“I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.”
Thomas Paine (American Revolutionary War)
“That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done again, And there is nothing new under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes 1:9
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”
Your mum
It’s trite to point out that everything repeats, that history is objectively cyclical, not only is it an obvious fact, visible throughout all recorded human history (hence, no doubt, the cultures disdain to teach children history) it’s also a biblical fact (hence, no doubt, the cultures desire to… ah, you get it).
One of the dangers of this lack of awareness is it lulls Christians into a false sense of security. People tend towards normalcy bias, they assume because the last several years of their life were one way, the next several will be that way also. Perhaps, that’s the silver lining in the Flupocalypse, people suddenly have been awoken to the concept of fundamental change in their lives. The truth is though, I think it’s really shown us just how easily led the peons are. It really isn’t going to take as much as most people think to rile the great mass of men up into hatred against Christianity again. Don’t believe me? Let’s flash through a few recent(ish) examples where just that happened, and that right quick…
For millennia French peasants had gone about their business much as usual, keeping to their national pastimes of fine cuisine, great wine, and talking with a funny accent (if you catch one, force him to say beef, they say boeuf or something, it’s hilarious). I mean, sure, there was the odd bit of medieval internecine warfare, and brief periods where the English completely understandably, and rightfully, invaded their country to steal all their stuff for over a hundred years, but mostly it was pretty chill in France for peasants. That was until the atheists took over.
Many people remain completely unaware of the true nature of the French revolution, fooled by the propaganda slogans, as people so often are fooled by propaganda slogans. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, sounds grand, right? Who could be against that. After all, the revolution had been from below (if you ignore the FreREDACTED), the poor did indeed have legitimate grievances with the king, even though “let them eat cake” is a lie.
The story of downtrodden masses rising up for freedom, like most secular truths, is a half truth. Rise up the new regime did though; rise up with the express intent to “tear down throne and altar”. They killed their king, ran the streets red with the blood of the aristocracy, and set to work building their new and equitable Babel utopia. One of the first things on the to do list was destroying churches, converting many of them to “temples of reason”, where they, on at least one recorded occasion, installed a topless hooker on top of the altar and praised her as the secular “goddess of reason”.
From there, things quickly, spiralled… In fact I’ll use a couple of quotes from Christopher Hibberts book to illustrate the point here, but full disclosure, I haven’t read his book, and only know of it (and the quotes) from this very good article on the subject over at The American Conservative.
Jacobin, Brichet, advised that the Law of Suspects should be interpreted so that all the well-to-do came within its scope: questions should be asked in every village about the means of the principal farmer; if he were rich he should be guillotined without further ado — he was “bound to be a food-hoarder.” But it was not only the rich, or even mainly the rich, who suffered. The poor were executed with the well-to-do, women with men, the young with the old, some accused of “starving the people”, others of “depraving public morals’, one witness for “not giving his testimony properly’.
Christopher Hibbert’s history, The French Revolution
… A woman was charged with the heinous crime of having wept at the execution of her husband. She was consequently condemned to sit several hours under the suspended blade which shed upon her, drop by drop, the blood of the deceased whose corpse was above her on the scaffold before she was released by death from her agony.
“The time was come which was foretold,” as Madame Roland had said, “when the people would ask for bread and be given corpses.”
Christopher Hibbert’s history, The French Revolution
Now the Vendée region of France (think flyover state America as a handy analogue) didn’t take to kindly to this mad, big-city, topless hooker goddess, guillotining people by the thousands (and wearing the severed heads as hats) stuff. And yes, the whole drowning thousands of (mostly) priests and nuns, by stripping them naked, tying them together, and throwing them in rivers, in the ceremony of “Republican Marriage” probably mildly offended their Christian sensitivities too. Sidebar; isn’t atheist utopian equality swell?
From Feurs, the representative himself reported, “The butchery has been good.” … At Nantes, three thousand captives perished in an epidemic in the grossly overcrowded prisons and a further two thousand were towed out in barges to the middle of the Loire and drowned, some of them stripped naked and bound together as couples. The river became so choked with these barges that ships weighing anchor brought them up filled with the dead. Birds of prey hovered over the waters, gorging themselves with human flesh, and the fish became so contaminated that orders had to be given forbidding them to be caught. On occasion, Carrier appeared to be insane as, raving endlessly about the need to “kill and kill” and to “butcher children without hesitation,” he slashed at the air with his sword.
Christopher Hibbert’s history, The French Revolution
Anyway, the flyover/Vendée folks finally had enough of this crap and they rose up in armed revolution. How’d it work out for them? Not well, some estimates believe 170,000 died. Some are as high as 300,000. Liberty, equality, fraternity, indeed. Funny how they skip over the genocided Christians bit in school, right?
“There is no more Vendée, Republican citizens. It died beneath our free sword, with its women and its children. I have just buried it in the swamps and the woods of Savenay. Following the orders that you gave to me, I crushed the children beneath the horses’ hooves, massacred the women who, those at least, will bear no more brigands. I do not have a single prisoner to reproach myself with. I have exterminated them all.”
French General Francois Joseph Westermann report to the Committee of Public Safety
I began this article by saying history is cyclical though, so let’s give a couple of other quick examples of mass murder by the egalitarian, atheist, utopia crowd shall we?
In the glorious 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a new workers paradise was esta—- Blah, blah, blah, you know the story by now. Well look, that largely atheist revolution (and yes, I do know, don’t say it) turned on Christians real damn quick. I was gonna fish out my copy of Gulag Archipelago to demonstrate this but it’s in a box somewhere. I vaguely remembered a couple of good example quotes though, and whilst searching for one online, I came across this CONTEMPORARY discussion on the vile den of iniquity that is Reddit, and I took the following screenshot. I didn’t edit this! This sums up the atheistic utopian mindset today better than any century old quote ever could.
These are folks you live amongst today, and pretty soon this will be the accepted mainstream media opinion. You can laugh at that statement now. One day you won’t.
It sure is strange though, isn’t it, how you never heard about this stuff in school? Right? Also, why didn’t they teach you about what happened to the clergy in Russia during this period? The mass murder. That came up didn’t it? No? Weird.
All that utopia building just intensified under Stalin; if you don’t know about the Holodomor and the intentional starvation of between 3 and 12 million Ukrainians you might want to wonder why… In fact one of the most affecting scenes I have ever read came from a history book covering this period, Bloodlands by Timothy Synder. In this age that’s Fahrenheit 451ing Dr Seuss, rest assured you will not be able to buy Bloodlands in a few years, so if you want to read it get a copy now. The following section is about a group of women trying to protect children from cannibals by hiding them in an orphanage during the period.
“One day the children suddenly fell silent, we turned around to see what was happening, and they were eating the smallest child, little Petrus. They were tearing strips from him and eating them. And Petrus was doing the same, he was tearing strips from himself and eating them, he ate as much as he could. The other children put their lips to his wounds and drank his blood. We took the child away from their hungry mouths and we cried.”
Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder
It’s been a while since it came out, and surprisingly, I found an honest Slate article about the book, quelle surprise. The article also had the following quote from that book.
In the face of starvation, some families divided, parents turning against children, and children against one another. As the state police, the OGPU, found itself obliged to record, in Soviet Ukraine “Families kill their weakest members, usually children, and use the meat for eating.” Countless parents killed and ate their children and then died of starvation later anyway. One mother cooked her son for herself and her daughter. One 6-year-old girl, saved by other relatives last saw her father when he was sharpening a knife to slaughter her. Other combinations were, of course, possible. One family killed their daughter-in-law, and fed her head to the pigs, and roasted the rest of her body.”
Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder
Please understand. None of this was an accident. This was premeditated. And your school teachers never told you about it, did they? I doubt they even knew. I wonder why that is?
Estimates vary on exactly how many Christians were executed under the Soviet regime, the low end of the estimate you often come across is 12 million, but let’s say it was even half of that, you would have thought you would hear about a number that big in school, no?
Seeing as you’ve been good enough to stick around this long, I’ll finish up with one last semi-recent, socialistic atheists mass-murdering Christians story. Yay.
The Cristero War or, La Cristiada.
Now, anyone who has even a vague understanding of 1920s Mexican history is going to correctly point out that the Cristero War, like most civil wars is not a simple one side versus the other affair; there were many players jockeying for position and power, just like the mess in Syria today, or the Spanish Civil war in the 30s. However, just like those two more recent conflicts, whilst it’s a disservice to oversimplify the story down to two just two broad sides, it is possible to simplify the story down to two broad sides, and at its most simple level the Cristero War was about Catholics who wanted to worship versus their secular atheist socialist government who didn’t want to let them do that.
Rather than give you a history or economics lesson, let’s personalise this with two quick stories, and you tell me why you think these people died, and what they died for.
The above is Father Miguel Po in cruciform position about to be executed by firing squad. His final words, defiantly shouted at his executioners were “Viva Cristo Rey” – “Long live Christ the King”.
The little guy in the photo is José Sánchez. He wanted to join the Cristero War with his brothers when he was twelve (as in Power Ranger owning age). Everyone tried to dissuade him but he said the following, and this is a direct quote from the Great Oracle That Tells No Lies (Wikipedia) – “the boy insisted that he wanted the chance to give his life for Jesus Christ and so come to Heaven easily.”
Do you see that? That’s bold because it’s a hyperlink, because it’s Wikipedia, because this twelve year old is twice the man I am.
“The Cristeros nicknamed him Tarcisius, after the early Christian saint who was martyred for protecting the Eucharist from desecration”
We all suck compared to these people.
The boy was captured by government forces during heavy fighting on January 25, 1928 when the Cristeros he was with were surrounded
José, seeing his predicament, quickly got off his horse and handed him to his general: “My general,” he said, “take my horse and save yourself. You are more needed by this cause than I am.”
You what mate?! Are you smoking crack?
If you’re ever feeling down about yourself please remember that there was a Mexican general who once took a horse from a fourteen year old boy so he could save himself. So, at least you have that going for yourself.
“Do not be worried about my death, as this would make me suffer (…) Be courageous and send me your blessing, together with the blessing of my father.”
Jose Luis Sanchez del Rio last letter to his mother from imprisonment (he was held by chance at the very church he was baptised in)
Ultimately the man responsible for ordering the boys execution was his godfather (yes, I know, I know, it sounds like I’m making this stuff up, but Latin’s gonna Latin), and the godfather, Rafael Picazo Sanchez, gave him multiple opportunities to get out of the killing by simply repenting of his faith.
The young Jose refused, was sentenced to die, and on the day of his martyrdom had the bottoms of his feet sliced open with knives, was made to walk barefoot to his place of execution, was repeatedly stabbed, told he would still be allowed to live if he simply recanted, but instead he kept screaming “Viva Cristo Ray” at them until they finished him off with a pistol shot to the head. He was fourteen, and I know it’s redundant at this point, but I wanna be him when I grow up.
Ultimately, more than 50,000 Cristeros died during the war.
Viva Cristo Rey!
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes”
misattributed to Mark Twain, but probably your mum