The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution. IV

The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution

By Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado

(Continued)

iv. The Calvinist Origin of the New Law

"The source of  all wrongs lies in the

candid optimism of most of the public

men of our nineteenth century, who

indiscriminately applied the English

liberal doctrine and the essential

North American public law principles

in our land without realizing that the

new creed could not signify any

progress in Latin America.

Alfonso López Michelsen.

It has been well said, by authors of the most dissimilar extraction, that behind every political issue lies a theological issue, an assertion which for many chaste democratic ears is inadmissible and extravagant, but which for renowned writers of Colombian constitutional history, such as Alfonso López Michelsen and Leopoldo Uprimy results in a basic presupposition to understand our institutions. Let us remember the famous debate at the Universidad Nacional between the two above, sometime around 1950, which versed precisely on the topic, and was left in writing in two well-known publications: "La Estirpe Calvinista de Nuestras Instituciones" (The Calvinist Lineage of our Institutions) and "Capitalismo Calvinista o Romanticismo Semiescolástico de los Próceres de la Independencia Colombiana.  Réplica al Profesor Alfonso López Michelsen"  which I have re-read carefully and which might well have been titled "The Scholastic Lineage of our Institutions."

I confess that the origin of the writers of treatises on the New Law called more my attention every time, in their great majority Anglo-Saxon or German, regions where Calvinism has designed their political, social and cultural institutions until I found in the work of Professor Francisco Díaz de Tejada the most substantial study on the relationship between Calvinism and the New Law, which in its fundamental ideas I will follow in the following paragraphs, making some brief comments.

Text by Francisco Díaz de Tejada

For Catholic Theology, the Universe has an immanent order willed by God, contained in the natural law, which reason can discover, and which in its physical aspect is complied with by every being, but in its moral aspect man can disobey.

Man's eternal destiny depends on the use of his liberty, signaled in a logical judgment in which God rewards and punishes human conduct in this world, checking it for compliance with the eternal law, so that God's action as judge depends on God's action as the legislator.

With Protestantism, the terms are inverted, to a Protestant, God's action as a judge is more important than that as a legislator. The individual's salvation does not depend on his earthly conduct but on such predestination, to heaven or to hell, which God for all eternity chose for him. Man's actions do not count against a decision taken by God for all eternity.

The closed voluntarism of Protestantism gets to place God's action as a legislator in a second plane. From the moment that the law is not the logical criterion for God to forgive a man, but salvation appears instead as an individual and concrete decision of the  Divine will, forgiving some and condemning others, whether a man observes the law or not, he will be saved or condemned not for observing it or violating it but because God willed it to be so. For a Protestant, God is judge, simply judge; His general legislating action means nothing for concrete salvation. For Calvin, Justice is purely and simply God's will when He acts as a judge. Protestant voluntarism which places the Divine Will above the Divine Laws makes God more important as a judge than as a legislator and entirely free to condemn or save solely at his own discretion without taking any kind of laws into consideration, even when He Himself has established them.
  
From those theological principles emanate the concept of law sustained by Calvin, with precedence over the norm. The law is for Calvin the perception of what is just, the sentiment of the just in any given case with independence from the norm; the law is a sentiment, it is reduced to the conscience of the magistrate who dictates the sentence.

We will later see the strange correspondence with the postulates which characterize the new law.

The Ciceronian equaling of the law with the judge takes in Calvin a sense different from that which the classics gave to it. When he picks up Cicero's passage according to which the law is a mute magistrate and the magistrate is the law alive, it will not be to subject the judge to the norm, not even to equate them, but to indicate that after the rulers, come the laws, to place the concrete before the general, equity before strict justice, the judge before the norm; all this in accordance with his position of transferring to the human judge the extreme arbitrary criteria which he had attributed to the Divine judge.

The foundation of such a position is that owing to the doctrine of predestination, the grace received by the judges allows them, in the privacy of their consciences, to sense the just more clearly than the way in which the legal norms establish it. The judges, in relation to human norms, are the law and are the precepts. For Calvinist voluntarism, the law does not obligate the judge, it is for the judge mere indicative advice, never imperative.

Such is the Calvinist doctrine regarding the superiority of the judges over the laws. Spokesmen for the Divinity itself, interpreters of revealed law in the deep of their consciences, they can well prescind from or contradict human norms because they are the living law and what they approve or prohibit is the law, the exclusively applicable law. God has conferred to them an inviolable majesty, will Calvin stress in his ¨Institution of the Christian Republic.¨ If what is important is God as a judge above God as a legislator, in accordance with the conception of predestination, the judges will be more important than the laws in translating to the juridical plane such theological proposition. The voluntarist measure in theology hops with ideological coherence to the realm of law. There will not be more authentic law than that which the judges dictate, be it approving, be it prohibiting in each concrete case.

To Calvin, the judges carve out the law with a supra-legal authority coming from their decisions to be just because of their having been inspired by God regardless of their content: such deified judges construct the law from their majestic pedestal of elected, it suffices for them to possess the grace of the just.

(To be continued)

Go to Chapter V Go back to Chapter III

The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution. III

The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution

By Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado

(Continued)

III. From Legalist Fetishism to Judicial Fetishism

"For those societies which abandon

the austere cult of the truth for the idolatry

of ingenuity, there is no hope at all, 

after the sophisms, come the revolutions, 

and after the sophists, the executioners"

Juan Donoso Cortés

How delicate is the exercise of authority when justice is administered, when what is right is stated in each concrete case; how much risk of lacerating justice when we reduce the law to the words of the statute or, even worse, when we transform this into a phenomenon of power, forsaking our priesthood for justice.

We cannot reduce the judicial function to the rule of a law which often lacks legitimacy or to juridical technique, but neither can we hand it over to juridical imagination, which has turned into a source of law nowadays. A jurist must be conscious that his mission is not to be at the service of the law, but at the service of justice, he is not a functionary of the law but a server of justice on behalf of society. Without a doubt, a jurist has to seek the sense of the statute and has to abide by what the law prescribes but he has to interpret it as a function of what is fair, that is, of what is just in the concrete case.

"The judge should be faithful to the law, the law should be faithful to justice, and both of them should be faithful to the common good, but if the law is not faithful to justice, the judge cannot be faithful to the law."

Rightly has the perennial philosophy taught us: The text, understood as the juridical norm, gets its authority in the first place from the fact that it expresses natural law, not from the mandate dictated by a master, whether this be a prince, a Führer, a legislative assembly, a Kafkian bureaucracy or the aggregative sentences of a Court. Positive law receives its strength from the fact of containing justice; this is why, when an author who cannot be suspected of militating in the ranks of the new law, as was Saint Thomas, was asked whether the judge should be bound by what is written in the law, he responded:

"Not when the text runs against justice."

He even unequivocally asserts the following principle that any jurist has to have engraved in his conscience should he not want to become a law technician, a passive interpreter of the law or, what is the same, a slave of power.

"Lex esse non videtur quae justa non fuerit."

 Professor Tomás D, Cásares, in the quoted work summarizes in a modern manner the aforementioned principle in the following terms:

"There are situations where the conscience of what is just commands us to disobey the law. Not only is what the law commands not proper, but what it commands runs against what is proper. And when this happens, it commands without authority, which means that authority lies not in positive law by the mere fact of it being law but because of the reason by which it commands. The law is not imposed in our conscience, nor does it create a duty of justice from the fact of being law but from its intrinsic content, from the rightfulness of its purpose..."

 In like manner, Professor Álvaro D'ors confirms this, tersely but masterfully: "No legality without legitimacy", understanding it as conformity with the law but with a law more permanent than simple legality, one which does not depend on a social contract but on a suprapersonal cause, which is natural law, the classical juridical realism. This is how he explains it: 

"Relations amongst persons and the authority of those in power should be supported necessarily by an anterior and superior source to have justification. As Divine revelation is silent on almost everything concerning the temporal order, it is necessary to seek in nature, which is the work of God, the order which it may contain in conformity with the Divine plan. And this is the only solid possibility available to us, since, if no natural order exists, neither can there be justice, by it being left without an object above and beyond the will of those who impose it."

Abandonment of such legitimacy was translated into a growing discredit of legality and of democratic legitimacy, laws which the citizen neither understands nor loves, as per Rafael Gambra, in which only their constrictive character and their irrationality can be seen, and end up, as would be expected, being obeyed ever less.

With the former philosophy contrasts the conception of law which positivism has:

"The law deserves being obeyed, no matter what its contents, its 'material' justice, or its usefulness may be, only by reason of its 'form', because it proceeds from competent authority, because the competent will, invested by the social contract of free men has ordered it so,"

today dramatically contested by juridical post-modernity, meaning to be the New Law, which most certainly will end up dissolving it, consolidating another voluntarism headed by the judicial organs.

What a drama to reduce law to a simple system of norms! This was the temptation into which the juridical positivism fell, being it reduced to a simple form of social control, which gave rise to a reaction as noxious as the preceding one, which has been taking concrete form in what is now known as the 'New Law', in vogue in our courts of law, where the law disappears to give way to the subjective criterion that the judge may have of what is right; a very well camouflaged or quite technically administered subjectivism, with the pretext of the primacy of principles and values, which on purpose lack constitutional concretion but which are always brought up to interpret a law against the law or the constitution against itself, and which have as a purpose to ignore the limits that the law establishes, with which law ceases to be a fair objectivity to turn into an expression of the will of some technicians. This ends in the abolition of the rule of law, in a relativization of justice, in voluntarism which canonizes possible subjective injustices, and in the disappearance of the primacy of justice. It now even results to be admissible that constitutional judges modify laws by means of so-called aggregative sentences. As rightly pointed out by Geny: "allowing judges to be able to modify laws would be the most utter anarchy; it would be the subversion of law"; but today this is what is considered to be juridically correct.

Good it is to remember, this new philosophy has nothing to do with the juridical realism of Aristotelic and Thomistic lineage, as some people believe today; while it is true that for these, the law is what is just or, better said, the just thing due other, but what is just as something objective, embodied in the law by him who had the community under his charge for the common good, quite distant from the contemporary voluntarism and agnosticism without which knowing what is naturally just by means of reason was not deemed to be exotic.

The former, as Michelle Villey reminds us, would discern the natural institutions from those which opposed them as well as the justness from the unjustness of things. The will was not an originator of rights and neither was reason, the latter was a means to discover what is just in the manyfold social relationships.

A thing very different from the judicial activism present in the majority of our legal systems, where the judge turns into: "the legislating judge, the mediating judge, the hero judge, the controlling judge, the social operator judge". O tempora, o mores!

From another perspective, with the above coincides Spanish jurist Alejandro Nieto, who, on receiving the Honoris Causa title from Universidad Carlos III stated:

"Since if this is so, it is high time that we get rid of hypocresies and call things by their name ... High time that we stop cheating the citizens and misleading the students. Because it is not a matter of ignorance or of bad faith, but something much more serious, namely, that laws neither order society nor resolve conflicts but rather that, at most, they are guidelines, reference points that the legislator puts in the hands of functionaries and judges, knowing well that they will apply them very partially, and what will be decisive is not the will of the legislator but the personal criterion of the operator.

But, what will those criteria be which move the jurist to accept the law only to the extent that its content agrees with his judgement? Therefore, it is certain that they be personal opinions: which explains the difference in decisions and, in the second place, it will be a criterion foreign to or trascending the norm. Be it very clearly said: each juridical operator has a personal purpose in each concrete case: at due time, he contrasts the norm with such purpose and, if it is convenient to him, he will apply it, but if purpose and norm are not in consonance, he will reject the norm or twist it without scruple until it becomes useful to him... 

The theory of the purpose is something known, but notice that I am talking about the subjective, personal and selfish purpose of the juridical operator, and not of the objective and social purpose of the norm.

On hearing this, tear his gown whoever may wish to do so, but such is the reality, and I prefer to be condemned for scandal rather than being taken for a fool." 

(To be continued)

Go to Chapter

Go back to Chapter II

The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution. II

The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution

By Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado

(Continued)

II. Function and Sacral Character of Authority

"You would have no power over me had

it not been given to you from above"

John XIX - 11

To exercise authority is to serve; not get served from it, from its function, from its power, from its ability to sacrifice the general interest in favor of unspeakable purposes. This principle we find glossed by Argentinian poet Leopoldo Marechal, but is ridiculed ad nauseam these days

            If you are offered a post where you are conspicuous

           accept it by reason of your merit alone

          look ahead to the fruits you will give to your people

          if an elm tree you are, refuse as a pear tree to serve

          otherwise you'll become just a counterfeit pear tree

          aside from becoming a dishonest elm.

Or by Saint Exupery in his posthumous work, Citadelle, in which he impugns the attitude so frequently endured by the peoples at the hand of the holders of power who serve of it themselves to satisfy their vanities and whims, and to promote their own business enterprises or those of their relatives.

          Positions and functions of high rank do tempt

          with the ever defenseless public gold

          or with the glitter of an investiture.

          Joseph, don't put your hands ever on monies

          which to your laudable virtue are entrusted...

          And regarding the glitter on you imposed,

          with coldness and indifference you'll carry

          as who out of obligation has to don

          a frac of persnickety decorum...

Such is the moral justification of authority; that's what it exists for, its limits are not capricious; if authority is made an instrument to attain other ends, it loses its legitimacy and credibility. Little does it matter whether its origin is legitimate if it is not ordered to the common good. Its misuse is the reason why rebellion against constituted autorities proliferates ever more these days. In face of this, subordinates distrust authority to such an extent, that an eagerness to prevaricate by anyone who holds an investiture is presumed until the contrary is proven, and unfortunately this is what happens now in contemporary society, in the public and the private spheres, there is no institution, no matter how respectable it may be, that can keep safe from this stigma,

And why? Why such a panorama? What is the cause?

Multiple explanations we find every day; from those who claim the inexorable emerging of a new morality which has nothing to do with that of our elders, to economy-centered explanations of social facts, passing through a multifarious libertarian fundamentalism which ends up erecting man as a subject of absolute rights.

Hazarding being accused of being a neo-Taliban fundamentalist, I have always believed that the loss of the sacral sense of authority is the only cause of its collapse. This loss is why those who exercise it believe that nothing limits them, but only their whim, their interest; how easy it is to prevaricate in such a way, and because of that, those who owe obedience see only unbearable arbitrariness in its exercise. That all authority comes from God as its supreme source is one thing, and a very different one is that its origin be an opinion poll. An authority based only on the threat of coaction, and which does not obligate in conscience is doomed to undergo perpetual disobedience; when duty is not lived as ethical or sacred, when it is considred just a hypothetical imperative, it is obeyed only before the presence of the police, and it is infringed whenever impunity seems to be certain. In vain will we make any efforts to reestablish order, any order, if we refuse to recognize to the author of order, to Him who told us "I am the way, the truth and the life", His kingship over consciences, over society, over law, over the State, over morals. In intellectual life, and in social life.

(to be continued)

Go to part I

The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution. I

The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution

By Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado 
Professor of Philosophy of the Law and of Constitutional Law at Universidad de Santo Tomás in Bucaramanga, Colombia


Lecture delivered at the Aula Máxima de las Universidades Católica y Piloto in Colombia, on occasion of the visit of Prince Sixto Enrique de Borbón y Parma during the Foro Internacional Universitario - Identidad y Legado Histórico on February 4, 2005

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

I. The Spanish Heritage of our Juridical Institutions

When I was invited by the organizers to participate in this Forum, several were the topics that came to my mind and I pondered for several days before choosing the definitive one I am going to present to you today.

I had first chosen a topic related to the juridical heritage of Spain in America, I had intended to point out that juridical institutions had disappeared with the advent of the Republic, which many years later returned to our code in a traumatic way. It would suffice to cite some of them:

• The eight-hour workday: 250 years before the issuance of Decree 2663 in 1950 we could find it in the Leyes de Indias.
• The action to protect fundamental rights: 311 years before it got consecrated in our Constitution of 1991; one century before the Declaration of the Rights of Man in the Virginia Constitution, it had already been contained in the Leyes de Indias under the name of 'recurso de amparo', to guarantee the rights if the Indians against abuses by 'encomienda' holders. I cannot understand why these days we find so many teachers of constitutional law or some public law treatise writers who, due to ignorance or on account of sectarianism, pretend to find the genesis of such institution in the Virginia Constitution or in the universal declaration of the rights of man.

Such social policy had no equal in any legal code at the time.

Because of institutions as beneficial as the aforementioned, the process of independence was much more a civil war than anything else, in which frequently the blacks and the Indians almost unanimously embraced the royalist cause, offering their lives in favor of the Crown. Let us recall, among others, the most noted one in history, that of Indian Agustín Agualongo. With good reason, General Joaquín Posada Gutiérrez, hero of our independence and very close to Bolívar, presents us with this testimony beyond suspicion:

"I have said hostile towns because it is necessary that it be known that the independence was unpopular among the generality of the people... the Spanish armies were made up four fifths of sons of the land, that Indians in general were tenacious defenders of the King's Government, as they had the presentment that as tributaries they were much happier than how they would be as citizens of the Republic."

An author in no way suspicious of confessionalism as is Alfonso López Michelsen corroborates this by affirming in his textbook 'Introduction to Constitutional Law':

"The constant preoccupation of Spanish monarchs, especially those of the Austrian Dynasty, to improve the condition of the Indians, in bringing and incorporating them into the Spanish civilization under the tutelage of the Crown, was an incomprehensible purpose for the Anglo-Saxon capitalists which were colonizing North America at the time. The purely practical criterion of these colonizers was to oust the redskins towards the West, removing them gradually from the fertile regions where the skin trade was being profitably conducted. Hence, whereas the Spanish legislation for the indies is an imperishable monument of wisdom, nothing similar exists among the English and Dutch of the time. At the end, the redskins and the rest of the North American tribes were practically exterminated, without a trace having been left there of any civilizing purpose on the part of the British Crown or of evangelization on the part of the Protestant churches."

On the other hand, Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, who traveled through America at the beginning of the eighteenth century brings us this extraordinary testimony:

"The Indian peasant is poor, but he is free. His status is much preferable to the one of Northern Europe. Much happier we would perhaps find the fate of the Indians if we were to compare it with that of the peasants in Courland, Russia, or a large portion of Northern Germany,"

At some moment I was tempted to expound on 'the controls imposed on the administration during the colonial period', a topic often overlooked by our Frenchified writers of treatises on Colombian constitutional history, Enlightenment on that topic came not from France or England; they come from the land of Isabella and Ferdinand. Alfonso López himself in the same cited text says:

"The greatest mirage in this process was the adoption of the liberties consecrated by the Saxons in their public law as something new, signifying a great step forward in the political progress of our institutions. This would be tantamount to accepting that before the independence, the rights of man had not been recognized or respected in America, a precarious and unprovable thesis, in our mind.

That they were not consecrated in splendid constitutions under the name of Rights of Man or of the Citizen is evident, but that they were not recognized is quite debatable, since the existence of a natural law is a distinguishing characteristic of Spanish law. So it happened that many laws which violated these principles remained unapplied, with the classic 'it is obeyed but is not complied with', which was then the brief and summary formula with which an inconvenient law or one contrary to what was understood to be natural law was suspended, just as now a law can de declared inapplicable by the Supreme Court when it is contrary to the Constitution"

I also thought of referring to the consequences which for our nationality had the abandonment of Hispanic law and the adoption of the Anglo-Saxon and North American political doctrine, showing how the latter is the cause of a great portion of our institutional calamities,

But those topics, notwithstanding their academic importance, I quickly discarded, because the presence of Spain was much more than that, the political and social institutions were instruments to insert us in a culture, in a civilization, in the Western Christian civilization. How different is the Spanish presence in America with respect to that of other powers in other territories! While in the former, the conqueror appeared to the side of the evangelizer, in the latter the colonizer appeared to the side of the bottle of whiskey and the factory. While here, as a consequence of the Christian spirit, a new ethnicity emerged, the 'cosmic race'; there, after annihilating the natives, carried those displaced by the Protestant inquisition to consolidate the conquest.

It is necessary to remember that Hispanism cannot be understood away from Catholicity; the principles of the Church impregnated the customs, the culture, the law, education — which was Christian, the family, the social environment, all had that mark.

But now we live in a post-modern and post-Christian time. Modernity notwithstanding, until well advanced the twentieth century, Christian institutions still subsisted which little by little are being dismantled. This seems to be the condition to be admitted to the world village. An efficacious instrument for such dismantling in the countries of Hispanic tradition has been the adoption by the Constitutional Judge, of the school of juridical interpretation known as the new law, which at first sight appears with unspeakable attractions especially for those who, fed up with the strict formalism of positivism, consider with juridical realism, that law is the objectively just; but beyond the appearances, underlies the most radical privatizing individualism, even of the common good; it is the juridical expression of the Promethean sign of the times and of the designers of the New World Order who, by means of such a conception, intend the compulsive homogenization carried to the spiritual, cultural and juridical plane.

This compels me to address the topic which I now present to your consideration, which I ventured to title in a rather suggestive way, 'The New Law, the New World Order, and the Cultural Revolution' which have a close relationship among themselves and share a deep de-Christianizing disposition, and thus are dissolving of the Hispanic traditions.


(to be continued)

Go to part II

The Visit

The Visit

By Luis G. Urbina (Mexican poet 1864 - 1934)

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

She has to come. She will come.
When? I don't know. But quite soon.
I can now listen to her far-off voice 
and her footsteps I do hear.

Open the door, soul, no need's there for her to knock
and set all things in right order
the hearth put out, the house neat,
the candle of the faith at the back.

She has to come. She'll come quietly,
taking me in her arms just as 
the mother of a child who, tired,
comes back from the woods and creek hopping.
In a low voice I will tell her — Welcome —,
and without fear or amazement,
will surrender myself to the Mystery,
I'll think of God and then close my eyes

Empire-phobia and the Black Legend

Empire-phobia and the Black Legend

by Javier Torres

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

Historian Elvira Roca, author of "Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra", (Empire-phobia and the Black Legend), puts on the eighteenth-century Spanish elites the responsibility of assimilating uncritically the French doctrine of the Enlightenment, greatly responsible for the negative image of the Spanish Empire which had dominated the world since the sixteenth century.

It is not often that a historical essay keeps itself on the best-selling books list. But historian Elvira Roca (b. El Borge, Malaga, 1966), researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), has accomplished this.

And with a politically incorrect thesis, at that. She has sunk her teeth in a centuries-old Taboo topic, the black legend which Spain has been wearing as a sanbenito.

The book, "Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra" (editorial Siruela), breaks apart the topics which so successfully had been erected by the enemies of Hispanism. Myths which talk about an obscure and backward Spain despite it having carried its faith to America and having been the foremost world power in the sixteenth century. A stigma from which it could never get rid of.

Elvira Roca claims that none of that would have happened without the bandwagonism of the Spanish intellectuals of the Enlightenment, or the pessimism of the generation of 1898, which helped assimilating and propagating the poisoned narrative cooked on the fire of the lights of the Enlightenment: Spain is guilty.

Having interiorized the complex, the Spanish elites repeated uncritically the Enlightenment doctrine, quite the opposite of what was happening in our neighboring country: Voltaire, who spent his life exiled from a France which prohibited his books, never wrote anything which could suppose an affront to his country. All comparisons are odious.

In her book, Roca recollects that institutions such as the Inquisition, or episodes such as the expulsion of the Jews — something that has been repeated in other European nations at other historical moments — were magnified in such a way that they still burden the imagery of the Spanish collective guilt.

Interview with Elvira Roca:

Is the bad press regarding Spain and its Empire the price to pay for its conquest of America?

It is the price to pay for many things. The anti-Spanish propaganda was useful at a moment in history as part of Protestantism's self-justification, and of several nationalisms; it was a kind of dual mentality which makes up an enemy and transforms it into a devil. The question is not that our history is free from errors and mistakes just as that of any other nation, the matter is the peculiar position that those errors occupy in the European imagery,

Some examples of errors and mistakes in other countries.

The history of France contains very shameful acts, some of them in the twentieth century, but on France has not befallen any general disrepute nor any indictment of anomalous and ignorant people among the whole of Europe. In Spain, that current has been produced with cases which have not in any way been anomalous in European history.

"With the arrival of the Bourbons, our elites copied the Enlightened French and assimilated the idea that there had never been a case of religious intolerance comparable to the Spanish Inquisition"

For example?

The expulsion of the Jews, In no place has it taken the peculiar connotations which it has acquired in our history. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 seems to be unique when actually it was not so; it is something which has occurred in Europe over many centuries. Why is it that in our case it is peculiar and not in others?

Sánchez Dragó wrote the essay "And if he talks badly of Spain, he is Spanish" in which he pictures our complexes and legends. Do we happen to be the main enthusiasts of the black legend?

We have assumed it with absolute enthusiasm. In the eighteenth century the Bourbons arrive, and with them the Hispanophobe French Enlightenment: anything that was prejudicial to Spain was useful to France. But our elites copied the French Enlightened, and propitiated an assimilation that maintains that there had never been a case of religious intolerance comparable to the Spanish Inquisition, when exactly the opposite is the case.

The opposite?

Religious intolerance should be hung around the neck of Protestant peoples, which were much greater persecutors than the Inquisition.

Was there never a reaction to such current?

Our elites generated the tradition by which, if you want to be a prestigious intellectual in Spain, you have to be critical of our country to the point of exhaustion. But that was the only thing imitated from the Enlightenment, because the French Enlightenment always worked favoring the creation of France as a world power. Voltaire passed his life exiled from a France that prohibited his books. But you can never find in Voltaire a single criticism to his country! He could have said that liberty and culture were being persecuted there, but he said nothing of the sort. And not only him, none of the French intellectuals of the Enlightenment wrote anything against France, on the contrary, for them France is the most beautiful country in Europe, where more liberty exists, where the lights of reason shine. 

In other words, the supposed intellectual vanguard of Spain in the eighteenth century actually assumes a foreign doctrine.

The Spanish intellectuals of the eighteenth century, which were persecuted much less than in France, repeat as a mantra the French topic that Spain is a country in which there is no liberty, and culture and science are persecuted. This has created a tradition which keeps alive today.

To what extent did the decline of the Empire in America exert an influence?

The end of the American colonies did not help, either; and towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Spanish elites justify the national crisis resorting to the topics of the black legend: Spain deserves it, this had to end badly because we have been the most intolerant, the champions of the lack of liberty. And so, it is assumed that the blame for the fall of the empire falls on those who built it in the sixteenth century. An absurdity, of course; what would have been logical was to analyze what was occurring in our nineteenth century to explain the collapse of the Empire.

Did the pessimism after the Disaster of 1898 come to stay forever?

The generation of 1898 was incapable of facing the problem which history placed in front of them, and ended up assuming the topics on Spain. But if we analyze the arguments against the Empire one by one, it is not too difficult to dismantle the absurdity of the black legend. What was easier for the relief of that generation was to blame the Inquisition. All except me!

Is it impossible to build up an Empire without having to bear a black legend?

It is almost impossible. I have not studied all of the empires, but in general lines, all share that shadow propitiated in great part by envy. Something happens now with the United States, that we even dress our kids for Halloween, we copy their catastrophic cuisine. There is also a fever for the language, and not because the Sixth Fleet has come to force us to open an academy in our neighborhood. We do it because we want it. And all this at the end generates sentiments of resentment or envy which require a simple explanation. All this generates empire-phobia. Well, that same thing happened with Spain in sixteenth century Europe: Spanish ways were imitated, the Spanish language was studied, and all this distilled an enormous unease.

Would the Black Legend exist had the first conquerors of America not been Spaniards?

The example is in North America, where there had been a conquest, and that has neither been an argument for thinking that all of the English are barbarians nor for thinking that the North Americans have been so since the independence of the thirteen colonies. Spanish America is full of Indians and blood mixing, whereas that does not exist in the North, and what little there exists comes from the pre-existing Spanish population, since one half of the US territories had belonged to the Spanish Empire. A half-Navajo friend of mine from Texas once told me: "I have never emigrated. It were the United States the ones who came to my home" Few Indians were able to survive in the territories that they occupied from the East to the West.

Not all colonizations were the same, of course.

The Enlightened never saw the Spanish cities, hospitals, universities or cathedrals in America. Nor the Leyes de Indias (laws of the indies), nor the mixing, nor the population growth; neither did they talk of the French taste for scalping, or of the French having never been capable of building a city in America in a century and a half. Nothing did the French ever leave in America. Nevertheless, they spent their life talking of the shame which Spain supposedly meant for humanity.

"The idea that Spain colonized the southern part of America and the result is poverty whereas the British colonized the North and the result is wealth is false."

In contrast, Spain left universities and cathedrals, You may be right in that about envy.

Only in Spanish America were there universities. The British empire during its second expansion left only four. Spain left a spectacular educational infrastructure. The pain and sorrow is that it was destroyed in great part after the independence, period during which Spanish America suffers total impoverishment. The idea that Spain colonized the southern part of America and the result is poverty whereas the British colonized the North and the result is wealth is false.

Another myth?

When the wars for independence started, the Spanish Viceroyships were much richer than the thirteen North American colonies. And this can be measured in terms of population, demography, justice, speed of mail, purchasing power, educational system... After the independence from Spain, however, everything collapsed in a few decades: the South impoverished itself by leaps and bounds, while the Anglo-Saxon North grew fast. The supposed 'liberation from Spanish tyranny' resulted in a brutal impoverishment of the population. In fifty years they passed from being at the head of the train to the tail.

In just one day during the French Revolution, more people were murdered than in the almost four centuries of the Inquisition. Why is it that some do all the misdeeds and others are given the blame?

We study the French Revolution as if it had been a great achievement for humanity. I perceive a certain ineptitude among Catholics in dealing with the propaganda and controlling the public opinion prevailing over them. This battle was lost at the moment Protestantism got the peoples of Southern Europe assume their moral inferiority. Spain gets the beating mostly because of its ineptitude. We don't get to see that, on the other side, a self-interested and manipulated public opinion is being generated This staging is not casual.

"Protestants grew with the notion that a perverted religion had existed, a wicked Christianity and a degraded message from Jesus Christ had existed (the Roman Church)"

Do we keep seeing this today?

That all of Europe should have gone to Germany to put their money during the last crisis, when it has been the Germans the ones responsible for three successive bankruptcies, says it all. The Germans have never in their life paid their debts. Since the time of Bismarck, they drag a history of non-payments. But nonetheless, the whole world knocks on the doors of the German banks to leave their money there. Spain, on the contrary, paid her debt with the United States after the war of 1898, assuming the Cuban one in addition.

Is the black legend built against Spain comparable to that of other empires, such as Rome, the United States or Russia?

It is very difficult to try to measure the virulence of any propaganda against Rome, but we can measure the one against the USA. But I would like to emphasize that the only case of empire-phobia in Europe is that against Spain, and the importance it has in our setting is decisive: Protestants grew with the notion that a perverted religion had existed, a wicked Christianity, and a degraded message from Jesus Christ had existed (the Roman Church).

By happenstance, could Catholicism be what inspired the enemies of Spain to construct the Black Legend?

No, not at all. It is all the way around. They use Catholicism as an alibi. Had it not been Catholicism it would have been something else; they needed to fabricate something to put them in a position of moral superiority. It was necessary to attack Spain and the bases of its morality insofar as it was a powerful empire. Spain had a position in the world contrary to the national churches such as that existing in England. Spain could do nothing more than defend Catholicism which in turn defends a supranational morality; that is to say, it does not belong to any nation nor to any king. On the contrary, the protestant churches are property of the nations to the front of which kings or Lutheran princes had put themselves. The Spanish Empire always defended the position that religion is above all nations.

A Sonnet to Death

A Sonnet to Death

To my mother´s death

By Amalia de Estrada

Taken from http://lascadenasdeobligado.blogspot.com/

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

You are pictured without flesh, wielding a scythe
With your ugliness hidden a black cloak behind 
You're looked at with great fear as well as fright
Just like the vermin are commonly looked at.

Your name is uttered with rancor and with rage
You are greeted with weeping and with wail!
Only the Christian soul, that of the saint
By your fiery appearance is not beguiled.

A messenger from God, who calls all men, 
So as to give them that life which never dies,
Beatific vision for those who love Him.

I am not going to sing you a Miserere
With its lugubrious tone, but a Hossana!
Unless we die,  we cannot go to Heaven.

Se Cierne la Tormenta

Se cierne la tormenta

Tomado de Christian Order, febrero de 2019

Traducido del ingles por Roberto Hope

Macron: "¿Por qué hay miles de personas allá afuera?"

Funcionario: "Son el pueblo de Francia, que viene a decirle adiós, Señor Presidente."

Macron: "¿Y a dónde van?

Podemos disfrutar de un chiste aun cuando percibimos su gravemente seria alusión a la brigada del Nuevo Orden Mundial. Pinta a Monsieur Président de la République como un retroceso al feudalismo: un orquestador del caos del siglo veintiuno quien, ante los campesinos sublevados despliega el mismo sentido de superioridad, privilegio y egoísmo que ellos siempre le han atribuido a sus bêtes noires, los monarcas del pavoroso Ancien Regime, como si dijera: "¡ustedes, hordas engreídas, pueden comer lodo, pero nosotros nos mantenemos apegados a nuestro foie gras y Sauterne añejo! ¡Largo de aquí!

Insufrible y peligrosa, esta pomposidad distintiva conforma la ventajosa actitud criminal de los globalistas a costa del bien común, aislándose de las masas que ellos despiadadamente manipulan y explotan, a la vez que venden a sus naciones y sus derechos naturales. De hecho las protestas de éstas últimas que ahora estallan por todo el Occidente, son incomprensibles para los ricos, apátridas, trans-nacionalistas, faltos de sentimientos patrióticos y ajenos a la vida y a las preocupaciones ordinarias.

Emmanuel Macron es el epítome del tipo.

Ex-banquero de inversión de Rothschild & Cie. (banco francés perteneciente a Rothschild & Co), hasta el mismo predecesor presidencial de Macron y camarada socialista de champaña, Francoise Hollande lo ha llamado "el presidente de los muy ricos" o, lo que es lo mismo, el más reciente autonombrado títere producido por la Casa Rothschild para promover sus intereses.

¿Qué esperanza tiene esa criatura fabricada, de privilegio masónico, de comprender a los gilets jaunes (chalecos amarillos) y a los millones de personas por todo el país, que éstos representan, hartados de la injusta, interesada, incompetente clase dirigente personificada por el propio Emmanuel?

Como lo alude nuestro chiste; exactamente cero.

Que es por lo que el movimiento sigue avanzando: 27,000 manifestantes reunidos en el décimo fin de semana consecutivo al momento en que esto escribo. Haciendo eco de estos puntos, el comentarista francés independiente, François Maceron, observó que el único sorprendido es el gobierno.

"Mientras sigan las causas, el movimiento va a persistir. Hasta ahora no ha habido una respuesta seria a las inquietudes expresadas por los chalecos amarillos. Todo lo contrario."

"En tanto que los chalecos amarillos son gente de clase media, que está luchando por sobrevivir, quienes exigen que se detenga el aumento del impuesto [al diesel], el gobierno se encarga de cuidar a los que no tienen dónde vivir y a los desempleados, todas las diferentes categorías que viven de la ayuda social. A mediano plazo, esto significa que las clases medias habrán de ser todavía más castigadas. [Así, el gobierno] hará lo contrario de lo que se le pide."

"Debe de pasada observarse que este gobierno, y los tecnócratas que lo apoyan, no son seres superiores como tratan de hacer creer, sino amateurs que no tienen idea de la realidad social ni del terreno que han visto sólo desde las ventanas del ENA. [Medias-Presse.Info, 10/1/19].

La escuela élite para los servidores públicos, de los cuales Macron es un producto de vía rápida típico [habiendo sido lanzado en paracaídas a un alto cargo en el servicio civil a la corta edad de 27 años], L’Ecole d’Administration Nationale (ENA) representa "el interminable ciclo protegido de patronazgo, promoción, favoritismo y amiguismo." Como lo observa el blog Quid Verum, "la ENA tiene un completo y absoluto control sobre el estado francés. Sólo cien estudiantes se gradúan cada año." Como consecuencia, la ENA se ha vuelto una "casta élite auto-replicante — y un pase de admisión a la clase gobernante francesa."

Sorprendentemente, todo presidente francés desde de Gaulle ha sido un graduado de la ENA, con la excepción de Georges Pompidou, que estudió en Sciences Po [Institut d'Études Politiques de París, la segunda escuela élite]. Ocho de los últimos diez primeros ministros han sido enarques. Todos los departamentos del gobierno/servicio civil son dirigidos por enarques, ¿Y qué hay de los negocios? El 84% de los 546 altos ejecutivos de las 40 compañías más grandes de Francia son graduados de un puñado de escuelas élite. El 48% provienen de la ENA y de Sciences Po.

Esta connivencia sistémica es lo que produjo el movimiento de protesta, que meramente fue desencadenado por un impuesto al diesel, pero que ha estado gestándose durante décadas. Quid Verum sigue diciendo:

"Las élites francesas son hombres y mujeres jóvenes a quienes se les ha dicho no solamente que son la créme de la créme de los intelectuales, sino que son moralmente superiores. Seres humanos mejores que sus inferiores.

Esta gente es arrogante, pero también es ignorante. Criados en familias muy adineradas y mimados en las redes de las que son parte esas familias, no tienen idea de lo que es la gente común ni de cómo es su vida.

La arrogancia unida a la ignorancia producen una mezcla muy tóxica. El echar mano al cambio climático por parte de Macron para justificar los impuestos al diesel, así como su indignante sugerencia de que los franceses comunes viajen menos en auto, son un ejemplo clásico del problema.

Et voilá, el meollo del asunto en países por todo el orbe.

Élites culpando a la gente ignorante por los problemas que las mismas élites han causado. Élites jamás siendo llamadas a cuentas por su incompetencia. Y élites jamás teniendo que experimentar en carne propia las condiciones causadas por sus ideas fallidas.

Los franceses están cansados de ser sujetados en cadenas por la clase gobernante. Están cansados de ser pobres y de estar desempleados.

Quieren una nueva dirección para su amada nación.

¿Suena familiar?

Traición y disgusto

¡Pudiera decirse!

Detrás del 'nacionalismo' y del 'populismo' que se desata por todas partes está una exasperación semejante con la 'clase gobernante' globalista. Los mismos tipos que han tratado de hacer fracasar el Brexit — en muchos casos escupiéndoles en la cara a la mayoría de sus propios electores.

Deprimidos por el temor de que Gran Bretaña deje a sus 'mejores compañeros del mundo' — los australianos — 'desamparados' por otros 40 años, el ex-Alto Comisionado Alexander Downer recalcó recientemente la farsa que hemos tenido que aguantar desde las 4:40 de la mañana del 24 de junio de 2016, cuando fue confirmado extraoficialmente el resultado del referendo. En el Sunday Express del 20 de enero, Downer se lamentaba de que:

Él pueblo inglés votó por abandonar la Unión Europea, pero dos tercios del parlamento no estuvo de acuerdo con la decisión del pueblo. Docenas de arteras estratagemas están siendo utilizadas para desafiar la voluntad del pueblo.... ¿El plan? hacer que se cancele el Brexit.

En tanto que reprochan a quienquiera que asocie las raíces Nazis de la Unión Europea con sus frutos dictatoriales, la clase dirigente simultáneamente ha organizado una campaña de propaganda digna de Goebbels — el Proyecto Pavor..

Interminables escenarios del peor de los casos al dejar la Unión Europea son pregonados por los globalistas de arriba a abajo, desde el gobernador del Banco de Inglaterra (el canadiense Mark Carney, ex funcionario de Goldman Sachs) hasta los desalmados socialistas de champaña de extrema izquierda del grupo Momentum del Partido Laborista, y todo utópico 'progresista' de sofá que haya entre unos y otros.

La vida británica fuera de la Unión Europea (léase Bruselas-Berlín-Paris) se pinta en términos apocalípticos, haciendo caso omiso de los intereses comerciales de regiones tan importantes como Baviera; o sea, las regiones de la Unión Europea que por necesidad económica exigirán que se logre un arreglo con la rica Gran Bretaña, sea antes o después de la fecha límite del 29 de marzo. Pronósticos nefastos (que nunca se materializan) son aceptados sin crítica alguna por la BBC y los medios controlados de comunicación corporativos, que luego se los imponen a un público mal servido y terriblemente engañado,

Y, sin embargo, a pesar del caos artificial que ha embrollado al Brexit desde el principio gracias al histérico empecinamiento de los medios ultra-eurófilos; una reciente encuesta de ComRes determinó que la mayoría de los votantes (53%) siguen queriendo que se respete el resultado del referéndum: Menos de un tercio de los votantes (31%) quiere que se cancele el Brexit o que se haga un segundo referéndum sobre las relaciones entre el Reino Unido y la Unión Europea [Daily Express, 17 ene 2019]

Considerando las circunstancias adversas, éstas son cifras notables. Además, la nauseabunda traición bipartita produjo juicios condenatorios. 

Sólo el 10% de los votantes encuestados piensa que los políticos están al tanto del estado de ánimo del país, en tanto que el 74 % expresó su desacuerdo con esa afirmación.

Casi cuatro de cada cinco (79%) está en desacuerdo con la afirmación de que el Parlamento está saliendo con buena cara del proceso Brexit', con sentimientos similares entre los votantes conservadores y los laboristas.

Todavía más al punto; en respuesta al planteamiento: "El proceso Brexit ha demostrado que la generación actual de políticos no está a la altura de su cargo" el 75% estuvo de acuerdo. 

Además, grandes mayorías consideran que el actual sistema político no ha dejado que su voz sea escuchada (67%) y quiere una lista de reformas radicales para llevar a efecto una completa reconstrucción del sistema político británico (72%). Éstas incluyen una demanda de mayor descentralización en la toma de decisiones; una perspectiva Brexit en total contraposición con la autoritaria Bruselas.

Quizás el más indicativo y portentoso de todos los resultados, el 52% de los votantes concordaba con esta afirmación: "Theresa May está en lo correcto al advertir que si Brexit se detiene, causará "una catastrófica e imperdonable violación de la confianza en nuestra democracia." Sólo el 26% de los votantes manifestaron su desacuerdo.

Distantes y carentes de todo sentido común, los ocupantes de la burbuja de Westminster se mantienen despreocupados de las consecuencias últimas señaladas en el resultado de esa encuesta — seria agitación social. De manera semejante, despreocupadamente ignoran el precedente potencialmente anárquico del parlamento secuestrando el proceso Brexit para echar abajo la voluntad expresada por 17.4 millones de votantes. Esto hace recordar el choque revolucionario que tuvo Oliver Cromwell con el parlamento, como lo observó el Presidente del Comité de Escrutinio Europeo de la Cámara de los Comunes, Sir Bill Cash, así como el ex Secretario de Brexit, David Davis durante la audiencia sobre el avance de la separación de la Unión Europea, televisada el 16 de enero.

Violencia sin límites

Por supuesto, la revolución sangrienta es más un pasatiempo francés que uno inglés. Pero los encabezados de noticias que proclaman la movilización de las fuerzas armadas en el caso de que un Brexit 'intransigente' cristalice en un aumento en la violencia contra los despreciados 'nacionalistas' de todas partes. 

Ataques brutales por toda Europa y los Estados Unidos son ahora el pan de todos los días. Considere también que la rama alemana de la 'Antifa' financiada por Soros son todavía más violentos y están mejor organizados que sus equivalentes en los Estados Unidos: la consignas que gritaban éstos últimos — "No Trump! No Wall! No USA at all!" (No a Trump! No al Muro! No a los EU en absoluto!) — conduciendo la estrategia de 'divide y vencerás' del Nuevo Orden Mundial que busca convertir a Occidente en una distopia comunista sin fronteras.

Sin embargo, tal como la prensa cómplice deja a los mecenas de Antifa, como Soros, que prosigan con su proyecto devastador año tras año, enriqueciendo a los oligarcas (incluyendo a los dueños de los medios masivos de comunicación) y al mismo tiempo endilguen niveles insostenibles de deuda nacional sobre la generación actual y las futuras, de la misma manera, los camisas cafés operan también impunemente. Son raros los arrestos y las reacciones policiales enérgicas.

De manera típica, el pasado noviembre, un grupo afiliado a Antifa ("Smash Racism DC") cayó en la residencia del conductor de noticias de Fox News, Tucker Carlson con la misión, que ellos mismos reconocieron, de provocar 'temor' en su familia. Gritando en el jardín frente a su casa, "Tucker Carlson, lucharemos. Sabemos dónde duermes en la noche," también se lanzaron contra la puerta del frente, rajándola. Carlson y sus cuatro hijos habían salido. Pero su aterrorizada esposa, sola en su casa, se encerró en una alacena y llamó a la policía, que llegó minutos más tarde.

La chusma 'acabó dispersándose' informó Fox, pero no se sabe si se hicieron arrestos. Ante tan osada y extrema criminalidad, ¿cómo pudo ser eso posible? Y ¿por qué es la ausencia de una rápida y bien publicitada justicia el patrón indiferente?

No era una protesta. Era una amenaza. No protestaban nada específico que yo hubiera dicho. No me pedían que cambiara nada. No estaban protestando una política o propugnando alguna legislación. Estaban amenazándome así como a mi familia y diciéndome que abandonara mi vecindario en la ciudad donde me crié.

Despreocupada y aparentemente intocable, la chusma de Smash Racism DC había prometido públicamente en una entrada en Facebook del 3 de noviembre de 2018 que "pronto la clase gobernante va a añorar los días cuando meramente les arruinábamos la cena." Suena cómicamente Bolchevique. Como se demostró en la residencia de Carlson cuatro días más tarde, sin embargo, no son cuestión de risa las palabras y acciones cada vez más violentas de los personajes y grupos de izquierda.

Las protestas contra el Juez de la Suprema Corte Brett Kavanaugh vio gritos iracundos, intentos casi constantes de silenciar con gritos las audiencias del comité, y hasta intentos de allanar el edificio de la Suprema Corte cuando el nuevo Juez protestaba su juramento de toma de posesión del cargo. Manifestantes también persiguieron a muchos diputados Republicanos a su paso por el Reagan National Airport, y agredieron a Republicanos en los salones de los edificios de oficinas del Senado.

Varios Demócratas prominentes, incluyendo al ex-procurador general Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, y el Senador Cory Booker también han alentado a sus seguidores a confrontar personalmente a los Republicanos. La candidata presidencial fracasada Hillary Clinton declaró que los demócratas no deberían ser "comedidos" con los Republicanos hasta recuperar el Senado, y la Senadora Mazie Hirono se rehusó a declarar que los manifestantes no debieran perseguir a los Republicanos hasta sus casas o a restaurantes [Life Site News]

El punto es que no debemos esperar mucha ayuda de la prensa o de las autoridades cuando se redoblan estos ataques dirigidos a patriotas respetuosos de la ley. François Maceron cita a un oficial de policía francés que dice: "En casos de perturbaciones al público, nuestra tarea es restaurar el tráfico normal. Nuestro papel normalmente no es hacer arrestos." Esto explica, dice él, por qué los criminales gozan de gran impunidad y siempre vuelven." Por el contrario, considérese el tratamiento de las protestas de los gilets jaunes, Bajo un verdaderamente impactante fotomontaje de caras y cuerpos ensangrentados, leemos el siguiente informe francés:

Un repaso de la represión policial contra los chalecos amarillos: 6,000 arrestos, 2,000 heridos, ojos reventados, manos arrancadas, quijadas estalladas, jóvenes deformados, gaseados y aporreados.

No, no se trata de Corea del Norte ni de China, ni de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela dirigida por el terrible Maduro, ni del Imperio de Putin tan odiado por la clase dirigente políticamente correcta! Estamos en Francia donde la corrupción del mundo político contemporáneo es digna de la Tercera República. Estamos bajo el gobierno de Macron que toma la apariencia de un pequeño dictador cubano encarando la ira de los chalecos amarillos.

Además de varios cientos de manifestantes severamente heridos, diez personas han sido muertas en medio de las protestas de los chalecos amarillos, como lo comenta Macron, "algunos criminales han tratado de aprovechar la excitación causada por el movimiento de los chalecos amarillos sea con propósitos de anarquía (destrucción, ataques contra la policía o contra edificios, vandalismo) o con el propósito de saquear." Pero, fiel a las formas:

Para eludir las reformas que no quiere hacer, incluyendo una importante reforma fiscal, el gobierno está tratando de desviar la atención hacia los criminales. El gobierno, ... ha utilizado [este elemento no representativo] y seguirá usándolo para desacreditar el movimiento de los chalecos amarillos, compuesto en general por gente de paz.

Brecha peligrosa

Para entender por qué un número creciente de "gente de paz" habría de hacer peligrar sus vidas tomando las calles de Francia, Italia, Estados Unidos, Alemania y otros lados es simplemente comprender la obscena y siempre creciente brecha entre los que tienen y los que no. Como lo reconoció la ex-presidente del Banco de la Reserva Federal, Janet Yellen, hace cuatro años:

No es un secreto que las pasadas pocas décadas de creciente desigualdad puede resumirse como incrementos significativos en su ingreso y riqueza para aquéllos que están en el nivel más alto, y estándares de vida estancados para la mayoría.

Las cifras son para dejarnos boquiabiertos — y son inquietantes. Como lo explicó un observador en una entrada del 13 de diciembre de 2018:

Según un informe del 2017 del Institute for Policy Studies, tres multimillonarios — Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet y Bill Gates — han amasado tanta riqueza como la mitad inferior de la sociedad americana. Esas son 160 millones de personas! O como lo informó Oxfam en enero de este año, la riqueza de ocho hombres (incluyendo los tres antes mencionados) es igual a la de la mitad de la gente del planeta en 2017. Vóitelas! Y sólo para darles una idea de a dónde nos dirigimos a velocidad supersónica, un reporte de Oxfam de un año antes, eran 62 los multimillonarios dueños de la mitad de la riqueza del planeta. Imagínense eso: de 62 a 8 personas en un solo año.

Luego considere lo que sabemos del surgimiento de la clase de los que poseen miles de millones. También según Oxfam, apareció un nuevo poseedor de más de mil millones cada dos días en 2017, en tanto que el 82% de la riqueza generada en este planeta ya se iba al 1% más alto de la población, y la mitad inferior de la población mundial no vio aumento alguno en su riqueza. En 2017 (año más reciente del que tenemos cifras) la riqueza total de la clase de los de más de mil millones se expandió en casi el 20%.

Nomi Prins, una ex-funcionaria en Wall Street y autora de "Collusion: Cómo los Banqueros Centrales Manipularon al Mundo" [2018], también observa:

Si la economía mundial está realmente floreciendo, como lo afirman muchos políticos ¿por qué es que los dirigentes y sus partidos en todo el mundo están siendo removidos de manera tan generalizada?

Una respuesta obvia: La 'recuperación' económica posterior a la Gran Recesión estuvo reservada en gran medida a los pocos que podían participar en los mercados financieros ascendentes de esos años, no para la mayoría que seguía trabajando más largas horas, a veces en múltiples empleos, solo para mantenerse a flote. En otra palabras, las buenas épocas han dejado fuera a tanta gente, como aquéllos luchando por mantener unos cuantos cientos de dólares en su cuenta bancaria para casos de emergencia o el 80% de los trabajadores americanos que viven al día.

Esta situación, peligrosamente injusta se refleja en la Francia ruda que yace debajo de la Francia refinada. Quid Verum explica;

Muchos siguen conociendo a Francia a través de la lente de las portadas de la revista Vogue: una nación de gente afluente, feliz, que vive en casas elegantes con vacaciones interminables, vino y comida. Una utopía de elegancia, estilo y chic 24/7.

Es importante observar que esa Francia no existe. Es el mundo de la clase gobernante francesa, menos del 1% de la población.

¿Cree usted conocer la verdadera Francia? Aquí van algunos datos que podrían sorprenderle:

El estado francés ha estado en bancarrota desde el 2004. Finalmente lo reconoció un ministro en 2013.

El PIB de Francia no ha subido arriba del 2% en 50 años.

En 2018, el 14% de la población de Francia vive debajo de la línea de pobreza (ganan menos de el 60% del ingreso medio)

Peor, más del 50% de los franceses tienen un ingreso anual de menos de 20,150 euros al año (como unos $1,900 dólares al mes)

La tasa oficial de desempleo es del 10% — como 3.5 millones de ciudadanos (en realidad es mucho mayor). El desempleo en los jóvenes es del 22%. Sí, lo leyó usted correctamente,

Asombroso pero cierto: el gobierno de Francia emplea al 25% del total de la fuerza de trabajo francesa, y es imposible despedirlos.

Si tan grande y creciente desigualdad está enfilada a una seria violencia civil que hará que los choques del los gilets jaunes parezcan leves, la insensible decisión de los Eurócratas de Bruselas, de otorgarse enormes aumentos en sus propios emolumentos este año, solamente va a inflamar más la situación.

Personificación de su propio interés globalista, el jefe de la Comisión de la Unión Europea, Jean Claude Juncker y el Presidente del Consejo de la Unión Europea, Donald Tusk, son los principales beneficiados. Cada uno se embolsará más de 350,000 libras esterlinas en 2019, haciendo que parezca pequeño el salario de Theresa May como primer ministro, de 150,000 libras esterlinas. 

Adicionalmente, Juncker recibe una prestación residencial de 36,844 libras esterlinas y una generosa cuenta de gastos, cuyos detalles se mantienen secretos. Y el año próximo tendrá derecho de recibir una pensión de por vida, de 52,500 libras esterlinas.

En tanto que los contribuyentes del Reino Unido batallan para lograr ganar para sufragar sus gastos, 250 millones de libras esterlinas se envían de Londres a Bruselas cada semana, con poco que mostrar a cambio. La ampliamente aumentada paga y prestaciones de Juncker y Cía costará 124 millones de libras esterlinas adicionales,

Si alguna vez hubo un ejemplo de ordeña del presupuesto de la Unión Europea, éste es. Juncker y sus compinches son arrogantes a más no poder, respondió David Davis. Arrogancia y desconsideración características, que sólo pueden acabar en lágrimas y sangre. Nomi Prins observa que:

En última instancia, lo que trasciende la geografía y la geopolítica es un subyacente nivel de descontento provocado por la economía del siglo veintiuno y una resultante brecha de desigualdad del tamaño del Gran Cañón, que sigue ampliándose. Vengan las protestas de la izquierda o de la derecha, lo que sigue siendo el meollo del asunto es cómo las políticas fallidas y las políticas apaga fuegos implementadas por todo el mundo, ya no funcionan; por lo menos no cuando se trata del los que no pertenecen al privilegiado 1%.

Y no se equivoquen, en vez de sacrificar su gran fortuna, el 1% hará que el sistema financiero caiga y va a echarle la culpa a Trump, al Brexit, o al 'nacionalismo'. Pueden hacer esto porque tienen reservas financieras y de capital para salir librados de una crisis, y en segundo lugar, como lo demuestra la historia, siempre se recuperan de los terremotos financieros que ellos mismos provocan. Lo que el Primer Ministro del Partido Laborista, Clement Atlee, dijo en su libro Partido Laborista en Perspectiva (1937) se mantiene cierto por todos lados.

Una y otra vez hemos visto que hay en este país otro poder distinto de aquél que tiene su asiento en Westminster. La City de Londres, un término conveniente para designar a una colección de intereses financieros, es capaz de imponerse contra el Gobierno de la Nación. Aquéllos que controlan el dinero pueden seguir una política interior y exterior contraria a la que ha sido decidida por el pueblo. [p, 179]

Él hizo eco de las advertencias de los presidentes Theodore Roosevelt y Dwight Eisenhower acerca de poderes obscuros que manejan el mundo; que podrán ver sus países en llamas antes de hacerse a un lado y poner en riesgo sus mal habidas ganancias y prebendas. A cualquiera que dude de su actual desesperación, capacidad, e intención, le basta con leer nuestros despachos regulares sobre la investigación de la enteramente manufacturada 'colusión rusa': una auto profesada 'póliza de seguro' del así llamado 'Deep State' (miembros influyentes del gobierno, que secretamente manipulan y controlan la política) para destruir a Donald Trump en el caso de que fuera electo. Dos años después, esta traidora operación sigue monopolizando engañosos encabezados que evitan mencionar sus orígenes políticos, los múltiples conflictos de interés del Procurador Especial Robert Muller y su equipo, y las partes inocentes arruinadas por sus tácticas de estado policíaco. Mientras tanto, la importantísima conspiración — un golpe transatlántico contra un presidente debidamente electo — permanece fuera de las noticias, Eso se llama poder bruto!

Un mundo occidental en el que la verdad y la justicia se pervierten tan flagrantemente, en el que a los trabajadores no sólo se les niega un salario justo, sino que se les tima, manipula y maltrata por el 1% superior, está mirando al fondo del cañón. Pues, la historia regularmente demuestra que hay límites a lo que la gente puede aguantar.

Una población puede tolerar ser guiada por una casta élite, mientra esa misma casta pueda proporcionarle beneficios sobre una base continua. Una vez que se comienza a agotar la capacidad de la élite de 'comprar' su consentimiento, la agitación y desobediencia civil están garantizadas.

Pero cuando una élite incompetente cambia, de privar de beneficios a los 'deplorables', a castigarlos y culparlos por la incompetencia de las propias élites, se está aproximando a terreno inexplorado.

Papa prejuiciado

Sería bueno que nuestro pontífice hiciera algunas de estas correlaciones. Pero está demasiado ocupado reprendiendo a los temidos 'populistas' que se resisten a sus afinidades globalistas y a su insensata promoción de fronteras abiertas.

Está ciego al actual cambio consistente en un alejamiento con respecto a los partidos políticos que anteriormente eran dominantes y de los sistemas que los acompañan [como] una verdadera forma de populismo, que genuinamente pondría las necesidades de la mayoría de la gente por encima de los pocos de la élite, construir cosas reales incluyendo infraestructura, promover una distribución orgánica de la riqueza. y estabilizar las economías por encima de los mercados financieros," como lo plantea Nomi Prins.

Tan reacio es Francisco a esta tendencia, que hasta llegó a abandonar el protocolo por evitar reunirse con el político más popular de Italia, el Ministro del Interior Matteo Salvini. "La Iglesia se ha rebajado a pelear contra nosotros. Lo esperaba," dijo Salvini recientemente.

El Papa que no juzga a los sodomitas, que dice no 'hacer' política, que tan cálidamente recibe a ilegales, transsexuales y otros pervertidos, que recomienda a China y otras dictaduras, juzga en cambio intocable e inaccesible al actual hombre fuerte de Italia. ¿Por qué? porque como los Trumpianos y los Brexistas, Salvini está recuperando el control de sus propias fronteras para detener la invasión de inmigrantes ilegales y reafirmar la soberanía y la identidad italianas,

Para este papado, Salvini y las corrientes trans-europeas que él representa — tratando de afirmar la prioridad de las familias católicas y hacer retroceder el hedonismo y el delirio de género — son una afrenta al globalismo y sus 'valores' elásticos, Y así, en un mundo asolado por una perfecta tormenta de comunidades polarizadas, tensiones socio políticas intensificadas, violencia anárquica, y creciente persecución de los cristianos — un mundo en el cual se llama al martirio — no es el Vicario de Cristo en la tierra sino personas como Trump, Orban y Salvini los que se han vuelto ejemplo en las batallas culturales, morales, y religiosas, abanderados de la identidad de los pueblos y de la civilización cristiana.

Qué vergüenza para Francisco! Sin embargo, como lo observa Maceron, bajo esa dirigencia seglar "los partidarios de una Europa de Naciones están más cerca unos de otros que nunca antes."

Con los húngaros, los italianos, y ahora los alemanes, los españoles así como todos los demás europeos que quieren, en paz y amistad dentro del continente, mantener la originalidad de su nación, uno ve la posibilidad de luchar contra las utopías uniformadoras y las oligarquías financieras y cosmopolitas que las apoyan,

Los gilets jaunes y los Brexistas completan esa justa coalición.

En cuanto a nuestra parte como católicos, con el papado en eclipse, debemos mirar más allá de Roma, hacia Santa Juana de Arco y hacia los mártires, para mantener la fe y adquirir la inspiración y la fortaleza necesarias para sufrir las tribulaciones que están por venir.