When of one mind, Janus' views
form a composite of his two main sides. He attempts to consider issues with care and thoughtfulness, though he remains biased towards Christianity and Western
traditions. Outsiders might call him a Conservative, but in fact he is a Fundamentalist in that he promotes the Christian values that raised Western civilization to its peak.
One of the faces, looking to our right and called Patulcius, is the headstrong and determined side of Janus, tending to authoritarian ideals. Patulcius looks to history and upholds the traditions of
Christianity and Western civilization, and the well-being of Western nations. Patulcius sees world events as a struggle between divine and demonic
forces.
The other face—the easy-going, more open-minded, left-facing Clusivius—dislikes authority and prefers a more individualistic outlook. Clusivius looks to the future and contemplates changes. While
Christian, Clusivius takes an interest in the well-being of other civilizations as well as the Western. Clusivius tends to believe that elitist conspiracies play a major part in world events.
When possible, the complete Janus seeks to form a synthesis of the two sides when making a decision. At other times Janus allows any differences to stand without resolution. But now and again the two sides must battle one another until one side wins Janus' acceptance.
Tending to sensationalize, and sometimes to hyperbolize, C. F. van Niekerk over-analyzes any number of subjects from mundane minutiae to the great philosophical questions of life itself.
Katáxiros, the parched one, alone and adrift at sea, yet ever rowing ahead anyhow, sometimes weakly and sometimes vigorously, thirsting after God through the Orthodox Christian Church, contemplating the ways of the Lord, recognizing that while he is inadequate to the task, he must press ever ahead. Katáxiros writes about matters pertaining specifically to the Orthodox Church.
Barzillai Alpheus Bozarth claims to be a 19th Century man marooned in the 21st Century after a failed experiment in inter-dimensional travel. Not at all impressed with the wonders of our time, he would give just about anything to return to his beloved world of "horse manure and civilized etiquette". Barzillai writes historical observations and pores over old books and documents.
We don't know what to make of the Wanderer. He walks in with the moon and rolls out with the wind. He uses no name; the smells of rank sweat, dirt, and smoke mark him as much as anything. He's always near, but never close. Heedless of human ideals and bounds, he stands unyielding for honor on the ground. He's practical to a fault when he's not romantic to even greater fault. He says little, but when he does finally speak, we listen up. The Wanderer is our lawman of final resort. By hook or by crook, he sees a job done, just don't ask how. Frankly, we're a little afraid of the Wanderer.
Nature can be cruel to mankind.
If Concussus had his way, nature would be crueler yet. Concussus tends to arrive at the blackest of times, when humanity seems the most despicable.
Diabolus, the devil's advocate. Sometimes we are tempted to embrace the evil world that we despise. Diabolus is there to encourage us in this folly. Fortunately a rare visitor here.
– 23 July 2016 –
Patulcius:
In clinching the Republican nomination and largely uniting the party behind his agenda, Donald Trump has managed to shift the definition of conservative for a new era. Some of this is for the better, some for the worse. Trump has been aptly described as a sort of 1980’s Democrat, and his RNC speech supports that case indisputably.
It’s not all bad. Assuming Trump wins and he delivers on his promises, he will have created a ‘conservative’ party that abandons free trade in favor of some form of protectionism—a good sign for national sovereignty. Republicans will finally put an end to the scourge that is illegal immigration, though they might possibly embrace plenty of non-white legal immigration through a “big, beautiful door”. Concerning foreign policy, Trump’s remarks in the past suggest that his government will work with Putin and reconsider our role in NATO (although Trump’s RNC speech leaves us wondering if Neocons have jumped into his head). Gone are any pretenses to a smaller role for the federal government since we will need a huge bureaucracy to fulfill his promises to replace Obamacare, restore law and order around the country, and improve the lives of veterans and inner city children. But nowadays we unfortunately need a large centralized state in order to hold the non-cohesive country together.
Apart from the potentially good, however, Trump’s RNC speech suggests two major shifts to the left for his new version of the Republican party. In trying to appeal to minorities and homosexuals, Trump has adopted the Democratic formula.
Pandering to Underprivileged Minorities
A well-meaning young woman visits the slums to help black girls with their math. The childhood of these blacks must be a parade of white do-gooders, one after another, who show up for a day and then disappear forever. What we need are even greater efforts to uplift this perennially-disadvantaged people. “Make Inner-City Black Kids Great Again!”
Trump’s Republican Party is also trying to usurp the Democrat stronghold of racial identity politics. In his acceptance speech, Trump repeatedly referred to the plights of hard-working Latinos and those perennially abandoned and helpless inner-city children:
This Administration has failed America’s inner cities. Remember, it has failed America’s inner cities. It’s failed them on education. It’s failed them on jobs. It’s failed them on crime. It’s failed them in every way and on every single level.
When I am President, I will work to ensure that all of our kids are treated equally, and protected equally. Every action I take, I will ask myself: does this make life better for young Americans in Baltimore, in Chicago, in Detroit, in Ferguson who have really in every way folks, the same right to live out their dreams as any other child America?
Conservatives love to play a color-blind game where they praise the glorious vision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as Pence did in his RNC speech. Many of these conservatives earnestly and whole-heartedly think they believe that race doesn’t matter, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Most of them don’t run into blacks too often. When they do see a black stranger, they smile and say “hello” to prove they’re not racist, but they quickly look away. Some of them have one or two black friends with whom they work and sometimes socialize, but somehow they get nervous if they find blacks rising to more than about twenty percent of a social setting, or if they find themselves near blacks who don’t fit the civilized, suburban archetype.
This is a natural fear, a survival instinct, but the conservatives shamefully suppress and deny its existence within themselves.
While there is no need for the Republican Party to to market itself exclusively to whites, the simple fact that 90% of their support comes from white people should demonstrate the folly in seeking minority votes. Trump will win or lose on white turnout.
Among the huge numbers of RNC attendees, probably about 90 to 95% of them were white, and many of the visible minorities worked for the news media or were hand-picked delegates. Yet the television footage repeatedly featured close-ups of the few non-white Trump supporters, sometimes the same ones again and again, as if to say: “See, we have minorities, too!”
While it would be suicidal for the Republican Party to actively exclude the support of minorities, the fact that despite all efforts to reach them, non-whites still only make up about 10 percent of Republican supporters should demonstrate the folly in actively seeking their votes. The secret to Trump’s appeal has been his galvanization of the white vote, and he will win or lose on white turnout.
I had hoped that the rise of Trump represented the coalescence of a “white party” in America, similar to the way that party politics operates in the South, and this white fusion still might be the case. After all, Trump did not create his movement; he has merely capitalized on the growing frustrations of white Americans in the face of our rapidly approaching minority status. And I suppose it’s also possible that in appealing to minority victimhood, Trump is actually trying to make himself palatable to white liberals in order to foster this union of white conservatives with white liberals.
Let’s just hope that he doesn’t take it too far. If Trump takes this pandering to the brown people seriously, it’s very possible that his presidency will offer more of the same egalitarian handouts and special programs that we’ve seen since Kennedy and LBJ.
Likewise if Trump genuinely believes in his “big, beautiful door” analogy, and if Republicans hang on to their foolish ideas of American exceptionalism and the proposition nation, saying that anyone can become a good American if he just works hard and loves the flag, then at best we’ve only delayed our day of reckoning for a few short years, leaving us with fewer men alive who appreciate the values of the olden days.
Pandering to Sexual Deviants
A boy scout troop joins a Seattle gay parade. One wonders if they joined voluntarily or did their scout master and whacko parents force them? Since the homos are now the victims of Muslim terror in Orlando, Trump has repeatedly pandered to the “LGBTQ Community”. “Make America Queer Again!”
Worse yet, Trump’s new Republican Party now clearly abandons traditional sexual morality in favor of full “LGBTQ” acceptance. Very soon, if not already, the political opposition to sexual deviancy will be considered as irrelevant and quaint as the opposition to gambling and pornography. From Trump’s RNC speech:
‘Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted our LGBTQ community. No good. We are going to stop it. As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology, believe me.
And I have to say as a Republican it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.’
In the early days of Trump’s candidacy, he tried to avoid taking a stand on the rise of sexual deviancy in our culture, usually giving vague indications that he preferred traditional marriage or that he would bring people together. Then, he strangely took the side of the transsexuals in the North Carolina bathroom protection uproar:
‘There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate,” Trump said. “There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic — I mean, the economic punishment that they’re taking.’
After the gay Islamic terrorist shooting of Latino homosexuals in Orlando, Trump moved full-bore in the direction of homosexual acceptance, pandering to pro-homosexual liberal voters.
The homosexual Milo Yiannopoulos, a supposed leader of the Alt-Right movement and tiresome showcase of Breitbart News, encourages homosexuals, catamites, and other deviants like himself to support Trump. And Trump apparently supports them back.
That terrorist attack encouraged a similar protective and sympathetic response in many supposed conservatives, such as talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck—people who have grown rich expressing opinions that carefully fit within the range of acceptability for average Republican voters.
Because our terrorist enemies seem to oppose homosexuals, average Americans who previously opposed them now collectively consider homosexuals to be red-white-and-blue all-Americans. Like baseball and apple pie.
Every night at the Republican convention, Republican speakers made some pandering reference to homosexuals. Clearly no influential Republican is even making a pretense anymore about overturning homosexual marriage.
Until recent times, historians considered the widespread acceptance of homosexuality to be a clear sign that a society had fallen into irreversible decadence, depravity, and decline. Just as crime, disease, sexual slavery and exploitation cannot help but accompany prostitution, the prevalence of homosexuality also brings widespread violence, pedophilia, drug abuse, disease, mental illness, and corruption of law. When enough people are corrupted by it, the society will not recover.
By accepting and embracing defeat on this issue, Republicans have demonstrated to those few of us who still believe in our founding morals and Biblical Faith that we have no representation in the government, that the country is no longer ours. We are just a people who happen to live here.
Put Not Our Faith in a Trump Presidency
So even though I will almost certainly vote for Trump in November (instead of a third party like I usually do), and I do think he will win, the best that we can hope for in a Trump presidency is a slow-down of our demographic decline. Our moral decline will continue unabated.
Let us “put not our trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.”
Probably there was never any hope that the common Christian culture would be restored in America. Bible-believing Christians who actually live out their faith have fallen to insignificant levels. Whether Trump wins or not, we must unite and hold on to our faith and ride the beast of the West wherever it should happen to fall.
Walt Garlington at Confiterati compares the situation with that of King Jeroboam II of Israel in the Old Testament:
Sadly, one sees the further drift of the States from faith in the Most Holy Trinity to faith in themselves, in the idea of America as the perfecter of humanity.
But, these things notwithstanding, let us suppose that Mr Trump did ‘make America great again’ as he defines that phrase. What would it profit them in the long run? There are a couple of ensamples from the Holy Scriptures that they ought to pay special heed to.
First is the northern kingdom of Israel under King Jeroboam II. We read in II Kings 14 (http://christiananswers.net/bible/2ki14.html),
23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years.
24 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
25 He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher.
26 For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel.
27 And the LORD said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.
28 Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and his might, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?
29 And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel; and Zachariah his son reigned in his stead.
Jeroboam II ‘made Israel great again’, increasing her territory and worldly glory. Yet less than 30 years later, the northern tribes of Israel were led into captivity by Assyria because they forsook the worship of the true God.
What will the United States look like in 30 years?
Obama, the leader of all that is wrong with today’s United States, 
FINES ET INITIA 