Tuesday Pile of Prep

Mandeville, LA – Today’s Pile of Prep: most of the stories and research used to put together the Mike Church Show on the Veritas Radio Network’s CRUSADE Channel. 2016 is here and WELCOME to the All-New, Mike Church Show on the CRUSADE Channel, listen LIVE for Free (don’t cost nuthin’).

Sapientia et Veritas –If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes pan of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another-doubtless very different St. Benedict.” – Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue

Tennessee Discovers The 10th Amendment, Sues Mordor, Federal Judge Says “What’s A 10th Amendment?” – There is a funny story Kevin Gutzman tells from time to time about his experience taking an exam on the Constitution in a Bar Review Course at U.Texas law school. His prof instructed the class before the test “and remember, no matter the question, the answer is not: what is the 10th Amendment”. This, Gutzman says, is an accurate reflection on the state of American Law Schools that “teach the Constitution”: they DON’T teach the Constitution, they tach case law allegedly settled by the SCOTUS. Now comes the latest overreach by Mordor on the Potomac, forcing states including Tennessee, to accept Syrian refugees, then clothe, house, feed, educate, make them friendly to gays etc. Well, in a stroke of Constitutional genius, Tennessee has decided to dust off its Constitution and to say “how ’bout no” to Mordor and its Federal Judge’s edict and to add a Madisonian cherry to the top of their revolt, the Vols cite the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as their defense! “WHEREAS, under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as construed by the United States Supreme Court in … the federal government cannot lawfully coerce the State to provide funding with no real option but to acquiesce.” Before you go and pop the top on a bottle of Woodford Reserve please note that Tennessee isn’t actually challenging Mordor’s authority but more appropriately is demanding they pay for what they’ve ordered Tennessee to pay for.

Shocker: There’s No Way To PROVE The Deep State Spied on Then Targeted President Trump – Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi is a seasoned traveler of the treacherous Potomac River and The Bay of Tyranny but even he cannot pronounce on the likelihood of a “coup” inside “the Deep state” to target President Trump. Giraldi’s conclusion after an exhaustive analysis that you can read here is that we’ll probably never know if the CIA targeted Trump and if it did, then Trump can use the same CIA to target Dumbocrats in 2020. Got that citizen? The “Deep State” is here to stay and will soon become Trump’s “Deep State”. “So, whether there is some kind of coup in progress ultimately depends on your perspective and what you are willing to believe to be true….But if nothing comes of it all beyond an extremely rough transition, the whole business might just be regarded as a particularly nasty bit of new style politics.”  I’d just rather Trump said to the CIA “you’re fired!”

Last Year It Was Safe Spaces, This Year Removing Gym Scales – University Bans Gym Scale To Avoid Scaring Students With The Truth About Their Weight. Carleton University has removed a scale from its gym, apparently because physical reality is too much for some students to handle. A sign where the scale used to be explains that the school’s decision to ditch it was in an effort to keep up with “current fitness and social trends,” according to a student newspaper, The Charlatan.

The SAINT Benedict Option Is Not A Cloister, Its A Catholic Education Community – Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” book comes out on Wednesday amid much fanfare and controversy but at least one entity in ‘Muricah is already offering a SAINT Benedict option as in the liberal education and Christian life it requires. Here’s a sample from one of their leaders at The Imaginative Conservative. “Are the “culture wars” over? Some would say so. But if the contemporary world were simply a lost cause, the education at WCC would have a diminished merit. Even if our whole civilization is teetering on the brink of a new Dark Ages (this time with smartphones), there must be those who know a better way, and we are doing our best to educate them. The point is not abandonment of the world but finding the lost and feeding the hungry. And when in our nation’s history have there been so many who are intellectually malnourished and spiritually astray?” Glenn Arbery makes a fabulous case for a “Benedict Option” that is more a way of life and form of education change than a relocation and withdrawal which is very similar to the plan I outlined on today’s show.

“Liberal” Writer Gets That Life Without Christianity Will Be Bleak – Realizing that the now nearly complete and comprehensive victory the Progressive left has won in the Marriage Wars is making life as a Christian in ‘Muricah nearly impossible, Damon Linker laments post-Christian ‘Muricah…sort of. “If traditional sexual morality is an absolutely necessary component in an authentic Christian life, then America may well be the post-Christian nation Dreher insists it is, with devout Christians reduced to the status of exiles within it and facing the prospect of outright persecution in the workplace and elsewhere.” Linker’s view is partly rose-colored glasses and part dystopia but at least he has a view that allows for the Christian POV to exist and I think, sees the danger in its being forced out of official, ‘Muircan life. “Christianity in all of its manifold forms and expressions isn’t about to disappear, but comprehensive Christianity — a holistic vision of God and humanity, sexuality and sin, marriage and procreation — has been dethroned. Those of us who see a necessary moral advance in this revolution should be capable of acknowledging that it also entails a significant loss. [emphasis mine-MC]” Linker has no idea of the magnitude of the loss he and the “winners” will experience living in a truly post Christian world like the world of brain-eating Hindu’s.

The Presidents That Knew The Difference Between Evan Williams & Jack Daniels Were Good Presidents – This is an interesting little story about the ‘Murican Presidents that consumed alcohol while residing in the White House. “Thomas Jefferson, his presidential successor, who also chimed in on the Declaration of Independence, ran up a wine bill that nearly spun him into bankruptcy. James Madison, who stopped the European colonization of America and penned the Missouri Compromise barring slavery north and west of the state, created a scandal when somehow 1,200 bottles of Burgundy and Champagne imported from France wound up at the White House and Congress paid the tab from an account earmarked for furniture.” Too bad President Trump doesn’t “turn up”.

CNN Equates Cannibals To Christians And Christians To Hindus – A new show on CNN that purports to enlighten Christian neanderthals about all the awesome “religions” we’re missing out on by not being open minded enough. The show is called “Believer” and its debut episode featured a Hindu sect profiled by host Reza Aslan that cooks and eats human brains…wait for it… that CNN filmed and the Aslan participated in. Yes, he ate a human brain on CNN’s air. What’s next for CNN, will a “religious” sect i ‘Muricah be formed to consume the remains of Planned Parenthood’s grisly “business”. Read the SF Gate story and note that the left-libs who might normally be counted on to promote this sort of barbarism are “outraged” by it, not because of the brain eating, but because Aslan didn’t do a good enough job of finding pious Hindus. Oremus…

Will Trump Add An Extra Coal-Car To The Last train To Brokesville? – I hate being right but I told you so: Congress will raise the debt ceiling on or around March 15th, making the $20 TRILLION mark look like pikers relying on Monopoly’s Community Chest to survive the game. Add in the GOP’s version of ObamaCare, Trump’s $1 trillion in new “infrastructure” ands his call to end “sequester” AND spend another $64 BILLION to keep the CIA new spyware and we are left with the question: WHY. WHY should Congress offload new trillions on our kids? WHY should Trump sign such insanity? WHY won’t the states vault into action to stop this madness by passing The Compact For America’s balanced budget amendment to the Constitution? Cue up David Simpson’s “Gloom, Despair an Agony On Me” song. Hee Haw never saw a Trillion dollar debt ceiling and now all ‘Muricans who cotton this madness are “Hee Haws”.

Muricah, Mobile Home of The Brave And The Moral Minority – In the period that followed the evil of Roe V Wade, Evangelicals begin banding together to oppose abortion and the plan was hatched to flee the Dumbocrat Party to the GOP and through the GOP elect judges to overturn the evil. The backstop for this effort was the well-known Jerry Falwell and his “Moral Majority”. But was there ever really a post, World War II, Moral Majority? In a word, “no”, and three new books go at lengths to prove this then to propose solutions one of which is The Benedict Option. In reviewing these three books, my friend Patrick Deneen does the signal service of providing some historical narrative for the existence of the Moral Minority. Here’s a sample: “Even where religious faith persists, Christian Smith suggests that religion for many Americans is individualistic and therapeutic rather than a source of discipline and moral norms. For nearly thirty years, conservatives have triumphed politically amid a catastrophic breakdown of social and cultural norms, especially those that foster an ethic of self-sacrifice, commonweal, and practices that inculcate duty, discipline, respect, civility, and obedience.” [emphasis mine-MC] Read the whole essay, it is worth your time and the future, I believe, depends on our admission of this Moral Minority as a starting place to CONSTRUCT a new Christendom where one never really existed. Deneen nails this point. “Now, a more radical possibility is opening up. Traditional Christians now wonder if a just and righteous society must be built in opposition to a national creed that has led inexorably to libertinism.” Perhaps “Benedict Options” are not enough, we should be praying for new Benedicts and pray for the Grace to know them and follow them.

Not Being Diabolically Correct Will Cost You $20,000 – The EEOC has released the results of a “discrimination” lawsuit brought by a federal worker against another federal worker for the use of the term Hebrew slave in an email exchange over a vacation request. Think I’m making that up? Eugene Volokh has all the diabolically correct details, among them are: “Moreover, the comment was especially personal for S1 because it dredged up memories of how her family was targeted for systematically murder, incarceration, and deportation during the Holocaust. Complainant testified that S1’s comments made her “incredibly sad,” which we find to be a reasonable response to S1’s actions. The fact that S1 may have intended his comment to be a joke or a cliché does not soften the offense any more here than it would if he had uttered an equally offensive racial slur. We determine that a reasonable person in Complainant’s circumstances would find that S1’s comment was severe enough to create a hostile work environment based on her religion. Thus, we find that the AJ properly found that Complainant was subjected to religious harassment….” This is “freedom of religion” in reverse, on steroids. If someone let slip a “Jesus Christ” after stapling their finger to a piece of paper, would that constitute an incident of “religious harassment”!? You already know the answer to that, despite the fact that Blasphemy could have been the intent AND the result.

If At First You Don’t Secede, Try, Try Again – Secession fever is sweeping the continent of Europe as the relics of Christendom grapple with the fact that in the span of 400 years, Europe has had its population decimated by genocide, two World Wars, authoritarian control by Communists and Nazis and now abortion and birth control and all it has to show for it are gilded offices in Brussels, the yoke of the EU’s taxes and an ascendant Islam that threatens what Christendom stave off for 1200 years: a Muslim Caliphate. While ‘Muricans are not wrasslin’ with identical demons they are similar and secession is now back on the table in ‘Muricah too. Patrick J Buchanan thinks this movement will grow, and I concur. “California seceding sounds like a cause that could bring San Francisco Democrats into a grand alliance with Breitbart. A new federalism – a devolution of power and resources away from Washington and back to states, cities, towns and citizens, to let them resolve their problems their own way and according to their own principles – may be the price of retention of the American Union. Let California be California; let red state America be red state America.” Buchanan even quotes Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. What Leo predicted has all come true and the process of undo this calamity and restoring the Old World Order must begin…just sayin’.

The “Benedict Option” Relies On The Holy Name Of A Roman Catholic Saint, So Why Is The “Ben-Op” Decidedly NOT Catholic? – Rod Drehere’s new book The Benedict Option will debut next month to much controversy and fanfare and unfortunately at the expense of the work of the book’s Muse, Saint Benedict. I haven’t rad the book yet but I’ve been reading Dreher for years on the subject and he presents a misguided view of what Saint Benedict accomplished which is nothing short of the establishment of the Monastic Life and the spread of Catholicism throughout The Continent. As Brother André Marie reminds us: “Saint Benedict died on March 21, standing before the altar, just after he had received Holy Communion. In his humility, he never became a priest. His life was written by the Pope, Saint Gregory the Great. The Benedictine Order, as we are told in the martyrologies of its monasteries, has given the Catholic Church 57,000 known saints. This great Order has also given the Catholic Church thirty-five Popes, of whom seventeen have been declared either Saints or Blesseds.” That Dreher, a fallen away former Catholic, is using this magnificent example of Catholic piety and humility to promote a quasi-Christian retreat from life is antithetical to the life that Saint Benedict and Benedictines have lived ever since.

It’s March 2017 And The Immodesty Is About To Go Nuclear Because It WENT Nuclear – Venerable Bishop Sheen called out ‘Muricah back in the 1960’s while speaking to a group of young Catholics on “Youth and Sex”: “8:15 in the morning, the 6th of August, 1945, when we flew a military plane over this city, when we dropped that atomic bomb on it; that bomb on blotted out boundaries. There was no longer a boundary between the military and the civilian, between the helper and the helped, between the wounded and the nurse and the doctor, between the living and the dead. For even the living who escaped the bomb were already half dead. So we broke down boundaries and limits and from that time on the world has said we want no one limiting me. … You want no restraint, no boundaries, no limitsI have to do what I want to do. Now let’s analyze that for a moment, is that happiness?”

The Tragedy of Post Christian, Philosophia Perennis Devoid Thinking – Read this piece from AmConMag writer Noah Millman to get a closeup view of why Philosophia Perennis is so desperately needed to corral the erroneous thinking Men are sure to engage in when NOT grounded in the eternal quest for True Wisdom i.s. Sapientia. The issue Noah, is not whether “only the Saints” can live by the Magisterial code, it is that by God’s Grace the Saints DID live the Tradition WHILE receiving the Graces needed to do so. You cannot approach Grace as zero sum, mathematics, as in if I do ______ I will receive ______ “Grace credits” but if I do ______I will have deducted ______ Grace Credits. Grace is present in the world and we are given the supply needed at Baptism, the suffering of the Christian Faithful is simply to maintain the state you enter at Baptism, using the Gospels and the Traditional Teaching as MEANS to that END. As Padré Gaetano tells us in Humility of Heart: “And has not a saint abundant reasons, from the thought of his own weakness, to live always in a state of great humility, when he knows that from one hour to another he may lose the grace of God and the kingdom of heaven which he has merited by years of laboriously-acquired virtues? “Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.”

For an audio version of Jefferson’s [r]epublicanism via Project ’76 Webisode, click here

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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