I will not defend sinfullness. You did not address any of my questions, just used events in history in a manner that is simply not pertinent to anything in my post.

#2. Not all of the ‘missionaries’ have an interest in saving souls, they are con artists simply there to make money. Bishop Hilarion alludes to that reality. Should they not be regulated?

Questions: What is religious freedom? What is there about Russian history and culture that leads one to expect a Protestant style, secular egalitarianism as we have in the U.S? Is our model of ‘religious freedom’ really better? If so, how and why?

IMO, we all have religious freedom regardless of what the state does or does not do. What we don’t have is freedom from the consequences of our faith if the government is oppressive. Personally, I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.

Religious freedom as taught in the west denies community, faith and culture in any context other than the individual. That means it is antithetical to any faith that acutally builds community and requires obedience, e.g, the Church.

Religious freedom enshrined in law and inforced by the state all to easily becomes a tool that requires traditional Christianity to deny our historic self-understanding and the revelation with which we have been entrusted.

If relgious education, for instance, is truly voluntary and available to all regardless of one’s faith, what is wrong with that. I suspect that the state department proponents of religious freedom don’t like that fact that only traditional faiths are represented. They want to demand that Satanism and all the other ‘faiths’ possible to invent from our fallen and diseased imaginations be taught to everyone, or no body gets to learn about theirs.

Yes. The only absolute the moral relativist holds to is that there are no absolutes.

Interesting.

Was de Tocqueville a student of the Athenian democracy I wonder?

Same thing happened there…during the Peloponnesian War…the Athenian Assembly bought off the masses by spending money on them…it bought their temporary support, but killed the treasury – eventually leading to the Spartan victory and dictatorship.

However he came up with it…this is a very interesting, and accurate quote.

Best Regards,
Dean

Again Nietzche comes to mind the 😈 “transvaluation of all values 😈

You are correct Isa: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

He also said: “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”

No, no. It does hold to a hiearchy of values: everything is subjected to “tolerance.” Everything is tolorated except Truth and conviction. What is the fashion of today takes precedence over tried and true principles handed down through the generations (that’s backwards, also bad. Tradition starts with my generation).

Dostoevsky’s protagonist in “Crime and Punishment” upbraids someone for eavesdropping on his recounting his crime. “Ho, ho! So listening to private conversations within listening distance is evil, but bashing the heads of old women is fine. With thinking like that, you should get on the next boat to America!” was the reply. It seems Russia has regained that wisdom and moral insight.

IIRC, De Tocqueville also said that the republic would last until the Congress realized that it could bribe the Public with the Public’s money. That day seems to have arrived.

Michael: You are right. I may have inadvertently insulted genuine pagans where no offense was intended. I was thinking of the Slavic form of paganism, namely worship of “nature”. I also agree that a certain level of nihlism is an apt description of the elite. But even nihlism tends to evolve (self-correct) into something new as the old is or is being obliterated. The elite are looking for a new religion to fill the void and they have found it in “environmentalism”. There is a great distinction (which has escaped the thought processes in the EP) between stewardship of creation and worship of sticks and stones and ozone holes.

Nick, I think your description does violence to genuine paganism (now extinct) which had within it a genuine if incomplete and misunderstood appreciation for the divine.

I don’t quarrel with your term egalitarian hedonism. What I think we are seeing though is nihlism at work and Nietzche’s term 😈 Will to Power 😈 being quite apt for the elite and the herd for the rest of us.

Only living the ascetical/liturgical life of the Church allows us to cut through all the nonsense.

Michael:

DeTocqueville wrote that the time will come when Americans would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. The time is approaching. However, rather than calling it egalitarian utilitarianism, I would think more apropos would be egalitarian hedonism, in the general culture, but egalitarian paganism with the elite culture. My definition of egalitarian paganism = giving equal worship to any thing but the Eternal Truth.