THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

One of your readers wrote, in respect of the Muslim period in Spain and the enthusiasm of the Reconquista: “A few voices of rationality managed to save some key texts which among other things introduced Europe to Greek and Roman knowledge.” 

Another one of your readers wrote: “The Muslims were responsible for some great civilizations, exquisite art, the transfer and preservation of classical philosophy, and a civilization of tolerance (in Spain) for hundreds of years.” 

This notion that the West owes its civilization to Islam is a complete falsehood notwithstanding that many otherwise intelligent and educated people continue to believe it.  The continuity from Classical Mediterranean to Western European Medieval Civilization is patent, which is to say that knowledge of the Greco-Roman tradition never vanished, even though at times it contracted to a few monasteries and scriptoria.  Many scholars have understood this since the nineteenth century, but a French researcher, Sylvain Gouguenheim, has recently and brilliantly restated the facts in a remarkable book Aristote au Mont-St, Michel: Les racines grecques de l’Europe Chretienne (2008).  Regrettably Gouguenheim’s book has not yet been translated, but readers of The Thinking Housewife may access my review of it, at The Brussels Journal, here.  In that review, I wrote:  (more…)

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JEFF W. writes:

I’ll share with you a thought I had this morning.

I have been thinking about how the Internet is a slum. Google, whose business purpose is to gather eyeballs for advertisers, provides easy access to all sorts of trivial, time-wasting garbage, as well as pornography. Facebook encourages the worst in self-centered behavior. The young billionaires who run Google and Facebook are slumlords.

There is one part of the Internet, though, that is not a slum, where civilization and good manners can be found, and that is at The Thinking Housewife authored by Laura Wood.

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HERE IS a recipe I half-invented the other day after an unsuccessful attempt to make homemade Chinese dumplings with homemade wonton wrappers. This case of spectacular cross-cultural hubris resulted in a decent sandwich. If you find ground chicken breast too expensive or too hard to make, ground turkey would work too. The burgers are an adaptation of the curried chicken dumplings in Susanna Foo Chinese Cuisine. (more…)

AS HAS been discussed here before, there is a movement by men in Western society to reject marriage because of the widespread phenomenon of unilateral divorce by women and its accompanying injustices, including the appropriation of property and children. The roots of this movement are understandable. But the prescribed cure, if it involves the refusal to marry and have children to avoid the possibility of divorce, is as harmful as the wrongs it seeks to redress.

Here’s a useful analogy by Alan Roebuck. He writes: (more…)

  According to a new report based on 2010 Census numbers, the population of white children dropped by 4.3 million, or about 10 percent, in the past ten years. The number of Hispanic and Asian children grew by 5.5 million, or about 38 percent. White children are in the minority in ten states.

A READER writes:

While reading your recent entry on child labor and seeing the picture of the child chimney sweep, something began to stir inside my memory. It has taken a few days but my dear Grandma telling me of going to work in the silk mill as soon as she was able has finally bubbled to the top!

I know why it took so long to surface because she talked in such an animated way about how she could hardly wait until she was old enough to work there. She talked about being so excited to finally be bringing in money and to have the joyful responsibility of buying all her own material for her clothes which she made herself starting at age 12. (more…)

   FROM one of my favorite blogs.

IN A DISCUSSION here last September on Pastor Terry Jones’s plan to burn the Koran, I expressed disappointment that he had not. It is inspiring that he has since gone ahead and to read of his remarkable, no-nonsense defense of his decision to do so. At VFR, Dean Ericson writes:

Terry Jones’s action has been the single most bracing and courageous act of rebellion against the suffocating, mindless liberalism that infects nearly every American mind. In one dramatic gesture Jones proves that Islam is not a “religion of peace.” In one clarifying act he has demonstrated the utter futility of our Islamic nation-building folly. He has shown how shaky is the house of cards built by liberals–so shaky that one obscure man can make the whole pile of lies tremble.

In the discussion from last year, Thomas F. Bertonneau wrote:

Here is a partial list of societies and civilizations that ceased to exist when Islam, a violent cult-like creed whose ethos entails absolute intolerance of all other creeds, destroyed them –  (more…)

J. writes:

I am a third-year college student and am struggling to survive the college environment. I do enjoy lectures in philosophy and reading philosophy and other subjects but I can’t stand the students and the “college lifestyle.” As someone who believes in the values espoused on your website, for example, I am completely nauseated by the behavior, clothing, arrogance, hedonism, alcoholism, etc. of the students and avoid them completely, often to pursue my own reading and interests. (more…)

CONSERVATIVE evangelical pastors met recently in Iowa to affirm their opposition to same-sex marriage. Who was among their speakers but Newt Gingrich himself, the walking embodiment of American Christian hypocrisy on the subject of marriage. How can one defend marriage anywhere near Newt who left two of his wives and admitted to having an affair with his current wife, Callista, for years while married to his second wife?

If the primary purpose of marriage is self-fulfillment then same-sex marriage makes sense. (more…)

A MEN’S ONLY club of the powerful and influential is an outrage. A women’s-only club is proof of progress. The Belizean Grove is “the world’s ultimate old-girls club.” Here’s what they do at their gatherings, according to The New York Times:

They spend mornings in panel discussions based on the retreat’s particular theme; in recent years, those themes have included “Complexity,” “Shaping Our Future” and “Wisdom and Spirit.” At the sessions, Grovers showcase their areas of expertise, opining on issues as diverse as military strategy, marine life, philanthropy and how revolutions in the Middle East may affect the geopolitical balance. (more…)

SEBASTIAN C. writes:

I must take issue with your casual dismissal in the entry on the British TV series “Downton Abbey” of employers exploiting their female house maids with the line “But sexual abuse of young women today is rampant among those who grow up with their mother’s boyfriends.” I don’t think the analogy holds. There is a difference between something happening occasionally as a consequence of another phenomenon and something that is institutionalized and ritualized. Let me explain. 

In his ancien regime and the revolution, Tocqueville includes an appendix (or the editor to my French edition includes them, I don’t recall) quoting from some of the Cahiers de Doléances. These were the detailed grievances of the peasantry and provincial shopkeepers against the aristocracy. One of the main complaints is that the aristocratic men routinely helped themselves to the prettiest French peasant girls, usually raping them, sometimes simply kidnapping them. This is so entrenched in French culture that by the 1970’s there were a number of soft-core porn movies centered on this theme. Even non-Marxists historians of the revolution like Francois Furet (who was my own professor at Chicago) have written that the sexual tension created by the presence of young male aristocrats in the countryside contributed to igniting the terror.  (more…)

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WOMEN, because of their natural empathy, make better doctors than men. An article in today’s New York Times illustrates why this widely-held belief is false. The entry of large numbers of women into the medical profession has diminished the level of dedication and personal care. Doctors who are mothers are empathetic. But they are empathetic to their children too. They don’t want to work the hours demanded by the traditional medical practice and prefer bureaucratically-administered hospital or clinical jobs that come with regular shifts. 

The grandfather of a woman who is a doctor comments on the changes. “My son and I had deeper feelings for our patients than I think Kate will ever have,” Dr. William Dewar II said over lunch at a diner in Honesdale, about 30 miles northeast of Scranton. Munching on a club sandwich, Dr. William Dewar III gestured toward the diner’s owner, who had greeted them deferentially. (more…)