A firebrand’s take: And so it goes …

My new friend and compatriot Valerie Protopapas has given me permission to publish some of her fearless work, which I will be doing piecemeal over the coming months. I am honored since this prolific writer is a fearless firebrand to the core.

Now, the word firebrand has a long and diverse history. Its varied meanings can include anything from a “burning stick to a divisive agitator.” Nevertheless, I think the word is fitting for Protopapas.

“I’ve been accused of being ‘pessimistic’ and only seeing the dark side,” she explained to me in an email. “The only time I see light today is when I stub my toe and the world lights up in pain,” Protopapas added in her trenchant wit.

No, she’s not causing Murica’s “unrest or strife,” as the modern parlance implies. But instead, this astute independent historian and feisty social critic is simply pointing out the uncomfortable truths of it, both personal and cultural. And Protopapas is indeed “aggressively promoting a cause,” that of looking at the roots of “our” disorder and disunity to get readers to stop and think and, God willing, to reassess and perhaps even pivot. That’s not “sedition.” That’s good darn advice.

I’m confident Protopapas isn’t “damned to burn in hell,” as the older etymology suggests. Rather, she’s pointing out that we may very well be living in hell right now. Perhaps she is a “spark” to light a fire under us for really understanding how we got in the hot globohomo mess find ourselves in today.

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“And so it goes …”
By Valerie Protopapas

And so, the final blows fall around us, in our institutions and on our streets, and we can say as God Himself once said, “It is finished.” He said it of His great work of redemption, but we can now say it of the noblest experiment of government ever attempted by man—the “united” States of America.

As in all things, we today witness only the end of a long train of evils that has led to these final blows. It actually began in 1787 when the convention called to amend the weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation was hijacked by men—including many so-called “Founding Fathers”—to accomplish what was in fact illegal under the terms of the Articles—that is, to revoke that light yoke of union and create a far more restrictive and dangerous ruling document that came to be known, paradoxically, as “the glorious Constitution.” In a way, it is almost amusing to hear so many “modern patriots” call loudly for a “return” to the Constitution when, in fact, what we have 225 years after that document’s ratification is the very result predicted by those who rejected it at the time.

But the Constitution was only the beginning of the effort to destroy a representative republic and replace it with an Empire ruled by a central authority. The destructive nature of the so-called “federal government” became more and more obvious as the union that President George Washington prayed would be “the first love and guiding duty of Americans” became a matter of sectional self-interest, political corruption and economic despotism. Quickly (by historical standards), the former free association of (formerly) sovereign States became a contest of power and money based upon section.

One section, the South, read the handwriting on the wall and tried to make use of the much vaunted Constitution to withdraw from what had become for them political impotence and economic bondage. Former United States Senator and the first—and only—President of the nation that those Southern States constitutionally created, Jefferson Davis, said many years after the bloodiest war ever fought by Americans:

“It is a satisfaction to know that the calamities which have befallen the Southern States were the result of their credulous reliance on the power of the Constitution, that if it failed to protect their rights, it would at least suffice to prevent an attempt at coercion, if, in the last resort, they peacefully withdrew from the Union.”

One cannot but wonder if we listen carefully enough, the ghost of that great Virginia patriot, Patrick Henry, can be heard calling from his tomb, “Ego me dixi vobis!” (I told you so!)

Lincoln’s war of conquest and consolidation put the final nail in the coffin of the already dying republic, replacing it with an empire eager for conquest and consolidation. Nonetheless, for all of their suffering and death, the Southern people were fortunate. Unlike the American Indian, they were permitted to continue to live in a state of quasi-freedom. Many today believe that they eventually acquired actual freedom with the end of reconstruction, but, in fact, by that time the rest of America’s liberties had been eroded away until there was little or no difference between the South after reconstruction and the rest of the nation without it. The only thing that grew stronger was the central government–and this is how it has continued.

For a while, a sort of equilibrium remained because the nation retained its Christian moral heritage, most strongly in the South. But the communist/socialist philosophy of Marx’s American statist disciple, Abraham Lincoln, was not to be denied. Slowly, over the years, “progressives” like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and others worked to grow the power of the central state to encompass ever-wider areas within the lives of the People. Of course, this was often done with the best of intentions and, at the time, some of these efforts did achieve the desired good (such as TR’s efforts to provide Americans with healthy food and drugs).

The problem, however, was that such “good intentions” were not and have never been amenable to limits! Since the concept of states’ rights had been destroyed in the misnamed “Civil War” that had reduced the formerly sovereign states to nothing more than bureaucratic entities within that central government, there simply was no logical or legitimate way to curb Washington’s growing power.

The major stumbling block to the creation of an all-powerful State was, as noted, America’s “Christian culture.” This was well known and efforts to undermine the morality of the People in order to create the “New World Order” began even before the end of the 19th Century. Educators and philosophers such as John Dewey brought their atheism and humanism into the American educational system with the understanding that America would never be free of Christian influence until it was destroyed in the young.

In time, that branch of the central government most feared by Thomas Jefferson, the judiciary, moved not only to increase the power of government—and especially that of the judiciary—but to strike down Christian influences in the culture as well as in government. It was a deliberately slow process because the People were still feared if not respected—and politicians are generally more venal and self-serving than idealistic.

But it does not take a brilliant scholar to realize that if such judicial rulings by the courts as abortion on demand and “gay marriage” had been attempted before 1950, the outcry from the American People would have quickly ended such unholy and perverted policies, Supreme Court or no Supreme Court! But little by little, America’s values were worn away and little by little, Americans themselves became as corrupt, venal and wicked as their rulers. Churches in the name of “social justice” embraced policies that directly contradicted the teachings of Christ and their own doctrines. What we see today was best expressed by British poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) who wrote,

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

The result of this “embrace” is that fewer and fewer Americans identify themselves today as “Christians” which is absolutely correct. Even many of those who continue to use that description believe and live in such a way as to make their claims ridiculous. Indeed, the only “religion” today that can boast of serious adherents is itself more bloody and blasphemous than the worst of humanism’s canons as the Crescent once more threatens to turn the world into one bloody 12th century caliphate. Ah, where are King Richard of the Lion’s Heart and Prince Eugen today? Instead, we have a conglomeration of pathetic capons who fear offending the wicked more than they wish to protect the good. In truth, we have the “leaders” we deserve.

But the killing blow to “the great experiment” was not delivered by a communist-Muslim mulatto homosexual foreigner whose ineligibility for his office both in talent and credentials was well known—and ignored—neither was it the result of the machinations of an atheist Jew whose vast fortune is the product of destroying nations and betraying his own people to their exterminators, nor of a Muslim prince who, four years before Barack Hussein Obama was foisted upon the nation confidently predicted that a Muslim would be in the White House—in four years.

No, the killing blow came from none other than “We the People.” No longer able to resist corruption or maintain our morals because our once great Christian ethic had been replaced by the utilitarian creed of atheistic Secular Humanism, Americans have chosen what Milton once described as “…bondage with ease rather than strenuous liberty.” Of course, what Americans don’t realize is that “bondage with ease” is impossible. As fewer and fewer of the productive struggle to bear the burden of more and more of the unproductive and of the cost of the ruling class, the time must surely come—and soon—when that “bondage” will make of antebellum slavery a light and easy yoke.

No, we cannot blame our enemies. God knows, they made their intentions very well known throughout the years from Hamilton to Obama. Sadly, we have proven that nothing of value lasts and eventually, the greater is supplanted by the lesser. Thus, as of today, we no longer have the shoulders of giants upon which to stand but instead must watch the spectacle of our demise from the sewer of a culture we ourselves have allowed to be created.