Posted on 09/03/2009 4:52:50 AM PDT by spirited irish
In his article, "How to Argue with (Guilty) Liberals," Carey Roberts wrote, "Like a demanding and ill-mannered child, liberals are used to getting their way. Whenever they lapse into the losing side of an argument, they reflexively resort to name-calling and mud-slinging. Epithets like "neo-Nazi," "crypto-fascist," and "imperialist stooge" buzz like mosquitoes hovering over a Potomac swamp. But how many conservatives who are targets of such slurs know these liberals are indulging in one of the greatest intellectual ruses in history? How many realize it's a matter of the red-faced pot calling the kettle black?" (http://www.chronwatch-america.com/5457/1/How-to-Argue-With-a-Guilty-Liberal/Page1.html)
In response to Carey's well-reasoned advice, Free Republic members possessed of a lot of first-hand experience with liberals responded with cogent observations such as: "It is a mental disease," "Liberals are not moved by facts and logic. So none of this will work," "Never attempt to analyze insanity. It is useless to argue with liberals," "I can't talk to them...all they do is yell 'Bush is stupid' and nothing else....to them thats the end of any discussion." (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2325537/posts)
Though liberals boast ad nauseum that as 'children of the Enlightenment' their beliefs are based purely in science and reason, nothing could be further from reality.
Researchers of the genesis of modern Progressive Liberalism say the movement first arose during the Renaissance as a rejection of the Church and the Biblical God paired to a turning back to the "old ways." The "old ways" were occult-magic pantheistic esoteric Cabbalism, Ancient Mystery Religions, Luciferian Gnosticism, Heremeticism, Theosophy, Roisicrucianism, Anthroposophy, alchemy, Tantric sex-magic, the Eternal Return, and more. With passage of time, a secularized version of the former would emerge. It would subdivide and be called positivist materialism and secular humanism. The 'old ways,' a type of Gnostic 'quietist pantheism,' would eventually take outward expression in a variety of political, philosophical, and scientistic systems such as Bolshevism, Marxist Communism, National Socialism, Fabianism, existentialism, empiricism, scientific socialism, Freudianism, Progressivism, Hegelianism, utopianism, Darwinism, Cultural Marxism, multiculturalism, and political correctness.
Modern liberalism then, is a continuation of the 20th century's totalitarian mass movements (i.e., Communism and National Socialism), which over time had gradually emerged out of Renaissance magic. It was Fyodor Dostoevsky who foretold both the rise of Marxist Communism in Russia and the murder of millions of people by Gnostic-Communists. Dostoevsky was among the first to understand that the modern mass political movements are devilish Gnostic irreligion's aping science and reason and demonically dedicated to the destruction of the idea of the living God and to total suppression of the knowledge that man is created in His spiritual image. At bottom modernity's Gnostic irreligion's are spiritually, morally, and intellectually bankrupt, concluded Dostoevsky.
Shortly before the French Revolution-Terror, the rebellion against the living Creator had become so all-encompassing that in the words of Lester Crocker, the rebels desired, "...a total integration of man in nature, with refusal of any transcendence....The important thing, as La Mettrie, d'Holbach, and others made clear, is that he is submitted to the same laws; everything is response to need — mechanically...like a tree or a machine. Man merely carries out natural forces — without any freedom whatsoever — in all he does, whether he loves or hates, helps or hurts, gives life or takes it." (Monsters From the Id, E. Michael Jones, p.5)
In short, occluded by hatred, the rebels were compelled by a spirit of madness to willfully choose to annihilate themselves by imagining they were soulless machines or plant-beings rather than created in the spiritual image of God. Nature, Gaia, Overmind, the Goddess of Historical Necessity, divinized dialectical matter — all of these irrational, nonliving Forces would eventually be touted as the magical 'un-creators,' and in time, come to be taught to Westerners as 'evolutionary science.' Unfettered from the Creator and His absolute morality, they could now freely act upon their basest passions — which they would trumpet as 'reason' — and be free of guilt, or so they hoped.
Knowing the Truth, they nevertheless chose to reject Truth and embrace the lie.
"Thus heaven I've forfeited...I know it full well...My soul, once true to God...Is chosen for hell." Karl Marx in his poem The Pale Maiden (Marx & Satan, Richard Wurmbrand, p. 22)
"I do not want him (Yahweh) to exist, because he would set limits to my greatness. " Dietrich Heimrich Kerler (The Drama of Atheist Humanism, Henri De Lubac, p. 58)
The Psalmist writes, 'the fool has said in his heart, there is no God." (Psalm 14) The ultimate cause of disorder, chaos, murder, tyranny, and all other evils is to forget God. This evil begets other evils, and from the time of the Enlightenment right up to our own time, a massive edifice of interlocking, tightly-woven lies has been spun by the Gnostics. Its' consuming darkness not only overshadows the West — all but obliterating the light of truth, reality, common sense and right and wrong — but under its' covering of darkness, has unleashed murder in numbers so vast that the word 'genocide' had to be invented in order to describe what took place in the USSR, Nazi Germany, and all other societies for whom the bell of death tolled when they fell into the hands of Gnostic irreligionists.
What Is Wrong With Liberals?
In today's psychological terminology, cognitive dissonance is the term used to describe what is in essence, the morally diseased condition so aptly dubbed liberal 'insanity' by one Free Republic member. Cognitive dissonance, also known as moral imbecility, means that two opposing ideas or truth-claims — one true and one false — are held within one's mind at the same time. As pride is offended by truth, it selectively rejects truth and reality and instead, willfully embraces falsehood and surrealism, which it then insists is true. In short, the unreal becomes real, evil becomes good, lie becomes truth, abnormal becomes normal, and the guilty become the innocent. Acts 28:26-27 calls this condition 'willful ignorance.' From the highest corridors of power to the lowest levels of society, moral imbecility is reaching critical mass in America.
Boastfully calling itself scientific, enlightened, and reasoned, the spirit of Progressivism is a deceiver, for in reality its politics are the politics of fools and the wicked. Though it brags it is forward-thinking, this spirit has in reality, cast the West back into the darkness of mythos, moral relativism, polytheism, superstition, and unfettered envy that characterized the Roman Empire as it slowly died. Its' much-vaunted 'change' has resulted in the unmaking of the true spiritual progress of Jesus Christ and his many disciples, one of whom was St. Augustine.
It was as Rome was dying that St. Augustine both revolutionized and brought to a close antiquity's idea of freedom by connecting it with morals. "Thus," he writes in the City of God, "a good man, though a slave (of Christ Jesus), is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices." Augustine revolutionized the concept of freedom by connecting it to morals, or as our Founders said, to Virtues. Man, said Augustine, was not a slave to nature (or nature's 'gods') or to nature's laws, as Aristotle claimed. His freedom was a function of both will and moral state. Thus man's will is free to turn to his Creator and seek Truth and liberty, or conversely, to turn away from his Creator into the consuming darkness of willful ignorance and amorality, thus enslaving itself to pride and other vices. (Libido Dominandi, E. Michael Jones, p. 57)
After the manner of St. Augustine, President Andrew Jackson's Secretary of War, Lewis Cass, would much later write:
"....the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its' holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power." (quoted from www.earstohear.net/)
First man is progressively enslaved by his evil passions, then he falls head-first into diabolicism. St. Augustine called this pneumopathology 'Libido Dominandi.' Thus it is Libido Dominandi — moral imbecility and diabolical moral imbecility — that possesses the souls and minds of both Progressive Left insiders and their rabidly zealous camp followers.
In a treatise titled, "Leftism as Psychopathy,' John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) writes, "...there (is) a core leftist type — seen at its clearest among Leftist academics and intellectuals. Although such people form only a small fraction of the total population, their influence and their grasp on the levers of power in the media...bureaucracy...universities, and, at times, in politics, makes what they think, say and do very important indeed." It is Ray's contention that this type of person falls within the category of psychopath and sub-clinical psychopath.
The most striking characteristic of the psychopath, notes Ray, is his "moral imbecility" — his breathtaking lack of feeling for other people and his disregard for the rules they live by. They are famous for their utter amorality, lack of remorse, willingness to lie, cheat, steal and kill.
In his analysis of the Progressive Left, Jamie Glazov author of United in Hate writes, " The Left habitually attempts to distance itself from its own history and to obfuscate any straightforward analysis of its political motives, goals, and allegiances. In doing so, the Left intentionally blurs its own complicity in the greatest crimes of the twentieth century." In other words, the Progressive Left speaks with forked tongues and pretends not to know truth. They are double speakers; the evil men of Psalm 140 whose tongues are sharp and poison is under their lips....they set snares for the morally righteous and compass them about with deception. Snares, lies, and deceptions — these are the evil essence of Saul Alinskys' Rules for Radicals among whose adherents are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (United in Hate, p.1)
Glazov observes that the Progressive Left dedicates "their lives to erasing individuality — including their own — and becoming part of a group from whose party line they cannot waiver..." In other words, they seek escape from their Creator through creation of what Eric Voegelin termed a 'second reality,' an illusion of annihilation of self through absorption into nature. Hence they are "motivated by the Marxist dream of destroying the world as it is and building a utopia on its ashes..." ( United in Hate, p. 2)
In short, with their greed, malice, hatred, and envy superheated by will-to-power, they seek not only the death of the Immortal, but the destruction of the Created Order so they can build a New World Order. This is Libido Dominandi inflated to the critical stage of the demonic. The Gnostics now tread the same highway to hell taken by Nimrod (Genesis 10-8) who rebelled against God, then declared himself both god-man and messiah, and with his adherents — who likewise embraced 'self as god' — attempted to bring heaven to earth (a New World Order) in Babylon.
"The mystery religion of Babylon," notes Tal Brooke, "is the root of all mystery religions, the secret initiations, the exalted priesthoods, and....secret knowledge (gnosis). It has fermented over the centuries into a refined wine...." In short, modernity's Gnostic irreligion's are Christian heresy syncretized with all of the 'secret knowledge' of the world's religions — both past and present — and its' taproot is the 'refined wine' of ancient Babylon. (The Great Lie, Tal Brooke, p. 11, SCP Journal, Vol. 29:2-29: 3, 2005)
Envy, said St. Gregory of Nyssa, is, "The passion which causes evil, the father of death, the first entrance for sin, the root of wickedness, the birth of sorrow, the mother of misfortune, the basis of disobedience, the beginning of shame. Envy banishes us from paradise....Envy made Joseph a slave. Envy is the death-dealing sting, the hidden weapon, the sickness of nature, the bitter poison, the self-willed emaciation, the bitter dart, the nail of the soul, the fire in the heart, the flame burning on the inside..." (Life of Moses, quoted in Death by Envy, Fr. George RA Aquaro, p. 74)
"Scripture combines envy with jealousy, covetousness and stinginess, into a single concept that is a manifestation of idolatry (narcissism) of self and belief that there is a limited supply of good," writes Fr. George R. A. Aquaro. If we move aside and dig beneath the rationalizations proffered by Transnational Progressives and their media-mouthpieces calling for hate crime laws, redistribution of wealth, universal healthcare, UNESCO's call for teaching grade-school kids to masturbate, and population control schemes outwardly manifested in abortion (choice), eugenics, and multiple sustainable-growth schemes, we'll find diabolical envy — that Hideous Strength — squatting there at bottom.
In the final analysis, malice and envy towards God compels man to destroy creation and to annihilate his God-given soul by imagining himself as 'one' with nature. This is the definition of damnation, said Fr. Aquaro. Hell is not a punishment meted out by a hateful God as some would think, but an absolute refusal of a pardon granted all mankind. It is impossible to receive good from a person one envies, and so it is that one cannot be saved if one resents God. This is the message of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 when the elder brother refused to enter the house upon his brother's return. It is also the underlying meaning of CS Lewis's pointed observation that the door to hell will be slammed and locked from inside.
"Come Satan...God is evil..." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Philosophie de la Misere, pp.200, 201
"...I go sometimes go...To the oak of Wotan....To make a pact with dark forces..." Adolph Hitler, The Solution of the Riddle, Mullern-Schonhausen
"The Evil One is the satanic revolt against divine authority...Satan (is) the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds..." Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State, p. 112
"My soul...Is chosen for hell." Karl Marx
If you've not read Bill Wiese's chilling account of how he spent 23 minutes in hell — the molten pit of raining fire and burning rock freely chosen by Marx, Hitler, and so many others of both that generation and our own — then read the brief account at this link: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:mQkoNZ1yx5IJ:www.examiner.com/x-11731-Boise-Christian-Living-Examiner~y2009m7d29-Spend-23-minutes-in-hell+23+minutes+in+hell&cd=18&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&ie=UTF-8
Wiese reports his stay in hell lasted exactly 23 minutes. "He woke at 3:00 in the morning, feeling as if he had just been "catapulted" from his bed. He fell thousands of feet in darkness until he hit the cold, stone floor of a prison cell — a temporary holding area in the pit of hell where he was tortured by demons before witnessing the destiny of the damned."
"It was raining fire and burning rock, similar to the way lava falls from the sky when a volcano explodes. The smoke from the flames was very thick, allowing visibility for only a short distance, but what I could see was horrifying. I saw many people reaching out of the pit of fire, desperately trying to claw their way out. But there was no escape," explains Wiese."
Slaves of that Hideous Strength — demonic malice and envy — Progressive insiders are driven to seek something they outwardly call 'equality,' but which is in fact, annihilation of their God-given souls. Strange isn't it, that the 'equality' they crave and the one place that offers it for eternity is Hell.
Resources
Science, Politics, & Gnosticism, Eric Voegelin
Death by Envy, Fr. George R.A. Aquaro
Monsters from the Id, E. Michael Jones
The Drama of Atheist Humanism, Henri De Lubac
The Great Lie, Tal Brooke
Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, Ellis Sandoz
Leftism as Psychopathy, John Ray, M.A; PhD
© Linda Kimball
I've read some of Paine's works that were very critical of Biblical literalism and "reveled religion", but have not seen anything written by him that denies the existence of God, and in fact much that affirms it. I have seen many of his quotes lifted out of context and used by atheists but nothing from Paine himself that would support the conclusion that he was an atheist.
You said:
"He went from siding against the English "chrisian" despots to siding with the French atheist despots."
He was supporting the revolutionaries. By what measure were they "French atheist despots"?
There was a strong atheistic strain among them. I'm sure there were many believers among them, of course, but atheism (free-thinking) was growing in France at the time and their thinking influenced the Russian revolutionaries who went even further in their atheism.
and in fact much that affirms it.
I have not seen quotes from Paine affirming his belief in God. Plenty of them bashing religion and the Bible. This is what led me to think he was atheist...because he largely fails to give God any credit whatsoever. If you have some quotes showing he did believe, I would be interested to read them.
Okay,some of them were atheists. How is it they were despots?
Okay. From The Age of Reason, Part First, Section 1:
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
Do you require more?
Actually, I don't require any of them. But I would be interested to know if Paine continued in his belief all through his French revolutionary days when the atheists there went through their "goddess of reason" phase and all that.
The word of God is the creation we behold; and this word of God revealeth to man all that is necessary for him to know of his Creator.
Do we want to contemplate His power ? We see it in the immensity of His creation.
Do we want to contemplate His wisdom ? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed.
Do we want to contemplate His munificence ? We see it in the abundance with which He fills the earth.
Do we want to contemplate His mercy ? We see it in His not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful.
Do we want to contemplate His will, so far as it respects man ? The goodness He shows to all is a lesson for our conduct to each other.
In fine, do we want to know what God is ? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation.
Most might think the suspension of the rule of law in favor of mob rule involves some kind of despotism.
Thanks for the quotes. Indeed, he looks like a deist at least in his earlier years.
Would he have written in opposition to the hereditary monarchies, that they were repugnant to the idea that all men are equal before God if he had abandoned his faith?
In every revolution there is a period of "suspension of the rule of law" between the time one government loses control and another is established in it's place, but calling that "despotism" seems much of a stretch.
Most of the Founding Fathers used words similar to describe the French Revolution. If you prefer "Reign of Terror" to "despotic" that was another term commonly used.
Some did, some didn't. I don't have enough reference which ones did or didn't agree with him on the subject. It seems,though, that the worst is being assumed about him on scant evidence from some quarters.
to read later!
ph
snip: do you think she’d consider the US Constitution fundamentally flawed because it not only allows it, but protects that right?
In response to your question, we’ll turn to Charles Hodge, married to the great-granddaughter of Ben Franklin, received his doctorate from Rutgers and was a professor at Princeton for 50 years. In 1871, he anticipated the coming paranoid-schizophrenic Christophobic intolerance of people just like you, the ACLU, etc:
“The proposition that the United States is a Christian nation, is not so much the assertion that the great majority of the people are Christians, but that the organic life, the institutions, laws, and official action of the government, is in accordance with the principles of Christianity...In the process of time thousands have come who are not Christians. Some are Jews, some are infidels, and some are atheists,...All are welcomed; all are admitted to equal rights and privileges. All are allowed to acquire property, and to vote in every election. All are allowed to worship as they please, or not to worship at all...No man is required to profess any form of faith, or to join any religious association...More than this cannot reasonably be demanded. More, however, is demanded...The infidel demands that the government should be conducted on the principle that Christianity is false, the atheist demands that it should be conducted on the assumption that there is no God...The sufficient answer to all of this is that it cannot possibly be done.” (Back Fired, William J. Federer, p. 171)
Why can’t it be done? Because ideas have consequences, and in that this nation, described by d’Tocqueville as the ‘freest, most enlightened’ civilization in the history of the world is founded on, “the organic life, the institutions, laws, and official action of the government, is in accordance with the principles of Christianity..,” these fundamental presuppositions cannot be set-aside to please Muslims and atheists without destroying our inalienable rights and liberties.
Federer’s book is a detailed history of the Christian founding of this nation. As he shows, Jews, Unitarians, Muslims, atheists and other non-believers were allowed to come here and enjoy the liberties and rights available here. However, Christian tolerance towards these others has been used by many of them to, in the words of Federer, “throw the Christians out of the boat.’
And that is precisely your own attitude, which is compounded of both hostility and paranoia.
Read the words of Einstein and learn from them:
“Being a lover of freedom, when the (Nazi) revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly. Albert Einstein
If it's fundamentally flawed, what do you propose to do about it?
snip: If it’s fundamentally flawed, what do you propose to do about it?
Spirited: Nothing, nothing at all. Why? In that ‘pride goes before a fall,’ then by extension, if one gives a prideful person enough rope, he’ll absolutely hang himself. And ‘hanging yourself’ is exactly what you’ve been doing to yourself every time you evidence your ‘willful’ inability to see reason (truth). To pompously claim that Einstein and the people who founded this country and maintained it are somehow ‘fundamentally flawed,’ for it is their truth-claims you derided and not mine, is to hold yourself up as a ridiculous gasbag.
Yes, you’ve been hanging yourself. For every time you quibbble, distort, equivocate, bluff, misrepresent, and in the words of Orwell, “doublespeak,” you simply prove the truth of the author’s contentions regarding moral imbecility, all of which points back to Augustine’s astute observation regarding Libido Dominandi.
The Founders declared the Constution will guaranteed freedom of religion. You use arguments from Hodge and Federer to argue that this is simply not possible.
You seem impressed with Federer. He writes glowingly of the religious beliefs of FDR, and conveniently ignores that FDR attributed his theology to the teachings of Endicott Peabody - an avowed socialist.
ping
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