Archive for August 13th, 2005
Luther and Calvin
I have always been fascinated by the history of the Reformation because I, like the Reformers, have always been pitted against the Great Authorities and Established Institutions.
How can one man be right when all the Authorities are wrong?
Many and many a time I feel the same thing Luther felt at Worms when he said to the Emperor, “Here I stand. I can do no other.”
One thing that tripped up the Reformation at its height was the vicious infighting between its leaders. Luther hated Zwingli, the brave leader of Swiss Protestantism who died in battle, with a passion.
Luther said, in my loose translation:
“When my prayers lack passion, I think of Zwingli and the pope, and my fervor returns.”
He apparently hated Zwingli MORE than he hated what he called The Whore of Babylon!
Although the Lutheran Church skips over it, Luther was every bit as much a believer in predestination as Calvin.
I am always subject to correction. In fact, that’s a major reason for the blog. But from my considerable reading of history, Calvin never denounced Luther and Luther never denounced Calvin. Considering how strong their opinions were, that surprises me. Calvin looked upon Luther as the founder, and said repeatedly that Luther’s doctrine was incomplete, but he never denounced him.
I prefer Luther because he had such a giant sense of humor. The man laughed all the time:
“When I break wind in Wittenberg, Rome hears it.”
Luther was raised in the sand hills, just as I was. His father owned a factory, just as mine did, but Luther was raised among the peasants just as I was. He had a giant education, just as I do, but it did not change his fundamental, Bible Belt attitude. He looked the Emperor and the Church Authorities straight in the kisser and said, “That is not what the Emperor says. That’s not what the Pope says. I stand by what the BIBLE says!”
Luther was a man I could get inside of.
On the other hand, I get the distinct impression from his friendliest biographers that nobody could get inside of Calvin. Calvin the man was much, much kinder than his doctrine. He was only responsible for helping execute one heretic in his entire life, though he had a degree of civil authority Luther never held.
But no one ever mentions his ever laughing out loud the way Luther did.
And Calvin was not, as everybody says, “The theocratic dictator of Geneva.” He was not even made a CITIZEN of the place until late in life. It is to Calvin’s discredit that he approved completely of the burning of Severtus, which I mention in my book. It is not true he ordered it. He couldn’t have.
Calvin was probably the greatest theologian who ever lived, but I have little use for theologians. I come from a line that goes back to the Reverend Alexander Whitaker, the son of a Cambridge don who came to America in 1609 “to convert the savage Indians.” This reaches right down to my grandfather who was a circuit-riding country preacher and my sister, who was a Director of Religious Education.
In other words, my tradition is the preacher who begs everybody to come to the front and accept the Lord, not the theologian who is careful to be sure that only Worthy People are allowed into the church.
Calvin stood in the doorway of the church, making sure that only the Worthy came in. Considering his hatred of Zwingli, I am sure Luther did the same thing. But Luther’s image, the laughing welcoming evangelist, is the one I identify with.
“Suffer the little childen to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
It is hard to imagine anyone less like children than the sour-faced Puritans who had a special place in their churches for the even more sour-faced, humorless, elderly Elect.
My approach in politics is the same as my ancestors’ approach to religion:
Get them baptised and get them INTO the church. THEN you teach them what is right. That’s what the church is for.
I am sure a lot of people are a bit bothered by my reaching out to all the wrong people and my making irreverent remarks.
Blame it on my blood line.
When Jesus sat down with the Evil Sinners He probably even LAUGHED with them. That is NOT the Calvinist picture of Christ. The Puritan would have been right there with the self-righteous Temple Jews condemning Him.
We used to have a saying on the brick plant, “We laugh, we joke, but we don’t PLAY.” You do your work and you can crack all the jokes you want to. But jokes are there to make the work go easier. They are never to substitute for the job at hand.
Jesus had a purpose and He had a sense of humor.
Or at least that is what my blood line tells me.
8/13/05 Bob’s Weekly WOL Articles
Posted by Sys Op in WOL Weekly Articles on 08/13/2005
Weekly WhitakerOnline.org Articles
August 13, 2005
Our Established Religion
O’Reilly the Retard
The Collapse of the Communist Priesthood
Our Established Religion
The discussion in this week’s Saturday Internet radio program that can be linked at: Townhall will be entitled, “America’s Established Religion.”
Our established religion is Political Correctness.
Let me repeat that:
America’s established RELIGION is Political Correctness.
The reason they are able to get away with this is because of a myth pushed by respectable conservatives and preachers. This myth is that Political Correctness represents secularism and science.
Since the first amendment to the United States Constitution forbids the establishment of any RELIGION, the religion of Political Correctness is OK because it is not a religion. So every conservative goes into the debate saying that Political Correctness cannot violate the first amendment, whereas regular religion can.
Like all respectable conservatives, they have already surrendered before the debate begins.
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O’Reilly the Retard
I was fighting what is called the secularist agenda thirty years ago. I was marching, organizing marches, and doing press conferences against anti-religious textbooks the NEA was pushing. That was a generation ago, and all the conservatives thought I was being unrespectable.
As usual, decades later everybody is now discovering what I was doing a generation ago, and declaring it is good.
Even that poor little retard Bill O’Reilly is now denouncing the “secularist agenda,” which he discovered after everybody else had long since seen it.
But I didn’t fight the education establishment’s agenda because it was non-religious. I attacked it because I had infinitely more respect for the deep wisdom of the Bible Belt, with all its faults, than I did for the hair-brained kooks who called themselves “intellectuals.”
When Bill O’Reilly says that Political Correctness is secular, he is handing the professor-priesthood the first amendment on a silver platter. No matter how you try to talk around it the first amendment does NOT ban the government establishment of any form of secularism. It bans RELIGION.
Religion is not a bunch of people sitting in a church or synagogue or mosque. Scientology has the status of a religion, but it has no god. When Catholic priests first reached Asia they were astounded to discover that Buddhism was a religion with out a god.
Religion is a set of beliefs based on faith.
Political Correctness is a set of beliefs based entirely on faith. Every university requires you to do homage to “diversity,” though there is no evidence whatsoever that this “diversity” has any value at all. That is a belief enforced on the basis of faith, but the professor-priesthood is able to enforce its faith because conservatives insist that the religion of the professor-priesthood is some kind of science, not religion.
Tens of millions of young people spend their entire lives paying for the professor-priesthood. Right now tens of millions of young people are paying off the back-breaking student loans they had to take out to pay to go to college.
I do not know a single one of them who doesn’t know he was cheated.
But that is just the beginning.
After wasting four years of their lives in college taking courses they scarcely remember and ten years paying off their student loans, some of them are in their mid-thirties hoping to have families. But every child they have is going to require their putting aside huge piles of money, not for a home or for retirement, but for tuition.
All this is backed by government. College degrees are required by government. Government enforces accreditation, which is the life-blood our professor-priesthood lives on.
A generation of young people will spend their entire lives in vassalage to the professor-priesthood.
A whole generation of young people is ripe for rebellion.
They are not interested in O’Reilly’s drivelings about secularism versus religion.
They want their FREEDOM.
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The Collapse of the Communist Priesthood
When I went to a Communist country I crossed the dead line. There were land minds and guards with automatic weapons who would kill escapees. Inside the country there were long, long lines at any store that happened to have something for sale.
When I left the country, nobody outside seemed to notice those things, least of all the anti-Communists. They were busy theorizing about evil atheistic Communism versus their own religious values.
Everybody remembers Ronald Reagan’s famous words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
What they do NOT remember is that Reagan’s respectable conservative staff removed those words THREE TIMES from his speech and he has to reinsert them himself each time. They did not want him to talk about the Wall he was standing in front of. They wanted him to talk theory.
People in Communist countries wanted FREEDOM from an insane rule by the Communist religion. Nothing in the Communist faith WORKED, but no one was allowed to doubt it. So hundreds of millions of people were enslaved by it while conservatives dribbled theories to each other in National Review.
Today a generation of young people wants freedom from the unbelievably silly professor-priesthood. But National Review and O’Reilly want to dribble theories about a secularist agenda to each other.
It is time for us to tear down the wall in front of us. This insane priesthood must go, not because it is secular, but because it is a priesthood to which our government enslaves us.
It is time we remembered what the Constitution and especially the first amendment to the Constitution, really means.
8/13/05 Insider Letter
Posted by Sys Op in Insider Letter Archive on 08/13/2005
(Reprinted to Blog from email list of 8/13/05)
*** Bob’s Insider’s Message ***
The Emperor’s Clothing Store
Does anybody remember how that old story, The Emperor’s New Clothes ended?
A little boy said, “But he doesn’t have any clothes on.”
At that point, everybody was shamed. They had been told that if they did not see the New Clothes, it just showed they were not Worthy. When a little boy said what they could all see, they were shamed to realize they had been made fools of.
But the Professional Market Analysts and the Modern Artists are ALWAYS being exposed. As I keep pointing out on my radio show the Wall Street Journal regularly reports scientific studies that demonstrate that monkeys throwing darts do just as well as professional market analysts.
The Andy Warhol who cracks a commode and sells it for a million dollars is a fraud everybody knows about, but he is not the only person who gets the million. The Professional Art Critics and Art Professors live like kings, too.
And nobody notices.
Nothing professors require us to believe in ever works. But nobody minds. The next time they raise tuition everybody will complain, again, that tuition is being raised too much.
Our professor-priesthood, they say, is asking for too much more pay.
Nobody ever points out that there is no reason to pay them at all.
The end of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” ought to be different.
The kid said, “He doesn’t have any clothes on.”
“The people said, ‘We can all see that. When is the Emperor going to raise our taxes and order an even BETTER set of clothes that don’t exist?'”
Bob
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