John Piper celebrates mudsharking

I have gradually come to believe that John Piper may be the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing. There is not a single tragedy, there is not a single dyscivic or dyscivilizational trend that he does not celebrate as God’s will or good Christian behavior in his mealy-mouthed manner:

Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1967, the United States Supreme Court declared unconstitutional all state laws that prohibited interracial marriage. The case was called Loving v. Virginia. Mildred Jeter (who was black and Native American) and Richard Loving (who was white) were married in 1958 in Washington, D.C. When they returned to their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, they were arrested. They pled guilty to “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.”

This is a court decision worth celebrating. But far more important than the legalization of interracial marriage in one nation is the fact that God’s revealed will for the world is not undermined but advanced when a man and a woman from different ethnicities marry in Christ. That is a startling and controversial claim in the face of diverse opposition to interracial marriage in our own day. (The following quotes appear in Bloodlines, pages 204–205.)

From the black community, one spokesman says, “Interracial marriage undermines [African-Americans’] ability to introduce our children to black role models who accept their racial identity with pride.”

From the white community, another spokesman says, “We are seeing the death of the American and his replacement with a non-European type. . . . White people . . . are going to have to struggle mightily to survive the Neo-Melting Pot. . . . Call it what it is: Genocide and extinction of the white genotype.”

From the white evangelical community, another says, “I would never marry a black. Why? Because I believe God made the races, separated them, and set the bounds of their habitation (Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26). He made them uniquely different and intended that these distinctions remain.”

Against all of these objections, I believe it is as important as it ever has been that Christians settle it in their minds that interracial marriage in Christ is not only a beautiful picture of Christ’s marriage to his church, but also a flesh-and-blood incarnation of the unity Christ achieved by his death and resurrection….

The freedom and the beauty and peace of interracial marriage is one ray of the glory of Christ that should be shining from this new humanity — this “chosen race” (1 Peter 2:9) — which Jesus Christ died and rose again to create.

That’s right up there with “Tornadoes are Christ’s fingers being dragged across the land.” I have no doubt whatsoever that this depraved man is going to end up by endorsing Islam as “a beautiful, glorious demonstration of Christ’s love for the Messenger of God, may peace be upon him”. Frankly, it’s a surprise that he hasn’t changed his position on women in the pulpit yet. If he lives another five years, I expect he will.

I have always been convinced that the Calvinists are absolutely and utterly wrong when it comes to theology. And every single time I read something John Piper has written, it underlines my opinion in that regard.

After all, what can be a more beautiful picture of Christianity than white women working to support their black husbands – 98 percent of whom do not financially support their mixed-race children – when they aren’t strangling or beating them to death? A reader writes of learning that a former college girlfriend recently enjoyed the freedom and beauty and peace of paying the toll:

Witnessing the blueprint of the problems often discussed in this corner of the web unfold in person is sobering. Looking back, as a mid 20’s guy who wasn’t redpilled until my senior year of college, and as even more so as a recently converted Christian: the immensity of how truly evil those forcing this upon the world are has finally hit me. A true modern liberal fairy tale. Happy ending and all. Upper middle class white woman goes to college, does well at first, but the school has the exact effect its intended to have. A corrosive concoction of drugs and dick lead to her having to leave and live at home her junior year. I lost touch with her for about two years, but I actually caught up with her a few months before this and she had more or less gotten her act together. But alas, past actions have consequences in the present. And in this reality sleeping with a historically violent black whose concept of forensic science leads him to believe leaving his underwear in the washing machine after a rape-murder is sufficient cover leads to the well-documented results.

Can’t you just feel the rays of the glory of Christ shining from that new humanity?

Assassination attempt on House Republican

50 shots were fired at a Democrats vs Republicans Congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot and wounded in the hip. Several Congressional aides and two federal agents were also shot.

The shooter had a long rifle, but apparently not much in the way of military training. The shooter was shot, apprehended, and taken to the hospital.

The shooter was James T. Hodgkinson, a union member, Bernie Sanders volunteer, and left-wing anti-Trump hater. He was shot and killed by the Capital Police.

London fire

It is reported to have been an accident, not arson or a terror attack, but I can’t help but think that this is the sort of thing one usually expects to read about from the 19th century or see in undeveloped countries.

‘A number of fatalities’ confirmed as huge blaze ‘sparked by faulty FRIDGE’ engulfs 27-storey London tower block: Trapped residents build ropes from sheets and hurl themselves from windows. Several people are confirmed dead after a huge inferno broke out at a residential tower block in West London. Many residents believed to still be trapped inside the 27-storey building as it teeters on the brink of collapse. More than 600 residents desperately tried to escape the flames as the fire broke out in the middle of the night.

Jon Hall, former chief fire officer for the Midlands, who advised David Cameron’s government said today: ‘This is a Third-World type accident that represents a failure of every component of fire safety & building management.

Then again, it reminds me of the twin towers in Minneapolis that have long been known as “the ghettos in the sky”. So, when is the candlelight vigil, or would that be considered redundant?

The corruption is every where

And convergence will come for everyone. Don’t think you or your children will escape the demands for convergence to social justice ideals just because you’re nice people who do so much for the community. John C. Wright’s son learned a hard lesson in Churchian tolerance:

This Sunday the scoutmaster of my sons’ Boy Scout Troop arrived unexpectedly and uninvited on the doorstep of my house, while I was at Mass.

He announced that, due to an anonymous complaint that my youngest son had allegedly made an “anti-Muslim remark” in a private conversation, therefore he and his brother were forthwith expelled from the troop.

To be sure, this was not the only reason given. It was merely the cherry on top. This issue is more complex than the thumbnail I give here, but those nuances are nothing to the point of the example.

When he heard the decree, my son sat on the couch with a look on his face as if he had been shot in the guts.

He had been in this troop for as long as his boyhood memory reaches, has reached the rank of Star and is about to reach Life, and is a patrol leader, or was.

This troop was a big part of our lives. Weekly meetings and monthly hikes and campouts, and yearly camporees have been woven into our schedules since Cub Scouts. The grown ups in the family have spent more hours and weekends lending a hand and helping to sell popcorn than I can calculate. My wife is more active by far than I, and has even earned her Woodbadge, which is an advanced, national leadership program that gobbled up an unfortunate amount of her writing and editing time.

The loyalty and longsuffering support of the Wright family for this troop, which has been a part of all our lives for years, suddenly counted for nothing. We dared speak a word that might offend the Prophet of Submission, peace be upon him. The Blasphemy Laws were breached!

Apparently the decision to expel was made by the pastor of the church sponsoring the troop, even though, technically, it was not his decision to make. I say apparently, because there was no conversation, and no one asked my son for his side of the story….

From my youth up, I have always been phlegmatically indifferent to the opinions of those whose opinions are based on neurotic emotion, because such opinions are without merit. From my point of view, if Tor Books wishes to insult my readers, or World Con voters wish to vote my works under ‘No Award’, their reputations are harmed, not mine. I continue as before.

In such a case, forgiveness is logical and necessary: the hatred harms only the hater, who inner darkness and unreason is exposed to the candid eye of man and angel alike.

But my son is not prepared for betrayal by people, such as Christian pastors, such as his own scoutmaster, whom I taught him to trust, respect and obey.

The world where chaplains will denounce you for being Christian, or Boy Scouts will expel you for being patriotic, is a new world to him.

When a Leftist Christian has to decide between Leftism and the teachings of Christ, he goes Left. When a Leftist Scout has to decide between Leftism and the teachings of Robert Baden Powell, he goes Left. Leftist put Leftism before all other loyalties.

Perhaps the lesson will toughen his spirit.

The lesson may be useful for my friends and readers as well:

The corruption is everywhere. To judge from their acts rather than their words, the corrupt wish not only to cow you into silence, dear reader, they wish to rob your children of innocent happiness.

John may be able to preemptively forgive these people, even though they are unrepentant and have not asked for it. I will not. They are wicked to the bone; they are People of the Lie who call good evil and evil good.

And the young Saxons are learning how to hate them. Which is good, because hatred of the wicked is both a Christian virtue and a Christian duty.

Step one: stop the importation

The Mayor of Rome calls for a halt to migration:

Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, on Tuesday asked the interior ministry for migrant arrivals to the capital to be suspended. “I find it impossible, as well as risky, to think up further accommodation structures,” said Raggi in a letter sent to Paola Basilone, the prefect of Rome, in which she called for a “moratorium” on further new arrivals.

The mayor cited as reasons for the request the “strong migratory presence” in the capital and “the continued influx of foreign citizens”.

According to the most recent figures published by the administration, on January 1st 2016 there were approximately 364,632 foreigners living in Rome, amounting to 12.7 percent of the total population.

This was more or less the same as the previous year, but represented an increase of 6.2 points since the year 2000. And according to the Roman Observatory on Migration, Lazio is the Italian region with the second highest number of migrants, outdone only by Lombardy.

Across Italy as a whole, around 8.3 percent of the population is foreign, according to Istat figures which were also released on Tuesday.

In Rome, around half of the foreign population were from Europe, with Romania the best represented country.

Stopping the inflow is the first step. The next step will be in the next 4-6 years, when the outflows begin.

Mailvox: the bitter generation

An Xer explains why Generation X is bitter and cynical:

As an X-er, I faithfully followed nearly all the advice given by my boomer parents, and it got me diddly-squat. Gradually I came to understand why: Nearly all the advice they gave me would have been terrific advice for someone with a typical boomer life trajectory, when mistakes could easily be erased and every tree looked like it would grow to the sky. Taking on ruinous debt for a fuzzy degree just so you’d have a diploma with your name on it was probably great advice in the 1960s and 70s. Buying more house than you really needed or could reasonably afford would have been a killer investment strategy in 1982. Everything boomers did was a dumb gamble that improbably succeeded, and they never wondered why; they just accepted it as a convenient law of nature. To this day, I still get these kinds of useless tips from my boomer parents, though by now I’ve learned to ignore them.

This is the great theme of the boomers’ life: They could always take a lot of wild, irresponsible chances on everything, because nearly every bet they made seemed to pay off handsomely, at least within their lifetimes. The completely predictable and obvious long-term costs were always way, way over the horizon — a problem for somebody else. The bill, if it ever came due, would be paid by their posterity, and who cares about those losers? They don’t even like the Beatles, and they’re too whiny and lazy anyway.

Which leads to the root of their endless narcissism. Many boomers believe the incredible advantages they enjoyed were not hard-won gains of previous generations that could easily be squandered, but the inevitable fruits of their own virtuous awesomeness. It never occurred to them that they were both the beneficiaries of and the caretakers for a fragile legacy, and that an economy where anyone with a pulse who was willing to bust their ass could enjoy a solid middle-class life was a historic anomaly that had to be carefully safeguarded. No, it was all just a well-deserved reward for boomers because of their own industriousness and moral goodness. Those whiny kids could have the same thing if they’d just work harder, is how boomers see it.

The cynicism of us X-ers comes from the fact that we grew up really believing this stuff, so finding out it was a lie was kind of a rude awakening. We fully expected that following the rules and ticking the right boxes would automatically give us the exact same life our parents had enjoyed, and we didn’t even have a hint that it might not be true. It also stings because, as another commenter alluded to, X-ers are old enough to have actually seen and gotten a taste of that vanished world; our younger cohorts know it only second-hand. They never lived through it, so the loss doesn’t feel as bitter for them.

I’m not bitter about it, but I, too, was somewhat snake-bit by Boomer cluelessness about the changing world. When I wanted to drop out of college halfway through my sophomore year to sell my 16-bit, 8-channel, stereo 44 KHz sound card that an engineer and I already had working in both hardware and software, my parents aggressively lobbied for me to “stay in school” and “get my degree” because, as every Boomer knew, college degrees are so important. Which, in retrospect, made absolutely no sense in light of how they wanted me to continue working for my father’s company after graduating, which I’d already been doing every summer.

So, instead of selling 200 million dollars worth of sound cards more than two years before Media Vision did with a vastly inferior product, I now have a BS in Economics with a second major in East Asian Studies and a minor in History. None of which has ever profited me so much as a single dime.

The responsibility, of course, is mine. It’s on me, not them. I should have ignored their advice, dropped out, and ploughed ahead to pursue the opportunity while the window was open. But I didn’t, because I trusted what I assumed was their greater experience and wisdom and because it is always easier to take what passes for the normal path in one’s social circle. And that is why Generation X is so little inclined to pay any heed to Boomers now. We listened to them and we took their advice in our youth, and now we see how doing so led us astray.

Even the Guardian gets it

This is one of the few times you will see me approvingly quote an article from The Guardian:

Even as their world came apart, the bankers clung to denial. By August 2007, the flagship hedge fund of Wall Street’s most prestigious firm was tanking fast – and what explanation came from the man at Goldman Sachs? “We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row.” The bank was getting hit by events that were only meant to happen once every 100,000 years – and they were happening every day of the week. Given a choice between blaming their models or reality, Goldman’s bosses held the world at fault.

You know the rest because, a decade later, you and I are still paying for it. How the banks died, the world economy collapsed and most of us got poorer. How the financiers, mainstream economists and regulators were so detached from reality that they swore blind that such a catastrophe was impossible – even while it was under way.

Their reputation has never recovered. And as an economics journalist, I look across at politics and see the same process at work. Brexit, Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn: time after time, the political class has completely failed to understand the world they were governing, policing and analysing. Allow me to be blunt: our political crisis is also a crisis for our political class. And it is one from which I doubt they can recover.

At each major fork in the road, they have sped off down the wrong turning, while decrying the other as unimaginable. Each time, they have crashed.

That is because the maintream economic models, on which so much of the social policy of the last 45 years has been made, are wrong. But the wealth of too many powerful and well-connected individuals relies upon the continuance of the system built on those false models for anyone to make any substantive changes until the whole thing collapses. As it inevitably will, sooner or later.

For starters, all the bad debt needs to be written off. It will never be repaid. But writing off the bad debt means the bankrupting of almost every major bank in the world, and the financial elite would rather see the world collapse into disease, famine, and war than accept the just consequences of their idiotic actions.

Diversity + Proximity = Radicalization

At this point, it should hardly come as a surprise that one of the basic tenets of multiculturalism – the idea that exposure to the secular West will cause Muslims to become more liberal and less extreme – is not only false, but has been known to be false for centuries.

Malikism in Spain represented well the Sunni tradition of the Islamic West, which historically has been more rigid than the Sunni tradition of the Islamic Middle East. Citing several medieval Muslim sources, the great Hungarian Arabist Ignaz Goldziher confirmed that, contrary to popular opinion, the practice of Islam in Spain was much more rigorous than in the East. If anything, the presence of large Catholic populations to the north and in their midst, along with the conversion to Islam of many of the earlier inhabitants, seems to have exacerbated the Andalusian clerics’ zeal in adhering to Maliki teachings. In other words, far from being conducive to tolerance, living close to Christians exacerbated Islamism in al-Andalus.
 – Darío Fernández-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain

Of course, given the incredible amount of historical revisionism and ahistorical falsehoods, and outright multicultural propaganda chronicled by Fernández-Morera in his extraordinarily detailed book, it’s hardly a surprise that the popular opinion of those who know nothing of the history of Muslim Spain would prove susceptible to the whitewashed version.

Fernández-Morera’s book reminds me a little of The Irrational Atheist, in that he follows a similar method of quoting the English-speaking Arabist historians, many of whom are clearly unaware of the various Spanish and Arabic accounts, at length, before conclusively demonstrating how hopelessly wrong they are. The destruction of the myth of al-Andalus is so complete, and so brutal, that the only real question is whether the historians he is methodically abusing are shamelessly mendacious or merely pig-ignorant.

But regardless, it is historical evidence that the longer the current wave of Islam is permitted residence in the West, the more radical, violent, and zealous it will become. Secular hopes of liberal accommodation are in vain, as Islamic jurisprudence looks even more askance on atheists than it does on those it terms polytheists.

White pathologies are not universal

Chateau Heartist observes the uncomfortable obvious:

If you’ve ever lived in a diversitopia — I mean an area with real Diversity™ not just black and White but multiple races living under one neighborhood roof adding to the colorfully hazardous stew — you’ll notice a peculiarity that shitlib SWPLs would rather you never mention, which is that nonWhites — the subcontinental browns, the aztecs, the orientals, the MENAs and even the fuckin mystery meat race orphans, among others — treat blacks so much worse than Whites treat blacks. Blatantly, rudely worse.

You’ll often see a scene where some bindi is excoriating a black service worker for tardiness or general incompetence. As a White person, you might cringe a little at the scene, even though you know gandhi is right on the merits. A part of you wants to chastise him for not recognizing the informal rules of engagement in America when dealing with blacks: abide their shortcomings with a sumptuously magnanimous spirit.

It’s as if all the world’s empathy, big heartedness, and indulgence were concentrated in just one race — White Western Europeans — and the Lord of Lunacy decided no other race but Whites should possess such divine traits. Whites alone seem to have the ability to grasp the failings of another race and to obligingly adjust their behavior to draw the least amount of attention to the stark racial differences when in the company of members of that race, so that they don’t feel like lessers in the presence of superiors, or like oddballs in a world where White norms of social interaction are foreign to them.

NonWhites, however, whether they grasp the inherent and therefore unmitigable nature of black failings or not, care not a whit for blacks’ feelings and will gleefully, almost sadistically, make their displeasure with black incompetence known to participant and spectator alike.

All this is a roundabout way to reiterate the infamous CH maxim “Diversity + Proximity = A lot of hurt feelings and suppressed aggravation”. Diversity is not our strength or our moon landing; it is our miseries heaped atop miseries, only prevented from exploding in a cataclysm of spite by wealth transfers (aka paid ransom) from Whites to nonWhites.

It is always a shock to Americans to discover that not only do most not-Americans not want to become Americans, but that in many cases, the not-Americans don’t even regard them as a superior form of humanity worth emulating.

In fact, many, if not most, Asians look at the West these days and wonder how on Earth both China and Japan ended up losing so badly to such clueless, naive idiots for so long.