MARK J. PERRY writes about today’s holiday:

This week gender activists and feminist organizations like the American Association of  University Women will be promoting “Equal Pay Day” on Tuesday, April 2 and this is an update of my “Bigfoot” post from a year ago to help counteract some of questionable statistics and mythology that get recycled every year in early April about the “gender pay gap.” The annual event known as Equal Pay Day brings awareness to a completely bogus apples-to-oranges comparison of median incomes by gender. Specifically this year’s Equal Pay Day will publicize the 20% unadjusted difference in median annual earnings for women and men working full-time in 2018 (most recent data available) when absolutely nothing relevant is controlled for that would help explain that 20% raw differences in income like hours worked, marital status, number of children, education, occupation, number of years of continuous uninterrupted job experience, working conditions, work safety, workplace flexibility, family friendliness of the workplace, job security, and time spent commuting. (more…)

A FEMALE READER writes:

A lot of women (a staggering number to me) have blasted this mother and given her “parenting advice” about spending her time raising respectful men.  The mother is right on this one.

From the article in The Observer, the student-run newspaper at the University of Notre Dame:

The emergence of leggings as pants some years ago baffled me. They’re such an unforgiving garment. Last fall, they obtruded painfully on my landscape. I was at Mass at the Basilica with my family. In front of us was a group of young women, all wearing very snug-fitting leggings and all wearing short-waisted tops (so that the lower body was uncovered except for the leggings). Some of them truly looked as though the leggings had been painted on them.

A world in which women continue to be depicted as “babes” by movies, video games, music videos, etc. makes it hard on Catholic mothers to teach their sons that women are someone’s daughters and sisters. That women should be viewed first as people — and all people should be considered with respect.

I talk to my sons about Princess Leia and how Jabba the Hutt tried to steal her personhood by putting her into a slave girl outfit in which her body became the focus. (That’s the only scene in the whole franchise in which Leia appears in such a way — and it’s forced upon her.)

(more…)

VIEW FROM THE RIGHT:  AN APPRECIATION AND A DISSENT

PART ONE: AN APPRECIATION

by Alan

BRIGITTE BARDOT led me to View from the Right.  In or about 2004, I read news reports about how she was being penalized for expressing her views about the disastrous effects of immigration on her country.  I thought it absurd that she should be penalized, and I was curious to learn whether anyone else in America thought the same.  So I looked to the Internet for commentary on that matter.  One link or another led me to View from the Right.  That was how I discovered VFR and Lawrence Auster, so I have Brigitte Bardot to thank.

I was not looking for commentary by “Conservatives” because I knew how inept and spineless they had proven themselves to be in countless confrontations with the “Liberals” they pretend to oppose.

Some years earlier, Mr. Auster had become appalled by what he saw on the streets of New York City and in public places.  I had had the same visceral/esthetic reaction to similar scenes I observed in St. Louis in the same years.  His reaction to the culture-wide collapse of rules and standards nearly paralleled my own.

What I found at VFR—not all at once but over a span of weeks—was exactly the kind of thoughtful commentary and discussion I had hoped to find.  Several times each week I would read VFR.  For me, the important part of VFR was “the politically incorrect Right” part.  I knew I had found a kinsman. (more…)

  Ave Maria Gratia Plena By Oscar Wilde Was this His coming! I had hoped to see A scene of wondrous glory, as was told Of some great God who in a rain of gold Broke open bars and fell on Danaë , Or a dread vision as when Semele, Sickening for love and unappeased desire, Prayed to see God's clear body, and the fire Caught her brown limbs and slew her utterly. With such glad dreams I sought this holy place And now with wondering eyes and heart I stand Before this supreme mystery of Love: Some kneeling girl with passionless pale face, An angel with a lily in his hand And over both the white wings of a dove. READ more on Lady Day here.

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HOW MANY of the yellow vest protestors in France have studied the Social Credit system, or even heard of it? Probably very few.

This is sad because Social Credit offers a solution to the economic woes motivating the yellow vest uprising. Find out more about Social Credit here.

Oliver Heydorn sums it up:

Social Credit refers to the philosophical, economic, political, and historical ideas of the brilliant Anglo-Scottish engineer, Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952).

As far as the sphere of economics is concerned, Douglas identified what is wrong with the industrial economy and also explained what needs to be done in order to fix it.

The core problem is that there is never enough money to buy what we produce. There is a gap between the prices of consumer goods and services and people’s incomes.

This gap is caused by many factors. Profits, including profits derived from interest payments, is only one of them. Savings and the re-investment of savings are two others. The most important cause, however, has to do with how real capital (i.e., machines and equipment) builds up costs at a faster rate than it distributes incomes to workers.

The economy must compensate for this recurring gap between prices and incomes. Since most of the money supply is created out of nothing by the banks, the present financial system fills the gap by relying on governments, firms, and consumers to borrow additional money into existence so that the level of consumer buying power can be increased. (more…)

ALAN writes:

People who lived in the Missouri Ozarks 85 years ago were poor in material possessions, but they were not poor otherwise. They had a wealth of moral fiber, common sense, imagination, self-discipline, sense of responsibility, respect for neighbors, and gratitude for simple pleasures.

Imogene Snider was one of them.  She was the youngest of eight sisters. More than fifty years afterward, she wrote about growing up on their family farm deep in the Ozarks in the 1930s.  Reading the memories of such people helps to keep things in perspective. They are an antidote to the unspeakable excess of the modern world.

Awash in that excess, modern Americans take for granted such things as water, electricity, supermarkets, insulated homes, push-button heating and cooling, instant entertainment, and dozens of flavors of ice cream available on a moment’s whim.

Keep all of that in mind as you read these few portions of her lengthy reminiscences:

            “The parlor was a special room…used when we had family gatherings and on holidays…  We kept our best pieces of furniture in the parlor…  There was also a piano…  We entertained our friends by playing the piano.  Music was a great part of life at our house….  Seven of the eight girls in our family learned to play the piano…  I spent many lonely hours at the piano for it was a great source of recreation and entertainment for me in the days when we had so little diversion or entertainment…

            “The winter nights were long and very lonely, and we had little for entertainment.  We strained our eyes reading by the yellow glow of the smoky kerosene lamp, and our reading material was very limited. We were not allowed to play cards, so sometimes we played dominoes…

            “Sometimes we borrowed a lawn mower, and I pushed it by hand a mile or so down the road, mowed the lawn, then pushed it back down the road home…

On decoration days in May and June, they would go to local cemeteries to decorate graves: (more…)

WHAT Trumpers are experiencing right now is the “Tell-Tale Heart” “groan moment.” In Poe’s story, this occurs when the incipient victim is forced to face his dire reality. It’s the moment when he has to come to terms with his worst fear: Presently I heard a slight groan…. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself—“It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. For two years now, Trump loyalists have been trying to convince themselves that every lost opportunity, every defeat, has been part of some grand plan. “We’re not losing; Trump is merely luring his foes into a trap.” The dude’s got less than two years to spring that trap. Maybe it’s finally time, no? Or maybe there never was a trap, and what we’re seeing now is a necessary split between the people who believed in the man because they supported the agenda, and those who believed in the man because they were looking to follow a “god emperor.” -- David Cole

[Source] (more…)

FELLOWSHIP OF THE MINDS analyzes the video of the New Zealand mosque shootings and finds it to be fake. (The article is also available here.) Dr. Eowyn gives four reasons for concluding it was made with computer-generated imagery and a green screen. In our time of movies, TV and video games saturated with over-the-top violence, why would the New Zealand government take such extreme measures to prevent its citizens from seeing the video? The answer perhaps is that if the people of New Zealand actually saw the video, they would realize the mosque shootings were a gigantic false-flag hoax perpetrated on them in order to advance gun control. (The video can still be viewed on BitChute, the file-sharing video hosting service, and also here.) The fact that the video is a fake does not necessarily mean no one was hurt or killed.  

  "MOST liberal Christians today affirm that creating culturally diverse societies is the moral, godly, and just thing to do—the more diverse, the more just and godly. But if it is our purpose to discern God’s purpose, doesn’t it seem far more likely that God would oppose the creation of multicultural, majority-less societies? He would oppose them first because they rob human beings of the stable cultural environments and the concrete networks of belonging that are essential conditions of personal and social flourishing; second, he would oppose them because they lead to unresolvable conflict and disorder. In opening America’s borders to the world, our political leaders are not following any divine scheme but are indulging an all too human conceit: “We can create a totally just society” they tell themselves. “We can stamp out cultural particularities and commonalities that have taken centuries or millennia to develop. We can erect a new form of society based on nothing but an idea. We can ignore racial and cultural differences and the propensity to inter-group conflict that has ruled all of human history. We can create an earthly utopia, a universal nation." ---- Lawrence Auster, Our Borders, Our Selves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism (forthcoming)  

A  CORRESPONDENT writes: [At last week's hearing in the House of Representatives on the Violence Against Women Act,] Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) offered an amendment that would have allowed biological women in [battered women] shelters to not have to sleep in the same room as biological men who were transgendered. The Democrats voted down her proposal, since there was no clear "proof" that this was a problem. Great political theater.  

  HOW CAN ANYONE believe what goes on in Catholic churches today is Catholic? This Ash Wednesday service in Cologne, Germany is an extreme example, but the ugliness and irreverence are not rare. The entire spirit of the Vatican II revolution is one of openness to everything modern no matter where it may lead. The idea is that if Catholics become cool, tolerant, people-centered and, all in all, very non-Catholic, they will convert other people. The opposite has happened. They have repelled. This jarring, screeching performance is hideous -- I feel sorry for her neighbors if she practiced at home --- and yet no one walks out. The church is filled with zombies --- or leftovers from the Sixties who possibly find it hip and would walk out if confronted with silence or sacred music. Notice there are few young people in attendance. They realize that anything as irreverent and secular as the One World Religion of Vatican II can't possibly be important. Watching this video clip, says Novus Ordo Watch, is for the rest of us an act of Lenten penance. A commenter at NOW writes: The Enemy has succeeded in taking the spine out of men, perverting them to the point that some men actually think this garbage is art. We are becoming a demonic society. What was good is now evil, and what was evil is now good. What was sin is now virtue, and what was virtue…

  MORE interesting commentary from Ole Dammegard on the Christchurch mosque shootings and the leftist "eco-fascist" who was allegedly involved. Again, no disturbing imagery here. (After the first hour, this interview becomes derailed for a while.)

  THE mysteries of the life of St. Joseph have inspired folk music and hymns for many centuries. Here in honor of the feast of this great saint are two versions of The Cherry Tree Carol, performed by Paul Clayton and Artus Moser. For a whole different experience, a beautiful medieval carol, Marvel not, Joseph, can be heard at The Clerk of Oxford.    

AFTER I arrived in Ireland, I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during the day. More and more the love of God increased, and my sense of awe before God. Faith grew, and my spirit was moved, so that in one day I would pray up to one hundred times, and at night perhaps the same. I even remained in the woods and on the mountain, and I would rise to pray before dawn in snow and ice and rain. I never felt the worse for it, and I never felt lazy – as I realise now, the spirit was burning in me at that time.

It was there one night in my sleep that I heard a voice saying to me: “You have fasted well. Very soon you will return to your native country.” Again after a short while, I heard a someone saying to me: “Look – your ship is ready.” It was not nearby, but a good two hundred miles away. I had never been to the place, nor did I know anyone there. So I ran away then, and left the man with whom I had been for six years. It was in the strength of God that I went – God who turned the direction of my life to good; I feared nothing while I was on the journey to that ship.

— St. Patrick (more…)

  WHAT exactly happened in Christchurch, New Zealand? Ole Dammegard looks at the event and the way it is being orchestrated. "Was it a crazy lone individual or professionals carrying this out?" Is the reported death toll true or false? (This is an audio interview. No disturbing images!)