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This is an unusual Memorial Day. Today we remember, with a debt of gratitude we can never repay, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us free from external enemies. As we do so, internal enemies are working steadily to erode and ultimately destroy the very freedoms for which so many gave their lives, and to render their sacrifices meaningless.
Today is May 29. It is not only Memorial Day; it is also the 570th anniversary of an event that is largely forgotten today, but was one of the most momentous occasions in all of human history: the conquest of Constantinople and final destruction of the Roman Empire.
If students today take enough time away from transgender studies and Critical Race Theory to learn about such matters at all, they learn that the Islamic conquest of Constantinople on May 29, 1453 marked the end of the Byzantine Empire, which at the time was essentially a degraded city-state marked by infighting and corruption. They’re unlikely to learn that “Byzantine Empire” was a term that was never used until long after the demise of the entity in question, which throughout its long life was known as the Roman Empire, a political entity that lasted an astonishing 2,206 years, and which gave the Western world its spiritual, political, intellectual, philosophical, and artistic patrimony.
In many ways, as I show in my forthcoming book Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization, we are still living in the Roman Empire; its cultural influence has never dissipated. The lessons we can learn from it are so many and various as to defy easy synopsis. But one of the most telling of those lessons for our situation today is that for most of its long lifetime, the Roman Empire was generally thought to be invincible on the battlefield, so far superior to other military forces that the Romans at times even prevailed against stronger forces on the power of their reputation alone. Not only Romans, but many non-Romans at times assumed this.
Roman politicians likewise thought that the empire could never be defeated, and behaved accordingly, unhesitatingly engaging in savage infighting without regard for how this fighting would weaken the empire before its external enemies. The empire was forever. It would never end. So they could take endless risks. One of the most notable of these regarded mass migration. The Western empire that was centered on Rome itself fell in 476 after a mass migration that many Romans encouraged, as the migrants were willing to serve in the military when their own countrymen often were not. Those migrants, however, often did not share the values of the Romans, and as they grew in number, became increasingly assertive and demanding. Ultimately, they gained complete control.
The Roman empire centered in Constantinople lived on for nearly a thousand years after this. It ultimately succumbed to the Islamic jihadis who had been trying to destroy it for nearly eight hundred of those thousand years, and who still harbor the same aspirations of conquest today.
On this Memorial Day, we are likewise still threatened by those Islamic jihadis, although most Americans have forgotten about their existence and think that they are a spent force. We are also threatened by a mass migration that weakens our national character and unity. And just as was so often the case in the Roman empire, the most immediate threat comes from within, from those who are so intent on securing their power, and so short-sighted, that they are destroying the very basis of that power. As we remember the fallen today, we must realize that the existential threat we face today cannot and will not be defeated by military force.
The soldiers now are ordinary citizens. The warriors who win the next victory for human dignity and freedom will be people who had the courage to stand against the officially mandated madness and say, “No more.” We have been brought to a point where it is no longer enough to be grateful to God that some people gave their lives to defend and protect our civilization. It is now incumbent upon us to arise and be willing to do the same, not with bullets and bombs, but with the force of reason and the unyielding refusal to surrender and submit.
We live in an age when absurdity and madness are not only in the ascendancy, but are insistently forced upon us by an increasingly authoritarian ruling traitor class. In this age, staying sane is a revolutionary act. On this Memorial Day, dare to be part of that revolution.
Very well said.
Thank you to all that have served and those who continue to serve their country.
Cogent. Short of Divine intervention, sane citizens with courage are the sole barrier against the forces threatening to destroy our civilization. I think courage is more lacking than sanity, and we should each support and encourage each other in order to foster it.
If I may, a similar point is well made in the following:
https://starrs.us/the-last-full-measure/
No mention of Ancient Greece? And no mention of the stupidity, superstition, poverty, misery, mass death and mass starvation, the tyranny of serfdom and theocracy, that was medieval Christianity?
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not Western but Oriental cults of mysticism and superstition, all three of which are invaders of the reality, reason, logic, and science based Greco-Roman West.
Oriental religion, oriental unreason, is what destroyed and once again is destroying the Greco-Roman West. Marxism in all its essentials is nothing more than Oriental religion cloaked in pseudo-scientific nonsense.
“Greece created philosophy, logic, science, mathematics, and a magnificent, man-glorifying art; it gave us the base of modern civilization in every field; it taught the West how to think. In addition, through its admirers in ancient Rome, which built on the Greek intellectual base, Greece indirectly gave us the rule of law and the first idea of man’s rights (this idea was originated by the pagan Stoics)….
On every account, the conclusion is the same: Communism is not a new, rational philosophy; it is a tired, slavishly imitative heir of religion.” – “Religion versus America”. Leonard Peikoff
Unbelievable. You wrote an anti-Christian screed on Memorial Day. I wonder how much you will trash America on July 4th.
You have a lot of nerve commenting about anything on Memorial Day. You have no idea about sacrifice or love of country. You will always be a selfish, self-centered little P.O.S.
So I will repost my favorite unAmerican comment of yours:
*I don’t recognize any such absurdity as service to my country. I recognize a moral responsibility to my freedom and liberty and the freedom and liberty of those I love.* –THX 1138
6,800 Americans died fighting against the British in the War of Independence.
650,000 Americans died in the Civil War.
116,708 Americans died in WWI
500,000 American died in WWII.
37,000 Americans died in the Korean War
58,000 Americans died in the VietNam War
9,000 Americans died in Iraq and Afghanistan
They died so you could have the freedom to be a petty, insufferable Objectivist jerk each and everyday.
The one thing no one will ever associate you with: heroism.
This Memorial Day could , certainly,be called “A time of crisis”.That is because the devolt Muslims who are also the stealth jihadists are constantly scheming and active in their sly insidious subversiveIslamic goal to replace United States Constitution as the law of the land for America and replace it with Sharia for the advancement of Islam.
Likewise, the the other devolt Muslims who are the violent jihadist, as those of al Qaeda , ISIS and so forth,haven’t given up on their delusional but dangerous jihad of violence killing and destruction against America and the American people, It;s not a matter of “if” they they strike again but “when” it;s only a matter of time .
So the jihadist s”by hook or by crook” are still striving for a great advancement of Islam in the US.
Therefore , its best to understand what exactly Islam really is
One good and valid definition of Islam is that it may actually be described as a “religious political / Sharia system of complete tyrannical mind control that totally influences the thoughts ,ideas and behavior over and upon millions of people around the world.”
Which this ,above , interpretation of Islam, the wisdom of the statement of Thomas Jefferson does very much apply to this subject .
For Mr. Jefferson had declared “I have sworn upon the altar of God , eternal hostility towards every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Thank you. Staying sane is quite a task these days when formerly normal people begin to succumb to the pressure to advocate or condone perversion or rank immorality.
Do enough of us have the fortitude to resist the pressure and propaganda?
We remember the past, again and again…for it sheds Light to the Future
Without the Religious/Political power of the Constantin’s there is No Need for a Counter Force against them by Islamic Political/Religious Governments….they are Yesterdays news ready to be thrown into the trash
The US Constitution gave us a First Amendment to protect from hogwash religious movements….yet still the Money going into NGO’s and Religious institutions is powered by our electorate. And, Love the little Church’s on the Hill in Vermont/New England., Norman Rockwell style. But, now wait for the blowback by these other groups….
Can’t we all just get along?
And don’t get me wrong. Our departed royal queen herself in her own quiet way thought the best way to honour their commemoration was to fight a new global war on Climate Change. And Trump for his part launched a new global war in mind against contagion. Such are the demands of the living upon the dead.
First and foremost, many brave , courageous heroic US soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan fighting the vicious and deadly Taliban ,who had given safe haven to the Osama Bin Laden and his jihadists who used that land as a base for that schemed jihad mass murder affront of September 11, 2001. Those American soldiers should be remembered and honored, esspecally on Memorial Day.
Second that treacherous Joe Biden made them all die in vain because of his horrible ordered rashly withdrawal from Afghanistan in the wrong way in the wrong time.
That despicable Biden fiendish villain of the very worst sort.