Editors’ note: Below are David Horowitz’s opening remarks for the Freedom Center’s 2022 Restoration Weekend being held this weekend (November 10-13, 2022) at the Arizona Biltmore Resort in Phoenix, Arizona.
Thank you all for coming. I deeply regret that I can’t be with you in person. My doctors have advised me that I’m in too high a risk category to travel. I want to say a few words about the Weekend and the Center and what we’re about.
Trust me, you are in good hands this weekend. 15 years ago, I was blessed to be able to recruit Mike Finch to be the Center’s president and chief administrator. Mike’s dedication has freed me to focus on our programs and on my writing. Being home-bound has its advantages. I have completed three books in the last year to advance the Center’s mission.
One of them is in your bags and scheduled for publication in January. Its title is Final Battle: The Next Election Could be the Last. It’s about the dire aspects of what we are facing as a nation because of what has happened to the Democrat Party, which, by the way, you are not allowed to speak about without fear of being canceled or ruined.
The second book will be published six months later. The third is what I consider to be the most important I have written because it restores the true narrative of race in this country — a narrative all Americans can be proud of.
As for the Center itself, its staff has been with me for 20 years. Thanks to the Shillman Fellowship program made possible by Dr. Bob’s generosity. Our staff are among the best, most informed writers on the web.
Under the leadership of John Perazzo, we have created DiscovertheNetworks.org the — most comprehensive guide available to the anti-American Left and its totalitarian politics.
Our Freedom Center is a mission oriented operation. It’s a battle tank rather than a think tank. For 34 years, we have been dedicated to teaching conservatives about the malicious nature of the Left.
Do not treat them so politely. Stop calling them liberals. They are vindictive bigots and, worse, intoxicated by what they see as the nobility of their cause. They are criminals without morals and Machiavellians, whose ruling principle is this: The end, which is power for the utopian fantasies, justifies the means — and the means is the destruction of our country.
Democrats are not soft on crime.
They are pro-crime. Crime to them is reparations and a socialist redistribution of wealth, and no cash bail agendas — which are wreaking havoc in our country and in our city streets. All of this is based on the Marxist idea that earned wealth is theft and that violent crime is driven by poverty, which the statistics show it is not.
In their eyes, rich white people have the privilege of cash bail because they can afford it and the poor, who are people of color, cannot. And that to them is a social injustice. Reality is quite different. When was the last time you saw a video of a white rich man pushing a random individual off a train platform? When did you see a rich white man drag a woman of color across the subway walkway by her hair and stomp her head into the concrete over and over until she lost an eye — and then walk free?
Violent crime is the work of 2% of the population who are criminal psychopaths, who do not care about human life. Society should be defending human life. These are psychotic human scum who should be locked up until they are too old to wreak more havoc on the lives of the innocent — or forever.
To catch and release them to strike again is sick. The sickness is a diseased ideology. In reality, people of color are not poor and the vast majority do not commit violent crimes. They are victims of violent crimes. 80% of black Americans live above the poverty line. Asian Americans are the richest economic group in America, earning on average $20,000 a year more than white Americans.
White supremacy is a vicious leftist lie, a dagger aimed at the heart of our country by deranged ideologues who know very well what they’re doing. The charge of white supremacy is the biggest, most destructive wound the Democrats have inflicted on our country in the last eight years.
The mission of the Freedom Center begins with restoring the truth about our country and our pride in it.
America was born out of a revolutionary declaration that all men are created equal and have a God-given right to liberty. Every black who was shipped to this country during the slave trade was enslaved by black Africans and eventually freed by white Americans. The idea that inner city blacks are poor and often criminal because of 400 years of white oppression is a racial hoax that is killing our country and enticing its worst elements, white and black, to feel entitled to steal, maim, lie and murder.
American slavery lasted only 20 years in the north and 76 in the South. When you hear the words “400 years slavery” from demagogues in the Democrat Party, you are hearing them from the party of slavery and segregation and anti-white racism, from people who have never been slaves, but want reparations from a government that sacrificed 360,000, mainly white lives, to free the slaves. If they want reparations, let them sue the Confederacy and the Black Africans who actually enslaved them.
Slavery existed in Africa for a thousand years before a white man ever set foot on that continent. If slavery is anybody’s original sin, it is not the sin of Americans, but of black Africans. From the time of America’s creation, there was never a successful slave revolt but there was always a freedom movement for blacks, led by white Americans who were ready to sacrifice their lives for it.
The founders detested slavery on Christian grounds, but could not end it in the South without provoking a war against England, which would have joined the South and crushed the North. In all history, there is no other record of one race of people making such sacrifices to free another. These are the words that will get you canceled or killed for saying them.
So most people don’t say them.
Given the universality of slavery in human societies, and despite the bigots among us, white Americans can be proud of their record on race and in liberating black Africans from servitude. At the heart of the Center’s mission is the desire to refute the leftist laws that are destroying our country and to restore faith in America’s principles and heritage — so that America’s citizens are all protected by it.
White supremacy is the most disgusting and evil charge made against our country and its people by anyone, including our most dedicated totalitarian enemies. It’s an existential threat to our way of life and our freedom that is ritually repeated by the White House itself.
Systemic racism is not a pervasive fact of life in our country as our racist president maintains it is. It is outlawed, and it has been outlawed for nearly 60 years. What crystallizes for me the criminal nature and immorality of the Biden government is the fact that it exists without a conscience, without compassion. It is heartless — without care for the most vulnerable among us, and indeed for any of us. It is engaged in the illegal destruction of our southern border, which started when Obama was president.
Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, attempted to secure the border with a zero tolerance policy by arresting illegal aliens in preparation for deporting them. This policy had the unintended consequence of temporarily separating children from their parents who had broken our immigration laws. These parents were processed while the children, maybe 4000 of them, were taken care of by border agencies and the facilities that Barack Obama had built when he was president.
But Biden’s characterization of Trump’s zero tolerance policy was this: “Look folks, this administration’s policies that literally rip babies from the arms of their mothers and fathers is one of the darkest moments in our history.” This became a key theme of the Democratic Party’s attacks on Trump. It was amplified by Democrat officials and the partisan media. And then came the maliciously false claim that Trump had placed the babies in concentration camp facilities reminiscent of Auschwitz.
These were the facilities that Obama had actually built. President Trump himself was so moved by the plight of the children, separated because the law does not permit the jailing of children of criminal parents, that within two months of implementing the zero tolerance policy, he abandoned it and conceded that the Democrats had defeated his attempt to secure the border through it.
The day Joe Biden became president he illegally opened the border by multiple executive orders and invited millions of unvetted aliens into the country, including and specifically, “unaccompanied minors”. As a result of Biden’s destruction of the border and invitation to unaccompanied minors to come here, two years later, right now, approximately not 4000 parentless kids, temporarily and safely taken care of by government agencies, but 300,000 kids, without parents, are dispersed throughout the country, often to god knows who.
They had previously been escorted by criminal drug cartels along the 1000 mile trek through jungles and deserts.
How many died along the way is unknown, and an estimated 60% of them were raped and physically abused. Today, according to White House statistics, 20,000 of those unaccompanied kids have actually been lost. Who would take a parentless kid and not seek out the authorities to help them locate relatives or receive the medical attention they might need?
These kids have been sex trafficked and are suffering a permanent fate that is agonizing to contemplate.
Yet not one single Democrat has raised his or her voice to get them help. This is evil. This is the most heinous crime ever committed against the innocent by our government I can think of. And every Democrat has turned a blind eye to it. The ends justify the means.
Now I want to turn to a word about these weekends and the Americans we have influenced. What makes our Weekend special is that the speakers and attendees attracted to us and whom we seek out share our mission and our values and our bluntness.
One of the people I most wanted to meet this particular weekend is Katie Pavlich, whom I only recently learned from an email she sent out was the student who invited me to speak at the University of Arizona 20 odd years ago. Her email described how I had influenced the militancy of conservative students like her and how she had been punished by her university for inviting such a politically incorrect speaker.
I’d watch Katie and Fox for years without realizing the connection, admiring her aggressiveness and bluntness and forthright command of the issues. So this weekend was going to be a special occasion for me to see Katie again and thank her for her courage in fighting this war. I guess now I have to do this remotely, but I am glad to be reunited with her again.
When I was younger, I spoke with over 400 universities and wrote five books on the takeover of our educational system by the Hate America Left who were busily transforming schools into one party indoctrination centers and racist ones at that. The books I wrote were well read, but they didn’t make a dent on the leaders of the Republican Party, even though I knew them, including three speakers of the House.
I created an academic Bill of Rights and academic freedom for students that would stop Marxist indoctrination and warn Republicans that they can’t turn the education system over to people who want to destroy our country and not lose it before long. My warnings fell on deaf ears, which is why we are so close to losing all that we have cherished in our country right now.
I am especially proud of the efforts we have made over the years to support young and courageous patriots like Katie Pavlich through our programs. Before we created the Freedom Center, Peter Collier and I gave Peter Schweitzer his first job out of college. And look what a force he has become. I edited Ben Shapiro’s first book, which was about the academic threat, which he wrote when he was 18. After he left Breitbart, I hired him when he went out on his own. Another force of nature.
20 years ago, our long time field director at the Center, Lonny Leitner, invited me to speak in Marquette, where he was punished for planting the American flag around the campus to honor the victims of 911. America. Academia. Academia hates America.
The Center, in this sense, discovered and promoted Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens and also James O’Keefe, all brilliant and fearless warriors in the battles to save our country.
This weekend, we are giving our Andy Taylor Award to Brandon Straka, who has created a conservative movement to lead gays out of the bigoted LGBTQ mafia and welcome them to the ranks of Americans who are fighting for the freedom to be left alone, and not to destroy others who are different.
Stephen Miller was a high school senior who I mentored for several years and recommended for a position on Jeff Sessions’ staff.
Stephen became President Trump’s most articulate speechwriter and aggressive adviser. After the Democrats stole the 2020 election, Stephen created America First Legal, which is suing the unconstitutional Biden policies, the goals of which are to turn America into a race-based communist dictatorship, literally.
11 years ago, we gave our Annie Taylor award to another American hero of the war to defend our democracy. Catherine Engelbrecht is the head of an organization called True the Vote. This has been the most effective organization investigating and exposing voter fraud. Catherine was recently jailed for refusing to expose an FBI whistleblower. To our perverse and malicious enemies that makes her an election denier and a threat to democracy. But what more American – more defense of the cause of democracy – can there be than that?
Ten years ago, Catherine flew from her home in Texas to my home in California to film her first promotional video launching True the Vote and featuring me as its endorser. If any of you are in a position to help this gutsy warrior and her organization, please do so.
I would like to close by paying a special tribute to my wife April, whose love and support has sustained me through all these battles.
April and I have been together for 29 years -and it has been the happiest and most productive way of life. It’s not an accident that these two things should be connected. Listen, I take from my experience for anyone here who is single and might use the advice, is this: look for someone who has a kind heart and lives life better than you do, someone who seeks the joy, beauty, love and happiness that is always around us in what is otherwise a harsh and unforgiving world.
A few months ago, I watched a YouTube clip of a young woman winning the prize on Britain’s Got Talent. She was 30 years old and had cancer and only a month or two left to live. She said, “Don’t wait for life to be less troubled to find happiness – reach for it, for it is always there.”
So it is. This is what I learned from my wife. They are wise words if you can hear them at any time. For myself, I intend to be around for a long time. First of all, we have a lot of work to do to save this country from its internal and external enemies. And secondly, April made me promise I will live to the age of Methuselah.
And that’s a promise I will live by.
May you be blessed with a Refuah Shelemah ( a speedy recovery in Hebrew) and many more years of strengthvigor snd fearlessness In fighting the woke left
Definitely a positive for me. I really enjoyed reading this and I thank you for writing it! It really refocus us right back down to what we’re dealing with without any of the niceties.
Thank you,
Henry jordan
David, your life and books have been a constant inspiration and uplift to my adult life. Thank you, thank you
Thank you, David. You made my day.
Thank you and grateful for the fearless warriors and for my loving supportive husband
Every good wish to you and your wife
“The founders detested slavery on Christian grounds”
But did they REALLY? The Bible has plenty of Holy Scripture that defends, encourages, endorses, slavery. Pro-slavery Americans defended slavery by quoting Holy Scripture just as Abolitionist Americans used Holy Scripture to condemn slavery.
The fact is there is nothing in the Bible from where any Christian can definitively, unequivocally, objectively, and rationally argue that God or Jesus absolutely prohibits and condemns slavery. Holy Scripture can be interpreted in contradictory ways and always has been which led to bloody wars and persecutions between different sects of Christians interpreting the Gospels in contradictory ways.
No, the definitive element, the crucial factor, that led the Founders to interpret Holy Scripture as condemning or prohibiting slavery was not the Christian Gospel or the Old Testament itself, but the fact that the Founders had grown up in and had been educated in the in the Age of Enlightenment; the enlightenment of reason. It was the dominance of reason over faith that allowed the Founders to arrive at the conclusion that slavery was immoral. The condemnation of slavery could not have happened so thoroughly and so definitively in any previous era. Credit must be given where credit is due, not to Christian faith, but to Christian faith attenuated, shackled, and led by REASON.
“The early Christians did contribute some good ideas to the world, ideas that proved important to the cause of future freedom. I must, so to speak, give the angels their due. In particular, the idea that man has a value as an individual — that the individual soul is precious — is essentially a Christian legacy to the West; its first appearance was in the form of the idea that every man, despite Original Sin, is made in the image of God (as against the pre-Christian notion that a certain group or nation has a monopoly on human value, while the rest of mankind are properly slaves or mere barbarians). But notice a crucial point: this Christian idea, by itself, was historically impotent. It did nothing to unshackle the serfs or stay the Inquisition or turn the Puritan elders into Thomas Jeffersons. Only when the religious approach lost its power — only when the idea of individual value was able to break free from its Christian context and become integrated into a rational, secular philosophy — only then did this kind of idea bear practical fruit.” – Objetivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America”
“Religion versus America”
There are fewer Christians today than at the start of this nation. The Age of Reason without God יהוה has degenerated us, not progressed us, to the point of near barbarism for so many.
Only the godly have been keeping us afloat.
I’d say take your Age (of Godless) Reason and shove it.
It is of very little value when all is said done without God יהוה in it.
Do you want to know why the Bible puts up with slavery? It was what had been taking place for thousands of years. Nations enslaved or took captives in conquest to use to built up their nations. To replenish their populations. It kept human life alive and producing. God has high standards by which the Hebrew people were to treat and not mistreat their slaves, their servants, their paid employees as well as those who borrowed from them.
Other than that Jesus said that if you have the opportunity to be free, be free.
How lovely. Hebrew slavery was not real slavery. Just like Islam is really a religion of peace. And real Socialism has never been tried. The Christian Dark Ages were not really that dark after all and Christianity had nothing to do with it.
The whitewashing of history continues.
Did you ask any of the Founders whether they came to their conclusions about their Christianity not being the reason for their antipathy towards slavery? My guess is no. Considering the anti-slavery movement in this country was led by Christians your stupid post is just another excuse for you to bag on Christianity.
You are the one who is slavishly wedded to your hatred of Christianity. You always manage to shoehorn it into everything you write about even though your version of history is, at best, a blinkered attempt to elevate yourself to a position faux prominence.
You are as big an idiot as Marginal Marlow, our rezidentura Communist morale officer.
Convention wears a double face.Truth, love, loyalty, honor, all that we most value in ourselves and others, are things fought for, slowly won, and preserved in ritual from one generation to the next. But these rituals, that represent the highest ideal, also represent the worst lie. The new first emerges not as satisfaction of these ideals, but as a contradiction in them. It emerges as hate, as a standing inescapably outside the universal.
Faced with the existing contradiction in existing rituals, the temptation is to view the contradiction at first not as problem but as mystery, not as error to be fought out, but as paradox to be revered and accepted.
But this choice is, of course, no choice, since to delay is but to increase the pressures forcing a turning into the contradiction.
But with it’s solution, with an understanding of “the self” in neuroscientific terms) we return to the very rituals that we were forced to reject at first, and now they wear a very different face, symbolizing the highest ideal. After a man has been through suffering, on the other side, when he returns with a task needing implementation, then the very rituals which first appeared as a mask of hypocracy and lie, emerge as the avenues to a greater simplicity and accuracy of expression. They then feel at no point burden, but rather a needed means to economy and openess.
There are a lot of scriptures in the Bible regarding human beings how they have authority over things not people. I read the Bible daily and it irritates me when other people who don’t want to tell me what’s in it.
“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.” – Exodus 21:20-21
“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.” – Exodus 21:2-6
“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.” – Leviticus 25:44-46
“Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” – Numbers 31:17-18
“When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies.” – Deuteronomy 20:10-14
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” – Ephesians 6:5
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” – Colossians 3:22
“All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.” – Timothy 6:1
“Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.” – Peter 2:18
“Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” – Titus 2:9-10
“one race of people making such sacrifices to free another…. white Americans can be proud of their record on race and in liberating black Africans from servitude.”
There’s two kinds of racism, condemning a man because of his race, and glorifying a man becuse of his race. There is no such thing collective racial guilt and there is no such thing as collective racial innocence. There is only individual guilt and individual innocence.
“The white people held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true, and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw was: my people had sold me…. My own people had exterminated whole nations and torn families apart for a profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory….
From what I can learn, it was sad. Certainly. But my ancestors who lived and died in it are dead. The white men who profited by their labor and lives are dead also. I have no personal memory of those times, and no responsibility for them. Neither has the grandson of the men who held my folks…. I have no intention of beating on old graves…. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negroes who hold that nature somehow has given them a low-down dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it…. Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and that is worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it.” – Zora Neale Hurston
There is only you making a fool of yourself on a day that ends with a ‘y’.
Brilliant, timely, and TRUE. Few authors can justly claim similar praise. God Bless you and your good wife, from my heart. May your goals for the future of America be realized, as the distortions of the psychopaths are seen as the distortion, the inversion, the mirror image of reality that they actually are.
You have given us an image of the moral high ground. Now we must take that ground back.
Today! And every Day.
Linda
The moral high ground of individual freedom, individual liberty, the personal and self-interested pursuit of happiness, and Capitalism can not be defended with Biblical morality.
It can not be defended by an appeal to the mystical, supernatural, other-worldly, and Judeo-Christian moral code of altruism and self-sacrifice. The sacrifice of the individual to OTHER, to God or to neighbor.
Only on the moral basis of SELFISHNESS, properly and objectively defined, RATIONAL SELFISHNESS, or if you prefer, RATIONAL SELF-INTEREST and RATIONAL SELF-PRESERVATION, can individual freedom, individual liberty, the pursuit of personal happiness, and Capitalism be successfully defended and championed.
“America’s inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.” – Ayn Rand
you’re so inappropriate and unkind. get some help for this.
I wish Mr.Horowitz good health, a speedy recovery, and many years of life. I wish him the best. But unreason (secular or religious) isn’t the answer that will save America. Unreason (secular and religious) is the cause of America’s collapse. The only antidote for unreason (secular or religious) is a philosophy of CONSISTENT and unbreached REASON.
“There are many good people in the world who accept religion, and many of them hold some good ideas on social questions. I do not dispute that. But their religion is not the solution to our problem; it is the problem. Do I say that therefore there should now only be “freedom for atheism”? No, I am not Mr. Kemp. Of course, religions must be left free; no philosophic viewpoint, right or wrong, should be interfered with by the state. I do say, however, that it is time for patriots to take a stand — to name publicly what America does depend on, and why that is not Judaism or Christianity.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America”
“Religion versus America”
You seem to have appropriated Peekaboo’s psychosis as your own. You are not well. Seek help.
There is no such thing as UNREASON for to presume one uses it requires one to REASON which you favor but fail to see it used before your very eyes.
You are also myopic in thinking that REASON, in a normal sense of the word, can only be had without God יהוה. This is error.
More crap from one of the most miserable losers on the planet. Get a life outside of your safe space.
I agree with Cat. You need help for your long running psychosis.
I AM outside of a safe space, you emotionally, petulantly, childishly, personally, incessantly, attack me all the time. And you’ve been doing it for YEARS now. And I’m sure you will never stop. A childish man is usually childish all his life.
The validity of the mostly ignored truth of the eloquent rule of capitalism’s invisible hand still prevails because of the religious acceptance and the secular human instinct to better one’s self. Altruism is the luxury of successful implementation of capitalism and non-existent in tyrannical dictatorships that portray their systems of compulsory redistribution of resources as humanitarian.
Not only that but wealth and poverty are relative. There can never be total equality in everything. The atheist tries to play God יהוה and manipulate the natural man.
Allowing one the freedom to make his or her way in life is allowing the soul to soar, or not….
Free choice is the answer. No dictatorial systems.
Being grateful for what we have is what brings smiles to our faces and the pleasure to help the unfortunate as well as the ideas to strive to reach some other goal.
🌷
Great article Mr. Horowitz…you’re one of a kind. Have a speedy recovery., We are in desperate need for more like you.
David, Horowitz remains:
“The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.”
Thank you Mr Horowitz, this site has inspired many people, me included.
THX 1138,
There has always been in the Christian world a movement radically opposed to slavery. In fact the abolition of slavery has clearly been theorized by Christians. This movement was not marginal. And it didn’t start with the “Lumières”, but long before. It was Christians who asserted that the person is not just a biological body, but that it also includes the fruit of his work, what he owns, his money. You continued to make Christianity something homogeneous, whereas there was within the church, an immense movement of ideas and thought during 2000 years, with controversies, debates of ideas on almost all subjects. You forget that it was Christians who founded the school of Salamanca. That there is in the biblical text a vision of the modern capitalist economy, and that Christians have recalled this. Without Christianity, the Western world would have remained in a state of barbarism. You also forget the church’s fight against bigotry. You ignore a whole, very large set of things, you want to make a scapegoat of it. From an anthropological, sociological and psychological point of view, the Bible, the biblical myths, parables of Jesus, are of a very high level, but you have not studied either Jewish thought or Christian theology, then you can tell all the nonsense disconnected from a whole very, very big, huge, vast, whole of things.
And you are not recontextualizing a whole large set of practices, customs, traditions, that have evolved over 2000 years, and which are not the same everywhere in Europe, whether you are in the north, or in the south, in the east or in the west. Without Christian thought, Europe would have remained barbaric. And it is those who have moved away from Christian thought and Jewish morality in the 20th century who have committed the most atrocities.
The fall from power of the church was also the possibility for sectarian movements to take power, including communism, Marxism, socialism, which were widely condemned by a whole range of Christians in the 19th and 20th centuries. Your assertion that communism, Marxism, socialism were born of Christianity is scientifically and theologically false. You will find in Christian theology the rejection of socialism. And you have to separate civil justice from church justice. You know absolutely nothing about the inquisition, the why and how… You have a totally ideologically oriented vision, your criticism goes through a highly distorting prism. The fundamental idea of Socialism is absolutely erroneous, and contradictory to Catholic teaching.
Finally, you will find in ancient Greek thought a whole set of patterns and models that have been used by socialist thinkers, and in Book V of The Republic, Plato exposes political ideas close to a communist ideology. And you may find disturbing similarities between Marx and Plato.
Mr. Carras, the CRUCIAL issue in the history of the development of a philosophy of freedom and liberty, of mankind’s intellectual progress towards or away from freedom and liberty, is and has always been the philosophical battle between REASON versus UNREASON.
What is REALITY? What are the facts of reality? And by what means of knowledge and method of knowledge (logic) can man arrive with certainty at the facts of reality? REASON or some form of UNREASON? Or put another way FAITH or REASON?
No religion can be or has ever been COMPLETELY devoid of some rational common sense but always within the religious, mystical, supernatural, context of an ocean of unreason, i.e., of religious faith. Which then is the factor that is responsible for the rational elements in a religion, and which factor is responsible for the irrational elements in a religion, reason or faith? Religion is an early form of philosophy, a precursor to rational philosophy. As such, the whole point of religion was and is to make some kind of sense, some degree of understanding, of existence, of man’s nature, and of man’s relation to existence.
A religion can and often does undergo historical periods where the religion becomes more rational or becomes more mystical, supernatural, otherwordly, utterly dismissive of this natural reality and this earthly life, in other words more irrational. This phenomenon also occurs geographically, where the same religion in different hemispheres, can in one hemisphere become more irrational, while next door in the other hemisphere a more rational version develops. Some religions, over millenia, have slowly and tortuously, become more rational than irrational, more wordly than otherwordly, i.e., today’s modern, diluted, secularized, versions of Judaism and Christianity. While another religion remains in its pure, medieval, orthodoxy. Untouched, undiluted, unreformed, by the influence of rational philosophy, i.e., Islam.
Christianity began as simply the Oriental Cult of Jesus of Nazareth when that cult began to invade the pagan West it was ridiculed, and rightfully so, for its many mystical, supernatural, and absurd claims and beliefs. It was as ridiculed by the Greco-Roman pagans as it was vehemently rejected by the Jews. In order to give the Cult of Jesus some semblance of intellectual respectability the early church fathers like Augustine, co-opted, borrowed, and stole Plato’s mystical, supernatural, otherwordly, philosophy to try and intellectually defend the the Cult of Jesus’ mystical supernaturalism.
Ancient Greek philosophy was no more perfectly homogenous than Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Plato’s philosophy is the mystical, supernatural, antipode to Aristotle’s reason, logic, and reality based philosophy. Even Aristotle’s philosophy is not perfectly homogenous, Aristotle contains Platonic elements within it. But, the crucial difference between pagan Greco-Roman philosophy and culture and Oriental religion was that reason was dominant over any form of unreason. Whatever pagan, mystical, cults existed, and there were many, the dominant cultural, intellectual, force in the West was reason. While the dominant element in the Orient was the unreason of religious faith. The ancient Jews fought tooth and nail against Hellenization, i.e., against Western rational philosophy diluting or altering one iota their religious mysticism.
The Cult of Jesus co-opted Platonism to acquire a semblance of intellectual plausability and respectability and became Christianity. Philosophical supernaturalism by its otherwordly logic must always lead to an elite theocratic priesthood of theologians or secular, tyrannical, technocrats like Anthony Fauci. Platonism always leads to a theocracy when it exists in a religious form. And Platonism must always lead to a secular tyranny when it exists in its secular form, i.e., collectivism-socialism-fascism.
More people should speak out against the Bolsheviks who want t o ruin America and reduce us to a 3nd World Nation
David, we have only met through the reading of you writings, but the truth and honesty and first hand knowledge of what you write has made me a tremendous fan. I have read several of your more recent books but also the first three of your Black Books and I have others on the shelf to read. Keep up the good work, we need you!!!
THX 1138 wrote : “The CRUCIAL issue in the history of the development of a philosophy of freedom and liberty, of mankind’s intellectual progress towards or away from freedom and liberty, is and has always been the philosophical battle between REASON versus UNREASON”.
False, Factual reality is much more complicated than this aberrant simplification.
The belief in spirits does not necessarily imply a disconnection with the rigorous observation of substantial reality. See on the side of the tribes of Amazonia, the belief, the myths, are connected with an environmental reality. Religious belief can remain connected with anthropological realities, with materialism, with rigorous observation of human behavior and “natural” phenomena. One does not prevent the other, and all Christianity proves it, as well as the myths of the Jewish Torah. Studies the Bible from an anthropological, sociological and psychological point of view. Myths, for example the myth of the dragon, are linked with anthropology, sociology, human psychology, these are two things that remain linked. The myth of the dragon tells a reality about the human being. The myth of Adam and Eve tells realities about human behavior, which upstream have been rigorously observed.
The danger is when beliefs are no longer linked to anthropological realities, we enter the domain of the occult, and the world of phantasmagoria. The myth of the dragon is not a phantasmagoria, because precisely it tells something related to anthropology, human psychology.
“It has never been part of the argument of this book that Christians did not attempt to use rational means of discovering theological truths. The problem was rather that reason is only of limited use in finding such truths. Any rational argument must begin with axioms, foundations from which an argument can progress, and proceed to conclusions on which all concur….
So where are the axioms from which theology can progress? Attempts by Thomas Aquinas and others to provide self-evident principles from which logical argument about the nature of God could progress collapsed as soon as it became clear (in the Enlightenment, for example) that there was no agreement about what these principles might be (as there had to be if they were self-evident!). One can talk of the revelation of God, but, as the Montanists showed, anyone can claim to have received a revelation from God, and there is virtually no way of assessing what is a valid or invalid revelation. In practice revelation does not prove susceptible to reason because there is no way through which it can be assessed by reasoning minds. The result is that in the churches there was soon a battle for control over what counted as revelation, and the Montanists were among the casualties. The scriptures are often cited by theologians as the primary source of “axioms”.
However, when one puts together the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the Book of Revelation, and the Old Testament, there is no sense of a coherent “axiomatic” basis on which to build theological truths. As any study of, say, the Arian dispute shows, the different sides to the conflict drew on different texts to “support” their argument. Again the churches had eventually to assume control of how scripture had to be interpreted, in effect so that interpretations never conflicted with what became orthodoxy. Even Thomas Aquinas, one of Europe’s most outstanding champions of rational thought, had to suspend reason when it conflicted with orthodoxy.
So the point being made here is not that the Christians did not attempt to use reason but they could never reach agreed truths, any more than there could be, in practice, an agreed formulation of what is meant by Plato’s “the Good”. The evidence of Christian disputes shows conclusively that reason failed in achieving any kind of consensus, and, in fact, like other spiritual movements in the ancient world, Christianity splintered as it settled into different cultural and philosophical niches across the empire….
Philosophically, therefore, it becomes crucial to define the areas where certainty is possible and those where it is not. This was another of the intellectual achievements of the Greeks. Pace Plato, they understood that the nature of the divine, if such spiritual force exists, cannot be grasped when there is no external evidence for it. The troubles described in this book come not from the teachings of Jesus or from the nature of Christians themselves (though arguably one can trace them to Paul), but from the determination to make “certain” statements about God. Tragically, the pressures to do so, many of them political and economic, were intensified by the introduction of the concept of an afterlife, in which most would be punished eternally for failure to adhere to what was eventually decided to be orthodox. If there is no external standard by which one can define God, then figures who have the authority to define him for others have to be created and this authority given ideological support. This invariably means the suppression of freedom of independent thought.” – Charles Freeman, “The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason”
“Philosophically, therefore, it becomes crucial to define the areas where certainty is possible and those where it is not.”
The unknown being infinite in absolutely everything, no certainty is possible about anything.
If you study a nail for 100,000 years, after 100,000 years its unknown will remain infinite.
And you can use scientific reason to slaughter hundreds of millions of people.
When one understands “rationality” as an emergent phenomenon that arises from the cesspool of irrationality then one understands irrationality correctly. Rationality can never divorce itself completely from its origins as you would know if you could contemplate chaos which you haven’t been taught to.
One could call it a deficiency in your education.
“Rationality can never divorce itself completely from its origins”
Rationality and irrationality have always cohabited, and they are two communicating vessels. And the brain can generate irrational thought on its own. This means that there is an irrationality “function” in the brain. And the whole thing is to understand how this function is useful, as long as it is not linked to a criminal, destructive drive.
Mr. Carras is sober, you’re not. Buh-Bye.
“There is a use of [the concept] “infinity” which is valid, as Aristotle observed, and that is the mathematical use. It is valid only when used to indicate a potentiality, never an actuality. Take the number series as an example. You can say it is infinite in the sense that, no matter how many numbers you count, there is always another number. You can always keep on counting; there’s no end. In that sense it is infinite—as a potential. But notice that, actually, however many numbers you count, wherever you stop, you only reached that point, you only got so far. . . . That’s Aristotle’s point that the actual is always finite. Infinity exists only in the form of the ability of certain series to be extended indefinitely; but however much they are extended, in actual fact, wherever you stop it is finite.” – Objectivisy philosopher Leonard Peikoff
“An arithmetical sequence extends into infinity, without implying that infinity actually exists; such extension means only that whatever number of units does exist, it is to be included in the same sequence.” – Ayn Rand
“Every unit of length, no matter how small, has some specific extension; every unit of time, no matter how small, has some specific duration. The idea of an infinitely small amount of length or temporal duration has validity only as a mathematical device useful for making certain calculations, not as a description of components of reality. Reality does not contain either points or instants (in the mathematical sense). By analogy: the average family has 2.2 children, but no actual family has 2.2 children; the “average family” exists only as a mathematical device.” – Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger
“And you can use scientific reason to slaughter hundreds of millions of people.”
What you speak of is not scientific reason, what you speak of is RATIONALIZATION and moral EVASION! Yes, men have FREE WILL, morality is a CHOICE, and at any point in time a man can choose not to think, not to reason, to evade and betray REALITY, the reality that your right to life imposes upon you an obligation to respect another man’s equal right to his life!
When you kill an innocent man, when you INITIATE force against another man, you have destroyed your own right to live! You can not have your cake and eat it too.
“It is not society [nor the supernatural], nor any social right [or supernatural, divine, edict], that forbids you to kill—but the inalienable individual right of another man to live. This is not a “compromise” between two rights—but a line of division that preserves both rights untouched. The division is not derived from an edict of society [or an edict from God]—but from your own inalienable individual right. The definition of this limit is not set arbitrarily by society—but is implicit in the definition of your own right.” – Ayn Rand
“And you can use scientific reason to slaughter hundreds of millions of people.”
You CAN murder another person, you can choose to enslave another person, you can rob another person, but you can not do it by RIGHT!
“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.” – Ayn Rand
Long may it fall.
You’re wasting your time. Victor Davis Hanson et al are servants of the state. What causes them internal conflict is that the state is no longer serving their interests. As with everywhere else the state serves its own interests.
And the same internal conflict that can only be resolved in the usual way exists in the MAGA movement. At root all these people want a more rational state that services them but the fact is the state serves best by getting out of the way and performing the basic functions it now only serves contrary to the aforementioned interests.
The state rejects this basic interpretation just as it rejects the Constitution. This is a completely rational rejection since the state has never had any inclination to be basic.
Even in this absolute negation of basic they still have not understood.
Yes .I hope you live in good health until you want to die David. In the meantime we have to live with idiots that don’t understand that the whole system let them down.
Because this is no kind of game anybody wants to play.
In the meantime we have idiots who think this is some kind of game to play.
People that can’t accept death. Death is coming for all of us. Live Covid.
Oh ,okay you’ve got a zero tolerance policy like Dershowitz? Let’s find out who the the who the zero tolerance policy applies to to effectively pathetic schmucks.
Excuse my drunkenness but seriously?
Wow, it’s like you want to live in good in health in the most prosperous society that has ever existed.
Prosperous not on your account David but still you want to live.
May you be blessed and all that but really what do you have that hasn’t led us exactly here?
Exactly what is it you think you’ve had in your life that didn’t lead us exactly here?
Exactly nothing
Because you have nothing
Do you have any idea of what people are prepared to do for any kind of BS reason? Perhaps you aren’t prepared for goof reasons. We must reconsider.
This nonsense I wrote makes absolutely no sense please ignore it.
I like it. You shouldn’t be ashamed.
Complements upon your observations.
I take them to heart.
Thank you.
We need you David, stay around