A COMMENTER at Tradition in Action wrote this a while back:

Once I left my cat without any food for some days when I had to leave on an urgent trip. When I came back it was gone. Months later, I saw it at a house many blocks away dozing on a high stone wall out of my reach. I called its name; after I insisted two or three times it lazily opened an eye and raised its head to see who was calling. It fixed me with a ‘poker face’ for a while, then returned to its sun bath without even recognizing me. I had spent alot of money on that cat and fed it well, except for that week. No love in the picture, only the instinct of self-interest. That’s what’s normal. No one should expect more from cats.

Also the way to train a dog is based on the same instinct. The instructor uses the stimulus-response sequence to achieve his goal, rewarding the dog for good behavior or punishing it for bad. Go watch a training session for police dogs as I did, and you will understand what I mean, the dog reacts from its own interest, nothing else. There’s no love or noble sentiments in the picture, just basic instinct.

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CALIFORNIA legislators have proposed that a statue of Father Junipero Serra, the great 18th-century Franciscan missionary, in the National Hall of Statuary in the U.S. Capitol building be removed and replaced with one of the lesbian astronaut Sally Ride. Father Serra, who established eight missions along the California coast that succeeded in converting thousands of Indians, was famous for his devotion to the Indians, his efforts to educate them in agricultural techniques and his objections to harsh treatment of the natives by the Spanish colonizers. He has, however, come under harsh criticism, accused of being an accomplice to colonial brutality. Father Serra is under attack from the world and, as Thomas Droleskey writes, has been misrepresented by "Pope" Francis, who plans to canonize the saint in the fall.

BUCK writes:

Yesterday, Rick Santorum was quoted as saying about Bruce Jenner: “If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman,” and that “My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticize people for who they are. I can criticize, and I do, for what people do, for their behavior. But as far as for who they are, you have to respect everybody.”

How stupid is Rick Santorum? “He’s a woman?” “You have to respect…who they are?” (more…)

From prayers and hymns to Mary, the Queen of all hearts: O Queen of Heaven! obtain for me Thy glory there one day to see. Oh then and there, on that bright day, To me thy womb's chaste Fruit display. Here is a reflection on "Mary's First Graces:" Mary began her journey along the road to perfection at a height to which other saints only arrive at the end of a long life of saintliness. God loved her more at the first moment of her existence than He loved the holiest among the rest of men at the time that their earthly pilgrimage was over and they were ripe for their heavenly reward. What glory must have been hers even from the beginning! If we look at Mary through the eyes of feminism, however, we see a woman who did nothing with her life. The greatest woman who ever lived, this paragon of contemplation, the woman who is more loved and honored and revered and cherished than any other woman in history, did nothing important. Only by contradicting their essential principles can feminists uphold Mary, usually as a symbol of girl power.

THERE are many, many, many signs — first and foremost the very obvious fact of clashing dogma — that the religion upheld by the supposed Catholic Church hierarchy and promoted in once Catholic buildings is not the true Catholic religion. One of those signs is the child sex abuse holocaust, the horror of which continues to unfold. This week, a judge in Philadelphia ordered Monsignor William Lynn to return to prison to continue serving a three- to six-year sentence for child endangerment after his conviction was upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Led off to prison in handcuffs, Lynn, 64, was a former Secretary of Clergy in Philadelphia who transferred presbyters suspected of child sexual abuse to other parishes. Lynn was accused of covering up sex crimes for years. He is one of two dozen Vatican II bishops accused of child endangerment or other criminal behavior related to child sexual abuse.

In 2002, Patrick Buchanan wrote:

At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage. They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecumenical, and engaging the world. And their legacy?

Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.

There have always been sinners in the Church and always will be. But this is different. This is the legacy of the Revolution.

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DETAILS here.

YOU gotta admit, she’s got what it takes: Seeming hatred for America, a disregard for the rule of law (notice the rush to press charges before the cause of Gray’s spinal injury has been determined and her inflaming of the anger of the rioters) and membership in the 21st-century racial aristocracy. Plus she’s a woman. And she has amazing rhetorical gifts:

“To the youth of this city: I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a moment. This is your moment,” she said. “…. You are at the forefront of generational and systemic changes. … As young people, our time is now.”

Marilyn Mosby’s star has just begun to rise. (more…)

Karl D. writes:

Back in 1977 when I was a boy, I remember my family and I watched the mini-series “Roots” based on Alex Haley’s book. I recall liking it very much and being quite moved by the story and its characters. It appears that it is now being re-made for an early 21st-century audience, which makes me think it will be extra brutal and make whites by extension look extra sadistic. (more…)

ALEX writes:

After watching the unfolding nastiness in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other places I thought of another byproduct or even possible source of these gatherings. People who are inclined to act out quickly without thinking and go rioting produce not only violence but also generate spiritual entities or attachments which breed more violence and may attach themselves to those around them. These attachments go on to influence others in negative ways, including negative thinking, violence and paranoia. Anyone in such an environments is subject to these attachments and therefore mental disturbances, physical addictions, etc. (more…)

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

In my Western Civilization course this semester we have studied Homer’s Odyssey, Plato’s dialogues Symposium and Phaedrus, the Letters of Epicurus, and Athanasius’ Life of Saint Anthony – all under the theme of the “Quest for Order.”  As supplements to the reading, I screen relevant films for the students – for example, a beautiful filmed performance from Zurich in 1977 of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (1940) and Roberto Rossellini’s Socrates (1970).  These items of cinema have an obvious relation to the reading-list, but I also recently screened Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress (2011), about four quirky coeds at the fictitious Seven Oaks University who conclude that the slovenliness of contemporary college-life is intolerable and who resolve to redeem decorum as much as they can in their own chapter of academia.  Among the simple gestures undertaken by Violet, Rose, Heather, and Lily are: To dress nicely, even elegantly, every day and to act like civilized people always.

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FROM NJ.com:

New Jersey residents are fleeing the state in droves, but the loss is primarily being offset by a continued influx of immigrants from other countries, without which the state’s population would be declining precipitously.

Between 2013 and 2014, New Jersey lost at least 55,000 residents who left for other states, the continuation of a trend that’s been going on for decades as people flee the state to retire, to seek a lower-cost of living and jobs in places that have been quicker to recover from the recession. (more…)

ALAN writes:

On Tuesday nights when I was a boy, I would lay sprawled on our living room floor to watch the TV western “The Rifleman.” It featured Chuck Connors and Johnny Crawford in stories about a rancher and his young son in New Mexico Territory in the 1880s. The most impressive elements in the series were its bedrock moral code, the love between father and son, and the unforgettable theme and background music.

In the second episode, telecast on Oct. 7, 1958, young thugs assault the Rifleman and burn down the house that he has bought and decided to make into a home for him and his son.  But the Rifleman was a man, not a compromiser, a feminist, or a boy-man.  So before the episode ended, he nailed those thugs. There were no sob-sisters to intervene on their behalf, and concern for their “civil rights” was not uppermost in his mind.

Instead, he made them rebuild what they had destroyed.

There is a lesson there that American white men could learn—if they were in a frame of mind to learn anything.  But American white men hate lessons as much as they hate responsibility. That is because most of them are still adolescents. (more…)

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whom I cannot take seriously because she resembles a hostess in a nightclub more than the leader of a major city, comes under more criticism today. From Fox News:

Despite a firm denial by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a senior law enforcement source charges that she gave an order for police to stand down as riots broke out Monday night, raising more questions about whether some of the violence and looting could have been prevented.  (more…)

AS REPORTED AT FOREIGN POLICY:

In a letter obtained by Foreign Policy, two Democratic members of Congress are urging the Obama administration to ban a Dutch lawmaker from entry into the United States due to his controversial views on Islam. (more…)

ANDREW KURTZ writes:

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

An article at the website Politico piques me. In “Americans bomb Pew test of basic political Knowledge,” Nick Gass reports that according to a recent Pew poll “only one-in-three Americans knows how many women serve on the Supreme Court, but 91 percent can identify Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years after his assassination.”  According to Gass, the same poll indicates: (more…)

THE riots and political rage in Baltimore over the last few days represent mass denial and projection — even if the police acted wrongly and unjustly in the death of Freddie Gray. That’s because the overwhelming violent risk to black Baltimoreans does not come from the police. It comes from their fellow citizens.

Baltimore, in 2013, had the fifth highest murder rate in America. The victims and the perpetrators were overwhelmingly black, judging from lists of the victims and accused. Here is a list of the 233 homicides from 2014. Look at the high number of black shooting victims. Among them was Michael Mayfield, a 17-year-old member of Edmondson-Westside High’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps who played baseball and was a “youth ambassador” and peer mediator. He was shot in the head while sitting in a car outside his grandmother’s home and the suspect is described as black. The murder is believed to be a case of mistaken identity. The 2014 death tolls also includes Allan Foster, a 56-year-old black retired roofer who helped organize the March of Dimes’ annual Great Chesapeake Bay Swim. From a news report after his death:

Most evenings, the 56-year-old and his wife walked to a neighborhood store to play Keno, which is what they were doing moments before Foster was gunned down Thursday outside his Irvington home in Southwest Baltimore.

Marcia Simpson-Foster, who said her husband didn’t have any trouble with anyone, believes it must have been a case of mistaken identity.

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FOLLOWING an article in The New York Times about the relatively small number of women engineers, a commenter writes: Is this a solution looking for a problem? Certainly there should be no roadblocks to women choosing any line of work they desire. But do we need more female engineers for the sake of having more female engineers? Why not put an editorial about how most garbage collectors are male and what can be done about it.