AT VFR, Howard Sutherland writes:

Isn’t every Pope’s primary mission to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations and call people–all people–to the Christian faith? Rather than make statements that imply an equivalence between Christianity and Islam, Pope Benedict should exhort those Moslems who have moved into Christian (or once-Christian) lands to enter into the life of those lands fully by embracing the Christian faith. (Of course, I would prefer that the Pope exhort Moslems in Europe–and everywhere else, for that matter–to embrace Christianity and then return to their ancestral homelands, there to proselytise among their kin still benighted by Islam. But if expecting the Pope to call Moslems to convert is unrealistic, how unrealistic is it to expect him to tell them to go home?) (more…)

THOUGH the federal government does not officially recognize the fraudulent institution of same-sex “marriage,” a major federal agency does. The Census Bureau issued revised 2010 figures yesterday for the number of same-sex couples, which it derives from respondents who say they are “married” to a member of the household of the same sex. (more…)

A WOMAN I know taught her son at home until he was eight. She was then considering sending him to a small private school. In order to apply to the school, the boy had to take an entrance exam. (more…)

  [T]he Captain had brought the Pinnace in near the Place where I at first landed my Rafts, and so landed just at my Door. I was at first ready to sink down with the Surprize. For I saw my Deliverance indeed visibly put into my Hands, all things easy, and a large Ship just ready to carry me away whither I pleased to go. At first, for some time, I was not able to answer him one Word; but as he had taken me in his Arms, I held fast by him, or I should have fallen to the Ground.                                              -- Robinson Crusoe, Daniel DeFoe, (Chapt. 27)

ALYCE writes:

I think you are wonderful. 

You are a friend of women, and make me proud to be a woman also. You are a friend to those I love most – my sons, my daughter, my husband, my father.  (more…)

THOMAS writes:

I am a third-year student at a major law school. Since family law is tested on the bar exam, I decided that it would be smart to take a family law course. The professor is a woman who is a Brigham Young University law school graduate (although I seriously doubt she is Mormon).  She has published several articles on gender, sexuality, and family law. (more…)

TEXANNE writes:

In this New York magazine article, “Parents of a Certain Age,” a piece about older mothers who conceive artifically, there’s not even a passing glance at possible emotional and psychological implications for the real live children themselves. There are millions of these Brave-New-World children who make up the next generation — particularly prevalent among the class which will be shaping and enforcing thought. What concept of the connection between love, sex and procreation (let alone the very definitions of male and female) will these children have? How does a person feel when he realizes that an order was placed for him, with genetic material delivered at a convenient time for the discerning customer? (more…)

  THE DISCUSSION of the blogger "CWNY," at Cambria Will Not Yield, continues here.

 

N.W. writes:

Mr. Alan Graham of the County Down has made my day. The old fellow threw Rihanna and her production crew off of his land after he saw the singer prancing around topless in one of his barley fields. While Mr. Graham had given them permission to use his land, he did not know who Rihanna was, or what kind of video she would be shooting. (more…)

PATRICK writes:

Here’s an article from CNN about a transgendered three-year-old. Am I on Candid Camera? What is going on? This is creepy, weird and more than a little bit evil. (more…)

ROBIN JENNIFER writes:

Oh, my word! My favorite thing about the article in Slate is the photo of the “mother” – she is bent over, with drooping back, belly and breasts, as she labors under the horrendous and torturous weight of a child. (more…)

FROM CHAPTER 7, of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe:

This I was very glad of, you may be sure, and about the latter end of December, which was our second Harvest of the Year, I reap’d my Crop.

I was sadly put to it for a Scythe or a Sicle to cut it down, and-all I could do was to make one as well as I could out of one of the Broad Swords or Cutlasses, which I sav’d among the Arms out of the Ship. However, as my first Crop was but small I had no great Difficulty to cut it down; in short, I reap’d it my Way, for I cut nothing off but the Ears, and carry’d it away in a great Basket which I had made, and so rubb’d it out with my Hands; and at the End of all my Harvesting, I found that out of my half Peck of Seed, I had near two Bushels of Rice, and above two Bushels and half of Barley, that is to say, by my Guess, for I had no Measure at that time. (more…)

WRITING AT SLATE yesterday, Sharon Lerner says the abysmally low birthrate among corporate women is proof of the U.S. government’s stinginess. If only we had universal paid parent leave. You see, dear reader, this is the kind of nonsense that rains down upon us like soot. (more…)

ACCORDING TO a new report, 43 percent of  corporate professional women between the ages of 33 and 46 have no children. In its press annoucement of the report on the work lives of “Generation X-ers,” the Center for Work-Life Policy, a liberal “think tank” which specializes in corporate diversity programs, expresses no consternation over the demographic suicide of the American elite (it actually seems to think this low birthrate is kind of cool), but raises alarm about the need for cutting-edge corporations to appeal to the childless.

Perhaps the U.S. could become the first country in the world to offer parent leave to non-parents.

Why not? Once corporations began to accomodate parents, and mothers in particular, by offering them flexibility, which is a form of non-cash payment, they became unfair to the childless. If they can’t do away with these forms of favoritism, the only choice is to offer the same flexibility and benefits to the childless. After all, there is no business rationale for favoring parents except the goal of retaining them as employees. The childless make valuable workers too. (more…)

THE PSEUDONYMOUS writer CWNY often argues that the white man has replaced faith in Christ with worship of the black man. CWNY’s argument is more subtle than that. He says rationalism ate away at the heart of the white Christian, who then turned in his lifelessness to the primitivism of the Negro. The liberal Christian sought to recover the elemental and fend off spiritual death.

If CWNY’s argument seems hard to grasp, here is a music video made by members of an Evangelical church that just about sums it up, though with much less elegance.

It’s worth noting that no one has forced these men to appear this way. They like it. This is how they view themselves, as pale, robotic imitators of black thugs. (more…)

THE New York Times today describes the 2008 racially-motivated arson that destroyed a black church in Springfied, Massachussetts as a “hate-fueled fire.” A crime that is more than two years old, in which the perpetrators have been caught and punished, still calls for passionate condemnation. In contrast, the brutal execution-style murder of a young white couple by two black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma last week has not even been covered by the Times, let alone been identified as “hate-fueled.” The media coverage elsewhere of the murder of Carissa Horton and Ethan Nichols, who were robbed in a park and then shot in the head, has overwhelmingly referred to the crime as “senseless” or “random,” not as an act of racial hatred.  (more…)

DAN writes:

I have a great deal of love and admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, and consider him an instrumental figure in my turn to Christianity after years in the spiritual wastelands of my youth. That being said, when it comes to the issue of Islam I regret that the Holy Father has retreated from his earlier positions which displayed a skeptical, if not critical, view of the religion and a seeming recognition that it did not belong in the West. (more…)