Yoozio and Goodzio

Yoozio is the phonetic spelling of Józio, one of the diminutives of the Polish name Józef (Joseph). One must have earned a special affection to be promoted from the diminutive “Józek” to “Józio,” just as one does who is promoted from Joe to Joey.

Still in a café at the Market Square in Wrocław, I open my newly purchased books, to take a peak into the mind of a man as great and luminous as his close friend, Karol Wojtyła (aka John Paul II) was. Józef Tischner -- Catholic priest, initial and providential pastor to the Solidarity insurrection, man of the people, highlander fond of his Góral folk culture, mountaineer, nature lover, social drinker, indefatigable teller of risqué jokes, resolutely celibate male whom women found irresistibly attractive, Doctor of Philosophy, friend of the brightest European minds of his generation, Dean of the Papal Academy of Theology and professor at the Jagiellonian University (est. 1364) in Kraków, prolific author – and “Yoozio” to his friends, particularly the shepherds among them.  

But who is Goodzio?

Goodzio is Cardinal Godfried Maria Jules Danneels, Archbishop of Brussels, Doctor of Theology and ecclesiastical scholar of note. At least that’s my nickname for him since I read Thomas Landen’s “Cardinal Delighted: Belgium Opens the Floodgates”. 50,000 - 100,000 more African and Middle Eastern Muslim colonizers will now stay in Belgium permanently. The Belgian Catholic Church has been encouraging this from the beginning. It’s hard for a European autochthon to forget this set of pictures that The Brussels Journal published in 2006.

 

The difference between Yoozio and Goodzio is in the Y. The Y chromosome. This was Yoozio.  This is Cardinal Danneels (1).

The difference is also in their concepts of Good and God. Danneels is a do-goodnick, a man deracinated from the equations of reality and seemingly representing a Son of God who is a mystical theorem of love and self-erasure wrapped in arcane theology. But Tischner is a propagator of goodness that’s woven into a hierarchy of values, including biological imperatives and Epicurean values. He seems in touch not only with the Son of God but also the angry, physical Galilean preacher who lived among and related to real people in a real time and place, with all that entails. It’s a huge difference.

Tischner writes in his “Examination of Conscience” -- a book so compact that I finish reading it before I have finished my beer:  

“Repentance means sometimes also liberation from an innate fear that haunts the just -- fear of one’s mercy. We ask, ‘Where will it lead me?’ Today we are giving the finger, tomorrow the hand, and what will we give in the future? It’s necessary to weave mercy with prudence, and that too is “repentance.” (2)

The problem with Goodzio, with all do-goodnicks, with all Body Snatchers (3) is that they have castrated and perverted the four cardinal virtues. Justice, or rather its waterlogged “social justice” permutation, assumes gargantuan dimensions. Prudence and courage are cast out. And temperance is redefined to exempt favored sexual and racial minorities.

If Goodzio had resigned his archbishopric and went instead to minister to the poor in Turkey, if his co-hierarchs (4) had had the courage to immigrate illegally to Morocco and Sudan to help the hopeless there, they would have attained spiritual sublimity. But to turn Belgian churches into Muslim mosques and piss-smelling, alien colonizers’  dorms, to visit on the Belgian people another 100,000 barbarian invaders, that is an unpardonable crime, an arrogant theft of dwindling social capital that belongs to all autochthon Flemings and Walloons and is not Goodzio’s to give away.

It’s one thing to have respect for other faiths and compassion for all people. But it’s another to turn churches over to Muslim invaders or to proclaim the benefits of Islam to Europe, as Cardinal Danneels seems to be doing with some regularity, e.g. here  and here. Goodzio, like all limousine liberals, seems to not have lived a real life, in touch with real people, his people. And this syndrome bedevils the entire still-Christian leadership of the West.

On the night of July 18, 1969, as they drove through Chappaquiddick, did Edward “Ted” Kennedy -- perhaps the worst churchgoing limousine saboteur of his own people in modern times – ask Mary Joe Kopechne what it was like to grow up in a lower middle class white family in New Jersey, or did he charm her with stories of his Korea wartime military service in, mirabile dictu, Paris? Because Kennedy, Carter, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Tony Blair, Helen Bjørnøy et al.  – that entire “Christian” traitor class -- have no clue and no interest in their own little flyover people. But they are proud to implement “values” they have learned in their respective churches. And that’s the case also with practically all Jewish politicians. If not flaming leftists, liberalism is the wet, moldy husk they have retained from their Old-Time religion. 

How different Yoozio is. Though equipped with a similar basic theological and devotional kit as Goodzio, this Catholic theologian, pastor and philosopher was also deeply attuned to the thought and feelings of simple folk. What he learned while bivouacking with highlander shepherds on the Carpathian slopes, he was able to reload into discussions with cardinals in the papal palace at Gandolfo, or into lectures to PhD candidates in philosophy.  Conversely, as he once said of his dual vocation as philosopher and pastor, “Ceaselessly, I had to bend Husserl’s theory of the transcendental constitution to the needs of little Mary or Kathy in the kindergarten.”

The proof is right before me on the café table, as I open my second Tischner purchase, his multiple-printings best seller and now a stage-act,  Historia filozofii po góralsku [“History of philosophy, the highlander way”]

The book’s basic premise is in this quote: “Philosopher -- that's Greek. It means as much as ‘a sage.’ But it is said in Greek for dissimulation. Like, why should someone know how it was at the beginning? But the Greeks were no Greeks, but highlanders who made believe they were Greeks. For at the beginning there were no Greeks, but everywhere there were highlanders."

That’s not quite it, though. To get the real flavor in English, I have to ask a Scottish Highlander friend for help, as the book is written in the Polish Highlands’ Góral vernacular. So this is how the flavor of the last two sentences would appear to the Polish reader:

“Noo the Greeks werena Greeks at a' but 'struth they were braw Hielanders who played the Greek so if the truth be told the Greek was nae Greek but Hielanders. In lang syne there were nae Greeks but a' Hielanders, aye.”

Tischner translated here all the ideas of classical philosophy into the common sense precepts of simple shepherds. And vice versa. Philosophy, spirituality, ethics must arise from the unvarnished life experience of even an unvarnished person. Homer, Heraclitus, Hegel and Husserl -- as Horse Sense. God as a magic wand vanishing the horse heap that passes for human relationships – which are always between mask-wearing, lying egomaniacs.  

Józef Tischner has 600 books and other publications to his name, but I, too long absent, first became aware of him only three days after my arrival here. A newspaper on my hotel breakfast tray had a full-page article, “Tischner: the Highlands’ avalanche.”

Since then I have learned that the “Priest Professor” – as most of his myriad awed admirers addressed him, in the third person singular -- has, among others, articulated the spiritual and moral foundation of the Solidarity movement when it was still a lost, persecuted and anonymous group of dissident workers.  His Etyka solidarności [“Solidarity Ethics”] appeared in the 80s, and other books followed exploring the ideas of solidarity in the face of subjugation, encounter with values, forging a post-communist Polish identity. And freedom, that he called “the unfortunate gift of freedom,” continuing to bedevil not only the Poles who for 45 years were deprived of freedom, but also the West that has had a surfeit of misdirected freedom.

High-flying concepts breeze by: agathology, axiology, hierarchy of values, thinkers I have never heard of [e.g. Max Scheler (1874-1928)], lectures to philosophers all over Europe (e.g. here). But I am having a beer at an outdoor café table in Wrocław, with just two books and some newspaper clippings. I can’t possibly plumb the depths of this man now, or ever. Instead, this gives me an idea of what he was about, jocose façade notwithstanding:

“Religion is for the wise. And if someone is stupid, he should not use religion to disguise his stupidity.”

“Faith is essentially a sad necessity. If we could have knowledge, we would not need faith. The thing is, we cannot have knowledge. There are matters that surpass the capabilities of the human mind. There is a warming light. That’s how it is with God.”

“Not all values are absolute values. The error is not only in relativizing everything but also in absolutizing everything.”

But this I find Yoozio’s most intriguing saying: “The Parable of the Good Samaritan shows what in Christianity is fundamental, and what is fundamentalist.”

What did he mean by that? For this champion of Goodness also had the highlanders’ common sense. And the Parable of the Good Samaritan is the Trojan Horse that’s ruining the West from within. So maybe the error is in reading words attributed to Jesus in an absolutist way. Giving the finger, the hand, the elbow, the arm, and the future itself.

I have met Samaritans on visits to Israel. An individual Samaritan is likely to stop and give aid to a needy stranger in distress. But the Samaritan tribe would never be insane enough to accept 100,000 or 10 Somalis or Moroccans into its midst. A Samaritan elder who would push such a thing through would be summarily tried by a secret tribunal and executed. But then, these are the real Samaritans, ancient and ethnocentric highlanders.  And these are the fake Samaritans.

Right now, this issue is on my mind, as loud Andean music is bothering me in this medieval Silesian square where a Bach quartet would be more becoming. I get up and walk over to a group of gawkers surrounding some Amerindian buskers, undoubtedly wending their way through Europe. The bystanders are simple, local people. They are interested, they will drop something in the hat, but their stance, their faces say, “Okay, this is nice, but when you finish you have to move on.” That’s the way it ought to be.

From useful Christology to Useful Idiocy

Yoozio died prematurely in 2000, but he is everywhere. There are now at least 31 schools named after him. Pupils compete for the best poem dedicated to their mentor. They attend philosophical seminars devoted to life’s major questions that preoccupied him. They have websites like this, in a provincial grade school, where I don’t see much evidence of angst, anorexia, sex at 13, self-mutilation and hatred for white ethnic identity.  Still, their Tischner-homage song proclaims a nonparochial openness to the world, love of man and nature, just as the “Priest Professor” taught.

Tischner’s mountain chalet has been turned into a popular museum. There is a society named “In Tischner’s Ways”. The Jagiellonian University has an annual symposium called “Days of Tischner.” There are similar events in other major Polish university towns. They all promote Tischnerian concepts of intellectual integrity, courage, and sensitivity to “the other.” An annual Fr. Józef Tischner Prize is awarded to writers of philosophical or religious works best exemplifying those values. There is the “Józef Tischner Institute,” founded by his pupils and friends to propagate his ideas.

But here I run into problems. For Tishner’s ideas are gradually being co-opted by the forces of multiculti “tolerance.”  There is a competition for the best essay on the Tishnerian theme of “Dialog is the building of mutualities”. Funded by The European Commission’s “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue,” which is a fountain of deadly opiates like “Diversity in unity”, “Intercultural Dialogue: a Challenge for faiths and convictions?”, and “Together in Diversity”. The latter aims, “To raise the awareness of European citizens [snip];… based on the common values of respect for human dignity, liberty, equality, non-discrimination, solidarity, the principles of democracy and the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of minorities.

Sounds good. But the solidarity that Tischner spoke of is the solidarity of a people, and the minorities in favor of whose rights he spoke are minorities that have been a part of the people for 800 years, not minorities imported by the tens of millions in the last four decades by a demented ruling elite, stuffed into the throat of an unwilling but apathetic Europe, and spewing toxic irritants ever since.  And Yoozio had nothing to do with secular equality. It’s equality before God that interested him.

Another such charade is the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Institute for Human Sciences) in Vienna, founded by Fr. Tischner and a few other European intellectuals in the early 80s. “After its inception, the IWM aimed to reintegrate the ideas and experiences of the eastern parts of Europe, which have been intellectually isolated after 1945, back into the western discussion. The political transformation in the East [snip] modified this intention. 1989 has meant that many traditional beliefs, attitudes and institutions – for years held as self-evident facts of life – have been put into question.”

What matters here is precisely which “traditional beliefs, attitudes and institutions” the Wissenschaften wise-ones are helping to “put into question.” I can’t answer yet, but I know this: in Yoozio’s time it may have been different, but now, just the list of the people who run this place makes me nauseous. For among those swells sit George Soros, Joschka Fischer, Giuliano Amato, Timothy Garton-Ash, Saskia Sassen, Amy Gutmann, Ira Katznelson, Aleksander Smolar and probably others who would make me retch if I knew more about them.

This is no gratuitous invective. All of the above are socialist sympathizers, and some were ardent communists in the past. All exude the fumes of Multiculti Tolerance - We Are All One But People Of Color Are More Virtuous - Affirmative Action - Obamerica And Eurabia Forever. And four of the eight are Jews, which exemplifies why reason is among the current causes of antisemitism, however irrational the modes in which it may be expressed.

How much was Yoozio a part of this scene? It would take me months of study to answer that validly. But I know this:

In the early 80s, the contacts Fr. Tischner had made in Vienna allowed him to bring, at great risk of commie persecution, many wagonloads of agricultural equipment [36 on just one occasion] for his dirt-poor Góral highlanders. Poor because they had never kissed communist butt like some of the Wissenschaften moralists did. He also arranged to send young Góral homesteaders to an agricultural school in Austria. If the price was to engage in some palavers with Western Body Snatchers, it was worth it.

Yoozio loved his highlanders because they have always loved freedom. It comes from the mountains, the brooks, the eagles. No one has ever subjugated them; not even Nazi or commie henchmen (5). Their spiritual mentor and benefactor taught that the highest expression of freedom was to carry on your back the weakest sheep of your kinfolk’s flock. But he knew too that you do that while tucking a foot-long dirk in your belt and holding the highlanders’ fighting axe, the ciupaga, in your hand (6).

Being open, friendly, respectful of other people, peoples and cultures, recognizing a pan-European commonality -- that is great. But it’s all moot unless weaned from utopian universalism, guilt, pacifism and global altruism as the supreme good. For those just strengthen the progressive death grip of the tools of Hitler’s or Stalin’s Revenge: the Body Snatchers, the Leviathan State, the hostile Replacement Populations,  the Alinskyite storm troopers of white self-hatred and dhimmitude.

For a major European cardinal like Goodzio to rejoice in what The Telegraph called “Demographic Time Bomb” ought to be considered civic treason. But the Church ought to regress to some point of sanity where it’s considered religious anathema too.
 

Sarmatians, Snatchers and Scoundrels

I am in Central Europe in search of the “many traditional beliefs, attitudes and institutions – for years held as self-evident facts of life” that the likes of George Soros and Joschka Fischer have not yet “put into question.” I find another such “fact of life” in another church, just two minutes’ walking distance from the other one I’ve just visited, in Wrocław.

 

The Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene is a huge brick pile, built in the 11th century, burnt by the Mongols 150 years later, rebuilt, burnt again, rebuilt even larger. What stands here was erected in the mid-14th century, with two towers added 100 years later. It turned Protestant in 1523, lost its spires and roof in the last days of the war in 1945, lost a lot more in a mine explosion a few days later. Just the usual for a Central European cathedral.

But I am interested in the bridge. High up, 46 m. above ground, the Penitents’ Bridge ties the two hatless towers. Mentioned in chronicles from 1459, this too is a phoenix that last arose from the ashes in the 1990s. Legend has it that on this bridge swirled the souls of young maidens in penance for lives spent in flirt and other vain pursuits instead of running a good household and bringing up children.

The fact of life that women are connected to nesting and children is still on the surface everywhere in Central Europe. Feminism, particularly in academic sociobabble circles, is seeping in via Western influences and tons of EU paper. The Norwegian gynocracy is two hours away by plane. The evil idiocy of the West’s Maneaters (e.g. at Harvard) takes but a few hours to circle the globe. But it’s still different here.

Barbara Kudrycka, current Polish Minister of Higher Education, is trying to push through the idea of women’s “parity” in science. She undoubtedly soaked up fashionable ideas during her 2004 -2007 tenure in the European Parliament. But prominent women in such positions as Mayor of Warsaw and Rector of the University of Warsaw (7) are strongly against this type of thinking.

Of the 32 Central European women that come to mind quickly when I think of those I have been acquainted with, there are 2 engineers, 2 chemists, 3 microbiologists, 3 dentists, 2 pharmacists and 2 physicians. Not a bad ratio, particularly as all these women but one have married once, for life, and raised good children. Even though only one was a regular churchgoer, there is something about growing up in a traditional Christian culture. Yoozio, for instance, could jump from a mildly ribald joke to something as serious as this: “Someone who does not consider marital betrayal a sin, should not go to confession but should go to get baptized.”

“The affair connected to the financial excesses and nepotism practiced by British parliamentarians has shown a radical change of values in Western societies,“ writes the noted (and female) journalist Aleksandra Rybińska in the prestigious Polish newspaper, Rzeczpospolita (8) “Tolerance as the highest value pushed out from the public life other principles of its functioning – honesty, integrity, conscientiousness. It’s not important if you steal and cheat; it’s important that you like Negroes.”

Virtues. How to explain virtues to a white Western MSM pundit for whom only the opiates of nondiscrimination, racial self-abasement and hypocritical “equality” are virtues? How to explain virtues to a teenager who grew up with rap on his ear buds, speech codes in the classroom, “cool” as the supreme norm and Obama as The One? How to explain that there are qualities far more despicable than racism, let alone “racism”? It’s not possible.

To sustain virtues requires an upper class that’s defined by virtue, whom the lower classes emulate. “Celebrities” as the current upper class in the West cannot possibly rise to the task. They are too debauched, vain and stupid. But in Central Europe virtues (and some weaknesses too) have been preserved until now, even through Communism, in Sarmatism.

The Sarmatians were an ancient Proto-Caucasian people like the Scythians, Parthians, Yazigs and Alans. They either fought Rome or fought for Rome. Nomadic warriors and herders, they settled eventually in Eastern Europe between the rivers Dnepr and Wisła (Vistula), as mentioned already in Strabo’s 2000-years-old Geographica.

For roughly 200 years, beginning from late 16th century, the Polish - Lithuanian nobility, known as szlachta, was obsessed with the idea of its Sarmatian origins, just as the mania of ancient „roots” was taking hold in other European countries too. Among Sarmatism’s external manifestations were unique, Turkic-like (for men only) costumes and weaponry, an equestrian countryside life; the Bible, church traditions and the Latin language as a major presence in daily life. But more important were the virtues and vices that comprised the „Sarmatian” mindset (9).

It is no longer remembered that the social class known as „nobility” had nobility. In Poland, that expressed itself as honor, courage, fortitude, honesty, fidelity, love of freedom, country and tradition. Corollary to that were gallantry, conspicuous courtesy to women, strong family bonds, pacific disposition and pragmatic religious tolerance.

The latter two contradict some clichés, but they were a logical extension of the former. The nobility could not be conscripted, but felt honor-bound to serve at war. And they fought with mad bravery. The feared Polish hussars, for instance, such as decided the Battle of Vienna in 1683, were all volunteers from the szlachta who even paid for their own expensive equipage and weaponry.  And no one is more prudent with military adventures than the warrior who bears their often ultimate price. The same went for religious tolerance, at least with respect to Christian denominations. The szlachta had seen enough bloodshed elsewhere in Europe over Christian schisms, and decided that live-and-let-live was better.

The nobility was 10% of the population and ranged from simpleton ne'er-do-wells, to feudal seigneurs with enormous estates and thousands of leaseholders. Yet all the nobles were legally equal and were ardent believers in the ideas of republicanism: freedom, equality at law, self-rule, inalienable rights, elections. Unlike in Western Europe, Polish kings were elected by the szlachta and had limited powers. It had taken hundreds of years to wrests these privileges, but by late 16th century Poland-Lithuania had become the freest country in Europe (10).

All this was undone by the vices. Just like in modern liberalism, excessive value placed on the rights of the individual led to anarchy. Fixation on personal freedom led to lack of self-restraint, selfishness and eventually treason. Honor and dignity degenerated into quarrelsomeness and a penchant for dueling and litigation. A single countryside hick with a coat of arms to his name could paralyze the state with his liberum veto during a parliamentary session. Just like the racial or orificial minorities that exercise the privilege of paralyzing Western society now.

Traditionalism failed to integrate a desire for personal and national development. Love of the horsey, alcohol-fuelled lifestyle led to contempt for book learning. Overvaluation of blood descent from warriors led to contempt for social classes that were not so.

Regardless of the tribulations of history that all this bore, by mid-19th century the haute bourgeoisie had started emulating the warrior class’s virtues. Farther west, e.g. in the cities of the Hanseatic League, a comparable trend, fuelled partly by the Reformation, had started much earlier. But in the multiculti West now the noble virtues have been buried, while in Central Europe they remain a potent cultural force, as they do in Japan.

A “Sarmatian” is unemployable (11) in a modern corporation and useless as a Western politician, because there are things he won’t do to gain money, status or power. He will not stab in the back. He will not betray his friends or his country. He will not import and pump up “minorities” for either the true Machiavellian political advantage or the faked economic one. He will not rise when political Chicago mafiosi enter. He will not steal even when no one is watching. He will starve rather than suck up. And so he starves – and the West is much the poorer for it.
 
It’s remarkable that even in the United States – the country that arose to break with European class divisions and iniquities -- the Declaration of Independence ends with the line, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” No Prussian baron of ancient lineage could have put it better. And few were the European aristocrats who could equal the natural nobility of George Washington.

Not much “sacred Honor” left now in this nation of Ponzi pyramid shysters, legal leeches, burglars in Brioni suits presiding over “investment” banks,  greedy nincompoop CEOs with 11-digit golden parachutes, Wise Latinas, Affirmative Action buffoons in endowed professorial chairs, Chicago thugs in the White House and lying bribed bimbos in the U.S. Congress. 

There is more sacred honor in a random battalion of the U.S. Marines than there is in all of Manhattan. But the Poles I have been close to, or whom I read, grew up with an ethic that George Washington could recognize. I grew up with it myself. I had to find a bride among samurai families in Japan, because I could not find one in California who understood concepts like “honor” and “loyalty” (12). Few are as wretched as those who have lost the notion that there are certain things that are just “not done.”
 
Zbigniew Herbert, Poland’s greatest post-war poet, was a “Sarmatian.”  He refused to prostitute his talent to sing the praise of the commie criminals who were running his country. And he starved. Lesser poets like Czesław Miłosz and Władysława Szymborska had no such scruples. They did well for themselves, and eventually got their Nobels too. But the noble one did not – he was “right wing.” What remains of Herbert is poems like this:

“Go where those others went to the dark limits
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize
go upright among those on their knees
among those with backs turned and those toppled in the dust
you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony
be brave when the mind fails be courageous
in the final account only this is important
and may your helpless Anger be like the sea
whenever you hear the voice of the belittled and beaten
may abandon you not your sister Contempt 
for the snitches executioners cowards -- they will win
they will go to your funeral and will with relief throw a clump of soil
the woodborer will write your rearranged biography
and do not forgive indeed it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn” (13)

The nobility had a good and long run.  At the end it decayed, just like egalitarian democracy has by now. But maybe future genetic science will be able to isolate the “nobility phenotype” whose carriers will be trained for leadership positions. For a truck driver with the nobility phenotype may be better Senator or CEO material than hollow souls who are hereditary wastrel dukes, Harvard MBAs, or popularly elected charismatic lawyers from Arkansas who charge the going rate.

 

The story has only begun

Back in Warsaw, friends take me to the new Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. It’s a holy place for every Pole, a memorial to the noble virtues, a reminder of German brutality, Soviet evil and Western appeasement of evil (14). The experience is too much to relay here, but there is a smaller and happier one linked with it. For across the street from the museum, I see this building, showing how the fruits of capitalism, though not distributed equally, are displacing the equally distributed misery of socialism. 

 

I have conflicting emotions while seeing this. For in Poland and the rest of Central Europe, capitalism is gradually resurrecting ruins. But in my country, socialism and diversititis are gradually reverting the blessings of capitalism to ruins. But not before capitalism itself has turned into a nobilitatis-free banquet of contagious whores.

At the level of state leadership, there are no better international exponents of sensible Conservatism than the leaders of the Czech Republic have been. As to Eurabia, it’s a Russian who wrote in Pravda recently, “The true responsibility of the Rus, of the Russian peoples, is to save Europe and the West from itself and from the anti-Christian [snip] and Islamic scourge that the West is rotting of, like a gangrened alcoholic, dying a slow withering, rotting death.”

As to economic principles, Poland has two personal tax rates: 18% and 32%, a 19% corporate tax, no real estate tax, and a 22% VAT. “Capitalist” America will institute, as of 2011, marginal income tax rates for the upper middle class at 50%-58% in 39 states, and 40%+ in the others. That’s not counting Social Security taxes, special surtaxes on the “rich,” 10% VAT that most of the states now aim for, high real estate taxes, and an average corporate tax rate of 39.3%. And half of the population, consisting mainly of “minorities” imported and domestic, does not pay any income taxes. Guaranteeing a large pool of voters for The One.

Poland’s taxes are relatively high for the region, if a distant dream for a Belgian or American. Bulgaria has a 10% flat income tax, Russia - 13%, Lithuania - 15%, Romania - 16%, Slovakia - 19%, Latvia - 23%. That’s freedom, properly understood.

But freedom has other important dimensions too. The post-communist ruling elites here have not engaged in the favorite treason of their Western counterparts: population replacement. Even though neighborhood grocery shops in Prague are operated by Vietnamese, and various exotics sell cut-rate, Asian import clothing at outdoor bazaars in Poland, this is a minuscule percentage of the population. The people here, everywhere from Latvia to Slovakia, are still repulsing the minoritarian tyranny imposed by the ruling elites on weak, brainwashed societies farther West. 

It’s an indescribable pleasure to walk among a throng of people in a large public venue, and experience none of the blessings of diversity. No burkas. No “youths.” No hateful stares of fifth columnists from “Asia.” No black gangs on the prowl for white victims. No Kevlar vests on schoolchildren. Young lovers walking safely at 03:00. No “undocumented workers” driving death cars with no license and no resistance to alcohol. No pampered immigrant jihadis driving death cars with a license and no alcohol. No gays exchanging body fluids in public. No gay pride parades. No transvestite police persons. No Arabic prayer incantations wafting through the golden light of dusk...

 “Wisdom does not rely on smarts but on the ability to stay by the obvious truths,” said Yoozio. “He will endure who has chosen to stand by the obvious truths. He who has chosen a temporary illusion in order to gain by it shall pass along with the illusion.”

As long as Central Europe continues to resist the flow of temporary illusions from the EU, it shall not pass. As to the rest of us, all bets are off.

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(1) Comparison between the young Tischner and the aged Danneels may be unfair.  But Tischner retained his raw vitality and masculine charisma until his death from cancer at the age of 69, as evident in this picture.

(2) Like in Chapter 1, I am responsible for all translation from the Polish here, unless otherwise noted.

(3) The basic analogy reverts to Part 1, where we cited the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the film, alien “Body Snatchers” produce giant legume Pods that replace living people while appearing to be identical to them. From the Pods develop the new Body Snatchers who cultivate further Pods etc. I use these terms interchangeably, usually preferring Pods as a catchall term, and anti-Pod as the antithesis of Pod.

(4) Having a good time here with Cardinal Danneels in front of a graffiti-defaced church.

(5) That goes also for the nearly identical Slovak, Czech and Ukrainian highlanders, with multiple similarities to those in Hungary and Romania.

(6) It comes through in the voices, words and images of this góral song.

(7) The names are, respectively, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and Prof. Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow.

(8) Aleksandra Rybińska, “Koniec epoki dżentelmenów”, 20-06-2009

(9) To the best of my knowledge similar external and internal components existed in Hungary and perhaps parts of Slovakia and Transylvania.

(10) It may sound ridiculous to call “free” a country where only 10% of the population could vote, but in England at that time, the Magna Carta notwithstanding, only 3% of the population could vote. Everything said here about 16th -18th century Poland and Poles pertains to Lithuania and Lithuanians as well.

(11) Unlike the “Sarmatian,” the samurai is employable because his has been a collectivist culture. Otherwise, his virtues are the same, but tempered for collective goals.
 
(12) Had I lived in Central Europe or in the American South, my local search would likely have been more successful.

(13) http://www.zbigniew.herbert.pl/, excerpt from Przesłanie Pana Cogito [“Message of Mr. Cogito”], my translation.

(14) This largest uprising by any European underground forces under German occupation lasted from August 1 to October 2, 1944. 22,000 Polish underground soldiers [96% from the “right-wing Sarmatian” Home Army (AK)] rose against a German garrison twice as strong in men and 40 times as strong in weapons and materiel. By then, the Allies and the Soviets had already squeezed the Third Reich in a vise. But the Soviet Army stood on the right bank of the Wisla (Vistula) river, watching the fighting without interference. And Stalin forbade Allied planes from landing on Soviet-held territory, hence Allied logistic assistance was between impossible and ineffective. Franklin Roosevelt in particular showed a marked disinclination to challenge Stalin on this (or any other) point. After 63 days of fighting, the Poles lost hope and surrendered, with 16,000 military and 150,000 civilian dead. It’s only after that, and after the Germans’ destruction of the city and massacre of its survivors, that the Red Army moved in to finish what the Poles had started. Too late for Poland, but just in time to claim the country for Stalin.

  
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