Hail, thou ever blessed morn,
Hail redemption’s happy dawn,
Sing through all Jerusalem,
Christ is born in Bethlehem.
Edward Caswall, 1858 Hymn for Christmas Day (Also known as See Amid the Winter Snow)
I have a deep and abiding fondness for certain choral music; Christmas carols or even sort-of-Christmas carols, especially the English ones which weren’t part of my growing-up-Lutheran tradition. That tradition tended more towards the Germanic side of the scale, save for hymns by the Wesleys and Isaac Watts. The English Victorians … sufficient to say that a lot of such hymns and carols were pretty ghastly as poetry, music and theology combined, but time has done some sifting out and the best of them usually turn up in seasonal presentations like the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings’ College, Cambridge. I make a point of listening to the BBC broadcast of it, every year on Christmas Eve morning. I’ve become so very fond of some carols I’ve heard through that broadcast that I’ve made a point of searching out YouTube recordings of them to post on my various websites. All In the Bleak Midwinter is one, Once in David’s Royal City is another and See Amid the Winter Snow is another still. (Link here) I’ve replayed the video so often in the last few days, I have finally learned the melody by heart … and the chorus haunts me this particular Christmas. Sing through all Jerusalem, Christ is born in Bethlehem!
It’s not just that the UN has resolved, in the face of an abstention by the US, to back a claim by the Palestinians to Jerusalem, or that a Jewish infant born in Bethlehem these days might be a hate crime in progress according to pro-Palestine activists. Once a town largely Christian, most local Christians have been chased out, just as Jews and Christians have been from practically everywhere else in the Islamic world. Well, that’s the Middle East for you, everywhere outside of Israel. The ethnic-cleansing of everyone but Muslims of whatever flavor goes on, unabated in the Middle East accompanied by a chorus of indifference sung by the Western ruling class, who seem intent on an Olympic-qualification level of virtue-signaling.
It’s just that now those Muslim chickens have come home to roost in severally and most heavily in certain Western European countries, in such strength and numbers with the passive acquiescence or even outright encouragement of the Ruling Class, I cannot help but wonder … now much longer will there be a BBC broadcast of the Lessons and Carols from King’s College, in the wake of threats of Islamic-inspired terrorism, or ongoing public hooliganism on the part of refugees from the Middle East?
How much longer will there be well-attended Christmas markets in German cities and towns? What about candle-lit midnight masses in French and English cathedrals, Christmas trees and crèches on display in public squares? Such events can be guarded by private security, police, even soldiers, by barricades and checkpoints, just as synagogues, Jewish schools and cultural centers across Europe have had to be guarded for years … but quite soon I believe there will come the point when citizens make an entirely rational decision to not risk their own safety, the safety of their children and stay home from the markets, the town square, the candle-lit midnight mass. Participation in such long-established public traditions will fall away, and as the crowds thin out, it is likely that civic authorities will decide possibly with some regret that protecting such sparsely-attended events are just not worth the expense and the hassle of provoking the Muslim bully-boys. Will it happen in Germany first? Or maybe France.
Discuss.
Interesting comment by “Iberian”, excerpted:
“This is the paradox we are facing in Europe: if we want to keep all our progressive values (welfare-State, secularism, gay marriage, feminism) we have to support (because there is no other chance) local far right parties. Said all this by a progressive (a “liberal” as you say in the USA) who is seriously thinking about voting to the far right. Never ever in my entire life thought about voting the far right, but enough is enough.”
https://notesfromaredpillgirl.com/2016/12/22/home-sweet-home/#comments
I still think that Europe won’t go down without a fight. After all, despite all the warnings most of us have seen for a few decades, they’re still in denial mode. At some point they move to anger.
Brian, I keep thinking after horrors like the Rotherham abuse and the Bataclan massacre, that surely some Brits and Euros must be thinking – ‘this far and no farther’ – but no effective action of any sort. It seems mostly to be ‘hunker down in place’ or ‘quietly emigrate’. It’s as if stubborn defiance has been bred out of them over the 20th century. I feel like screaming “Don’t you value anything of your culture, your art, your traditions, your way of living – that your ruling class can simply unilaterally dissolve you and import some dangerous exotics – and you just sit there?”
>progressive values (welfare-State, secularism, gay marriage, feminism)
They have chosen the form of their own destructor.
My sympathy is limited.
Two months ago it looked like the US was set to give a ringing endorsement to the party proudly broadcasting that it wants to completely drive Christians from the public sphere. I just have a feeling that Europe has plenty of deplorables, and they’ll make their voices heard in the coming years.
Is there some channel through which one can learn what the average guy in (e.g.) southern France thinks? There’ll be a spacious distance between what they grouse about and what they’d fight for, of course, but since pretty much everything is filtered through the ENA-archs I have no idea of what either might be.
Neither do I, James – neither do I. All we have to go on is blogs … and those responses which get some kind of international notice.
Is there some reason why parties who support some immigrant control are always referred to as the FAR-right? Left-wing parties, no matter how outrageous their platforms, are never called the FAR- left.
At some point the Europeans will remember who they were. Who they really are. And it will get ugly and bloody. I have a cousin in Germany, slightly younger than me, who has a teenaged daughter. Her husband is quietly angry at what is going on there, and fearful. There must be many ordinary Germans, Frenchmen and Britons who feel the same way, that they are slowly being backed into some horrible corner.
I get the sense that Europe is a tinderbox sitting on top of an ammo dump that’s been doused in jet fuel. It won’t matter if the spark comes from fear or anger, but at some point the whole thing is going to blow up, and it will be bloody. Think Bosnia was bad? Once this fire starts it’s going to burn up the entire continent. The Muslims will be the first to feel the flames, but it won’t stop there–when that carnage is over it will be time to settle the score with those who created the conditions for it.
The spark probably will not come from some “far-right”–whatever the Hell that is–politician. It will come from a loving parent who can no longer bear the idea of his or her daughter living in fear of what the barbarian hordes imported by their own leaders will do to them just because they can. And they will make note of why those hordes were there in the first place. What’s coming will make 1945 look like a practice run….
I think there are three major reasons that Europe is likely already lost:
1. They don’t have guns.
2. They have been indoctrinated from the end of WW II that nationalism is merely a transition to transnational democratic socialism.
3. Their political and cultural elites are much more uniformly committed to and entrenched in the commanding heights of their cultures with this progressive vision. The ability of common people to influence dramatic change of the current political direction is limited by even more centralization than we have. They are years beyond where we find ourselves. It might be surprising how few of them even see the need for a rejection of the fundamental progressive vision.
So I think they lack either the political or force options as well as the collective will to divert from their current path.
Brexit was perhaps a tactical blunder by the British elites, but I think it likely it will be frustrated in the end anyway. The continentals will make it as painful as they can for Britain as an example to any other member who might consider challenging their national and cultural unification of Europe. They will have plenty of help from inside the British elites
Death6
Most important: “They don’t have guns.”
Americans buy more and more guns as the political left rants against them.
I am getting a new Walther P4 for Christmas, as soon as the California 10 day period is up Jan 2.
My younger son, the Trump voter, bought two AR 15 lowers before they became subject to register in California. He and a friend are going to build two AR 15s from them.
We will be Arizona residents by the end of the month. California is just too crazy.
I think that it would be wise to actually look up the gun ownership figures in the EU before coming to conclusions about how few guns they have. The figures vary widely and recent events seem to have created a sales surge:
https://www.sofmag.com/gun-sales-for-self-defense-spike-in-france-austria-and-germany-while-illegal-guns-flow-to-criminals/
chorus of indifference sung by the Western ruling class, who seem intent on an Olympic-qualification level of virtue-signaling.
When we adopt the language of Left, we demonstrate we think as they do. Even to use it ironically (which I hope is the case here) is a kind of submission. When the issue is important, irony won’t do. What the Left from Bill English to Obama in alliance with Islam has done is put the world on a path to brutal genocide and ruthless war. What they have done will inspire evil for a generation at least.
Ah, well. The success of anti-Semitism at the U.N. is just one more Leftist success in a series of successes that has crippled the USA and made the West weak and depraved.
if we want to keep all our progressive values (welfare-State, secularism, gay marriage, feminism) we have to support (because there is no other chance) local far right parties.
And when we don’t?
There are no far-right parties in EUrope. They are all socialist, and range from Stalinist to Maoist to Trotskyite to Bernstein to Hitlerite. The far-right is throne-and-altar.
And there is more bigotry: anti-feminist bigotry (from the “guests), and anti-gay bigotry (from the “guests”). ”” Iberian.
Iberian is a hard-Leftist. There is no anti-feminist bigotry. To disagree and to reject a political program of cultural transformation is not bigotry. Were there “anti-feminist” bigotry, then there would be anti-Nazi and anti-Communist bigotry. Ditto for “anti-homosexual.”
Eric….I think of a hard leftist as one who is (a) totalitarian and (b) favors socialism in the sense of government *ownership* of production, rather than ‘only’ regulation of same. The whole left-right continuum leaves much to be desired, though.
“Once a town largely Christian, most local Christians have been chased out, just as Jews and Christians have been from practically everywhere else in the Islamic world.”
A lot of liberal-to-far-left people have told me that it’s the eevil Jooz who have been driving the Christians out with their Zionist policies. Rather amazing. It’s as if they only get their “news” from islamo-fascist propagandists.
Well, we know they have guns in Belgium because the Paris terrorists bought their Kalashnikovs and grenades from a smuggler in Brussels. If European leaders protect their citizens with any more gun control they’ll end up wiping them out completely.
“Many beautiful things are possible, but not all together”, as Antoine de St-Exupery put it.
Open borders–free movement of goods and people–sounds very nice. But it seems to be incompatible with many *other* things…the ability of women to walk down the street without being assaulted, the ability of gays to keep on living, the ability of cartoonists to draw what they like, on and on without end.
The particular form of ‘diversity’ represented by open borders appears to make impossible many other forms of diversity: the ability of French people to have their dogs with them in outdoor cafes, the ability of French women to sunbathe topless, the ability of Germans to enjoy their Christmas traditions, the ability of Jews to wear the kippa in public, the ability of atheists to argue against religion, etc etc.
The design of any physical product, or any piece of software, is largely about tradeoffs. Absolute insistence on a particular feature will foreclose other features. The same is true of national policies.
Indeed.
EirisGuys
That is a good remark: “Throne and Altar” is the really far right not any kind of fascism or pseudo-fascism. Then, I think Marine Le Pen´s Front National fits in the “Throne and Altar” box. Maybe not so much “Throne” due to the French republican tradition but indeed “Altar”.
Viktor Orban too”¦ deeply Catholic.
It is funny because Marine Le Pen once had an interview on Spanish TV and she was asked if she was “extrema derecha” (far right). Marine said that “Not at all: far right are the ones who want to privatize the whole economy, not us, we are deeply in favor of the State”.
So it seems that the “far right” label is kind of “hot potato” everybody throws to other people: the fascists to the tradcon Christians, the tradcon Christians to the miltonians/randians”¦ It is a mess.
By the way”¦ In Spain, miltonian/randians call themselves “liberales”. So if any Spaniard tells you “I am a liberal” he is not definitely a progressive but a minarchist or an ancap.
Cheers
“Is there some channel through which one can learn what the average guy in (e.g.) southern France thinks?”
A couple Frenchmen I follow on twitter are always retweeting this fellow who is an advocate for the National Front. I guess in France he would be an extremist, but where I come from he’s a moderate. Similar to the Brexit and Trump, the real extremists are in charge of the media trying to convince people to abandon their traditional values. Le Pen did have to sack her father for his Neo-Collaborationist bloviating, so she was then accused of moving to the Left. I can only determine that she wants to preserve some state in order to defend the country against the invasion. The Jews left in France are increasingly throwing their support to her and the FN because the alternative is be destroyed by the ruling Elites.
Porter Alexander, who was Lee’s artillery commander at Gettysburg, after the war became a railroad president. Reflecting back on the issues of the war, he remarked:
“Well that (state’s rights) was the issue of the war; & as we were defeated that right was surrendered & a limit put on state sovereignty. And the South is now entirely satisfied with that result. And the reason of it is very simple. State sovereignty was doubtless a wise political instution for the condition of this vast country in the last century. But the railroad, and the steamboat & the telegraph began to transform things early in this century & have gradually made what may almost be called a new planet of it… Our political institutions have had to change… Briefly we had the right to fight, but our fight was against what might be called a Darwinian development – or an adaptation to changed & changing conditions – so we need not greatly regret defeat.”
I think a lot of the belief in unlimited globalization is driven by an extension of Alexander’s argument, with the jet plane, the container ship, and the Internet taking the place of the railroad, steamboat, and telegraph.
“I think a lot of the belief in unlimited globalization is driven by an extension of Alexander’s argument,”
Maybe in a thousand years, humans will be willing to surrender the role of family and small group to faceless nameless hordes of bureaucrats but the EU has shown that these so called “experts” do no better at running things than the small group or family. The Soviet Union showed the failure of a concept of central control of all of life.
The “elites” who are given power do not adopt the eleemosynary theory of group action. They in fact become more selfish and greedy as they acquire power.
Look at the IRS and the EPA. They are not benign agencies of a benign government. The members of those bureaucracies enrich themselves and punish those bold enough to challenge them in their self love.
There is a limit. In Sherman’s Memoirs, which I have just been reading, he sums up by saying that an army of 60,000 is as large as a general may successfully command.
I suspect a state is as large an administrative unit as can be controlled by an efficient bureaucracy. The 3M corporation enjoyed considerable success in spinning off divisions that operated almost as independent entities. I am not expert in large corporations but I have seen some evidence of incompetence that is startling.
Globalization is probably just too much for humans to control.
“It’s not just that the UN has resolved, in the face of an abstention by the US, to back a claim by the Palestinians to Jerusalem”
It is only the US’s continuous veto that allows the flouting of the UN, where Israel was formed. The partition of Palestine was that formation by the UN, and the boundaries include Jerusalem as mostly shared and both side’s capital.
The spin has gotten to the point that there is no argument no facts just what people feel might be true. This is everywhere now. News is simply PR for your side.
Did you know the US just fattened a hospital in Mosul? I doubt it.
Reminder: the miltonian lobbys in the EU (together with the marxists), promoted the massive African and Asian immigration into the EU.
Miltonians don´t believe in the Nation-State, don´t believe in frontier control, they believe in free demographic movements worldwide without any kind of control by the State.
Miltonian and marxists both are internationalists. Aleksandr Dugin would say: both are trotskyst.
Fascism is the cure.
Pengun, you don’t know what you are talking about. The Palestinian Arab leadership and all of the adjacent Arab countries rejected the UN’s 1947 partition of Palestine. The Palestinian Jews accepted it. The Arab countries invaded Israel, the Jews fought back. Jordan illegally occupied the West Bank and part of Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967. Egypt and Syria provoked a war with Israel in 1967 and Jordan joined in on the anti-Israel side. Israel captured Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. Israel has every right under international law to continue to hold this territory. Anyway Israel’s borders are indefensible without the corridor from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, which would otherwise be an open ramp for armored attack into the heart of Israel. Israel, and the USA for that matter, have every right to disregard UN diktat that goes against their national interests. Get back to me when the UN starts to care about the well being of people in China, Iran, Rwanda, Cuba, etc., etc. (not to mention political dissenters, gays and Christians in the Palestinian territories).
Hospital — or a command and control center, Penny … it’s hard to tell the difference, sometime. Especially when they are stuffed full of ammunition.
I have watched hundreds of hospital attacks. Perhaps 7 or 8 were real. This one looks almost like the FU in Kunduz, which was.
Jonathan, I was just pointing out the facts about Jerusalem’s dual nature, is all.
I don’t much care about the various religions involved, dislike em’ all, but the innocents, so gullible and believing in this ancient nonsense, I do care about. At this time the scales are twitching. Weights are changing and the world is not the same anymore. I believe America just lost it’s preeminence, although it’s very hard to tell from in the middle of the change. A great weight has been lifted from the world’s neck, America’s boot. This is wonderful.
I’m sure it’s not over, but the log lam is broken.
Enjoy the lack of American boot, Penny – I am certain that you will.
Jonathan, I was just pointing out the facts about Jerusalem’s dual nature, is all.
You have the facts wrong.
“You have the facts wrong.”
And what part of shared capital do I have wrong?
“Enjoy the lack of American boot, Penny – I am certain that you will.”
It was never on my neck, I’m next door. It has burdened the entire world since WW2 though. A great deal of that was generally helpful, but as time went by it became apparent that the preeminence America enjoyed was coming to an end and that changed the game a great deal. Most of the middle east is on fire because America has attempted regime change there wholesale. To consolidate it’s hold on the area.
Today we have the poor damn Iraqis attempting again to do something about Mosul. It’s ludicrous at this point, as they have had their Special Forces, trained by America, attrited by 50% at this point. They have bravely sent about 10,000 police units to reinforce the northern and south eastern groups and the PM says they will take Mosul in 3 months. The US commander says 2 years now, after claiming he would take Raqqa and Mosul very soon, earlier.
The US has smashed 2 bridges and a hospital.
And what part of shared capital do I have wrong?
It’s not shared, it’s Israel. Read what I wrote in my previous comment. The Jews accepted the 1947 UN partition plan, which would have put Jerusalem under UN control. The other parties, including Jordan, rejected the plan and started a war to capture the areas of former Mandatory Palestine controlled by the Jews. Jordan illegally occupied half of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. During that period the Jordanians blocked Jews from visiting their holy places, desecrated and looted Jewish property including cemeteries, and didn’t treat Christians well either. The UN didn’t give a damn. Nor did the governments of the countries that are all over the Israelis for being imperfect today. In 1967 Egypt and Syria provoked a war with Israel. Jordan joined them, hoping to cash in for little effort. They lost and Israel captured the parts of Jerusalem it didn’t already control. Israel has every legal and moral right to keep the territory it took in defensive wars. Under Israeli control Jerusalem is freer, more prosperous and more tolerant of all faiths than it’s every been. Yet now the people who attacked Israel and lost want Israel to turn back the clock and accept the partition plan that they, the losers, rejected on the first go. It’s not going to happen, thank God.
I agree that every inch of this planet is owned by right of conquest. I understand that, but the UN, and I think International Law has it that conquest is now not a legal thing, until the agreements are made. This why the 67 line etc.
It looks like that if Israel does not make a deal it may be forced to go it alone, against most of the west anyway. This should produce some exiting times.
Israel has got some new F 35s and Hezbollah is a absolute beast now.
The 67 war wasn’t a conquest by Israel. It was Israel’s defense against an attempted conquest by Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Syria, Egypt and Jordan lost. My understanding of international law is that Israel could keep all of the conquered territory if it wanted to. For example, the USSR kept the territory it captured from Nazi Germany, and Germany isn’t demanding it back. But everything Israel does gets put under a moral microscope.
PenGun may not believe the nonsense he/she posts here. It’s difficult to believe that anyone could be so dense but there are Democrats that prove the point.
“I agree that every inch of this planet is owned by right of conquest. ”
That is one sign of sanity. We could be living in stone age conditions as hunter gatherers but we have progressed.
The Neaderthals lost out to the Cro Magnons. Eventually, the Amerindians were devastated by the diseases they had been isolated from for 10,000 years.
Diseases protected Africa from colonization until the 20th century provided enough public health knowledge to keep colonists alive.
The IndoEuropeans left their language and probably the wheel but vanished as a recognizable people.
The Jews rebelled against the Romans and were exiled, just as they had been by the Hittites. They have returned, just as they did after the Hittites disappeared.
What we call “Palestine” was virtually empty when Mark Twain visited about 1880. The Jews began to return about that time and the return was greatly accelerated by the Germans in the 1930s.
The Arabs fought a war, thinking they would exterminate the Jews but they lost. Three times they lost.
“if Israel does not make a deal it may be forced to go it alone, against most of the west anyway. ”
No, they will go it alone against the Arabs again but the Saudis may have decided that Israel is a better friend than enemy when Shia Iran has been armed by Obama.
“No, they will go it alone against the Arabs again but the Saudis may have decided that Israel is a better friend than enemy when Shia Iran has been armed by Obama.”
OK. You will need a huge pile of luck if you are going to get in bed with those monsters. The new bunch is especially nasty. Still like meets like I guess.
Not traveling companions I would chose.
As well the Saudis are going to run into pretty serious trouble as the various wars in the area evolve, not to their advantage. You can expect really rational responses from them … not!
Israel is in a bad position with regards to Hezbollah as well. Those guys are much stronger than when they fought Israel to a standstill in 2006. I believe Israel has chosen to go to war over the West Bank. That will not end well. Put your silly nukes away, you can’t use them.
“Those guys are much stronger than when they fought Israel to a standstill in 2006.”
This is your usual nonsense. Hezbollah is terrorist organization that uses children, the press and the UN to look stronger than they are.
Israel has a western sense of ethical obligation. Hamas and Hezbollah use children as shields.
Personally, I would use boiling oil into the tunnels.
Oh Mike. Why Israel is freaked out right now. Hezbollah with Russian Special Forces embedded:
https://southfront.org/russian-special-forces-operate-along-with-hezbollah-units-in-aleppo-video-photos/
Judging by how the Spetsnaz operated in South Ossetia and Crimea, this video was staged to show the insignia and weapon and the name on his back. Remember the unmarked ‘Little Green Men’? What are the Russians wanting to tell us here, and what are they really doing instead?
I don;t see any positive returns to the Russians by joining Hamas in attacking Israel.
The Israelis were once allied with the Russians long ago and they have some shared interests, especially in the age of Obama.
Hamas is a suicide cult and the Russians can’t afford that.
Hamas has little to do with Hezbollah. The first is a Palestinian social support organization, well that was where it started. The second was formed to fight Israel after the Invasion of Lebanon.
It’s common to ‘patch up’ when embedded, for both the US and Russia. Creates a more unified group.
Now Mike, the Russians are not going to help Hezbollah attack Israel. What is frightening, or should be, is the level of sophistication those Hezbollah forces have acquired.
We do know that, since the Russians have entered Syria, the Israeli air force has still attacked Hezbollah convoys. This means accommodation from Russian anti-aircraft systems. Israeli planes have to be notifying Russian air defense when they launch, and the Russians in turn don’t say anything to Hezbollah.
We also know that American planes have attacked Syrian rebels in northwest Syria lately, including just today. That has to mean coordination between us and Russia, despite all the bluster about hacking and sanctions.
Th report from about a half hour ago was our drone strike killed eleven rebels including high level commanders. To me this suggests possibly they had a connection with last night’s Istanbul bombing.
“the level of sophistication those Hezbollah forces have acquired.”
Not to mention the billions that Obama gave their sponsors, Iran.
PenGun: “Those guys are much stronger than when they fought Israel to a standstill in 2006.”
Mike K: This is your usual nonsense. Hezbollah is terrorist organization that uses children, the press and the UN to look stronger than they are.
From what I have read, Iran has sent thousands of missiles to Hezbollah, so yes, Hezbollah is better armed today than in 2006.
“Iran has sent thousands of missiles to Hezbollah, so yes, Hezbollah is better armed today than in 2006.”
Oh yes. Iran got billions from Obama and spent it on terrorism. The missiles Hezbollah has are for terrorism, not any defensive program. Like most Muslims, they are a suicide cult.
Israel is still interdicting Hezbollah missile production and supplies (with implicit Russian acquiescence). In an attack in November the IAF reasserted its claim to the operational zone in SE Lebanon.
News agencies affiliated with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad said the air raid on the military compound occurred at 1:15 a.m. local time and that four large explosions were heard in the capital. They further reported that the strikes were carried out by Israeli Air Force planes operating in Lebanese air space.
Although it looks like the compromise was probably for the Israelis to avoid northern Lebanon, but that’s not an area Hezbollah operates in. This again begs the question, what is the role of the United States? Despite the appearance of detachment and even defeat, we are actively involved with the Lebanese air force, who do fly in northern Lebanon. The A-29 is for close air support.