The End of History?

“One of the signs of a great society is the diligence with which it passes culture to one generation to the next.” — Winston Churchill ca. 1931

Never a dull moment in this year of Our Lord of 2020. I was quietly watching the news and informing myself about the latest developments of the Apocalypse when I heard that some politicians (I will let you guess from what party) proposed that History should not be taught any longer in any American educational institution. The joke was already written and it came to my mind like a flash: “Oh! That is what the Marxist were talking about when they mentioned the end of History!” By the way, I am going to capitalize the word History, as a science, on purpose to distinguish it from i.e. “the history of the Roman Empire.”

Yes, that is happening in the United States, a country that has apparently decided to become Argentina, or Germany of 1938, or perhaps both at the same time.

The revolutionary proposal was presented in an effort to erase the ‘racist white privileged past’ of the Great North American Republic. It is a shame that anyone ever entertained such idea but it also a sign of the times, the sign of the rise of a generation of badly informed men and women who are about to inherit one of the largest economies in the planet and also one of the largest and deadliest military arsenals in history.

That is why History is important. It is not difficult to instill an interest in History to those young persons inclined to read. A man that I never met was responsible for my early attraction to History books. His name was Indro Montanelli, an Italian journalist much admired by some of my relatives. I read numerous times his Storia dei Greci  and Storia di Roma which was the introduction to his magnum opus: La Grande Storia d’Italia. Recently, Mr. Montanelli was honored by the BLM movement who attempted to remove his statue from a certain park in Italy in protest for his involvement and conduct during Mussolini’s Ethiopian campaign. But the man, complex as he was, remains a genius historian with an insightful knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the  italiano medio, something one could roughly translate as the average Italian. 

I have to thank Montanelli for showing me the strange fact that History is much more than a boring list of rulers, battles, and empires raising and falling. What followed was the intuition that History has its own internal sense, something that moves one to ask the great question: What is moving history? That question was answered when I became a Christian and learned that the “what” was really a “Who” — perhaps my earliest but undetected brush with the Logos.

History is an integral part of Christian doctrine. Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration are historical elements of how Christians view reality. As followers of the Logos Incarnate we also sense the historical consequences of the Johannine revelation:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος]  He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

The Logos (imperfectly translated into English as ‘the Word’) incarnated as Christ, the Messiah. Perhaps the most important identifying mark of the Messiah was his teaching through parables, metaphors, examples.

Then the disciples came and asked him, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ He answered, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. (Matthew 13:10-11)

It is easy to understand that Logos is the force moving History to its final conclusion. Christians understand history as a battle between the forces of good and evil, Heaven and Hell. That becomes clear in the prophetic dream of Mordechai.

And this was [Mordechai’s] dream: Behold there were voices, and tumults, and thunders, and earthquakes, and a disturbance upon the earth. And behold two great dragons came forth ready to fight one against another. And at their cry all nations were stirred up to fight against the nation of the just. And that was a day of darkness and danger, of tribulation and distress, and great fear upon the earth. And the nation of the just was troubled fearing their own evils, and was prepared for death. And they cried to God: and as they were crying, a little fountain grew into a very great river, and abounded into many waters. The light and the sun rose up, and the humble were exalted, and they devoured the glorious. And when Mordechai had seen this, and arose out of his bed, he was thinking what God would do: and he kept it fixed in his mind, desirous to know what the dream should signify. (Esther 11:5-12 DOUAY-RHEIMS)

Therefore, History is a lesson of the Logos and Logos is the force moving sinful human history to its end which is the redemption of the human race and the restoration of God’s Kingdom. That conclusion is fiercely opposed by the enemies of Logos. One dragon represents the forces of light, the other dragon represents the forces of darkness.

Now, the forces of darkness also have a lesson to teach to their followers. In our age, several devices have been set on the world’s stage to confuse and blind mankind to the realities of History. Those devices oppose the will of the Logos mimicking his actions with countermeasures of falsehood. The strange request presented to the American government to forbid the teaching of History is an obvious trick of the enemy to blind mankind to the lessons presented in History by Logos.

The anti-History enters the world

Wise men have observed that every heresy has altered History and Holy Scripture. Since heresies come from the enemy of God —who lacks the power and intelligence to create anything meaningful— the enemy is forced to create crude imitations of both History and the Bible. In fact, heresies never miss having a touch of the ridiculous. Whenever you see something silly trying to pass as divine, run from it: the devil is behind it with his characteristic lack of humor, beauty and love.

That brings us to one of the most sad self-righteous evil morons that ever walked this planet: Karl Marx. The man who defined of his own musings as “the critique of everything that exists!” Modest, he was not. Presented with the marvels of the universe, Chuck basically said: “not good enough, I could do better.”

In that vein, Marx saw history as a struggle to climb the economic ladder. We infer that he was presenting the so called oppressed classes with a better way, a more effective method of advancing materially: to work less, have more, enjoy better standards of living, etc. And yet, every state or society that has embraced his ideas has only increased the average workload, had to do with less, and enjoyed lesser standards of living than the hideous Capitalists they hate so much. That is something than the young generations in Capitalist countries seem to be missing. Why?

One answer to that question may be that History is not being taught in schools. I am willing to affirm that none of those children burning everything they can in Portland, Seattle and other places ever read Frank Dikötter’s Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62, or Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, just to name two books among many that chronicle the devastating effects of applying Communism to a society.

What those young persons (and some older ones also) have read is the anti-History taught by the many convinced Marxists that populate the halls of academia, and the traitorous media that rarely if ever utters a critique of what is really going on in Communist countries. Not to mention the members of the political left who are ready to skewer their own fellow countrymen at the slightest mistake (real or perceived,) and then look the other way when it comes to let the public know any Communist country’s inhumane treatment of their own citizenry.

The slanted presentation of Communism both in the media, academia, and political discourse conform what I call the anti-History. If History is the lesson the Logos presents to mankind, the anti-History is the twisted falsification aimed to confuse and mislead those foolish and ignorant enough to try in their own flesh the fire that has burned so many in recent History.

The lesson of Logos is simple, it is presented to us in real History so we can avoid unnecessary suffering. A smart person can learn from the errors of others and avoid the ugly consequences. But even the smartest person —when deprived of good information– will fall for every old trick. History makes us smart mainly because it is the account of other people’s mistakes and successes.

A Mother’s warning

In 1917, Our Lady of Fatima warned the world of the “errors of Russia” but the world did not take heed. Unfortunately neither did the Catholic Church. The infiltration of the Church and the resulting Great Apostasy was a constant theme in many of the apparitions of Our Lady since La Salette in 1851 all the way to Akita in 1973 and even in more recent visits of Our Mother like Civitavecchia, Italy in 1993.

Those warnings are meant to help us avoid the mistakes that so many others are making. We have to be taught because we have very short memories and we are rather dull in learning the lessons of History, we are even duller presently in learning the lessons unfolding before our own eyes!

The “errors of Russia” have spread worldwide, the present state of apostasy in the Catholic Church can only be ignored by those who willingly turn the blind eye to the most egregious acts of betrayal of our ancient doctrines. But Our Mother’s warnings are not all doom and gloom. She also has announced a triumph of the intentions of her Immaculate Heart. She is with her obedient sons and daughters to assist us through the real end of history (notice, not capitalized) that is the end of human self-rule in this anti-God world.

This world will suffer the same fate as all the poor countries that were hoodwinked into accepting Communism. It is precisely the increasing influence of Marxist ideas and methods what is going to crash the political systems, the economies, and the societies that embrace them. God will be with us to pick up the pieces after the “profound critique of everything that exists” leads the nations of the world back into non-existence. A great crisis is unfolding but take heart, this is a sign of Our mother’s triumph. That triumph no one can erase from History. This is the end for some but a glorious beginning for others.

Try to be on the side of God, standing with the forces of good until that first light breaks.