When Did Churches Worship at the Altar of the 501-3c?

One of the more puzzling facets of modern life is how Christian churches washed their hands of politics even though “man is a political animal” as Aristotle taught.  To wash your hands of politics is like washing your hands of part of your humanity -- like washing your hands of religion (for man is also a religious animal who must worship something). 

Of course the simplest reason Christian churches abdicated responsibility is money: churches want to keep that tax deductible status at all costs since it would presumably result in a crash in donations.  So, in a sense, the government at this point "owned" churches. 

But what’s odd is we have a clear and recent example of what happens when the local church doesn’t want to get involved in politics: Nazi Germany.  It seems hard to imagine Hitler would’ve come to power and been so politically successful had the dominant German Lutheran church taken a hard stand. I assume because of our belief in American exceptionalism and the figment of our Constitution, we figured nothing like that could happen here. 

Examining our history it began, as usual, with good intentions: charities had been given tax breaks since the Tariff Act of 1894. Back then, most revenue of the federal government had come from tariffs.

One of the more evil men ever to become US President, Woodrow Wilson, not surprisingly had a hand in directing that organizations “disseminating controversial or partisan propaganda’ were not ‘educational’ for purposes of qualifying for tax-exempt status...As a result, contributions to these organizations were not deductible from the new federal income tax.”

To try to separate humans from politics is trying to separate where God ends and man begins with regard to scriptural inspiration - they are entwined to such a degree that it’s hopeless to try to disentangle.  Legal challenges came and no clear standard emerged from the court decisions so as a charitable organization you had to guess to the degree you were “controversial” or “partisan”. 

Another very evil man who became president was Lyndon Johnson, and he was eager to ban any political activities even to the point of not allowing the endorsement of a candidate by any group or church receiving tax exempt status. And so continued the building of the wall between church and state that was never intended by the founders. 

Last 100 years of Spiritual Warfare

I think one of the mistakes I’d made about history was that I’d pictured it more as a logical progression from one thing to another, one technology to another, etc... But it’s more of a spiritual tug-of-war with one side gaining temporary victory. That’s the thing I missed - all victories are temporary and all defeats are temporary. The Church is failing now, just as it was succeeding in the ‘50s. It probably happens like that because when you’re winning the tug-of-war you think it’s easy and let your guard down, even though it’s ever fought at a deep and difficult level.

Looking at the decades of the ‘40s-‘80s and you see a tremendous whipsawing back and forth of good and evil. 

The “god” of this world for at least a century has been science, and so it’s not surprising that it has been used as the premiere Trojan horse for evil.  In the 1920s & ‘30s, eugenics was “science” that deemed Jews worthy of death, Down syndrome  babies unworthy of birth, and blacks inferior to whites. Some of this “science” went so far as to be able to supposedly tell murders by the shape of their head and teeth. 

In 1948 “science” was used to create the conditions for the sexual revolution. Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent sex report was released that year:

“Kinsey's work and research was manipulated so that its results would be indicative of what he himself believed, without any real and tangible scientific support. According to Paul Robinson, one of Kinsey's biographers, Kinsey's work was designed to ‘undermine the traditional sexual order.’[6] Kinsey had his own amoral agenda and hoped to use his research as the scientific base to ‘change society's traditional moral values.’”

But there was help from the good guys. Thomas Merton published a fabulously successful book about his spiritual journey called “Seven Storey Mountain”.  George Orwell wrote a prescient book warning of government overreach and surveillance called “1984”. In 1948, Billy Graham has his first hugely successful crusade. In that same year, a nun (Mother Theresa) received a vision from God to found an order serving the poor in India. 

 Attack - counterattack. Attack - counterattack. 

In 1952 Norman Vincent Peale writes a surprise best-seller advocating memorization of bible verses to bolster positive thinking. The next year an even bigger surprise came when Bishop Sheen was a television star. 

The momentum was all on the side of “team good”. But, the enemy was awakened and a fierce counterattack began.

In 1954, wary of the sudden popularity (and thus power) of Sheen and Peale, LBJ inserts his amendment into legislation that forbids churches from participating in the political process. This is the first step towards a wall between church and state and a de-Christianized society.

In 1956, Playboy Magazine started and “Lolita” was published. Elvis and his hips came on the scene then too. In 1957, an obscene gay sex book “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.was published and the beat poet era began. By ’59 Bishop Sheen was off the air and St. Pope Pius XII had died -- the last good pope until John Paul II came along in ’78. 

In 1960 the Christian charismatic movement began, starting with the Anglicans and making it to Catholics by 1968. But the ‘60s were mostly a series of catastrophic losses. School prayer and Bible studies were banned. The birth control pill was invented and quickly the Supreme Court legalized contraception and then abortion. In ’64 the first movie to break Hollywood ban on pornography appeared and by ’72 X-rated movies were common. The gay movement begins in ’69. 

Then more counterattacks from the good guys. The “Jesus revolution” of the hippies occurs in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and hundreds of thousands are baptized. Jimmy Carter, an unapologetic Christian, is elected president in ’76.  Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” begins in ’79 and helps kick off the Reagan era. John Paul II is elected pope in ’78. The Medjugorje apparitions begin in ’81. It’s a counterattack that eventually fells the Soviet Union and lead to a better U.S. judiciary, one that promised to eventually roll back Roe... 

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Bill Buckley’s brother Reid was kind of a prophet when he complained in ‘06 about GW Bush not getting his judges and nominees through. In 2016 it was “hold my beer” time given how they destroyed Trump:

“The necessary political concordat of any democracy is .. that its president have the right to their nominees for the cabinet, the bench, and the major bureaus, who are properly rejected only for reasons of incompetence or unethical conduct…and by vote of the full Senate, not a cabal. That this modus operandi has been dissed by the Democratic leadership, establishing an ugly precedent, bodes ill for our republic.”

Buckley went on to say, “Our representatives as a whole, the political establishment, without ideological distinction, though with a few sterling exceptions--are, have become, our republic's assassins.”

He died in 2015 so never got to see how his predictions came true to even a (previously) political establishment lover like me. The failure to accept Trump as duly elected president in '16 broke the legimitacy of our government. 

Weather or Not, Here I Am

Ahh the beach slake. The morning dolphins in the hazy sun, a timpani of waves. Walked dogs in beach at 9 and by 10:30 landed with kindle, coffee and chairs. Feels like it’s been awhile and indeed over 8 months which is decently long for me. My aspiration is ever a handyman for my parents who does Cancun quarterly.

I used a plant identifier app to check out the lush “Gilligan’s Island” collection of plants along an ocean path. A Japanese privet separates two adjoining properties at northernmost point. Along the way: Yaupon hollies, water oaks, Earleaf Greenbrier ivy (also known as Wild Bamboo), Southern Live Oaks (can live for over a thousand years), muscadine grape vines, Chinese tallow (invasive), and Oleander. It looks like a rain forest. 

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So the weather today was better than pre-reported by the astrologists. Good all afternoon and into the (super long) evening. The good thing about a June vacation is there are 18 hours of sunlight so you’re bound to find a decent stretch of pleasant valley. 

Afternoon thunderstorms were heavily predicted but the timing on weather apps was anything from 11:30am till 5pm. Which is sort of like saying the Reds this season will win between 55 and 90 games. True enough but not particularly useful. Reminds me of how our dog DNA test had a predicted adult weight range between 55 and 90 lbs. 

We listened to a John Piper book, ‘Christ and the Coronavirus” written in March 2020 on the drive here. Better than politics. Later did listen to presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I increasingly like. Cincy native, was valedictorian at St X high school. Yale grad but I won’t hold that against him...hopefully he’s a traitor to his class like Trump?

His message certainly resonates with me seeing how he’s obviously thought about how, logistically, to get rid of the government gangsters and he’s also thoughtful about China. He promises a pardon of Trump which seems the politically smart thing to do given that presumably a lot of people might vote for Trump simply to get him off the hook. (A legal scholar says Trump can pardon himself if he wins office.)

Vivek mentioned former Attorney Gen’l Bill Barr who said that while there is unfairness between how Hillary was treated and how Trump is being treated, the time to fix the rule of law is now by enforcing it against Trump. He must think we’re stupid. Every time there’s a Republican being wrecked by unequal enforcement the argument is, “well we need to do what’s right with what’s right in front of us now.”  

If Barr was serious he’d call for Biden (not Hillary) to go under the knife (of the law). The deal has always been: you give us Joe Biden (not Hunter) and we’ll give you Trump. Instead they give Hunter a slap on the wrist and think that’s a good deal for us. Which is exactly why we Trump supporters have no one else to go to, although I could see going Vivek if circumstances change. 

Of course this is all decorating the house before the hurricane, or arranging floral arrangements after the wedding reception. From a biography of Cdl George: “Cardinal George always spoke about the family as the basic building block of civilization, and he feared the government was no longer protecting the family. The consequences that would come from that, he knew, would be profound.” 

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Can’t keep the Irish out of me I guess. A book I’m reading says “Irish peasants of the 1800s had a love for big and sonorous words..” 

I using the word “fierce” in a fourth grade poem shows it might be innate...”Fierce sometimes is the rain”.  I don’t think Mom caught that gene given her plainspoken but bracing lyrics, “a bird poo-poo’d on my car”. 

The author of the book says, “I preached to him perpetually the doctrine of simplicity. It was not easy to persuade him that it was better to say a thing was ‘red’ than it was ‘of ruby dye,’ but little by little he learned.”

Oh I like that "of ruby dye". 

The book is from the early 1900s and called “A Cluster of Nuts: Being Sketches Among My Own People” by Katharine Tynan. 

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I was reading a Saul Bellow novel, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature when that meant something, and he has a character inherit $3 million and thus be considered wealthy beyond measure. Obviously this doesn’t work in today’s dollars. I checked and the book was written in 1958, so I looked at the inflation-adjusted numbers and it’s $30 million today -- which makes much more sense. $30 million is rich by today’s standards. 

Found online: “According to Schwab’s 2023 Modern Wealth Survey, Americans said it takes an average net worth of $2.2 million to qualify a person as being wealthy.”

The average net worth by age in 2019, according to a Federal Reserve survey:

55-64: $1,175,900

65-74: $1,217,700

75 or older: $977,600

Why '24 Doesn't Matter

I was talking over the weekend with my brother about his woeful investment advisor and I said that what helps is to see that there are no experts. A columnist I read has a good line on it: “distrust, but verify”, meaning that the default assumption is that experts are lying to you but try to verify it in case they are telling you the truth. (That writer said that he used to be in the “trust, but verify” camp until of late.)

Talking to him, I was thinking (but not saying) about the covid fiasco, where the medical field revealed itself as something of a joke -- most memorably by Fauci and the CDC tamping down the lockdown for the Floyd rioters, protest apparently being something that should be put above health concerns (apparently religious activities outside of “woke” religion don’t qualify).  There was also the amazing shredding of their credibility by claiming that the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory. 

Basically covid was to the medical profession what the priestly pedophilia scandal was to the Catholic Church.  The difference is that the Catholic Church, even with very flawed ministers, is the path to eternal and infinite life while the medical profession is, at best, a way to extend life a few years. Which means the medical profession can be overruled and ignored if you so choose.

Anyway it was heartening to see that he recognizes at least the folly of our fake system of education credentialing. I hope he can do so with journalists, who again get to be “experts” mostly in misinformation or information suppression.

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I think with Trump the big picture is that a group of un-indicted criminals (the FBI & DOJ) are trying to make Trump a criminal.  Which he may well be, but it’s still ironic. The unjust indicting the unjust simply because the first have the power to do so.

‬It reminds me of how much I liked how objective baseball was, how the rules mattered and applied (theoretically) equally to everyone.  Two players in the minors, one hitting .280 and and the other .250 with equal power numbers meant that the guy hitting .280 would be brought up. Not so if one guy’s name is Trump and the other Biden.  Then it doesn’t matter what you’re hitting.

The problem with our judicial system is that Hillary, Biden, & Trump could all be charged and thrown in jail, and yet only one of them got indicted. The reason? It’s who you know, and who likes you. Years ago I read where the FBI/DOJ get to pick the winners and losers -- and that’s about as far from the “rule of law” as you can get.

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A European observer has this to say about the ’24 presidential election:

“Whatever you may think of their individual credentials, there is no one currently who can make any fundamental difference as a future US president unless they have a vast support network beneath them including Congress, Pentagon and Langley.”

True, which is why ‘24 election isn’t all that meaningful except as an interesting directional signpost. If the country can be saved it certainly won’t be by Trump or DeSantis let alone Tim "Can't we all get along?" Scott. 

America changed, in 1945, by not scrupulously drawing down its armies and becoming a peacetime republic as we had done in all our previous wars. Instead we became a full-time empire. People say that had to happen since the USSR was expansionist and so there was never a chance to stand down. I guess basically the reasoning is, “we had to become an empire because the USSR wanted to be an empire.”  Which is true, I guess, but because power corrupts, it flows naturally that empires are corrupting. Which means that it was pretty much foreordained that we would become corrupt. It makes me feel better about our decline and corruption since it pretty much had to happen that way in the natural sphere. It will take heavenly, supernatural influence to change at this point. (Imagine an alternative world where Communism didn’t exist and thus there was no Cold War. America disarms, becomes a force for good instead of evil, JFK doesn’t get shot, the Vietnam war doesn’t happen, the CIA/FBI don’t enlarge to target Communists, then Muslims post-9/11, and now moms at school board meetings.)

I recall how in late September of 2001 talking heads claimed that 9/11 would change the world forever. And I thought at the time, “hmm…. We kill who did this and that sends a message not to do this again…how does this change the world forever?”  I guess two forever wars later, the destruction of Christians in the Middle East, and an FBI into surveilling its citizens using the “Patriot” Act, I know now!

Memories of Dusky Days

Let not fair June be squandered! 

So I took the dogs and headed on a 75 degree day to picturesque German Village, their first time in Schiller park. They were in hog heaven with all the new smells -- it being practically a dog park given how many fellow dog walkers were circling. Max extended himself heroically in what (for him, a Nordic dog) was a hot day. 

We went by the statue of the German poet Schiller, erected on a July 4th day long ago in a spirit of German and American patriotism. We walked by the old houses built in the 1800s and I thought about how today’s beauty-nihilists are hypocritical - many of the same people who create and support ugly modern art were living in these architecturally beautiful residences. Beauty is their secret vice. 

Some of the porches in the more modest homes remind me of Aunt Mary’s in Hamilton, Ohio. She was the only person I knew as a youth who lived in a home built before 1940 and thus had no spirit of modernism to it. 

She lived in a “German city on a river”, a twin of Cincinnati in my imagination. Funny that both are named for empires: Hamilton coming originally from England (via Alexander Hamilton) and Cincy from the Romans.  Hamilton means “treeless hill”, of which there are few in Hamilton (St Clair Ave?). Cincinnati means “with curly hair”. Originally Cincy was named “Losantiville”, meaning “city opposite the mouth of the L.” (“L” stood for “Licking River” that joins the Ohio River from Kentucky). Historian Lewis Collins called Losantiville “a pedagogical and unmusical name” and wrote, “The invention of such a name was positively cruel in [founding city father] Mr. Filson.” 

Mary’s house was built in 1926. Others on the street are said to be 1930-1940 builds.  Mary was born in 1913 so the house was not old by her standards; our house is similarly contemporary to me (I was 5 when it was built and Mary was 13 when hers was). If she bought it in, say, 1953 at age 40, then the house was like buying a house built in 1997 today. Hardly “old”. And yet to my eyes, who had only lived in houses built in the ‘60s, Mary’s house seemed antique to say the least. Especially when a lot of her 1970s-era furnishings were decidedly not 1970s-furnishings. More like 1930s?

It’s funny that my “great aunt” was, in experience for me, less a great aunt than an aunt, and less an aunt than a grandmother.  Influence can’t be measured by a genealogy chart, that’s for sure.

Tucker's Back and This & That

A cagey TV insider said this about Tucker Carlson (and Donald Trump's) popularity:

"Tucker’s show worked on cable news because it transgressed the medium he messaged from, and because Tucker is a class traitor. (The latter being Trump’s appeal.) When someone who looked 'old money' said things that were true and forbidden, massive interest followed.”

During his ten minutes on Twitter (already Fox News is calling this a violation of his contract), Carlson said: 

“Any fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew [the dam] up, just as you would assume they blew up Nordstream, the Russian natural gas pipeline, last fall.” 

And indeed false flags often have a fatal liability of betraying themselves by cui bono questions.

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Mark Halperin: “Please stop telling me that Michelle Obama is going to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2024.  There is ZERO chance she would accept that assignment. ZERO.”

Would be a boffo miss if he gets that wrong given how many times he has said this, but kudos for taking a stand!

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What if it’s *not* that establishment GOP figures haven’t been red-pilled yet, but that they have gone beyond that and been black-pilled, and are now just worried about their pensions? In other words, it’s not that they’re unaware of where we’re at but have already concluded it’s not possible to reverse course. 

Sen Ted Kennedy, shortly before he died, understood how we precarious our situation was and how it’s all held together with string and baling wire. If he was already aware of how screwed up we are, then how much more do our leaders realize it now? I think the Dem leaders are just doing an uncontrolled demolition for reasons unclear. Maybe they're European at heart. 

Interesting to hear RFK Jr say in an interview that when he was growing up it was unthinkable that the government would lie to you. Super high trust in the authorities back in the ‘50s. He was asked if there was a seminal moment, maybe when his uncle was assassinated, when he began to distrust the government.  He said actually the first eye-opening moment - a red-pill - was when Eisenhower was given the choice to lie about U.S. spy planes over Russia in 1960. One was shot down and the pilot had been instructed if that were the case to commit suicide but did not. Eisenhower lied and the Russians produced the pilot and the rest, as they say, is history. In 1971 the Pentagon Papers came out and the lying done by our government was shown to be deep and pervasive. 


There’s the old trope, “how do you know a politician is lying to you? His lips are moving.” And yet we want to believe our leaders are truthful and we seem to make that joke but we haven’t really believed they’ve lie to us. Until now, when they're not even hiding it. 

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GDP statistics are notoriously skewed and flawed. A better stat is PPP, which describes how many goods and services you could buy in a given country if all countries were using the same currency. Basically it tells you the true purchasing power of a country and thus what their real wealth is.  In the latest numbers Luxembourg and Singapore in the top two spots, no surprise there. No surprise either that Qatar and UA Emirates are near the top. But how about little old Ireland in third place? Ireland was as far back as number 14 in 2013, but they’ve rallied every year since and now Ireland is richer than us (we’re at number 10). It seems to help explain why Ireland is so decadent now given how much wealth they’ve acquired so quickly. From the poor house in the 1970s and ‘80s to among the most wealthy in the world today. That would corrupt anyone. 

Another interesting stat is how Japan is said to have had “lost decades” of productivity and zero GDP growth. But it doesn’t seem to have hurt them much at all. They’ve been number 31, 32 or 33 (of 182 countries listed) since 1999. Right in the ballpark with Italy. You don’t hear of riots in the streets, strikes or food pantry needs in Japan despite all the angst about them not meeting some GDP growth measurement. 

Countries in the rear are mostly war-torn African ones, and countries in the middle are like Brazil, South Africa, and Armenia. The European rankings are pretty much what you’d expect but for Ireland - all the white, Northern European countries first (Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria, Germany), then the mid-tiers (Belgium, France, UK), then the lower tiers (Italy,  Poland, Spain, Greece).  

America has been steadily around number 10 since the 1990s.

Results here: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gdp_per_capita_ppp/

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Tweet from a conservative philosopher Yoram Hazony ...:

It took just 10 years to enter a world in which normal people:

1 Don’t believe anything the New York Times says.

2 Don’t think a degree from Yale is worth much.

3 Don’t trust the doctors.

4 Can’t watch Hollywood films.

5 Are comfortable voting for a candidate under indictment.

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It’s fun to research Bible verses, like the gospel the other day in which Jesus heals the blind eyes of Bartimaeus. Mark makes a special note that he is “son of Timaeus”. 

Coincidentally or not, there was a Timaeus famous in Greek philosophy, and specifically a figure in Plato. From a reference work: “Disturbances gravely impair the soul’s cognitive functioning...The body and its parts were designed to support that functioning, and Timaeus takes the design of the eyes and the mechanics of vision as an important case in point.”

Interesting to see a possible connection between Timaeus and his interest in the design of the eyes and the son of a different Timaeus and his search for vision.