Pandora’s Last Gift Versus The Gospel Of Despair

     I’m in an odd mood this morning (“So what’s new?” come the mutterings from the peanut gallery), in part owing to two pieces I recently stumbled over:

     My reaction to these stories might have been different had I not just enjoyed a rather satisfying breakfast of fresh cherries and yogurt. (“First breakfast, then Armageddon” is a working principle here at the Fortress.) As matters stand, I’m able to write about them in a relatively tranquil mood, with only a quick slug of Maalox® for ballast.

     It’s easy to say “I’m fed up with it all and I’m dropping out.” It’s a lot harder to say “I still have hope that things could be better, and I’m going to act on it.” In the first case, you’ve put your listeners on notice that they should expect nothing from you. In the second, you’ve announced that you’re putting yourself to work on achieving your aspirations, whatever they may be. On first blush, these are personal matters that should concern no one but the speakers’ loved ones. On second thought, the reactions to them tell us quite a great deal that we need to know…whether we like it or not.

***

     Amil Niazi, the author of the first cited piece, evokes from me both pity and contempt. Surrender is just about never praiseworthy. The surrender of a privileged first-world office worker is particularly contemptible – and I could wear out my fingers listing the various privileges this self-pitying woman enjoys. If she’s sincere about her proclamation, I doubt she’ll enjoy herself much henceforward; the determinedly mediocre seldom do.

     The subject of the second piece, high school football coach Joe Kennedy, has displayed a great deal of courage. He risked his livelihood to act on his faith. From the details reluctantly provided by the Sports Illustrated hit piece, he enjoys a considerable amount of support. That’s notable, in these days when so many parents merely wring their hands over “public schools” that force their kids to listen to drag queens, apostles of transgenderism, and lectures on anal sex.

     In both cases, the word no one can avoid mentioning is hope.

     Americans have traditionally been strivers, not because we’re guaranteed to gain thereby, but from the hope that we’ll become more valued and better off. When our markets aren’t being interfered with by governmental imbeciles and our economy isn’t half-paralyzed from neo-cartelization, we tend to do better and better over time. Quote Henry Ford II:

     It is worth remembering that output per man in this country has increased on the average by about two percent a year during this century. Mere continuation of this trend will mean a future full of better things for more people.

     The “rising tide” that “lifts all boats” arises from improvements in capital, especially human capital. We learn to do better as we persist in our various trades. Doing better results in greater productivity. Employers that recognize and value productivity confer rewards on those who do better.

     As for Coach Joe Kennedy, the whole of the Christian faith is founded on hope:

  • That the life, words, ministry, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth are accurately recorded in the four Canonical Gospels;
  • That we may therefore trust that He was who He said He was;
  • And that we may therefore hope for a blissful afterlife if we only love God and our neighbor as ourselves, just as He directed us.

     (Pascal’s Wager isn’t perfectly on point here, but it is relevant.)

     The prevailing Establishment in this country, and in most of the world today, is rabidly hostile to Christianity. Where Jesus preached hope, they preach resignation. Where Jesus said that “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” they counter “What is truth? Ignore all that blather and do as we say.”

     Do you really need any better explanation for the expulsion of all traces of Christianity from our public institutions – especially our schools?

     There’s a reason hope is one of the three theological virtues.

***

     I could go on about this for many pages, but I’ll spare you. Let it suffice to say that they who seek to delegitimize hope, and who preach surrender to mediocrity and subjection, know what they’re about. The infiltration and subornation of organ after organ of information and opinion is too obvious. The messaging is too consistent. The attacks on those who defy them are too vicious and too vigorously sustained.

     “There’s nothing to hope for, so why hope? Stop striving. Surrender. Ignore that guy on his knees; he’s just an unreconstructed dupe of a god-myth two millennia old. Why follow his course when all it could possibly bring him is trouble? Especially trouble from us.

     The wheel is turning, Gentle Reader. You know not the day nor the hour, so place your bet. Choose your side and stand fast to your post. Prepare to defend yourself.

2 comments

  1. The chutzpah of the antitheists and their press agent, SI, is strikingly exposed in one paragraph.

    To his legal opposition, Kennedy’s covenant, however intended, was coercive, delivering a powerful message to teenagers who wanted to play and coveted their coaches’ approval. Some might have participated to curry favor or join “us” rather than “them.” One brief in the SCOTUS docket is from psychologists who argue there’s a fragility to adolescent minds.

    They are projecting onto Coach Kennedy the core methodology — coercion by authority figure — that educrat propandists employ to corrupt the nation’s youth.

    You were too polite to point out their despicable and unwittingly revealed tactic Fran. I’m not.

  2. Our Constitution is so heavily influenced by Biblical Principles that it can’t be removed without removing those biblical Principles from our culture.

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