We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
Provocations began in 2003, accelerated in 2007, and then reached a peak in 2014 when American Victoria Nuland overthrew the elected government of Ukraine with US dollars, media, other assets...and the full backing of the US State Department and USAID.
Most of the media celebrated this. One outlier journalist wrote the following article a decade ago:
“Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington's planned seizure of Russia's historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
“But Nato's military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.” #JohnPilger https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger…
Today marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of fiction author Jane Austen, who examined ordinary, day-to-day, small-town family life within an Overton window-frame which once included Biblical civilization and ethics.
The world of Jane Austen's generation was rapidly pivoting the Overton window to a secular worldview, and so were the cultures of contemporary nations.
Lord David Cecil, a biographer of Miss Austen, noted this comparison between authors:
"If I were in doubt as to the wisdom of one of my actions, I should not consult Flaubert or Dostoyevsky. The opinion of Balzac or Dickens would carry little weight with me: were Stendhal to rebuke me, it would only convince me I had done right: even in the judgment of Tolstoy I should not put complete confidence. But I should be seriously upset, I should worry for weeks and weeks, if I incurred the disapproval of Jane Austen."
"We are smack in the middle of a Fourth Turning, and the turmoil of it all has affected the entire West. Over the last five years, virtually every major institution has disgraced itself. What used to be a high-trust society has been blown to smithereens, and nobody knows what to think anymore. And even when an individual person’s convictions haven’t changed, despite the societal turmoil, it is very difficult to know who to think those convictions with. This implosion of all the trusted institutions and relationships has of course included those of us on the political right.
"...So what am I saying? When being normal is weird, be normal. When being normal is normal, remember why you should be normal, and be prepared to defend it, which cannot be done apart from Christ. And when being normal is weird, don’t be extra weird. Be extra normal. Normal you say? By what standard? To the law and to the testimony. Exactly so."
Doug Wilson
