He’s the Deep State. And he’s saying all that while trying to broker a deal with the Chinese communists who slaughtered protesting young people.
And if anyone is being silenced in our era, it’s elders. Everything is about listening to young people and empowering them, and glorifying “youth culture,” the culture of the Prodigal Son when he asked for his inheritance and then took off.
If Francis believed in his Bible, he would believe more in the voice of elders.
Amen and second it.
* * *
Yes, Emerson witnessed the same problem in his own time:
With such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with.
Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the chances are a hundred to one, that he will cut and harvest it.
Under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth ever so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound: it will always attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue of one pound weight.
And the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force, -- if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, then against it; with right, or by might.