The Great Religious Talk Show

“What do I wish for?” repeated the student. “Perfect happiness. Fortune herself is my desire.”

“Explain what you mean by Fortune,” pursued the spirit.

“Fortune,” began the other, “is a power of nature, and—”

“Be quick!” cried the ghost. “Do you wish for money?”

“No, no,” answered the wise man; “the greatest happiness is to have no heart. I wish that you would take mine from me.”

“Shall I take your heart?” asked the spirit again.

“Yes, take it, and hide it so well that it will never be found.”

“Far, far away,” said the spirit, “in the middle of a wild forest, there is a sea with an island on which an old castle is standing. I shall bury your heart fifty feet under the deepest cellar in this castle. Are you contented?”

“Yes, and I shall rejoice to be rid of it.”

Now the stream vanished, and the pot boiled quietly as before. The wise man felt a cold touch at the left side of his chest, and knew that he had lost his heart. Since that day he lived much more peacefully, and was able to see the greatest want and distress without feeling the least trouble. He thought himself happier than all other beings, and was able to pursue his studies undisturbed. 

–Danish Fairy and Folk Tales

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‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, ‘have you a heart?’

‘The circulation, sir,’ returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, ‘couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.’

‘Is it accessible,’ cried Mr. Gradgrind, ‘to any compassionate influences?’

‘It is accessible to Reason, sir,’ returned the excellent young man. ‘And to nothing else.’

–Hard Times

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The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer’s rest.

–Hard Times

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The liberals’ “elective affections” are with the sacred negroes and all those who hate the white race. To what extent have they, the liberals, suborned the affections of the white grazers in favor of their cruelty? It appears they have been very successful in their attempt to suborn the pity of whites and turn them against their own people. If what appears to be true is true, that whites actually believe their ancestors were evil and beyond redemption and that they must do penance for their ancestors’ evil by ceding their civilization and their very lives to the sacred negroes, then it is quite useless to have elections this fall.

The Republicans are campaigning for a return to the first circle of hell, where the virtuous pagans sit around a heathen campfire and talk about the virtuous life. The demon-crats are campaigning for the final descent into the pit of hell. Even if the demon-crats lose the presidential election because the white grazers are not prepared to go into the deepest pit of hell, the devil still has won, because he has won the cultural war: the European people have rejected Christian Europe because it was ‘racist,’ and they have embraced post-Christian Europe because it is not racist. The political debate is not about whether we shall be Christian or heathen — that has been decided already: we shall be heathen — what is up for debate is the fate of the white grazers. Trump claims there is a place for the white grazers in the first circle of hell, while the demon-crats claim there is no place for white grazers in their kingdom which has ‘progressed’ beyond the first circle of hell. They are for the deepest regions of hell where they intend to dwell with the devil in perpetuity.

Dante errs when he places virtuous pagans in hell who have never been exposed to the light of Christ’s love. But what about those who have been exposed to the Word made flesh, the Christian theologians and philosophers who worship reason untainted by a heart of flesh – haven’t they chosen the first circle of hell? Yes, they have. They don’t hate the Word made flesh as their liberal brethren do – they are beyond love and hatred – but they always side with the liberal hellhounds because they, like the mad-dog liberals, do not believe that abstract reason unilluminated by the human heart is pure evil. They think, against the blood wisdom of our people, that their exalted Grand Inquisitorial reason shall take them and their followers to heaven on earth. That cannot be. Such ‘exalted’ reasoning brings a man, and a civilization, to the deepest pit of hell. What seems to be a polite, cozy talk show discussion about religion starts with a supper with the devil, then precedes to a long vacation in the devil’s summer house, and finally ends with a permanent residence in hell. Why must that be the case? Do I not place too much emphasis on hearts of flesh, on what I call Christian Europe? That is only true if the Christian faith is something other than what St. Paul claimed it was. He enjoined us to search the scriptures with our hearts so that we could become “epistles of the living God.” Doesn’t that injunction require that we have a heart?

If we can’t see the face of Jesus Christ in the living epistles of the people who took His word into their hearts, where can we see the face of Jesus Christ? “You don’t need to see His face,” the Thomist and all the rational, first-circle men of reason tell us, “All you need is our philosophy.” But whose philosophy shall I choose? Why should I choose one rational scheme over another? Is truth revelatory or is it rational? I maintain, because I have seen the face of Jesus Christ in European hearts of flesh and not in abstract reason, that truth is revelatory, not rational.

Negro worship has replaced Christ-centered Christianity because organized Christian Jewry rejected St. Paul’s revelatory vision of Jesus Christ in favor of reason unaided, and as the churchmen asserted, unpolluted by humanity. Dmitry Karamazov is the exemplar of the heart of flesh, which the theologians hate. He despises ‘two plus two equals four’ theology, and he allows his passion for Grushenka to bring him to the brink of murder and despair. But his heart of flesh overcomes his evil passions, and he comes to the foot of the Cross. In contrast, the great intellect, the great rationalist, Ivan Karamazov, is left naked to the merciless god of the rationalists, the archangel Satan. It is significant that when Hollywood made a movie of The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan became the hero. Twentieth century modernists were incapable of believing that a rationalist could be a villain. But not only can a rationalist be a villain, a pure rationalist is always a villain; he is the boon companion of the greatest rationalist of them all. Satan lurks behind the arras of the great religious talk show, a diabolical Polonius making sure that there are no hearts of flesh present at the talk show.

It’s a curious thing — the mad-dog, secular liberals are one with the conservative Christians in their rejection of St. Paul’s vision of charity. St. Paul saw Christ in his heart and told us we could know Him through that vital organ of sight. The liberals and the churchmen damn that organ of sight and bid us turn to their visions of a rational utopian world ordered and run by illuminated minds free from the illicit passions of the human heart. It is very easy to find illicit passions in the hearts of the antique Europeans because they were mortal men and women. But is that all we can see in their hearts? Is Rembrandt the sum of whatever sins he may have committed, or is he to be judged by the vision within his heart? I cannot be silent on this issue of the passionate hearts of my people. They had a vision of the heart that completely transcends the cruel utopian theologies of our clergymen and the hellish utopias of the liberals. We must reject both evils and stand, even if we stand alone, with the ancient hearts of our people.

In the culture that the theologians damn as impure and the secular liberals damn as racist is the blood faith of a people who took Christ into their hearts. If the theologians and their followers would look at those people through and not with the eye they would see with blinding sight and become epistles of the living God instead of the Amen chorus of Liberaldom.

The Christ story is all in all, and it was always present as a vital, living entity in our people until our people divorced Christ and married the sacred negro. Let me reference a work such as Dickens’ Hard Times. The book is certainly the greatest critique of the inhumanity of unbridled capitalism ever written, but it is so much more. When the hero of the book, one Stephen Blackpool, a suffering servant who has been rejected by the socialists and the capitalists, disappears under suspicion for the robbery of the bank, only one faithful heart remains in Coketown who still believes that Stephen is innocent and that he will return. And the one faithful heart, Rachel, wins another woman over to her side, and together they wait and pray for Stephen’s return. Dickens did not make a rational decision to write a Christian allegory, he wrote from the heart, and the Christ story was in his heart. That is the beauty of our people when they were a people.

All my life I have heard the theologians tell me to abandon the whited sepulchre of Christian Europe for their Christian rationalism. But is not reason unilluminated by a heart of flesh the real whited sepulchre? The people with the ancient hearts saw a great light, they lived and died in the shadow of the cross. The modern theologians see no light, they bid us sit in church and think about ‘white privilege’ while we contemplate the magnificence of the noble black savage. That is not my world, I cannot live with the inhuman vision of the anti-pietas, anti-European, Christless Christians.

However much I might rail against the first-circle-of-hell talk show conservatives, both lay and clerical, they now constitute the ranks of the opposition to the mad-dog liberals. Isn’t it better to make peace with them and reside in the first circle of hell rather than go into the deepest region of hell with the mad-dog liberals? No, it is not better. It is not better for two reasons. The first reason is that hell is still hell and I do not want to live in hell. The second reason is that the liberals will not let you remain in the first circle of hell, they will not let you go halfway off the cliff with the swine, you must go all the way. Unamuno was right: it is all or nothing. Either we stand with the men whom Moley (from The Wind and the Willows) called the “Death or Glory Toads,” the antique Europeans, or we can become the shadows of the liberals, following them ever so cautiously, wearing conservative outer garments covering up our liberal hearts, into the center of hell.

The great battle will not begin until we walk away from the religious talk show where the ‘racism’ of the ‘evil,’ antique Europeans with hearts of flesh is taken as a given. If we proceed against the Tower of Babel rationalists, refusing to accept their given, that white pietas is racism, we will find a heart and a will to resist what now seems irresistible, the liberals’ juggernaut. But of course in order for that to happen the whites who have made a whited sepulchre of reason divorced from the human heart must reclaim their hearts, like the philosopher in the Danish fairy tale, “The Man Without a Heart”:

The old man turned furiously upon him, and reached for his staff, but at the same moment he felt a stinging pain in his left side, threw up his hands, staggered to his feet, and cried: “Mercy, mercy! I have served the Evil One! Some one gave me back my heart. Oh, give me my youth again, that I may live like other men!”

In the next second the two figures outside the windows became alive again, and the two brothers clasped each other in their arms, while the sisters held each other by the hand. But a great change had taken place in the room. There now stood by the philosopher’s chair a little boy, gazing curiously at the many singular objects about him. This man had found his heart again, and was to begin life afresh.

For none of God’s creatures can live without a heart.

“Like unto a child”: that is the miracle of Christian Europe. +