While on X (formerly and to a large extent still known as Twitter) one day, a user surprised me with his answer to my comment, which had argued that G. K. Chesterton’s writing had done much good work. My interlocutor appeared annoyed that some people consider Chesterton a saint. His words reveal more than that. Without identifying the user, I place his words below:
I have no disdain for [G. K. Chesterton] and I agree with many of his opinions, but I know well enough words are nothing before God and only deeds matter. He may have had quite a nice character, but there was nothing saintly about him. [Italics mine] Some people have him for a saint, that’s what bothers me.
NN on X
The above is tantamount to saying that a writing life does not matter! It is no deed to write countless books which help shape the imaginations of millions! We are supposed to believe that God does not consider this in one’s personal judgment–except maybe as a waste of time. Surely, when G. K. Chesterton was judged before the throne of God, the effect of his books and articles in influencing people towards the good and conversion were not at issue! Holding such a view of Chesterton’s personal judgment is simply insane. Are we to believe that the books written by Doctors of the Church and other saintly writers were not numbered among their good works? If such were the case, I don’t think any Catholic would write!
It is not often that a film comes around which hopes to create social change in a positive way. Jim Caviezel and others behind Sound of Freedom hope to encourage new laws and enforcement policies to save children from being preyed upon by evil and twisted monsters in human form. It is a real shame that things have gotten so perverse in the Americas: the profits of the sex trafficking of children have surpassed that of the drug trade. O tempora! O mores!Deus nobis miseretur! It is sad to think of how much we need people like the film’s hero, Tim Ballard, to investigate such crimes against mere children; but, I am glad that we have people who will stand face to face against such evil. That we have people like Ballard who are willing to endure such pain in order to save poor innocents must be a sure sign of God’s mercy for our country.
The story is simple and fits the outline of my last post: Tim Ballard quits his job with Homeland Security so that he can not only throw pedophiles in jail, but even save the children these people victimize. One problem with dealing with this kind of evil is that most normal people cannot wrap their heads around perpetrating sexual crimes against children. The beginning of the film shows how Ballard tricks a pedophile into revealing more information, which leads to his saving a young boy named Miguel from a predator.
You may well have heard of Jim Caviezel’s new movie, Sound of Freedom. Elon Musk has endorsed the film and even suggested that be available on Twitter for subscribers. That may or may not be possible; but, everyone should still see it in theaters in order to support the noble goal of this movie. The awful reality of child sex trafficking has been hidden from the public. In the movie Nefarious, the demon who is the villain of the film brings out the fact that there are now more slaves around the world than in the Roman Empire at its height–most of them sex slaves. Reading Under Siege: No Finer Time to Be Catholic by Austin Ruse brought out in more detail just how deranged the United States itself is with sex trafficking–particularly of minors. I hope that Sound of Freedom shocks the public’s conscience and leads to a movement to clamp down on this evil.
The movie follows the real life story of Tim Ballard. After Ballard’s failed attempts to get his government agency to spend more effort on fighting child sex trafficking, he quits the agency and forms his own organization to do that. From the trailer and the way people are talking about it, the film sounds like it will be an exciting and moving experience.
But, I cannot tell you much more without having seen it myself. It will be screening across the United States in movie theaters on Tuesday, July 4th. I myself will probably obtain a ticket for the following day, since it’s an off day for me. After watching it, I’ll have some more to say.
The unfortunate truth is that not many Christian movies display high quality. They tend towards being overly preachy, unbelievable or low in production value. People on the conservative side of the spectrum often speak about the need to take back the culture through producing good art, which helps to reclaim the social imagination. (It cannot be stressed enough that the battle between good and evil is first fought at the level of the imagination.) Yet, conservatives have trouble creating art, and persuading them to support artistic works is another chore in itself. This leaves the youth’s imagination at the mercy of liberals and progressives, and conservatives wonder why society is collapsing even as we have fled from the battle for people’s imaginations.
I Heard the Bells stands as a great exception to the rule of Christians producing lackluster work. Everyone who wants to see the flourishing of Christian art should go to the theater and watch it before its theater run ends on December 8th. Everything about the film is perfect. As far as I can tell, the only defect contained in the work lies in some of the actors’ appearances not matching up with the actual ages of the historical figures, especially in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow–who would have been 54 and 44 years old in 1861. But Stephen Atherholt and Rachel Day Hughes do a spectacular job, so that didn’t ruin my suspension of disbelief.
I Heard the Bells portrays the drama which unfolded in the renowned American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s difficult years between Christmas of 1860 and Christmas of 1863. Yours truly went into the film completely blind as to what happened during these years, and I won’t ruin the experience for you. Suffice it to say that catastrophes hit Longfellow’s family, work, and country at this time. (Readers will have noticed that the years above cover Secession Winter through the first half of the War Between the States.) This suffering stopped Longfellow’s rhymes until penning the Christmas carol “Christmas Bells.” This great tale of how he recovered from these catastrophes will put you right in the Christmas spirit.
Sight and Sound, a theater group famous for its presentations of biblical plays, produced this film as its first on-screen production. My parents travel two and a half to three hours to see these plays. I myself have not had the honor; but if the same attention to detail and acting talent shines in the plays as in this movie, they must be well worth seeing. Theater actors often display a much higher level of craftsmanship than purely screen actors. Just think about how actors like Daniel Day-Lewis, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Anthony Hopkins’s performances often stand head and shoulders above their fellow movie stars. In I Heard the Bells, we are treated to a whole cast of people of that caliber. One really sees their love for acting, especially if you can watch the extras about the making of the movie.
The sets are gorgeous. The 19th century costumes and New England mansions evoke the ambiance of a Dickensian Christmas tale. Even the snowy, bombed out church displayed in one scene is beautiful. The movie easily compares to It’s a Wonderful Life in regard to the plot, high quality of the work and uplifting mood. I can’t wait to own I Heard the Bells on Blu-Ray. Remember! It’s only in theaters until December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception!
The above question was recently asked at a Turning Point USA event. Charlie Kirk gave an excellent response to this question. He pointed out that we have not exhausted all of the peaceful means to counter tyranny from the federal government. Conservatives need to hold the line and use state majorities to pass laws which protect their citizens from federal government overreach. Also, and this is a very important point, the Democrats probably want to provoke a violent response so that they have justification to use violence against us. The Democratic Party at this point is completely irrational. American voters know it and will dish out a shellacking to the Democrats at the polls at their first opportunity in 2022, which might well be America’s own version of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Resorting to armed resistance before we see what happens then would be premature and disastrous.
Nevertheless, I want to answer this question for myself. What would cause us to reach the point where the greatest evil in the life of any country is unleashed: civil war? Civil war supposes that every logical and peaceful means of solving political differences have been exhausted or that the government has committed an act so egregious as to dissolve us from the duty of obedience to lawful authority.
The most obvious tipping point has a parallel in our own history: the federal government attempting to take away our guns. Britain’s attempt to do this led to the shot heard around the world at Lexington on April 19, 1775. People have an inherent right to revolution against tyrannical government. In modern times, semi-automatic rifles count as the chief civilian owned weapon which enables resistance to modern armies. (At the same time, Croatians did resort to bolt action rifles during their war for independence in the 1990’s and managed to use them to great effect until better arms were obtained.) The Democrats have threatened to go after this class of weapon, especially the AR-15, many times. The banning of it would count as an act of war against the citizens.
Now seems to be a good chance to write about why voting for Trump is the moral choice from a Christian perspective. I see lots of articles claiming that Christians cannot morally vote for Donald Trump. These articles insinuate that a Biden victory would be a good outcome for Christians in America–at least in respect to holding the moral high ground. Trump has so many character flaws that it would be better to have an opponent of Christian civilization run the country such as Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Then, we could hope to make gains in 2022 or 2024 using the inevitable backlash against progressive doctrine being shoved down the throats of Americans.
This argument supposes that there will in fact be a backlash against progressive policies. However, only two kinds of progressive policies really seem to create backlash: raising taxes and gun control–especially gun control. I’m not sure that the Democrats will rush for the kinds of gun control measures which drive everyone mad. They well know how voraciously Americans have been buying guns this year, and that Americans don’t want to suddenly be told that they will become criminals unless they turn in their means of self-defense.
“The Myth of the Kindly General Lee” by Adam Serwer reminds me a little about how the theodicy is used to undermine the philosophical demonstrations for God. Arguments in favor of God existing include St. Thomas Aquinas’ Quinque Viae, St. Anselm of Canterbury’s Ontological Argument, and C. S. Lewis’s position that reason’s preeminence over matter points to a rational Being existing before the material universe. The theodicy or the problem of evil, aka the problem of pain, posits that an infinitely good, omnipotent and omniscient God could not permit evil in the universe. Since evil exists, God must lack goodness, omniscience, or omnipotence or not exist. At any rate, the Christian God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-holy cannot exist in such a universe, which is what those who argue for the theodicy go for.
The way in which the article above reminds me of this philosophical conundrum is that the theodicy does not actually undermine the traditional arguments for God. It talks about something else entirely and hopes by talking about something else entirely to make you think the traditional arguments somehow insufficient. Serwer relies exclusively on Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through his Letters. He’s apparently never read the major biographies of Robert E. Lee: Douglas Southall Freeman’s authoritative four volume biography, Emory Thomas’s work, or even Michael Korda’s Clouds of Glory. Nor has he likely read any primary source material not present in Pryor’s volume. I don’t see mention of John Esten Cooke, James Dabney McCabe, James Longstreet, or any other contemporaries who fought either alongside or against Lee and wrote about him. All of which goes to show that Serwer’s appraisal of Lee is very incomplete. This is very similar to how most criticism of Christopher Columbus is based on a letter written by his political rival, Francisco Bobadilla.
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:
Having been convened on an extraordinary occasion, as authorized by the Constitution, your attention is not called to any ordinary subject of legislation.
At the beginning of the present Presidential term, four months ago, the functions of the Federal Government were found to be generally suspended within the several States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, excepting only those of the Post-Office Department.
Within these States all the forts, arsenals, dockyards, custom-houses, and the like, including the movable and stationary property in and about them, had been seized and were held in open hostility to this Government, excepting only Forts Pickens, Taylor, and Jefferson, on and near the Florida coast, and Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The forts thus seized had been put in improved condition, new ones had been built, and armed forces had been organized and were organizing, all avowedly with the same hostile purpose.
Today marks the 157th anniversary of the battle which ended Dixie’s hope to become its own country. Looking around at the looting and destruction occurring at major cities, one feels sorry that she did not succeed at Gettysburg. Yes, Union has provided countless blessings for all Americans and positioned the United States of America to extend the blessings of liberty around the world. Northern victory in the War Between the States also abolished America’s original sin of slavery.
Yet, Union has allowed Northerners to continually immigrate into the South, many bringing with them the poison of cultural Marxism and contempt for Southern culture. The South may very well be the most American section of the country, boasting historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, and other important Founding Fathers. America would not be America without the South, and the monuments to the same above persons are those the mob most wants to destroy. And they are succeeding! I cannot but think that the American tradition of liberty might end soon, and Southern victory in the War Between the States might have enabled it to persevere forever in at least one section of the country.
At any rate, today I salute my gallant ancestors and their comrades who tried to secure their country’s independence. I even salute their gallant foes whose generosity in victory allowed the wounds of sectional strife to heal. I am especially sorry to see San Francisco’s Ulysses S. Grant statue toppled and vandalized by the mob. Grant had shortcomings both in the way he conducted the war and his presidency; yet, one cannot but feel grateful for him resisting the bloodlust of Radical Republicans after the war. When the Radicals called for the blood of Dixie’s generals and statesmen, Grant threatened to resign if the government annulled the surrender agreement he worked out at Appomattox Court House. The Savior of the Union won that argument.
I recently learned that a travesty will take place in Richmond, VA. The Governor of Virginia has okayed men to take down R. E. Lee’s statue from Monument Avenue. To remove the statue of one of the greatest Americans! O tempora! O mores! To think that one would live to see the day when Virginia was ruled by those who hate Virginians and the South!
To alleviate my frustration, I sent an e-mail to the governor’s office. I could not bring myself to refer to Northam as “honorable.” I read up on his bio and was surprised to learn that he was born and raised in Virginia and served in the U.S. Army as a doctor. One would not expect someone with such a past to support infanticide or the removal of the monuments of Virginia’s great men. At any rate, I cannot think of him as other than a Quisling.