IN A DISCUSSION here last September on Pastor Terry Jones’s plan to burn the Koran, I expressed disappointment that he had not. It is inspiring that he has since gone ahead and to read of his remarkable, no-nonsense defense of his decision to do so. At VFR, Dean Ericson writes:

Terry Jones’s action has been the single most bracing and courageous act of rebellion against the suffocating, mindless liberalism that infects nearly every American mind. In one dramatic gesture Jones proves that Islam is not a “religion of peace.” In one clarifying act he has demonstrated the utter futility of our Islamic nation-building folly. He has shown how shaky is the house of cards built by liberals–so shaky that one obscure man can make the whole pile of lies tremble.

In the discussion from last year, Thomas F. Bertonneau wrote:

Here is a partial list of societies and civilizations that ceased to exist when Islam, a violent cult-like creed whose ethos entails absolute intolerance of all other creeds, destroyed them –  (more…)

J. writes:

I am a third-year college student and am struggling to survive the college environment. I do enjoy lectures in philosophy and reading philosophy and other subjects but I can’t stand the students and the “college lifestyle.” As someone who believes in the values espoused on your website, for example, I am completely nauseated by the behavior, clothing, arrogance, hedonism, alcoholism, etc. of the students and avoid them completely, often to pursue my own reading and interests. (more…)

CONSERVATIVE evangelical pastors met recently in Iowa to affirm their opposition to same-sex marriage. Who was among their speakers but Newt Gingrich himself, the walking embodiment of American Christian hypocrisy on the subject of marriage. How can one defend marriage anywhere near Newt who left two of his wives and admitted to having an affair with his current wife, Callista, for years while married to his second wife?

If the primary purpose of marriage is self-fulfillment then same-sex marriage makes sense. (more…)

A MEN’S ONLY club of the powerful and influential is an outrage. A women’s-only club is proof of progress. The Belizean Grove is “the world’s ultimate old-girls club.” Here’s what they do at their gatherings, according to The New York Times:

They spend mornings in panel discussions based on the retreat’s particular theme; in recent years, those themes have included “Complexity,” “Shaping Our Future” and “Wisdom and Spirit.” At the sessions, Grovers showcase their areas of expertise, opining on issues as diverse as military strategy, marine life, philanthropy and how revolutions in the Middle East may affect the geopolitical balance. (more…)

SEBASTIAN C. writes:

I must take issue with your casual dismissal in the entry on the British TV series “Downton Abbey” of employers exploiting their female house maids with the line “But sexual abuse of young women today is rampant among those who grow up with their mother’s boyfriends.” I don’t think the analogy holds. There is a difference between something happening occasionally as a consequence of another phenomenon and something that is institutionalized and ritualized. Let me explain. 

In his ancien regime and the revolution, Tocqueville includes an appendix (or the editor to my French edition includes them, I don’t recall) quoting from some of the Cahiers de Doléances. These were the detailed grievances of the peasantry and provincial shopkeepers against the aristocracy. One of the main complaints is that the aristocratic men routinely helped themselves to the prettiest French peasant girls, usually raping them, sometimes simply kidnapping them. This is so entrenched in French culture that by the 1970’s there were a number of soft-core porn movies centered on this theme. Even non-Marxists historians of the revolution like Francois Furet (who was my own professor at Chicago) have written that the sexual tension created by the presence of young male aristocrats in the countryside contributed to igniting the terror.  (more…)

(more…)

WOMEN, because of their natural empathy, make better doctors than men. An article in today’s New York Times illustrates why this widely-held belief is false. The entry of large numbers of women into the medical profession has diminished the level of dedication and personal care. Doctors who are mothers are empathetic. But they are empathetic to their children too. They don’t want to work the hours demanded by the traditional medical practice and prefer bureaucratically-administered hospital or clinical jobs that come with regular shifts. 

The grandfather of a woman who is a doctor comments on the changes. “My son and I had deeper feelings for our patients than I think Kate will ever have,” Dr. William Dewar II said over lunch at a diner in Honesdale, about 30 miles northeast of Scranton. Munching on a club sandwich, Dr. William Dewar III gestured toward the diner’s owner, who had greeted them deferentially. (more…)

RESPONDING to the discussion in this entry about a high school student being taunted by friends, Paul writes:

No, no, no. No way should this boy allow his “friends” to bully him. He should make these guys respect him or drop them.

For example, I had a longtime close friend who had become more and more sarcastic with me during college. I am not sarcastic, so the match was uneven. At that time, shrugging (mostly) or attacking were my primary responses with others. I called him one night and asked him to come over to discuss something. He did right away. (more…)

SAGE McLAUGHLIN writes:

I just encountered this passage from C.S. Lewis, one which was not familiar to me.  Like so much of his work, it expresses something many of us know but have never given such excellent expression:

Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a wide-spread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. (more…)

  THE leaf of the Acanthus plant, pictured here growing in the ruins of the Palatine Hill in Rome, is architecturally renowned. Acanthus spinosus is the model for the stylized decoration on Corinthian and Composite capitals. You have seen it on classical buildings many times. History has it that this Mediterranean thistle was the inspiration for the Corinthian capital designed by the Greek sculptor Callimachus in the fifth century B.C. According to the Roman writer and architect Vitruvius: A Corinthian virgin fell ill and died. After her burial her nurse placed a basket of her favorite possessions on her tomb and put a tile on top to preserve its contents. The basket was accidentally placed on the root of an acanthus, which grew around the tile, and so formed volutes at its corner. Callimachus passed by the tomb, saw the basket, and pleased with the form and novelty of this composition, was inspired to construct columns of this style in the country about Corinth, and arranged its proportions." I learned these vital facts yesterday while quizzing my 17-year-old son with these excellent architectural flash cards by Gwen Headley.