The Bigger Picture

“May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you're dead.” -Irish Drinking Toast

*Reader note: The footnotes to this article are just as important as the body.

This article was originally intended to deal with the 2007 Sidney Lumet film Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, adding to the Homo Economicus series but my exposition to the movie took over and became its own animal. I plan to cover that great film specifically with my next article which is related to the below content, the overall question being: Can America turn the tide or is it too late? As an Orthodox Christian I do not believe what is detailed and written below is an ultimate solution which would be America becoming majority or a substantial minority Orthodox which would then be able to reflect Orthodox governance, laws and faith (Symphonia). I believe this can happen but I’m not naive enough to expect this will occur in my life time or even my unborn children’s lives, it may very well never happen.

Nevertheless, its also pointless to purity spiral and not see the obvious traction and positive gains being made in the direction of a reversion to tradition and genuine community building based on shared culture (ethnos) not to mention the massive growth in Orthodoxy in the US.1 Saying this is somehow a negative is like demanding a baby be born without labor pains, you're not living in reality and not in the arena. We need to be building legacies for the future because our enemies sure are. Its both and, not either or.

It has been refreshing to hear recently the core problems that have plagued the US for decades coming to the fore. The first guy through the door always gets bloody and often doesn’t get the credit he deserves, you rarely score points for being ahead of the curve. Pat Buchanan was dismissed by most of the public when he was running for president on three occasions, even those considering themselves conservatives because they simply couldn’t see what Buchanan saw was over the horizon.2 Namely, the incredibly detrimental impact of immigration both “legal’ and “illegal” was having and going to have on the US. Buchanan identified the underlying thought of US immigration policy: that man was a widget, a fungible economic unit, you can simply plug and play different people with