Update: This post was originally published on September 25. It has been made “sticky” to keep it at the top. Scroll down for last night’s news feed and Bill Warner in Hungarian, plus nine recent Vlad videos.
The essay below is the seventh in a series by Takuan Seiyo. See the list at the bottom of this post for links to the previous installments.
Left: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876
Right: George Grosz, Metropolis, 1916/17
The Bee and the Lamb
Part 7
By Takuan Seiyo
Hope of the helpless
Gallivanting as this work has, between Estonian poetry and the British patriotic songbook, Dresden and Baltimore, 13th century Prussians and 19th century Puget Sound Indians, there comes a point where one has to offer Ariadne’s thread to the reader. A corollary strand in this thread is the necessity to restore universal knowledge of the history, mythology and aphoristic wisdom of the Western peoples so that every high school graduate within the sphere of Western civilization “gets” the meaning of old and once ubiquitously understood cultural memes like “Ariadne’s thread.”
If I impugned in the preceding chapter the mental fitness of “Christians for Obama” it’s not because they are bad Christians but because they are gullible political bumpkins, so stupid that they are serving evil and unaware of it. But why speak of Christianity at all, particularly in a revisionist tone that puts reason ahead of faith? And if one removes sola fide as the sole basis for moral judgment, on what authority may an intelligent discourse proceed with strong words like “evil”?
We will get to all those points, but for now I will state that the Western West is immersed in evil and the Eastern West — the Christian countries once behind the Iron Curtain (ex Russia, always a separate case) — is not. Moreover, the rest of the world, where there are other kinds of evil, does not know this particular Western evil.
The East, i.e. Eastern Europe, has a good future to look forward to, if it avoids being crushed again by the Russians from the East, or infected by white man’s disease from the West. And here is a timely Reality Check:
“Sixteen months after it joined the struggling [euro], Estonia is booming, reported CNBC on June 5, 2012: “The economy grew 7.6 percent last year, five times the euro-zone average. Estonia is the only euro-zone country with a budget surplus. National debt is just 6 percent of GDP, compared to 81 percent in virtuous Germany, or 165 percent in Greece.”
The article goes on to explain that Estonia bounced back from a massive hit (18% contraction) by the global financial crisis because its people accepted severe austerity measures. They even re-elected the politicians that imposed them — quite unlike other eurozone countries where soft, socialist, decadent peoples have taken to the streets and toppled governments, for they have grown over three generations to expect an inexhaustible cornucopia of entitlements poured from above by ruling socialist oligarchs.
It was the Estonian people’s long apprenticeship in the School of Reality — of late under the brutal Bolshevik bear — that allowed them to choose the right course. This, plus Estonia’s smallness, and the strength of homogeneity. But one sample does not a trend make; for that we have to adduce other ex-Soviet vassals in the northeastern corner of Europe — all, like Estonia, graduates of the same school of terrible historical woes, traditionalist opposition to postmodern nonsense, and stubborn mono-ethnicism.
How about “Lithuania shows the way”? A May 2012 financial report of the Swiss IMD limns Lithuania as “The most improved economy in new global competitiveness rankings, proving that austerity measures can pay dividends.” In May, as well, the International Monetary Fund reported that Latvia’s gross domestic product will grow by 3.5% in 2012. No country in Western Europe will see such growth.
Here is another recent headline, from Germany’s Spiegel: “The Miracle Next Door: Poland Emerges as a Central European Powerhouse”. For anyone who knows that just as America was entering the most glorious chapter in its history, Poland was entering its most miserable, a misery that lasted from 1772 to 1989 — 218 years — and culminated in a Commie-Nazi-Commie apotheosis of horror in 1939-1948 — that headline is material for reflection. Why Poland up, but Spain down?
Concerning the austerity, a spat developed between the grossly deluded economic poobah of the New York Times, and the President of Estonia. In June 2012, Paul Krugman put down Estonia’s austerity measures in his “Conscience of a Liberal” column. To which Toomas Hendrik Ilves responded in these words: “Let’s write about something we know nothing about & be smug, overbearing & patronizing: after all, they’re just wogs.”
The average ratio of government debt as percentage of GDP is 41.4% in the nine formerly communist countries, ranging from 6.6% in Estonia (5.6% per IMF) to 79% in Hungary (75.5% per IMF). The average for the European Union is 83.4%, and 105% for the USA, i.e. twice and two and a half times the Eastern European average, respectively[1]. And so as freedom and prosperity increase in the East, they decrease in the West. Yet, set on a course by Keynesian socialist lunatics like Krugman, America in particular is set on printing, pumping and spending its way to sovereign default or hyperinflation — either one catastrophic and unnecessary.
Indeed, America should beg Estonia for an intensive cure session for the acute spongiform encephalitis that is ravaging the collective brain and soul of the Lilliputian heirs to the giants of 1776. This shows even in business — America’s traditional strength.
Islamic organizations in Missouri and New Jersey have called on Congress to pass a law against insulting anyone’s religion. They say that an exception to the First Amendment must be made to prevent blasphemous speech, which incites violence.
This is the sixth in a series of subtitled versions of a recent seminar given by Dr. Bill Warner in Tennessee.
Consider the recent 
It’s been a long time since Dymphna went to the emergency room, and she has been pining for it, so we decided to set out on a Saturday jaunt so that she could enjoy the hospitality of the our local health care system.