For the record, the absurd Trump “Peace Plan” is virtually identical to the ruse I outlined a year ago. The only question is whether Charlie Brown (a/k/a Russia) will be dumb enough to take another run at the football. https://ronpaulinstitute.org/would-a-trump-putin-agreement-bring-peace-to-ukraine-or-just-set-the-stage-for-more-war/

“Get it in writing”? Both UN Security Council Resolution 1244 on Kosovo and the Minsk agreements were in writing. What difference did that make to the West? If Putin really thinks a “legally binding treaty” is worth a damn, he really is delusionally incompetent. Likewise if he thinks Trump really wants a permanent peace that respects Russia’s security concerns, rather than a fiction that avoids a humiliating defeat for the US/NATO/EU and our proxies in Kiev.

The 1861-65 conflict was not our first civil war. It was our second. The first was during the Revolutionary War, pitting anti-British American Patriots against pro-British American Loyalists.

“…an equally deranged right-wing gunman had critically wounded Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others.”

The Giffords shooter, who targeted others on the scene seemingly at random, is a mentally troubled individual with no clear political views or motivation.

Deranged, yes. Right-wing, no.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160506000145/http://www.thewire.com/politics/2011/01/what-we-know-about-jared-lee-loughner/21572/

Re “the Immaculate Conception is one of the tenets of Islam.”

I trust this refers to the Virgin Birth, not the Immaculate Conception.

Putin would have to be insane to take the settlement described here.
1. Trump isn’t, and never has been, in control of the US government, not even the Executive Branch. Even if (big “if,” IMO) he’s acting in good faith, no agreement he makes can be relied upon (see point 4 below), even for the balance of his term, much less after it.
2. The collective West knows it cannot win the war against Russia but can, if the Russians permit it (because they think they have a “deal”) try not to lose it. The goal is not peace in Ukraine or Europe, but to put it on hold while we shift to Iran, then China. Then come back to finish off Russia.
3. After Trump’s meeting with the Z-man & the Gayropeans at the WH, we have even more confirmation that the plan is to put some sort of a US-backed European “assurance force” into rump Ukraine after the shooting stops, with the idea of a Korean-style DMZ and of re-consolidating a rump Ukraine as a viable NATO proxy though not a formal member. The ONLY way Moscow can avoid that is to liquidate the current Ukrainian state (either via direct control or via a puppet regime), which they clearly are loath to do. Anything else relies on Western promises that will not be honored.
4. I’ll say it One. More. Time, because evidently it’s an impossible concept for many people to grasp: NO AGREEMENT SIGNED BY WESTERN POWERS CAN BE RELIED UPON. THEY LIE.
5. Sadly, I laid all this out in December, before Trump even took office. All going according to script. The only question is whether the Russians are dumb enough to bite. https://ronpaulinstitute.org/would-a-trump-putin-agreement-bring-peace-to-ukraine-or-just-set-the-stage-for-more-war/

Quite to the contrary, what evidence is there that Russia intends to settle the war by military means? Moscow’s stated goals haven’t changed from June 2024: denazification (whatever that means, it’s unachievable unless Russia takes control of all of Ukraine, or at the very least imposes a puppet regime on any rump state); demilitarization (since Russia declines to target the Kiev regime’s command and control in a way, say, comparable to how Israel sought to decapitate Iran’s leadership, I guess this effectively means killing off all Ukraine’s men); neutrality (Mr Lavrov still talks of binding, iron-clad treaty “guarantees” — which are worthless); and de jure recognition of Crimea and the four oblasts as Russian. Sure, they warn ominously that if Ukraine and its sponsors don’t take the offer, four oblasts will become eight — a threat they’d obviously rather not deliver on. In short, everything still points to a “pedagogical” strategy (if you want to call it that) to get the West to agree to Moscow’s minimal demands, which largely would rest on western promises that would not be honored. The fact that the West has not accepted doesn’t change the fact that such a Minsk 3-type fake peace remains Russia’s goal, not a Berlin 1945-style victory.

The idea that Mr. Trump is a man of peace is absurd. Moreover, if anyone in Moscow (or for that matter, in Beijing, Tehran, Pyongyang) thinks a U.S. signature on an agreement is worth anything – Trump or no Trump – they should get their heads examined. Unfortunately, there’s reason to think that Mr. Shamir is in good company in Moscow, that many, likely including Mr. Putin, still harbor such illusions, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Re “Why do we still have no voice, despite Donald Trump, despite the rise of the Alt Right, despite the pro-white organizations and personalities that appear all the time? I think there are two reasons. One is the idea that the system is so rotten that electoral politics can change nothing. The other is the idea that there has to be complete collapse, and then white consciousness will grow out of the ruins.”

There’s another reason.

In Europe, demographic defense is “national,” preserving a country’s national, i.e., ethnic character, as English, French, German, Italian, etc. While the ethnos in question in indeed white, the appeal is not to race per se.

In the US, though, simply saying “American” has no clear ethnic referent. For historical reasons, including a large minority of African extraction that has been here almost as long as the core white, English-speaking, Christian American ethnos, the term “American” today cannot be distinguished from its civic context.

Thus, as there’s no readily available term for the core American ethnos — most of whose members have no ethnic consciousness as such — the only obvious alternative is race narrowly defined.

That is itself a problem for at least two reasons. First, most core American ethnics themselves reject a purely racial consciousness, though that may change in “the ruins.” Second, race is itself not an ethnos. in the same way that appeals to ethnic solidarity in Europe resonate not only with common ancestry but hundreds of years of shared awareness in language, religion, and culture generally.

The reason for the Establishment Clause was to protect States’ established churches against any federal establishmet by Congress.

“Eternal hell is the sickest human idea, and it is a Christian idea — Latin Christian, to be fair: Greek Orthodoxy rejected it.”

No. While there are some differences in the Orthodox Church’s view of eternal hell (Gehenna, as opposed to Hades, corresponding to the Hebrew Sheol) from the views of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, there is no question that, after the Last Judgment, Gehenna will be forever. Universalism (specifically Origen’s notion of “Apokatastasisc) was condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553.

Ummm…

Yeah, that may well be true. But it still doesn’t explain why superior African athletic ability (in some sports, anyway) is more apparent in Europe or North America than in sub-Saharan Africa itself. If your thesis is correct, we should see more evidence of it in its place of origin, not less.

Sure, but it’s still a fair question as to why people of African origin dominate many sports in some (still) majority European-descent countries but we don’t see a lot of success of national teams from the black African countries themselves, except in certain niches, like east African long-distance runners.

You’d think they’d be the mother lode for genetically advantage talent. Yet we don’t see it.

I don’t pretend to know the answer. Anyone have a theory?

“I came to see that religion—and specifically Christianity—was a malevolent force in society…”

Where is that addressed?

There was a transatlantic trade run by Europeans from Africa to the Americas for a few centuries. It was then ended by Europeans (and European-Americans) ourselves, not only in the Atlantic but ending the Muslim slaving operation in the Indian Ocean — an operation that long-preceded the European Atlantic trade. Slavery was then, over a few decades in the 19th century, abolished domestically in those few Christian lands where it had persisted.

What other civilization ever raised serious moral objection to the slave trade, much less took steps to abolish it, other than European Christendom?

In the rest of the world slavery was simply taken for granted (as it was in pre-Christian Europe) or positively endorsed, as in Islam. Islamic slaving operations from North Africa terrorized Europe for centuries, from the Mediterranean all the way to Iceland. Capture of Christian slaves in raids from Tatar-ruled Crimea, the “harvest of the steppes,” depopulated swathes of Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. The last Muslim-ruled lands to abolish slavery (at least formally) did so only in the second half of the 20th century, only under pressure from historically Christian countries.

No other culture can boast anything comparable to Christian Europeans’ anti-slaving record.

You mean natural resources like oil, gas, minerals, etc., that in many locations, notably Africa, the locals had no notion of or way to use until Europeans got there? Resources that if not for colonialism would today be sitting under the ground, useless, even to the people of post-colonial states under their current regimes, which are almost always more corrupt, brutal, and exploitative than the colonial administrations were?

Whenever I hear denunciations of colonialism and European empires, I think of this.

What did European colonialism ever do for their subjects? Oh nothing — just abolished slavery, brought medicine, technology, industry, infrastructure, rule of law, better agriculture (and end of famine), Christianity (in place of idolatry, human sacrifice and cannibalism), and…

.., PEACE.

“Oh, PEACE — Shut up!”

“In fact,Islam also teaches to be fair to other people who are even not Muslims from what I’ve read in the Koran. And specifically Christians.”

Bunk.

Why does a discussion about the negative aspects of Judaism always have to feature pinhead Islamophilia?

“Tariffs target consumption; taxes target savings and hard work.” True! Which is a great argument for REPLACING other taxes with tariffs — which doesn’t seem to be in the cards — not for ADDING tariffs to existing taxes.

In recent years doubt has been cast on the conventional view that the Black Death was spread by rats. For example:

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/black-death-may-not-have-been-spread-rats-after-all

Hence, cats might be irrelevant.

A “communist Wehrmacht” — great expression!

The DDR did not expect East Germans or their armed forces to be ethno-masochists. Watch:

…or 1913…
…or 1865…
…but why quibble. The point is well taken. We haven’t had a Constitution for quite some time.

I was wondering about this very point. In May-June 1993 I had spent about a month working in the Duma as part of a parliamentary staff exchange with the US Senate. (The very thought seems bizarre now.) This was in the midst of the notorious “voucher” privatization scheme. Nobody I talked with, from any Russian faction, had a good word to say about it, as it greatly facilitated transfer of state property to the oligarchs. Given his prominence, I’d always associated Jeffrey Sachs with the voucher scheme. I’m relieved to hear that’s not the case. Perhaps Mr. Sachs can provide some insight into whose baby it was.

“There was a fake report that Israel had bombed Gaza’s St. Porphyrius Church.”

Ummm … am I missing something? The Israelis DID bomb St. Porphyrios Orthodox Church.

https://www.reuters.com/world/former-us-rep-amash-says-relatives-killed-gaza-church-air-strike-2023-10-20/

“The Harehills disturbance began when an immigrant Romanian family became involved in a stand-off with social services officers…”

Not Romanian: Romani, a/k/a Roma, Gypsy.

“Currently the fanatic faction, led by Zelensky, is fighting the realist faction, led by Zaluzhny.”

Zelensky and Zaluzhny are indeed fighting, but the latter doesn’t represent any sort of realism. To the extent we can tell, Zaluzhny is a hard-core Banderist ideologue backed up by neonazi militias who belatedly seem to be realizing that their western “friends” have led them into a death trap. Zelensky, on the other hand, far from being a fanatic is an opportunistic little weasel utterly dependent on the West.

Exactly. Ditto the much-touted draft agreement in Istanbul in 2022. Why should anyone have believed its provisions would have been honored by Kiev and its backers once Russia pulled back its forces? Russian naivete seemingly knows no bounds.

1. “which explains why Orthodox Christians make up less than 1% of the US population” Again, this isn’t really about numbers, but Orthodoxy starts from a small base in the West for the same reason historically western denominations are small minorities in places like Russia, Greece, Serbia, Romania, etc. Whether that will change in the future as customary western faiths continue their decline, we’ll see. When you see more and more parishes with hardly anybody of the founding ethnic stock, it certainly appears significant, but time will tell.
2. There’s a difference between saying the Church is not a political club and saying it’s “apolitical.” Man is a political animal. The Church is not of the world but it is in the world. Of course the Church is not entirely divorced from politics — and from society — nor can it be. The nature of the Church’s relationship to politics reflects the nature of the political order. If the state and society are favorable to the Church (as was the case in historically Orthodox states, increasingly in post-communist states today), we have symphonia. If the state is hostile (paganism, Islam, communism, etc.) — or indifferent, as America used to be but now tending towards hostility — it’s more complicated. But in no case is the Church unconnected to the social and political order in which it exists. But whatever the relevant political factors, Americans’ growing interest in Orthodoxy can’t be reduced to politics, as I hoped I had conveyed but obviously failed.
3. If you’re suggesting that the same social pathologies that have gutted the western denominations are present in some parts of the Orthodox Church, you don’t have to convince me. Again, this is nothing new. After Nicaea 325, Arianism didn’t just evaporate into thin air but dogged the Church for decades on end. Ditto the impact on Orthodoxy during the Reformation and Counterreformation, when Orthodox prelates sometimes lined up with either the Protestant or the Roman Catholic camp as circumstances warranted, not because we really were part of that dispute but because political circumstances seemed to require it. Today — when the entire Christian and post-Christian world is assaulted by the anthropological heresies symbolized by the skittles flag, and when western denominations are surrendering to one degree or another — of course we have those in our Church who would like to follow the same dismal path. But I would note that (a) those influences are quite small compared to those in the western denominations; and (b) those influences are almost always tied to some direct political or ecclesiastical infection from the West. I’ve already noted in a link posted in an earlier comment how the skittles assault in Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, and elsewhere is part of the stated policies of the US and Western Europe, plus western NGOs, many of them connected to George Soros. Likewise, if you look at such marginal academic groups, like the Orthodox [sic] Studies Center at Fordham (a Jesuit institution), social liberalism goes hand-in-hand (I hope it’s just hands…) with pro-Vatican ecumenism. In that vein Constantinople has been under heavy US State Department influence since the 1948 coup that deposed Patriarch Maximos and installed Patriarch Athenagoras. The current “conservative” Greek government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US and Israel.

And so on…. This is NOT to say “it’s all the West’s fault,” but rather to note that, as has always been the case, it is precisely because the Church is NOT divorced from worldly affairs, external, discordant currents will have their impact. This means some people will fall away (the Parable of the Sower). Whole communities may depart in schism (Brest 1596). Yes, the Greek bishops have dropped the ball (though I am told that not everything that’s going in Greece on this matter is public; again, we’ll see).

In short, stuff happens. You’re free to disagree, but I am confident that we will weather these storms as we have others in the past, including far worse ones. Maybe that just sounds like TradCats whistling past of the graveyard with respect to Francis’ antics. On the other hand, we don’t have a top-down papal system. Patriarch Bartholomew can say and do what he likes before he goes the way of all flesh, but despite his delusions to the contrary, he’s not an “Eastern Pope” and his efforts to serve his true masters in Washington, Brussels, Rome, and Tel Aviv will amount at worst to a schism where some part of the Orthodox Church — hopefully a small one –will submit to the Lavender Mafia in the Curia. Hopefully that will not happen, and in fact I don’t think it will. We’ll see. Life goes on.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. Yes, maybe some of the many who are now coming to us initially are driven by the rot in their own traditions and the sense that they can find a hideaway in the Orthodox Church. But, as I hoped I’d conveyed but evidently failed, we are not a political club, “conservative” or otherwise. What inquirers find is what they were really seeking, even if only partially aware of it: life, truth, peace, salvation, nourishment for their souls and bodies.

As for what the future holds (tax status – really?), we’ve managed through whatever the Sanhedrin, pagans, jihad, Uniatism, communism, and everything and anything else the devil and human malice could concoct. We’re not worried.

Re: “The Orthodox church is the only one with something of worth, but it’s dull and dead despite all the new churches built in Russia and the like.”

Whoever thinks that can’t have much contact with Orthodoxy, either in the US or anywhere else. I was talking with a friend in Houston last night. At his parish, they have over 200 catechumens. Other parishes have dozens. It’s not just numbers though. It’s WHY they’re coming, ordinary ethnic Americans (not just Russians, Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, etc.), especially young men who’ve gotten sick of being lied to their whole lives about — well, about pretty much everything.

You know that when NPR is after you, you’re onto something. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1096741988/orthodox-christian-churches-are-drawing-in-far-right-american-converts

There’s an element of truth in the claim that many of these angry young men (plus some women, and families) are drawn to what NPR mischaracterizes as the “far right.” But once they arrive, they come to understand that the Church is not a political organization, nor is it a courtroom, but a spiritual hospital that neither the Synagogue, the Mosque, the Sweat Lodge, the Ashram, wherever the hell the neopagan LARPers or atheists hang out, nor the standard brand Evangelical, Protestant, or (sorry, Mike) Roman Catholic groups can offer.

THAT’s why Orthodoxy is undergoing a yuuuge revival not only in Russia, Serbia, etc., after decades of unimaginable persecution and innumerable martyrs (followed by post-Cold War importation of “democracy”) but is the “last man standing” in what’s left of America, which is perhaps about to enter a parallel abyss. It’s also why the Global American Empire (GAE) of lies and perversion is targeting the Orthodox civilizational world and the Orthodox Church, since the GAE already has subverted all the others. https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/violence-erupts-as-west-turns-its-sexual-subversion-weapon-on-georgia/

Unlike any of the other alternatives we maintain and offer the authentic doctrine, worship and mysteries of ancient Israel (Gal. 6:16): true Temple, true Priesthood, true Sacrifice, true Body and Blood, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, neither adding to (like Rome, which departed from Orthodoxy a thousand years ago — it didn’t start with Bergoglio or Vatican 2!) nor subtracting from (like the Protestants) the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).

OK, this is the cue now for all the materialists, atheists, anti-Israelists (not “antisemites”), popesplainers, Bible-thumpers, etc. to chime in. Feel free. Scoff away.

But for others:

Come and see.

(Just one of many, many examples

)

“I’m not all too familiar with the details of the Islamic faith.”

Nor of the Christian faith, evidently, nor of its actual relationship to rabbinic Judaism.

“US Americans claim to be a nation of immigrants and celebrate diversity, so such distinctions are superfluous.” Sadly, that’s one of the two great lies sold to the American people during the past few decades. (The other is that the US was founded as a civic state, not an ethnic state of a distinct people: European, mostly English (a/k/a white), Anglophone, Christian (mostly Protestant).

Unfortunately, unlike Russia, we don’t have two distinct terms for the core American ethnos vs other inhabitants of the United States who don’t share that identity, and who often loathe its representatives and increasingly seek to replace them.

Respectfully, Mr. Guyénot, as a non-Christian, much less an Orthodox one, nor a Hellene/Greek (or more properly, Romaikos), you can speculate on what maybe, possibly, conceivably might have been the intention of choosing a “philosophical” name like Holy Wisdom, but there’s no question that everybody – literally, everybody – in the East Roman (“Byzantine”) Empire understood it to mean Jesus “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:22-25). Also see, https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2014/05/jesus-christ-wisdom-of-god.html Note also that according to Orthodox Christian practice, the person or feast to which a church is dedicated is depicted on the iconostasis next to the Theotokos. In any church named Holy Wisdom, that icon depicts Jesus Christ. It didn’t just “sound” Christian, the Christian meaning is literally right in front of everybody’s eyes.

(To address a few of the other comments: no, the Holy Wisdom is the Son, the Logos, not the Holy Spirit. Also the gender of words doesn’t necessarily reflect the hypostatic identity of the Person denoted. For example, all three divine Persons are always referred to as He. This is true of the Holy Spirit (“He,” not “It”), even though the word “Spirit” in Greek is of the neuter gender. Likewise, terms referring to Christ include Son, Logos/Word (both masculine) and Sophia/Wisdom (feminine), but the appropriate pronoun is always He.)

Back to the central point of your flawed but nonetheless valuable analysis, Mr. Guyénot: yes, there has been what appears to be a concerted effort to devalue the pivotal historical place of the East Roman Empire (including the now ubiquitous use of the miserable and misleading term “Byzantine” since the 16th century). This is not, however, because the East Romans were somehow less deluded (as some might see it) by Christianity. Quite to the contrary, the East Roman commonwealth was arguably the most successful Christian state in history. Besides the political (Roman) and cultural (Hellenic) pillars of the East Roman identity (which you well addressed) the third essential pillar (which you ignored) was the East Romans’ genuine conviction that as Orthodox Christians they represented the true “Israel of God.” (Gal. 6:16) Scoff if you wish, but this Israelitic conviction was reflected not only in the Empire’s official ideology but in a people passionately (you might think, fanatically) devoted to Orthodoxy in the face of several attempts by heretical rulers – and by the West – to impose an alien faith on them. In my opinion, this factor more than anything else explains the desire of Western historiography – first Roman Catholic and Protestant, later materialist and progressive – to denigrate or ignore the Empire. I’d further suggest that a similar prejudice operates today with respect to that contemporary “Byzantine” polity, Russia, which as a revived Orthodox Christian power attracts hatred of a kind never accorded to the “progressive, socialist” USSR.

“Hagia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, is the goddess of philosophers, not theologians.”

No. The Holy Widsom, or the Wisdom of God, is the Son, the immortal Word, the second Person of the Holy Trinity: Jesus Christ. While the term is grammatically feminine, it has nothing to do with any female saint, much less pagan goddess, named Sophia. It could not be more Christian.

I agree that “Hebrew Bible” is an inappropriate term for the Old Testament.

Thank you. Mr. Hoffman, for an intelligent and informative corrective to Mr. Dalton’s drivel, not to mention to the no-less-brainless majority of the posted comments on the same. Brace for a torrent of abuse from the same crowd.

Excellent survey but overstates the extent of the Trump hiatus. The neocons never let go of the levers of power but were somewhat restrained in their exercise by having to work around the Boss. Keep in mind that the major build-up of Kiev regime forces and disregard for the Minsk 2 agreement took place under Trump, leading to the current conflict.

There’s no Transatlanticism without Transgenderism.

Commentary on Mr. Whitney’s analysis:

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/december/14/is-russian-restraint-averting-the-risk-of-nuclear-war-or-inviting-it/

“Is Russian Restraint Averting the Risk of Nuclear War – or Inviting It?”

Yes, lots of interesting details, including US General Graves’ pro-Bolshevik and anti-monarchist biases.

Also: “Anti-Bolshevik forces in the sparsely populated northern regions lacked resources and struggled to feed their armies so, consequently, they had to depend on the interventionists, who had no intention of helping the Whites topple the Reds.”

Exactly.

Characteristically good piece from Mr. Whitney except for this nonsense: “Washington’s animus towards Russia has a long history dating back to 1918 when Woodrow Wilson deployed over 7,000 troops to Siberia as part of an Allied effort to roll back the gains of the Bolshevik Revolution.”

The only “gains” the Bolsheviks could point to in 1918 were armed dispersal of the elected Constituent Assembly, the humiliating peace of Brest-Litovsk, the initiation of civil war, and embarking on an orgy of mass murder of tens of millions of Russians (largely at the hands of non-Russians, especially in the early years).

The intervention of the United States and other countries, mostly Russia’s erstwhile allies, initially focused on the vain task of trying to keep Russia in the war against Germany and stopping war materiel from falling into German hands, but with the November 1918 Armistice, their goals shifted to — well, exactly to the agenda Mr. Whitney describes: plundering Russia and her resources. Which of course many of them no doubt had in mind to start with.

For more than a century progressive propaganda has peddled the story that the intervention was meant to strangle the Revolution in its cradle. If only! The truth is rather different: the chaos and carnage the Bolsheviks inflicted on Russia provided a convenient opening for carving out spheres of influence in the former Russian Empire. The various White anti-Bolshevik movements constituted allies of convenience for the interventionists, but outside aid to the Whites was sporadic and limited. One might almost suppose the last thing the interventionist powers wanted to see was any non-communist movement’s becoming strong enough to defeat the Bolsheviks and defend Russia’s genuine national interests — for the same reason our latter-day “interventionists” despise the current order in Moscow.

Re “The same is true of the US/NATO bombings of Serbia in 1999: they had a UN resolution authorizing military force.”

Respectfully, that’s inaccurate. There was no UNSC resolution for the attack on Serbia over Kosovo. Instead, the US secured a vote in the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s political body, which has no legal authority for an attack on another country except in self-defense, which was not at issue in Kosovo. (For what it was worth, with respect to US domestic law, not only was there no Congressional authorization, the House actually voted down the authorization to use force on a tie vote, despite leadership on both sides of the aisle whipping votes for the affirmative. Most GOP members voted Nay, against both the Clinton Administration and their own party’s leadership.)

The link embedded in the quoted sentence is to the Wikipedia entry for UN Security Council Resolution 1244 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1244 of June 1999, at the end of the war, providing for “substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo” within Serbia. Notwithstanding the clear language of UNSCR 1244, which under the UN Charter was binding on all member states, the US and our satellites insisted on Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, not autonomy within Serbia. It’s a glaring example of “rules” — legally binding ones in this case — that mean only what we want them to mean. The lesson was not lost on the Russians or the Chinese.

Total nonsense. The 3A prohibition on quartering actually is specified in so many words, the purpose and scope of which was clear to the framers, to the legislators who ratified it, and to everybody else. On the other hand, while a number of constitutional protections amount to privacy, “privacy” as such doesn’t appear. Indeed, as the late, great Joseph Sobran pointed out, saying we have a right to privacy with no further elaboration is as nonsensical as saying we have a right to “freedom.” Privacy for what, freedom to do what? As Dobbs points out, despite the Roe Court’s bald, unsupported assertion that privacy is certainly broad enough to encompass abortion, evidently legislators of 50 states whose laws were struck down by Roe were oblivious to that self-evident fact. Finally, while abortion is generally a surgical procedure it is not a “medical” one. It treats no illness or injury. Rather, it “treats” the personal or social condition of having a live in utero child by killing that child. Call it what you want, but it ain’t medicine.

Maybe he’s referring just to Pelosi’s district. In any case, the “It’s just politics” argument is off-base. Chinese communities in the US are themselves divided between pro and anti Beijing, so baiting the PRC isn’t necessarily good hash-slinging retail politics.

Alternate explanation: just as western governments and media seem unable to actually listen to Russian and Chinese leaders when they describe their motives, critics of western policies seem deaf to the ideological claptrap spewed out by the authors of those policies. That’s a mistake. When we hear it’s all about “democracy vs. autocracy,” that’s the truth – in the minds of ideologues as fanatical as any 1920s Bolshevik. Granted, their concept of “democracy” amounts to a sick, gnostic caricature of any normal concept of popular government but that doesn’t make it any less real in the minds of people who can only see the world in terms of a titanic manichaean struggle between good and evil – in which, by no coincidence, their personal financial wellbeing happens to coincide with the forces of good.

See the later response from Passing By. I agree with most of Hudson’s criticism of corrupt western governmental and corporate pseudo-elites. Socialist nostrums I could do without.

Correct.

Plus, claims that huge percentages of people favor legal abortion are misleading. Sure, most people favor legality in certain “hard case” circumstances, so-called ‘exceptions” like rape, incest, etc., that constitute about one percent of abortions. Few favor the radical regime Roe imposed nationwide, effectively providing for abortion throughout pregnancy for any or no reason. (The so-called “trimester” scheme under Roe and Doe v. Bolton is widely misunderstood.)

Despite his socialist inclinations, Hudson is a smart guy. He should stick with stuff he actually knows about.

I agree. It will be interesting to see if Ukrainian forces try to reoccupy it now that it’s been “liberated.” If so, they can be just as easily pounded as the Russians there were.

“E.g. he could have just asked Ukrainian president to invite Russian special forces or troops to help, just as Syria and Kazakhstan did. Rather, he did nothing for some reason that we’ll most likely find out once he finally retires.”

According to my sources at the time, he did. He told Yanukovich to do what needed to be done, Russia would back him all the way (as recently happened in Belarus and Kazakhstan). Yanukovich refused, preferred to “compromise” his way out with his Western friends acting as brokers.

I don’t follow Girkin. In general I agree with the Saker’s “6th columnist” analysis. https://thesaker.is/is-there-a-6th-column-trying-to-subvert-russia/

Contact me via DM on Twitter. https://twitter.com/JimJatras

This report from Intel Slava Z makes more sense. “Goodwill” is just window dressing:

“🇷🇺🇺🇦 So yes, Snake Island will be abandoned by Russian troops.
Ensuring the defense of an object that is within reach not only of missile systems, but also of cannon artillery, turned out to be very problematic and costly over a long distance.

Nevertheless, the main reason was the lack of reconnaissance and target designation equipment of the operational-tactical level in the arsenal of the fleet and the Aerospace Forces, which would allow effective targeting of aircraft and Caliber. Like, for example, the UAV MQ-9 Reaper.

Tactical UAVs can be launched from the territory of the island, but they do not provide round-the-clock reconnaissance of enemy targets to a sufficient depth, as a result of which it becomes very difficult to hit a maneuverable target.

It is necessary to return the island either when control over the Odessa region is established, or immediately before the signing of a truce. Otherwise, there will be only vain sacrifices.”

Re: “Certainly much could still go wrong. Moscow could throw away a winning hand in favor of some kind of settlement relying on promises by the same gang that has broken so many in the past.”

Today’s news that Russia has withdrawn from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” is disquieting. What “goodwill” can they possibly expect in return? Kiev is already crowing that they recaptured the Island. Maybe a trick to keep the Ukrainians and NATO thinking they can win, so that the war continues and Russia will take more of Ukraine? Possible but doubtful. Seems more like reversion to rose-colored glasses regarding so-called “partners” in the West.

Thank you for your kind words.

I agree that Putin has gone the extra verst, and then some, seeking accommodation with the West. As many others have pointed out, in a Russian context he is a moderate manager seeking to balance the various factions in his government and in Russian society. In that sense, his personal inclination is rather like that of Yanukovich and, until the latest color revolution attempt against him, Lukashenk0, to straddle.

Whatever his inclinations, though, the West has foreclosed that option for him. As you pointed out, he decided to act decisively in Syria, and now he has been forced to do so in Ukraine. After years of seeking a peaceful diplomatic path on Ukraine (which, yes, coldly sacrificed thousands of people in the Donbass) he found himself with few options. I am reminded of the old saying that the United States finally does the right thing but only after exhausting all the other options. This may be more accurate with respect to Russia (not just Putin but Lavrov, Shoigu, Medvedev, etc.) than the US. Besides, in 2014 Russia was not prepared militarily or financially for a showdown with the West, nor did they have China’s solid backing. Now those pieces are in place.

As I see it, the Russians are not aiming for rapid destruction of Ukraine or capture of Ukrainian cities. Rather, via methodical and unspectacular reduction of Ukrainian forces, they (it appears, since I’m not privy to the Kremlin’s internal deliberations) are putting themselves into a position to dictate settlement terms while allowing least risk of direct NATO involvement (which Russia seeks to avoid not because NATO would win – it wouldn’t – but because escalation to strategic nuclear level would then be hard to avoid: everyone dies). This is another reason why Russia (not just Putin) doesn’t seem to be bothered much by insults and humiliations; rather than respond in pique to affronts to prestige the best revenge is to just plow ahead and win “boring” as Gonzalo Lira says.

Also, it seems that for Russia, backed up by China, Ukraine (and potentially Taiwan) must be seen in the context of a global struggle that is mainly economic and financial. Abetted by our clueless mandarin political and business leadership class that for decades has driven the West (North America and Western Europe) into an existential social, political, economic, and financial – and ultimately spiritual – dead end, we are now seeing the chickens coming home to roost, for which the self-destructive sanctions imposed on Russia are less a cause than a catalyst. The effect will be the long overdue death of NATO and its sister abomination the EU and the emergence of the multipolar order that should have emerged in 1991 (but didn’t, in light of the insane neocon quest for global domination), belatedly inaugurating a stable and constructive international order since the last one committed seppuku in 1914. Put another way, this is WWIII, which, as The Saker puts it, is only in a small percentage “kinetic” — in Ukraine, where the Eurasian powers would like to see it confined — while the big play is financial and economic. IMO that’s going quite well for Eurasia, disastrously for the Western mandarins.

Certainly much could still go wrong. Moscow could throw away a winning hand in favor of some kind of settlement relying on promises by the same gang that has broken so many in the past. I hope that doesn’t happen don’t think it will. More dangerously IMO, our stoooopid and criminal leaders could choose (or stumble into) a “Samson Option,” bringing everything down, burying themselves and everyone else along with them – lights out for everybody. At the moment, though, perhaps the flailing of the Fed and the ECB point rather to helplessness leading eventually to resignation, then acceptance.

In any case, from the POV of American patriotism there is a glimmer of hope. While we are about to see a level of chaos and pain in this country none of us has witnessed in our lifetimes (Europe first and worse, probably) there’s at least a prospect that something like a normal – national, not globalist – America (freed from Woke Democrats and most of the equally worthless Republicans Party, along with their corporate overlords) will emerge at the end of the ordeal. In that sense, perhaps we undeservedly are being offered a “soft landing” similar to that afforded the USSR thirty years ago. I think it’s the best we can hope for: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/september/16/it-s-later-than-you-think/

Thanks for this correction.

Mr. Slavskiy supplies some interesting details but clearly needs a refresher on Orthodox Church structure, notably the difference between autonomy and autocephaly, as well as the status of Met. Onufry’s canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in relation to Moscow, as opposed to the uncanonical bodies headed by “Filaret” Denisenko (“Kyiv Patriarchate”) and Constantinople’s and the US State Department’s protege, “Epifany” Dumenko (“Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” which Mr. Slavskiy doesn’t mention).

The crisis in the Orthodox Church was and is an integral element in the march of folly that has brought Ukraine to its current, tragic juncture. However, I suggest that when the military and political situation finally shakes out, the Church’s status in Ukraine (whether or not any Ukrainian state exists at that point) will also be simplified.

If I may say so myself, the following (from 2019) gives a somewhat better “can’t know the players without a program” explanation:

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/whats-really-behind-the-state-departments-meddling-in-ukraine/

“Naturally, instead of investing in a patriotic youth movement, the Kremlins in their infinite wisdom, decided to do literally nothing”….

Well, it seems somebody at least tried.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashi_(youth_movement)

“Caught all the time cheating” by whom, the usual neutral, honest international monitors of beauty, truth, fair play, and rule of law? No US thumb on the scale? Why should we believe accredited doping watchdogs are any more credible than those responsible for say, chemical weapons?

Maybe reconsider what’s really going on here:

https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/kamila-valieva-the-worlds-ice-angel/

When the usual suspects in Washington are all warning in chorus about something that’s about to happen, maybe they know something we don’t?

“Serb mortar attacks” in Bosnia, “Racak massacre” in Kosovo, “Saddam’s WMDs,” “Kaddafi’s rapist troops,” “Assad’s poison gas attacks” — who but the perps at the CIA and MI6 would be so sure that Ukraine is about to go “kinetic”?

Indeed — in absolute terms, but even more so in comparison to the sociopathic theomachists who killed them and succeeded them.

“His [Tsar Nicholas’s] officials machine-gunned the pleaders on the Bloody Sunday.” Machine guns? Where has that even been alleged, even in the most lurid pro-Bolshevik accounts? Such an assertion does not enhance credibility.

Of course even accepting inflated communist figures, the death toll was barely a weekend’s work for the Cheka.

Rather than the way it’s depicted in history, which invariably gives the winners’ version http://www.monomakhos.com/what-really-happened-on-bloody-sunday/ — in this case the communists’ — Bloody Sunday, like virtually everything else we’re told about pre-revolutionary Russia, is a lie.

What really happened was a successful provocation by Antifa’s precursor in Russia:

The Saker often has a lot of value to offer, but the soft spot for Islam (especially, Shiism) is inexplicable. Say what you want about organized Jewish influence in France and selectively jailing people for what amounts to anti-Jewish blasphemy. (Certainly nobody would be prosecuted for defaming Christians .) But why omission of the elephant in the room: Why are all these Muslims in France in the first place? Certainly liberal Jews in France and elsewhere, along with non-Jewish Leftists, have done their part, equating with anti-Semitism any criticism of Islam and its 14 centuries of aggression, slavery, murder, rape, pillage, and genocide, and rolling out the red carpet for millions of people who just shouldn’t be in France or any other traditionally Christian European country. The irony is that it’s this migrant population, not supposed neo-Nazis, that spawns the vast majority of anti-Jewish attacks, as well as those against Christians. As for “Once the cutthroats strike, blame Islam and double down,” name ONE prominent French (or other European, or North American) political leader who’s ever blamed Islam per se for anything? No, they use weasel words like “Islamism,” “Islamofascism,” or generic no-brand-name “extremism” or “religious fanaticism” precisely to avoid pointing the finger at core “religion of peace and toleration” doctrines and practices and to warn against “blaming all Muslims,” a red herring. (“Huh. ‘Allahu akbar’ — I wonder what he meant by that….”) Then they double down on so-called laïcité (secularism) as a fundamental French “value,” in place of the only value that defined France for centuries: Catholicism. Until that is recovered (BTW, I am not Roman Catholic) as the necessary bedrock of French national identity, things will get worse. The rest of what was once known as Christendom isn’t far behind, and in some cases (Sweden or Canada) may be ahead of France.

As a Greek, this brought a warm glow to my heart….

If I had a nickel for every Ukrainian who told me in 2004 that something like the “Rose Revolution” could “n e v e r happen in Ukraine”…..

Then it happened. Twice.

Is it true that there’s a risque docudrama already in the works?

Tentative title: “The Night They Raided Minsk”

I agree regarding possible partition (though) it will never happen. But if it did, there are parts of Moldova outside of Pridnestrovie that would not want to join Romania, both in the north and — especially — in Gagauzia. The electoral map of 2016 showing support for Dodon is instructive:

Not many people knew about the depleted uranium, but anyone could see, and should have seen, that it was a blatant act of aggression.

“At the time, I was overwhelmingly focused on domestic political issues, so I only paid slight attention to our one small military operation of those years, the 1999 NATO air war against Serbia, intended to safeguard the Bosnian Muslims from ethnic cleansing and massacre, a Clinton Administration project that I fully endorsed.” And why should one believe our government and media about “safeguard(ing) the Bosnian Muslims from ethnic cleansing and massacre” any more than one should believe their other lies?

The situation then was very different from the one we face now. With the exception of the foreign troops in the 1765-83 conflict, our first two civil war were mostly just that: civil conflicts within the American ethnos.

Today, that ethnos is still a majority in absolute terms but a shrinking one. In all likelihood it is already a political minority due to ethnic Americans who for various ideological reasons are hostile to their own origins and identify with the racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, and other minorities who oppose them and seek total political control – and once Texas “flips blue” will pretty much have it on the national level. As such, any standoff will look less like our two previous conflicts and more like the Russian civil war, though with the geographic difference that the urban “center” will actually be on the two coasts.

But that’s if a conflict actually materializes, as I think it will not. Unlike our two earlier struggles, there would be no conferral of legitimacy upon ethnic American resistance to the new order at any level of government as was available during the Revolution when Patriots could say they were obeying the law in the form of colonial governments and the Continental Congress, while Loyalists had appeal to the Crown; or in the Civil War when southerners were loyal to their state governments while northerners claimed the same regarding their states and the federal government. If the crunch comes, and I think it will, I don’t think even the “reddest” state government in Flyover Country would be willing to support any show of disobedience to purportedly legal demands from Washington – witness meek submission to whatever edicts come from the Supreme Court, with even supposed conservatives concluding we have no choice but to “obey the law.”

Where and how would pathologically law-abiding middle class Americans, many of them older and in questionable health, vent their rage? March on Washington – and do what when they got there? Or stay at home and torch the local post office? There would be no obvious foci of legitimacy, organization, or action. But there would be horrendous consequences for any manifestation of what would be condemned as “terrorism.”

Sure, devotees of the Second Amendment own more private weapons, so ethnic Americans are better armed. But that may change as the violent Left gears up its own paramilitary capabilities secure in the knowledge that authorities turn a blind eye to their violence while regarding even non-violent civic nationalism (never mind ethnic nationalism) as subversive. Unlike the circumstance when the Constitution was adopted and private firearms were as good or better than military ones, there is no comparison today in delivery of devastating, deadly force. Estimates vary widely on how the military would divide. The same can be said for police forces, some of them heavily militarized.
To be clear, I don’t rule out Mr. Cathey’s suggestion that a messy civil conflict could ensue. If so, it would look less like our two earlier organized and (relatively) polite civil wars and more like the brutal communal conflicts in Yugoslavia (1991-1995), Spain (1936-1939), or – probably most likely, since there would probably not be decisive interference from outside powers, as was the case in Yugoslavia and Spain – Russia (1917-1922).

But I think such a conflict is improbable. My guess is that the historic American ethnos, whose last-chance champion Trump was elected to be, would give up without a fight and submit to a tyranny that would, eventually, result in some even more fundamental societal collapse. Americans like to imagine ourselves as rough-hewn, freedom-loving, don’t-tread-on-me rebels. But after decades of corruption and conditioning by politicians, judges, bureaucrats, educators, entertainers, media, advertising, pharmaceuticals, processed foods, etc., today’s Americans may well be among the most docile people on earth. Maybe that’s how America ends: not with a bang but a whimper.

There’s the 4th and most likely outcome: no separation, no civil war. The Dictatorship of Victims triumphs, America ends with a whimper not a bang. There’s no separation because there’s no political mechanism for doing so. No civil war because the American ethnos (European stock (English core), Christian (mostly Protestant), English-speaking) is terminally law-abiding and would have no idea how to mount an insurrection, much less an ability to carry it out. Any small outbursts will be dealt with brutally as an example to others (Charlottesville “justice”). Game over. Winter is coming.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-dictatorship-of-victims-strikes-back/

Much to think about here. One footnote to add. When considering how animals can be used humanely we should not idealize what their lives are like in the wild, particularly how those lives end. Eventually the large majority, whether predators or prey, get sick or old, or are injured. Obviously nobody cares for them, they can no longer seek food, and they starve. Suffering is virtually part of the definition of animal life. We can try to minimize it but we can’t eliminate it.

@Israel Shamir

is correct. Soloviev’s view was, to put it charitably, ideosyncratic, colored by his civilizational envy of the west. Without repeating what I wrote, for Orthodoxy as its name describes – true glory to God, right doctrine – intercommunion can come after, not before, dogmatic issues are resolved. Otherwise, whatever the individual’s intentions, he is simply excommunicating himself.

I agree that we need Christian unity – socially, politically, civilizationally, even militarily – in the face of the rising forces of godlessness. https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/21/oic-muslim-world-voice-christian-countries-should-have-one-too.html Muslims have the OIC, why don’t Christian nations have something similar? (Short answer is that even countries with Christian majorities don’t have Christian governments.) There is much we can do short of a common chalice.

Sorry. Re “The model here is the Bulgarian schism of 1972-1945, ”

Should be 1872-1945

Mr. Shamir makes a valuable contribution on an important (contra @Michael Kenny, see below) and poorly understood matter. Two points of accuracy deserve attention however.

First, Mr. Shamir claims that Moscow not only has broken communion with Constantinople but with other autocephalous churches that refuse Russian demands to do likewise (“ending communion with the churches that refuse to excommunicate Phanar”). I follow this matter quite closely and am unaware of any such request, which would be (as Mr. Shamir notes) counterproductive. The statement from the Russian Synod states: “From now on, and until the Patriarchate of Constantinople refuses to make anti-canonical decisions for all clergymen of the Russian Orthodox Church, it is impossible to serve the clergy of the Church of Constantinople, and for the laity to participate in the sacraments performed in its churches.” http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5283708.html It says nothing about other autocephalous churches’ taking the same action. Moscow’s goal is to induce Constantinople to pull back from its provocative action, not turn this divide into a permanent, worldwide schism. The model here is the Bulgarian schism of 1972-1945, during which other churches, notably the Russian church, remained in communion with both sides. (Which doesn’t really make sense, but in Orthodoxy, thankfully, things don’t always make sense.) Moscow seeks to convene a meeting of the Orthodox primates to address the question of the Phanar’s encroachment in a conciliar manner, which would be impossible if they were all forced to excommunicate one or the other of the parties.

Second, Mr. Shamir suggests that Moscow play the Roman Catholic card:

‘Regarding communion, the Russian church can retain communion with Phanar and Jerusalem and with other Orthodox churches, even with splinter churches on reciprocity basis. Moreover, the Russian Church may allow communion with Catholics. At present, Catholics allow Russians to receive communion, but the Russian Church do not allow their flock to accept Catholic communion and does not allow Catholics to receive communion in Russian churches. With all the differences between the churches, we the Christians can share communion, flesh and blood of our Saviour, and this all we need.’

While there is some grounds for concern that Moscow may try to triangulate politically via Rome (to keep Pope Francis neutral, as he has been so far, at least formally), the notion of Moscow’s allowing intercommunion is a total non-starter. Permitting intercommunion with Roman Catholicism by members of any Orthodox autocephalous church would guarantee immediate, absolute, and probably irrevocable isolation by all the others. They would immediately become in Orthodox eyes Eastern-rite Catholics, like the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The mere suggestion fundamentally misconstrues the importance of Eucharistic and dogmatic unity as the “glue” that holds Orthodoxy together (as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church’s point of unity in the papacy as a supreme administrative authority, in light of which their current approval of intercommunion is merely a disciplinary dispensation). It’s somewhat surprising that someone of Mr. Shamir’s erudition would suggest it, but this is not the first time he has done so.

@Michael Kennny: “I’ll never understand why the American internet is getting so worked up about this.” Actually, there is far less attention to this than there should be. In Ukraine, like in many areas outside North America and Western Europe, matters of faith and identity are not scorned as mere “religion” – they’s fightin’ words! That’s why the blatant meddling of the US government in this matter is critical. As explained by Valeria Z. Nollan, professor emerita of Russian Studies at Rhodes College, “The real goal of the quest for autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a de facto coup: a political coup already took place in 2014, poisoning the relations between western Ukraine and Russia, and thus another type of coup – a religious one – similarly seeks to undermine the canonical relationship between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Moscow.” This is why American officials, including Secretary of State Pompeo, have weighed in personally in what must be understood as a political assault on the Russian Federation and a spiritual assault on Orthodox Christianity. The result will be violence, not just in east Ukraine but all over the country, as the proponents in Washington are well aware – with Putin already the designated villain. See more at https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/11/17/whose-money-stoked-religious-strife-ukraine-who-tried-steal-it.html (If Mr. Shamir has proof to back up his assertion that money was not involved, let’s see it. That doesn’t mean that non-monetary aspects aren’t primary – they are – but money always helps grease the wheels, as in the Maidan “revolution” itself in 2014.)

Re: “The chief purpose of Allied intervention in Soviet Russia was to help the Whites defeat the Reds and destroy Bolshevism.”

Nonsense. If that had been their goal, the interventionists could simply have provided material and logistical aid to the Whites, which they didn’t to any significant degree, rather than commit large numbers of their own troops. Their real objective was to carve out spheres of control or influence from the resource-rich carcass of the Russian Empire, much as they later did from the Ottoman Empire, and had earlier done in China. To that end, it was important that the Reds – who had themselves been financed by interests within the same interventionist powers – not be ousted by a strong, nationally minded Russian government. Indeed, it is precisely the existence of such a government today that so irks the latter-day heirs of the interventionists of a century ago.

I too lament the demise of the double-exclamation pointed ¡Jeb! Certainly, though, ¡Marco! or ¡Rafael! would be inappropriate?

It’s high-time for a Protestant on the Supreme Court:

From the founding of the Republic until 1836, every Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court was not only male but a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant).

That changed with the first Roman Catholic elevated to the Court, Roger B. Taney of Dred Scott infamy. Two other Catholics were appointed in the 1890s. The idea took hold of an informal representative “Catholic seat” on the Court.

The first Jewish Justice, Louis Brandeis, was confirmed in 1916. Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American, in 1967. The first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, in 1981. The first Hispanic, Sonia Sotomayor, in 2009. Given our admirable passion for representative fairness, I suppose we should be scouting out talented jurists who are (fill in the blank) Asian, Native American, Mormon, Muslim, Scientologist, avowedly atheist, openly gay, bisexual, transgender, differently abled, and so forth.

But hold on a minute! In our zeal for diversity on the Court, we somewhere seem to have lost track of somebody. There is not a single WASP on today’s Supreme Court – indeed not a single Protestant of any racial, linguistic, or gender description.

Especially as the Court has become less and less a judicial referee – as the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage recently reminded us – than effectively a super-legislature that feels entitled to impose the robed solons’ personal preferences on the nation, fair representation is more important than ever. It is intolerable that not one member of America’s founding ethnos and core demographic sits on our highest panel as it just makes up stuff nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

I am not a WASP or even a Protestant, but I believe it’s time for a Protestant to be named to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy. Ideally, the nominee should be from one of the confessions that dominated the United States at our founding (an Episcopalian, a Congregationalist, or a Quaker), but I could be persuaded of the merits of a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Baptist or other Evangelical, or even (going out on limb here) a Presbyterian. Note that nothing in the Constitution requires Justices to be lawyers – another testament to the Founding Fathers’ timeless perspicacity.

http://www.repealfatca.com/index.asp?idmenu=3&idsubmenu=165&title=TheJIMgram