Orthodox Reflections

OR Staff Note: We are witnessing the rise of what could be called “Post-political America” – a general collapse in faith and trust in the American political system. This is illustrated in the results of a Washington Post-ABC News/Ipsos poll, summarized under the headline, “Voters broadly disapprove of Trump but remain divided on midterms, poll finds.” This poll found that 68 percent of respondents believe the Democrats are out of touch with the aspirations of voters, with 63 percent saying the same about Trump. Americans have been voting good and hard for decades now, only to see their nation continue to deteriorate. Even when they vote for so-called “extremist” candidates, such as Trump or Mamdani, nothing of substance changes. The Status Quo, on all the important issues, simply continues. The same corporations continue to dominate their lives. The same wars keep getting fought. The moral decay of the nation goes on unabated. After decades of political failure, it is only rational that many Americans are casting about for alternatives. Especially younger Americans are abandoning contemporary politics, often to focus on the eternal rather than the temporal. This world is not really our home, after all.

Another poll analysis showcasing the collapse of American voters’ confidence in government

This transformation is not something we should be afraid of, but for Boomers, Gen Xers, and many Millennials, this is a very disorienting time. Many of our most cherished presuppositions are being openly called into question. Chief among them is the superiority of so-called “representative” government to other forms of political organization. The transition of a nation, currently organized as a corporate kleptocracy, into whatever comes next (should Jesus tarry), is bound to be traumatic.  And there is, of course, legitimate danger in this process. While Walt below discusses current warm feelings towards Christian Monarchy, what is much more likely in the American context is a turn towards a populist authoritarianism. Average people hate chaos and uncertainty, and so have historically proven more than willing to back a “strong man” who promises to take care of everything. What the exact character of such an authoritarian American regime would be is anyone’s guess, but it could go very badly. Hopefully we won’t replace crony capitalism with some form of communism, racial identitarianism, and/or heterodox religious extremism, but desperate people often make really bad choices.

Pray, repent, and work on your personal holiness – for all else is in God’s hands.

By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland.  His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.

The Comte de Chambord, a 19^th century heir to the French crown, once said that it was as if France had two souls within her – one Christian and monarchical, the other diabolical and revolutionary.

A similar situation appears to be developing in the United States.

Some evidence of that surfaced in mid-October when the text of group chats held amongst leaders of Young Republicans became public:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.

Two members of the chat responded.

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote back.

“I’m ready to watch people burn now,” Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member, said.

The exchange is part of a trove of Telegram chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.

Racial animosity doesn’t belong in the Orthodox Church, but neither does ignorance. Many young white men have been damaged by a lifetime of vilification in mainstream media, culture, employment, and academia. The profoundly angry and resentful ones don’t need to be leading anyone anywhere at the moment. However, we need to understand how so many young men got this way.

This transgressive attitude of a segment of young conservatives was confirmed in the wake of Tucker Carlson’s interview with one of the chief young transgressives, Nick Fuentes.  Via one of Rod Dreher’s reports on that:

This is why the Fuentes-on-Tucker thing strikes me as such a Rubicon moment. I was talking today with a Christian I know who is a big player in conservative politics, and who is as appalled by it as I am. He tells me that what normie outsiders like me don’t know is that something like 30 to 40 percent of the Republican staff in Washington under the age of 30 are Groypers — that is, followers of Nick Fuentes.

Let that sink in.

I told my friend that this makes zero sense to me. I’ve watched about as much of Fuentes as I can stand in any one sitting, and he comes across as a runty incel pervert on coke who believes in nothing more than being outrageous. Here’s a video link to one of his most infamous moments, in a 2022 livestream with the left-wing podcaster Destiny. Transcript:

Destiny: “Children are hotter than adults.”

Nick Fuentes (laughing): “Based. Let’s f**king go. That’s why we love Destiny. That’s why we love this guy.”

I can hear the Groypers now: “But it’s performative! He doesn’t really mean it!” Well, he might mean it (see Chris Brunet’s collection of receipts about pederasty-normalizing among Groypers). But even if it’s just a transgressive joke, I don’t want people who make jokes about having sex with children within 100 miles of political power! This is the guy who just got normalized on Tucker’s show this week.

The thing about Fuentes is that there’s rarely anything serious there at all, nothing you can argue with, or think about. Even when he makes substantive claims, they aren’t informed by much of anything (he’s only 26, and uneducated). Plus, the guy praises Hitler and Stalin both. What the hell are we supposed to make of that? What is the appeal?

My conservative friend, a political professional, said the answer is actually pretty simple, though hard for people my age to understand. Fuentes is funny, charismatic, and willing to be transgressive as a finger in the face of propriety. He’s just one Midwestern guy who the whole System tried to break — they put him on a no-fly list, banned him from social media, and so forth — and he ended up becoming the hero to a huge number of right-wing Zoomers.

Again, my friend is not a Groyper, and is as anxious about this as I, but he’s far, far closer to the power dynamics in Washington than I am. He said that the thing people of my generation don’t get about Fuentes is that what he actually believes doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he’s giving the finger to the System — and he keeps winning over the hearts and minds of Zoomers.

Some of these young folks have happily changed their generation’s label – Gen Z – to Generation Zyklon, as in Zyklon B, the chemical used in Nazi gas chambers (via another Dreher essay).

[OR Staff Note: A good many of the snide references to Nazi themes are most likely “tongue-in-cheek,” as many younger people outright reject the standard Holocaust narrative, along with the entire idea of Nazi gas chambers ever having existed. For those who want more information on revisionist WWII and Holocaust history, see this compendium of books. Younger people are also more likely to reject the post-WWII so-called “Open Society Consensus,” which they see as a successful attack on Western social cohesion and Christian values. No endorsement of Nazism implied here, just providing context as to where this is coming from.]

Southerners have gotten wrapped to a degree in this.  Some pro-Hitler/Nazi sympathies showed up on occasion at the Identity Dixie web site when it was still in operation, for whom your author also did some writing from time to time.  A clash between them and traditional Southerners played out at another Southern web site not long (see the articles and comments here and here).  All of that is quite unfortunate and unnecessary, as the South has an infinitely better role model in her Patron Saint, King Alfred the Great of England; she needn’t wade through the detritus of the Nazi Party to find examples to emulate.  We’ve written about St Alfred and the South elsewhere for those interested – here and here, for example.

Thus, there are undeniably many young men and women in the States who have been beguiled by the demons.

But, thanks be to God, another segment of them are finding and walking the path of Light, of Christianity.  An encouraging report shows they are becoming more devoted church-goers than their elders:

In a historic reversal of decades-long trends, younger Americans are now more likely to attend church than their parents, according to new data from the Barna Group. The research, part of Barna’s ongoing “State of the Church” project with Gloo, shows that Millennials and Gen Z have overtaken Boomers and Elders as the most frequent churchgoers — signaling renewed spiritual interest among younger adults.

“The fact that young people are showing up more frequently than before is not a typical trend,” said Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vice president of research. “It’s typically older adults who are the most loyal churchgoers. This data represents good news for church leaders and adds to the picture that spiritual renewal is shaping Gen Z and Millennials today.”

Barna found that Gen Z Christians now attend services an average of 1.9 weekends per month, and Millennials 1.8 — the highest rates recorded since the group began tracking generational participation. In contrast, Boomers now attend 1.4 times per month, down sharply from twice a month in 2000.

Many of these young folks are embracing the Orthodox Faith, as reports across the United States and the West in general continue to affirm.

This increase in piety is reflected in their political views, for instance, their favorable view of monarchy:

The rise of monarchism among young Americans is consistent with a number of studies that suggest Gen Z is more suspicious of democracy than previous generations. Fewer than 1 per cent of the over-65s are in favour of an American monarchy. But 27 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds in the USA would like to have a king or queen, according to a YouGov poll in 2023.

Kristen Ziccarelli, writing from a Roman Catholic perspective (which in this instance is quite close to the Orthodox view; nonetheless, Michael Warren Davis details some of the major problems with Roman Catholicism here) for The European Conservative, explains this rise in support for monarchy:

Across the West, there appears a keen sense of exhaustion that explains the longing of the modern age for heroes of a different order. Perhaps it is because Gen Z knows nothing other than political turmoil and is disenchanted with the failed promises of the technocratic age. It is not hard to see how the young, new Right in both Europe and America might be drawn to monarchy, not because they personally crave domination or power, but because they crave meaning, beset by anxiety growing up in the digital age. There is a distinct clarity that comes from ordering one’s life around God, and it’s worth considering this as a primary explanation for the growing number of Catholic conversions in recent years, of which France is a hotspot.

Properly understood, Christian monarchy is a model for how saintliness is built. Ultimately, it is character that makes one a hero. This is the foil to politics and managerialism that my generation desperately craves, and it’s something that the new Right has finally brought back into the conversation. And it’s about time that we realized this, because no civilization can endure if it forgets what it was built on.

French writer Charles Péguy saw the modern world’s malaise long before it fully took hold. “We are the last,” he wrote, “almost the ones after the last … the world of those who believe in nothing, not even in atheism. The world of those without a mystique. And who boast of it.” Péguy warned that this precise belief in nothing—this spiritual vacuum, for lack of a better word—would lead to decay. Today, the West is indeed in decay because it has lost the audacity to believe in something: to take risks, to be passionate, to be called for something higher than comfort.

A call for “Monarchy and God Again” is therefore not about restoring crowns and titles for their own sakes, and it’s certainly not about dictator-style power centralization. It is about re-anchoring civilization in the order that once made Europe great—the same order that baptized France under Clovis, the same that Belloc proclaimed when he said, “The Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith.” It is about remembering that our institutions once aimed at sanctity as much as sovereignty. And realizing that public life once mirrored divine order, at least in its framework.

Consider if France were to heed Louis de Bourbon’s offer, and what it might mean for its leadership in response to the civilizational crisis. Across the West, the winds are changing. As has happened consistently since the dawn of Christianity, when pagans fail to inspire, the soul of man turns once more toward God, truth, and beauty. And so, in the dusk of a waning West, the phrase that once stirred the U.S. may yet take on new meaning for the eldest daughter of the church: MAGA, but instead, it’s Monarchy and God Again.

We certainly prefer her kind of ‘MAGA’ to Trump’s worldly, uber-materialistic version.

There are also more mundane reasons for preferring monarchy, as related by Dr Paul Craig Roberts:

Political campaign contributions, not voters, elect the president and members of the Senate and House. Consequently, elected representatives represent the private interests that fund their campaigns.

Democracy serves as a cloak, a guise, that hides the fact that the government belongs to the private lobbies that purchased it.

In every election the emphasis is on getting the vote out, and that is done by money. There is no democracy as long as money determines election outcomes and thereby “public” policy. Obviously, there is no public policy serving the public’s interest.

Why do Americans believe in the hoax of democratic rule?

Why did the Supreme Court rule that it is a First Amendment right for organized lobbies to purchase the government?

In 1973 Alvin Rabushka and I had an article published in the journal, Public Choice, titled “A Diagrammatic Exposition of an Economic Theory of Imperialism.” In the article we introduced the concept of the “imperialist paradox.” The point we made is that whereas imperial rule is considered exploitative, in actual fact it extracts less resources than a democracy responding to organized interests. The reason is that the organized interests in democracies are shielded by the assumption that government is acting in the public’s interest, whereas an imperial regime is assumed to be acting in its interest. Imperial exploitation is recognized and resisted, whereas exploitation by organized interests in a democracy is protected under the rubric of serving the public interest.

Liberals maintain that government regulation restricts exploitation by private interests, but as economist George Stigler pointed out decades ago, regulatory agencies are captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate. We certainly witnessed that fact during the “Covid pandemic” when the FDA, CDC, and NIH served Big Pharma’s profits and not the public’s health.

Hans Herman-Hoppe’s book, Democracy:  The God That Failed, is an extended treatment of that summary.

To give an Orthodox gloss on monarchy, we turn to Serbia’s New Chrysostom, St Nikolai Velimirovich.  In his writing about the Holy King Milutin of Serbia, we see many of the virtues that manifest themselves in Orthodox monarchies – a protector of his people, concern for the poor and the sick, a desire to honor God and build up the Church (spiritually and physically), etc.:

Milutin was the son of Uroš I and Queen Helena and brother of Dragutin. He fought many battles defending his Faith and his people. He fought against Emperor Michael Palaeologus because Palaeologus accepted union with Rome and tried to force the Balkan peoples and the monks of Athos to recognize the pope. He fought against Shishman, King of Bulgaria, and Nogai, King of the Tartars, in order to defend his lands. All his wars were successful, for he constantly prayed to God and hoped in God. He built more than forty churches: beside those that he built in his own land—Treskavac, Gračanica, St. George in Nagorič, the Church of the Holy Theotokos in Skoplje, Banjska and so forth—he also built churches outside of his land, in Thessalonica, Sofia, Constantinople, Jerusalem and the Holy Mountain. He entered into rest in the Lord on October 29, 1320 A.D. His body was soon shown to be incorrupt and miracle-working; and as such, it reposes even today in the Church of the Holy King in Sofia, Bulgaria.

 . . . A great son of the Orthodox Church, King Milutin saved the Balkans from Uniatism. At that time in history when the Byzantine emperor’s conscience was weakened, this noble and God-bearing Slavic king rose up decisively and, with God’s help, saved Orthodoxy—not only in his own land, but also in all the lands of the Balkans. He who closely examines the life of the holy King Milutin will understand why God gave him success after success in all his works throughout his life. When Milutin ascended the throne, he immediately vowed to God that he would build a church for each year that he would reign. He reigned forty-two years and built forty-two churches. Next to some of the churches—for example, in Thessalonica and Constantinople—he also built hospitals for the indigent, where the poor would receive everything free of charge. Beyond that, he especially loved to give alms to the needy from his own enormous wealth. Oftentimes, this powerful and wealthy king dressed in the clothes of a poor man and, with two or three of his servants, walked among the people at night and asked about their misfortunes, and gave to them abundantly. He lived a very simple, familial life, even in the midst of his great wealth—though he never seemed that way to foreigners. He had become accustomed to a simple life while still at the home of his father; King Uroš I. It is told how Emperor Michael Palaeologus sent his daughter Anna with a retinue to the court of King Uroš, an offering to Milutin, in order to lure the Serbian king into union with Rome. But King Uroš, seeing the foolish extravagance of the princess and her retinue, said: “What is this, and what is it for? We are not used to such a life.” And pointing to a Serbian princess with a distaff in her hand, he said: “Behold, this is the kind of clothing we expect our daughter-in-law to wear.”

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Lest we be misunderstood, this treatment of monarchy isn’t meant as an attempt to discredit democratic forms of government entirely.  The latter can have their place in a governmental system, but it usually works best in small, local communities where the people know the candidates personally, where big money doesn’t control the folks who are elected or distort reality through advertisements.  With aristocracy at the higher levels and monarchy at the pinnacle, the government assumes a stable form.

This mixed form of government is that which the States knew as colonies under the British crown, and which was praised during the Philadelphia constitutional convention and afterwards during the ratification debates.  The people who participated in the latter events certainly had their Enlightenment drawbacks, but with their deep knowledge of history they were closer to the truth than the shallow, myopic, democracy-worshippers who are prevalent today in much of the US.

Nevertheless, we have these two clashing groups of young people in the United States today, the blasphemous and the pious. The former are eager to flout as many long-standing moral boundaries as they can in an effort to subvert The Powers That Be, which is a rather Gnostic attitude.  The latter seek to restore Christian traditions and institutions that have been lost over the centuries in the West.  Unless there is repentance by the former, the States appear to be headed for a time of unrest as these two worldviews collide.  But if anyone doubts which one is superior to the other, we offer the beautiful life of a Georgian saint, St Jotham Zedgenidze.  He belonged to the court of King George VIII and was concerned about a plot to murder the king.  St Jotham attempted to warn him, and that is where we will pick the story:

Among those who served in the royal court was a certain Jotham Zedgenidze, a man deeply devoted to his king. He heard about the dreadful conspiracy and warned the king, but the noble and fearless George did not believe that such a loathsome betrayal could ever take place.

Desperate to convince the king of the very real and imminent danger, the devoted Jotham told him, “Allow me to spend this night in your bed and prove the truth of my words!”

Certain that his beloved courtier was mistaken and that his unmeasured love and dedication were the reasons for his suspicions, King George permitted him to spend the night in the royal bed.

The next morning King George entered his tent and found his beloved Jotham lying in a pool of blood. Immediately he began weeping bitterly over his error. He arrested and executed the conspirators and buried his faithful servant with great honor.

The Georgian Church numbers Jotham Zedgenidze among the saints for his devotion to God’s anointed king.

Sacrificing one’s life out of devotion and love for God’s anointed king is praiseworthy and glorious and brings shame upon all those who are for now flippantly joking about Adolf Hitler, Nazi atrocities, and other evil, perverted acts.  Through the prayers of St Jotham, may they all turn away from such putrid things and seek the Holy Trinity in the Garden of Paradise, in the Orthodox Church, while time remains for amendment of life.