America, the High and the Mighty

In the wake of the LAX shooting and other examples of our declining civilization, I watched one of my favorite movies again---“The High and the Mighty”, starring the incomparable John Wayne.  It has never moved me more.

Perhaps it now falls into the realm of ancient myth, but, for me, it is a world I remember.  I was a babe in arms when the film was released, and yes, people really did behave that way, and in my lifetime, and I am 60, not 600, years old.  America didn't change suddenly from civilized and civil place where people put their best foot forward and expected as much of others.   It happened over time and whether the dividing line was World War II and the ensuing decadence, or Kennedy-Johnson and the ensuing madness of apologizing for being successful doesn't really matter.

The High and the Mighty, and perhaps the title is almost too appropriate, was the America of my childhood.  We hear a lot about “Self-esteem” today, but back then we had “Self Respect”.   As someone said, self-esteem is what you think; self-respect is what you do.  There are plenty of people today, pumped full of self-esteem and thinking themselves very good indeed who haven’t the self-respect to work for a living or cover their shame, or wash their car, or wipe their child’s nose.   People spoke to each other civilly.  I say this with the most profound shame, for I am one of the worst offenders:  We did not pour forth rivers of sewage from the same lips that kissed our parents, children and sweethearts.  I can think of all kinds of excuses—I've used them.  But they are foolish and ridiculous.  The fact is that we no longer have any self-respect.   We strove for cordiality in our encounters with others, not because we cared what they thought of us, but because of who we were.  We strove to control ourselves, emotionally and physically, in public, not only because of who we were but because we felt an obligation to others.  We were kind even to, probably especially to, those beneath us.  Yes, regardless of what strata of society we occupied, we were aware that some people were “beneath” us, and we felt an obligation toward them.  We tended to associate most strongly with people who were most like us in their upbringing, their principles and their Faith.  We were not interested in “expanding our minds”.   In those days hard work, a basic dedication to sobriety , honoring our elders, and fearing God, worked.   We didn't go around shooting random strangers, and everybody had firearms.

Men used to respect women.  Not all men, certainly, and a woman could certainly opt out of the arrangement, but overall, chivalry was still in force.  Women, as a whole, still respected themselves and their special place in creation.  Men responded favorably.  Feminism is a lie from hell.

This was the America that produced my husband of blessed memory, and it is the America which he never stopped believing in, despite all evidence to the contrary.  In spite of working in an atmosphere alive with tension over not “offending” his female coworkers, he continued to honor and respect women.  He was honest, humble, masculine and noble.  He cherished his appearance---not because he wanted to impress people but because he respected himself.  After his death, one of his little dialysis nurses told me “Your husband always smelled so good!”

 

He died February 7, 2013, when most of us had long since given up on America.  Most of us knew by then that the America he loved was gone forever, long since given over to the ignorant and the idle, those with no respect for themselves or others, who elected a president who knows nothing and takes no responsibility and thinks the job of president means living in the big house and spending other people’s money—getting while the getting is good.   But it was becoming too clear even for a starry eyed patriot like my husband—did I say he built things that saved thousands of American soldiers’ lives?  Well, he did.   He had suffered so much physically from his failed kidneys, and he never gave up.  He died 20 minutes after he got off the phone with his last conference call…I think Our Lord decided he had suffered enough and removed him from the heartache of seeing his country lost. 

I hope you’ll watch The High and the Mighty.  If you've seen it, I hope you’ll see it again.  I hope you will mourn for America, when it was a Christian civilization, before we gave it over to heathens and freeloaders and self appointed victims and to the illegals flooding across our borders.  I hope you’ll grieve for a time when a nanny state was not to be tolerated, and we cared more about our duty to ourselves than our entitlements from others, and we didn't have TSO’s getting murdered because we knew how to behave at the airport and in other public venues and we didn't NEED the TSA.    I hope you will weep for a time when we were the most decent of people and not human garbage, a time when being “tolerant” was not all that was required of life, a time when being an American made one proud and grateful and gracious and full of hope.

The Sincerity of the APE (Atheist Power Elite)

[I have given up social networking for Lent---I need to spend more time blogging, and actually THINKING and less time just visiting...]

The problem with the Pelosis, the Reids, the Obamas, the O’donnels, the Garafolos, ad infinitem, is very simple: They have rejected God, they have rejected His laws, and they have totally rejected the concept of eternal reward and punishment. Yet, being the creatures that He made them, they still innately yearn for justice. I don’t think they are a bunch of sociopaths, although they certainly behave that way. No, they are truly concerned with justice---but it is a justice from which they have excluded God and everything that represents Him. So the only authority they have to go on is their own confused and directionless sense. They truly want to punish the evil and reward the good---in this life, because there is no other---and they have no arbitrary authority to appeal to. The so-called Conservatives of the same metaphysical stripe appeal to the “Constitution” and the “Founding Fathers” to avoid involving God, although the have invented a complex fiction regarding the founding fathers’ spirituality in order to appease the average American, who still, in his heart of hearts, believes in and defers to the Almighty. But all these practical atheist elites do what they do because they believe that they are God. That no one else knows what’s best. That the individual should turn to them, and not himself, in making personal determinations. Because they are compassionate, but not wise, they embrace the “downtrodden”. Period. Without regard to why he is “downtrodden” or whether he could become otherwise, and because they embrace the downtrodden, they assume that someone else is treading on him, and they foolishly assume that it must be the successful, the moral, the people with religious conviction. They have made conviction the cardinal sin—almost the ONLY sin--of their tragic communion: the sin of “Intolerance”. It is a fatal misnomer, for “tolerance” is the very thing they hate: in order to tolerate a thing, one must have a conviction against it, and this is the thing the Atheists in Power will not allow.
The frequent show of real intolerance from their own ranks is not mere hypocrisy. They are God. They must be allowed judgments which are denied those unfortunates who fall under their “providence”.
The entire thrust of their creed is in reality the justice they instinctively yearn for. The success of those in opposition to them is, in their minds, injustice. Taking money from those who have earned it and giving it to those who “need” it is, in their minds, justice. There is no sense in pointing out that they themselves live well. Their luxuries are mere necessities for facilitating their godhood. They are obsessed with injustice, and eaten alive by it. The question “why do good things happen to bad people” haunts them---and remember that “bad people” are simply those who do not share their creed.
As a Catholic, I don’t have to worry about eternal justice---I only have to be kind to whoever or whatever shows up at my door or falls under my sphere of influence---small as that may be. As a Catholic, I am required to practice courtesy, largesse, and defense of those weaker than myself. I am required to be an example of nobility, so that those I touch will hopefully be influenced to go forth and act accordingly to those THEY touch. I am required to use wisdom and true charity, not simple sentimentality in my giving to others both of my time and my material possessions. And I am allowed to sleep peacefully at night, because the ultimate question of Justice is not up to me.
When “Bob Rogers”, the mafia don, stands before the Judgment and hears “Eternal Damnation” he will protest, “But GOD! I was always kind to animals and my mother!” and God will say, “YES, Bob---yes you were. And that’s why I gave you that big house and all those cars and boats.”

Syler

liberal "tolerance"

"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions."

Thus spake that early twentieth genius, GK Chesterton, and never has it been more true or more relevant than today.

A man of conviction will not tolerate certain acts, words and even expressed thoughts. That is, he will not sit idly by and say nothing. He may refrain from arbitrarily challenging every wicked thing he encounters, but don't ask him how he feels about something if you don't want to hear it stated plainly. And if you are possessed of the popular insanity which dictates that any disagreement with your whim is a personal attack, then prepare yourself to lose your feel good.

A man of conviction will NOT, however, discard friends, family, or even acquaintances simply because he disagrees with them, no matter how vehemently. The man of conviction will instinctively love the sinner even as he hates the sin. He will realize that his acquaintance or friend is a unique person regardless of his misinformation and will be the same person when and if he corrects his metaphysic, only better, and ultimately happier. The man of conviction would no more reassure a friend re his wrong theology than he would urge him to ignore a cancerous tumour simply because his friend feared surgery.

This is in STARK CONTRAST to the modern liberal to whom "tolerance" is a shallow mantra! My family has recently experienced the hateful wrath of two such "tolerant" erstwhile friends. Their practice of tolerance runs thus: Declare that you hate "racists", conservatives and true Christians (nominal Christianity is okay). Declare that it is wrong to discriminate against anyone based on color or creed or behavior---and discrimination means whatever *I* say it means. Declare that no one has the right to disagree with you and that, if they do, they are intolerant and must be cut off.

These people are quite capable of ending long friendships based on a word. They are vicious, self-centered and their reason for hating people with convictions is that convictions make them uncomfortable. Professing convictions will make you their hero, but actually carry through with your convictions and they will turn and rend you. Eschew them. Regardless of how close you think you are to them, they will cut you off in a heartbeat and with total dispassion if you dare to gainsay them or if you become in any way inconvenient. Find yourself a good, passionately right or wrong friend who will stick by you no matter what.