Our Interview with Satan

Churchill’s Parrot: Charlie Churchill’s Parrot here and joining us this evening is the Prince of Darkness himself, Satan. Mr. Satan, so gracious of you to be here.

Satan: Not at all.

CP: How are you, sir?

S: Never better.

CP: That’s most unfortunate. We must say we are a bit surprised to see you here. You’re not really one known for giving interviews are you?

S: You are correct. Historically my policy has been one of stealth; lurking in the shadows, masking my presence, et cetera, et cetera. There’s no cause for me to employ this strategy any longer, however.

CP: Truly? Might we ask why not?

S: No one believes in me anymore. I’ve made a joke of the very concept of evil, let alone belief in anything called “The Devil.”

CP: You don’t seem as distressed about that as one might expect.

S: Distressed? I relish in it. I am now as a hunter, utterly undetected by his prey, poised to pounce at the time of his choosing to make the final kill. Most exciting really.

CP: …yes well that is a bit chilling, isn’t it? And to what do you attribute this lack of “faith”, for want of a better term?

S: Well it certainly is no accident. My minions and I have worked for centuries to divert human beings in their intrinsic yearning for the light of Truth to the enervating conundrum that the Truth is there is no Truth. And when there is no Truth, there can be no evil. There are only preferences, which fair-mindedness prohibits people of conscience from judging. Now that this mind set has been acculturated world wide, I have effectively neutered mankind, morally speaking, and enjoy free reign on Earth.

CP: Well there it is then. What makes you believe this mind set – what we might paraphrase as Relativism - is any more a force in human events now than previous?

S: Obama.

CP: Er …Come again?

S: Obama. The ascendance of this man was the confirmation I required that this Relativism, as you put it, had become the dominant influence in the American ethos. Most of the rest of the world had adopted it decades ago, but Americans always clung to these despicable notions of self-evident truths, unalienable rights, and a “Creator” from which all emanated. Now, however, it looks as though they too have come to regard these concepts as nonsense and are more than willing to chuck them at the first hint of discomfort.

CP: Sadly you’ll get no argument from us on that. Tell us, what was your first clue about Obama?

S: The Saddleback Church Forum with Rick Warren, Obama, and Mc … McElroy?

CP: McCain.

S: Yes, McCain. You will recall Warren asked both candidates independently, “Does evil exist and, if so, should we ignore it, negotiate it with it, contain it, or defeat it?” McCain’s response: “Defeat it.” Obama, however, was far more academic, finessed, nuanced, and lengthy. I knew I had my man!

CP: Fascinating. Would you agree that we have seen that same dynamic played out in Mr. Obama’s reaction to sundry international crises of late: the Russian rape of Georgia, Al-Qaeda’s advance through Pakistan, the bald-faced threats of North Korea, the repression of the Iranian freedom movement, increased Iranian hostility toward Israel, ex-Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya’s, disregard for the Honduran constitution and the rule of law...?

S: Precisely! There are complexities to these issues. But at their core, each is plainly a manifestation of brute lust for power and disregard for human dignity. In the past, American leaders would publicly identify these acts as evil, and awaken the passions of righteousness in souls throughout the world. Now the leader of the free world merely furrows his brow and spouts meaningless equivocations laden with qualifiers and caveats. Delicious!

CP: President Jimmy Carter was of little more use in such instances, was he not? What’s the difference now?

S: Carter, though useful, was genuinely weak. Obama is not weak. He is a devout Relativist. Thus he believes quite deeply that America is no better than any other nation. That she has no special responsibility to maintain the peace in the world. That she has no right to the riches she enjoys. And that she is a bully and a rogue who must be brought to justice before the world. More importantly, Obama has the talent and the will to convert the unbelievers to this worldview.

CP: So much for current foreign policy. What about domestically?

S: Oh where shall I begin? We have had so many victories so quickly. We have virtually obliterated faith in free market principles and convinced free people to place their trust in an economy managed by a vigorous centralized government. We have convinced the gentle-hearted that their love of man can best be demonstrated, not through individual acts of mercy, but through government redistribution of wealth. We continue to advance the “knowledge” that man’s activities toward bettering himself are ultimately destructive to himself and to his planet. I mean I can’t help but giggle like a school girl when I think about Obama’s EPA successfully selling the assertion that human breath is a pollutant! You can’t imagine what sublimity that is to me.

But again, the most exquisite aspect of all this is that the American people voted for it. The AMERICAN people! This is the hope and change they chose. Mind boggling! Granted only about 10% were paying any attention when they did so, but apathy has always served me well and will continue to do so. My work here is nearly done.

CP: You must know there is a rather outspoken and passionate opposition to all this.

S: Oh yes, yes, but I have so thoroughly marginalized them and that which they advocate they are almost entirely irrelevant in the scheme of things; objects of ridicule and no more. I give you, Sarah Palin.

CP: Still your minions do have the tendency, from time to time, of overplaying their hands and awakening an authentic moral outrage in the common man.

S: Oh you’re quite right about that. Ham-fisted pity pimps and wild-eyed sociopaths have certainly spoiled the whole game for me in the past. But I need no longer concern myself with such buffoons. I’ve got my smooth-talking ace-in-the-hole in the driver’s seat now.

CP: We realize this is the age of “transparency” and all, but have you no reservations about laying out your strategy so plainly?

S: None whatsoever. Remember, I don’t exist. And, in the eyes of men, those who oppose me are pathetic lunatics lunging at phantoms. You cannot win.

CP: We can and we will. It’s just that you can’t imagine how we’ll do it at this point. Unfortunately, neither can we. But we possess something which you do not: Faith.

S: You are fools.

CP: Coming from you, that’s quite a compliment.

S: As you wish.

CP: Well we certainly have no shortage of other questions for you but we realize you have another engagement to attend.

S: Yes I’m overseeing the Jackson funeral and have a few loose ends to tie up.

CP: You don’t say. Well sir we wish you every obstacle, frustration, and failure in your future endeavors.

S: Likewise.

C: We have no doubt.

The Child in Chief Speaketh

From CNN

Obama also said Wednesday he is "very comfortable" with his decision to ban interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which he called torture.
The president called the practice a recruiting tool for terrorist groups like al Qaeda, citing World War II-era British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who also rejected such "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

"Churchill understood that if you start taking shortcuts, over time that corrodes what's best in a people," Obama said. "It corrodes the character of a country."

- President Barack Obama, 100 Days, April 29, 2009.

Mr. Obama – a point of clarification. Mr. Churchill’s reference to torture was:

a.) in reference to actual torture, not highly productive interrogation techniques which, while scaring the daylights out of prisoners, do them no actual harm

b.) in reference to downed and captured Nazi pilots, most of whom were drafted against their will and who possessed little to no strategic knowledge outside of the parameters of their particular mission, rendering torture or even harsh interrogation pointless

c.) in recognition that captured British soldiers were largely being treated well by their German captors

Detained Islamic terrorists have demonstrated in word and deed their personal and deeply held conviction that their enemies – all non-Islamics – must convert or die. They have stated their unrepentent allegiance to this conviction. They have abused, tortured, beheaded, and blown to pieces countless innocent people in demonstration of this conviction and vowed to continue doing so long before any American or Allied engagement in the matter. They are in possession of strategies and technologies that make a small band or even just one of them as potentially lethal as an entire squadron of Luftwaffe bombers.

Your assessment of the situation and reference to Mr. Churchill in this instance is yet further proof of your adolescent and disastrous miscalculation of past, present, and future.

That the leader of the free world would publicly renounce a proven and legitimate means of defense in the fight against pure evil is a profound step in the direction of total surrender. And the free press applauds. Breathtaking.

Cheers,

Charlie

Update from the UK Times -Best try that again Barry.

Re-Dependence Day

On our most recent sortie through Sir Winston’s old papers and notes, we came across an item of interest, particularly in light of the philosophical divide that is the subtext of the current United States presidential contest.

It is an early draft of The Atlantic Charter , the 1941 statement composed by United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill outlining their vision for the post-World War II world. The historical value of the Atlantic Charter is the subject of another post. In this instance, we shall focus on a key edit Sir Winston made to that charter which ought to have changed the course of history. It did not.

In the draft pictured, Mr. Roosevelt had incorporated the third of his “Four Freedoms” – “Freedom from Want” - rather prominently in the Charter’s fifth statement regarding the future global economic field. As you will note (click image to enlarge), Sir Winston struck through this statement and attached it as mere afterthought to the far more vague and aspirational sixth statement.

This is not an insignificant edit. Mr. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms introduced in his January 1941 State of the Union Address just months before issuance of the Atlantic Charter, were all the rage at this time.
1. Freedom of Speech and Expression
2. Freedom of Religion
3. Freedom from Want
4. Freedom from Fear

The first two of Mr. Roosevelt’s freedoms had, of course, been brilliantly articulated and secured a century and a half prior by the American Founders, the culmination of some 600 years of English Common Law. It is the second two “freedoms” which demonstrate FDR’s contribution, if you will, to the American ethos. They have since become central tenets of modern American liberalism, i.e. Leftism, and, we shall argue, will prove the undoing of the free world if not stuck through once and for all.

Freedom from want and freedom from fear. Want and fear are subjective states of mind. To be free from them is something only the “wanter” or “fearer” can achieve for themselves.

Consider want. One may want with equal desperation for the basic necessities of life as for a weekend bang-fest in Vegas with Spitzer-vintage whores. Regulating either the degree or the object of another man’s want is not only impossible but generally necessitates extraordinary levels of brutality in the attempt. History is replete with examples. What can be regulated are the actions men take in their efforts to gratify – and thus free themselves of – their wants. This is already done. It is called “The Rule of Law.” You cannot kill. You cannot rape. You cannot steal. In other words, you cannot take what is not yours without the consent of its owner, no matter how severe your want.

Within legal parameters, citizens in free market economies are otherwise free to seek to gratify their wants till the cows come home. If these citizens find they, nonetheless, “Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” we recommend they seek the counsel of their local priest, rabbi, or swami, for this is a personal spiritual dilemma. This is not the purview of government. Only those entertaining sadomasochistic fantasies of Orwellian behavioral modification techniques could seriously suggest it ought to be.

Ditto for fear.

Surely FDR had none of this in mind when penning his Four Freedoms speech. He merely sought a catchy slogan for declaring his earnest desire that no one ought be poor and no one ought live their lives in fear. We applaud politely at Mr. Roosevelt’s kind sentiment but disagree profoundly with the suggestion that these wishes constitute rights, particularly rights equal to those of freedom of speech and religion which government is obliged and able to honor.

One here notes the careful wording in America’s founding documents concerning these matters. The Declaration of Independence specifies the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right, not happiness itself. The Constitution ascribes to government the responsibility of promoting the general welfare, while it must provide for the common defense. The choice of verbs is no accident and the distinction is not insignificant.

To have declared that their new government, or any government, were capable of protecting its constituents from want and fear would have struck the Founders as hilarious, and that it sought to do so as terrifying. For only a government assuming for itself the authority of an all-powerful, over-protective, over-bearing mother could wish to achieve such a thing. Behold the Nanny-State.

Sadly, in 1948, Lady Roosevelt saw to it that her husband’s grotesque add-ons to the Founder’s genius were prominently incorporated within the preamble of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Sir Winston had little say in the matter.

In the sixty years since, the free world has dutifully supplanted civic and historical education with nanny-state nonsense adorned in the raiment of “human rights” and “social justice.” Is it any wonder that today a formidable number of free persons seek to relinquish their freedom, running like sobbing toddlers into the open, all-powerful arms of government, promising to protect them not only from foreign and domestic molestation, but hospital bills, mortgage payments, and second hand smoke as well?

These central tenets of American liberalism are dangerous lies. There is no such thing as freedom from want and freedom from fear. There is only self-control. The consent of free men ought be given only to those governments which require and honor self-control. That would be the essence of self-government i.e. the very object of the American experiment.

In 1941, Sir Winston – the British Prime Minister (though half American by birth) - said all this and more with the stroke of his pen. Unfortunately, sixty-plus years of cultural devolution have eroded his mark.

“It is better to perish than live as slaves,” he once said, echoing the conviction of liberty’s champions before and since. At one time it was understood as essential that this conviction be cherished in the hearts and minds of all free men in order for them to remain truly free. Today, it is smirked off as so much draconian melodrama as we hand over our personal sovereignty piece by piece. Liberty is not enough. We want total freedom: freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from responsibility, freedom from choice, freedom from ourselves.

“You shall have it,” promises the Left, like The Pied Piper of Hamelin leading generations to the second childhood they’ve been cultivated to covet. “All you need to do is listen to the music … and follow.”

Cheers,

Charlie

In the news?

In the off chance you missed this one: Last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts arrives in Canada . It's enough to make American Lefties change their tune on Iraq. Oh wait, they are!

Cheers,

Charlie

Sweet Nothings

“Imagine there’s no countries/it isn’t hard to do/nothing to kill or die for/and no religion too/imagine all the people/living life in peace.”
- John Lennon, Imagine

With the American Democratic Party’s formal consummation of its dalliance with the Fresh Prince of Thin Air, we had anticipated at least some airing of the lamentations of regret typically following such ill-advised intercourse. Hearing little to none, we are compelled to re-examine the cultural circumstances which make it possible for a farce such as this to come to pass.

Though much discussed, the Obama ascendancy still baffles: the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy has turned the keys over to a very junior Senator whose scant voting record is the furthest left of any in the Senate. Really? It has been called “the audacity of hope.” We call it merely, audacity; that strain of defiant, reckless, irresponsible audacity one expects from a sixteen year old, not from a national institution that – at one time anyway – was of significant weight and consequence.

We ought not be surprised.

By inertia alone has the DNC produced candidates over the past four decades possessing at least the requisite resume for the job of American head of state. The real work over these years has been that of the New Left steadily inculcating its Fifth Column dogma into the party’s ethos. Clearly the Democratic Party has suffered for it, yet remains, somehow, undead. Zombified in this fashion, the party has afforded its representatives nothing in the way of new ideas to promote. Since the mid-Sixties they have spewed and re-spewed the very same socialistic Great Society pap about defending the poor, minorities, and the oppressed; rhetoric exposed daily as empty, insincere, misleading, and counter-productive. It only follows then that this hollowed-out party produce and endorse a candidate as insubstantial as its rhetoric – window dressing for the empty store. But why are people buying it?

Because Obama resonates profoundly with the prevailing cultural influence of our time, what we call fashionable nihilism. In a universe without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value; form reigns supreme over content; style over substance; aesthetic over actuality; the subjective is enshrined and the objective demonized; relativism is embraced and absolutism rejected; perception is reality. These are the bylaws of contemporary popular culture and the parameters of acceptable modern thought. In the political realm, there may be no more perfect embodiment of them than the young, handsome, golden-voiced, and virgin - Barrack Hussein Obama.

Fashionable nihilism has been sometime in the making. No less than Friedrich Nietzsche heralded its rise and warned of its disastrous potential as far back as the late 1800’s. In his classic The Will to Power, Nietzsche warned that European culture was moving “as toward catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.” He predicted that in “the history of the next two centuries …what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism.”

At midpoint now between “the next two centuries,” it seems Freddy may have been onto something. We do not here refer merely to the rise of sociopath monsters such as Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, but also the popular movements which supported them, and – perhaps most importantly – the mind set that rationalized reluctance and timidity amongst those who ought stop them.

In his April 24, 1933 address at the Royal Society of St. George, Sir Winston Churchill aptly diagnosed the condition and its effect on his contemporaries.

"The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians....Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told."

Nonetheless, for the next seven years England continued to drag her feet and avert her eyes until landing herself in the weakest possible position, resulting in the near extinction of Christian civilization. Ultimately, Britain did save herself, due largely to the leadership and state craft of Sir Winston Churchill whom she voted out of power the moment she was returned to safety. The body was safe. The soul is another question. Fashionable nihilism, temporarily suspended, had retained its hold.

This trend was not mainstreamed, however, until the 1960’s. What with the perfect storm of an unprecedented surge of young people, unprecedented wealth, and unprecedented mass communication technology – not to mention an elder generation too weary and few to counter it – an ersatz cultural revolution took place. Principles which had guided Western civilization through the storm of history to her present sanctuary –moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue - were cast off in favor of the values and world view of adolescence: the rash, the titillating, the intoxicating, the immediate, the audacious. The faith that our story was part of a larger more permanent Truth requiring of its actors courage, integrity, perseverance, and self-control in order to be told, was discredited as mere chauvinism and bigotry. This time, relativism was the Serpent’s apple, and the brave new world sunk its teeth into it with relish. Henceforth, Western minds have been narrowing while believing themselves to be opening.

The New Left seeing this for what it was - the hollowing out of free market democracy from its core - shrewdly seized upon this development. Marketers, entertainers, and opportunistic politicians, pursuing trends with all the discretion of bucks in rut, followed suit. Today, the sweet nothings of fashionable nihilism – ever-sexy, ever-youthful, ever-enticing, never delivering – are omni-present, penetrating Western minds and hearts from every possible angle and coloring every aspect of modern society.

In his new book, Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, author Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident and political prisoner as well as a member of the Israeli cabinet, argues against the modern consensus that traditional concepts such as nationalism and religion are antithetical to freedom. Discussing his book at a recent Heritage Foundation lecture, Sharansky began by citing John Lennon’s Imagine (the lyric which prefaces this post) as iconic of this consensus.

“Imagine the world without God and without hell, without borders and without nations, the world where there is nothing to die for, the brotherhood of man,” Sharansky paraphrases. “He (Lennon) believes that real freedom is when people stop being divided into nations, into religion, and when there is nothing to die for. It’s such a good life you don’t have to die for anything.”

Sharansky then explained that, in his own experience and that of other dissidents he met in Soviet gulags as well as through his work since, it was the exact opposite belief that empowered them to defy and prevail against oppression. The faith that there is something permanent, something bigger than one’s own life and well-being, that there are things truly worth dying for; things like God and country, quaint old-fashioned notions that make extraordinary heroes out of ordinary men, this was the faith that sustained them. Those without it capitulated. What else could they do? What is the use of resisting tyranny when none of this nation and religion business matters anyway?

Yet even with the collapse of the Soviet Union Sharansky notes, the Lennon sentiment thrives throughout the West today. Should it continue to do so, Sharansky warns, it will mean our doom. For – seeking to disavow ourselves of our very selves as we are - what resistance could we possibly put up against a force so focused, so furious, so intense as say … Islam?

“We have two societies,” Sharansky explains. “One has a strong identity and no obligations toward freedom. And the other has a strong belief in freedom but no identity, no roots, no desire to die for anything. This society has no chance.”

Sobering words from one who knows.

The rise of Islam in the modern world is an indictment of the West’s self-induced enfeeblement. Frankly, it is laughable that a cult of 7th century cave-dwelling suicidal miscreants could possibly present any actual concern to the 21st century world. Yet it does, because we have allowed it. Like a drunken gardener who too long neglected the simple tasks of tending his plot and is now in danger of losing it to weeds and pests, so the free world today is poised to be overrun by goons of yore as a result of its own fecklessness.

And now we see that instead of rooting out that fecklessness, far too large a portion of the American people are evidently eager to let it lead them in voting a preposterously under-qualified man to the most powerful office in the free world.

“Oh whatever,” they rebut. “It’s time for a change. Besides it’ll be neat to have a black president.” Behold the rigorous logic of fashionable nihilism.

And Britain and Europe, oblivious to their own lost cause, cheer them on from the sidelines.

For nigh on half a century, the Free World has lounged in the spa of fashionable nihilism, bathing in its pretty songs, its feel-good policies, its pie-in-the-sky promises; sweet nothings seducing us to our undoing. In this context, the Obama campaign is indeed a referendum. Not a referendum on “race in America,” for what then of the rancorous debate around Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell etc.? This is a referendum on how America understands herself. Does she still take seriously her role as the last best hope of mankind and all which that requires? Or does she concur with her critics that she is too proud, too strong, too rich and must therefore humble herself before the court of world opinion, electing that court's preference for president being the first big step of many in that direction?

We shall see. This referendum on America is for American’s to decide. It they decide unwisely, the next one may not be. For once sovereignty is given over – be it in the name of peace, or reparation, or empty-headed stupidity – it may never be regained; just ask the Britons and Europeans.

At this point in history, these are the stakes, the bleak dividends of fashionable nihilism: sweet nothings more nothing than sweet.

And as Sir Winston forewarned at another such point in history,

"If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told."

Cheers,

Charlie