OR Staff Note: Walt’s analysis below is historically accurate. The “Yankee problem” in America stems from the Puritan (Roundhead) influence in the Northeast that led to a vicious, intolerant kind of Millennialism. That philosophy was dramatically different from that found in the South among the descendants of non-Puritans, whether standard Englishmen or Scots-Irish. Unfortunately, today, much of political and religious life in the South is dominated by “Christian” Zionism. Perhaps the most blood thirsty and dangerous Millennialist heresy of all time, but one that hopefully will lose power as Gen Z matures.
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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.
People around the world have expressed their shock at the wicked duplicity practiced by the Trump regime vis-à-vis Iran: In the midst of negotiations with the Iranian government, the former, along with the Israelis, executed the leadership of the latter in a cowardly air attack.
If people knew anything about the character of the Yankees in the United States, they would not be surprised by such a brutal act of treachery. To give one key example: At President Lincoln’s much ballyhooed second inaugural address (which some in the heretical church of Americanism consider to be on par with the Holy Bible), he said the following words:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
That speech was delivered on 4 March 1865. However, just a year earlier, the Lincoln regime had approved an expedition to assassinate the leaders of the Confederate States in Richmond:
The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid (February 28–March 3, 1864) was an ambitious attempt by Union cavalrymen to assault the lightly defended Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, and free prisoners of war during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The brainchild of the flamboyant Brigadier General H. Judson Kilpatrick, the raid turned into a fiasco when Kilpatrick’s men were stopped northwest of the city and a supporting column, under the command of twenty-one-year-old Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, was routed to the east. Dahlgren was killed, and papers found on his body, which were subsequently published by the Richmond press, detailed plans to burn the city and assassinate Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cabinet.
As with so much in the religion of Americanism, the pretty outer dressing of liberty, the rights of man, etc., hides within it a venomous snake ready to strike dead those who approach that cult with careless naiveté and trust.
People in other countries are beginning to wise up. Alexander Dugin, the Russian political philosopher, for instance, said recently (emphasis in original),
Trump’s behavior is particularly striking. All of this happened during negotiations involving Kushner and Witkoff, and according to available information Iran had agreed to almost all American demands—literally to almost everything. Despite this, such a strike followed directly against the leadership of the country. First of all, we must understand that in this situation we [Russia] are next. Venezuela, Iran, and before that Syria and Hezbollah—these are all regimes or political systems currently targeted by the United States, and they are our allies.
In effect, if such actions can be taken against our allies, if all of this goes unpunished, if Trump succeeds in everything he attempts, then at the next stage—perhaps even during negotiations between Kirill Dmitriev and Kushner and Witkoff—a similar operation aimed at regime change in our country could occur.
However, none of this phases Trump’s MAGA base, revealing how their loyalty to him has a demonic, delusional (prelest or plani, to use the technical Orthodox terms for it) element to it. In recent detailed polling, an unbelievable 85% of MAGA Republicans said they support Trump’s strikes on Iran, and this despite his numerous promises not to start new wars and his mockery of past presidents who did launch long, costly wars in the Middle East. And 73% of them said they thought the Iran war would be beneficial for the people of Iran, also in spite of more than 20 years of actual tragic results of US wars and regime changes in the Middle East and North Africa.
The delusion stretches from the usual suspects like the Zionist Southern Baptist Dr Richard Land to the heretofore reliable geopolitical analyst Dr Steve Turley, who is now saying ridiculous things like this: ‘MAGA is not just renewing America; it is renewing the world.’ That kind of ideological puke is part and parcel of the globalist Americanism that Dr Turley once made a point of opposing. Will the pre-MAGA-cult-drone version of Dr Turley ever reappear? We hope that he will at some point; we miss that fellow.
This war on Iran, rather than being a ‘just war’ per Dr Land and others, seems to be just the opposite. And we are speaking of things other than the obvious despicable nature of negotiating in bad faith, the killing of more than one hundred school girls in Iran, etc. Specifically, the timing of it suggests that the satanic leadership of the West was desperate for a way to distract the world from the ongoing flood of revelations and retribution that the Epstein files had initiated. And, second, that the demonic hordes were eager to distract humanity from the repentance and focus on Christ during the season of Great and Holy Lent (per Fr Seraphim Aldea of Mull and Iona and Metropolitan Nicholas of New York, to name a couple).
“We try to enter these holy days of Great Lent through the gates of Forgiveness Sunday, because it is necessary to make peace, not fight in this salvific time” – First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), Metropolitan Nicholas (Olhovsky)
And what shall we do, now that the Trump and Netanyahu regimes have sent the world sliding down toward a terrible abyss? One of the first things we must do is to offer our sincere repentance and prayers to God to have mercy on His world. One of the chief problems with Yankee Americanism is that it is often wholly focused on the sins of others rather than on the wounds and scabs of our own American souls. The reverse is how things ought to be, as St Ephraim the Syrian teaches us during Lent: ‘Yea, Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother’. How many wars would that humility prevent by itself!
Second, we must know ourselves and our history. American history is more than the history of the Yankee States. There are other cultures in the union of States that must be known and appreciated and preserved as well. Knowing about the tradition of Christian chivalry practiced by Southerners, for example, would help protect the world from evil wars as well. Professor Richard Weaver writes in his valuable book The Southern Tradition at Bay, (via the PDF version, no pagination; pgs. 162 and 163 of the document)
It is not unusual to read in Southern accounts of the rejection of some procedure as “unworthy of a Christian soldiery.” Indeed, by the standard of modern practice, which represents a revolt against all civilized restraints, the matter of regard for rule was carried far. Exceptions were found, naturally, among the disorderly elements which made up parts of the Western armies, but few outrages can be ascribed to the armies of Johnston, Lee, and Bragg, and none of them was condoned.
Great indignation followed the discovery that these observances were not going to be reciprocated by the North. Though few Confederate commanders attempted to reason the matter out in terms of philosophy and history, there was conviction that those violating the code were guilty of an enormity whose consequences would not be limited to immediate acts. Most of them considered it unprofessional to display anger, and we have from Lee only a few passing remarks about the cruelty of war. But the more impetuous members of the fraternity were not unwilling to declare themselves. Jubal Early was bitter against Sherman, and the pages of Semmes are crowded with citations of Yankee knavery. One reads of “the mad fanatics of the North,” and of “the coarse and rude Vandal.” Semmes explained to the captain of a foreign ship that “we are only defending ourselves against robbers, with knives at our throats.” In almost every chapter the reader encounters “the Northern Demos” and “the barbarians of the North.” Semmes shared the view of Edward Pollard that the Northern government was the instrument of a coarse and unruly mob, and that the Northern armies were recruited from riffraff, whose outstanding penchant was thievery. “Unfortunately for the Great Republic,” he wrote, “political power has descended so low, that the public officer, however high his station, must of necessity be little better than the b’hoy from whom he receives his power of attorney. When mobs rule, gentlemen must retire to private life.” This government was “with a barbarity unknown in civilized war, laying waste our plantations and corn-fields.”
There are exceptions both ways, but in general the two peoples, Northern Yankees and Southerners in Dixie, are quite different. Prof Weaver quotes R. B. Rhett, Jr, who contrasts the two peoples – the more warm, friendly, open Southerner with the more narrow-minded, censorious Northerner, also in The Southern Tradition at Bay (pgs. 104-5 of the document):
The truth is, there is an incongruity between the two peoples from their very natures.… The one is cautious and reticent; the other frank and open in communication. The one is penurious; the other free in the use of money. The one cannot comprehend the meaning of the word honor; the other values it beyond life.… The one loves gregariousness and does everything by association; the other cultivates privacy and individuality, and acts with difficulty with others. The one is skeptical, prying, officious, harsh, dogmatic, aggressive, and fond of novelties, misnamed progress; the other is more genial and more tolerant, distrusts change and reverences the past. The one looks upon government as an instrument of aggrandizement, to make money or to rule others; the other regards it simply as an instrument of protection, for securing justice and leaving to all under its authority the privilege of seeking their own happiness in their own way. Is it possible that two people of such different characteristics and antagonistic views can live voluntarily under the same Free Government?
If the Southern mindset were present amongst those governing in Washington, D. C., we probably could expect fewer wars being started by them. And if Southern Christian chivalry is not welcome there at all anymore, then the Southern States should begin once again planning a peaceful exit from a fruitless, abusive union.
Third, we should as much as possible try to warn people of the errors and evils of Zionism, which is one of the main forces responsible for this new war in Iran. Fr Andrew Phillips, an Orthodox priest in England, has done this recently in a short essay of his in which he points out both the madness of the Zionists themselves –
According to at least one US commander: ‘Trump has been anointed by Jesus in order to fight at Armageddon so that Jesus can come back and then we will enter the rapture’. This particular heresy is called ‘Zionism’. –
as well as the frightening consequences for the world that result from it –
The Zionist heresy does not know that Antichrist will come before Christ returns and that there will be no ‘rapture’. This is because Zionism is an Old Testament religion, the religion of the Pharisees, that of those who murdered Christ. Those who still live in the Old Testament, those who have still not received the New Testament revelation or openly rejected it, whether formally Jews or Muslims or pseudo-Christians, will confuse Antichrist with Christ and worship Antichrist. Here we have the explanation for what is happening now.
General Robert E. Lee’s prediction in a letter to Lord Acton (15 Dec 1866) of the course taken by the federal government after the falsely named Civil War is speeding to its fulfilment: ‘ . . . the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it’ (bolding added).
The federal government under Lincoln and others, having crushed the idea of a voluntary union of free, independent States, has become a consolidated monster. And who will save the States and the other countries of the world from it, with both the MAGA Right and Marxist, LGBT Left beholden to evil? The only Savior remains the Lord and God Jesus Christ, and the only place He may found and experienced fully and without distortion is the Orthodox Church. Enter therein quickly, all you who seek hope rather than despair.