“To be forbidden to discriminate is to be forbidden to think.”

ALAN writes:

When writing this summer about the old drugstore in St. Louis where I once worked, I neglected to mention that its owners were criminals. To wit:

While reading microfilmed newspapers in connection with that essay, I discovered that the owners of that store had placed numerous “Help Wanted” ads in St. Louis newspapers over a span of many years. Sometimes they wanted a pharmacist to work the midnight shift.  Most often they wanted male cashiers or women to work at the soda fountain/lunch counter, with “uniforms furnished.”

One “Help Wanted” ad read in part:  “Cashier. White, night work…..”  That was in 1960.

Isn’t that simple and straightforward? They placed an ad, the ad was printed, and people responded to the ad.  What could be a better expression of the liberty that Americans once understood and valued? Yet Americans today — “Liberals” and “Conservatives” alike—would tell us that that was a crime. By that standard, I worked for criminals. If you accept such claims, you are beyond hope; you have gone through the looking glass into a nether world where left is right, dark is bright, and evil is good.

The genius of a totalitarian regime is to suffocate people in a miasma of laws and regulations while telling them at the same time how lucky they are to enjoy “freedom” and pointing to the wide variety of choices in toys, TV screens, and motor vehicles as proof.  Americans today live under such a regime. (more…)

“A GRATEFUL READER” writes:

Architect and author Peter Blake, who died at age 86 in 2006, was a modern designer who had moments of repentance — almost.

Born in Berlin in 1920 to Jewish parents, educated in war-torn England, and divorced three times, Blake easily succumbed to the modernist movement and became a prominent writer and advocate for the movement. While he came to regret some of the fruits of the “modern movement,” he never recognised that the ultimate flaw of modernism lay in its rejection of tradition. In a 1977 People-Magazine interview, Blake admitted:

“Every magazine I edited folded, and my books did absolutely no good; America is uglier than ever.”

While he remained somewhat attracted to ugliness, he recognised some of modernism’s failings: (more…)

  AMERICAN composer Randall Thompson's "Frostiana," a choral version of six poems by Robert Frost, was composed in 1959 for the 200th anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. This is the most famous of the poems. "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" --- by Robert Frost, as performed by Turtle Creek Chorale Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Don't like it? How about this one by Eric Whitacre?  

"'White privilege' is the most bizarre phenomenon in human history. Never before has an 'oppressed' class of people fled in huge numbers to countries controlled by the people [they] claim are their oppressors." --- Tolerant Fellow

MANY people on the Internet, in the wake of multiculturalism and national decline, sadly admire Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. I am not prepared to write an extended critique of Hitler's extreme racial consciousness (and hasn't enough been said?), but I offer this one quote from Mein Kampf as an example of where he goes disastrously wrong, without implying that this is the only problem: IT [the National Socialist state] must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one’s own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world; and one highest honor: to renounce doing so.  And conversely it must be considered reprehensible to withhold healthy children from the nation.  Here the state must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face of which the wishes and selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit. . . . Those who are not physically and mentally healthy and worthy must not perpetuate their defects in the bodies of their children.  In this the National Socialist state must perform the most gigantic educational task.  And someday this will seem to be a greater deed than the most victorious wars of our present mediocre era. . . . In the National Socialist state, finally, the National Socialist philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats,…

WWLTV reports some astounding data: By the end of 2016, the opioid prescribing rate in Louisiana had declined almost 11 percent since 2007. But even with that marked progress, there were still almost enough opioid prescriptions dispensed for every resident in Louisiana to have one, according to the latest data released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With a rate of 98.1 opioid prescriptions distributed per 100 people in 2016, Louisiana was still well above the national rate of 66.5. Only four states [only four?!]— Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee — had higher prescribing rates.  “Obviously, as an administration, we acknowledge it is a crisis here in Louisiana,” said Michelle Alletto, deputy secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health. [emphasis added] Read here about the family that made a fortune on Oxycontin, the most popular prescription opioid.

KYLE writes:

On June 9, 1972, Elvis Presley held a press conference at the New York Hilton for an upcoming concert tour. During the conference a reporter tried to lure Presley into soliciting his personal views on war protesters and the Vietnam War, a subject which he wisely elected to decline, stating, “I’d just as soon keep those views to myself, I’m just an entertainer and I’d rather not say.” At the time of this press conference, Presley was one of, if not the most, popular entertainer in the world. He held fame and influence that no mortal person can handle, and because of that, he could’ve given his honest opinion and gotten away with it. He chose to stay in his own lane.

On January 28, 2018, the 60th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony featured over three-hours of “musical performers” denigrating Donald Trump, men and conservatives with some music mixed in.

In one bizarre segment, a parade of celebrities read excerpts from Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” hit piece. Hillary Clinton appeared on screen reading a snippet from the book that mocks Trump’s love for McDonald’s. U2 performed their newest immigration-themed single in front of a Statue of Liberty backdrop (their latest music video portrays the KKK marching outside the Oval Office window). Another segment featured a stage full of female vocalists clothed in white, “Kesha & the Resistance Revival Chorus” (note the ‘resistance’ moniker). Singer Janelle Monae marched to the microphone and proceeded to tongue-lash men in the typical leftist, passive aggressive tone: (more…)

THE Mass is the greatest event in the history of mankind, the one holy act that keeps the wrath of God from a sinful world. For it holds the Cross between heaven and earth. No wonder a priest remarked at the changes which slipped the Cross from its socket, that the earth tilted in its axis that day — a catastrophe which plunged us into the cold and darkness of year-round spiritual winter. (more…)

THIS IS an Italian family eating out in a restaurant in Rome last week. It appeared to be a mother with her three adolescent sons (one of them had walked away briefly) and her daughter. In between the primi and secundi courses for this midweek meal, they all communed with their cell phones. The mother is the one in the far left, tired, her elbow on the table, hunched over her phone. The Italian matriarch is not what she once was.

In a few years, these children will be gone from home. Is their time together, time together? It’s easy to blame cell phone technology here, but there is, I think, a deeper problem and cell phones can’t be entirely blamed.

To be fair, the formless family dinner, which is the norm today (the norm, that is, when families eat together), can lead to problems, especially when family members are exhausted. It’s not surprising that people would try to escape it. Bickering or irritableness or the hogging of conversation can make family dinner an unpleasant experience, especially with teenagers.

On the other hand, to be detached from each other in this way — no, there has to be a better way. (more…)

"THE Holocaust may yet turn out to be the greatest robbery in the history of mankind .... The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim state' .... The most successful ethnic group in the United States has acquired victim status. Considerable benefits accrue to this specious victimhood, in particular, immunity to criticism, however justified." --- Jewish author Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry, 2000

“GRATEFUL READER” writes:

Your photographs of Roman doorways capture the character of the holy Christian city magnificently. Two recent book reviews came to mind from your following comment,

The grandeur of these doorways and their useless ornamentation are deeply attractive to those who find so much of the modern world visually cold, austere and brutally ugly.  

The book called Le Corbusier, the Dishonest Architect by Malcolm Millais has been reviewed by Nicholas Salingaros and Theodore Dalrymple.

Salingaros, a professor of mathematics and architecture, writes of the Swiss-French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, and his cult following:

“Millais analyzes numerous structural faults with the iconic 1952 Unité d’Habitation apartment block in Marseilles, France [photos here]. Here is the original model for dark, dreary, double-loaded internal corridors, and apartments with one side in darkness and the other with impossible glare. Cult followers reproduce it as a perfect prototype, whereas Millais’s authoritative conclusion is damning. How could a building containing so many errors of design and construction—most due to untested ideas—have received a permit? The answer is that the Housing Minister waived all building regulations. Architectural culture deliberately ignores all these faults, while critics endlessly repeat self-serving lies that Le Corbusier himself invented to cover up his ignorance and mistakes.

“Le Corbusier’s unbuilt design for slaughterhouses for the French industrialist Max Du Bois was recycled to become the Unité d’Habitation. Later, Le Corbusier revisited this macabre theme in his idea for the Philips Pavilion, a building financed by the Dutch Electronics Company Philips for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Corbu describes his chilling idea: “It should appear as though you are about to enter a slaughterhouse. Then once inside, bang, a blow to the head and you’re gone.” So, Monty Python’s 1987 The Architects Sketch starring John Cleese was spot-on after all.”

 The following excerpt from The Architects Sketch indicates the comedians’s recognition of pathology in the modern architect’s intentions: (more…)

I WAS fortunate enough to receive a trip to Rome for my birthday this year. My husband and I got back yesterday. We spent six days in the city, visiting the sights of this spectacular metropolis where the ghosts of the past accompany you everywhere. January is a great time to go to Rome. Everything is less crowded and it’s not that cold, although this year because of especially warm weather (60 degrees Fahrenheit during the day), the streets in the main historic areas were mobbed for part of the time we were there. In addition, January is cheaper than the summer and fall months. Our plane fare on Norwegian Airlines was $350 each roundtrip from Newark, New Jersey. We stayed in a small, 24-room hotel which occupies the third floor of a building on Via Firenze near Piazza della Repubblica and the ancient Baths of Diocletian. Our room in this central location in a 19th-century building with an elegant facade and a courtyard with a rickety elevator cost about $80 per night.

Here is the exterior of the building which houses, among other things, the Hotel Oceania:

My favorite feature of the hotel was its interior courtyard, seen here from the third floor:

Last Sunday, to mention just one of the things we did during our stay (I hope to have more posts), we walked along the Via Giulia, a street close to the Tiber in the historic center, a thoroughfare that truly transports the pedestrian to a different time. A good description of it from The New York Times:

Commissioned by Pope Julius II (for whom the street is named), Via Giulia was built in the early 16th century, part of a plan to build a square of roads near the Vatican. The project was never completed. But to this day, Via Giulia is lined with an array of extraordinary churches and cultural buildings, as well as some of the fanciest homes in Rome.

Via Giulia offers a walk unusual in Rome for several reasons. It is wide enough that you are not dodging cars and scooters or inhaling their fumes; arrow straight, so you will not get lost; intimate and quiet enough to appreciate what you are seeing.

Via Giulia starts with an ivy-covered arch, designed by Michelangelo; it was part of another unrealized plan, this one to connect the Palazzo Farnese (now the French Embassy) with the Villa Farnese, on the other side of the Tiber. The connection was never made, so the arch instead functions as a sort of majestic entryway.

Despite the crowds on nearby streets, we were almost the only pedestrians along the way, as if we were walking in a village not a big city. Below are some photos of doorways I took along the way. I’m not a talented photographer and I have not annotated these photos, but they give you, I hope, a sense of what we encountered along our path. The grandeur of these doorways and their useless ornamentation are deeply attractive to those who find so much of the modern world visually cold, austere and brutally ugly. One cannot help but feel gratitude toward those who have the wealth to maintain them: (more…)

"Let's face it: Christianity and Islam are eternal enemies. Each makes uncompromising claims of exclusive truth. But this doesn't mean that the secularist-Zionist war on the Islamic world serves any Christian interest or deserves Christian support." --- Joseph Sobran

THE woman who supposedly was the model for the iconic World War II poster of “Rosie the Riveter” has died. The New York Times honors her contribution to the nation with an obituary. The Anti-New York Times responds here.

While Rosie is commonly portrayed as a symbol of women’s emancipation, she represents the opposite. She stands for the dawning of an era — after the initial postwar return to tradition — in which millions of women would be forced due to economic necessity to enter the paid workforce. Feminists romanticized their loss of status at home as “liberation.” The Rosie poster is a classic work of Soviet-style agitprop. The home stands between the people and the Omnipotent State.

(more…)

KYLE writes:

The excerpt below is from a pre-Vatican II Catholic prayer book by Father F.X. Lasance titled, My Prayer Book (1907). The piece is titled “What Mass Is,” and it’s a superb summation of the Mass from an anonymous author. These traditional prayer books are indispensable tools in arming ourselves with the Holy Spirit in the spiritual warfare we’re constantly engaged in.

What Mass Is

Non-Catholics who are present at mass, not understanding the ceremony, wonder why we should be so diligent in assisting at it. To them, the idea of church and public worship is associated with preaching and hymn singing. They are surprised at a function in which a clergy man takes no notice of the people and at which there often is no sermon.

What, then, is the Mass that so attracts Catholics and attendance at which is made obligatory on them, at least once a week, under pain of deadly sin? (more…)

LIFESITE NEWS reports on Trump’s live-streamed speech to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. last Friday, marking the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Jan. 22:

“Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life,” the president told cheering crowds of hundreds of thousands that packed Washington Mall Friday.

Dr. Thomas Droleskey at Christ or Chaos was less enthusiastic. :

][T]he truth remains that no one but no one, despite their good intentions, should be termed “pro-life” who believes [there] are certain supposedly “exceptional” circumstances in which babies may be vacuumed up, sliced and diced, and burned alive in their mother’s wombs. Good intentions do not redeem flawed premises.

For instance, Trump’s mention of the “Mexico City Policy” was very misleading … (more…)

IN his short story, “The Maypole of Merry Mount,” published in 1832, Nathanael Hawthorne described the conflict between Puritan settlers of New England and those settlers, established at Mount Wollaston, also known as Merry Mount, who retained the ways of old England with its festivals and feasts.

Unfortunately, the culture of the Puritans, who sent the Merry Mounters packing, would ultimately triumph in New England, leading to the grim political creeds we see today, at their core Puritanical even though they reject many of the traditional mores of the actual Puritans

From the story:

All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted hither [to Merry Mount.] The King of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of Misrule bore potent sway. On the Eve of St. John, they felled whole acres of the forest to make bonfires, and danced by the blaze all night, crowned with garlands, and throwing flowers into the flame. At harvest time, though their crop was of the smallest, they made an image with the sheaves of Indian corn, and wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and bore it home triumphantly. But what chiefly characterized the colonists of Merry Mount was their veneration for the Maypole. It has made their true history a poet’s tale. Spring decked the hallowed emblem with young blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer brought roses of the deepest blush, and the perfected foliage of the forest; Autumn enriched it with that red and yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted flower; and Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung it round with icicles, till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam. Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole, and paid it a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced round it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner staff of Merry Mount. (more…)

FROM an interview with Stephen Baskerville, author of The New Politics of Sex: The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of  Government Power:

Now, after decades of serving as the intellectual apologists for this crass culture, those same radical ideologues have found that they can further increase their influence and power from the chaos they helped create by turning the resulting unpleasantness into newfangled quasi-crimes that no one fully understands and which permit no defense. Having ridiculed not only the Christians themselves into silence but also their annoying, old-fashioned vocabulary of ‘sin,’ ‘immorality,’ ‘fornication,’ and ‘adultery,’ the radicals have substituted jargon that instead condemns ideological unorthodoxy (‘sexism,’ ‘misogyny’) and implies criminality: ‘sexual harassment,’ ‘sexual abuse,’ ‘sexual misconduct,’ ‘sexual assault,’ sexual this and sexual that.

Radicals and revolutionaries always promise us a new world of freedom where we do not have to obey the rules that mankind has had to accept in order to build a stable civilization.  (And the basic rules are universal, though how they are administered vary significantly, usually according to religion, which can make a huge difference in the nature of the civilization.)  But the rules they throw out the front door always re-enter through the back door, often in a grotesque form that is more authoritarian and terrifying.  We found this with Stalinism and Maoism, and now we see it with sexual radicalism. (more…)