JAMES HASSON at The Federalist writes of the Army’s “Tier Three Transgender Training.” Now women in the Army face the possibility of naked men in their restrooms. Also men who do not qualify for enlistment may qualify under the less stringent female standards.

Hasson writes:

For a soldier to officially change gender requires only some paperwork. A military doctor or civilian medical professional must certify that the transgender person has achieved “stability in the preferred gender” and the soldier must change the gender designation on the soldier’s passport or birth certificate. From that point on, the transgender soldier is “expected to adhere to all military standards associated with their gender,” and “use the billeting, bathroom and shower facilities” of their new gender.

For example, “Vignette Four” of the training module presents the following scenario: “following her transition from male to female (which did not include sex reassignment surgery) and gender marker change in DEERS [DEERS is the military’s personnel database], a transgender Soldier begins using female barracks, bathroom and shower facilities. Because she did not undergo a surgical change, the Soldier still has male genitalia.”

How should troops respond? “Soldiers must accept living and working conditions that are often austere, primitive, and characterized by little or no privacy.”

By consenting to transgenderism (anyone who doesn’t consent, at least outwardly, has to go), the lower ranks become the perfect citizens of a psychological totalitarian state. “Transgenderism” attacks truth and reality. The best and the brightest must become willing accomplices to lies. To get ahead and survive in institutions such as the Army, they must deny obvious truths that everyone knows: a man is a man and a woman is a woman.

Why is the Army so heavily accommodating a tiny, troubled minority that otherwise deserves compassion for a tormenting affliction and help overcoming it? Transgender policies are not motivated by the interests of the “transgendered,” who often end up committing suicide or living a life of wrenching regrets, as Alex P. Serritella writes in his book Transgenda: (more…)

  JEWISH-born and -raised Brother Nathanael proposes an 'America First' policy toward Syria.

ST. John Chrysostom (347-407), the Bishop of Constantinople and one of the 32 doctors of the Church, condemned immodesty in dress in strong terms: "You carry your snare everywhere and spread your net in all places.  You allege that you never invited others to sin.  You did not indeed by your words, but you have done so by your dress and your deportment.  And much more effectively than you could by your voice.  When you have made another sin in his heart, how can you be innocent?  Tell me whom does this world condemn?  Whom do the judges in court punish?  Those who drink poison or those who prepare it and administer the fatal potion?  You are more criminal than those who poison the body.  You have given the death-dealing drink.  You murder not the body but the soul, and it is not to enemies do you do this nor are you urged on by any imaginary necessity nor provoked by injury.  But you do it out of foolish vanity and pride." Woe to women who dress immodestly!  Woe to fathers and husbands who do not correct their wives and daughters!  Woe to pastors of souls if they remain silent!  Woe to us, for this is one of the sins which causes most souls to go to hell, sins of the flesh.  "O that they would be wise and would understand and would provide for their latter end." (Deut.32:29)  "There…

ONCE revered as temples of learning, public libraries are indoctrination centers filled with junk. It gets worse and worse all the time. The Boston Public Library just hosted the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” men in drag dressed mockingly as Catholic nuns, yet again.  This time for children’s storytime. Seeking to honor homosexual “Pride Month” in June, the library happily announced a “Drag Queen Storytime.”  The San Francisco-based group enjoys non-profit tax deductible status.  [Source] Pick up materials you find online, but don't hang around. Don't teach your children to have any respect for public libraries. Just because they have some good books doesn't make them good institutions.

  MOST Americans are familiar with Independence Hall, an inspiring Georgian building that is an icon of our "freedom." Very few are familiar with a much larger structure that is less than half a mile away: the Masonic Temple of Philadelphia. Which is the more influential structure? Some would argue that it is the imposing, ornate temple, where powerful Freemasons continue a deeply-held American tradition today.   Henry Makow, a Canadian, writes about the role of Freemasonry in America: Freemasons drafted the Constitution and signed the Declaration of Independence. The "Indians" who dumped the tea in the harbor were Masons. So was Paul Revere and his Minutemen, George Washington and most of his generals. The Marquis de Lafayette was shunned until he joined the Masons. At least 20 of the 42 US Presidents were "Brothers." Freemasonry is the Church of Satan masquerading as a fraternal mystical philanthropic order.

(more…)

MICHAEL SNYDER writes: Never before in human history has our world been so saturated with debt. And what all of this debt does is that it funnels wealth to the very top of the global wealth pyramid.  In other words, it makes global wealth inequality far worse because this system is designed to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer. Every year the gap between the wealthy and the poor grows, and it has gotten to the point that eight men have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people on this planet combined… Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam today to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos. This didn’t happen by accident.  Sadly, most people don’t even understand that this is literally what our system was designed to do. Today, more than 99 percent of the population of the planet lives in a country that has a central bank.  And debt-based central banking is designed to get national governments trapped in endless debt spirals from which they can never possibly escape. Read more here.

  JOHN PHILIP SOUSA'S "Manhattan Beach March" -- for this July Fourth weekend

  BEING POOR is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Losing your job is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Imprisonment is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Murder is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Cancer is not the worst thing that can happen to you. There is only one really bad thing that can happen to you -- losing your soul. When man turned against God, he fled from His face. He suffered for centuries in confusion and uncertainty. God could have left it that way, but instead He repaired the rupture between His creatures and Himself. He offered shelter. And it began in the womb of a single woman. For many this mystical event is nothing but fable. If all you see is the world before you, then you are blind to what is not visible.You are as crippled as -- no, more crippled than -- the man who is physically blind. You cannot see an entire dimension of reality. Immaculate Mary, your praises we sing. You reign now in Heaven with Jesus our King. Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria! Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria! In Heaven the blessed your glory proclaim; On earth we your children invoke your sweet name. Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria! Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria! Your name is our power Your virtues our light Your love is our comfort Your prayers are our might…

MANY nationalists of the “Alt-Right” romanticize paganism and condemn Christianity as effeminate. Pointing to the anti-Catholic “Pope” Francis, they rightly condemn his support for open borders, but find in it a ready excuse to ignore the Church. They seem willfully ignorant of its historic support for nationalism, the fact that it was Christian knights who once defended Europe’s borders, the warnings by pre-Vatican II popes of the heresies of modernists and the failure of Francis to accept Catholicism! Some of these neopagans actually believe Europe will be restored by a return to Norse gods — or lots of manly passion. Many, I am convinced, want to be libertines and nationalists or want to coast on waves of unrestrained nationalist feeling without the hard work of self examination.

Some are Darwinists who lack wisdom and common sense. Alt-Right pagans will never possess the moral fiber to restore Europe. Heck, they can’t even produce big families.

A blog called Catholic Kulchur responds to this trend in “An Open Letter to the Alt-Right from a Traditionalist Catholic.” Though the author accepts the validity of Francis as pope, a view which somewhat undermines his arguments, he makes an important argument with eloquence:

The Alt Right is rightly disgusted with the buddy Jesus, high-fiving Evangelical Catholicism, but they are wrong to think this sentimental and effeminate Christianity is the Christianity that was given to the Irish by St. Patrick or to the Slavic people by Saints Cyril and Methodius. The Christianity of the Beowulf poet or that of St. Thomas Aquinas, himself a member of an aristocratic Norman-Italian family, is not the Christianity of Pope Francis or Rick Warren.  For two millennia, the borders of Europe were defended by Christian knights who shed their blood fighting waves of migrants seeking to chain our ancestors under the yoke of Islam. (more…)

J.S. writes: From "The Problems with Wonder Woman" by Danusha V. Goska at Frontpage Mag: Let's finally admit that women discriminate in favor of pretty women just as surely as men do. Women reject big-boned, dowdy, nerdy females, as high school friends, as potential hires, when buying dolls, as heroines of novels and main characters of films every bit as much as men do. So-called feminists castigate and lecture men for participating in evolution's inevitable preference for the pretty and the powerful, but women do it themselves, to themselves and each other. I remember a "feminist" friend practically ululating about what a thrill it was to see Gloria Steinem speak in person. I drilled this feminist about what Steinem actually said in her talk that was so inspirational. All she could say was that Steinem was over sixty and still could "rock" tight, black leather pants. We women forge our own chains.

STEPHEN IPPOLITO writes from Australia:

Your recent point that modes of female dress and the depiction of female physicality carry potent symbolic power and reflect a society’s health took me back to a certain desk at a Christian Brothers school at Bondi Beach years ago when the same point was made to my classmates and me by a Brother who had, in the ’60’s, established a school in tribal Papua New Guinea.

He related that one evening he screened a film for the boys and their parents where all of the mothers, quite in keeping with their  societal custom, were either topless or almost so.

All was well until a scene appeared around a pool where Western women were shown in what were, for those days, somewhat revealing bikinis, but which of course would be considered quite modest nowadays.

The native mothers did not hesitate but rose as one and ushered their husbands and sons out of the room. (more…)

  JUDGING from the artistic record, it is possible to enjoy the beach with clothes on. See more beach paintings here.      

ANXIETY is not a virtue. Worry is not wholesome. Anxiety and worry are crushers of souls. Sometimes people ask, "What can I do? What can I do about the state of the world?" Here's what you can do. Banish anxiety from your life. You don't need a doctor to do it. You don't need counseling. You don't need a prescription. You need a spirit of trusting, childlike surrender to God's will. You need to give up the stubborn pretension that you are in charge. To focus soberly on the tasks before us is necessary. But the picking at scabs, the roaming in the fog, the confinement in the cage of worry is positively harmful.  Are you worried about the state of the world? Are you worried about poverty or illness? Are you worried about finding a spouse? Are you worried that you will be stuck in a job you hate forever? Are you worried about the future of your children? Are you worried about old age and death? Anxiety is excessive focus on the past or future, which become fields of speculation and imagination. Meanwhile the present is before us. We have much work to do, we have many steps to take. The anxiety-afflicted need to spend some time meditating upon God's love. Pray for the grace to understand it. Be not therefore solicitous for tomorrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Think…

WARNING: graphic, lewd content. In this video, German Chancellor Angela Merkel dances in Greece in the 1990s. This reinforces my point that female immodesty is a symptom and cause of social collapse. (more…)

  A CHORAL rendering of the Northern Lights by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo, performed here by the University Singers at the University of Minnesota, captures the pulsing drama and beauty of these magnificent atmospheric events. Pulchra es, amica mea, suavis et decora filia Ierusalem. Pulchra es, amica mea, suavis et decora sicut Ierusalem, terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata. Averte oculos tuos a me quia ipsi me avolare fecerunt. Thou art beautiful, O my love, sweet and comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army set in array. Turn away thy eyes from me, for they have made me flee away. The composer wrote: Looking out from an attic window one Christmas close to Oslo, over a wintry lake under the stars, I was thinking about how this ‘terrible’ beauty is so profoundly reflected in the northern lights, or aurora borealis, which, having grown up in the southern part of the country, I have only seen once or twice in my life. It is one of the most beautiful natural phenomena I’ve ever witnessed, and has such a powerful, electric quality that must have been both mesmerizing and terrifying to people in the past, when no one knew what it was and when much superstition was attached to these experiences.