Posted on 12/12/2004 4:19:58 AM PST by Leifur
Perhaps the most revolutionary conservtive movement in the USA is home schooling. This is a multi-generational project with a huge potential payoff. If CHristians keep having lots of kids, and giving them superior educations, then the future will be ours. The liberals are either aborting their kids, or rendering them incompetent.
You have listed a number of problems which I really don't have an answer for. Historical trends are really difficult to change. Quite often changes that occur are the result of unexpected external events.
The Ukraine (I don't know if the candidate is good or bad) is a perfect example. The entrenched power tried to defeat the people with rigged elections and even tried to murder the candidate running against them. The People did not stand for it and took to the streets. Now the Supreme court over there that probably would have let the sham stand, understood that the people would not stand for it. It's hard work and takes years to correct. The most committed win.Right now the only really committed in Eu is the Islamofascist. Good luck.
Expect teacher unions to pressure the Dems to try ban home schooling in the years to come.
bump
Their is a major flaw in your assumptions. Teaching of Christianity in government schools, Government mandated Christian Holidays, transform faith in the eternal to mere cultural trappings. Your Churches must first be free from the state, utterly independent and passionate for the divine. This means being willing to forget about your beautiful cathedrals, priories, and monastaries. They have to a substantial degree become mere museums and are largely controlled by a secular fifth column. You must let go of them and trust that God will restore more than you will lose. Europe must once again become Christian. It's only by bold Christian faith that Europe will transform for the good.
The Old Europe likes Socialism, Atheism, immorality, no values...
I grew up in the sixties, and always felt like some sort of odd-ball. In my wildest dreams I never thought I would ever see the day when Republicans would hold both the senate and the house and have a Republican president. We conservatives still have a lot of work to do but we are winning, and you will too. Just don't expect things to change over night. Your current situation did not happen overnight and neither will the solution. Be patient and of good cheer. Conservative values will win because they are based in truth and goodness. Good luck to you and God bless.
Christian Nowatzky and Kostantin von Abendroth, two divinity students in their mid twenties affiliated with the free church in Germany (1% of the population) have a vision to bring Reformed (Calvinist) Christianity back to Berlin. (And from there--establish churches throughout the rest of the main cities of Europe where the christianity in general and the reformed church in particular have become virtually extinct. Their vision is to change the ruling elites.
Can they succeed?
The short answer is yes, definitely. Their timing is picture perfect. These are the guys to spread the word. They have good backing from Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in NYC and Mclean Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Mclean. I've already sent them a check. (And figure to do so regularly.) fyi Redeemer Presbyterian Church was the first reformed church set up in the downtown area of an old US city in more than a century when it started up in 1986. Tim Kellor the pastor there-- really knows his stuff. I started my walk with the Lord at Redeemer back in the l989-90 before coming to Washington DC. I now attend Mclean Presbyterian Church.
http://www.redeemer2.com/themovement/issues/2004/august/berlinprojekt.html
http://mail.yahoo.com/config/login?/ym/www.berlinprojekt.org
http://us.f524.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=4803_3956708_4614_594_1277_0_32029_3898_133896613&Idx=10&YY=83913&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Sent
But even when there is no explict language barrier, there is one anyway. For the simple reason that the people who choose to go into the publicity business - newspapers, radio, television, the movies (and also IMHO education, especially higher education) - sometimes want to be misunderstood. And obviously such people, if they have a coherent interest in being understood in a certain way when the public understands differently, have the opportunity as well as the motive to produce confusion by insinuating novel meanings into traditional words.
Consider the term "society." That is a good conservative word, until the leftists get their hands on it. Suddenly the all-encompassing word "society" is reduced, in leftist usage, down to the thing which they are selling. Namely, government. I asked my leftist uncle bluntly what he thought the difference between "society" and "government" was, and he admitted that he saw no difference! He didn't think that was a confession, but I did and I do. The collectivist project is to expand government to utterly control society as a whole - which in practical terms also means to reduce society down to what the government can control. Collectivism is really governmentism, and "governmentism" is all too clearly a synonym for tyranny.
The collectivists used the nice conservative word "society" to form a deceptive word for their tyrannical project by calling their project "socialism." And outside the U.S. - the exemplar of the (literally) liberal country, "socialism" was sufficiently deceptive a label for tyranny to be made popular or even dominant. But in the U.S. that label was still not enough to sell tyranny effectively. But collectivists are nothing if not persistent, and they latched onto the project of using the word which best described their opponents - "liberal" - when speaking of their own, anti-liberty, project. This transformation was already complete, this usage was already standard, in the mouth of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Thus, the American reading The Road to Serfdom - F.A. Hayek's famous WWII book on the essential similarity of "left wing" communism and "right wing" fascism - must constantly remind himself that when Hayek uses the term "liberal" he does not mean socialist but the very opposite of that. And thus I understand what you mean when you use the term "liberal." I have to think consciously about it, but I understand. Just as if the term were not part of my native language.
Similarly, the term "conservative" can have entirely different meanings here and in Europe. American conservatives want to conserve - as the preamble to our Constitution puts it - "the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Ironically "liberty" means freedom, and freedom implies the possibility of doing things differently than they have been done in the past. So we Americans have a strange sort of "conservatism." Our sort of "conservatism" exalts people who innovate, like the heads of our famous current corporations now, like Ford and Edison and the Wright brothers - and even the noted member of the group which produced the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin (theorist on the nature of electricity and inventor of, among other things, the cast iron wood-burning stove, the bifocal eyeglass lens, and the lightning rod). And, comes to that, Thomas Jefferson, who reinvented the plow from the amazingly inefficient traditional wedge made of wood to the standard curved scooping shape and iron construction which is still taken for granted today.
The opposition to the socialist project must be political, and in politics you must control your own vocabulary or the socialists will define you as being evil. They still do that in America, even though we did win the last election by about 3%. Without the constant barrage of deceit coming from journalism and other sources of socialist propaganda, the recent election should have beeen won by a ten-point margin or more.
As a conservative I must be willing to conserve what is good in my society, and christianity is good and deserves to be conserved in a christina society. Revival must allways have something firm to stand on, and when a nation can stand on 1000 years of christianity it can be beliewed that the next 1000 years will also be on christian grounds. This is our culture, and it is my duty as a conservative to preserve my nations culture, but I also want it to be revived as a living, breathing christianity, like my own church (not the national church) has preserved, but the solution is not to rip apart the link to the past and become a secular society.
But I agree that the churches have to be free from the state, it does not have to be the same thing to have the priests on government payrole (wich I am opposed) and to have the state to rely on its christian grounds. The reason that the government pays the national church´s priests is a contract made between the church and the state in the year 1907 about that the government got all the land in the church´s ownership (aroun one third of the country) instead of paying the church´s priests. I consider this one of the worst thing in our political and religous history, but before that, the church and christianity were supported to be defended and preserved by the state, as is claimed in our constitution, and that is possible in many other ways than direct government payrole.
Now, when liberals are rallying for separation of church and state, I at least, am opposed to give any religon the same standing in Icelandic society, but I am not opposed to what most people really want, to make the church economically independent, but most people think of these two things as the same, wich they are not. To rift this contract is though difficult, as the government has to find a way to pay the church for the land it has allready sold, or return the land, or something like that.
I noticed one thing you said in your homepage, that conservatism is optimistic. I recently read a paper about the difference between european and Us conservatism, and our tend to be much more pessimistic than yours. I am at least pessimistic, the liberals are taking everything over.
I agree with all of your post - but then, I am a conservative American. The poster is a conservative, but not an American. Part of what he want to conserve is a traditional explicit Christian Establishment. And part of the reason for that desire is, apparently, fear of a future Islamic Establishment. I agree with you that a Christian-in-name-only Establishment is a slender reed upon which to hope to rest.He does however self-identify as, "I am an christian-pentacostal conservative," so he may possibly be able to hear what you are saying; his particular Christian denomination is hardly likely to be the Establishment in his home country. With man it is impossible, but God may perhaps send a revival to Europe.
Christians in Europe obviously have the same problem we see here in the ACLU persecuting Christians and the Christian underpinning of the Boy Scouts. And in the tarring of Christians with the brush of the totalitarianism which Islamists promote.
I think that the antiauthoritarian distinctive of the Bible-believing Church is that the New Testament was written when Christianity was under persecution and was nowhere the Establishment, and had no military pretensions whatsoever. The Koran was apparently written by someone who was bent on military conquest. The modern-day Know-nothings of journalism systematically conflate the two radically different perspectives under the rhubric of "fundamentalism."
"Do you, the conservative base of the US have any ideas for us"
Come live and work in Texas.
It seems like the countries that have a state religion are the countries that tend to be atheistic. Those, like the US, that separate church and state, are more religious.
How is Denmark able to enact immigration reform from *within* the EU?
My advice for European conservatives would be (ironically) to do as the homosexuals and Islamic fundementalists have done: establish an agenda and make a committment to putting it in place.
I have seen some Freepers say, "The Europeans have allowed this situation to happen, now let them stew in it. Don't expect America to save your asses one more time." We should be saying, "How can we help?"
Good luck, Leifur
It seems to be the case, but that is mainly because the government run churches stop to be living, and become political correct, dead institutions easily manipulated by anti-christian, liberal forces. But it is possible to have religious countries in both name and effect, and in fact it will be kicking christianity while it is lying down to separate the church and state now, and result in total unchristianity of the whole society in both name and practise.
But I still beliewe though that the church should be come economically and administratively (wich it is becoming more and more) from the state, but as it is the job of the government to protect Icelandic culture, it is the job to protect christianity as well, because it is an integral part of our culture. If we separate, what then? We will have to change everything in our society, even the flag.
Yeah, maybe we should do that. We have few of us started to write a homepage promoting conservative values, but we have not dared to set that up as an agenda, although we call it an conservative webpage (wich does not have to mean the same thing in people´s mind). This is a difficult situation, as US conservatism and specially neo-conservatism (wich is not the same thing, although most European think it is) is so loathed here now.
About Denmark, they have done much in recent years, although they are in a little difficulty, because a human rights commitee or something like that, essentially a EU institution promoting liberalism, has criticized the laws, wich we have copied mostly here in Iceland although not beeing part of the EU.
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