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Remember the Fallen
President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth were at Arlington National Cemetery today honoring the Fallen. As they should.
Politics is a dirty business, and all too often it sacrifices young men by the thousands in its wars. For nothing.
Was it worth it: the Civil War, World War I & II, the Cold War? As Zhou Enlai said about the French Revolution: “it is too soon to tell.” All we know is that young men gave their lives in the very peak of youth. It is chilling to think that the greatest thing a young man can do is sacrifice his life for his tribe, while the greatest thing a young woman can do is bring forth the miracle of new life.
And let us not forget that Memorial Day started out as Decoration Day, when the women of the South, defeated in the Civil War, determined in 1865 to decorate the graves of their sons that died in the war. Blacks organized to honor union troops that died in a Confederate prison camp, and a day of remembrance was officially established in 1868.
For me therefore, the center of Memorial Day is mothers mourning the sons that could never return home to father a new generation of beautiful bouncing babies.
For me, personally, I never cease to be grateful for the extraordinary good fortune experienced by my family in the 20th Century of Abattoirs. My father escaped as a teenager from Bolshevik Russia in 1918; my mother moved from Japan to India in 1940 where she met and married my father. My uncles both served in World War II but survived to father my cousins. In India during Independence, the Hindus and Muslims killed each other rather than the oppressor Brits, I have been spared military service. But I have four grandsons of military age.
Secretary Hegseth just announced that the armed forces had achieved their recruitment goals with four months to go. Truth is that young men volunteer to fight for their country: it’s in the jeans. It is our job to make sure that, whatever sacrifice is asked of them, they fight and/or die for a good reason.
Very often there is no good reason. Politicians like to fight wars: it’s in the jeans. And that goes for the leaders of sub-national guerrilla armies, much beloved of our lefty activist friends.
Activists like to fight too: it’s in the jeans. They too send out their warriors to die for the cause: think Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
I confess that I also remember the fallen of the enemy. If you look at Wikipedia’s World War II Casualties page you see that the Soviet Union lost about 20 million, military and civilian; Germany lost 7 million; Japan at least 2.5 million. The US lost 0.4 million; the Brits lost almost 0.5 million.
Then there is Poland: 6 million deaths.
Let us all hope and pray that we humans learned a lesson in the Century of World War, even as we honor the fallen that gave their lives that we should live.
| Mon, 25 May 2026 21:09:50 GMT |
Marx vs. Dante, Nietzsche, Jung, Campbell
I tell you, the world out there is full of useful knowledge. Like this piece about a book by Robert Orlando about Marx, arguing that Marx’s vision was a descent into Hell and no way back.
Marx and his long-time confidant Engels filled their pages with hell and its torments, with the march of history as purgation, but nowhere did they speak of paradise,” writes Orlando. “There was no ascent, no final vision of harmony — only struggle without end, revolution without transcendence.
Orlando compares this with Dante’s Divine Comedy, which has three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Marx never gets out of the Hell of Inferno.
Of course, Marxism as a political faith does have a happy ending. First the Hell of capitalism, then the purgatory of revolution, and finally the paradise of socialism. So there is that, alongside the 100 million deaths of the Black Book of Communism, which seems to confirm Marx’s world view that there was no way out of Marx’s Hell.
The idea of Marx seeing no way out of Hell made me think. Maybe Marxism is not the way to go. It’s not a if there aren’t modern alternatives if you assume, like Marx, that God is Dead.
Instead there is Nietzsche, interpreted from Grok:
Descent into Hell: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
Purgatory: Decadence and Nihilism.
Ascent:
Revaluation of All Values.
Úbermensch
Eternal Recurrence (Groundhog Day)
Will to Power: “expansion, growth, self-overcoming, and creative power.”
Then there is Jung, His journey is into the underworld of the unconscious, connecting with Greek mythology. Grok:
Confronting the Shadow: “dark twin.”
Facing Archetypes: “Wise Old Man, Anima/Animus, or the Terrible Mother.”
Integration and Rebirth: back out of the underworld
Or Joseph Campbell and his Hero’s Journey. Reduced to three stages, Grok:
Departure (Leaving the Ordinary World)
Initiation (The Adventure and Transformation)
Return (Coming Back with the Elixir)
Or you can represent The Hero’s Journey thus:
Leaving safety and comfort
Facing your deepest fears
Dying to your old self
Being reborn wiser and stronger
Sharing what you’ve learned
Grok notes that this process is echoed in Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Matrix. Experts agree that it is not comprehended in Wokism.
However, here’s a theology instructor saying that the Kidz are converting back from secular ideology to traditional religion.
Whereas they used to be prone to dismissing religion as antiquated and oppressive, the majority of them now deem religion to be interesting or “based.” My sense of a religious vibe shift has been confirmed in recent reporting and in the record increase of zoomers converting or reverting over the past year or so. For many of the religious zoomers I meet, faith is a beacon of hope in an otherwise chaotic world.
But all is not well:
Few of my students are capable of formulating an opinion on their own without regurgitating something they heard on a TikTok reel.
Really, how many of us have anything in our brains except what we heard in church, in school, in the university, in legacy media, or in social media?
But at least the Kidz are trying.
Ed, a cradle Catholic and current college junior, tells me that many of his peers are prone to conflating religion with “some mode of anti-establishment political ideology, which they view as necessary in order to save the West.” A classmate who identifies as a monarchist told him that “culture, tradition, and the things that give humans meaning are dying under the current paradigm,” to which he believes Catholic integralism functions as an antidote. He believes many of his very online, middle-class peers are drawn to such ideas due to their “feeling of social isolation and sense of directionlessness.”
The writer, Stephen G. Adubato, seems to be sneering at the kids. But I say that at least they are trying; they want some sort of foundation and meaning to their lives.
I call it a start. And to heck with Chuckie von Marx.
| Fri, 22 May 2026 22:26:13 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Politics for men: I will fight for you! Politics for women: I will protect you!
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. — attr. to Einstein
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Politics is downstream of culture is downstream of religion is downstream of...
