“LET us, therefore, forsake the vanity of the crowd and their false teachings, and turn back to the Word delivered to us from the beginning.”

                    —- St. Polycarp

St THOMAS Aquinas on Man’s Relations with Foreigners (Source):

Man’s relations with foreigners are twofold: peaceful and hostile: and in directing both kinds of relation, the Law contained suitable precepts.

The Israelites offered three opportunities for peaceful relations with foreigners.

First, when foreigners passed through their land as travellers; secondly, when they came to dwell in their land as newcomers; and thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. Read More »

PLEASE don’t use the phrase “Artificial Intelligence,” or A.I., if you can avoid it.

It is misleading.

Machines don’t have intelligence, which is essentially an immaterial faculty. Computers process information fed to them by human beings and use mechanical power to do it. They can’t reason. Machines can’t think.

See Peggy Hall’s Substack post on this subject in connection with “Stargate A.I.,” the ridiculously-named, high-tech program (it sounds like a video game) introduced last week by Trump. She writes:

Let’s get one thing straight—I really don’t like the term “AI.” It’s not just a personal pet peeve; I flat-out reject the idea of “artificial intelligence.” And don’t even get me started on this whole “machine learning” nonsense. Machines don’t learn—they get programmed by humans. We’re not machines, we’re people. And our brains are not computers. They are brains. Human brains. And it’s the human brains that program these computers, so there. I only refer to it as “AI” because it’s the phrase everyone uses, but I do not care for the term at all.

I’m also bothered by the idea these tech gurus are promoting that AI can somehow solve problems that humans can’t. This technology is being elevated while minimizing the incredible creation that we are—humans, God’s greatest creation. I entirely reject that notion of computers being “better than” humans.

The further implication of the phrase “artificial intelligence” is that the human mind is a machine — and that human beings in their essence and powers are merely machines. Some philosophers have viewed things this way, but then to them we have no more inherent dignity or destiny than toasters or satellites. It is definitely to the advantage of billionaires with utopian visions, whether well-intended or not, to adopt this view.

“HISTORICALLY, the poorest of the poor are rarely, if ever, the ones who migrate from poor countries to rich countries. Quite frankly, the poorest of the poor are so undernourished, and physically disabled, that they don’t have the stamina to migrate. It’s those who don’t share these characteristics who migrate. Read More »

. Read More »

“Remember that even Stalin had to take a step back and grant ‘concessions’ to those disappointed with Communism. Trump is in that concession-granting phase, but it’s merely a ploy. Many of these concessions aren’t even real concessions. Read everything carefully.”

[Source]

MARC writes:

Thank you for your article, “Cooking and Love,” published a few days ago.

I had never heard of the Lutèce before, nor of the chef André Soltner, but then I’m not very cultivated and certainly not in the culinary field, so not much of a surprise here.

However, checking on the internet about Mr. Soltner, I could see he was from Thann where he was born in 1932. Though my wife is Swiss and we live on the other side of the border from Alsace, one of her grandmothers was born a few months later and lived her whole life in a small town just a mere miles away from Thann. Read More »

THEY trusted the science. They did what the government told them to do.

Three families devastated by a modern form of medical witchcraft: here, here and here.

When will those whom they trusted pay for these crimes?

ALAN writes:

Thank you for informing your readers of the death of Anita Bryant. I would like to present a few thoughts representing the views of Americans who knew better than to accept the lies told about her.

Her critics claimed a thousand times over that she was an evil, mean-spirited, hate-filled “anti-gay rights” bigot. If that were true, once would be enough to prove it, wouldn’t it?  But they know they cannot prove it, so they repeat it endlessly in Big Lie snow-job fashion: A decades-long degradation ritual, standard Communist operating procedure. Read More »

ONE winter evening many years ago, I was driving home from work on a highway outside Camden, New Jersey. The darkened hulk of this small city, one of the most dangerous in America, appeared before me on the road when a car about 100 feet ahead of me, traveling at about 60 miles per hour, suddenly spun out of control on a patch of ice.

I saw it revolve in place like a tiny toy top and then career to the side of the road near a bank of snow. It was a terrifying sight and the very instant I saw it, I pulled over to the shoulder and then parked right behind the car.

The stunned driver spilled out of the driver’s seat. A black man of about 30 years old, he stumbled up the steep, snowy embankment and sat down with his head in his hands.

I ran up the hill and called to him, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” Read More »

1. TREAT those of other races with kindness, courtesy, civility and genuine good will.

2. Refrain from patronizing virtue-signaling and excuse-making.

3. Never use deprecating slang words or images to describe other races.

4. Show patience toward whites who idolize other races, and who believe in racial utopia, while firmly rejecting their hellish flights from reality.

5. Do not befriend those with racial obsessions.

6. Do not discuss racial differences at social gatherings.

7. Treat those you meet in this multicultural empire as individuals, not representatives of racial types, but seek this empire’s end.

8. Love your own race more than other races.

9. Defend the interests of the white race with confidence and personal sacrifice, knowing that to do so is to be misunderstood and to seek the good of other races, as well as future generations.

10. Reject neurotic white guilt and the systematic defamation of the white race without indulging the fantasy that whites are without faults.

When the lessons and tasks are all ended,
And the school for the day is dismissed,
The little ones gather around me
To bid me “good night,” and be kissed.
Oh, the little white arms that encircle
My neck in their tender embrace;
Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven,
Shedding sunshine of love on my face.

And when they are gone,
I sit dreaming
Of my childhood—too lovely to last—
Of joy that my heart will remember
While it wakes to the pulse of the past:
Ere the world and its wickedness made me
A partner of sorrow and sin,
When the glory of God was about me,
And the glory of gladness within.

I ask not a life for the dear ones
All radiant, as others have done;
But that life may have just enough shadow
To temper the glare of the sun;
I would pray God to guard them from evil;
But my prayer would bound back to myself:
Ah, a seraph may pray for a sinner,
But a sinner must pray for himself.

I shall leave the old house in the autumn,
To traverse its threshold no more;
Ah! how I shall sigh for the dear ones
That meet me each morn at the door;
I shall miss the “good-nights” and the kisses,
And the gush of their innocent glee;
The group on the green, and the flowers
That are brought every morning for me.

— From The Sixpenny Magazine, 1866

ON HIS second day in office, Trump unveils the coming digital prison and “cures” for all kinds of diseases — whether you like it or not.

I NEVER was fortunate enough to dine at the once venerable New York City restaurant, Lutèce, known in the words of a famous food critic as “impressively elegant and conspicuously expensive.” But I heard of it before it closed in 2004 after more than 40 years of operation.

Earlier this week, I picked up an old edition of the once-great, now-defunct magazine Gourmet and found in it a well-written and interesting article about André Soltner, the famous chef of Lutèce for 33 years, whom honestly I had never heard of before. He was apparently the reason why Lutèce was known far and wide.

I found this particular copy of the magazine on a residential curb with a stack of other Gourmet’s a few months ago. They were all from the magazine’s literary golden days in the early 90’s. I carried as many as I could lift in my arms home and I pick them up occasionally for the recipes, beautiful photographs and articles about amazing places I will never see.

Mr. Soltner was born in Alsace and was the son of a cabinetmaker. He decided to become a chef as a young man, trained in some of the most demanding kitchens in Europe and eventually ended up in New York with his wife. He was hired to make Lutèce a great French restaurant, with mostly classic recipes, and by all accounts he did.

Mr. Soltner said something in this article from more than 30 years ago that was especially impressive to me. He said no one becomes a truly great chef simply by mastering technique. There has to be an element of love or intense appreciation for those for whom one cooks. He also said something else memorable: he didn’t like the cult of the celebrity chef (even though he would become one). In this hedonistic age, chefs become gods and restaurants, temples. “I’m just a cook,” he said.

There was an appealing humility to this statement, given his great success. Cooking is not the most important thing in the world — and yet it’s important. I thought of that diminishing sphere of rigorous, backbreaking excellence known as French cuisine and could not help but admire his hard work in one of the most difficult fields and in a world of highly civilized, unapologetic refinement. To be a great restaurant chef, one needs the gifts of both a military commander and an inspired artist. He apparently took off from work, I later learned, only four extra days during his entire tenure at Lutèce, until he woke up one morning and realized he was ruining his wife’s life — and he sold the place for $3 million. It only declined from there.

I decided to find out whatever became of this interesting man and looked him up on the Internet. As fate would have it, Soltner died in Charlottesville, Virginia on January 18, just two days before I read about him. He had lived to the age of 93.

There is nothing more to say, but that I was destined by this strange coincidence to add a few words to his elegies.

“FAUCI, Milley & the Corrupt Congressman are attempting to have their cake and to eat it too. They want to accept the benefit of the phony ‘pardons’ protections WHILE at the same time continuing to proclaim their own innocence. This is a LEGAL impossibility. And if the Trump team doesn’t shut this down by bringing charges against all of them and forcing them to choose admission of guilt & the pardon protection, OR proclaimed innocence & defend in court, then the Trump team is just as complicit in this outrage. The Supreme Court has made it clear. You can’t ‘accept’ the benefits of a pardon AND simultaneously continue to proclaim you’re innocent. “A pardon, in our history, has been used as an act of grace, and its acceptance is an admission of guilt.” Burdick v. US (1915).”

— Legalman

“MAY you never be numbered among those whose house is peaceful, quiet and free from care; those on whom the Lord’s chastisement does not descend; those who live out their days in prosperity, and in the twinkling of an eye will go down to hell.”

— St. Raymond of Peñafort (d. 1275)

FROM 1981 comes this opening to Newsletter No. 54 by the late William Strojie, whose invaluable critiques of the Vatican II Revolution and its implications are still highly relevant:

In my second paper, “The Enemy Within The Catholic Church,” written for distribution by myself, I quote freely from the encyclical of Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, of September 1908, on the Errors of the Modernists. In this paper | mentioned that Piux X called Modernism a “synthesis of all the heresies,” which as Vatican 2 and subsequent religious and intellectual chaos has shown, is the work of modern Gnostics, the devil’s own religionists. This “religion,” under the euphemistic ‘‘ecumenism,” moved into the Vatican itself in our time, taking over the papal chair in the person of John 23, whose first appointment to Cardinal was Montini, Archbishop of Milan. Montini, former Vatican functionary of sinister influence, became Paul 6 who announced a New Order of Religion, the totality in worship, doctrine and indiscipline we now see about us. What remains since the death of Montini are only a few outward Catholic forms, occasional lip service to Catholic orthodoxy by the Vatican 2 popes and bishops — ‘Don’t go too far too fast’ — and such of the old buildings the modernist reformers have not sold off. Of these buildings I will mention just one — the excellent large Jesuit noviate of Sheridan, Oregon, sold to “Scientologists.’’ Hundreds of other such large sellouts or giveaways could be cited. Significant too are the generally hideous new structures, especially in the United States, having the appearance of protestant churches, theosophist temples or synagogues.

But this Letter is not about buildings, old or new, or the vandalism of the Vatican 2 bishops who have destroyed more of art and architecture, and burned more Catholic books, than all the other vandals who ever lived. It is, in a rambling way, about the religious syncretism as it shows its many-headed form today. Read More »

KARL RADL writes:

The Council on Foreign Relations (hereafter CFR) has often been argued to be one of the most important forums for the determination of the foreign policy of the United States. This simplistic view has come in for some judicious and well-deserved criticism from scholars of the subject. (1)

While I don’t hold to the view that the CFR has relatively little influence other than as talking shop as suggested by Schulzinger. (2) I also think it is important not to overstate it, but rather to see the CFR as one of an interlocking sequence of complementary and competing foreign policy think tanks jockeying for prominence and influence in the North American political landscape.

I think we can reasonably suggest however that the CFR is one of the more important and successful of these organizations given the prominence of its senior membership and sheer staying power in the arena of intellectual debate on the subject.

Therefore it is of great interest to us to ascertain the extent of jewish and Zionist influence within the CFR.

[cont.]