IN REACTION to the French massacre, the entire Western world is calling for freedom of speech. But as Tiberge points out at Galliwatch, the very existence of large numbers of Muslim agitators in France is a result of the destruction of freedom of speech, not by terrorists but by the French elite:

Has it occurred to any of the apostles of freedom of speech that if there really were freedom of speech in France there would be no terrorism? Has it occurred to them that for forty years the French have been muzzled on behalf of the Muslims, and that the so-called freedom of speech they are “defending” today does not exist? Has it occurred to them that this is not really about freedom of speech at all? Are they trying to say that having fifteen million Muslims in their country is not a problem so long as they have “freedom of speech”? And since freedom of speech does NOT apply to the Front National or to the Catholics against moral depravity or to Identitarians fighting for their heritage, who is it that benefits from “freedom of speech”? Answer: The Muslims, the terrorists, and the pornocrats!

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THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

The criminals have been identified and confronted, two arrested, one killed.  Good. [CORRECTION: Two are still at large and one has turned himself in. Read here.]

But there is this, from the NBC Website: “Authorities identified the three [Charlie Hebdo murderers] as Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, both French and in their early 30s, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn’t immediately clear.”

I have italicized the incredibly stupid, incredibly mendacious, utterly wicked elements of the sentence.

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  The Place Royal in Nantes.

  THE Telegraph reports on the new novel Submission, by French author Michel Houellebecq. The book was featured on the front cover of this week's Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper attacked by alleged Muslim gunmen today.

THE cartoonist Jean Cabut, below, was one of 12 people shot to death today by alleged followers of the Religion of Peace at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper which has made fun of the Muslim prophet in cartoons and text. The killers are still at large.

From The Daily Mail: “Charlie Hebdo featured the author Michel Houellebecq this week. His latest novel imagines Muslims taking over the French government in 2022. Inside, there was an editorial, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, and more cartoons – one showing the Prophet with a clown’s red nose.”

The newspaper was firebombed in 2011 and repeatedly threatened and yet kept going. According to Wikipedia, one of Cabut’s cartoons depicted Muhammad “under the caption ‘Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists,” crying : ‘C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons!’ (‘So hard to be loved by jerks!’).’

Here is a description of the newspaper, again from The Daily Mail:

Magazine Charlie Hebdo has become a byword for offensive statements in France after taking several highly provocative swipes at Islam.

The magazine once named Prophet Mohammed as its guest editor, published cartoons of the holy figure in the nude, and once renamed itself Sharia Hebdo with the cover slogan ‘100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter’. (more…)

ANNE writes:

Regarding your post “Education-by-Gadget:”

I have a nine-year-old, a five-year-old and a two-year-old. All girls. And a baby due any moment.

We do not own a television or subscribe to cable although we own two laptops, a desktop, one tablet, one smartphone, one “old school” cell phone, and a house phone.  My husband and I used to enjoy watching sports, particularly college basketball, but gave it up.

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STEPHEN from the Gold Coast of Australia writes:

What an absolutely charming photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson of the boy carrying bottles of wine. Thank you very much for posting it.

So much to enjoy and learn from in this deceptively simple photo far beyond the obvious charm  of the boy’s proud and impish grin.

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  JOHN HARRIS writes at the Center for Literate Values: [E]ducation-by-gadget doesn’t “prepare” our children for tomorrow: it programs them for a very specific kind of tomorrow. It condemns them to envision only that tomorrow and no other; it so degrades their intellectual and spiritual eyesight as to be capable of viewing only certain horizons. .... Why would we suppose that toddlers forced to learn only from buttons and screens would be preparing for a humane, creative future? In answer to his question: No one really supposes that. Gadgets are the greatest (and the cheapest) babysitters ever invented.

  IT'S HAPPENED at last. See the report from Eye of the Tiber.

SVEN writes:

Thanks as always for your blog. I would like to ask your opinion on the future of traditionalists in the millennial generation. I’m in my mid-twenties, and hold “old-fashioned” convictions on heritage, family, and church. We are taught to respect our elders, but as I realize the importance of old and ancient ways more every day, I cannot help but feel a sense of betrayal at how liberal (for lack of a better word) most of them are. My fiancée’s mother, for instance, who considers herself a conservative Catholic, often says things that would not have been out of place on the Woodstock stage in the summer of ’69. How can I reconcile the respect one should show for one’s elders with the fact that most of them have no respect for their elders, our forefathers? Do you think that there are a growing number of young folks like me who are rejecting the nihilism and meaninglessness of the modern Western culture to opt for the safety of the old ways?

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IF YOU thought Jorge Bergoglio took a break from insulting Catholics over Christmas, you were wrong. In his address on Dec. 22 to the Roman Curia, Bergoglio raised the art of Catholic-bashing to new heights. He accused the administrative staff of “mental and spiritual ‘petrification,'” a superiority complex, “spiritual Alzheimer’s disease,” and “existential schizophrenia.” All in all, a stunning number of explosive insults were hurled under the guise of a call to Christian repentance. It was a thrashing.

Perhaps not everyone accepts Bergoglio’s “God of surprises?”

“A Curia which is not self-critical, which does not keep up with things, which does not seek to be more fit, is a sick body,” Chaos Frank said.

Thomas Droleskey writes:

As a consummate demagogue, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s whole aim in his address of six days ago was to portray the current state of the conciliar curia in broad strokes so as to prepare the way for radical changes in its structure and operation next year, 2015. (more…)

ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

The Times of India reports:

 Indians had mastered aviation thousands of years before the Wright brothers, claimed a controversial paper presented at the 102nd Indian Science Congress here on Sunday.

Ancient aviation, as described by Maharshi Bharadwaja, was more advanced than modern day technology, said the paper presented by Captain Anand Bodas and Ameya Jadhav. “The knowledge of aeronautics is described in Sanskrit in 100 sections, eight chapters, 500 principles and 3,000 verses. In the modern day, only 100 principles are available,” stated the paper.

Bodas said Maharishi Bharadwaj spoke 7,000 years ago of “aeroplanes which travel from one country to another, one continent to another and one planet to another. He mentioned 97 reference books for aviation.”
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THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I am responding to “Simplicity is More Fun,” but my topic, not entirely unrelated, is Wine and Civilization: I remember being twelve or thirteen years old when at dinner my paternal grandmother Nellie or my great aunt Herminie would set before me at the table “one finger of wine and one of water” in a glass.  My mother, whose background was Protestant, would become perturbed, but the Catholic Nonnas had their explanation: Wine was a civilized custom to which children as they grew older needed to become accustomed.  That was how they did back in the “Quarter” in New Orleans.  As a consequence, I learned how to drink wine without becoming drunk, an achievement which I consider a social boon and not from an exclusively negative viewpoint.

When once in a while I teach freshman composition, I offer the students a list of two hundred carefully phrased essay-topics, two of which are “wine as a civilized custom” and “beer as a civilized custom.”  Student respondents invariably fail to read the qualification, “as a civilized custom.”  The result is just as invariably a whiney anti-liquor screed with mountains of statistics downloaded from various Bluestocking websites cut and pasted without any attempt at interpreting them.  I hasten to add that few of freshman composition students are unfamiliar with spirit, especially beer, which they drink to excess regularly, using their fake IDs to obtain it.  They know the phenomenon of hangover quite well (many of them, anyway).

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HAVING promoted the Sexual Revolution for decades, elite Westerners now turn their attention to the Death Revolution. That’s no surprise. The Sexual Revolution is a form of collective suicide.

See the long list of British actors and literary figures who signed a recent letter to The Telegraph calling for Parliament to make assisted suicide legal.

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We were not given life to be happy but to render glory to God. However, it is important to note that even from the viewpoint of earthly happiness, neopaganism is bad business. There is more joy in an austere and Christian society, even when life is modest, than in the fallacious splendor of a super-civilization – perhaps better said, a “pseudo-civilization”- that puts all its happiness in the delights of sensuality or the illusions of money.

—– Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

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  DAVID BROOKS, the New York Times columnist laughably called "conservative," picks the top magazine essays of 2014. His favorite is the "blockbuster" article by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic calling for reparations for blacks. All American blacks, in Coates's view, should receive money in reparation not just for slavery but for ongoing discrimination, particularly discrimination in lending. Brooks writes, "The essay has incredible propulsive force." That it does. You might call it a journalistic version of the Knock Out Game. Coates has impeccable elite credentials. He is the son of a member of the Black Panthers. He has done remarkably well as a journalist even though he dropped out of college. See Jared Taylor's excellent analysis from last May of Coates's essay.

TWO  idealistic Italian college students, who went to Syria on a humanitarian mission and were kidnapped there this summer, have emerged in a video recording begging for their life. Details about any ransom requested by the Islamic group holding them are not available.

Now’s the time for a fresh statement from “Pope” Francis saying every religion has its fundamentalists.

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