America's Real Conservative Choice For President

Much has been made about Barack Obama being a socialist and a Marxist by the dwindling white power base that is the decrpit Republican Party. But the reality is that tommorow America will have a choice between a real conservative President and a Republican. That choice of course is Barack Obama.

For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one.

His politics of unity; the third way, his appeal to Americans that they need to take personal responsibility for their families and their neighbours, his rise to power as an example of American meritocracy, his appeal to hard work, and a fair share for all, are traditional American conservative values, indeed they are the values of bourgoise enlightment exemplified by Freemasonry. His are the values of both Abraham Lincoln and FDR, not Ronald Reagan. After all prior to Regans unholy alliance of neo-cons, paleo-cons and evangelicals, conservatism was really just an outgrowth of 'classical liberalism'.

His endorsement by Colin Powell, as well as by other leading Republican's and conservatives such as Chris Buckley, shows that Obama's polics are more closely aligned to 'tradtional American values' than those of the evangelical right wing that hijacked the party of Goldwater.

And his promise to expand the war in Afghanistan means that he and Harper have something in comon despite the difference in their party labels. And Obama's Green Plan will coincide with the one that is still to be unvieled by the Harpocrites.


A Conservative For Obama
Ronald T. Wilcox
I'm a conservative. I've spent my money and my time in support of Republican candidates. I also support Barack Obama for president.
Modern conservatism is deeply rooted in ideas and political philosophy, in rational discourse and pragmatism. John Stuart Mill matters to conservatives.
Conservatives used to ask the tough questions and did not accept simplistic solutions. That is why it is deeply disappointing to me, both personally and professionally, that John McCain has run a campaign that is so antithetical to rational discourse about public policy. His campaign has been about glib answers to complex problems. His choice for vice president was political malpractice.
He has catered to a wing of the Republican Party that believes everything will be all right--if only the government gets out of the way. No matter the problem, that is the only acceptable solution. To suggest that research about or thoughtful analysis of a situation might, in some cases, point in a different direction is apostasy.
For these Republicans, simply the act of doing policy analysis must mean that you are a liberal. They know that real Republicans, and real men, don't need to think things through. I do not respect these people. They have dragged a proud movement that had much to offer our country down into the mud of ignorance.
And yet the reason I now support Obama is only partially due to McCain's decision to embrace this base form of populism. It also stems from a growing respect for Obama's thoughtfulness, which reveals itself when he's faced with difficult questions. I do not agree with all elements of Obama's tax policy, but I certainly get the impression he has thought about it a whole lot more than McCain.

The attraction of Obama to Sullivan and other conservatives is not surprising. In fact, their support is consistent with the constructive wing of the philosophy of conservatism. Those stuck in the world of divisional politics can be baffled by this. How, they ask, can people who admire Reagan and Thatcher also have time for Obama?Aside from his positive message of unity, there are a number of things concerning Obama which appeal to conservatives, not least his appreciative attitude towards traditions and his understanding of the importance of learning from history. In her ambitious New Yorker profile of Obama published last May, Larissa Macfarquhar writes that Obama was critical of his parents and grandparents for breaking up from their respective communities and moving to other towns and countries. They allowed themselves to be seduced by the American dream of individualism and mobility, something which to Obama seems "credulous and shallow." To Obama, the abandonment of their surroundings in Kenya and Kansas to start anew somewhere else seemed, writes Macfarquhar, "a destructive craving for weightlessness." Freedom has a price, and this is shattered communities and loneliness.

Many traditional conservatives (not the neo-con subspecies) are embarrassed by George Bush and are looking for a way out of the foreign and domestic policy nightmare that he has engineered. They also understand that John McCain would be more of the same or even worse. There is a lively discussion of Barack Obama that is taking place both in the blogosphere and in the media directed at a conservative audience, and much of the discourse is surprisingly receptive to the idea that Obama, though a liberal, could bring about genuine change that will benefit the country. A recent article by Boston University professor and former army officer Andrew Bacevich appeared in The American Conservative magazine and is available on the internet at www.amconmag.com. It is entitled "The Case for Obama" and makes the point that Obama is a candidate that is certainly no conservative, but he is the only real hope to get out of Iraq and also avoid wars of choice in the future. Bacevich rightly sees the Iraq war and its consequences as a truly existential issue for the United States, one that should be front and center for voters in November. Any more adventures of the Iraq type will surely bankrupt the country and destroy what remains of the constitution. Bacevich also notes that the election of John McCain, candidate of the neoconservatives and the war party, would guarantee an unending series of preemptive wars as U.S. security doctrine and would validate the disastrous decisions to invade Iraq and wage an interminable global war on "terrorists." Electing Obama instead would be as close as one could come to making a definitive judgment on the folly of Iraq and everything that it represents, a judgment that is long overdue. Many conservatives would agree that the Obama commitment to leave Iraq is the right way to go and long to return to the days when America only went to war when a vital interest was threatened.




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Secularize the State

Voices: The Lord's Prayer
Toronto Star -
We asked if it was time to replace the Lord's Prayer in the Ontario Legislature with something that better reflects the province's diversity.
Ontario premier orders review of Lord's Prayer recital Canada.com
Ont. mulls alternatives to prayer in legislature CTV.ca

No need for an alternative all inclusive prayer, if they wanted that they could have used any one of several Freemason prayers.

"And since sin has destroyed within us the first temple of purity and innocence, may they heavenly grace guide and assist us in rebuilding a second temple of reformation, and may the glory of this latter house be greater than the glory of the former."
- Masonic prayer

After all the modern state is a Masonic institution ,according to the conspiracy theories of the social conservative Christian right and their Islamic counterparts, And this 'great beast'; this Leviathan is supposedly a secular state at war with Christianity and Islam.

The best way to insure inclusiveness is to not have any prayer, since it would not include atheists, or agnostics to say nothing of pagans and wiccans who remain an anathema to the hegemonic Abrahamic religions. To be truly inclusive opening prayers should be eliminated by all levels of government.

The modern secular state was the aim and objective originally of the Masonic influenced forces of the bourgeois revolutions in America and France.

Richard J. Purcell's Connecticut in Transition, 1775-1818 (Washington~ 1918; reissued by Wesleyan in 1963) is the best published work. Purcell, who also wrote an American history text for use in Catholic parochial schools, emphasizes the religious differences among competing Protestant sects as an impetus toward the development of political parties, the disestablishment of the Congregational church, and the separation of church and state in the Constitution of 1818.

Despite the ahistorical objections of the powers that be.



SEE:

Masonic Hall T.O.

1666 The Creation Of The World

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

American Fairy Tale

Secular Democracy

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet

The Gnosis of Anarchy; Pagans, Witches, Heretics, and Luciferian Rebels


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secular state, prayer,Freemasons, prayer in Ontario Legislature, secret societies, conspiracy theories, Ontario, McGuinty,

Today We Are All Scot's

A'hae toast ya laddie with a wee dram.
It is Robbie Burns Day around the world.





In commemoration I link to my previous posts for your enlightenment, entertainment and erudition.

Happy Burns Day-2007

Happy Rabbie Burns Day-2006

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet-2005

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Politics, poetry, Robbie Burns, Robbie Burns Birthday, Robbie Burns Day, Scotland, poet, Peoples poet, Freemason

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Politics
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Robbie Burns
Scotland
Peoples Poet
Freemason

If A Mormon Can Be U.S. President....

If this guy, who belongs to a unique 19th Century American created religious cult, can run for President.....




















Could this guy be a contender?




Well no of course not he is dead.

But his cult isn't.

If American's can imagine a Mormon for President why not a Scientologist.

Sonny Bono,
Republican, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from California's 44th district
After unsuccessfully running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 1992, Bono was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994 to represent California's 44th District
He became a Scientologist, partly because of the influence of Mimi Rogers, but stated that he was a Roman Catholic on all official documents, campaign materials, web sites, etc.

Opps he's dead too. Well how about this guy.



After all Mormonism and Scientology share their origins in a gnostic world view.

Despite the vigilance of the early Church, the strength and pernicious influence of the Gnostic heresy—“ye shall be as gods”—has never diminished.

Saint John’s first epistle, written to the various churches dispersed throughout Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), was most likely written in the mid-late first century in order to encourage fellow believers to persevere in the faith, in the midst of rather intense persecution, false teaching, and political oppression. While it is more common in popular scholarship to see this epistle as having been written near the end of the first century, given the content of the letter and the failure of John to make any mention of the destruction of either Jerusalem or the Temple would urge me to strongly prefer an earlier date (i.e., pre-A.D. 70). [Incidentally, I would argue the same for the book of Revelation, as it foretells the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, rather than describing it as an event which had already occurred. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make much sense.]

One of the most influential forms of “false teaching” prevalent among the early Christians was what we today know as “Gnosticism.” It seems somewhat clear to me that many of John’s words are carefully chosen, in both his epistle and gospel, in order to combat this erroneous way of thinking. However, we need to try and not only read his works in this light, and bear in mind that there was no “First Gnostic Church” of Ephesus, or any concretely established “Gnostic” religion; rather, it was a philosophical underpinning of many thinkers in the Greco-Roman world, prevalent before, during, and most significantly after John’s lifetime. The Gnostic paradigm was, however, closely connected with early Christian beliefs and did much to unfortunately lead many astray from the truth of the gospel. John, being the good shepherd he was, wanted to ensure that none of his children in the faith were distracted by the lies of this Greek way of thought.

The founders of both were influenced by the modern occult teachings of their day, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy and spirtiualism etc. in the case of Joseph Smith, and the Ordo Templi Orientis in the case of L.Ron Hubbard.

joseph smith the founder of mormonism evolved
his theology over time, ending up with a doctrine
that is similar to the gnostic rosicrucians,
which was incorporated into freemasonry
as their theology.

smith actually joined freemasonry along with other
mormon leaders,only to be kicked out.

But the mormon doctrine of evolving into a god
and presiding over your own celestial kingdom,
along with mormon secret temple rituals being
copies of freemason rituals(wearing white robes,etc)
seems to have as it's foundation rosicrucian doctrine
which is claimed to have it's roots in ancient
egypt under pharoah Akhnaton,the ancient egyptian
priestly order of the "great white brotherhood"(they
wore white robes), and Hermes Trismegistus ,supposed
founder of Hermeticism and also being the egyptian
god thoth.

here is some interesting studies on this,

http://www.gnosis.org/jskabb1.htm

http://www.gnosis.org/ahp.htm

http://www.masonicmoroni.com/Links_Articles.htm

Few Mormons realize that the LDS temple ceremony is not of ancient origin, nor of modern revelation. Instead, the ceremony originated around 1790 when the Masons first conceived it for use in their secret society. Until 1990 the Mormon Temple Ceremony closely resembled the Masonic Initiators Ceremony, signs, tokens and penalties included. I never made the connection between Masonry and Mormonism until I began a serious study of the Mormon temple ceremony.

The Creed of the Church of Scientology (4 Feb 54)

The Church of American Science exists upon the following creed which is adopted as the creed of the Church of Scientology of California, with the additional tenets provided for in number 5 and 6 below:

	“1.	That God works within Man his wonders to perform.
	2.	That Man is his own soul, basically free and immortal, but deluded by the flesh.
	3.	That Man has a God-given right to his own life.
	4.	That Man has a God-given right to his own reason.
	5.	That Man has a God-given right to his own beliefs.
	6.	That Man has a God-given right to his own mode of thought and/or thinking.
	7.	That Man has a God-given right to free and open communication.

Liber LXXVII

"the law of
the strong:
this is our law
and the joy
of the world." AL. II. 2

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." --AL. I. 40

"thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay." --AL. I. 42-3

"Every man and every woman is a star." --AL. I. 3

There is no god but man.

1. Man has the right to live by his own law--

to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.

2. Man has the right to eat what he will:

to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.

3. Man has the right to think what he will:

to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.

4. Man has the right to love as he will:--

"take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where, and with whom ye will." --AL. I. 51

5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

"the slaves shall serve." --AL. II. 58

"Love is the law, love under will." --AL. I. 57

And as religious cults (tm) (c) (r) they are both successful businesses.

In a recent article in The Washington Post, religious reporter Bill Broadway laments that Mormons are feeling picked on. Despite the large number of Mormons who hold prominent positions in government and Fortune 500 companies "Latter-day Saints get little respect where they want and perhaps need it most — in the religious community.

The LDS is, among other things, a very big business tightly controlled from the top down. If one believes that the entire enterprise is based on revelation that is authoritatively interpreted by divinely appointed officers, it makes sense that control should be from the top down. The LDS claims that God chose Joseph Smith to reestablish the Church of Jesus Christ after it had disappeared some 1,700 years earlier following the death of the first apostles. To complicate the picture somewhat, God’s biblical work was extended to the Americas somewhere around 2000 b.c. and continued here until a.d. 421. This is according to the Book of Mormon, the scriptures given to Joseph Smith on golden tablets by the Angel Moroni. American Indians are called Lamanites and are part of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Jesus came to preach to these Indians and for a long time there was a flourishing church here until it fell into apostasy, only to be restored, as the golden tablets foretold, by Joseph Smith. In addition to giving new scriptures, God commissioned Smith to revise the Bible, the text of which had been corrupted over the centuries by Jews and Christians.

Today’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is, allegedly, in direct succession to Smith, and the First Presidency claims powers that would have made St. Peter, never mind most of his successors, blush. The top leadership is composed, with few exceptions, of men experienced in business and with no formal training in theology or related disciplines. The President (who is also prophet, seer, and revelator) is the oldest apostle, which means he is sometimes very old indeed and far beyond his prime. Decisions are made in the tightest secrecy, inevitably giving rise to suspicions and conspiracy theories among outsiders and a substantial number of members. Revenues from tithes, investments, and Mormon enterprises have built what the Ostlings say "might be the most efficient churchly money machine on earth." They back up with carefully detailed research their "conservative" estimate that LDS assets are in the rage of $25-30 billion.

Scientologists are expected to attend classes, exercises or counseling sessions, for a set range of fees (or "fixed donations"). Charges for auditing and other church-related courses run from hundreds to thousands of dollars. A wide variety of entry-level courses, representing 8 to 16 hours study, cost under $100 (US). More advanced courses require membership in the International Association of Scientologists (IAS), have to be taken at higher level Orgs, and have higher fees.^[58] Membership without courses or auditing is possible, but the higher levels cannot be reached this way. In 1995, Operation Clambake, a website critical of scientology, estimated the cost of reaching "OT 9 readiness", one of the highest levels, is US $365,000 – $380,000.^[59][60]

Scientologists are frequently encouraged to become Professional Auditors as a way of earning their way up the Bridge. As a Field Auditor, auditors can receive commissions on people referred to Orgs and a 15% FSM commission on completed services.^[61]

Critics say it is improper to fix a donation for religious service; therefore the activity is non-religious. Scientology points out many classes, exercises and counseling may also be traded for "in kind" or performed cooperatively by students for no cost, and members of its most devoted orders can make use of services without any donations bar that of their time. A central tenet of Scientology is its Doctrine of Exchange, which dictates that each time a person receives something, he or she must pay something back. By doing so, a Scientologist maintains "inflow" and "outflow", avoiding spiritual decline.

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Jacques DeMolay Thou Art Avenged

King Phillip of France ordered the arrest of the Templars and their leader Jacques DeMolay on Friday, October 13, 1307. The day lives on in infamy as the origin of 'unlucky' Friday the 13th.

The leader of the order, Jacques de Molay, was one of those who confessed to heresy, but later recanted.

He was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, the same year that the Pope dissolved the order.

Jacques de Molay (est. 1244–5/1249–50 – 18 March 1314), a minor Burgundian noble, served as the 23rd and officially last Grand Master of the Knights Templar.

"It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret."

Reports say they were slowly roasted over a hot, smokeless fire prolonging their agony as their flesh slowly cooked and blackened. Jacques DeMolay insisted that his hands were not to be bound so that he could pray in his final moments and before he died he cursed both Philip and Pope Clement, summoning both of them to appear before God, the supreme judge, before the year was out. His last words were, "Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us." Guy of Advernge is reported to have added, "I shall follow the way of my master as a martyr you have killed him. You have done and know not. God willing, on this day, I shall die in the Order like him."

The chilling irony of the conclusion of this story is that Jacques DeMolay's final words did, in fact, come true. Pope Clement V died only a month later on April 20th (he is suspected of having cancer of the bowel) and Philip IV was killed while on a hunting trip on November 29th 1314. True to the claim both men did indeed die within the year of Jacques DeMolay's own death.

Legend has it that during the days of the French Revolution, nearly 500 years after de Molay's death, an anonymous man from the crowd jumped onto the guillotine just as Louis XVI had been decapitated, dipped his hand in the king's blood, and cried: 'Jacques de Molay, tu es vengé!'

And with that the world changed forever as the myth of grandest conspiracy to free humanity from autocracy and church tyranny began and would influence European thought and politics for the last 700 years. The glorious myth of the a Knights Templar, you will of course remember them from the popular novel and movie; The DaVinci Code.

There’s considerable evidence to suggest Templars were forewarned of King Philip’s plans. Twenty Templar ships left France just days before Black Friday, according to Sinclair — some bound for Portugal and others for the Western Isles.

“Many historians believe that the vast treasure most certainly headed for Rosslyn — not directly, but it most certainly headed for Roslin” — a small town south of Edinburgh, Scotland, Sinclair said.

Rosslyn Chapel, a 15th century church designed by Knights Templar William Sinclair, may be where the Holy Grail and other treasures and documents were once stored — and perhaps still are, according to Sinclair.

His ancestors began building the chapel in 1446, just a year after a fire nearly devastated nearby Roslin Castle. Several caskets of documents and other treasures were allegedly spared from the fire, and those treasures may be buried in the crypt 40 feet below Rosslyn Chapel’s foundation, Sinclair said.

The magnificently-designed chapel took approximately 40 years to complete and the Sinclairs spent massive amounts of money during the process. Its location, which is remarkably close to another church, is more than a bit suspicious, according to Sinclair.

Why build a chapel so close to a church, he asked. There’s no reason, unless ….

“Rosslyn Chapel was not built as a place of worship. It was built as a repository for secrets,” Sinclair said. Evidence that the chapel is actually a reconstruction of the Temple of Herod only fuels the mystery.

“All the pillars are laid out to a precise plan according to ancient history,” according to Sinclair, and “the ritual references carved into the stone have been created as a clue for the individual who will one day unlock the mysteries of Rosslyn.”

Along with Friday the 13 the myth of the curse of the number 23, which was popularized by Robert Anton Wilson, was related to the Templars.

Jacques de Molay (est. 1244–5/1249–50 – 18 March 1314^[), a minor Burgundian noble, served as the 23rd and officially last Grand Master of the Knights Templar.

Today that vengeance comes in the form of a Papal apology long lost now rediscovered.

Vatican Publishes Knights Templar Papers

Knights Templar win heresy reprieve after 700 years

It is interesting to note that while the Papacy redeemed the Templars 700 years ago after having first capitulated to King Phillip Le Bel's (the Fair) initial trumped up charges, the first historic case of McCarthyism, they lost the paper work. Ah bureaucracy, eh.

The new book, published by the Vatican's Secret Archive later this month, will reveal many of the centuries-old mysteries of the secretive group. Entitled Processus contra Templarios, the book is based on a scrap of parchment discovered in 2001 by Professor Barbara Frale while looking through the Vatican's secret collection.

Known as the Chinon parchment, the document records the heresy hearings of the Templars before Pope Clement V and is understood to provide a full exoneration of the knights and their rituals and ceremonies.

Sodomy, blasphemy and witchcraft were among the crimes for which the warrior-monks of the Order of the Knights Templar were burnt at the stake. But almost 700 years after the pope dissolved their order, on October 25 the Vatican's Secret Archives are due to publish a book which promises to redeem their reputation - at least in the eyes of the church. "Among the charges brought against the Templars was that they had been 'seduced' by Islam and followed [the mediaeval heresy] Catharism - two incompatible elements," Franco Cardini a historian scheduled to take part at the book's presentation told Turin-based daily La Stampa. "Then again the lawyers representing the king of France did not need to build a coherent case," said Cardini, referring to the trials against the French Templars ordered in 1307 by King Philip IV, also known as Philip the Fair. "All that they were interested in was that the trials would appear credible before public opinion," Cardini added. With their power and wealth shrouded behind secretive rituals, the Templars had been the subject of many rumours, and Philip, who was heavily indebted to the order and needed money to finance his war with the English, relished the opportunity for a crackdown. Following the trials in France during which scores of confessions - many of them extracted through torture - of heresies committed by Templars were presented, Pope Clement V instructed Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Clement finally dissolved the order in 1312, but the myths surrounding the Templars have lived on, most recently in Dan Brown's best selling novel The Da Vinci Code and the Hollywood blockbuster based on it. The Vatican's book, Processus contra Templarios, or the Trial against the Templars, would appear to clear up at least one matter: that the Church could find no proof of the Templars' alleged heresies. It also suggests Clement, himself a Frenchman, was, as described on the Secret Archives' website, the victim of a "blackmail mechanism" put in place by Philip. The book is based on a parchment, the Act of Chinon, dated 1308 and discovered in 2001 in the Secret Archives, where it had been mislaid for centuries. In the Act of Chinon, Clement absolves the Templar leaders, while concluding that the order's initiation ceremony involving the "spitting on the cross", "denying Jesus" and the kissing of the lower back, navel and mouth of a fellow-Templar did not constitute serious blasphemy. The pontiff appears to have accepted the Templars' explanation that the initiation rite was supposed to simulate their humiliation at the hands of the Muslim Saracens - a throwback to the order's foundation following the first crusade to liberate the Holy Land. Still, with what the Vatican website describes as an "ambiguous compromise," Clement in 1312 "unable to oppose himself to the will" of Philip effectively ended all Templar activity.

The irony is that while the Templars were charged with the crime of Catharism, a Gnostic heresy, they had evolved from the first crusade the Church launched which was not against Islam but against the Cathars. It was an unpopular crusade, with little support in France or Spain, but it lead to the creation of the inquisition. Over 200,000 were killed.

There case is eerily reminiscent of the current state of emergency powers being used by the U.S. as it conducts its so called war on terror in the Middle East today.

The Templar Myth has been kept alive as part of the Protestant Reformation by the two branches of Freemasons (English Grand Lodge and the European Oriental Lodges) in their long standing battle with the Papacy.

The Templars' initiation ritual has been widely copied, most notably by the Freemasons, who have a title called "Order of the Knights Templar.


William T. Holcomb, 95, of Hendersonville died Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007, at Beystone Health and Rehabilitation.

He was a native of Colorado Springs, Colo., the son of the late Trafford G. and Mattie L. Holcomb. He lived in Hendersonville since 1984. He married the late Irene Smith of Sterling County in 1933.

He was employed by Chevron for 36 years and worked in a number of states, with most of his career in refining and production of asphalt products. For a number of years he was refinery manager in Baltimore and later became the manager of manufacturing in the eastern United States and Canada.

He was active in the Masonic organization. He was a past master in Maryland, a member of Kedron Lodge in Hendersonville, Oasis Shrine Temple, and a member of the Hendersonville Shrine Club. In 1977, when living in Arizona, he was invested with the DeMolay Legion of Honor. He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville.

The fact is that the Order of the Poor Knights of Jerusalem were the first independent military order and co-fraternity that allowed those excommunicated to join. Thus King Phillip could accuse them of harbouring Cathars.

They were independent of the Church per se answerable to their Grand Master only, and under Papal dispensation. Their oath of poverty was to hold all lands, and vassals as common property of the order. They owned farms, had their own towns, and had thousands of people in their employ. They also owned ships and thus were in competition with the Italians for shipping from Europe to the Holy Lands.

They created the first banking operation seen in Europe, by use of a traveling script that allowed Christians traveling to the holy lands to deposit their monies and valuables in a Templar Church in their home country and able to retrieve their value in any Templar Church along the way or finally in the Holy Lands for a service fee, since interest was seen as usury.

There lands and churches were the source of capital Phillip needed for his bankrupt regime. In London the City of London, its banking and economic capital, was founded upon the Templars London Temple.

Some of the Templars' lands in London were later rented to lawyers, which led to the names of Temple Bar gate and Temple Tube station.

The Templars were the historical beginning of the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism in Europe. They were the model for primitive accumulation of capital, armed mercenaries and mercantile bankers. The end of the crusades opened Europe up to international trade and within one hundred years, the beginning of the first stock exchange based on the shipping lanes used during the crusades.

See my paper:

LOOKING BACKWARDS
The Fraternal Origins of Working Class Organizations In the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism



SEE:

RAW RIP

1666 The Creation Of The World

Masonic Hall T.O.

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Jacques DeMolay, Knights Templar,Freemasons, Crusades, secret societies, conspiracy theories,

The War On Atheism

Here is a biased survey on Atheism and Morality conducted by Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge.

A new Canadian survey has found that believers are more likely than atheists to place a higher value on love, patience and friendship, in findings the researcher says could be a warning that Canadians need a religious basis to retain civility in society.

About the only claim that holds any 'value' is this one;

In the survey findings, there was only a five percentage-point difference between how theists and atheists valued honesty. But of all the categories, honesty is the value that is least connected to broad emotions such as love and compassion. In other words, someone can be honest and brutal.

I stand by that, being a Saggitarian and an ENTJ, I am often brutally honest.

The assertion made by the article that 'atheists' are less compassionate and moral than Christians misses the point. Those Canadians he interviewed are not necessarily atheists, per se, rather they are Canadians who do not profess a belief in God or organized religion. That is an unbelief, while atheism, and its derivatives; Marxism and Anarchism are counter beliefs, and in all cases rely upon classical liberalism as the basis of morality.

But in the realm of forgiveness, which is a core value of many major religions, particularly Christianity, the difference - 32 percentage points - is stark.

"That's a pretty explicit value within a large number of religious communities," said Prof. Bibby.

"Look at the culture as a whole and ask yourself: to what extent do we value forgiveness against themes like zero-tolerance? We don't talk very much about what we're going to do for people who fall through the cracks. So I think forgiveness is pretty foreign to a lot of people if they're not involved in religious groups."

Heck even Satanism has a moral code. Though it is not one of forgiveness. It is modeled on Ayn Rands morality.

In a consumer capitalist culture based on the values of ; I'm Ok Your Ok, the Me Generation and I Got Mine Jack 'unbelief' in God reflects a consumer choice. And the morality of the individual is then shaped by the society they exist in. In the era of Enron, Chainsaw Jack Welch, and other criminal capitalist enterprises, where Business Schools are having to 'teach' morality to budding business types, it is no surprise to find that Bibby's findings are what they are. Which is actually what Bibby is saying , despite the National Posts spin on the survey, that 'godless' capitalism has no values.

After all seeing that the culture is one of consumer capitalism, then this is more a condemnation of that then atheism or its political and philosophical offshoots.

But there is a war on Atheism currently in vogue amongst the Christian Right, and this just gives ammunition to the side which has conducted wars, pogroms and mass genocide, and continues with oppression, exploitation and mindless discrimination to excuse themselves as being 'good' people, with 'values'.

He said people who are believers are encouraged ­- whether by a desire to please God, or because of a fear of God - to adopt these values

To please or to fear the ultimate cosmic boss, to accept 'his' values, is not as humanistic as it appears. It is the morality of the slave. And thus is reflected in the social schizophrenia that creates the need for God, Priests, Bosses, Cops, Social Workers, etc, the whole kit and caboodle of authority ( a hold over of aristocracy within capitalism).

While Christians on the right claim that we need less human rights and more folks taking responsibility for their actions, they always seem to lovingly accept them folks who break the social or moral code, if they accept Jesus into their hearts.

The enlightened individual sees morality as a social construction; one of mutual agreement and sees no difference between human rights and responsibilities. Thus with the rise of Freemasonry and its child The Rights Of Man a new 'godless' revolutionary morality evolved and created secular society; Liberty, Equality,Fraternity.

Immoral Capitalism has truncated Liberty from Equality and Fraternity. That is the ultimate truth in Bibby's survey.

Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready.

History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom.

When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.

Hegel, Philosophy of Right (1820), "Preface"

SEE:

Islamicists and Evangelical Christians

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Masonic Hall T.O.

While Googling I came across this interesting article on the Masonic Hall in Toronto from NOW Weekly. I am footnoted in the article for this piece I wrote;

Liber Capricornus, The Symbolism of the Goat,
by Eugene W. Plawiuk, Master Mason.

My other articles on the social history of Freemasonry can be found here.




SEE:

Quebec Fete Nationale is Pagan

1666 The Creation Of The World

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

American Fairy Tale

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet

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Quebec Fete Nationale is Pagan

How pagan rites are revised to fit political purposes.

The reporter assumes that the Roman Catholic establishment in Quebec was not being political when it changed this ancient rite of Summer Solstice to a celebration of John the Baptist. Ironically a major festival for Freemasons, the political opposition to the RC establishment in Quebec.

Fete nationale began as a religious holiday back in 1615 to mark the summer solstice and the birth of John the Baptist.

But in years since, particularly with the waning of the influence of the Roman Catholic church in Quebec, it became more political. In recent years, efforts have been made to make it more inclusive and less political.

Quebecers celebrate Fete nationale more enthusiastically than Canada Day but one of the main reasons for that is because July 1 is the province's annual moving day and people are busy hauling boxes and furniture to new homes.

How to make Canada irrelevant, millions of dollars spent by Sheila Copps to supply Quebecers with Canadian flags, they can wave as they move with all their belongings festooned with Canadian decals, stamps, bumberstickers, etc.

While Quebec and its Roman Catholic Aristocracy adopted St. Jean de Baptiste as their patron saint for their Nation State the Freemasons did the same but for the promotion of the brotherhood of man.

On June 24th, we observe the festival of summer sun and on December 27th, we observe the festival of the winter sun. The June festival commemorates John the Baptist and the December festival honors John the Evangelist.

These two festivals bear the names of Christian Saints, but ages ago, before the Christian era they bore other names. Masonry adopted these festivals and the Christian names, but has taken away Christian dogma, and made their observance universal for all men of all beliefs.

The Baptist is patron of tailors (because he made his own garments in the desert), of shepherds (because he spoke of the "Lamb of God"), and of masons. This patronage over masons is traced to his words:

Make ready the way of the Lord, make straight all his paths. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth. (Luke 3, 4-6.)

All over Europe, from Scandinavia to Spain, and from Ireland to Russia, Saint John's Day festivities are closely associated with the ancient nature lore of the great summer festival of pre-Christian times. Fires are lighted on mountains and hilltops on the eve of his feast. These "Saint John's fires" burn brightly and quietly along the fiords of Norway, on the peaks of the Alps, on the slopes of the Pyrenees, and on the mountains of Spain (where they are called Hogueras). They were an ancient symbol of the warmth and light of the sun which the forefathers greeted at the beginning of summer. In many places, great celebrations are held with dances, games, and outdoor meals.

Many of these same fire festivals are also practiced on Walpurgisnacht and Beltane; May Day. Another pagan festival of great social importance.


See:

Fete Accompli


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The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

Americans are fascinated with conspiracy theories, in fact they generate the majority of them. Along with religious revivalism, conspiracy theories are second nature in the body politic of America.

Here is a fascinating thesis that shows that the conspiracy theory meme began in America with its founding during the revolutionary war. And since then conspiracy theory has dominated American politics.

Be it in the religious revivalism of the 1800's, the anti-Masonry movement, or the later Know Nothings, through out the history of American politics conspiracy theories have abounded, and have had major political impact. They are as American as apple pie.

This is a PhD. Thesis and is a full length book available for download as a PDF.

Conspiracy Theory and the Society of the Cincinnati, 1783-1790


At the same time, I became aware of a tradition of radical political dissent in
modern America, an abundance of conspiracy theories that also extended into popular culture. It was the time of Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement, of Waco, Ruby Ridge, Pat Robertson, and the X-Files. Suddenly conspiratorial explanations for current and historical events seemed everywhere. From Richard Hofstadter’s writings I realized that conspiracy theories occurred in episodic waves throughout American history, and from Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood I learned that the founding fathers believed in a secret English plot against American liberty. I decided to investigate, but soon became aware that other scholars were already writing on conspiracy theories in post-World War II America. Clearly, I had to look off the beaten path for a case study in American political “paranoia.”

It was then that I remembered a somewhat obscure document from my studies
on the Connecticut ratification debates. Just before the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Dr. Benjamin Gale, an eccentric physician from Killingworth, wrote a long letter to Erasmus Wolcott.

In this diatribe, Gale complained about the machinations of the Society of the Cincinnati, a veterans organization of officers of the Continental Army. Gale charged that all the talk about the weakness of the Articles of Confederation was merely a smokescreen for the treasonous ambition of the Cincinnati. According to Gale, this society planned to establish a military dictatorship or monarchy and assume the mantle of hereditary nobility for themselves. Gale was obviously an Antifederalist, one who not only attacked the movement for a new Constitution as unnecessary and dangerous, but who felt it was the result of a deliberate conspiracy against American freedom.

I had found my topic. Apparently, a conspiracy theory existed in the 1780s, the
very period when the political culture and system of the United States was taking
shape, and it accused the leaders of the Continental Army of anti-republican subversion.

Small wonder then that such discourses of radical suspicion surfaced periodically
over the course of American history. If some American revolutionaries felt that even George Washington and Henry Knox could be traitors, we should not be surprised that so many Americans question the report of the Warren commission or distrust the federal government and the United Nations. The Deepest Piece of Cunning is a journey to the origins of conspiracy theories in the United States. It should shed some light on the political controversies of the 1780s as well as the persistence of conspiracy theories in American political culture.

Abstract

In May 1783, the officers of the Continental Army of the United States of America
organized themselves into the Society of the Cincinnati. Soon after, the veterans
organization became the focus of an elaborate conspiracy theory which falsely accused the officers of trying to establish a hereditary nobility and subvert the young republic.

Over the course of the mid-1780s, prominent revolutionary politicans such as John Adams and Elbridge Gerry joined in the outcry. The conspiracy theory became a major political controversy, and even impeded efforts to reform the Articles of Confederation.

However, despite their frantic tone and lack of a factual basis, the accusations were not merely a fringe phenomenon created by political crackpots. Instead, the conspiracy theory was deeply embedded in American political culture. When the political and economic problems of the 1780s threatened to disrupt the republican experiment, many revolutionaries looked for a threat that might explain the crisis. They found that threat in the Cincinnati, whose military background, federal organization, and aristocratic trappings made them suspect.

See:

1666 The Creation Of The World

Once More On the Fourth

Conspiracy Theory or Ruling Class Studies

Bilderberg

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy

Ruling Class

Freemasons



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Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet

A'hae toast ya laddie with a wee dram.
It is Robbie Burns Day around the world.

A day to celebrate the common man, the common poet, of the common people; Robbie Burns. It's a day where we all become Scot's for a moment, drinking a wee dram of the namesake liquor in a toast to that countries greatest lover, poet and radical. Around the world there are Robbie Burns dinners and celebrations.

This unique popularity of Burns as the voice of the common people is not shared by any other poet. Other poets of the common people and their struggles, are not celebrated internationally by men and women of all nations as one of their own. As great a voice for their people as they may be.

The great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko is known as the Robbie Burns of the Ukraine. Some would say this is idle boasting but compare this final verse from Shevchenko's poetic eulogy, Zapovit (My Testament) with the last lines of Burns immortal; Scots Whae Hae, they both ring with eternal truth, that stirs the heart and brings a lump to the throat. A clarion call to revolution, and the fight for social justice for all.

Zapovit
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained
And in the great new family,
The family of the free
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me


Scots Whae Hae
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do, or die!

"Shevchenko's "ZAPOVIT," or "TESTAMENT," written in 1845, is considered sacred by Ukrainians around the world as it calls on Ukrainiansto arise and break the chains of oppression. In fact, when that work is sung, much like a hymn or national anthem, you will notice that the public stands in respect to the author and his message. "

Non Ukrainian scholars have noted the similarities between the two poets. W.K Matthews* speaks of Shevchenko's affinity with Ukrainian folk poetry, proving at the same time through his analysis of Shevchenko's versification technique that the poet was not "a simple imitator of folk-songs." In his comparison of Shevchenko with Burns, the author stresses both similarities and differences between the two poets. Matthews feels that "the transition from Romanticism to Realism" may "be followed as plainly in Shevchenkospainting as in his literary work" and that Shevchenko's "patriotism plays a highly important part in his poetry and has been rightly chosen by nationally-minded Ukrainians for special emphasis, just as the rather less important social criticism in his work has been emphasized by those intent on proving his revolutionary affiliations."

*(professor of Russian at the University of London and head of the Department of Language and Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, was invited by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain to deliver an address on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Shevchenko's death. The address was given at St. Pancras Hall, London, on 11 March 1951)


Like Burns, Shevchenko is accepted as a nationalist, but his revolutionary beliefs and convictions are dismissed as myth making by those on the left. Shevchenko's revolutionary ardor cannot be dismissed by scholars writing during the hey day of the Cold War, speaking to a largely nationalist and reactionary Ukrainian community in exile.

"For a dialect poet, Burns has a wide appeal. Gerry Carruthers of Glasgow University points out that he was unusual in being appreciated by both sides in the cold war: Russians regarded him as a socialist icon, while Americans liked his republicanism."

Andrew Noble in the Scottish Left Review argues that more than 200 years of depoliticisation have presented Robert Burns, a radical political poet, as a writer of the safe and pastoral. As we will see below new revelations about Burns revolutionary convictions have been discovered.

Freedom was the cry for Wallace as it was for Burns and it was for Shevchenko, and Ivan Franko and all the great voices of the people and revolution, their appeal is not merely national but internationalist and a rallying cry against oppression everywhere. Which is the international appeal of the Burns dinners and celebrations.

Burns the freethinker speaking out against Calvinist religious hypocrisy against the tyranny of Church and State. For the love of women and their liberation. For the fight and victory of those that have naught and shall be all. And for a day we can all be Scots, and celebrate their revolutionary history against the English Crown. Burns celebrates Wallace and the Bruce, and all the great Scots battles against the English Crown and their own comprador ruling class.

Ukrainians too share in the Scots sense of homeland and peasant rebellion, we celebrate the struggles of Cossack heros Ivan Mazepa, Stenka Razin , and Nestor Makhno, against The Tsars, The Poles, the Tartars and the White Russians

Ukrainians outside of the Ukraine, were subject to a hundred year Diaspora. And so cultural survival was deeply imbued in Ukrainian diaspora politics, left and right. Ukrainian's who came to this country were treated with racist disdain by the British Canadian ruling classes, and may were deported from 1918-1930 for being revolutionaries.

The English ruling classes have always seen the Welsh, Irish and Scots as being their subjects, part of their Imperial domain the so called United Kingdom. And like all imperial states, they have played off them against each other. It is always a good reminder to those whom the English have oppressed to remind them that they have more in common with the colonized then their colonial masters.

And that despite bans on learning Gallic it thrived in Canada like Ukrainian did, the Scots and Ukrainians defending their cultural heritage against the culture of the ruling class. The oppressed of all lands hold their culture as a sacred trust in the face of imperalism.

It was the post-folk music revival that began in the late sixties that moved out of Traditional folk music into an understanding of World Music, beginning in their own backyard with the Celtic revival. It corresponded to the revival working class folk music by Ewan McColl and with such hits as Steeleye Span's, Hard Times in Old England.

Behind much of the Celtic revival were Ukrainians, always ready to subvert culture to undermine imperialism especially English imperialism. "1970-1980 Allan Stivell, An Triskell, Tri Yann, Gilles Servat and other musical groups were at the origins of the cultural rebirth of Brittany.Allan Stivell's producer was Ukrainian. And Stivell's work was the real source of much of the Celtic Revival which has grown with the world music movement.

Revolutionary poetry, the use of vernacular poetry or parables, arises when the Imperial states of the late medieval period dominate the countryside. The language of the colonized is rich in feminine vowels, rhythms and rhymes. The Imperialist languages are guttural and full of consonants, the masculine voice of command and authority, of State and place.

Poets like Shevchenko and Burns celebrated their cultures in the language and retelling of the stories of the oppressed in effect the feminine vowels and the bardic voice. In the vernacular of the colonized, whose language was always viewed as the authentic voice of a culture. Imperialism in its urge to unify all under the double eagle of the aristocracy, in its urge to create one unified autocratic state, begins by banning the language, the poetry, the expression of the common people. English Imperialism did it to the Scots, Irish and Welsh, Polish and Russian Imperialism did the same to the Ukrainians.

So lets join in the greatest secular holiday of the year, and toast not just to Burns, but to the brotherhood/sisterhood he advocated for. Auld Lang Sang.

Read on....

ROBERT BURNS: BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robert, son of William Burns, a Scotch farmer, was born near the town of Ayr, January 25, 1759. His father, though very poor, gave him a solid English education; and the boy read eagerly all books he could come at. But the life was hard, and at the age of 15 Burns was working as his father's head labourer. The father died in 1784, brought to great straits through the failure of a lawsuit. Burns, with his brother Gilbert, struggled on bravely, but with poor success. He was then in the first glow of his passion for Jean Armour, whom he finally married, and but for her parents' opposition would have married earlier. During the next two years many of his best poems were written, as the Cottar's Saturday Night, Holy Willie's Prayer, Address to the Deil, The Mouse, The Daisy, and others. In 1786, having published some of these to gain passage-money for the West Indies, an invitation to Edinburgh, then containing the most brilliant intellectual society in Britain, made him famous. He gained, however, nothing but the rather meagre appointment of exciseman, with which he settled in Dumfries. Like other brave spirits of his time, he was accused of sympathy with the French Revolution. It is the fact that in the spring of 1792, Britain being still at peace with France, he sent to the Legislative Assembly two guns that had passed into his hands from a captured smuggler. And two of his noblest lyrics, Scots wha hae, and A man's a man for a' that, written 1792-5, show that the fiery heat of the great crisis had reached him. His poetry was the outcome of his nature. His scathing satire of Calvanistic hypocrisy, the wild humour of Tam o' Shanter, the burning passion of his love-songs, will live as long as the language endures. Burns died at Dumfries, 21st July 1796.

Humanist, humourist and patriot --By 1801, a group of Ayrshire men were already honouring their friend at an annual dinner. This year, on the 239th anniversary of his birth, thousands of men and women will toast the immortal memory and drain a glass or two. When they do, they'll be furthering a cause that was near and dear to his heart. He held inebriation in high regard as he remarked: "Whiskey and freedom gang thegither". Imbibing a wee dram would have enhanced many of the things he loved best: sociability, earnest argument, music, dancing and, of course, the lassies! These shameless flirtations were so successful that he and his long-suffering wife raised at least three of his illegitimate children in the family home. He may have scandalized polite society, but despite, or perhaps because of, that, he had a phenomenal way of raising people's spirits and making them glad. He emphasized decency in a world that barely knew it, and fostered a sense of dignity and self worth in his all but broken people.

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do, or die!
Burns on Robert the Bruce, relating to the song Robert Bruce's Address to His Troops at Bannockburn (Scots Whae Hae)

William Wallace & Robert Burns
This was a talk given to the Society of William Wallace at Elderslie Village Hall on Tuesday 19th February 2002 by David Brown
Wallace inspired the Scots of his day to follow his leadership. His memory has lived on and has motivated many generations of Scots, both before and after Robert Burns. Burns’ poetic genius captures the spirit of Wallace and will ensure that both of them will be remembered as Scots Patriots for many generations to come.

Robert Burns - An advocate for Scottish Independence
Various modern established media have tried to belittle Scotland's Bard and especially play down Burns desire for Scottish Independence. Just as the Tory and Labour parties tried to claim that Sir William Wallace fought for Scottish interests and the Scottish identity (none of them could bring themselves to utter Wallace's true cause - INDEPENDENCE), so too they have tried to play down Robert Burns nationalist spirit.

Burns, was employed latterly by the state as an exciseman, and undoubtedly received veiled threats concerning his political writings, indeed at one stage in 1794 he was threatened with the charge of sedition. To this end Burns started to temper his writing and even wrote letters and article under assumed names.

Can anyone question the cultural and economic nationalism of a man who penned the following ? A man for whom Liberty, Freedom and National Identity meant so much ?

"Alas, I have often said to myself what are the boasted advantages which my country reaps from a certain Union that counterbalance the annihilation of her Independence, and even her name !"

Burns was a supporter of the French Revolution and even used some of Tom Paine's radical words from "The Rights of Man" in "For a' That and a' That". (it has been suggested that this should be used as a Scottish National Anthem). After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Burns became an outspoken champion of the Republican cause. His enthusiasm for liberty and social justice dismayed many of his admirers; some shunned or reviled him. See: British poets and the French Revolution Part Five: Robert Burns Man, poet and revolutionary By Alan Woods

In 1859, at a centenary dinner in Boston, Ralph Waldo Emerson affirms that "The Confession of Augsburg, The Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of Man, & the 'Marseillaise' are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns." "It is for his songs that Burns is famous. More than any other one factor, they have sustained the cultural consciousness of Scotland. Burns gathered fragmentary songs & legends & transmuted them into something more wonderful & more socially powerful than the originals. As the revolutionary nationalist MacDiarmid also notes, Burns took folksongs of Scottish nationalism, of Stuart legitimism, & subtly altered them into something quite different. Jacobite becomes Jacobin. The songs of partisans filtered through Burns become battle songs of freedom, hymns to the integrity & independence of the individual.".. Kenneth Rexroth


Burns, the Freemason
The very mention of the name "Robert Burns" brings to mind images of red roses, starry-eyed lovers, Tam-O'-Shanter and the Cutty Sark, and the glens of bonnie Scotland. And while these images describe Scotland's "ploughman poet" to some extent, There is another side of Burns that is not as well known: Burns the radical--Burns, the supporter of the French Revolution--Burns, the critic of Religious hypocrisy and Puritanism--Burns, the Freemason.

On the 13th of January, 1787, we find him at a great Mason-lodge meeting, where the Grand Master proposed his health as Caledonia’s Bard, Brother Burns; and he, trembling in every nerve, made the best return in his power, and was consoled, while sitting down amidst the vehement applause of the audience, by overhearing the loud whisper of the Grand Master, "Very well indeed!" How we wish that Wilkie or some other genuine Scottish painter had given us this scene in colours—"Burns at a Grand Mason-lodge Meeting!" Alas! that of this splendid meeting, with all its grand worshipfuls and grand officers, nobles, lawyers, squires, and merchants, that one trembling figure, Brother Burns, sitting down bashful and blushing to the toe-points, and comforted by a friendly compliment accented aloud for his ear, is the only figure that would now be recognized!

Robbie Burns: Drink a toast to a progressive man
Barry McClatchie pays tribute to Scottish poet Robert Burns

Thousands of people, from all walks of life, all over the world celebrate
the immortal memory of Robbie Burns — the aristocracy, the gentry, the
military, the masonic order, political parties, Burns clubs, trade unions
and working people.

In Robert Burns we have a poet who straddles class barriers and who is
toasted by a great diversity of people who might agree with Burns when he
said: "Whisky and Freedom Gang Thegither".

They might all have a common liking for whisky, which many of us here do,
but, unlike Burns, some among the aforementioned have precious little
liking for freedom — especially the freedom for working people.

Burns suppers should not be used as an occasion upon which to hang
political theories nor to draw political parallels, but now, as in Burns'
time, nationalism and the role of the Scottish Parliament are major issues.

Burns was, on this issue and on every other, first and foremost a radical.
He knew and understood the national question.

Most of the current struggles are a continuation of past struggles. Take
the women's struggle. Over 200 years ago, Burns was declaring:

"While Europe's eye is fixed on mighty things"
"The fate of empires and the fall of kings"
"While quacks of state must each produce his plan"
"And even children lisp the Rights Of Man"
"Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention"
"The Rights of Women merit some attention."

We should honour Burns for his belief in a better future for humanity in
his inspiring words:

"The golden age we'll then revive"
"Each man will be a brother"
"In harmony we all shall live and"
"Share the earth together"
"In virtue trained enlighten youth shall"
"Love each fellow creature"
"And future years shall prove the truth"
"That man is good by nature"
"Then let us toast with three times three"
"The reign of peace and liberties."

Ian R Mitchell is stimulated by a new study of Robert Burns
Amongst the steady stream of works on our national bard, Liam McIlvanney's stands out as an ambitious and important study. His aim is to establish that Burns was "one of the great political poets of his own- or any- age." You might think there is nothing original in that, for we are all familiar with the barbs Burns aimed in his poems at the rich and powerful, and his sympathy for the poor. But MacIlvanney's point is this; the image of Burns as an "unlettered ploughman" has made his political ideas seem to be the often inconsistent outpourings of the poet's heart, rather than of his head. In contrast to which, this book argues that Burn's political ideas were a coherent and sophisticated philosophical whole, which - though certainly stimulated by the American and French Revolutions through which he lived - stretched back to an authentic British, and indeed, very Scottish, tradition of radical political thinking

Burns the Radical--- First full study of Burns politics

LIAM MCILVANNEY is Lecturer in English, University of Aberdeen. He is also currently the General Editor of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies

In politics if thou wouldst mix,
And mean thy fortunes be;
Bear this in mind, be deaf and blind,
Let great folks hear and see.

But Robert Burns did mix in politics, and very often it was the 'great folks' who suffered the invective of a poet with a keen satirical eye for political abuses. As a political poet, however, Burns has been ill served by a critical tradition which views him as a na-ve practitioner of rustic verse. In this, the first book-length treatment of Burns's politics, Liam McIlvanney looks behind the trivialising image of the 'heav'n-taught ploughman' to uncover the intellectual context of the poet's political radicalism. McIlvanney reveals Burns as a sophisticated political poet whose work draws on a range of intellectual resources: the democratic, contractarian ideology of Scottish Presbyterianism, the English and Irish 'Real Whig' tradition, and the political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment. Throwing new light on the poets education and his early reading, McIlvanney provides detailed new readings of Burns major poems. The book also offers new research on Burns links with Irish poets and radicals, providing a radical reinterpretation of the man who is coming to be recognised as the poet laureate of the radical Enlightenment.
Burns the Radical-Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth century Scotland'
Liam MacIlvanney, £ 16.99, Tuckwell Press ISBN 1 86242 177 9


The Culture of Glasgow
Freddy Anderson

Generally speaking, and with some few exceptions, it is obvious that indigenous Culture in Glasgow is finding it a very difficult struggle to make its way.

Why should this be when there is a wealth of literary and theatrical talent in Glasgow, including its huge peripheral housing-schemes? It is my opinion that the authorities, for all their lip-service to Culture, are very wary lest they open the flood-gates in Glasgow to an immense popular Culture, not Hollywood, Broadway or London-based, that will sweep away within a very few years the hackneyed, time-worn ideas that have been foisted on the people by a servile, manipulated media-machine for decades. I also contend that this suppression and distortion of truth began in Glasgow at the end of the eighteenth century with the appear­ance of Robert Burns' works in the Kilmarnock Edition.

These poems of Robert Burns were such a powerful exposure of the wickedness of the Establishment that it sent them scurrying for ways to undo the damage Burns was causing. Burns received not a single review in any Glasgow paper for his Kilmarnock Edition, but two mealy-mouthed letters that might have come from Holy Willie's pen appeared in The Mercury, signed Amicus by an obvious denigrator of Burns. Such is how the authorities in Glasgow hailed Scotland's greatest literary genius ever. I would not choose to mention this, had, after the great Edinburgh Edition of 1787, the City Fathers and Chamber of Commerce tycoons repented. They never did. Burns presented such a challenge to their philistinism, hypocrisy and 'North British' servitude, that they erected the highest monument in George Square to the loyalist minion, Sir Walter Scott, decades before the pennies of the Glasgow people paid for the much lower plinth of Rabbie Burns on the grass verge. And despite their sustained verbal accolades to Burns every January, they are still unrepentant. There is scarcely a plaque in the entire city to acknowledge the twenty or so links Burns had with Glasgow.

Robert Crawford, ed., Robert Burns and Cultural Authority.
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997. xiii + 242 pp. $29.95. (Hdbk; ISBN: 0-87745-578-3).1
Reviewed by Ian Duncan, University of Oregon

A. L. Kennedy's essay on Burns and sexuality tries to loosen the poet's writings (letters as well as verse) from the grim phallic monument into which his reputation has hardened; she arrives at a rueful, humane recognition of the ways, overdetermined but not perhaps predestined, in which writing is conditioned by the ideological investments of readers as well as writers. In "Burns and God" Susan Manning traces Burns's quarrel with religion with admirable deftness and sensitivity to register, although one of the hobgoblins of Burns criticism, the location of the poet's authentic voice, slips in and out of the argument. Marilyn Butler offers what is perhaps the most succinct and useful account of a complex topic, Burns's politics, to have been written, and I predict its frequent reappearance in course reading packets. Her essay was written before it could take account of the recent discovery in Scotland of a hitherto overlooked corpus of Burns's Radical writings, which looks likely to revise our sense of the matter, although perhaps it is too early to tell.


The Radical Tradition of Robert Burns
In particular through his book on the 'lost poems' (1), the independent Burns scholar Patrick Scott Hogg has done a great deal to demolish the myth that at the end of his life Burns had become just another disillusioned ex-radical. Patrick is also joint editor of the recently published The Canongate Burns (2), which has irked certain sections of the 'Burns establishment'. The following article is the text of a paper given by him at the Burns Now Conference at the University of Strathclyde on January 18, 2002.

Uncovered: After 205 years experts find lost Burns poems
Ten politically-explosive poems penned anonymously more than 200 years ago have been pronounced the work of Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns.

Five years of research by Scottish academics have proved the works were written by Burns, but were so radical he could have been hanged for treason had he put his name to them.

The ‘lost’ poems are to be published in major new book about Burns’s life, The Canongate Burns, which reveals that, contrary to popular belief, Burns was as radical in later life as he was as a young man.

Until now, it has been argued that when Burns became an Exciseman for the Crown in 1793 he abandoned radical political composition. However, the authentication of the poems, published in 18th-century London magazines, has led to a reassessment of his work after that date.
For the first time, all Burns’s songs, poems and other controversial work, such as the ‘Merry Muses of Caledonia’ - classified as pornography until the mid-1960s - will be printed in the order that they were first published.

Extensive footnotes will also place Burns in a much more radical light.

One of the researchers’ most significant finds was a note indicating that Burns had reworked a poem about revolution in America to give support to the cause of an independent Ireland.

In the new version, the poem, ‘Ode for Hibernia’s Sons’, openly criticises the British government and the royal family for their oppression of the Irish.

Hogg, who unearthed the new information, said: "This is explosively treasonable stuff. As an Exciseman he could well have been tried for treason which could have led to a noose around his neck."


Soapbox Girls Editorial
A few months ago, I turned the television on, switched it to PBS, and there was Maya Angelou, talking to a bunch of white folks. Very white folks. Like, the kind of white that you get from never seeing the sun. Sure enough, it turns out that they were Scottish. (Of all the bits of my mongrel heritage, Scots is the biggest, so I have an eye for that paler-than-the-undead look.)

As it happens, Dr. Angelou was visiting Scotland on a research mission, because she is a great lover of Robbie Burns. The documentary showed her laying her hands on a first-edition collection of Burns’ poems, and speaking with some professorial sort who clearly has near-daily access to it; chatting with a group of resident Burns experts, talking about his love of women and his political spirit; and most rivetingly, sharing in an evening of celebration of Burns’ life and work.

The celebration took place in a castle, in a room so large and dark you could barely make out the walls. The participants sat at tables, and took turns performing for one another. Some sang traditional Burns songs; others read favorite poems; still others sang and played their own compositions to Burns’ words. Maya Angelou told stories, and read poems, and talked, and she was simply her usual incredible self.

At one point, after a tall, burly man finished a spine-tingling rendition of “Scots, Wha Hae” Angelou rose from her seat, embraced the singer, and then turned to face the rest of the hall. She told them that they had a great deal in common, because their people had known slavery, and so had hers.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t know why, exactly, but I recognized that something very powerful had just passed before my eyes. The camera panned around the room, and intent gazes and nodding heads conveyed a long moment of mutual understanding. I realized that a connection had been made that affected me, personally-the history of my people was connected to other histories of oppression, and suddenly we were more alike than different. It was this abrupt and radical shift in perspective, combined with Angelou’s generous spirit of commonality, that brought intense emotions to the surface.

Toast to Caledonia
BURNS SUPPER - GLASGOW,Friday January 19, 2001
Afif Safieh The Palestinian General Delegate to the UK and the Holy See

On this night we also celebrate the brotherhood of all mankind, wherever
their homes or their exile be, "that man to man the warld o'er shall brothers
be for a'that"…

For me and my Palestinian compatriots to be regarded in this way, as Scots,
is a singular honour, deeply welcomed and cherished and I wish to reciprocate
it tonight. There is so much we can share - though a Scottish friend did
advise me that he would wish to spare me the Scottish weather…. As Burns
might have said, he told me,

'You wouldn't want to be 'dreekit, drookit an' drooned in Drumnadroket',

But questionable weather apart, how can one forget the human warmth we,
Palestinians encounter each time we move beyond Hadrian's Wall. It was
Scotland that pioneered in twinnings with Palestinian cities: Dundee with
Nablus and Glasgow with Bethlehem even when it was still perceived as
suicidal to be pro-Palestinian, even when it was seen as electorally
rewarding to be anti-Palestinian.

Scotland's vision for the future is informed by its political, social and
cultural traditions…its earnest desire -

For social inclusion,
justice,
fairness
equality
human rights
learning opportunities for all
better health services
new business opportunities and prosperity
information technologies
the love of your land and seas and the nurture they require
supporting Peace and Justice…

Lord Provost, my people will eternally be indebted to the Scottish friends of
Palestine, to the Trade Union friends of Palestine, to the
Scottish-Palestinian Forum and the newly established Scottish-Palestinian All
Party Parliamentary Committee for their dedication in raising awareness here
in Scotland about the dilemmas of the Middle East.
In Palestine, we still suffer, search and struggle, knowing where we wish to
go, knowing the freedom we desire…

The Immortal Memory By Len Murray
Toast At the World Burns Club

He lived in a world of either opulence or oppression.
By accident of birth all were born with privilege or in poverty.
With privilege there was wealth and position.
Without it, there was destitution and despair.
And it was that world of privilege and position, poverty and injustice that Burns hated and constantly condemned.

And the sentiments of change, drastic change in society, then being kindled in Europe, sentiments which would drive the Americans on to Independence and the French to Revolution, they were still anathema to huge swathes of the privileged in this country and elsewhere.
Burns, however, was above all a humanitarian, one who cared for the people like no one before him.
His sympathies were with the poor and the oppressed, the common folk, his fellow man.
And he had a love for all men that no other writer, before him or after, of any age, or of any country, had ever shown.
And so the pen of Robert Burns became the voice of the people; and he expressed the thoughts and the hopes of the people.
"God knows I am no saint. I have a whole host of follies and sins to answer for. But if I could, and I believe that I do it as far as I can, I would wipe all tears from all eyes."
"Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others," he wrote, "this is my criterion of goodness; but whatever injures society at large or any individual in it, then this is my measure of iniquity."
No figure in world literature had ever written with such compassion for his fellow man.

But RB left one, a message for all men; for all nations and for all times.
It is a message of friendship; a message of fellowship; but above all else a message of love. It is a message that is just as relevant and just as vibrant today as when it was written over two hundred years ago.
"It's comin' yet for a that an' a' that,
That man tae man the world o'er shall brithers be for a' that."


Delivering Inaugural Robert Burns Memorial Lecture,
UN Secretary-General Annan Calls for Brotherhood, Tolerance, Coexistence among All Peoples

ONE might think there is an ocean of distance between the hard-nosed give-and-take of international diplomacy as it is practised at the United Nations in New York, and the lyrical verse of Robert Burns that emanated from rural Scotland two centuries ago. But look closer.

To take just one example, Burns was born into poverty, and spent his youth working on a farm. Burns’ poems dignify and illuminate the struggle faced by the vast majority of the world’s population today.

Burns has also been described as a poet of the poor, an advocate for political and social change, and an opponent of slavery, pomposity and greed - all causes very much supported by the UN.

But it is one of Burns’s most famous lines - "a man’s a man for a’ that" - that I should like to serve as the touchstone for my remarks. And in particular his prayer, in the same poem, that "man to man, the world o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that".

Living together is the fundamental human project - not just in towns and villages from Scotland to South Africa, but also as a single human family facing common threats and opportunities.

The year just past has seen dramatic challenges to that project. The war in Iraq, failed negotiations on opening up the global trading system and other events have revealed deep fissures. These are not just differences over cotton exports or compliance with UN resolutions. There are world-views at odds.

For many decades now, states and peoples have woven a tapestry of rules, institutions and principles that, it was hoped, would promote prosperity and protect the peace. Today, this fabric may be starting to unravel, and I sense a great deal of anxiety about that, around the world.


Scottish Government First Minister Jack McConnell, in a special video message to mark the 246th anniversary of Burns birth on January 25, 2005, says the poet's message of international brotherhood is as relevant today as it was more than 200 years ago.

Mr McConnell said:


"As Scotland prepares to welcome world leaders to the G8 summit in July, it is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on the message that lies at the heart of Burns work - a message that is truly international and knows no boundaries.

"He despised poverty that surrounded him in 18th century Scotland; relentless grinding poverty that stifles ambition and destroys lives.

"And he mocked the privileged few who prospered but then did nothing to try and alleviate the plight of the majority they left behind.

"If Burns had been alive today, he would certainly have been at the forefront of the campaign to make poverty history.

"The words of frustration he wrote on a banknote in 1786 could have been written today to describe the economic plight of the developing world.

I see the children of affliction
Unaided, through thy curst restriction

"Burns would have argued with passion for an end to the inequalities between nations that condemn millions across the globe to a life of misery while those of us living in Scotland and Europe prosper.

"He would have written, with unparalleled force about the plight of millions of children in Africa condemned to die a premature death from hunger, or Aids, or from 'man's inhumanity to man that makes countless thousands mourn'.

"And he would have spoken with great eloquence of common humanity, of the things that unite us regardless of race, colour or belief.

"2005 is a rare opportunity for the home of Burns to stand up and again proclaim the eternal message of the brotherhood of man.



Welcome to The Burns Encyclopedia online - the complete text of the definitive Robert Burns reference volume.

Burns's political allegiance has been claimed by supporters of every political party or faction from extreme right to extreme left. He was, in fact, a good example of Dr Johnson's dictum about the unwisdom of giving one's loyalty of mind to a
Single party in that his attitude to the political parties of his day changed as he grew older. In any case he was never wholly committed to either.

In a sense, however, Burns's involvement in the wider issues of politics — the values behind politics, of which political parties are necessarily so partial an expression — remained fairly constant, although, like sensitive Scots of his day (and, for that matter, our own) he had to try to balance seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Thus, on the face of it, Burns was at the same time a Jacobite and a Jacobin. But only 'on the face of it!'

His nationalism, his internationalism, and his radicalism never wavered. He believed constantly and passionately in Scotland, in 'the brotherhood of man' and in the rights of the ordinary man.

In his autobiographical letter to John Moore, Burns described his recognition of his feelings for Scotland: '... the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins which will boil alang there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.'

His Jacobitism led him to write such songs as 'O Kenmure on and awa' ' and 'Scots wha hae'. It could lead him to send to the Editor of the Edinburgh Evening Courant a protest when a minister of religion, celebrating the Revolution of 1688, reviled the Stuarts:

'Bred and educated in revolution principles, the principles of reason and common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice that made my heart revolt at the harsh abusive manner in which the Reverend Gentleman mentioned the House of Stuart, and which, I am afraid, was too much the language of that day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our deliverance from past evils, without cruelly raking up the ashes of those whose misfortune it was, perhaps, as much as their crimes, to be the authors of these evils... The Stuarts have been condemned and laughed at for the folly and impracticability of their attempts, in 1715 and 1745. That they failed, I bless my God most fervently, but cannot join in the ridicule against them... Let every man, who has a tear for the many miseries incident to humanity, feel for a family, illustrious as any in Europe, and unfortunate beyond historic precedent; and let every Briton, and particularly every Scotsman, who ever looked with reverential pity on the dotage of a parent, cast a veil over the fatal mistakes of the Kings of his forefathers.' Whatever his sentimental attachment to the Jacobites, Burns was aware that theirs was a lost cause. In 'Ye Jacobites by name', he advised:

"Then let your schemes alone,
In the State!
Then let your schemes alone,
Adore the rising sun,
And leave a man undone
To his fate!"

That he was keenly aware, however, of the inadequacies of the ruling representatives of the House of Hanover he showed in 'A Dream'.

"Tis very true, my sovereign King,
My skill may weel be doubted;
But facts are chiels that winna ding,
An' downa be disputed:
Your royal nest, beneath your wing,
Is e'en right reft and clouted,
And now the third part of the string,
An' less, will gang about it
Than did ae day."

Nor was he under any illusions as to the real nature of the political jobbery which accomplished the unpopular Treaty of Union of 1707:

"What force or guile could not subdue
Thro' many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor's wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour's station:
But English gold has been our bane
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation."

Which of us today does not echo his protest: 'Nothing can reconcile me to the common terms, 'English ambassador, English court, & etc...'?

His internationalism and his radicalism were bound up with one another:

"For a that, and a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that."

What was coming, so far as Burns was concerned, was not only the brotherhood of Man, but changed social conditions where no longer hundreds would have to

"... labour to support
A haughty lordling's pride."

One aspect of his attitude prior to the French Revolution is perhaps summed up in 'The Twa Dogs', in which the manners of the rich are satirised much as Beaumarchais satirised them in The Marriage of Figaro. (Incidentally, the kin

Ship between Mozart and Burns, whose short lives coincided within a few years, is not unworthy of comment, since social satire lies behind not only Figaro, which appeared the same year as the Kilmarnock Poems, but also Cosi fan Tutte and Don Giovanni.)

Nor are his 'Lines on Meeting with Lord Daer' the toadying contradiction they are sometimes made out to be, for Daer sympathised with the Friends of the People, as did Burns. Besides,

"The fient o' pride, nae pride had he,
Nor sauce, nor state that I could see,
Mair than an honest ploughman!"

But after 1793, Burns's sympathy for France seemed to sharpen. Certainly, if 'The Tree of Liberty' is by him, there can be no doubt about his revolutionary sentiments:

"But vicious folk ay hate to see
The warks o' Virtue thrive, man;
The courtly vermin's bann'd the tree,
And grat to see it thrive, man!
King Louis thought to cut it down,
When it was unco sma', man;
For this the watchman crack'd his crown,
Cut aff his head and a', man."

This certainly accords with the sentiments in his letter of 12th January 1795 (the month in which 'Is there for honest poverty? was written) that so offended Mrs Dunlop:

'What is there in the delivering over a perjured Blockhead and an unprincipled Prostitute to the hands of the hangman, that it should arrest for a moment, attention, in an eventful hour, when, as my friend Roscoe of Liverpool gloriously expresses it -

"When the welfare of Millions is hung in the scale
And the balance yet trembles with fate!",

Nor is there much doubt about the significance of the 'Ode on General Washington's Birthday':

"Here's freedom to them that would read.
Here's freedom to them that would write!
There's nane ever fear'd that the truth should be heard
But they wham the truth would indite!"

So much for Burns's political attitudes. His actual political alignment can be gauged from his various election Ballads. Those written in 1789-90 — the 'Election Ballad for Westerha', 'The Five Carlins', and the 'Election Ballad at Close of the Contest for Representing the Dumfries Burgh, 1790' — are more or less Pittite in sentiment, and therefore pro-Tory. But in 1795, Burns had swung over to the Whigs with his four Ballads in support of Patrick Heron of Kerroughtree, which show, as Thomas Crawford puts it, Burns 'interpreting the French Revolutionary doctrines in terms of the general Whig demands for Parliamentary Reform'. The threat of French invasion may have induced doubts about the intentions of France:

"... For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted !"

but not about the original principles behind France's revolution: so, said Burns:

"...While we sing God save the King
We'll ne'er forget the People!"



"A Man's a Man For A' That"

Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave - we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.


For Hawk


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