Friday, December 21, 2012

Oliver Stone: An Old Adversary

by Taki Theodoracopulos


Religion is in decline, tradition takes a backseat to fashion, and same-sex marriage is now looked upon as normal. What were previously taboos—swearing on television, watching films of flesh-eating zombies and blood-sucking vampires feasting amidst car crashes and explosions, and nonstop onscreen violence—are all now accepted, if not outright encouraged. How to balance the ethical with entertainment seems to have been lost forever among the creative types our media takes so seriously.

But it’s once again Christmas time. The Christian religion preaches we should live in peace with our fellow man, which makes Christianity one hell of a failed doctrine.

Nothing is less Christian than war. Christianity seeks brotherly love, social and cultural continuity, turning the other cheek, and charity. Show me a war leader with such traits and I’ll show you one big loser. World War I was the kind of mindless slaughter that brought on Bolshevism in Russia and Hitlerism in Germany. Two great evils came about because of a great evil perpetrated by posturing popinjays in London, Paris, and Berlin—in that order. Germany lost its Almanach de Gotha in the trenches. Huge swaths of the British and French nobility also bit the dust. I still insist that if Germany had won in 1914 in the Marne, the world today would be a much better place.

“The Christian religion preaches we should live in peace with our fellow man, which makes Christianity one hell of a failed doctrine.”
In 1939 Poland was betrayed by not only the Nazis and Soviets, but also the English and French, the last two going to war with brave words but failing to send a single rifle to help the bravest people of Europe. No one went to Poland’s rescue in 1939, and no one helped in 1945. The wretched, hypocritical Brits didn’t even have the courtesy of allowing the Poles to march in the victory parade after Germany had surrendered.

My friend Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 is proof of communism’s godless evils. It chronicles the slaughter and betrayal of the West’s most gallant ally, and it breaks one’s heart to read it.

Nearly ten million Germans died between 1939 and 1945, with the commies raping an estimated two million German women postwar. The Russkis lost more than twenty million but then enjoyed 40 years of playing big man to Eastern Europe.

Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States is a very courageous effort to set the record straight. Stone is an old adversary of mine with whom I’ve recently made my peace. I agree very much on certain parts of his extremely controversial theories about his country. But unlike most other historians, Oliver has paid his dues. He won a Bronze Star in Vietnam as a grunt, whereas he could have gotten deferments, since he was at Harvard and near the top of his class. Stone sees Uncle Sam as a rapacious imperialist. He cites American repression of the Filipino struggle for independence around the turn of the 20th century and the repeated US interventions and covert operations in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. He names capitalism as the bogeyman. He also says that the United States, not the Soviet Union, bore the lion’s share of responsibility for perpetuating the Cold War.


That’s not what the great Greek historian Taki has taught us all these years, yet Stone has a point. Stalin never trusted the West, but he had no designs on taking us over from the outside. Trotsky did, but thank God someone stuck an ice axe in his head in 1940.

Read the rest here.

9 comments:

  1. Christianity teaches that we are all (every one!)hopeless sinners with one and only one escape: salvation by the grace of God through his son Jesus Christ. Christians (those who voluntarily accept God's grace to be born again in the Spirit) are instructed to endeavor, albeit imperfectly, to love others and live in peace with them. Merry Christmas to one and all who read this comment. God loves you.

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    1. Amen! Christianity is not a religion but a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate Lifeguard. So live your life by giving to Caesar what is Caesar's and giving to God what is God's.

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    2. Right back at you my friend. Merry Christmas to EPJ and readers.

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    3. I found Taki's paragraph on the lack of smiles in Communist countries interesting and poignant.

      Individuals are different, but I see a lack of smiles throughout our country too. I have also experienced a decline in my sense of humor, which is markedly non-PC. It's been that way since before high school (maybe when I started watching the Naked Gun movies).

      I do know that the supression of Christianity, Catholicism in particular, has left a massive vacuum in our civilization. Liberty is extremely important, but it's a means, not the end. We NEED liberty to do our best, and be able to make our mistakes without the emperor controlling us.

      Even if I was an atheist, I would not be hostile to organized religion. I am opposed to its misuse and crushing of individual rights. Christ, in his human role, was quite libertarian. For me, much loved is the story of Christ and the adulterous woman. He shames the furious mob with His words, protecting her with their dispersal. He then tells her to sin no more. How often does a traffic cop, or a narc do that?

      I am thankful to Tom Woods for developing great scholarship on this subject. Individual rights were largely born from Christianity. Aquinas wrote that one individual soul has more worth than all the material existence in the universe. If that's not an expression of peaceful individualism, and the value of a human being, I don't know what is.

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  2. "...The Christian religion preaches we should live in peace with our fellow man, which makes Christianity one hell of a failed doctrine..."

    One would guess that with all of these school shootings and wars around the world, that today is a highly violent time, compared to our history.

    But, that does not appear to be the case:
    http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180.html

    Dr. Pinker attributes the reduced violence, in part, to the rise of the state, affluence, and literacy.

    I disagree. I think humans have been undergoing an internal civilizing process as our souls reincarnate over and over and learn, from being on the receiving end, of how NOT to treat others.

    'Life Before Life' by Dr. Jim Tucker is fascinating. His summary of 2500 investigated cases convinced me that reincarnation is real. That book, along with 'Proof of Heaven' by Dr. Eben Alexander, paints a picture that life and after-life may be much different from what we have been taught by our priests and rabbis.

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  3. The only thing more dangerous to Human Liberty than the State is organized religion.

    The genocides of the Communists were driven by the same religious zeal as the genocides the Hebrews bragged about in the Old Testament.

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    1. The state IS an organized religion, just of the secular variety.

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  4. From the very birth of the state, the agricultural revolution, the state and organized religion have gone together.

    Every means to dominate mankind and make them obedient to "leaders" is evil; and that includes both the state and organized religion.

    Scaring kids with hell and damnation if they do certain things is no different from propaganda and the indoctrination that happens in public school.

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    1. Yes, organized religion seeks power and influence. Centralized governments seeks the same. When individuals are able to freely choose their religion and their government without being forced or indoctrinated by those with power and influence, only then can peace AND prosperity be achieved.

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