The fog and the flame

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Philippians 4:8



For we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we deal falsely with our god in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world . . .

John Winthrop


Instead of covetously consolidating its premises, the United States seems tormented by its tradition of fixed postulates having to do with the meaning of existence, the relationship of the state to the individual, of the individual to his neighbor, so clearly enunciated in the enabling documents of our Republic.

"Our Mission Statement" by William F. Buckley Jr., first issue of National Review, November 19, 1955

A lot of major world-stage figures are visiting post-America these days.

There's Pope Francis, who, on his plane ride from Cuba to post-America strove to convince reporters that he really didn't lean left. And a lot of devout Catholics who decidedly don't lean left are performing all kinds of contortions to see his point.

Sure, they say, he has signed on to the obvious fraud of global warming, he clearly misunderstands the free market, and his views on immigration indicate that he fails to fully understand how critical the sovereignty of nation-states is to an orderly world, but, balanced against his views on homosexuality and abortion, what he presents is a Christ-informed worldview that, if it's a mystery to us, is our responsibility to discern.

But the cat came further out of the bag in his address to Congress when he chose to include this figure in his pantheon of towering champions of justice:

 . . . the pontiff mentioned her in the same breath as Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, before going on to hail her achievements.

Yes, yes, we know: After her Greenwich Village days, which included flirtations with anarchism and Communism, and affairs with the likes of writers Eugene O'Neill and  Mike Gold, atheist biologist Foster Batterham and others, and a brief marriage to a wealthy businessman, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism.

It didn't seem to change much about her ideology:

In 1951, she fell foul of Cardinal Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York, after siding with archdiocesan workers who had gone on strike.

Later, she declared her support for Fidel Castro and his regime in Cuba and, in 1970, when the Vietnam War was at its height, praised Viet Cong leader Ho Chi Minh as a 'man of vision' and a 'patriot'.

Her views hardly mellowed at all in later life, either in religious or political terms, and in 1971, she paid a visit to Leonid Brezhnev's Kremlin in Moscow, Russia.

The following year, she joined Cesar Chavez's campaign for better treatment for Californian farm laborers - and, during the protest, was arrested and spent 10 days in jail.

The Pope's choice of this figure, among all those he could have chosen to cite, is rather telling, no?

Then there is the closed-door meeting Chinese president - actually "paramount leader," in the Chinese lexicon, as he also holds the top posts in the Communist Party and the military - Xi Jinping held with some of the biggest names in corporate post-America, with representatives from a particular sector conspicuously absent:

Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed Silicon Valley’s titans, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and billionaire investor Warren Buffet, in a closed-door conference in Wednesday.

At the event with America and China’s top business leaders, Xi vowed to work to remove barriers to foreign investment and improve intellectual property protections in a bid to crack down on his country’s rip-offs of US products.

But among those missing from the event was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In fact, representatives from the social media giant, Twitter and Google were all notably missing and it is telling that China currently blocks those companies’ websites.

Xi's rise to power involves some noteworthy elements. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was one of the founding revolutionaries of Red China and had in fact been involved in guerrilla activities  and political rabble-rousing since the early 1930s. After the Party came to power in 1949, he alternately landed some prestigious positions and ran afoul of Mao's designs. During the late-1960s Cultural Revolution, he spent some time in prison, which meant that his son had no special status and was sent into the fields as part of the Down to the Countryside movement. He began working his way back into the regime's good graces during that period, becoming the political leader for his production team. His education, while it included degrees in chemical engineering and law, was primarily about ideological indoctrination.

He's clearly a guy who knows how to play chess with regard to a career path as a Communist-dictator aspirant.

Since he's been in the upper echelons of power, he has made a point of stressing Party primacy in the nation's affairs.

As we know, he is also clearly positioning China to be the big regional power in east Asia. That no doubt will be at least the implicit message at this upcoming pow-wow:

China said on Thursday it will host defence ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) next month, amid tension between some of its members and China over the disputed South China Sea.

The Oct. 15-16 informal summit will take place in Beijing and China has invited the defence ministers of all 10 members, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian told a regular monthly news briefing.

Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan will have a "deep exchange of views" with participants, he added, without elaborating.

China has overlapping claims with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei in the South China Sea, through which US$5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.

China's increasingly assertive moves to press its sovereignty claims have rattled its neighbours and aroused concern in the United States, though China says it has no hostile intent.

A U.S. expert said this month, citing satellite photographs, China appeared to be carrying out preparatory work for a third airstrip in contested territory in the South China Sea.

And then Putin intends to meet with the Most Equal Comrade on the sidelines of next week's UN General Assembly. It's a rather sure bet as to what the leverage dynamic of that conversation will be. Russian fighter jets and ground troops are now in Syria. Russia intends to bolster, not topple, the Assad regime. The "moderate" - that is, anti-Assad as well as anti-ISIS / al-Nusra Front - rebels, into whose arming and training post-America poured millions, never numbered more than sixty and now don't exist. Putin is the figure that everyone from the Iranian mullahs to Benjamin Netanyahu wants to talk to.

LITD stands by its assertion that this is all by design. The Most Equal Comrade - indeed, all the policy-shapers of his Freedom-Hater Party - has pursued planned decline over the course of their rule.

That figures who either do not understand, or harbor animosity toward, what has been precious - indeed, indispensable - about America over the course of its existence are now dominant on the world stage is perfectly fine with the Freedom-Haters.

This is why, as the 2016 election cycle unfolds, we must cultivate the art of close listening. Those of us who retain what we were taught about wisdom, clarity, and the defense of the absolutes of this universe must bring that understanding to bear as we decide who, among those aspiring to govern, shares it.

There is no more margin of error. Getting it wrong this time around will be fatal.