WHEN reading about our $60 trillion national debt or the escalating figures for consumer indebtedness, what is your first reaction? Do you think, “We’ve got to stop spending!” or “Our government is giving our future away to welfare deadbeats and bureaucrats?”

If these are your very first thoughts, let me respectfully suggest that you don’t understand our monetary system.

When you see those mounting figures for indebtedness, the first thing you should think is:

“We are the victims of a colossal swindle. Something is wrong, not with us, and not with welfare recipients, but with the system.”

Indeed over-indebtedness is inherent to our financial system. We can never collectively emerge from what is in effect debt slavery, from cycles of boom and bust, and from the centralized power of high finance which controls public opinion, politics, government and business, we can never emerge from these burdens without significant monetary reform and a new philosophy on the nature of economic life.

But first we have to come to grips with the problem. And there is a major problem. Yes, we deplore Communism and Socialism. But Capitalism as it exists is ruinous too. That’s not because a market economy is bad. That’s not because profit, investment or private ownership are bad. That’s not because Capitalism makes some people rich. These things are good. The problem is two-fold: a monopoly of credit in private, profit-making hands and the inability in the modern economy, which benefits from centuries of labor-saving innovation, for income from labor and savings to match the costs of production. These defects in the system are causing misery in a world that actually can produce enough goods and services to give people, all people, the basic necessities and free them from crushing fear for the future.

Our financial system is out of touch with reality. Our usurious monetary system is strangling family life, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Someday people will, let’s hope, look back on this era as they now look back on the pagan slavery of Ancient Rome. They will wonder how people ever could have put up with such widespread financial oppression, with its attendant social conflict, and how they were ever fooled into thinking they benefited from what the writer E. Michael Jones calls “state-sponsored usury.”

Let me offer some background from a few critics who have stated the problems. I’ll return to the subject in future posts with more from those who have studied these issues and suggest solutions you don’t hear about from our politicians or the mainstream media.

First, most people don’t understand how money is created and circulated. Though Congress is vested by the Constitution with the power to create money, it is actually created by private banks who then loan it out at interest: (more…)

HERE’S a very good polemic against feminism by Paul Joseph Watson, who offers many reasons why many men don’t want to marry. One quibble: He says the mother at home should be equally respected as the careerist mother. But society cannot equally value two contradictory ideas. If it thinks the mother is the heart of the home then it does not want her to be absent unless absolutely necessary. (Warning: Mildly vulgar language. Why must so many intelligent commentators resort to ugly, four-letter words?) (more…)

THE New York state Senate blocked a transgender rights bill from passage eight times, yet Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented the proposed regulations by executive action last week. Individuals can be fined up to $100,000 for discriminating against a cross-dresser, which means if someone does not want an attention-seeking, steroid-crazy female impersonator working in his small business or interacting with his children, he can be financially destroyed.  

  WHAT really happened before Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected to the papacy on October 26, 1958? This video explores the mystery of the white smoke.

THERE was one bright spot to the anti-family Synod in Rome, which ended this weekend as it started, with cowardly and ambiguous accommodation to the spirit of feminism and the Sexual Revolution. That bright spot was the speech of a Romanian doctor, Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea, who  grew up under Communism. Dr. Cernea did not get all hung up on a psychotherapeutic guilt trip. She did not speak a single line of feminist boilerplate. She did not blather on about false mercy. She obviously knows totalitarianism when she sees it. The Sexual Revolution is a form of political exploitation, she said. Any accommodation to it is an accommodation with tyranny.

Material poverty and consumerism are not the primary cause of the family crisis.

The primary cause of the sexual and cultural revolution is ideological.

[…]

There is continuity from Lenin’s sex revolution, through Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, to the current-day gay-rights and gender ideology.

Here is her entire presentation: (more…)

  IN his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, in which he designated the last Sunday of October as the Feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius XI explained the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King. God has rights not just over the individual conscience, but over society at large. The separation of religion and politics, particularly the one true religion and politics, is a world disaster: 17. It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them. Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia. 18. Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: "His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ." Nor is there any difference…

A lesbian interracial couple moved into a suburban St. Louis neighborhood last spring and all hell broke loose almost instantly. In the past six months, the police have been regular visitors to the home of Maritha Hunter-Butler and Melanie Anthony, a couple that would be banned by any normal, middle class neighborhood in any normal society, even if they had not exhibited the sort of aggressive, bullying behavior they have been charged with since they moved in. But, as we know, the monstrous Id of the Sexual Revolution rears its fiendish head throughout the land. The women have, if the reports are correct, brought a toxic mix of racial resentment and homosexual entitlement to the neighborhood. This is the cultural reality of normalized lesbianism — not Ellen DeGeneres glamor, but two psychologically disabled and cruelly misled women pooling their resources to partake of the suburban dream. Hunter-Butler was previously convicted of murder-for-hire and has been charged with punching a neighbor in the face. Anthony recently exposed herself to neighbors while making obscene gestures in the presence of children. The women are together raising three boys. (Their very worst offense is perfectly legal!) Their dogs are allegedly out of control.

I feel sorry for anyone trying to sell a house in this enclave. The NAACP is involved and Ferguson protestors are on the alert. Neighbors should start boarding up their windows now. (more…)

THE Russian writer Nikolai Starikov says the United States government has abetted the migrant invasion of Europe. The goal? To weaken its own allies and prevent a strong alliance between Germany and Russia. This is a must-see interview. Whether Starikov is correct about the U.S. role in the invasion, and the reasons for that support, he convincingly argues that the migrant crisis has been directed from above. (more…)

A Kenyan woman at Henry Makow’s site offers six reasons why careerism is a bum deal for women. She writes:

I would like to tell you of some of my conclusions I have come to from observations and experiences at employment, for males and females. God created us differently and to do otherwise is to upset nature.

First of all, there can be no equal treatment at the workplace for males and females in terms of pay. How can you compare a female ( single – has fewer bills, married – has husband to also support her) to a male who has to provide for himself and his family?

Second, women should not be given managerial positions in mixed gender employment settings.  A  woman commanding a man is against nature and God. The man can’t talk back to the boss because he has a family to feed. He feels anger and that is directed against other females in general. I think that’s something very wrong! Yet society is encouraging this to be the norm and calls it progress. (more…)

ROBERT M. writes:

A few thoughts on Paul C.’s comments in the entry, “What Happened to Those Urban Enclaves:”

1.The WASP establishment already lived in the suburbs or in private places in the city. So this urban redevelopment wasn’t going to affect them at all. If anything it was going to bring cheaper gardeners, maids, etc. closer to their doorstep. And enable them to get out to their country homes faster.

2. The public sphere was destroyed. Because of the so-called “rights of the oppressed” you didn’t have to be polite anymore. Any person began having the right to barge into a social situation, no matter how customary, and just demand “free-speech,” “rights,” “acceptance,” ”recognition,” etcetera. So everybody retreated indoors and watched television. But the same cultural manipulators were waiting for them on the tube, lo and behold! Including a picture of suburbia presented by Leave it to Beaver. No wonder they soon moved. (more…)

Introibo Ad Altare Dei reports on the plan for female deaconesses. (more…)

PAUL C. writes:

How do you respond to those who say we should not be worrying about the synod in Rome because Jesus will not let anyone change dogma?  They say the person would be struck dead. (more…)

THE SCENE last week at the Cathedral of Mar de Plata in Argentina as feral bands of women, some masked and half naked, observed the pro-abortion March for Women by attacking Catholics praying and standing watch. From Lifesite News:

The women tore down the outer gate of the cathedral and hurled glass bottles and feces at the young men standing guard. When they  attempted to burn down the Cathedral the police began taking measures to  disperse the hordes.

Father Gabriel Mestre, the “Vicar of the Cathedral,” reportedly gave this shocking statement:

“[O]ne has to accept the dynamic and the dissent, and in fact in the Church we have to accept it because I think that more than half is in favor of legal abortion, and for that there are proper avenues, within a pluralistic and democratic society to generate policies which each from his ideological frame of reference considers as an appropriate way to progress, just like happened with ‘marriage’ equality or with divorce.” (more…)

  A BIT of apple lore and more paintings can be found here.

AS more supermarket jobs become mechanized (which should be a good thing in the long run as human beings can be freed up to do better things), the people who work for the large supermarket chains foreshadow the change. More and more of them appear to have been trained to act like machines.  Social interaction in the store is a scripted experience. A friend wrote to me yesterday:

Shopping has become less human. The insidious music and the robotic employees—in the sense that they have a script:  “Did you find everything you need?”  [“No. Let me hold up the line so I can fetch the things I forgot.”]

My new favorite is the way they are now trained to answer the phone at Joann Fabric:  “Joann Fabrics and Crafts. How may I inspire you?” Nauseating. Whatever happened to the small talk one occasionally participated in at the register, or bantering with shop employees?

While I’m on the subject, the most awful thing (to me) is the way businesses don’t have “customers” anymore, rather “guests.”  There was nothing wrong with being a customer, as in bringing one’s custom to a shop.  It was a dignified human relationship, that of customer and shopkeeper.

I loathe the way consultants/advisers, whomever, tamper with our beautiful language. It is a form of warfare. (more…)

FROM The Daily Caller: Two NASA supervisors were criminally indicted Tuesday under U.S. espionage laws for “willfully violating” national security regulations while allowing a visiting Chinese foreign national to gain “complete and unrestricted access” to the space agency’s Langley Research Center, according to the U.S. Attorneys office for the Eastern District of Virginia. The indictments of NASA Langley supervisors Glenn A. Woodell and Daniel J. Jobson cap a federal investigation into the two supervisor’s decision to permit Bo Jiang unrestricted access for two years at Langley. Bo Jiang was deported back to China in 2013.

A society without divorce is not a society without marital conflict. It is not a society without martial unhappiness. It is not a society without marital separation. Conflict is inherent to marriage, just as it is to life itself. For some it is much worse than others. A society without legal divorce is beautiful not because it is easy but because it is idealistic. Loyalty is super-human. Loyalty is beautiful precisely because it does not suit us. It infuses society with the transcendent in the same way a palace beautifies the lives of the poor who live nearby. Marriage is art, not instinct. Marriage is will when not feeling. At Crisis, Anthony Esolen reflects on the traditional Catholic view of divorce, in light of the family synod in Rome. His essay is nice, but it is unlikely to move the hearts of revolutionary "bishops" in Rome who fulfill some of the worst stereotypes of male clergy who know nothing about marriage. Of course, it is difficult! The vow itself is a sign of difficulty and obstacles, you committee crunchers! We don't vow to eat lunch everyday. We don't vow to take a shower. We vow to do things that are impossible. All times have been "challenging times" when it comes to marriage. Imagine standing at the gate of a medieval town and saying to a group of invaders, "But look how beautiful our houses are!"  They would not be there if there wasn't something to destroy.