The Thomas Chronicles

Back in December, Orson Scott Card wrote a rather brilliantly succinct essay about America’s current predicament (and the world’s for that matter) as relates to the fall of the Roman Empire. For those unaware about the stakes involved in our present military actions across the globe, this article, if you have the patience for it since it is rather lengthy, explains in the clearest manner the dynamics by which we can fall… and the world with us. I’ve attempted to explain this dynamic many times on this blog, but nowhere have I seen it explained so clearly.

Here is a brief excerpt:

What people overlooked was that everything depended on the Roman Army. The army wasn’t carrying the goods, it wasn’t even actively protecting the trade. The army was mostly stationed at the border, while the economy boomed in an empire so safe that none of the cities had walls. But the economic system that offered so much prosperity could only last as long as merchants could trust in the safety of the goods they transported, and as long as people could remain in place to do their work instead of having to flee barbarian invaders.

It was a robust system. Ward-Perkins points out that there were lots of crises over the years, from plague to invasions to civil wars, and none of them brought the system down, except for local crashes from which the economy soon recovered.

But it takes time and space to recover — years, and the presence of nearby robust economies that can help restore the area that was hard hit.

When you have crash after crash in close succession, and the nearby economic centers are also just as beleaguered as you, there is neither time nor space for recovery.

So when the Roman Army got caught up in civil wars (”If that legion can make their general emperor, we can make our general emperor!”) so that it was distracted and weakened, the emperors began the horribly self-destructive policy of buying off the bad guys on their borders.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, of course. You give the barbarians a lot of money and they go away. It saves lives.

Except that they run out of the money and now they know how to get more. If you crush the barbarian army in battle, they think twice before coming back. If you pay them for showing up and threatening you, and you don’t kill any of them, then coming back and threatening you again will be very popular with the barbarian footsoldiers. You’ll see them a lot more.

But money isn’t infinite — the barbarian invaders shrink the tax base as they interfere with trade, both directly (”Let’s loot this city so they’ll know we’re serious!”) and indirectly (”The barbarians are coming! Let’s leave our city and run away to someplace safe!”).

So the emperors took to giving them land. They settled the Alans here, the Ostrogoths there. Of course, the land they settled them on was already occupied, so the Germans came in as overlords — essentially, they became the new tax collectors, only they kept the taxes for themselves.

Thus the government was now giving away its tax base. Meanwhile, the Germans were lousy governors. They knew about taking taxes — but their taxation wasn’t the usual corrupt system of the Romans, it was much more direct and brutal. In many places it was indistinguishable from looting. They took so much that the people didn’t have enough left to allow them to buy quality goods from abroad. So they were removed from the empire-wide trading system.

Also, the Germans did not understand or accept the burden that had been borne by the Roman Army in the areas they now occupied. They did not maintain public safety. Newly impoverished people and other tribes of invaders harassed merchants so that through large swathes of the empire, it simply wasn’t profitable to ship things anymore. Either brigands or barbarians would seize your trade goods along the way, or there’d be nobody with money to buy your goods when they reached their destination.

The robust Roman economic system could absorb a little of this, but not a lot, and not for long.

Please read the rest here. I cannot urge you enough to read this piece.

Sometimes the significance of the Resurrection of our Lord is lost on Christians. With all the brou-ha-ha surrounding the politics of religion, it is easy to lose sight of just the basic fundamentals of our beliefs. Yes, yes, you say. Christ rose from the grave and ascended on high to the right hand of God. We all know that already. However, there is an added dimension to His Resurrection that is not discussed often, but it goes to the very core of our faith.

Jesus Christ rose to the grave and appeared before the Apostles that they might know and have hope. Not just in His promises of God’s Heavenly Kingdom, but also hope of the flesh’s resurrection. In Christianity, there is no division between flesh and spirit. Indeed, this is one of the crucial differences between Christianity and Hinduism/ Buddhism. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the best one can hope for is a cessation of life into nothingness and the utter divorce of the spirit from the flesh. It is through the utter denial of the flesh that one can achieve nirvana. Thus, one is freed from the captivity of life and the unending cycle of sin and degradation. (Yes, I said SIN. It wasn’t until recent modern history that mankind suddenly believed they were “all that” and that sin was just another human construct. All of mankind used to feel the weight of their sins and the inability of our individual wills to do anything about it. Christianity was rejected in previous eras for the ridiculous optimism of its promises, that we are sons and daughters of God and we can return home freed; now, despite what many of us say, we don’t really acknowledge and feel the weight of our sins…)

In our faith, there is no divorcing flesh and spirit. Christ’s Resurrection underlines this central point of our faith. Over and over, our Bible refers to the dead rising from their graves at His return and the spirit and the flesh being restored to perfection. I don’t presume to fathom what this means, but it’s awfully important and it’s certainly not to be dismissed.

So, on this glorious Easter, let us remember the promise and hope of our Lord— that He will return, deliver us from this glass darkly, overturn evil and restore us to what He intended us to be.

May the Lord bless us and keep us.
May the Lord make His face to Shine upon us.
May He be gracious to us.
May the Lord turn his face toward us and grant us Peace.
Amen.

***Addendum Below***

For the past couple of days I’ve been visiting my family back in Houston, Texas. When I exited the plane I noticed something missing in my immediate environment. The white noise forever blaring in the background of the LA megalopolis was suddenly silenced. But of course it was. I’m back in Houston, which is no paragon of tranquility, let me tell you, but it was markedly more quiet, less erratic.

After driving around for two days, one thing is abundantly clear— much has changed since I left about four years ago. When you leave the place of your upbringing, irrationally, somehow you expect your hometown to be in a state of stasis, transfixed to a moment in time. John will always show up at the local Starbucks at the same time every day, order his iced vanilla latte, sit outside on a wiry green chair chain-smoking faster than he could inhale… The days passed about as slowly as John would move, which was not very.

Houston’s roadways are suddenly stacked to the gills with cars and semi-trucks and the thousands of voiceless throngs of people who sit behind the wheel scratching their heads wondering how the hell did it get so crowded?

When Katrina hit back in 2005, most of the evacuees came to Houston, and it seems most of them never left. Though it’s not politically correct in the least to say so, since that time, crime has shot through the roof here in Houston. Murder, drugs, rapes, drive-by shootings— you name it. It’s all climbing.

For those of you who have visited New Orleans a few times before the hurricane struck, all this crime should come as no surprise. People usually showed up to New Orleans to party down in the French Quarter and get toasted. But the French Quarter ain’t even half of New Orleans. Much of the city was mired in voodoo occultism, drug addicts and a culture of victimology that was the envy of multiculturalists everywhere. Most of the city barely functioned at all with dilapidated homes and old buildings that appeared as though they were about to implode at any moment. Ray Nagin’s pouty-faced inaction in the face of Katrina, and his pouty-faced inaction after Katrina is intrinsic to that culture, and sadly, he truly does represent his constituents.

But now, many of them are in Houston. I’m sure many of the evacuees are law-abiding citizens, but I wouldn’t know about percentages. Every report I’m hearing are negative; from the scams on the FEMA credit cards to the drug dealers hanging outside my friend’s business. They are changing the landscape of Houston, and I’m not sure I like it.

Perhaps I’m wrong and there’s something very positive going on here. Perhaps, these evacuees will be swallowed up and assimilated into Houston’s still vibrant culture and mores. This would transformed the defunct, dysfunctional culture of victimology of the evacuees into one of more personal responsibility and productivity.

Addendum 4/6/07:

Perhaps I wrote too precipitously about the influence of the former New Orleans residents in Houston. While true that the crime rate in Houston has exploded exponentially since Katrina, Houston is also dealing with another, more long term problem. Houston, it would seem, is receiving an influx from all over the nation, most notably from California. The synergy between these two factors and others are a significant amount of stress on the city’s resources. How does a city cope with a population explosion of well close to a million people in six years time? And this is not including the influx of illegal immigration which is among the highest in the nation.

During this trip, I cannot but help to feel the passage of time and change…

On another related note, I find it interesting that the Blue States are emptying of people while simultaneously the illegal immigrants are filling in the void. This and the fact that the birth rate of the Blue State regions are in the negative decline makes for an explosive situation. Los Angeles is the second largest Mexican city in the world, just behind Mexico City. New York’s illegal immigration is also troubling. New York City’s Chinatown just keeps sprawling outward (it’s now almost taken over little Italy), and if trends continue, New York would be the largest concentration of Chinese people outside of China.

As these Blue States are bleeding dry while voting themselves more benefits, Americans are moving toward the Red States in the West, Midwest, and South. An enormous internal migration is in the offing. I think it’s of a magnitude unseen since the Dust Bowl era’s Great Plains migration to California. But I just don’t know what it means…

Um… you’ve got to be kidding.

Right?

CHICAGO - He wears Jesus’ robes and a neon blue halo, looks like Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) and is causing a stir at a Chicago art school. An undergraduate student’s papier mache sculpture of Obama as a messianic figure — entitled “Blessing” — went on display Saturday at a downtown gallery run by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

By Monday, word of the piece had spread on political blogs, and the school had been flooded with calls.

David Cordero, 24, made the sculpture for his senior show after noticing all the attention Obama has received since he first hinted he may run for the presidency.

“All of this is a response to what I’ve been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins,” Cordero said. “In a lot of ways it’s about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped.”

If this isn’t politics replacing piety, I don’t know what is…

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t read it…

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration Monday for its inaction on global warming in a decision that could lead to more fuel-efficient cars as early as next year.
ADVERTISEMENT

The court, in a 5-4 ruling in its first case on climate change, declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

The
Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate those emissions from new cars and trucks under the landmark environment law, and the “laundry list” of reasons it has given for declining to do so are insufficient, the court said.

“A reduction in domestic emissions would slow the pace of global emissions increases, no matter what happens elsewhere,” Justice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion. “EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change.” [emphasis is all mine]

You can read the rest here.

Apparently, in another gross incident in judicial activism, the Supreme Court is deciding the issue of Global Warming for the American people without their say so. Needless to say, this ruling comes at a devastating time for our domestic automakers who are already on the ropes. The imposition of more fuel and manufacturing regulations could possibly make the production of new vehicles more expensive for both the manufacturer and for the common man. As I noted in my previous post, environmentalism tends to be the luxury of the rich.

The good news in all this is that the good Court “did not specifically order the EPA to set mandatory limits but said the agency has not shown adequate reasons for declining to do so.” It would seem that this ruling basically provides the EPA with the teeth necessary act to reduce carbon emissions from cars and other vehicles but declines to tell the EPA what to do.

Writing for the Minority decision, Chief Justice Roberts wrote:

“Apparently dissatisfied with the pace of progress on this issue in the elected branches, petitioners have come to the courts claiming broad-ranging injury, and attempting to tie that injury to the government’s alleged failure to comply with a rather narrow statutory provision,” Roberts wrote.

He wrote his conclusion “involves no judgment on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem.”

The American Republic is founded on the principle of self-government, for the people and by the people. Increasingly, however, we are discovering that we have “rulers”, men and women who deigns to make our decisions for us. Not only does this behavior betray their low opinion of the American people, it also undermines the principles upon which our nation was founded. When America was first formed under the Constitution, Europeans believed our nation would eventually fall because of the sheer “anarchy” of our freedom. We did not have aristocratic oligarchs presiding over us, but we ruled ourselves of our own initiatives. While it is true that we have always had a wealthy, educated class in government and business, there was always respect for “We the People”.

Perhaps it is precipitous for me to say so, but it seems to me that many of our Leftists and Right-wingers want to overturn the ideals of the American Revolution. The Leftists want reduce American into a pale copy of a dysfunctional, stymied Europe while they grab for total power. The Right-wingers want to impose their list of rules upon the American people and legislate American salvation. Both denies the will of the people they are supposedly serving. Both have little to no confidence in the wisdom of the American populace to decide their own fate.

The hope is that at some point the American people will shrug off these extremes. I believe it all depends on whether or not we receive a full-on Christian revival. That’s our hope.

***Further Thoughts Below***

This isn’t exactly new news but it is to me. In the wild and zany Wonderland of Al Gore, much has been made of his desperate pleas to humanity, particularly the United States, to cease and desist its evil polluting ways. His inconvenient truth has collected legions of wide-eyed followers marching to the deep, ominous intonations of, “Save the environment! Save the ecology! Eviscerate obese American industry!”

Hollywood celebrities, like Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio and John Travolta and others, has joined the barge out to la-la land with Al Gore navigating the tugboat. The fact that Al’s Wonderland Ride is pulling a garbage, pollutant-ridden barge doesn’t keep people from jumping on. Far from it.

I found out yesterday through a friend that Al Gore’s Tennessee zinc strip mining operation has all its toxic waste still sitting there. For those unfamiliar with the method of strip mining, know that it’s probably the worst means of mining out there. A miner would literally strip a mountainside or a hillside down into loose sediments so it could be sifted for minerals. It’s the equivalent to raping the ground.

I’m no eco-nut but I’m completely opposed to strip mining because of what it does to the land. Come to find out, that mine was in operation all the way up to 2003. In its last full year of operation, 2002, it released “4.1 million pounds of toxic” waste. And that’s the effects of one year alone.

According to the Tennessean:

Two massive white mountains of leftover rock waste are evidence of three decades of mining that earned Gore more than $500,000 in royalty payments for the mineral rights to his property.

Although the article’s lead attempted to mitigate the harm this strip mining has done, saying, “there is no evidence the mine has caused serious damage to the environment in the area or threatened the health of his neighbors,” locals around the mining operation have complained about how the operation has polluted their waters for decades, a fact that was dredged up during Gore’s presidential campaign back in 2000.

And while Mr. Gore is flying around the world giving his presentation on the dangers of pollution, lecturing Congress, and receiving Oscars from Hollywood, this mine is planning to go active again next year.

But hold that mouse button folks, it gets richer.

When conservatives and skeptics question Mr. Gore on his positions, especially his blatant hypocrisy on flying a private airplane that dumps millions of tons of pollutants into the air, he arrogantly said he could do that because he’s “offset” his carbon emissions. How does this “offset” happen?

In a spasm of aristocratic condescension, he pays a company that pledges to take measures to counteract all the pollution he’s tossing up in the air. In a word, he’s buying others off, so he can continue to pollute.

In the Middle Ages, corrupt priests sold indulgences for the remittance of sins. A few gold coins would forgive you of your adultery. A few more would give you a pass for thievery. Nowadays, we’re too sophisticated to believe in the weight of our sins any longer, we’re selling indulgences for our pollution instead. For a few hundred bucks, you can bounce around in your private jets and cruise the Sunset Strip in your carbon-loving Hummer and have the full concurrence of your conscience.

Well, this is ludicrous luxury if you’re rich, just for the Overlords, you see. Not us peasants. But I haven’t told you the juicy part yet.

The company from which Al Gore buys his indulgences is called Generation Investment Management. So, what’s juicy about that, you ask? Well, he virtually owns the darn company!

Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.

Good grief, not only is this fellow lecturing us on pollution while flying across the country in his private jets, he’s conning everyone to give him money for doing it as well. He’s taken our liberal friends for a ride, and they’re happily jumping on the barge.

Like any good con artist (”confidence artist”), he not only talks people into giving him their money, the victim of the con artist discovers that he’s been fooled and in their shame deliberately covers up the evidence of the crime. Far from attempting to expose the con artist, the victim covers up the crime because were he to admit his error, he would also have to admit that he’s fallen to accusations against the very people who was supposed to trust, which in this case is the legitimate authority of the government. And every narcissist is a con artist.

Should Al Gore run for president, this should be his slogan: “Let’s us Save the Environment! Give me your Money!”

Unbelievable.

What can you say to such arrogance? Just bless him and move on.

Further thoughts:

Commentor Ymarsakar wrote:

Here’s an interview with a Polish WWII guerrila fighter in Warsaw

hattip Neo-neocon.com

The Left has learned that they cannot really resist and fight off pure destruction (embodied in the Nazi purge of the socialists, the Stalin purge of Trotsky, and the Islamic Revolution’s purge of the Left in Iran). So what they learned was that if they could exploit human nature inside a bubble of security and safety, they can live the good life without having to earn it through resisting evil and entropy. The Left’s alliance with entropy has already weakened their ability to resist their base impulses. Materialism, exploitation, and decadence is the logical extension of such degradation. (Hollywood)

Yes, many of our Leftists have made an alliance with entropy and chaos. Whether or not they do this out of true conviction, I don’t know. I don’t have a window into their soul, but I do note the consequences of such actions— dissolution and collapse.

Many liberals, however, don’t ally themselves with entropy and chaos. They truly believe that their agenda would yield the best results for America. I think they’re wrong and misguided, but I can’t hardly fault them with that, if they are truly acting through the light of their own conscience. But the true anti-American Leftists are another matter.

As with civilization’s concern for anarchists at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, whose purpose was the induce the fall of civilization into chaos, we are facing much of the same thing.

On one side of us, we have the Islamofascists. On the other we have the revamped anarchists now disguised in Leftism. And then on the horizon, we see the rise of the totalitarians…

Sadly, one of the reasons I started this blog was to bear witness. I’ve been haunted for years by the image of the last Roman soldier manning his post on the Rhine while the Empire collapsed around him. I started this blog to attempt to inject reason into our civilizational discourse… to be one of the ones to stand up as an American and be counted.

If our Republic falls, I want to say that I wasn’t one of the ones who fed off its fruits without gratitude, that I tried to do my small part and stand against this tide of entropy and anti-life and anti-Christ…

The TimesOnline reported today that British history teachers are dropping sensitive historical events because it might cause irreparable damage to the mental well-being of some of their students. Among the dropped topics are the Holocaust and the Crusades. It does not take a genius to figure out from their circumlocution that they are referring to the school’s Arab Muslim students.

Schools drop Holocaust lessons to avoid offence
Alexandra Frean

Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from certain races or religions, a report claims.

A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to “shallow” lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association.

The report, produced with funding from the Department for Education, said that where teachers and staff avoided emotive and controversial history, their motives were generally well intentioned.

“Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship,” it concluded.

However, it was concerned that this could lead to divisions within school, and that it might also put pupils off history.

And just before we get all self-righteous about this blatant rewrite of history, there is our own beloved Ward Churchill and Leftist professors to think about. Not to mention all the revised songs in our elementary schools (”We wish you a merry Winter, we wish you a merry Winter, and a happy new year!”) and how our kids don’t even know the patriotic song, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee“. The world’s just got a few screws loose…