The Cambridge Modern History Collection

That's an interesting way to put it, Artler. In the time of Jesus, apparently they thought his Second Coming was just a few years or months ahead. And if one actually talked and walked with a man who was raised from the dead, such people can be understandably forgiven.

I would say the standard Christian view now is that the Second Coming is a ways off. If Auschwitz wasn't time for it, then just when the hell will it be? It's a glorious future….but always in the distant future.

I would say the Progressive/Leftist/Communist idea, on the other hand, is that the glorious future can be had now. Yes, as a matter of fact (and of record), they are always chasing that "glorious future" as their naive (or just plain evil) dreams tend to be of the "one step forward, two steps back" type.

That the West is now a consumerist culture I take as self-evident. Christian or Jew, black or white, atheist or agnostic, the fact that we are all getting so fat tells you where our priorities are.

Yes, China could well kick our ass down the road. Islam will most likely conquer Europe in a game of sheer demographics. And technology and AI have the ability to transform us in ways that we can't imagine, and which could happen quickly. The last 125 years has brought so much change that we can't possibly look reliably into the future, no more than the Cult of Climate Change fanatics can predict the weather even 10 years hence. But what we can say with certainty is that what has been is now passing away.

Social utopias are always a busted scheme because man is the most violent, deceitful, and corrupt animal on Earth. His intelligence tends to magnify those traits. Only a deep moral restraint from a non-cult-of-death religion stands a chance of tempering our flaws. But religion (outside of Islam) is dying. And what is left is mostly transforming from Bible-based into Progressive (atheist/Marxist) ones.

And that belief system, as Dennis Prager notes, is the fastest-growing ideology on the planet. We can stick needles in it and lampoon its excesses. But it is now the default view. It holds the high ground on the moral landscape. And in concert with the material wealth of Consumerism, it has changed the basic religious stance of "self-denial" to various forms of mostly foolish "self-fulfillment." Women can become men, you know. And vice versa...emphasis on the "vice."

Say what you will, we have already lost the moral space in our world and I doubt that we'll get it back. Conservatism, for all intents and purposes, is dead. And the entire idea of self-government (once an astonishingly progressive, if you will, idea) is morphing into a Provider/client relationship (Morlock/Eloi) between the state and the consumer. The state exists to control and manipulate the consumer who has become thoroughly convinced that he needs the state more than he needs even God Almighty. As long as his belly is full and he is free to add to his tattoos, he is as content as a cow with a feedbag attached. Huxley's "Brave New World" is so astonishingly accurate in some ways.

Plus, I will add (I must add), no civilization can grow and prosper under the control of women. Yes, indeed, no civilization can go to war and destroy itself as fast as when men are running things. But civilization is a thoroughly male invention. Men are, and have always been, the great artists, inventors, builders, and poets. Women are of a completely different mindset.

Yes, women have accomplished some of these things as well. But even as they do so, they prove the rule, for feminism is ultimately about women escaping their biology. And because men are their main competitors, feminism has tried to make of them into surrogate men (as well as transforming men into emasculated eunuchs). And, indeed, that women have been as successful as they have been may show that the difference between the sexes (at least in edge cases) is not so great.

But we live in the by-and-large, and have to. Let's be honest. In Europe the women there are "nurturing" their own countries into extinction as they import millions of "refugees" who are fast replacing (and sponging upon) their own populations. And their appetite for entitlements (necessary, in large part, as a replacement for men) is insatiable. A capitalist, innovation-based society will never spring forth from one controlled by women.

I am somewhat past the 50% point in the series. The last few chapters have dealt with the 16th century and the great upheavals which took place for political and religious reasons.

The present chapter deals in some detail with Phillip II, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of Naples and Sicily and ruler of several other areas as well as of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires.

Phillip has been touched on in previous chapters, but this one goes into some detail about the man. Even before starting this chapter, I had come to the conclusion that Phillip was one of the biggest criminals in history. A religious fanatic and somewhat ponderous thinker, he reminds me of no one so much as Stalin, another religious fanatic.

Phillip would lie, cheat, steal, kill and destroy all in the name of restoring Europe to the Catholic Church. Of course, he would do much the same for dynastic reasons, but his greatest crimes seem to have sprung from his manic devotion to the Catholic Faith. It was noted that he never showed disappointment when hearing of some failure, nor joy when hearing of some success. 

This brings me to another thing which both Phillip and Stalin would appear to have in common. Phillip's great-grandfather Ferdinand started the Spanish Inquisition, but it came into its worst during the reign of Phillip. Like Stalin's show trials. the Inquisition devoured its own. True enough it started out going after Jews and Muslims who had converted to Christianity, but it ended up condemning even those who were staunch believers, including bishops and even confessors to the King. Phillip did little to nothing to save those he knew were innocent as he required a unified state in which everyone was in line with the radical Church. This gave Spain, which was made up of many differing regions and cultures, a singleness of purpose and instilled the well know Spanish arrogance that flowed from their believe in their superior beliefs.

I would bet that Stalin studied the Spanish Inquisition and made use of similar techniques. The Inquisition had its Catholic prelates sacrificed to power. Stalin had his Kamenevs and Zinovievs dying for a similar reason.

Remind me not to hire Mr. Kung for the write-up of King Phillip in "This is Your Life."

King Phillip sounds like a right piece of work. Yikes.

It's probably wrong to ball up one's fist in protracted rage and blame too much on Phillip and the Spanish. But you wonder if the paper-trail for today's flood of illegal aliens into the United States doesn't have some foundation in the horribleness of Catholicism in South America as perpetrated mostly by Spain.

I would say thank God it was industrious England, not Spain, that (mostly) founded North America or we would be just a shit-hole socialist-dependent country looking to jump some fences for "free stuff" at our nearest neighbor.

Of course, we were already heading in the direction to become a shit-hole socialist-dependent country via our own means.