THE FAITH AND HERITAGE website has responded to my recent criticism of an article recommending that Christians not do business with Jews because "the temptation to cheat is almost impossible for them to overcome." I have not had the opportunity to read the response in its entirety yet.  

WHEN CIVILITY and common purpose reign in a society, there is little it can’t withstand with dignity. Modern life need not be rude, chaotic and ugly. Michael Wines writes in The New York Times on daily conditions in the shelters for those made homeless by the Japanese tsunami:

Just two weeks after this nation’s greatest catastrophe in decades, the citizens at Takada Junior High School No. 1, this town’s largest evacuee center, have managed to fashion a microcosm of the spotlessly organized and efficient Japan they so recently knew.

Theirs is a city where a hand sanitizer sits on every table; where face masks, which Japanese wear the way other people wear sunglasses, are dispensed by the box. It is a place where you do not just trade your muddy shoes for slippers at the front door, but also shed the slippers at the gymnasium door lest you carry a mote of dust from the hallways into the living areas….

… Drying remains a problem. “We have to dry the ladies’ underwear where people can’t see it. So we put it in two classrooms on the second floor, and then we lock the doors,” said Mr. Nakai, the evacuee center manager. Classes at the school have been suspended since the disaster.  (more…)

KRISTOR writes at VFR:

People forget how society naturally organized itself before the statists began their insults to the natural order. People forget that before about 1900, municipalities had nothing to do with creating marriages; there were no marriage licenses. Churches performed marriages. No one else had the authority to do it.

No one knows that in 1850, banks issued their own currencies, that competed with the currency of the Bank of the United States. We have so much forgotten the idea of private bank notes, that we cannot even understand why Hamilton had to fight to get the U.S. to own its own bank, and issue its own currency. If we had competing currencies today, we would not have inflation. We’d have boomlets and bustlets, rather than the enormous run-ups and crashes we now get.

People forget that there were once no public schools, no public universities. (more…)

 JESSE POWELL writes:

As you probably know, the 2010 Census numbers on the racial composition of the United States have been released.  I would lke to present them with slight changes to the government system of classification. The Census results are organized according to “ethnic heritage;” meaning Hispanic or Non-Hispanic; and race divided into six different categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian and Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and Some Other Race.  In addition, a person may be a combination of races or multi-racial.  It should be kept in mind, though, that Hispanic is not a race according to the 2010 Census.  (more…)

AT THE website Tradition in Action, Elaine M. Jordan compares the demeanour and attire of yesterday’s mailmen with today’s “mail carriers.” She writes:

The stability and seriousness of the past has been replaced by a pseudo-juvenile and precarious spirit. Replacing the air of commitment and efficiency is one of sloppy and lackadaisical ineffectiveness. The mentality of the profession has clearly changed. Before mailmen were committed to serve society; now they seem to be turned almost exclusively toward their own comfort, rights and salaries.

The general impression is of disorder, lack of discipline and egalitarianism. The ridiculous is not absent from the picture [below] when one considers men who look more like boys in shorts rather than a professional cadre of trained workers. Immorality and the grotesque respectively appear when the carriers – male and female – show their legs.

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JESSE POWELL writes:

 It is sad to learn that divorce and illegitimacy have come to Sioux County, Iowa. I didn’t know that rural white areas had much lower rates of divorce and illegitimacy than the nation as a whole not so long ago. 

Reading the comments from the peanut gallery, however, the mood is much more triumphant. (more…)

Karen I. writes:

I thought you might find this interesting. I saw it on a website called Dollar Stretcher, which is a good site for a housewife to visit now and then. I was shocked to see this. It is important for housewives to have a credit history of their own in case of the death of their spouse, and other emergency situations. This new law could make establishing credit much harder for housewives. Our government seems intent on making things as difficult as possible for us. (more…)

THIS article on the staggering increase in divorce and illegitimacy in one county in Iowa indicates that feminism and the economic autonomy of women are major factors. The writers don’t come right out and say it but it’s clear: most of the divorces are filed by women.

The piece by Sabrina Tavernese and Robert Gebeloff only indirectly points to another factor: contemporary Christianity. Sioux County is overwhelmingly Christian, with about 80 percent of the residents belonging to a major denomination. Since 1980, the number of married people for every divorced person has declined by more than 60 percent, from 52 to 18.

The one Christian preacher quoted suggests he is uncomfortable with the idea of pointing fingers when it comes to divorce.

“There’s a perception here that you need to be perfect,” said the Rev. John Lee, a young pastor who has tried to encourage change in Sioux County by taking on taboo topics like divorce and mental illness in his sermons.

“Cars are washed, lawns are mowed in patterns and children are smiling,” Mr. Lee added. “When you admit weakness, you invite shame.”

The opposite is apparently true. There is a perception that you don’t need to be perfect at all, especially when it comes to marital vows made in a church.

Let’s face it. Feel-good Christianity hasn’t just stood by and watched the divorce rate soar. It has actively encouraged it. Christians now overwhelmingly accept the idea that the purpose of marriage is self-fulfillment and reciprocal love.

There is an enormous banner outside a local Evangelical church near my home that invites one and all in huge letters to “Fresh Start: a Divorce Recovery Seminar.” This redefinition of Christian marriage is one more example of something even more disturbing and profoundly telling: the closing of the Christian mind. Christians can no longer think their way out of a paper bag. Principle eludes them. They are truly Christians of the Heart-land, oblivious to the fact that God created their minds too. Their preachers and priests feed them sentimentalities, not truth, or ignore the whirlwind of marital disruption like babies sleeping through a storm.

The purpose of Christian marriage is not love and mutual understanding. It is to give life to and responsibly raise the next generation. Love and mutual understanding are entirely secondary. But the Christian of today is too much in awe of his or her heartbeats to perceive or think of anything higher.  

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THE March issue of Chronicles magazine includes “Going Down with the Good Ship Lollipop,” an excellent, first-rate piece by Jack Trotter on Shirley Temple, whose stardom the writer identifies as the beginning of popular culture’s explicit sexualization of children. Countering those who might protest that the tap-dancing little girl in embroidered frocks was nothing like today’s Britneys and Mileys, Trotter describes the dark, prurient side of her appeal.

“[M]illions of Americans embraced Shirley without so much as a murmur of disapproval,” he writes. In the piece, unavailable online, Trotter recalls the novelist Graham Greene’s observations of Miss Temple in his film reviews:   (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

I had an interesting experience walking home this evening. I was standing at a busy intersection patiently waiting for the crossing sign to turn green. I had hit the button signaling that I wanted to cross and was waiting. It was already dark and had been dark for about an hour. On the opposite side of the street a young woman, about 30 years old and well dressed, quite attractive, white, stepped into the street. When I first saw her do this I thought she was confused, that she didn’t know that the light was red; maybe she thought she saw a green light and just wasn’t very aware of her surroundings. (more…)

STEPHEN writes:

With regard to yesterday’s post on the “Meditations of Nicolas Goméz Dávila,” I would like to offer one small correction to what your correspondent (Peter S.) wrote, or at least prevent a potential misunderstanding on the part of your readers. Goméz Dávila wrote well over 3,000 aphorisms — the total is, I believe, somewhere around 14,000. Rather, I only translated approximately 3,000 of his aphorisms into English on Don Colacho’s Aphorisms.

Laura writes:

So you only translated 3,000 of his aphorisms? That’s all? 

Seriously, that is impressive. Congratulations and thank you for your effort. In celebration, I’d like to post a few of my favorite of Goméz Dávila’s aphorisms on love: (more…)

MICHAEL D. writes in response to this entry:

The last occasion when the United States attacked Libya was in 1986 in Operation El Dorado Canyon. This operation consisted of a series of air strikes by air force and navy strike aircraft where they struck regime targets in Tripoli and Benghazi. President Reagan announced the operation to the public while the planes were in the air – the strikes were in reprisal for a bomb attack by Libyan terrorists on a nightclub in Berlin that was packed with many U.S. servicemen and civilians at the time. (more…)

I REALIZE military commanders are under certain restrictions when coming up with code names for strategic operations, but still it is embarrassing to see an armed conflict assigned such a silly, euphemistic term in the news as “Operation Odyssey Dawn.” Even if military personnel refer to it as such, is it necessary for the public and journalists to accept the term? The rash mindlessness and indefinite purpose of this country’s attack on Libya, launched without Congressional approval, is sickeningly highlighted by the sentimental name. Ed O’Keefe in The Washington Post says the phrase sounds like “the title of a rock album, video game or — as some have suggested — the name of a pornographic movie star.” (more…)

  PETER S. WRITES: Today marks the completion of a multi-year informal translation project of the aphorisms of Don Colacho.  A profound reactionary intellectual, his observations, while no doubt acerbic to some tastes, are full of penetrating insight regarding the modern condition and the eclipse of the sacred.  Of the nearly three thousand aphorisms authored by him, I offer a few here by way of example:  We do not invoke God as defendants, but as parched lands.  Today the individual must gradually reconstruct inside himself the civilized universe that is disappearing around him.  I do not belong to a world that is passing away; I prolong and transmit a truth that does not die.  The Gospels and the Communist Manifesto are waning; the world's future lies in the power of Coca-Cola and pornography.

TODAY is Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday. Celebrate by listening to this beautiful version of the Bach Concerto in F minor, with Claudio Dauelsberg on the piano.

Bach means “brook” in German. Beethoven said, “Not Brook, but Ocean should be his name.”  Bach is a vast and glorious sea that stretches to the horizon.

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