Of Decadence and Decay
“The love of woman and womanliness is a masculine characteristic, and the love of man and manliness is a feminine characteristic... [I]t is almost impossible for a woman to irritate a real man, and as to the woman, a man is never quite contemptible, never altogether rejectable, as long as he remains a man.” -- Isak Dinesen
That our society is decadent is self-evident. But if the question, “Is our society decadent?,” were put to the American public, you would get an assortment of answers, ranging from, “Hell, no,” to, “The polls say that 90% of all Americans believe in God,” to, “70% of the American people believe promiscuity and stealing are wrong.” In short, there would be no agreement on the subject of decadence. Which is, of course, what one would expect; no society, having achieved decadence (maybe ‘dis-achieve’ would be a better word), is able to identify decadence. To the decadent, health is sickness and sickness is health.
Climbing out of the mire of decadence is not easy for an individual. And it is even more difficult for a society, because a decadent society has lost all connection to reality. The nerve endings are dead. Faith is gone and hence all the sentiments that elevate the human soul are gone as well. An individual living in a decadent society, who has managed to take his first baby steps out of the decadent swamp, will find himself isolated, marginalized, and possibly institutionalized. He will find individuals willing to criticize symptoms of the disease, such as child porn and legalized abortion, but those same individuals will draw back in shocked dismay if he criticizes modernity itself. That we are marching ever onward toward the light, despite some unpleasant detours, is an article of faith for modern man.
Satan is a very clever fellow. He does not make societies decadent by attacking God directly; instead he attacks the connecting links God has to His creatures. And one of the primary links is the divinely ordained, differentiated sex roles. Indeed, a significant indication of a decadent society is the complete blurring of the sex roles, and one of the key signs of a civilized, Christian society is clearly defined sex roles designed to support the patriarchal family.
That our society is decadent is self-evident. But if the question, “Is our society decadent?,” were put to the American public, you would get an assortment of answers, ranging from, “Hell, no,” to, “The polls say that 90% of all Americans believe in God,” to, “70% of the American people believe promiscuity and stealing are wrong.” In short, there would be no agreement on the subject of decadence. Which is, of course, what one would expect; no society, having achieved decadence (maybe ‘dis-achieve’ would be a better word), is able to identify decadence. To the decadent, health is sickness and sickness is health.
Climbing out of the mire of decadence is not easy for an individual. And it is even more difficult for a society, because a decadent society has lost all connection to reality. The nerve endings are dead. Faith is gone and hence all the sentiments that elevate the human soul are gone as well. An individual living in a decadent society, who has managed to take his first baby steps out of the decadent swamp, will find himself isolated, marginalized, and possibly institutionalized. He will find individuals willing to criticize symptoms of the disease, such as child porn and legalized abortion, but those same individuals will draw back in shocked dismay if he criticizes modernity itself. That we are marching ever onward toward the light, despite some unpleasant detours, is an article of faith for modern man.
Satan is a very clever fellow. He does not make societies decadent by attacking God directly; instead he attacks the connecting links God has to His creatures. And one of the primary links is the divinely ordained, differentiated sex roles. Indeed, a significant indication of a decadent society is the complete blurring of the sex roles, and one of the key signs of a civilized, Christian society is clearly defined sex roles designed to support the patriarchal family.
The patriarchal society was in fact the creator of those moral ideas which have entered so deeply into the texture of civilization that they have become a part of our thought. Not only the names of piety and chastity, honour and modesty, but the values for which they stand are derived from this source, so that even where the patriarchal family has passed away we are still dependent on the moral tradition that it created. – Christopher Dawson in The Dynamics of World History
I don’t think it’s possible to overestimate the evils that are wrought in a society when God’s benevolent ordering of the sex roles is put aside in favor of liberal utopianism. And it is halfway-house Christians who want to retain a faith in God, while destroying all of mankind’s connecting links to God, who allow the liberals to substitute Cybele for Christ.
The late John Paul II was a textbook case of the schizophrenia of half-way house Christians. The late Pope praised the feminist movement, saying it had championed “the dignity of women.” In his weekly audience of November 29, 1995, he called feminism “in great part legitimate,” and said it had added to a more “balanced vision of the question of womanhood in the contemporary world.” He further went on to say that feminism had reacted against everything that has “impeded the value and full development of the feminine personality” (from Inside the Vatican, January 1996). Gloria Steinem couldn’t have said it better.
Let me defend my critique of the halfway-house Christians, such as John Paul II, who support feminism. Who was the human conduit Satan used to transmit his evil to Adam? Eve, of course. She fell because she made a bargain with the devil, who claimed he could make her equal to God. And Adam fell because he feared the loss of Eve’s love so much that he was willing to love her outside of God’s love.
Staying true to his poetic nature, the Lord God counter-balanced Adam and Eve’s sins with the faithfulness of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Eve was a conduit for Satan, and Mary was a conduit for Christ. Mary, in contrast to Eve, who desired equality with God, desired only to be the handmaid of the Lord. Christ, in contrast to Adam, never consented to any request outside of God’s orbit. “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”
Who is a man imitating when he calls our attention to the “great contributions of the feminist movement”? He is imitating the old Adam. His love for the feminists is illicit; it debases him and the feminists because it separates both from God’s love. Feminism in its very essence goes back to the old Eve. The spirit behind the movement is a desire to make a deal with the devil in order to obtain equality with God. It is positively ludicrous to mildly chide the feminists for their stand on abortion and then go on to praise feminism to the skies, as if abortion is just an inconsequential part of the feminists’ agenda. Abortion is the feminist agenda! How can they obtain equality with God if they do not control life in the womb? Their soul mate is Satan, who promises them divine equality if they will do his bidding and unsex themselves. Lady Macbeth -- “Unsex me here!” -- is the patron saint of the feminists.
The triumph of feminism in society and church has left society and church without any moral authority, because there can be no authority without masculinity. And ironically, there can be no femininity either, because femininity needs masculinity to survive, just as masculinity needs femininity. All decadent societies (Sophocles, Virgil, and Shakespeare wrote eloquently on this topic) lose the ability to distinguish between a man’s and a woman’s divinely appointed sex roles. It is Satan’s wish that such divine distinctions be blurred, because once the blurring takes place, a society becomes decadent and loses all sense of God’s redemptive grace.
As with all modern innovations, we must ask who is being served by feminism? Are Christian men and women benefiting from feminism? Certainly not. Are the feminists benefiting? Of course not. Nothing, not the right to kill their children in the womb or the right to hold jobs formerly reserved for men, will appease them or make them happy. They denounced their souls when they became feminists, and only a ‘road to Damascus’ experience can release them from the feminist hell in which they live and in which they expect others to live as well.
A story from the Brothers Grimm, “The Fisherman and His Wife,” reveals the true aims of feminism, and man’s inability to ever make women happy by appeasement.
As you recall, a fisherman catches an enchanted fish. The fish begs the fisherman to put him back in the water. The fisherman, being a kind-hearted soul, throws the fish back. But upon his return home and after telling the story to his wife, the fisherman is berated by his wife for not demanding a wish from the fish. So, the fisherman returns to the sea and repeating the sin of Adam calls, “Flounder, flounder of the sea, Come, for I am calling thee! My wife, whose name is Isabel, Has a wish against my will.”
Each subsequent wish is granted, and every wish is not good enough for the fisherman’s wife. She goes from a cottage to a palace, and from being a fisherman’s wife to Queen, Emperor, and Pope. With her last wish, she demands to be God. Presto chango! She lands back in her shack and is once again just a fisherman’s wife.
Of course we all know the reason a man acquiesces to a woman, even though he knows, in his heart, that she is wrong. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath lays it right out in the open. But every Christian male knows that he can’t do the bidding of a Lady Macbeth, no matter how compelling the reward for acquiescing, and no matter how unpleasant the punishment for a refusal, because to do so places his soul and the woman’s soul into Satan’s realm. Patriarchy and Christianity are of necessity linked. Feminism and Satan are irretrievably linked as well. The former link must be restored, and the latter must be destroyed.
Feminism, like so many of the heretical –isms, had always lurked on the outskirts of Christendom. You could find its adherents in witch’s covens and the surviving underground cults of Cybele. But in the later half of the 20th century, feminism became mainstream, and patriarchal Christianity became an underground, proscribed religion. And it is significant that institutional feminism had its roots in the ‘civil rights’ movements of the late 1950s and 1960s. Radical women working in the civil rights movements saw themselves as even more disenfranchised than the black man. But because the black man was also ‘victimized’ by the white male, the feminists always reserved their criticisms for the white Christian male rather than the black male. The feminist silence during the O. J. Simpson trial was deafening.
If we just look at the stated beliefs of the feminists, their alliance with the black males seems ludicrous and inconsistent. If they are against masculinity, shouldn’t they be against every single male, no matter what the color? But when dealing with men, and even more so with women, we must, if we want to truly understand them, go beneath the surface of their stated beliefs to the spirit that motivates them. And at the spiritual level, the feminists and the blacks are united. Both groups despise femininity and worship pagan masculinity. We are back with Lady Macbeth. She asks Satan to “unsex her” and make her heart as cold and merciless as a pagan male warrior. And she will only give her husband conjugal rights if he forsakes his Christian masculinity for a perverted and savage pagan masculinity.
The late John Paul II was a textbook case of the schizophrenia of half-way house Christians. The late Pope praised the feminist movement, saying it had championed “the dignity of women.” In his weekly audience of November 29, 1995, he called feminism “in great part legitimate,” and said it had added to a more “balanced vision of the question of womanhood in the contemporary world.” He further went on to say that feminism had reacted against everything that has “impeded the value and full development of the feminine personality” (from Inside the Vatican, January 1996). Gloria Steinem couldn’t have said it better.
Let me defend my critique of the halfway-house Christians, such as John Paul II, who support feminism. Who was the human conduit Satan used to transmit his evil to Adam? Eve, of course. She fell because she made a bargain with the devil, who claimed he could make her equal to God. And Adam fell because he feared the loss of Eve’s love so much that he was willing to love her outside of God’s love.
Staying true to his poetic nature, the Lord God counter-balanced Adam and Eve’s sins with the faithfulness of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Eve was a conduit for Satan, and Mary was a conduit for Christ. Mary, in contrast to Eve, who desired equality with God, desired only to be the handmaid of the Lord. Christ, in contrast to Adam, never consented to any request outside of God’s orbit. “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”
Who is a man imitating when he calls our attention to the “great contributions of the feminist movement”? He is imitating the old Adam. His love for the feminists is illicit; it debases him and the feminists because it separates both from God’s love. Feminism in its very essence goes back to the old Eve. The spirit behind the movement is a desire to make a deal with the devil in order to obtain equality with God. It is positively ludicrous to mildly chide the feminists for their stand on abortion and then go on to praise feminism to the skies, as if abortion is just an inconsequential part of the feminists’ agenda. Abortion is the feminist agenda! How can they obtain equality with God if they do not control life in the womb? Their soul mate is Satan, who promises them divine equality if they will do his bidding and unsex themselves. Lady Macbeth -- “Unsex me here!” -- is the patron saint of the feminists.
The triumph of feminism in society and church has left society and church without any moral authority, because there can be no authority without masculinity. And ironically, there can be no femininity either, because femininity needs masculinity to survive, just as masculinity needs femininity. All decadent societies (Sophocles, Virgil, and Shakespeare wrote eloquently on this topic) lose the ability to distinguish between a man’s and a woman’s divinely appointed sex roles. It is Satan’s wish that such divine distinctions be blurred, because once the blurring takes place, a society becomes decadent and loses all sense of God’s redemptive grace.
As with all modern innovations, we must ask who is being served by feminism? Are Christian men and women benefiting from feminism? Certainly not. Are the feminists benefiting? Of course not. Nothing, not the right to kill their children in the womb or the right to hold jobs formerly reserved for men, will appease them or make them happy. They denounced their souls when they became feminists, and only a ‘road to Damascus’ experience can release them from the feminist hell in which they live and in which they expect others to live as well.
A story from the Brothers Grimm, “The Fisherman and His Wife,” reveals the true aims of feminism, and man’s inability to ever make women happy by appeasement.
As you recall, a fisherman catches an enchanted fish. The fish begs the fisherman to put him back in the water. The fisherman, being a kind-hearted soul, throws the fish back. But upon his return home and after telling the story to his wife, the fisherman is berated by his wife for not demanding a wish from the fish. So, the fisherman returns to the sea and repeating the sin of Adam calls, “Flounder, flounder of the sea, Come, for I am calling thee! My wife, whose name is Isabel, Has a wish against my will.”
Each subsequent wish is granted, and every wish is not good enough for the fisherman’s wife. She goes from a cottage to a palace, and from being a fisherman’s wife to Queen, Emperor, and Pope. With her last wish, she demands to be God. Presto chango! She lands back in her shack and is once again just a fisherman’s wife.
Of course we all know the reason a man acquiesces to a woman, even though he knows, in his heart, that she is wrong. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath lays it right out in the open. But every Christian male knows that he can’t do the bidding of a Lady Macbeth, no matter how compelling the reward for acquiescing, and no matter how unpleasant the punishment for a refusal, because to do so places his soul and the woman’s soul into Satan’s realm. Patriarchy and Christianity are of necessity linked. Feminism and Satan are irretrievably linked as well. The former link must be restored, and the latter must be destroyed.
Feminism, like so many of the heretical –isms, had always lurked on the outskirts of Christendom. You could find its adherents in witch’s covens and the surviving underground cults of Cybele. But in the later half of the 20th century, feminism became mainstream, and patriarchal Christianity became an underground, proscribed religion. And it is significant that institutional feminism had its roots in the ‘civil rights’ movements of the late 1950s and 1960s. Radical women working in the civil rights movements saw themselves as even more disenfranchised than the black man. But because the black man was also ‘victimized’ by the white male, the feminists always reserved their criticisms for the white Christian male rather than the black male. The feminist silence during the O. J. Simpson trial was deafening.
If we just look at the stated beliefs of the feminists, their alliance with the black males seems ludicrous and inconsistent. If they are against masculinity, shouldn’t they be against every single male, no matter what the color? But when dealing with men, and even more so with women, we must, if we want to truly understand them, go beneath the surface of their stated beliefs to the spirit that motivates them. And at the spiritual level, the feminists and the blacks are united. Both groups despise femininity and worship pagan masculinity. We are back with Lady Macbeth. She asks Satan to “unsex her” and make her heart as cold and merciless as a pagan male warrior. And she will only give her husband conjugal rights if he forsakes his Christian masculinity for a perverted and savage pagan masculinity.
MACBETH: We will proceed no further in this business:
He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
LADY MACBETH: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,
'Like the poor cat i' the adage?
MACBETH: Prithee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.
LADY MACBETH: What beast was't, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
So true femininity, the type of femininity that Christian European poets used to rhapsodize about, is demonized along with the masculinity of men like Alfred and Tell, who fought and killed in defense of, rather than out of blood lust or desire for material gain. Only pagan masculinity remains, in the blacks, in the feminist Lady Macbeths, and in the white males who kill in the abortuaries at the behest of the feminist Lady Macbeths.
The black and the feminist revolts are compact in their ideological roots. Both movements are anti-European and anti-reality. The black revolution runs counter to the traditional Christian European view of the black man as the descendant of Ham, the lascivious son of Noah, who needed to be held in check by his more godly brothers. And the black movements which advocate black supremacy, under the guise of racial equality, directly contradict the historical reality that whenever blacks rule, Satan reigns. The pigmentation of the black’s skin is not just an insignificant coloring. It is a warning from God; we dare not let darkness rule the light.
The contrast between the traditional European view of women as the life-bearers and life-nurturers, and the modern view of women as masculine pagans with female body parts is best exemplified by the contrast between the Virgin Mary nursing our Lord and the rock singer Madonna... well, we know what she does. It is not possible to be reconciled to, or to live with, people who prefer the later image of women to the former. And which image conforms to reality? Is Madonna the end product of the liberal’s utopian dream?
The assault on Christian Europe is diverse, but the source of the assault is not diverse. There is one, demonic personality behind each assault. Only a people connected to Him can resist the assaults of that other ‘he,’ the malevolent ‘he.’ When we refuse to sever our links to Him, by resisting the new feminist and black ideologies, we are fighting the good fight and being true to Christian Europe. +
The black and the feminist revolts are compact in their ideological roots. Both movements are anti-European and anti-reality. The black revolution runs counter to the traditional Christian European view of the black man as the descendant of Ham, the lascivious son of Noah, who needed to be held in check by his more godly brothers. And the black movements which advocate black supremacy, under the guise of racial equality, directly contradict the historical reality that whenever blacks rule, Satan reigns. The pigmentation of the black’s skin is not just an insignificant coloring. It is a warning from God; we dare not let darkness rule the light.
The contrast between the traditional European view of women as the life-bearers and life-nurturers, and the modern view of women as masculine pagans with female body parts is best exemplified by the contrast between the Virgin Mary nursing our Lord and the rock singer Madonna... well, we know what she does. It is not possible to be reconciled to, or to live with, people who prefer the later image of women to the former. And which image conforms to reality? Is Madonna the end product of the liberal’s utopian dream?
The assault on Christian Europe is diverse, but the source of the assault is not diverse. There is one, demonic personality behind each assault. Only a people connected to Him can resist the assaults of that other ‘he,’ the malevolent ‘he.’ When we refuse to sever our links to Him, by resisting the new feminist and black ideologies, we are fighting the good fight and being true to Christian Europe. +
Labels: barbarians, decadence, feminism, paganism, true femininity
posted by CWNY | 6:38 AM
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