Posted on 07/03/2015 5:32:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the 1400s, a nun in a French convent started making sounds like a cat. Other nuns began to do the same. Eventually, they started biting one another. As word of the bitings spread, so, too, did the bitings. They swept through other convents all the way to Rome.
In July of 1518, people in Strasbourg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, began dancing. It started with Frau Troffea. Others began to join in, and soon there were 400 dancers. Some died as a result of the nonstop dancing that went on for a month. They could not stop.
In 1692, colonists in New England began having fits. Demonic possession was a suggestion. The epileptic-like fits led to the Salem witch trials. In 2008 in Tanzania, female students started fainting for no reason. In 2011, students in Le Roy, N.Y., developed Tourette's-like symptoms that went unexplained.
History is riddled with episodes of mass hysteria. Sometimes those episodes of mass hysteria lead to evil. Sometimes they lead to merely bizarre stories. But society, on occasion, has fits of hysteria and insanity burning like wildfire through it. The wildfire eventually burns out, but it often leaves destruction in its wake.
The United States of America and much of the West are currently in a fit of hysteria. A wildfire is burning through it. Up is down. Down is up. Good is evil. Evil is good. Wrong is right, and right is wrong. Boys can suddenly be girls. Sex and gender are suddenly different things. And Justice Anthony Kennedy believes that because someone may look at the horizon and find loneliness, the Constitution guarantees him the right to marry another man.
Leave aside the fact that any judge who can redefine a multi-thousand-year-old institution on a whim has more power than our Founders would want. Our society is going through a round of hysteria.
For many in the country, they feel compelled to board up the windows, batten down the hatches and wait for this latest round of collective hysteria to run its course. Wildfires always run out of fuel. Nature or God, whichever your preference, sorts these things out.
Along the way, society is forgetting why we are organized as we are. G.K. Chesterton wrote of the "democracy of the dead." He wrote, "Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father."
Marriage arrived at what it has been through either divine fiat or trial and error. In the same way, our ancestors structured society to have people rely on themselves, each other, their local churches and their local governments for help. Now, the same madness sweeping through on marriage demands we get right to polyamory and scrap tax breaks for religious nonprofits. It is not a war on marriage, but a war on a way of life itself. If one dares bring fact into the mix, they are shouted down, boycotted and driven from the town square.
There is also a relentless desire to make those who recognize the madness think they are alone. Voices of dissent must be silenced. You must think you are all alone so that you might decide to go along to get along. The media elite are in cahoots with the censors, having picked a side now declared a "fundamental right," and you are not to know others disagree with elite consensus.
But you are not alone. Wildfires eventually burn out. The question for you is not whether you take a break from it all and step back to protect your family. The question for you is whether, after you do step back, you prepare yourself to step forward into the rubble, smoke and char to help rebuild civilization once the fire burns itself out.
Th American family is under attack from all sides inside and out with the help of our elected officials who are either compomised or mentally ill
We know when society begins to define itself as sexually promiscuous it is near extinction. Better to extinguish the passion for dissolution than the light of freedom.
Will it burn out or is the left fracking for more fuel?
Excellent. Erickson is among the great commentators of our day.
Mike Savage said that Liberalism is a mental illness. This is what you get when one doubles down on Marxism and applies it not just to economics, but to all life (so-called political correctness).
One of the foundation principles of enviros and leftists is the Precautionary Principle. The idea is that before introducing a new chemical into the environment, promoters must prove it won’t be harmful.
Since proving a negative is impossible, this means, if strictly enforced no new chemicals at all.
I’ve always wondered why we ignore the PP when it comes to introducing massive changes into the social environment.
Much along the same lines, there is Chesterton’s parable of the Fence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton’s_fence
As the author pointed out that now in the USA, up Is down, and right is wrong, God gave Isaiah some wisdom and a warning for mankind on this thousands of years ago.
Isaiah 5:20
” Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; and ... that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! ...”
True then. True now.
How exactly do you “step back” from all this? It’s the air we breathe.
There is also a relentless desire to make those who recognize the madness think they are alone. Voices of dissent must be silenced. You must think you are all alone so that you might decide to go along to get along. The media elite are in cahoots with the censors, having picked a side now declared a “fundamental right,” and you are not to know others disagree with elite consensus.
___________________________________________________
Elijah thought this way..
He even had a pity party..
But God said to him “Quit that whining. You’re not alone.”
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
“Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”
1 Kings 19:13,14,18
But6 Nana that’s the Old Testament. We’re New Testament people. OK whiny butts, here’s what Paul said when he quoted that scripture in his Letter to the Romans.
“God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me”?
And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”
So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.”
Romans 11:2-5
“Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” by Charles Mackay, is the standard read in this area. Although written in 1842, IIRC, it could have been written yesterday.
Thanks for reminding us
Some while back, and after having studied prophecy for many years,
It came to me that before the end (of the age) would come, that Isaiah Chapter 5 would have to be fulfilled first.
I’ve been noticing lately just how often Isaiah Chapter 5 has been mentioned by those that get it, to those like yourself for which he is clearly speaking to in the spirit,
It is as you say, but also verses 7 and 8, about oppression and this world system making believers illegal, where there is no place left for us to stand alone with our God,
Now we must acknowledge evil, pay for Molechs sacrifices via obamacare abortions, bow before Islam and never offend this demonic unclean homosexual obama state first and foremost or else be made an example of, impoverished and ultimately deemed a criminal in our own land,
yes great read. pull it out every now and again. it’s within view as i write.
The “mental illness” of liberalism, Marxism really, originates with two lies - one about God - the other about man.
The first is that there is no God - thus no judge, no right/wrong, no good/bad, all is relative.
The second says that man is good - his base nature is good, and he will only improve with time. They have no problem with the contradiction with these two lies - because the first one says there is no good. They have no problem with contradictions - it’s a form of self-deception.
These foundational lies lead to all other lies, because lies beget lies. Obvious contradictions beget obvious contradictions.
So today male is female and vice versa; white is black; abortion is good; any sexual preference is good, and so on. But lies require lies to be maintained.
Our dear leader and his close brethren in the Democratic party (both in gov. and media) thus can only survive on lies, that they maintain and promote perpetually.
Deception is a disease, not a mental illness. And it spreads like cancer. But, like cancer, in time it will destroy the very life that gives it life, and thus destroy itself. Our nation is self-destructing, committing suicide. In time - God’s time - it will die.
And only out of the ashes and dust of its death will God arise and will truth arise.
Meanwhile, we all need to be bright lights - lampstands - of who God is and what truth is.
It may cost us our lives - but first may cause us our livilihoods........
Yes...was thinking of that verybook last week and told hub we are in those times
No one ever sat in a class room, with their "equal" on either side, unless it was their identical twin or triplet. We all differ in aptitudes, personalities, motivations, priorities, etc., etc. The idea that it is essential to equalize the material circumstances of the disparate people in any community, tribe, nation or state, is not idealistic, altruistic, beneficial or even sane. It is driven by Compulsion Not Compassion. Similarly, the need to equate different "lifestyles," even to call what is manifestly not a "life" style, a "lifestyle," represents the same neurotic need to deny the most obvious reality.
Thus the sudden need to dance, or act like a cat, phenomena will be short term quirks in human behavior, while America & the West, in general, have been afflicted with an Egalitarian lunacy--rationally indefensible Egalitarian lunacy--for the past two generations.
Will this end as the previous, yet much shorter term episode in then Jacobin France? We are rapidly approaching a climax. The sad truth is that we may not have to wait very long to find out.
William Flax
Quoting Chesterton - thumbs up!!!
It is particularly pleasing and with joy that I find others who read Chesterton. Thank you for your post and for the link.
Another quote I found recently (Forget who said it but may God bless them for it) You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
Kind regards,
“Liberalism is a mental illness”
It’s not only a mental illness but a mental illness that is actually contagious.
When the Environmental Protection Agency was introduced, they should have introduced the Cultural Protect4ion Agency, with similar rules. Cultural pollution is far more damaging than environmental pollution.
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