In repose to “The C Word, Elizabth wrote,

Don’t forget “A Christmas Carol.” Dickens caught a lot of critical
flak for writing that one. Scrooge — Ebenezer Scrooge — was a
New Englander in Old England.

“‘A Christmas Carol”” came out about the same time that Victoria married
Albert. Albert is significant in the “typical American Christmas” as
this German prince made Christmas fashionable early in the age of
mass media.”

“Most of our Christmas customs here in the U.S. are German, one way or
another.”

Most people hate being contradicted. Elizabeth enjoys it.

Queen Victoria and Albert were married in 1840. “A Christmas Carol” came out in 1860.

America had long since had Christmas. As I said, the Puritans outlawed it, and they wouldn’t have outlawed something that didn’t exist.

Christmas was the old celebration of Winter Solstice when the sun was farthest away from earth. This happens on December 21 or 22, but Constantine made it December 25 because that was the date of the birth of Mithras, and he was a Mithrain.

So Christ got born on December 25. The Emperor said so. Those who objected have not been heard from.

Germanic theology included the Winter Soltice just as Mithraism and other Indo-European religions did.

Erin for Ireland and Iran mean the same thing.

There is a lot in Wodinism about the House Tree and the world tree Ygsdradil that I will not go into here, but the fact is that Christianity adopted all that: “Be all things unto all men.”

American had more German immigrants than it did immigrants from all the British Isles put together.

It doesn’t take a PhD in linguistics to see that “Santa Klaus” is a German name.

So Elizabeth, your specific example has holes in it but our thesis is dead accurate.

Bob’s Blog has lots of holes in its specifics. But that bothers me not the slightest as long as my general theme is accurate.

Sugar, you are no lemon.

In response to “What End?” Sheri writes:

“As far as high priests and magicians with backward collars being out of business, I think that those who actually believed something would not mind being out of business. The rest, I sure wouldn’t mind seeing out of business, and I don’t think God would mind either. Shari”

One point of interest about this comment is that Sheri is a devout Catholic. Being raised a Bible Belter I know that when Protestants think of Catholics they see the Pope and the Cardinals, “The Princes of the Church” in their minds.

The idea that a CATHOLIC would say that it might be better if the clergy didn’t even get PAID, much less be Princes of the Church, violates everything we ahev leaned about Catholics.

Out on Polo Road near Pontiac, SC there is a tiny Catholic Church. Across from it is a giant Baptist church, several stories high. So when the Catholics in that little church describe their location, they make a statement that causes Ole Bob to roll on the floor with laughter.

They say, “We are the little Catholic Church across the street from the Baptist Cathedral.”

Let me deal quickly with stone-faces who think I am insulting somebody. That Baptist Church was built by the congregation and I respect that mightily. Europeans can only keep their already-built churches open with a Church Tax, and it is a point of pride with me that Europeans simply cannot believe that we built all those churches ourselves.

I wonder if anybody but an American could understand this terrific bit of humor?

I remember a homily in an Eastern Rite church where the priest talked about Jimmy Swaggart’s denunciation of the robes Eastern priests wear and the costly crosses they carry.

After quoting Swaggart, the priest said, “He’s right, you know. We don’t need all this. But we love God and we want to good when we are worshipping him.”

He did not mention that Swaggart himself never wore a suit that cost less than a thousand dollars when he preached.

Down through the ages millions of Catholics have mentioned that Paul the Tentmaker and Peter the Fishermen were men with callouses on their hands. Peter, from whom all the popes claim descent, was a married man.

The Catholic Bible says that “A bishop SHALL have one wife.”

Benjamin Franklin did not believe that any public official should get paid. He felt that public service was a privilege, and no one should be in public office who does not know how to make a living otherwise.

Sheri says that those who preach the Gospel should do so without pay.

Paying preachers has resulted in a clergy that is full of socipaths josteling one another for better pay.

Sheri is a very old-fashioned, out-of-date Catholic. She thinks a person should give up everything to follow Christ.

Her attitude doesn’t fit what we think of as Catholic. But it sure sounds good to an Old Bible Belter as a definition of a Christian.

In response to my “Of Course You Oppose Extremism!” beginning with a quote from that piece, Mark writes,

“’Worse still, how do you deal with a public that PAYS to hear someone repeat a tautology from an idiot who thinks he is saying something?’”

“I believe there are a lot more thinking people than any of give credit for. When I talk to people about the idiotic ideas liberals and respectable conservatives tout I’m amazed at how many people agree with my point of view. ”

“If you look back to the 1980’s and the Reagan Revolution (as an example only) one could be amazed at how many people converted from the old Roosevelt/Johnson era ideas to the “new” conservative ideas seemingly overnight. It took pain in the form of financial collapse before they took note, but change they did.”

“People today have eyes and ears and more are being forced to understand what is taking place in our world just by the problems 3rd world immigration is bringing. It may seem like we are on a sinking ship — and we probably are — but when the water gets to our knees people will have to start thinking for themselves again and that is when we will win the largest number of converts — tautology be damned. ”

Mark, I am getting a little tired of my commenters making better statements than I do, and I wish you would all take a sociology course or a government job to dumb yourseves down a little.

Mark’s statement is the exact opposite of the “ALL is lost! I told them and they didn’t listen so it’s not my fault” crowd.

The stone-faced “All is lost!” crowd obsesses on Reagan’s failures. “You see,” they say, there’s no hope, the Reagan Revolution didn’t change things in a REAL way.”

They seem to LOVE saying things like that.

The Reagan Revolution occurred in November of 1980. It was an earthquake. The national media openly admitted that they did have any contacts inside teh sudden new ruling class in Washington.

The media, you know, those “professional journalists” they keep talking about, knew plenty of oderate Republicans and liberal Democrats who had guided both parties and all policy up to then, but they didn’t know a soul among the thousands of new faces in 1981.

As with all sudden revolutions, Reagan got a lot of power and didn’t know what to do with it. I keep mentioning that Mousilini almost missed the March On Rome that put him in power.

Democrats, who had controlled both houses of congress since 1957, not only got bashed in the presidential election, but they lost the Senate, too.

Their one bastion was the House of Representatives. Despite the opposition of Bush, Senior, who lost the presidency in 1992, Gingirch moved to the hard right and the House has been in Republican hands ever since.

In 1992 Ross Perot was asked if he would be willing to run for president by Larry King and the next thing Perot knew he was was all fifty state ballots and leading both regular party candidates for the presidency.

He dropped out when he suddenly discovered that politics is a rough game. If he hadn’t, he would have been president and probably wouldn’t have had the vaguest idea about what to do with it.

Mark’s point is that the earthquake fault is right there. I started sounding like an “All is lost!” type and he called me on it.

Which is exactly what a commenter is supposed to do.

What I know and you need to know is that when you are suddenly in the seat of power, you are sledom ready for it.

You keep telling me that you feel odd talking about public policy with an old pro. Let me tell you a little secret. The old pro who has been fighting to take over for years has exactly the same feeling when he is suddenly thrust out of his career in opposition to being the one who has to MAKE policy.

Suddenly a bunch of top-level bureaucrats were asking ME what to do next. And I had to explain it all to the media. And I had to root out the traitors myself.

And Our Hero, Bob Whitaker, made a mess of it in many areas. I was responsible for the next clearance of the head of the Cuba Desk of the Defense Intelligence Agency. She was Hispanic and a graduate of an Ivy League school. I knew the probability was 99% that she was a Communist.

But nobody could AFFORD to say so, and I followed my bosses.

She is now in prison for being Castro’s agent.

The list is endless. I did a lot of good, but like most of us what I remember is when, in the sudden reversal of role into a power position, I followed the old rules.

You have to do what Mark has done, NOTICE the earthquake fault that keeps rumbling American politics.

And when it erupts, you must know what to do next.

We need more people than Bob Whitaker thinking this way. Bob can give a lot of very good things to think about, but you have to spread those thoughts, think about them, and make the future.

You need to find other people who can make the future. It is not easy for a people raised on various kinds of Wordism to be weaned from it. It is not easy to understand that there is no Book of Bob.

There is only we the people of the United States and our posterity.

You will have to do it all, including the thinking.

In response to my “What End?” Bruce writes a response that really made me think.

Bruce says,

“I think when people want to know whether we will win or not, what most of them really mean is that they want to know if things will get on the right track in their own lifetimes.”

Boy, is that ever true!

When I was young I was obsessed with stopping integration, even though I knew exactly what would happen. In my security files, I discovered that the University of South Carolina was integrated as soon as me and my group left the school.

They had announced plans to bring in the first black student into a white public university in South Carolina in January of 1963 to the University of South Carolina. It had already been announced.

Then they switched it to Clemson and held off the University of South Carolina until September when we would be gone.

Why January of 1963? Because Fritz Hollings ran for governor in 1958 on one sentence, “There will no integration in South Carolina while I am governor.” His term ended in January of 1963.

Holings was the only Southern politician who backed John Kennedy against Lyndon Johnason of Texas for the 1960 presidential nomination from the word go. He made a deal with Kennedy that there would be integration in South Carolina until January of 1963.

Integration normally satrted at the beginning of a school year in September, and South Carolina was the only place where it began in January.

Nobody ever asked about that.

So I devoted a lot of time to a hopeless fight to keep integration from coming to ME in my home state.

That was pure selfishness.

So my article “What End?” as Bruce points out, reflects what any point of view does: some of the outlook of hte person doing the writing.

It is easy for me to be comfortable with the fact that we are now n a winnable battle for thelong-term survival of our race, but that still leaves Bruce and other young people in a hellish situation.

I am sitting here in fomfortable retirement in a nice condo giving very practical advice abut the long-term struggle. Since all of us want desperately for our race to survive, that is important advice for you.

But for Ole Bob, it is also a ticket to lala land. And the Bruces of our team have to keep reminding me not to lose track of the world THEY live in.