders to advocate for?

What if establishment Republican politicians put away literally any thoughts about Trump — much less their anger or petulance about him — for a minute to think about the importance of election integrity and how to obtain it?

What if Republicans stopped running interference for what Democrats did in 2020 at the same moment that Dems are trying to take over the entire country’s election system? This isn’t merely academic. Old-guard Republican cowardice and fecklessness could lead to Pelosi becoming America’s election czar.

In general, Republican voters deserve a far better class of politician than what the old guard of their party has been forcing on them. (GOP’s Old Guard Out Of Touch With Their Voters On Election Integrity.)

Another commentary stressed the outsourcing of the election process to private firms by state and election officials who are too slothful to do the jobs themselves and then to oversee the jobs done by the firms to which they have outsourced the conducting of elections and the counting of votes:

The United States Agency for International Development, which monitors foreign elections to ensure fairness and accuracy, asserts that proper elections require “transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability.”

The 2020 election in the United States, however, remains one of the least transparent, inclusive, and accountable contests in our nation’s history.  And unfortunately, due to prevailing political headwinds, it will likely remain so because election officials are refusing to be held accountable and answer basic, reasonable questions.

nstead, those responsible for managing our elections, along with their allies, are responding with a narrative that questions are bad and the election system is beyond reproach.

It is this response that is undermining faith in our democratic institutions, not the questions. Worse yet, many public officials are threatening sanctions and prosecution against those who reasonably challenge the lawlessness with which some elections were managed.

As a nation, it is now time to discuss whether the unprecedented management of the 2020 election reflects wise policy moving forward.

The Amistad Project is doing its part and has engaged in litigation in several states to bring transparency to unprecedented practices in our last national election. The following are some of our initial findings:

1. Many key government election offices received more private money than taxpayer money to manage the election.
2. A majority of that money was spent in a sophisticated effort to turn out the vote of a specific profile of voter in order to benefit one candidate.
3. These expenditures greatly exceeded campaign finance limits and violated laws and systems designed to keep government neutral in managing elections.
4. These private interests dictated the manner in which the election would be managed.
5. Amistad litigation and investigation have revealed that a handful of partisan billionaires funneled funds through a collection of left-leaning nonprofits directly into the counting centers of the urban core of swing states.
6. Ballots and voters were treated differently based on access to these funds.
7. A series of lawsuits by the left — and executive branch use of “emergency police powers” due to COVID-19 — radically changed the management of the 2020 election, resulting in different treatment of ballots and voters within several states.

 A bedrock of American democracy is equal protection under the law, and that government in an election provide for equal treatment of all voters.  In 2020 it did not.  And it appears now that few are interested in it doing so in the future.

This situation is the fruit of decades of policy and intellectual neglect. We have nationalized every issue, and national leaders have responded by claiming to be able to fix every problem facing every American citizen. They pass a vaguely worded law and push authority over to the vast administrative state while ignoring the application of that law and avoiding accountability for the law.

This separation of political power from political accountability is now so embedded in our republic that we have generally accepted an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy telling us when we can visit loved ones in the hospital, celebrate a marriage, gather over the holidays, or engage in political rallies.

These extraordinary powers are legislative ones delegated to the executive branch, and the same legislators who complain about how the executive branch uses these powers can take them back.  Most have not done so, however, because casting blame is politically safer than leading.

Our nation’s COVID response and election management have underscored two major cracks in our political foundation – we have separated authority from accountability, and we have concentrated power in unaccountable institutions.

As for election management, the Constitution vests state legislators with the responsibility to handle this task. Yet, most state legislatures do not even meet during the election season and do not review the performance of the election process.

Rather, they delegated that authority to executive branch officials who perform what are known as ministerial functions, thus preventing state legislatures from exercising their own discretion.  Meanwhile, these officials have signed contracts with a machine and software vendors who are generally beyond scrutiny in how they impact elections.

So much for accountability, transparency, and inclusion.

And now, when some state legislatures decide to do their job and learn what happened in the 2020 election, these vendors, talking heads, and many public officials cry foul.  Why?  Because they have decided that partisan politics are more important than good government.

This occurs on the left and the right.  Many on the left decried the lack of transparency in modern elections prior to the 2020 election, but not now that they’ve won. And many on the right improperly claim definitive proof of fraud in 2020 instead of recognizing that all investigations and reviews of government performance begin with questions, not conclusions.

The result is a form of nuclear warfare, where both sides engage in the mutual assured destruction by dropping accusatory sound-bite bombs hoping to cancel each other.  Meanwhile, responsive government dies.

As much as we have discovered about the last election, many questions remain. Citizens have a duty to keep asking those questions, and public officials have a duty to answer them. (7 Things We've Learned About the 2020.)

Some excellent points, albeit on a purely natural level, were made by the author of the article just above, especially as it pertains to the pure sloth at the state and local levels as election officials have found it easier to outsource both the hardware and the software necessary to conduct elections to foreign manufacturers and/or to the Big Tech firms that have a vested interest in assuring vote counts advantageous to the “left” while making it very difficult to prove that such is the case. The indifference of the “old guard” Republicans to this fact makes it all the more easy for those intent on election fraud to be successful and for those who call it by its proper name to be persecuted by the full force of the civil law as exercised by those intent on maintaining and augmenting their own power.

The “old guard” Republicans’ detachment from the reality of our times is perhaps no better exhibited than by the hapless Addison Mitchell McConnell’s response to President in Name Only Biden’s demagogic speech (see (Biden’s voting rights smears and lies and Joe Biden Lying about Elections) of January 11, 2022, that, in essence, contended that anyone who stands in the way of his pro-election fraud bill is a “racist” akin to the late Alabama Governor George Wallace, whom Biden himself had gone out of his way to praise while running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1987 before being force out of the race because of plagiarism charges, or to President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America, who was consoled by none other than Pope Pius IX, who personally wove a crown of thorns that he sent to Davis during  the latter’s imprisonment as a “traitor” after the end of the War Between the States, or to Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, a lifelong Democrat and a virulent racist. It is evidently the case that McConnell actually thought his old friend and former Senate colleague, Biden, meant it on January 20, 2021, when he said that he wanted to “unify” the nation, demonstrating that the Senate Minority Leader lives in a world of wishful thinking that does not even take into account his pal’s lifelong demagoguery:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”

Biden’s office initially declined to comment about what the vice president said inside the closed-door session, but after POLITICO published the remarks, spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said: “The word was used by several members of Congress. The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”

Biden later denied he used that term in an interview with CBS.

“I did not use the terrorism word,” Biden told CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley.

Earlier in the day, Biden told Senate Democrats that Republican leaders have “guns to their heads” in trying to negotiate deals. (Joe Biden likened tea partiers to terrorists.)

“Let me close, my friends, by saying I want you – I mean this sincerely. Just close your eyes and imagine. Imagine what the Romney Justice Department will look like.

“Imagine when his senior adviser on constitutional issues is Robert Bork. Imagine the recommendations for who is likely to be picked as Attorney General or the head of the civil rights division or those other incredibly important positions in justice.

“Imagine – and I mean this. This to me is one of the most critical issues of this election. Imagine what the Supreme Court will look like after 4 years of a Romney presidency.

“Folks, this election in my view is a fight for the heart and soul of America. (Transcript of Pro-Abort, Pro-Perversity Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr's, address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Convention.)

Biden took a race card from the deck of Team Obama 2012, and stuck that race card to the tip of his shoe, and then slammed the whole darn thing into his mouth so hard that it must have scraped off half of the vice presidential taste buds.

"Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing," Biden said of the Republicans at a campaign stop in Danville, Va. "Romney wants to let the — he said in the first 100 days he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules."

Then it happened. Biden began waving his right hand, palm up, and he adopted what he must have thought was the accent of a black minister.

"Unchain Wall Street," said Preacher Joe, reaching to the heavens, "They're going to put y'all back in chains."

Y'all.

Is that how people in Delaware talk? Or is it how white Democratic politicians speak when they're using dialect to talk down to black voters? What's next, Preacher Joe? Spirituals? Or are you going to carry around copies of "A Raisin in the Sun" and "To Kill a Mockingbird"?

Team Obama tried to defend Biden, but it was nonsensical babbling. And the Republicans were eager to pounce. (Biden, Obama & the Slavery/Race Card, Ya'll. For a video clip of Biden's latest exercise in demagoguery, see Biden: Romney Wants Americans Back In Chains.)

Ronald Reagan once called Joe Biden a “smooth but pure demagogue.” Biden is not so smooth anymore, but he certainly remains a demagogue. Biden’s preference for demagoguery to debate defines his career. For all his talk of civility and unity, he would much rather call his opponents names than address their arguments. Biden’s description of Georgia’s new election law as “Jim Crow on steroids” is typical of his demagoguery. It’s a comment as incendiary and heedless as his 2012 assertion that the policies of Mitt Romney were going to put blacks “back in chains.”

By equating a manifestly nonracist election law with segregation, Biden renders all of his comments on racism unserious. He is looking not to heal but to inflame, not to eliminate the problem of racism but to trivialize it. His willingness to throw around charges of racism so wildly, describing anyone who doesn’t share his left-wing politics as racist, is a sign of moral insincerity and intellectual laziness. In a 2020 speech, he likened Republicans to Bull Connor. Mere opposition to Democratic policies made Republicans in Biden’s eyes heirs to that racist. “The Bull Connors of today don’t stand in the street with fire hoses and dogs,” he said. “They wield their power rolling back rights, punishing the poor, denying access to health care and quality education, and turning away refugees and asylum seekers.”

Biden’s demagogic glibness, on display in such comments, has undermined his ability to govern soberly. What he so easily and dismissively called “turning away refugees and asylum seekers” was in fact a legitimate policy of immigration law enforcement that spared America the crisis it now sees unfolding at the border. Biden’s weakness for demagoguery led him to discard a system that was working. By so frivolously labeling that system xenophobic, he threw out a welcome mat for illegal immigrants and boxed himself into a de facto position of open borders. To change course now would mean ratifying what he once called racist, and he is loath to do that. His risible appointment of Kamala Harris, whose laxity on immigration issues is notorious, as his “border czar” can only embolden migrants in their decision to come.

It is clear that what animates Biden more than anything else is identity politics. He can’t resist indulging in it. His spurious claim to moral superiority over the Republicans — all of his talk of restoring the “soul” of America and so forth — is fueled by identity politics. But what exactly is moral about it? It rests on race-baiting lies and fresh injustices. It is nothing more than a cynical form of racial politics that empowers pols in endless pandering and enormous fibs. Biden has always been stubborn in his lies — recall his long refusal to admit his plagiarism — but now he can wallow in them, thanks to the protective power of identity politics. He still hasn’t admitted to spreading the lie that Trump called white supremacists “very fine people,” even though the text of Trump’s remarks contains a clear condemnation of white supremacists. It is that kind of habitual lying that explains Biden’s “Jim Crow on steroids” remark. In the name of remedying racial injustice, he feels entitled to make stuff up.

But it is the shameless practice of identity politics that makes racial harmony impossible. The Democrats say that they want “diversity,” but what they really want is division. By injecting race into philosophical disagreements where it doesn’t belong, they seek to embitter, not unite, the populace.

Biden’s stated desire for an end to racial division is no more sincere than his desire for robust democracy. His plans to pack the Supreme Court give the lie to that claim. If he cares so much about the “voice” of the people, why has he long supported a judicial despotism that so often squelches the people’s voice? It is precisely because Biden and the Democrats mistrust the people that they invest so much energy in expanding the power of the judiciary. The Democrats want issues such as abortion wrested away from the people and placed in the hands of liberal judges. The Democrats seek bigger and bigger government by judicial sanction.

Concealed within Biden’s call for a “living Constitution” is an elitist distaste for democracy. He prefers rule by judges to rule by the people. He wants judges to legislate from the bench at the expense of democratic choice, thereby enabling the Left to secure through the courts what it can’t accomplish through the people. An ideal judge in his view finds rights “not mentioned by name in the Constitution.”

The originalism that Biden scorns so deeply is designed to protect the range of democratic choice against an imperial judiciary that invents rights out of thin air. As Robert Bork at his infamous hearing tried to explain to Biden, activist judges “legislate a social agenda for the American people,” an arrogation of power that “diminishes liberty instead of enhancing it.”

Biden’s pleas for democracy fall flat in light of his aggressive support for judicial tyranny. If he gets his way, it is the Supreme Court that will end up on steroids. (Biden’s Demagogic Habits.)

Poor “Mitch” McConnell is so blinded by the delusion of a “civil” “unifier,” Biden as a contrast with a man he despises, former President Donald John Trump, that he had to express understandable revulsion at Biden’s January 11, 2022, pro-election fraud speech as demagogic even though demagoguery is of the essence of a man who until just a few years ago blamed a truck drive who was never ticketed for the death of his first wife and daughter (see Joe Biden's false claim about drunken driver draws renewed scrutiny). Biden is a demagogue who is truly to govern by executive fiat and verbal scoldings of the “unvaccinated, the “racist” and those who are “standing in the way” of “economic justice,” meaning, of course that he intends to delegitimize any and all elections that do not come out the “left’s” way, which includes how his own Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, solicited a letter from the National School Boards Association to term parents opposed to “critical race theory” as “domestic terrorists” (see Education Secretary Cardona solicited NSBA letter comparing protesting parents to domestic terrorists):

How will Democrats react to the thumping that most observers believe they will get in the 2022 midterm elections? Or to the possibility that in three years a Republican could be sworn in as the 47th president?

They relish the Jan. 6 opportunity to endlessly relive the supposed danger that a disgraceful but still pathetically ineffectual riot posed to the republic, which they have spent the last 12 months misrepresenting as an “insurrection” or failed coup d’etat by Republicans.

The media treated the date as a sort of new national holiday to reinforce the awfulness of former President Trump and his deplorable supporters. But all that hyperbole about that riot being the moral equivalent of the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, or even the 9/11 terrorist attacks hasn’t convinced many people living outside the leftist bubble of CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times to believe Republicans are a party of insurrectionists.

From the outside, the inflamed rhetoric of Jan. 6 fever appears to be an utterly cynical exercise in gaslighting. That was most apparent when used to justify Democrats’ push for so-called “election reform” laws that President Joe Biden claimed last week to be the only thing standing athwart a return to “Jim Crow” racism. The legislation is, in fact, an effort to federalize elections, discard every rule aimed at ensuring voter integrity, and in effect rig the process to Democrats’ advantage.

Democrats May Believe Their Own Spin

But the more one digs deeper into the avalanche of Jan. 6 articles in left publications like The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many others or listens to leading Democrats and party activists talk about the subject, the less cynical it seems. Democrats have been drinking their own mix of toxic partisan Kool-Aid to the point they actually believe that Trump and Republicans are authoritarians and plotting to destroy American democracy.

Indeed, after years of faithfully spreading conspiracy theories about the Capitol riot and Trump colluding with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, it was inevitable that liberals and leftists would be in a genuine state of panic about the possibility that they are living through the last years of a Weimar Republic-like prelude to Trumpian fascism. They believe that all resistance to Democratic legislation and leftist policies such as critical race theory indoctrination, or even public rudeness to Biden (“Let’s go, Brandon”), are evidence of an insurrectionist spirit.

Leftist Media In Frenzy of Fear

When one listens to political hacks like Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., say that ending the filibuster in the Senate and passing new voting laws is vital to the continued existence of the American republic, it’s hard to take him seriously. Yet audiences for left-wing outlets that are publishing innumerable think pieces along the lines of, “What Will It Take to Stop the 2024 Election Coup,” “The Republican Plot to Steal the 2024 Election,” “Seven ways Republicans are already undermining the 2024 election,” “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun,” or “No One Is Coming to Save Us From the ‘Dagger at the Throat of America’,” to cite just a few examples, are almost certainly buying what those who are breathlessly warning of the danger ahead are selling. Indeed, the authors of these pieces probably believe it too.

Seen in this light, serious arguments that try to explain to Democrats that Republican voter integrity measures like voter ID laws or banning vote harvesting won’t “suppress” the vote of minorities are likely to fall on deaf ears. So will pointing out that the Russia hoax used by federal officials to hobble Trump was a lot closer to a coup attempt than the foolish efforts to find a legal strategy to stop Biden from taking office.

The left is equally uninterested in the lack of evidence that Jan. 6 was anything but a disorganized riot or that, even if the 2020 count was accurate despite the chaos induced by pandemic practices, the election was unfairly influenced by the bias of Big Tech companies and corporate media outlets that suppressed reports of Biden family corruption.

Once you discard the idea that Republicans are relatives, friends, or neighbors who may disagree with you about politics but who also mean well and instead view them as the moral equivalent of Germans who voted Adolf Hitler into power, talk about defending democracy becomes a life and death struggle. That means defeat can never be accepted and must be averted at all costs, no matter what it takes.

Left Ready to Reject GOP Wins

To be fair, some on the right have come to see politics as an existential struggle as well. But while Biden’s capture by his party’s left-wing lends credence to those arguments, Democrats aren’t so much worried about the consequences of policy shifts to American society. What they appear to be claiming is that any system that could put the GOP or Trump back in power are not merely horrifying but must be the result of a corrupt or racist system that is being manipulated by Trumpist authoritarians.

This amounts to a political faith that is building toward a belief that Republican victories in November 2022 will be inherently illegitimate and must be rejected by hook or crook. The same applies to their hysteria about 2024 which, as the literature produced on the subject indicates, they have half convinced themselves has already been stolen.

That these conspiracy theories masquerading as defense of democracy bear more than a slight resemblance to the conviction on the part of some Trump supporters that there was no way their man could have fairly lost in 2020 is an irony lost on the left. As much as they are certain that any doubts about 2020 are the product of Trump’s “big lie,” their embrace of their own collection of conspiracies about vote suppression and Republicans stealing elections is nothing less than another “big lie.”

The impact of the myths about Jan. 6 being an insurrection and democracy endangered by a GOP assault on voting rights has, in effect, painted the Democrats into a corner where any defeat must be considered proof of a rigged system.

Prepare for Extreme Measures

Seen in that light, it’s not enough to denounce Democratic rhetoric as false or cynical. The net effect of their claims is that those who have been convinced of it are calling for extreme measures to prevent an election loss and are already preparing to regard their party’s likely coming rejection by the voters as another coup, no matter how honest the count may be.

The full consequences of this are unknowable but, at the very least, Americans should prepare for efforts by the Democrats’ cheering section in the corporate media and by the Big Tech overlords of the Internet to go further than they did in 2020 to prevent such an eventuality. In the event that fails, more “mostly peaceful” riots in the aftermath of Republican election victories are likely. As with the violence and looting unleashed by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, that will not be termed an “insurrection” by those still raging about what happened on Jan. 6.

All that, and not Republican opposition to the Biden presidency and Democratic legislation, is the most serious blow to the fabric of American democracy imaginable. (Democrats Are Prepping To Refuse To Accept Any Election Defeats. Also see Dems are using the Capitol riot to hunt political foes.)

There are some very good insights in this column on a purely natural level. However, the problem is that contemporary civil government and electoral politics are conducted only on the purely natural level without regard to man’s First Cause and Last End, that is, without a thought of the Particular Judgment nor the fact that it is impossible to produce peace and happiness in time when men pursue and dare to enshrine in civil law things are repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity.

Naturalistic Democracy is the Problem

The founding fathers of the United States of America were naturalists to the core of their being. They expected that their system of governance would be conducive to the creation and sustenance of a “civic virtue” wherein men would present themselves for public office who exhibited statesmanship by explaining their positions to the voters during elections and then, if elected, defending their actions while in office without regard to their own electoral survival but solely on the basis of what they believe constituted the common temporal good. Unfortunately for them, however, leaving aside the fact that many of the founders descended to the depths of demagoguery during the administration of President George Washington and thereafter following the formation of what became permanently established political parties, it is impossible for men to pursue or to sustain virtue on a merely natural level over time, something that Pope Leo XIII noted in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899:

Nor can we leave out of consideration the truth that those who are striving after perfection, since by that fact they walk in no beaten or well-known path, are the most liable to stray, and hence have greater need than others of a teacher and guide. Such guidance has ever obtained in the Church; it has been the universal teaching of those who throughout the ages have been eminent for wisdom and sanctity-and hence to reject it would be to commit one’s self to a belief at once rash and dangerous.

A thorough consideration of this point, in the supposition that no exterior guide is granted such souls, will make us see the difficulty of locating or determining the direction and application of that more abundant influx of the Holy Spirit so greatly extolled by innovators To practice virtue there is absolute need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, yet we find those who are fond of novelty giving an unwarranted importance to the natural virtues, as though they better responded to the customs and necessities of the times and that having these as his outfit man becomes more ready to act and more strenous in action. It is not easy to understand how persons possessed of Christian wisdom can either prefer natural to supernatural virtues or attribute to them a greater efficacy and fruifulness. Can it be that nature conjoined with grace is weaker than when left to herself?

Can it be that those men illustrious for sanctity, whom the Church distinguishes and openly pays homage to, were deficient, came short in the order of nature and its endowments, because they excelled in Christian strength? And although it be allowed at times to wonder at acts worthy of admiration which are the outcome of natural virtue-is there anyone at all endowed simply with an outfit of natural virtue? Is there any one not tried by mental anxiety, and this in no light degree? Yet ever to master such, as also to preserve in its entirety the law of the natural order, requires an assistance from on high These single notable acts to which we have alluded will frequently upon a closer investigation be found to exhibit the appearance rather than the reality of virtue. Grant that it is virtue, unless we would “run in vain” and be unmindful of that eternal bliss which a good God in his mercy has destined for us, of what avail are natural virtues unless seconded by the gift of divine grace? Hence St. Augustine well says: “Wonderful is the strength, and swift the course, but outside the true path.” For as the nature of man, owing to the primal fault, is inclined to evil and dishonor, yet by the help of grace is raised up, is borne along with a new greatness and strength, so, too, virtue, which is not the product of nature alone, but of grace also, is made fruitful unto everlasting life and takes on a more strong and abiding character.

This overesteem of natural virtue finds a method of expression in assuming to divide all virtues in active and passive, and it is alleged that whereas passive virtues found better place in past times, our age is to be characterized by the active. That such a division and distinction cannot be maintained is patent-for there is not, nor can there be, merely passive virtue. “Virtue,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “designates the perfection of some faculty, but end of such faculty is an act, and an act of virtue is naught else than the good use of free will,” acting, that is to say, under the grace of God if the act be one of supernatural virtue.

He alone could wish that some Christian virtues be adapted to certain times and different ones for other times who is unmindful of the apostle’s words: “That those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son.”- Romans viii, 29. Christ is the teacher and the exemplar of all sanctity, and to His standard must all those conform who wish for eternal life. Nor does Christ know any change as the ages pass, “for He is yesterday and to-day and the same forever.”-Hebrews xiii, 8. To the men of all ages was the precept given: “Learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart.”-Matt. xi, 29.

To every age has He been made manifest to us as obedient even unto death; in every age the apostle’s dictum has its force: “Those who are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences.” Would to God that more nowadays practiced these virtues in the degree of the saints of past times, who in humility, obedience and self-restraint were powerful “in word and in deed” -to the great advantage not only of religion, but of the state and the public welfare. (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

The “civic virtue” that existed in the minds of the American founding fathers was and remains illusory. We need the help of the graces won for us by Christ the King during His Passion and Death of the Holy Cross to be virtuous and to climb the ladder of sanctity with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to His own Sacred Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary out of which It was formed.

Democratic republics—and the globalist unions they make with one another--are bound to fall apart because they are founded upon a welter of errors that must degenerate into chaos and open conflict sooner or later.

Dom Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the great Dominican foe of Modernism and the Twentieth Century’s greatest exponent of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, explained the flaws inherent in democracies that lead to their decay and dissolution over time:

Democracy is an imperfect regime, as a regime in ratione regiminis, as a result of the lack of unity and continuity in the direction of interior and exterior affairs. Also this regime should only be for the perfect already capable of directing themselves—those virtuous and competent enough to pronounce as is fitting upon the very complicated problems on which the life of a great people depends. But it is always true to say as Saint Thomas noted that these virtuous and competent men are extremely rare; and democracy, supposing such perfection among subjects, cannot give it to them. From this point of view, democracy is a bit in politics what quietism is in spirituality; it supposes man has arrived, at the age or the state of perfection, even though he still may be a child. In treating him as a perfect person, democracy does not give him what is required to become one.

Since true virtue united to true competence is a rare thing among men, since the majority among them are incapable of governing and they have a need of being led, the regime which is the best for them is the one which can make up for their imperfection. This regimen perfectum in ratione regiminis, by reason of unity, continuity, and efficacy of direction towards a single end which is difficult to achieve is monarchy. Above all a tempered monarchy which is always attentive to the different forms of national activity. It is better than democracy or than the feudal regime. Monarchy assures the interior and exterior peace of a great nation, and permits her to long endure. (Dom Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “On Royal Government: translated by Andrew Strain, On Royal Government)

Perhaps the events unfolding before our very eyes will be used by Our Lord, Christ the King, to bring about the coming of the Great French Monarch who will unite men around the standard of the Holy Faith and who will do battle with Antichrist before he is killed, thus preparing the way for the final battle between Our Lord Himself and the great deceiver. However, it is my own personal belief that there will have to be many more chastisements have to take place before we the great French monarch comes forward. The current circumstances, however, do show us very clearly that the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity is capable only of producing disorder and of being led by people who are utterly unable to see the events of the world in light of First and Last Things. 

Here is a summary of the major principles that explain why naturalism is incapable of providing the framework for social order and must yield to the forces of barbarism over the course of time:

1) There are limits that exist in the nature of things beyond which men have no authority or right to transgress, whether acting individually or collectively in the institutions of civil governance.

2) There are limits that have been revealed positively by God Himself in his Divine Revelation, that bind all men in all circumstances at all times, binding even the institutions of civil governance.

3) A divinely-instituted hierarchy exists in man’s most basic natural unit of association: the family. The father is the head of the family and governs his wife and children in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. Children do not have the authority to disobey the legitimate commands of their parents. Parents do not have the authority to issue illegitimate and/or unjust commands.

4) Our Lord Himself became Incarnate in Our Lady’s virginal and immaculate womb, subjecting Himself to the authority of His creatures, obeying his foster-father, Saint Joseph, as the head of the Holy Family, thus teaching us that all men everywhere must recognize an ultimate authority over them in their social relations, starting with the family.

5) Our Lord instituted the Catholic Church, founding it on the Rock of Peter, the Pope, to be the means by which His Deposit of Faith is safeguarded and transmitted until the end of time. The Church is the mater, mother, and magister, teacher, of all men in all nations at all times, whether or not men and nations recognize this to be the case.

6) The Pope and the bishops of the Church have the solemn obligation to proclaim nothing other than the fullness of the truths of the Faith for the good of the sanctification and salvation of men unto eternity and thus for whatever measure of common good in the temporal real, which the Church desires earnestly to promote, can be achieved in a world full of fallen men.

7) It is not possible for men to live virtuously as citizens of any country unless they first strive for sanctity as citizens of Heaven. That is, it is not possible for there to be order in any nation if men do not have belief in access to and cooperation with sanctifying grace, which equips them to accept the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith and to obey God’s commands with diligence in every aspect of their lives without exception.

8) The rulers of Christendom came to understand, although never perfectly and never without conflicts and inconsistencies, that the limits of the Divine positive law and the natural law obligated them to exercise the powers of civil governance with a view towards promoting man’s temporal good in this life so as to foster in him his return to God in the next life. In other words, rulers such as Saint Louis IX, King of France, knew that they would be judged by Our Lord at the moment of his Particular Judgment on the basis of how well they had fostered those conditions in their countries that made it more possible for their subjects to get to Heaven.

9) The rulers of Christendom accepted the truth that the Church had the right, which she used principally through her Indirect Power over civil rulers by proclaiming the truths of the Holy Faith, to interpose herself in the event that a civil ruler proposed to do something or had indeed done something that violated grievously the administration of justice and thus posed a grave threat to the good of souls.

10) The Social Kingship of Jesus Christ may be defined as the right of the Catholic Church to see to it that the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law are the basis of the actions of civil governance in all that pertains to the good of souls and that those who exercise civil power keep in mind man’s last end, the salvation of his immortal soul as a member of the Catholic Church. Civil leaders must, therefore, recognize the Catholic Church as the true Church founded by God Himself and having the right to reprimand and place interdicts upon those who issue edicts and ordinances contrary to God’s laws.

This is but a brief distillation of the points contained in the brilliant social encyclical letters of Popes Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI, in particular, although Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX also contributed to their reiteration and explication. I have spent much time in the past twenty-five years or so illustrating these points with quotations from these encyclical letters, which contain immutably binding teachings that no Catholic may dissent from legitimately (as Pope Pius XI noted in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio in 1922).

The Modern State, including the United States of America, is founded on a specific and categorical rejection of each of these points. Consider the following:

1) Martin Luther himself said that a prince may be a Christian but that his religion should not influence how he governs, giving rise to the contemporary notion of “separation of Church and state,” condemned repeatedly by Popes in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

2) Martin Luther planted the seeds of contemporary deconstructionism, which reduces all written documents to the illogical and frequently mutually contradictory private judgments of individual readers, by rejecting the Catholic Church as the repository and explicator of the Deposit of Faith, making the “private judgment” of individuals with regard to the Bible supreme. If mutually contradictory and inconsistent interpretations of the Bible can stand without correction from a supreme authority instituted by God, then it is an easy thing for all written documents, including a Constitution that makes no reference at all to the God-Man or His Holy Church, to become the plaything of whoever happens to have power over its interpretation

3) The sons of the so-called Enlightenment, influenced by the multifaceted and inter-related consequences of the errors of the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, brought forth secular nations that contended the source of governing authority was the people. Ultimately, all references to “God” were in accord with the Freemasonic notion of a “supreme intelligence” without any recognition of the absolute necessity of belief in and acceptance of the Incarnation and of the Deposit of Faith as it has been given to Holy Mother Church for personal happiness and hence al social order.

4) The Founding Fathers of the United States of America did not believe that it was necessary to refer all things in civil life to Christ the King as He had revealed Himself through His true Church, believing that men would be able to pursue “civic virtue” by the use of their own devices and thus maintain social order in the midst of cultural and religious pluralism. This leads, as Pope Leo XIII noted of religious indifferentism, to the triumph of the lowest common denominator, that is, atheism.  

5) As the Constitution of the United States of America admits of no authority higher than its own words, it, like the words of Holy Writ are for a Protestant or to a Modernist, is utterly defenseless when the plain meanings of its words are distorted and used to advance ends that its framers would have never thought imaginable, no less approved in fact. The likes of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton have no regard for the words of the Constitution or for the just laws passed by Congress, and Donald John Trump is plainly ignorant of some of the fact that there are seven articles in the Constitution and twenty-seven amendments to it since its ratification in 1788. We are governed by men who are contemptuous or law or wholly ignorant of it. Quite a state of affairs.

6) This is but the secular version of Antinomianism: the belief advanced by those who took the logic of Luther’s argument of being “saved by faith alone” to its inexorable conclusion that one could live a wanton life of sin and still be saved. Luther himself did not see where the logic of his rejection of Catholic doctrine would lead and fought against the Antinomians. In like manner, you see, the Constitutionalists and Federalists of today do not see that what is happening today in Federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, is the inexorable result of a Constitution that rejects Christ the King and the Catholic Church. These Constitutionalists and Federalists will fight time and time again like Sisyphus pushing the bolder up a hill. They will always lose because they cannot admit that the thing they admire, the Constitution, is the proximate problem that has resulted in all of the evils they are trying to fight.

A nation founded on false premises, no matter the "good intentions" of those whose intellects were misinformed by several centuries of naturalist lies and Protestant theological heresies and errors, is bound to degenerate more and more over time into a land of materialism and hedonism and relativism and positivism and utilitarianism and naturalism and paganism and atheism and environmentalism and feminism and barbarism. Many evils, including the daily carnage against the preborn, both by surgical and chemical means, continue to be committed in this country. American "popular culture" destroys souls and bodies both here and abroad. Full vent is given each day to a panoply of false ideas that are from Hell and confuse even believing Catholics no end as they try to find some "naturalist" hero or idea by which to win the "culture wars," oblivious to the fact that it is only Catholicism that can do so.

Widespread vote fraud must, you see, become even more widespread and universal. After all, Americans who are not concerned about the daily slaughter of the preborn have shown themselves all too willing to overlook such "minor" things as undeclared wars, unconstitutional executive orders and directives, unjust judicial decisions, a ceasless surrender of legitimate national sovereignty, and illegal actions that put into jeopardy the nation's national security interests. Why should vote fraud matter at all to people willing overlook crimes against God and man from which they, whether or not they realize it, must suffer as the state of the nation worses over time?

It was in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, that Pope Pius XI described the true nature of modern political parties:

To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives. These political struggles also beget threats of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of the government. Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

We must remember that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order, a point made by so many of our true popes in the past two hundred years, including Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio:

Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.

Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)

Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Pope XI noted the futility of seeking solutions for the evils of the world in the realm of secular politics:

They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

This is what has been happening before our very eyes as various sets of naturalists sought to “replace” a statist takeover of the healthcare industry with something that was based on acceptance of the false premises upon which the takeover had been premised in the first place. Goodies once instituted become impossible to rescind. Dependency constituencies get created each time such goodies are bestowed, and professional politicians want to do nothing to jeopardize such goodies upon which large numbers of their constituents depend.

This site exists to promote Catholic truth in order to help its few remaining readers to rise above the agitation. 

We must remember these words, inspired directly by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, contained in Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians:

Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high place. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace:

In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints. (Ephesians 6: 11-18.)

Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary is a weapon, and her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel is our shield in this time when the forces of Antichrist in the worlds of Modernity and Modernism have rigged things against the Holy Faith and those who adhere to it despite their own sins.

The worst thing that can happen to us is the loss of our immortal souls for all eternity, not the transitory schemes of those whose ascent to power has been rigged by the devil himself to tempt us into the throes of despair.

On the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome

We need to pray today, the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome, for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter, something that will occur in a truly miraculous manner.

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., provided us with a marvelous reflection on the history and significance of this day:

The Archangel Gabriel told the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the Annunciation, that the Son Who was to be born of Her should be a King, and that of His Kingdom there should be no end. Hence, when the Magi were led from the East to the Crib of Jesus, they proclaimed in Jerusalem that they came to seek a King. But his new Empire needed a capital; and whereas the King, Who was to fix His throne in it, was, according to the eternal decrees, to re-ascend into Heaven, it was necessary that the visible character of His Royalty should be left here on earth, and this even to the end of the world. He that should be invested with this visible character of Christ our King would be the Vicar of Christ.

Our Lord Jesus Christ chose Simon for this sublime dignity of being His Vicar. He changed his name into one which signifies the Rock, that is “Peter;” and in giving him this new name, He tells us that the whole Church throughout the world is to rest upon this man as upon a Rock which nothing shall ever move (Matt. 16: 18). But this promise of Our Lord included another; namely, that as Peter was to close his earthly career by the cross, He would give him Successors in whom Peter and his authority should live to the end of time.

But again, there must be some mark or sign of this succession, to designate to the world who the Pontiff is on whom, to the end of the world, the Church is to be built. There are so many Bishops in the Church; in which one of them is Peter continued? This Prince of the Apostles founded and governed several Churches; but only one of these was watered with his blood, and that one was Rome; only one of these is enriched with his Tomb, and that one is Rome; the Bishop of Rome, therefore, is the Successor of Peter, and consequently the Vicar of Christ. It is of the Bishop of Rome alone that it is said: Upon thee will I build My Church; and again: To thee will I give the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (St. Matthew 16: 19); and again: I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; do thou confirm thy brethren (St. Luke 22: 32); and again: Feed my lambs; feed my sheep. (St. John 21: 15, 17).

Protestantism saw the force of this argument, and therefore strove to throw doubts on St. Peter’s having lived and died in Rome. They who labored to establish doubts of this kind rightly hoped that, if they could gain their point, they would destroy the authority of the Roman Pontiff, and even the very notion of a Head of the Church. But History has refuted this puerile objection, and now all learned Protestants agree with Catholics in admitting a fact which is one of the most incontestable, even on the ground of human authority.

It was in order to nullify, by the authority of the Liturgy, this strange pretension of Protestants, that Pope Paul IV, in 1558, restored the ancient Feast of St. Peter’s Chair at Rome, and fixed it on the 18th of January. For many centuries the Church had not solemnized the mystery of the Pontificate of the Prince of the Apostles on any distinct feast, but had made the single Feast of February 22nd serve for both the Chair at Antioch and the Chair at Rome. From that time forward, the 22nd of February has been kept for the Chair at Antioch, which was the first occupied by the Apostle.  (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome, January 18.)

A Brief Interjection:

I interject at this point to note that the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome was abolished by the Consilium that planned the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty as it was an stumbling block, if you will, in the path of false ecumenism, and it was under the supposed “restorer of tradition,” Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI that the since abolished “Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei” required the “Ecclesia Dei” communities to observe only the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in Antioch and to celebrate only the Feast of Saint Prisca on January 18. False ecumenism rules the day in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, a point that I made repeatedly in G.I.R.M. Warfare: The Conciliar Church's Unremitting Warfare Against Catholic Faith and Worship.

Returning now to Dom Prosper Gueranger’s reflection on today’s feast, the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome:

To-day, therefore, the Kingship of our Emmanuel shines forth in all its splendour, and the children of the Church rejoice in finding themselves to be Brethren and fellow-citizens, united in the Feast of their common Capital, the Holy City of Rome. When they look around them, and find so many sects, separated from each other, and almost forced into decay, because they have no centre of union — they give thanks to the Son of God, for his having provided for the preservation of his Church and Truth, by his instituting a visible Head who never dies, and in whom Peter is for ever continued, just as Christ himself is continued in Peter. Men are no longer sheep without a Shepherd; the word, spoken at the beginning, is uninterruptedly perpetuated through all ages; the primitive mission is never suspended, and, by the Roman Pontiff, the end of time is fastened on to the world’s commencement.

“What a consolation for the children of God!” cries out Bossuet, in his Essay on Universal History, “and what conviction that they are in possession of the truth, when they see, that from Innocent the Eleventh, who now (1681) so worthily occupies the first See of the Church, we go back, in unbroken succession, even to St. Peter, whom Jesus appointed Prince of the Apostles; that from St. Peter, we come, traversing the line of the Pontiffs who ministered under the Law, even to Aaron, yea, even to Moses; thence, even to the Patriarchs, and even to the beginning of the world!”

When St. Peter entered Rome, he came to realize and explain the destinies of this Queen of Cities; he came to promise her an Empire even greater than the one she already possessed. This new Empire is not to be founded by the sword, as was the first. Rome has been hitherto the proud mistress of nations; henceforth she is to be the Mother of the world by Charity; and though all peaceful, yet her Empire shall last to the end of time. Let us listen to St. Leo the Great, describing to us in one of the finest of his Sermons, and in his own magnificent style, the humble yet all-eventful entrance of the Fisherman of Genesareth into the Capital of the Pagan world:

“The good and just and omnipotent God, Who never refused His mercy to the human race, and instructed all men in general in the knowledge of Himself by His super-abundant benefits, took pity, by a more hidden counsel and a deeper love, on the voluntary blindness of them that had gone astray, and on the wickedness which was growing in its proneness to evil; and sent therefore into the world His co-equal and co-eternal Word. The Word being made Flesh did so unite the Divine and human nature, as that the deep abasement of the one was the highest uplifting of the other.

But, that the effect of this unspeakable gift might be diffused throughout the entire world, the providence of God had been preparing the Roman Empire, which had so far extended its limits, as to embrace in itself all the nations of the earth. For nothing could be better suited to the divine plan, than the confederation of various kingdoms under one and the same Empire; and the preaching of the gospel to the whole world would the more rapidly be effected by having the several nations united under the government of one common City.

But this City, ignoring the author of this her promotion, whilst mistress of almost every nation under the sun, was the slave of every nation’s errors; and prided himself on having got a grand religion, because she had admitted every false doctrine. So that, the faster the devil’s hold of her, the more admirable her deliverance by Christ.

For, when the twelve Apostles, after receiving, by the Holy Ghost, the gift of tongues, divided among themselves the world they had to evangelise — the most blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostolic order, was sent to the Capital of the Roman Empire, in order that the light of truth, which had been revealed for the salvation of all nations, might the more effectively flow, from the head itself, into the whole body of the world.

The fact was, that there were, in this City, people belonging to every nation, and the rest of the world soon learnt whatever was taught at Rome. Here, therefore, were to be refuted the opinions of philosophy; here, the follies of human wisdom to be exploded; here, the worship of devils to be convicted of blasphemy; here, the impiety of all the sacrifices to be first abolished; for, it was here that an official superstition had systematised into one great whole the fragmentary errors of every other portion of the earth.

To this City, therefore, most blessed Apostle, Peter, thou fearest not to come! The companion of thy glory, Paul the Apostle, is not with thee, for he is busy founding other Churches; yet, thou enterest this forest of wild beasts, and, with greater courage than when walking on the waters, thou settest foot on this deep stormy sea! Thou, that didst tremble before a servant-girl in the house of Caiphas, art fearless now before this Rome, this mistress of the world. Is it, that the power of Claudius is less than the authority of Pilate? or the cruelty of Nero less than the savageness of the Jews ? Not so: but the vehemence of thy love made thee heedless of thy risks; and having come that thou mightest love, thou forgottest to fear. Thou didst imbibe this sentiment of fearless charity, on that day, when the profession of thy love for thy Master was made perfect by the mystery of his thrice put question. And what asks he of thee, after thus probing thy heart, but that thou feed the the sheep of Him thou lovest, with the food, whereon thyself hadst feasted.

Then, too, there were the miracles thou hadst wrought, the gifts of grace thou hadst received, the proofs of the great works thou hadst achieved — all giving thee fresh courage. Thou hadst taught the truth to such of the children of Israel as had embraced the faith; thou hadst founded the Church of Antioch, where first began the glorious Christian title; thou hadst preached the gospel in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia; and assured of the success of thy work, and of the many years thou hadst yet to live, thou didst bring the trophy of the Cross of Christ into the very walls of Rome, where the counsels of God had already determined that thou shouldst have both the honour of power, and the glory of martyrdom.” – St Leo, Sermon 82, On the Feast of the Apostles, Peter and Paul.

The future of the human race, now under the guidance of the Church, is, therefore, centred in Rome, and the destinies of that City are interwoven with those of her undying Pontiff. We, the children of the Church, though differing in race, and tongue, and character, yet are we all Romans by holy religion; as Romans, we are united, by Peter, to Christ; and this our glorious name is the link of that great Fraternity of Catholics throughout the world.

Jesus Christ by Peter, and Peter by his successor — these are our rulers in the order of spiritual Government. Every Pastor, whose authority emanates not from the See of Rome, is a stranger to us, and an intruder. So likewise, in the order of our Faith, that is, of what we believe, Jesus Christ by Peter, and Peter by his successor, teach us divine doctrine, and how to distinguish truth from error. Every Symbol of Faith, every doctrinal judgment, every teaching, contrary to the Symbol, and judgments, and teachings of the See of Rome, is of man, and not of God, and must be rejected, hated, and anathematised. On the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair at Antioch, (February 22,) we will speak of the Apostolic See, as the one only source of governing power in the Church; to-day, we will consider and honour the Chair at Home as the source and rule of our Faith. Here, again, let us borrow the sublime words of St. Leo, and hear him discuss the claims of Peter to Infallibility of teaching. The Holy Doctor will teach us how to understand the full force of those words, which were spoken by our Lord, and which he intended should be, for all ages, the grand charter of Faith.

“The Word made Flesh was dwelling among us, and he, our Saviour, had spent his whole self for the reparation of the human race. There was nothing too complicated for his wisdom, nothing too difficult for his power. The elements were subject to him, Spirits ministered to him, Angels obeyed him, nor could the mystery of human Redemption be ineffectual, for God, both in his Unity and Trinity, was the worker of that mystery. And yet, Peter is chosen from the rest of the entire world, to be the one, the only one, put over the vocation of all nations, and over all the Apostles, and over all the Fathers of the Church: that so, whilst there were to be many Priests and many Pastors in the people of God, Peter should govern, by the special power given to him, all those whom Christ also rules by his own supreme power. Great and wonderful, dearly Beloved, is this fellowship with Christ’s power granted, by divine condescension, to this man! Moreover, if our Lord willed that there should be something in common to Peter and the rest of the Princes of his Church, it was only on this condition — that whatever he gave to them, he gave to them through Peter.”

(St Matthew 16:16) which when he had said, our Lord thus answered him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father, who is in heaven; (St Matthew 16:17) that is, blessed art thou, in that my Father hath taught thee, and human opinion hath not misled thee, but heavenly inspiration hath instructed thee; not flesh and blood, but He, whose Only Begotten Son I am, hath shown me to thee. And I say to thee: that is, as my Father hath manifested to thee my divinity, so do I now declare to thee thine own dignity. That thou art Peter (the Rock): that is, though I am the immoveable Rock, (1 Corinthians 10:4) the Corner-Stone, (Ephesians 2:20) who make both one, (Ephesians 2:14) and the Foundation, other than which no man can lay; (1 Corinthians 3:11) yet, art thou, also, a Rock, because thou art solidly based by my power, and what I have by right, thou hast by participation. And upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it: (St Matthew 16:18) that is, I will construct an everlasting temple upon thy Strength, and my Church, which is to reach to heaven, shall grow up on the firmness of this thy faith.

On the eve of his Passion, which was to test the courage of his disciples, our Lord said to Peter: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. And thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren. (St Luke 22:31-32) All the Apostles were in danger of being tempted to fear, and all stood in need of the divine help, for the devil desired to sift and crush them all; and yet, it is especially for Peter that our Lord is careful; it is for Peter’s faith that he offers an express prayer; as though the others would be sure to be firm, if the mind of their leader were unflinching. So that, the strength of all the rest is in Peter, and the assistance of divine grace is distributed in this order — Peter is to receive firmness through Christ, and he himself then give it to the Apostles.” (St Leo, Sermon 4)

In another of his Sermons, the same holy Doctor explains to us, how it is that Peter ever lives and ever teaches in the Chair of Rome. After having cited the passage from the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew, (verses 16-19,) he says: “This promise, of Him who is truth itself, must, therefore, be a permanent fact — and Peter, the unceasing Rock of strength, must be the ceaseless ruler of the Church. For we have only to consider the pre-eminence that is given him, and the mysterious titles conferred on him, and we at once see the fellowship he has with our Lord Jesus Christ: he is called the Rock (Peter); he is named the Foundation; he is appointed keeper of the gates of heaven; he’ is made judge, with such power of loosing and binding, that his sentence holds even in heaven. These commissions, and duties, and responsibilities, where-with he was invested, he discharges with fuller perfection and power, now that he is in Him and with Him, from whom he received all these honours. If, therefore, we do anything that is right, if we decree anything that is right, if, by our daily supplications, we obtain anything from the divine mercy — it is his doing and his merit, whose power lives, and whose authority is supreme, in this his own Chair. All this, dearly Beloved, was obtained by that confession, which, being inspired into the Apostle’s heart by God the Father, soared above all the incertitudes of human opinions, and drew upon him, who spoke it, the solidity of a Rock, that was to be proof against every attack. For, throughout the whole Church, Peter is every day still proclaiming: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God; and every tongue, that confesses the Lord, is guided by the teaching of this word. This is the faith which conquers the devil, and sets his captives free. This is the faith which delivers men from the world, and takes them to heaven, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. For such is the solidity wherewith God has strengthened it, that neither heretical depravity has been able to corrupt, nor pagan perfidy to crush, it.” (St Leo, Sermon 3) Thus speaks St. Leo. “Let it not, therefore, be said,” observes Bossuet, in his Sermon on the Unity of the Church, “let it not be said, or thought, that this ministry of Peter finishes with his life on earth. That which is given as the support of a Church which is to last for ever, can never be taken away. Peter will live in his successors; Peter will speak, in his Chair, to the end of time. So speak the Fathers; so speak the six hundred and thirty Bishops of the Council of Chalcedon.” And again: Thus, the Roman Church is ever a Virgin-Church;  the Faith of Rome is always the Faith of the Church; what has once been believed, will be forever believed; the same voice is heard all over the world; and Peter, in his successors, is now, as he was during his life, the foundation on which the Faithful rest. Jesus Christ has said that it shall be so; and heaven and earth shall pass away rather than his word.”

Full of gratitude, therefore, to the God of truth, who has vouchsafed to raise up this Chair in his Church, we will listen, with submission of intellect and heart, to the teaching which emanates from it. Rejecting with indignation those dangerous theories, which can only serve to keep up sects within the Church; and confessing, with all the past ages, that the promises made to St. Peter continue in his successors; — we will conclude, aided by the twofold light of logic and history, that the teachings, addressed to the Church by the Roman Pontiff, can never contain error, and can contain nothing but the doctrine of truth. Such has always been the sense of the Church, and her practice has been the expression of her spirit. Now, if we acknowledge a permanent miracle in the uninterrupted succession of the Bishops of Rome, in spite of all the revolutions of eighteen centuries — we acknowledge it to be a still higher prodigy, that, notwithstanding the instability of man’s opinions and judgments, the Chair of Rome has faithfully preserved the truth without the slightest admixture of error, whereas the sees of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, were scarcely able to maintain the true Faith for a few centuries, and have become, so frequently, those Chairs of ‘pestilence spoken of by the Royal Prophet. (Psalms 1:1.)

We are in that season of the ecclesiastical year, which is devoted to honouring the Incarnation and Birth of the Son of God, and the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin: it behoves us to remember, especially on this present Feast, that it is to the See of Peter that we owe the preservation of these dogmas, which are the very basis of our holy religion. Rome not only taught them to us when she sent us the saintly missioners who evangelised our country; but, more-over, when heresy attempted to throw its mists and clouds over these high Mysteries, it was Rome that secured the triumph to truth, by her sovereign decision. At Ephesus — when Nestorius was condemned, and the dogma, which he assailed, was solemnly proclaimed, that is, that the Divine Nature and the Human Nature, which are in Christ, make but one Person, and that Mary is, consequently, the true Mother of God — the two hundred Fathers of that General Council thus spoke: — “Compelled by the Letters of our Most Holy Father Celestine, Bishop of the Roman Church, we have proceeded, in spite of our tears, to the condemnation of Nestorius.” At Chalcedon — where the Church had to proclaim, against Eutyches, the distinction of the two Natures in the Incarnate Word, God and Man — the six hundred and thirty Fathers, after hearing the Letter of the Roman Pontiff, gave their decision, and said: “Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo.”

Here, then, is the privilege of Rome: to watch, by Faith, over the eternal interests of mankind, as she watched previously, for long ages, and by the sword, over the temporal interests of the then known world. Let us love and reverence this City, our Mother and our Guide. To-day we are called upon to celebrate her praise; let us do so with filial affection. Let us listen to some of the ancient Hymns in honour of St. Peter, and of which some were used in the Liturgy of certain Churches. First of all, there are the admirable verses of Prudentius, which form the Prayer of St. Lawrence for christian Rome, and which the Poet supposes him to be making as he is burning on the gridiron. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome, January 18.)

Our Lady knew that the bridal couple’s wedding feast in Cana was running out of wine before the bride and groom did. She beseeched her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to assist them. Unable to refuse her anything, Our Lord complied, thereby performing his first public miracle, which was a foreshadowing of the Holy Eucharist, at her humble behest.

Similarly, Our Lord will not His dear Blessed Mother’s request for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter sooner rather than later if he beseech her with humility and with confidence, especially through her Most Holy Rosary as His own consecrated slaves that her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

As goes Holy  Mother Church so goes the world, and the world is in a mess today because the Principle of Unity that is meant to serve as the clarion of voice of the Sacred Deposit of Faith and the defender of the Holy Faith against all heresies and errors, including those of Modernity and Modernism, is lacking that men are seeking salvation in all the wrong places as they deify themselves and thus unwitting make of themselves and others the victims of their own iniquities.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Prisca, pray for us.

Appendix

Reflections on Saints Prisca, Marius, Canute, and Wulstan

Saint Prisca (Saint Priscilla), whose feast was commemorated today, that is, Tuesday, January 18, 2022, the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter: Apart from being the Feast of Chair of Saint Peter at Rome. Saint Prisca refused to do what "Saint" John Paul II, Antipope Emeritus Benedict XVI did so frequently and that Jorge Mario Bergoglio does even more frequently than his two immediate predecessors, namely, to deny Christ the King before men in order to appear "respectful" of those who "believe differently."

Father A. J. O'Reilly, drawing upon The Acts of the Martyrs, provided us with the details of Saint Prisca's glorious martrydom in his The Martyrs of the Coliseum: 

At the time Claudius was Caesar, he issued a new and most impious edict to the whole world, that the Christians should offer sacrifice to the gods or be put to death. He ordered his presidents and judges to carry out his law, that he might destroy the the worship of the Christians; he enjoined on them, moreover, that those consenting to the sacrifice should be considered worthy of great honour, while non-conformists should be treated with the utmost cruelty. In order to manifest the earnestness of his impious law, this Emperor Claudius held sacrifices in the Temple of Apollo, and at the same time ordered the soldiers to seize all who were known to be Christians, men and women, and by dint of terror and direful tortures force them to sacrifice to the gods.

There were then malignant men who ardently desired to destroy the Christian worship; and coming to a certain church, they found the blessed Prisca, praying. She was of noble blood; her father had been thrice consul, and was exceedingly rich. This holy child was in her seventh year, and was adorned with the grace of god and the most perfect purity of morals. The ministers of the Emperor said to her: "Our Emperor Claudius has commanded you to sacrifice voluntarily to the gods?" The blessed Prisca said with a joyful heart" "First let me enter the holy universal Church, that I may commend myself to my Lord Jesus Christ, and then we will go in peace. It is necessary that, in the name of our Lord, I confound your unworthy Emperor, and assist in the triumph of Jesus. And returning to the church, she completed her prayers.

Having finished her petition, she went with them to the Emperor. the ministers, entering into the apartments of Claudius, said to him: "This girl is willing to obey the commands of your majesty." On hearing this he rejoiced exceedingly, and ordered her to be brought into his presence. When she was brought into the palace before him, he said: "Thou art great, O god Apollo! and glorious above all the gods, who has brought me this illustrious virgin, so beautiful and with such good dispositions." Then turning to blessed Prisca, he said" "I have arranged to have you brought to me, to make you my mistress, and the sharer in the power of my kingdom." To this Prisca said: "But I will sacrifice without blood, and only to the immaculate God, my Lord Jesus Christ."

The Emperor, hearing these things, and not understanding their meaning, ordered her to be led to the Temple of Apollo that she might sacrifice to him. The holy virgin being ordered to enter the temple, said with a cheerful countenance to the Emperor: "Do you also enter, and all the priests of Apollo, that you may see how the omnipotent and immaculate Lord is pleased with the sacrifices of His faithful." The Emperor ordered all who had gathered round to watch what she was going to do.

Blessed Prisca said: "Glory be to Thee, O glorious Father! I invoke Thee, I implore Thee, cast down this motionless and dumb idol, the vile emblem of falsehood and corruption; but do Thou, O Lord, hear me, a sinner, that this Emperor may know how vain is the hope he has placed in his idols, and that he ought to adore no other god but Thee alone."

When she had prayed thus, there was immediately a great earthquake, so that the whole city was shaken; the statue of the god shook, and fell to the ground; in like manner the fourth part of the temple was destroyed, and overwhelmed a multitude of people, together with the priests of the idol.

The Emperor was terrified, and fled. Prisca said to him: "Stay, Emperor, and assist; your Apollo is broken to pieces, and you may now gather up the fragments, moreover, his priests are destroyed in the same ruin; let him come now and assist them."

And the demon who dwelt in the idol cried out with a loud voice: "O virgin Prisca! handmaid of the great God who reigns in heaven, thou who keepest His commandments and hast stripped me of my habitation!--I have lived here for sixty-seven years, and under Claudius Caesar twelve. Many martyrs have come and have not exposed me. Having under me ninety-three other most impious spirits, I order each of them to sacrifice to me daily fifty souls of men. O Emperor, persecutor of the Christians! thou hast found a holy soul, through whom thou wilt finish thy reign in disgrace." These words were spoken by a loud voice and great lamentation; terrible darkness surrounded those who were present, and they went away in great trepidation and doubt.

The Emperor, not understanding that it was by the divine power that the idol had been overthrown, ordered her to be buffeted on the face; and when the executioners had beaten her for some time, they lost their strength and cried out: "Woe to us sinners! surely we suffer more than this girl: she i snot hurt, and we are in pain. We beseech thee, O Emperor, to have her taken from us." But the Emperor, enraged against them, ordered the face of the blessed Prisca to be beaten still more. Looking towards heaven, the holy virgin said--

"Blessed art Thou, O Lord Jesus Christ! for Thou givest eternal peace to those who believe in Thee." And when she had said this, she was surrounded with a bright light, and a voice from heaven was heard saying--

"Daughter, be of good courage and fear nothing, for I am the God whom thou invokest, and I will never abandon thee."

After these things the Emperor was enraged almost to madness.

The next day, sitting before his tribunal, the Emperor said: "The that wicked little sorceress be brought in, that we may see some more of her charms."

When she was brought before him, he said to her: "Will you consent to live with me, and sacrifice to the gods?"

But she firmly replied: "Cease, most impious of men, and son of a satanic father! Are you not ashamed to insult a helpless girl and ill treat her thus, when you know she will never consent to sacrifice to your idols?"

Then the Emperor in a fury ordered her to be stript and to be beaten with whips. The child's body appeared as white as snow, and so bright was the bright light that issued from her, that the eyes of the beholders were dazzled. Whilst they were beating her, the holy virgin said: "I have cried with my voice to the Lord, and He heard me in the combat of my passion."

The Emperor, hearing her pay thus, said: "Do you think you will seduce me with your magic?"

But blessed Prisca answered: "Thy father Satan is the prince of all darkness; he loves fornicators and embraces magicians." The Emperor then ordered her to be beaten with rods, but the Saint, hearing this new punishment, smiled and said: "O unjust and impious man, enemy of God and inventor of evils! you are too blinded to know the blessings you are procuring for me from the Eternal Creator." (Father A. J. O'Reilly, The Martyrs of the Roman Coliseum.) 

Why, ladies and gentlemen, are so many Catholics fearful of the likes of the petty caesars who are said to pose "greater evils" even though the supposedly "lesser evils" are in total agreement with their false opposites that the Catholic Faith is not now nor can ever be the unifying principle of any nation, including the United States of America?

Why are we not as willing as Saint Prisca to suffer torture and death in order to bear witness to the Holy Faith? Why all of the fear and histrionics?

As has been noted in many other articles on this site, the conciliar "popes" are as one with the anti-Incarnational premies of the Judeo-Masonic civil state of Modernity. They do not believe that the Cathoic is now nor can ever be the unifying principle of any nation as to assert this would be to violate the tenets of "religious liberty."

Saint Prisca did not believe in religious liberty. She believed in bearing a courageous witness to the Holy Faith, enduring many attempts to kill her before she did indeed become a martyr for the Faith. As is recorded in The Martyrs of the Roman Coliseum: 

Then the Emperor, enraged beyond measure, ordered her to be led outside the city to be beheaded. The holy martyr Prisca, rejoicing said: "O Lord Jesus Christ, Redeemer of all, I praise Thee, I adore Thee, I beseech Thee, I implore Thee, who hast liberated me from all the evils intended for me. Save me now, O Lord Jesus Christ, with whom there is no acceptation of persons; perfect me in the confession of Thy name; order me to be received into Thy glory, that I may happily escape the evils by which I am surrounded; and reward the impious Claudius according to his works towards Thy helpless handmaid!" And having said this she turned towards the executioners and addressed them thus: "Fulfil the orders you have received.: And thus did the blessed Prisca end her life by the sword; and a voice was heard from heaven, saying: "Because thou hast fought for My name, Prisca, enter into the kingdom of heaven with all My saints." And when this was said, the executioners fell and their faces and died. 

Then it was announced to the Bishop of Rome by a Christian who watched in concealment, how they led the blessed Prisca along the Ostian Way, to about the tenth milestone, and there beheaded her, and took away her life. The Bishop, having heard this, went with him to the place he mentioned, and they found her body between two eagles, once at her head and the other at her feet, guarding it, lest the beasts should touch it. There was a dazzling light round her head, and her face smiled in the Holy Spirit. Then the Bishop himself and his companion dug a grave, and buried her in the spot.

When the Emperor heard all these things, he was struck the same day with terrible grief in his heart, and like a rabid dog ate his own flesh, and groaning and trembling, he cried: "Have pity on me, O God of the Christians! I know I have transgressed Thy precepts, O Christ, and blasphemed Thee; I have persecuted Thy name, and have ungratefully sinned against Thee; Thou rewardest me as I have desired." He expired, convulsed and writhing in agony, and a terrible voice was heard saying, "Enter, Emperor, into the furnace of hell; to to exterior darkness, for gloomy places of pain are prepared for thee." There was a great earthquake, and there believed that day, of those who were in Rome, on account of the voice that was heard from heaven, more than five thousand, not counting women and children. the martyrdom of the blessed Prisca took place on the 18th day of January. (Father A. J. O'Reilly, The Martyrs of the Roman Coliseum.)

No, Saint Prisca was not a practitioner of false ecumenism. She was a faithful Catholic who hated and mocked false religions, which is precisely the opposite of what the conciliar "popes" have done.

The Roman Martyrology is replete with like rebukes to everything that Jorge Mario Bergoglio says and does, and I mean absolutely everything.

Unlike the conciliar “popes,” including Senor Jorge from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who have engaged in acts of idolatry by entering into places of false worship and esteeming the images of symbols found in such dens of the devil, our saints have given up their very lives and endured the harshest of tortures to avoid even giving a momentary appearance of approval to any kind of false religion, its images and its rites.

Such is the case also of the saints whose feast is celebrated tomorrow, January 19, 2022, Saints Marius, his wife, Saint Martha, and their two sons, Saints Audifax and Abachum, who were martyred during the year 270 A.D. during the reign of Emperor Claudius II (Claudius Gothicus), after refusing to sacrifice to the idols.

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., related the heroism of Saint Marius and his companions, the very members of his own family, in The Liturgical Year, which includes the lesson from Matins for today’s Divine Office:

Christians from all parts of the world have ever flocked to Rome as to the rock of faith and the foundation of the Church, and honoured with the greatest reverence and piety the spot hallowed by the sepulchre of the Prince of the Apostles. These words of Holy Church are exemplified in the Martyrs of to-day. Fired with ambition to have some part and fellowship in the glorious Society of the holy Apostles and Martyrs, they left all things and hastened to the Eternal City, there to receive in the fullest measure what they sought. Like the Magi of old they came from the far East. The star of faith had shone for them, and in obedience to its call they set forth in all eagerness to offer their gifts of homage and loyalty to the divine King in the person of His Vicar and his suffering members. Such generosity was not left unrewarded; our Emmanuel crowned it with the laurels of martyrdom admitting them into that cloud of witnesses that ever stand about him. Let us keep before our minds with our Lord, the author and finisher of their faith, this great and glorious band of martyrs, so that we too may ever run unwearied and with courage so that we too may ever run unwearied and with courage and patience in the fight proposed to us.

The following lesson is given in the office:

Marius was a Persian of high rank, who came to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, with his wife Martha, who was equally noble, and their two sons Audifax and Abachum, to pray at the graves of the Martyrs. Here they comforted the Christians who were in prison, and whom they relieved by their ministrations and alms, and buried the bodies of the Saints. For these acts they were all arrested, but no threats or terrors could move them to sacrifice to idols. They were accordingly mangled with clubs, and drawn with ropes, after which they were burnt by applying plates of red-hot metal to their bodies, and their flesh partly torn off with metal hooks. Lastly their hands were all cut off, and they were fastened together by the neck, in which state they were driven through the city to the thirteenth mile-stone on the Cornelian Way, a place now called Santa Ninfa, where they were to die. Martha addressed a moving exhortation to her husband and sons to hold out bravely to the last, for the love of Jesus Christ; and was then herself drowned. The other three martyrs were next beheaded in the same sand-pit. Their bodies were thrown into a fire. The lady Felicity of Rome collected the half-burnt remains, and caused them to be buried at her own estate. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume III: Christmas—Book II, pp. 337-338.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, considers religious differences to be a matter of individual thoughts or “feelings,” leading to an obligation on the part of “believers” to respect all “religions” as pleasing to God and thus capable of promoting peace and justice.

Pope Leo XIII explained in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, that such practical religious indifferentism leads to the triumph of practical atheism in men and their nations:

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name.Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885. See also Practical Atheism as the Lowest Common Denominator and Not A Mention of Christ the King.)

The saint who is commemorated tomorrow, Wednesday, Januuary 19, 2022, after Saint Marius and his Companions, Saint Canute IV, King of Denmark, was killed as a result of a scheme hatched by his own brother, Olaf, who despise the fact that Saint Canute sought to reproach sinners and to call them to conversion. In other words, Olaf is a figure of Jorge the Oaf, who believes that efforts to convert non-Catholics and those Catholics who are living dissolute lives are examples of “idolatry” and “judgmentalism.”

We turn once again to Dom Prosper Gueranger’s The Liturgical Year:

The Magi Kings as we have already observed, have been followed to the Crib of Jesus by saintly Christian monarchs on the Church’s Calendar during the season which is consecrated to the Mystery of his Birth. The eleventh century is one of the most glorious of the Christian era, and gave, both to the Church and the various states of Europe, a great number of saintly Kings. Among them Canute the Fourth of Denmark stands pre-eminent by reason of the aureole of his martyrdom. He had every quality which forms a Christian prince: he was a zealous propagator of the faith of Christ, he was a brave warrior, he was pious, and he was charitable to the poor. His zeal for the Church (and in those days her rights were counted as the rights of the people) was made the pretext for putting him to death: he died in the midst of a sedition as a victim sacrifice for his people’s sake. His offering to the new-born King was that of his blood; and in exchange for the perishable crown he lost, he received that which the Church gives to her Martyrs, and which can never be taken away. The history of Denmark in the eleventh century is scarce known by the rest of the world; but the glory of that country’s having had one of kings a Martyr is known throughout the whole Church, and the Church inhabits the whole earth. This power, possessed by the Spouse of Christ of conferring honour on the name and actions of the servants and friends of God, is one of the grandest spectacles out of heaven; for when she holds up a name as worthy of honour, that name becomes immortalized, whether he who bore it were a powerful king or the poorest peasant.

We find the following life of this holy King given in the Lessons until recently used in the Breviary:

Canute the Fourth, son of Sweyn Estrithius, King of Denmark, was conspicuous for his faith, piety, and purity of life, and even from this infancy gave proof of exceeding holiness. Having been elected by the votes of the people to the throne held by his father, he at once began zealously to promote religion, to add to the revenues of the Churches, and to provide the same with costly fittings and furniture. Being also inflamed with zeal for the propagation of the faith, he refused not to enter into just war with barbarous nations which, when he had conquered and subdued, he subjected to the law of Christ. Having obtained several glorious victories, and increased the riches of the treasury, he laid his regal diadem at the feet of a crucifix, offering himself and his kingdom to him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. He chastised his body by fasting, hair-shirts and disciplines. He was assiduous in prayer and contemplation, liberal in his alms to the poor, and ever kind to all, never deviating from the path of justice and the divine commandments.

By these and other such virtues the holy King made rapid strides to the summit of perfection. Now it happened that William, Duke of Normandy, invaded the kingdom of England with a formidable army, and the English sought assistance from the Danes. The King resolved to grant them his aid, and intrusted the expedition to his brother Olaf. But he, from the desire of getting possession of his throne, turned his forces against the King, and stirred up the soldiers and the people to rebellion. Neither were there wanting motives for this rebellion; the for the King had issued laws commanding the payment of ecclesiastical tithes, the observance of the commandments of God and his Church, and the infliction of penalties on defaulters; all which were made a handle of by perverse and wicked malcontents, for spreading discontent, exciting the people to revolt, and at last, to plot the death of the saintly King.

Foreknowing what was to happen, the King saw that he would soon be put to death for justice’ sake. Having foretold it, he set out to Odense, where, entering into the Church of St. Alan the Martyr, as the place of combat, he fortified himself with the Sacraments, and commended his last struggle to our Lord. He had not long been there, when a band of conspirators arrived. They endeavoured to set fire to the Church, to burst open the doors, and to force an entrance. But failing in this, they scaled the windows, and with great violence, threw a shower of stones and arrows upon the holy King, who was on his knees, praying for his enemies. Wounded by the stones and arrows, and at least pierced through with a spear, he was crowned with a glorious martyrdom, and fell before the altar with his arms stretched out. Gregory the Seventh was the reining Pontiff. God showed by many miracles how glorious was his Martyr; and Denmark was afflicted with a great famine and sundry calamities, in punishment of the sacrilegious murder which had been perpetrated. Many persons, who were afflicted with various maladies, found aid and health by praying at the tomb of the Martyr. On one occasion, when the Queen endeavoured during the night to take up his body secretly and carry it to another place, she was deterred from her design by being struck with fear at the sight of a most brilliant light, which came down from heaven. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Canute, King of Denmark, January 19.)

Yes, Saint Canute IV, King of Denmark, was resented because he enjoined his people to obey God’s Commandments. Jorge Mario Bergoglio has no use for the Ten Commandments as he truly believes that their strict observance is impossible and that those who demand such strict adherence are “Pharisees.”

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer to Saint Canute is one that we should make our own:

O holy king! The Sun of Justice had risen upon thy country, and all thy ambition was that they people might enjoy the fullness of its light and warmth. Like the Magi of the East, thou didst lay thy crown at the feet of the Emmanuel, and at length didst offer thy very life in his service and in that of his Church. But thy people were not worthy of thee; they shed thy blood, as the ungrateful Israel shed the Blood of the Just One who is now born unto us, and whose sweet Infancy we are now celebrating. Thou didst offer thy martyrdom for the sins of thy people offer it now also for them, that they may recover the true faith that have so long lost. Pray for the Rulers of Christian lands, that they may be faithful to their duties, zealous for justice, and may have respect for the liberty of the Church. Ask for us of the Divine Infant a devotedness in his cause like that which glowed in thy breast; and since we have not a crown to lay at his feet, pray for us that we may be generous to give our whole heart. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume III: Christmas—Book II, pp. 339-342.)

The people of Denmark preferred to remain in the darkness of their sins. They did not want to have their consciences singed with the burning torch of truth spoken by their own king, Saint Canute IV.

“Pope Francis” believes that is “merciless” to singe the consciences of hardened sinners, which is why he goes out of his way to embrace them even as they sin without demanding them to amend their lives by quitting their sins. Life is, as he has said so many times, a big “party,” right?

Wrong.

The Roman Martyrology today also contains the name of the great Saint Wulstan, to whom we have prayed every day for the past ten years now since we learned of his life and his example.

Saint Wulstan was a truly humble priest, monk, and prior who became the Bishop of Worcester, England, before the Norman invasion in 1066, a time of great tumult for his own Anglo-Saxon people as they came to be governed by foreigners from across the English Channel. He did not castigate the conquerors, however, as he wanted to be able to exhort them in behalf of the cause of justice and the good of souls, a zeal that won for him the respect of King William I, sometimes referred to as William te Conqueror, who sought out the counsel of this humble and pious shepherd of his flock.

Dom Prosper Guerganer’s The Liturgical Year contains his own summary of Saint Wulstan’s life and the reading in the Divine Office that are no longer to be found in the Matins for this day:

Several dioceses in England celebrate on this day the feast of Saint Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester. The last of the Anglo-Saxon saints, Wulstan was worthy to close the long line of men and women who had earned for the country the proud title of “Insula Sanctorum.” His character as sketched by a contemporary is singularly attractive. A simple man, strong in his simplicity, yet kindly and gifted with a merry wit, he held straight on his course in God’s service as a priest, monk, prior, and bishop, spending himself in the laborious offices of his ministry, much more intent on the burdens of his position than on emoluments. A love of beauty ran through his life and manifested itself in building fine churches, in his care of books, in his love for the freshness of children.

In his long life of eighty-seven years Wulstan saw the gradual passing of the old order, the reigns of Ethelebert, Canute, Edward the Confessor and of his friend King Harold down to the fateful day when power passed into Norman hands [1066]. With all his love for his own land and dynasty the Saint gave not time to useless regrets. He had warned the people that for their sins the country would fall under the dominion of strangers, and when the conquest became a fact he threw his great influence into support of the new dynasty. But he was no time-server, and had no hesitation in confronting the Conqueror to demand redress of injustice done to his See. King William learned to admit the sturdy Saxon prelate, and Wulstan, instead of sharing the fate of nearly all the native bishops who were removed and replaced by Normans, remained in his See and was made the King’s lieutenant for the Midlands.(Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume III: Christmas—Book II, pp. 343-345.)

The following are the lessons of Saint Wulstan.

Wulstan whilst a simple priest had acquired to himself a great renown for holiness. Afterwards having become a monk of Worcester Prior, he was in a short time raised to the government of the same church. Almost entirely ignorant of secular learning, he gave himself wholly to spiritual science. He was numbered among the most eloquent speakers of the English language, in proof of which, this is principally to be remembered, that by his assiduous preaching he converted the citizens of Bristol, whom neither the regal nor the pontifical power could withdraw from the infamous slave trade.

Being made bishop, he sedulously fulfilled all the duties of a good shepherd. He began to visit all parts of his diocese, to give ordinations, to dedicate churches, to reprove sinners, and to animate the souls committed to his care, both by word and example, to the desire of eternal life. It frequently happened that he fasted from sunrise till nightfall whilst he was occupied in confirming children to the number of two or three thousand who were brought from all parts. Such was his meekness and zeal for souls in hearing confessions that persons came to him from all parts of England, and by his admonitions sinners amended their crimes by worthy deeds of penance.

Neither did he whilst watching over the salvation of others neglect his own. He served God by the constant celebration of Mass, by assiduous prayer, by continued abstinence from flesh-meat and by overflowing charity to the needy. The more humbly he esteemed himself, by so much the more his virtues were proclaimed by all, so that not only the English and Normans, but the kings and rulers of foreign nations also commended themselves to his prayers. He died, a very old man, in the year from the Incarnation of our Lord, one thousand and ninety-five, and was buried in the church of Worcester. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume III: Christmas—Book II, pp. 343-345.)

Yes, each of the saints mentioned above serve as rebukes, both individually and collectively, to the religious indifferentism, the blasphemies, the heresies, and the scandalous sacrileges promoted by the conciliar "popes," including the current universal public face of apostasy, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who uses viscera and demagoguery with a diabolically-inspired ferocity. Saint Wulstan reproved sinners. Bergoglio pats them on the back while reproving those who seek their conversion as “obstinate” and idolaters, which is why his unfailingly loyal support for pro-abortion statists worldwide is all the more damnable on a day when so many Americans will be marching for life even though they do not realize that there is a battle for the life of the Holy Faith that is being waged by the man most consider to be "Pope Francis,"  a war that is being waged more overtly than at any time since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.

May the Rosaries we pray this day help to make reparation for the crimes of the baby-killers as well as for those of whose continue to kill the life of the soul and thus made more possible the daily war against all innocent human life, whether in the womb by means of chemical and surgical baby-killing or by the killing off of anyone after birth under the aegis of "brain death" or in the name of "compassion" by means of "palliative care." 

We can plant the seeds for the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Prisca, pray for us.

Saints Marius, Martha, Audifax and Abucham, pray for us.

Sant Canute, King of Denmark, pray for us.

Saint Wulstan, pray for us.