FROM Silas Walter Adams's 1958 book The Legalized Crime of Banking and a Constitutional Remedy: Stop and find your place in our present economic system - that is, are you a beneficiary; or, are you a victim? Are you a gainer; or, are you a loser? If you work for a living, with hands and/or head, or both; or, work for others for pay, you are a loser, the heaviest of all losers! You toil to provide man all his material wants, or to serve him, and you are paid with a cheap, inflated 25-cent dollar, which we persistently call a 100-cent dollar — a private dollar created by a private corporation. If you have earned your money either by producing something, working for yourself or as an employee, or in serving others, and through thrift and economy you have stored it away for the rainy day; or, if an honest man and would not take anything from another that you did not give in return an equal value of goods and/or service, you are doubly a loser; for the bankers’ constant stream of created new dollars pouring into circulation cheapens your dollar, and lowers its buying power. You get only a pound of coffee today for the same money you could buy four pounds of coffee in the thirties. If you are on a pension, or living on your life’s saving, even on the coupons you have been clipping from World War…
PETER STEINFELS, former religion writer for The New York Times, calls Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro's highly-publicized grand jury report of last August on sex abuse in the Catholic Church "grossly misleading, irresponsible, inaccurate, and unjust." He objects to the report's charge that the Church had ignored abuse cases. "This ugly, indiscriminate, and inflammatory charge, unsubstantiated by the report's own evidence, to say nothing of the evidence the report ignores, is truly unworthy of a judicial body responsible for impartial justice." See more at The Media Report.
TODAY is the 70th birthday of the writer Lawrence Auster, who died in 2013 of pancreatic cancer and whose writings on modern America are still avidly followed. This blog would not have been possible without his encouragement. Here is an excerpt from his entry, "The Breakdown of Western Form:" In today’s New York City ... you will walk into a retail store or a hair-cutting salon, and not only will there be loud black funk music blasting from speakers in the ceiling from morn till night, with its interminable, melody-less, rhythmless, lyric-less (and identical in every song), “oh ooo ohh, ooh, hoh baby, woohoo, uhh, uhh, Woohoo WoohuahAHahAAA, yeah-huh, baby oh yeah”, but the radio reception is so bad it’s all static. I’m talking about loud static, filling the establishment from powerful speakers. When you ask the employees to adjust the tuning of the radio station or to turn the volume down, they will do so, but there seems to be absolutely no consciousness on their part that there was anything inappropriate about this horrible noise. There is a shocking insensibility in young people today, a complete acceptance of noise and disorder in one’s environment. It reminds me of India, where villagers love to have all-night festivals with electronic speakers turned up to the max, where people in cities are surrounded by unbelievable, all-encompassing noise and disorder and are not disturbed by it at all. In one sense, this is an impressive quality,…
SURE on This Shining Night, performed here by the Minnesota Choral Artists, is a choral work by Morten Lauridsen based on the 1938 poem by James Agee: Sure on This Shining Night James Agee Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground. The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole. Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder Wandering far alone Of shadows on the stars.
WHILE I can’t recommend everything Michael Hoffman writes, this commentary on the Covington Catholic incident is good. (I have mainly stayed away from the media storm about this incident. Don’t let the “Masters of Discourse” tell you how to spend your time.):
The Cryptocracy manipulates people of color to serve as golem in the United States, disseminating a view of American history that portrays the majority of whites as whip-wielding tormentors of colored people in bondage, when the truth is that the vast majority of whites in early America were, as Congressman David Wilmot termed them, “the sons of toil.” Many arrived in this country in chattel bondage, not dainty “indentured servitude.”
The clandestine objective of crowding whites into ever more narrow psychological categories of self-abnegation and erasure, is to inflame them into lashing out desperately with inchoate violence that can be exploited to further justify ever greater encroachment by the government on our immemorial rights, and the escalation of increasingly intense negative caricatures of conservative white people issuing from the salons of Hollywood and New York. (more…)
FROM the book Sins of the Tongueby Fr. Belet, (Kindle version here) of the Diocese of Basle; Translated from the French, 1870 ed.:
In 1617 someone published a volume entitled, The Horseman’s Book: The Art of Riding, treating the use of bridles, whips, guides, and so on. Such a title is of a nature to give rise to sad thoughts. We have learned how to make bits, bridles, halters and pincers, and how to adapt them to a horse’s head or mouth; we have learned the art of directing these animals at will by means of a small bit. But we possess a tongue so ill-tempered that no bridle can curb it: this raging beast resists bits, halters and pincers alike, knocking down every obstacle in its path. It wants to be as free as a horse in the wild. Let us see what Saint James has to say on the subject: “We put bits into horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we control their whole body also. But no man can tame the tongue.” (1) Jas. 3:3-8]
Without a doubt, the most poisonous tongue of all is the backbiter’s. It spits its deadly venom to the four winds. It is an evil known throughout the earth. One can never stigmatize and deplore it enough.
Therefore, we shall now study the nature of this evil, its various species, and the gravity of the evils it breeds. (more…)
IN THE 19th-century, women did not especially denigrate femininity. They did not seek masculinity in all things or think modesty embarrassing. They were not, till the latter years of the century, infected with feminist-style self-loathing. Though Victorian society was not perfect at all, nor even the ideal, women were not plagued by envy of men.
The rich tradition of doll-playing of that era illustrates these historic attitudes. The doll was highly valued as a plaything for the young girl. Godey’s Lady’s Book of 1869, quoting Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, wrote of this approval, overstating a bit the case for the doll: “A doll is one of the most imperious wants, and at the same time one of the most delicious instincts, of feminine childhood… The first child is a continuation of the last doll. A little girl without a doll is nearly as unhappy and quite as impossible as a wife without children.”
After the Civil War, many well-to-do American homes spared no expense in providing daughters with dolls that came with elaborate wardrobes, including not just ornate dresses, but tiny gloves, lorgnettes, purses, earrings, bracelets, petticoats and even toothbrushes. These were the American Girl dolls of the day. A current exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum titled “Little Ladies: Victorian Fashion Dolls and the Feminine Ideal,” running until March 3, displays samples of the best dolls from that era. Standing in plexiglass cases surrounded by their miniature accessories and adorned in highly-ornate and colorful silks, linens, furs, and wools, they are captivating objects.
It was interesting to note in the textual commentary of the exhibit and in remarks by visitors and the curator, the cognitive dissonance such an exhibit, with what one reviewer called its “darker implications,” causes in women today. No one could deny the beauty of these clothes, with such rich colors and ornamentation, or the very high level of craftsmanship.
But they represent oppressive patriarchy. They represent “indoctrination.” How then can they be enjoyed, even on a purely aesthetic level?
The answer is to take in the aesthetic experience while shaking your head, snickering and condescendingly reminding yourself that things are much better today. (more…)
I came across two tweets this morning that deserve mention. First, an old standard:
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12 King James Version (KJV)
What we are witnessing today is nothing less than the titanic age-old struggle of Good vs. Evil and until and unless one recognizes this one does not possess the cognitive tools to begin to apprehend the nature of our current travails. (more…)
PLANNED PARENTHOOD aborted 332,757 children last year and received $564 million from taxpayers. On this, the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, some important history of what led to the decriminalization of murder from Dr. Thomas Droleskey at Christ or Chaos:
Roe v. Wade did not “start” the genocide of the preborn in this country that has taken over fifty million innocent human lives since 1965. The move for the decriminalization of surgical baby-killing began at the state level (so much for demigod of states’ rights) as pro-abortion leaders such as Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of the National Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called NARAL-Pro Choice), and Lawrence Lader and William Baird, among others used the existence of various “exceptions” in abortion legislation then on the books as the means of “liberalizing” “access” to baby-killing for all women in all circumstances. The move for decriminalized baby-killing under cover of law started at the state level, moving into the Federal court system only when pro-death advocates believed that it was propitious for them to challenge the laws of those states which prohibited or restricted “access” to baby-killing.
It is useful to review some of the history of decriminalizing surgical baby-killing under cover of civil law prior to Roe v. Wade. Those who contend that the “people” in the various states have the “right” to determine whether to permit or prohibit surgical baby-killing would have no problem with the pre-Roe legislation, nor would they be bothered by the fact that many states have “trigger laws” in effect to “protect” baby-killing in the event that Roe v. Wade is reversed at some point by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. (more…)
NO ONE believes in the Greek gods anymore. Gaia, the earth mother who gave birth to Uranus, the sky deity with whom she later conceived the Titans and a whole pantheon of passionately warring and amorous divinities -- any adult today who accepted this as true history or theology would not be taken seriously. Can you imagine a student at Princeton, say, seriously maintaining that Zeus is real? Agreement is universal: these gods do not govern our world. According to Hesiod, the famous ancient poet and chronicler of the gods: [Gaia] lay with Heaven and bore deep swirling Oceanus, Coeus, and Crius and Hyperion and Ipateus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos (Cronus) the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire. The stories of the Greek gods contain psychological insights and intuitions about the creation of the universe, the immortality of man and the existence of warring supernatural beings. But no one worships these gods anymore or appeals to them for assistance. It's interesting to speculate as to what the Greeks of ancient times would think of us, if they could come back to life. What would they think of our creation story? In the Greek stories, supernatural beings created man and gave him a soul. In other words, something created something. In the Darwinian account, which is the reigning creation story, nothing created something. The idea that Zeus sent Prometheus to earth…
I WAS recently talking to a woman in her thirties. Bright, talented, pretty and friendly, she has a beautiful, three-year-old son -- a little boy with an angelic glow that attracts everyone in the room. She has a husband who makes a good living and adores her. Her successful career she has interrupted but she could resume it at any time. I asked her if she was hoping to have more children. She said without hesitation that no, she was not. She was done and would be returning to full-time employment this fall. She would have no more children. She had never been enthusiastic about becoming a mother, she said, and only had one child reluctantly. (You would never know this by her affectionate behavior toward her son.) Even when she was a girl, she said, she knew she wasn't cut out for motherhood. It wasn't for her. Now for a college-miseducated woman who lives in a big city today to say she is not cut out for motherhood --- that's almost like a person raised in a tribe in the Amazon rainforest saying he was never cut out to be a software engineer. I was not surprised at her statement. "You know, you don't have to like motherhood in order to be a mother," I said. "You can even be a good mother and not like it. It's a job." She was taken aback. "Oh, I never heard that before,"…
"TODAY'S governments, more than just big, have taken on the overbearing configuration of Behemoth Government, over-bloated, top-heavy, inefficient, unapproachable, unaccountable, inhumane and cruelly unjust. Unaccountable, that is, to the people it governs but not to the hidden powers that secretly control it. This trend is the product of the prevailing attitude, itself based on the slippery footing of modern principles, which have men automatically turning to the highest and most distant reaches of authority to do for them what they are able and morally obliged to either do for themselves or to commission the smallest and most localized institutions to do for them. The Church looks upon this attitude -- and the criminal system it has spawned -- with profound disfavor. 'Just as it is wrong to withdraw from the individual and commit to the community at large what private enterprise and industry can accomplish, so too it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance or right order for a larger and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.'" [Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno] --- Hugh Akins
WHAT magic is there in the rule of six that compels the snowflake to conform so rigidly to its laws? Here is a gem bestrewn realm of nature possessing the charm of mystery, of the unknown, sure richly to reward the investigator. These are the words of Wilson A. Bentley, a self-taught Vermont farmer who from early childhood was fascinated by the crystalline structure of snow and was the first person to photograph the snowflake. Born in 1865 and educated by his mother, he taught himself the craft of microphotography so that he could document the snow crystals that fell outside his home in the rural town of Jericho, which typically received about 120 inches of snowfall a year. Bentley would gather snow on a black wooden tray, removing the excess with a feather duster. He then separated the crystals with the filament of a broom. Having attached a microscope, his only serious piece of scientific equipment, to a bellows camera, he glued the snowflakes to microscopic slides and photographed them inside in an unheated room, with light from a window for illumination. He washed his negatives in a nearby brook. He eventually amassed more than 5,000 microphotographs, starting with his first, made in 1885 when he was 20 years old. They appeared along with his explanatory articles in journals and in a book, Snow Crystals, published the year of his death in 1931. He wrote in his later years: For something over a quarter of a century I have been studying [the snow crystal] and the work has proved to be wonderfully fascinating, for each favorable snowfall,…
BORN TO poor Jewish parents who emigrated from London to New York City and Boston in his childhood, David Goldstein (1870-1958) is a fascinating and little-known figure in American letters whom you will never, for sure, read about in today’s mainstream publications. He described his early life thus:
Poverty was the lot of my father and mother. This they struggled through with courage, with devoted love for each other and the children. My parents and their four children had to be supported on the meagre earnings my father obtained from long hours of toil at the bench, making cigars. Though born of strictly Orthodox Jewish parents, they like most Jews who attend the synagogue were Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Jews. Thus, my father and mother, during my boyhood days, attended synagogue services on those two leading Jewish holidays, “if only for the children’s sake,” as Jewish fathers and mothers often say. [Wikipedia]
Goldstein became a socialist as a teenager and entered politics. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Boston when he was 27. He lost his political will, however, when he became disenchanted with socialism and Marxism. He realized the degree to which both opposed normal and healthy family life. Socialist “free love” deeply offended someone so conscious of his own indebtedness to family constancy and intimacy. He unsuccessfully sought to get the Massachusetts Socialist convention in 1902 to disavow free love and attacks against religion. He co-authored a book Socialism: The Nation of Fatherless Children in 1903. He was, of course, entirely correct and prophetic about the implications of socialism for the family. He also grew tired of class enmity:
It took some time to understand — being sympathetic with Socialism — that Socialists succeed in making ‘Socialist minds’ mainly by constantly picturing the misery of the poor and the greed of the rich; by continually condemning all things which meet with dissatisfaction in the minds of toilers, whether the discontent be rational or ridiculous; by increasing disapproval or condemnation of the character, work or proposals of officials in trade unions who have to meet practical issues and the responsibilities of the conflicts of labor organizations. At the same time, Socialists press forward their abstract propositions attract those idealists whose pictures are ephemeral and fall into confusion, like a baby’s house made of blocks, when the common sense touch of the actual world of strife and strain is applied to them; for human nature is what it is and not what Socialist idealists conjure it up to be in their sickly sentimental thoughts.” [Wikipedia]
Not long after his disillusionment with socialism, Goldstein, through the mysterious workings of grace, converted to Catholicism. He then set about his most important intellectual work — doing battle with prejudices and misconceptions of the Church. For ten years, he wrote a weekly column for the Boston Pilot, a newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese. A sample of his learned and elegant columns, in many cases actual letters to various public individuals — truly remarkable for their literary quality, especially by today’s standards — can be found at catholictradition.org.
Goldstein also traveled around the country as a sidewalk apologist, speaking in streets, squares and parks. He took his duty to propagate the Faith with unabashed seriousness and courage. He explained why he possessed such extraordinary zeal: (more…)
SOCIAL CREDIT, a body of economic ideas introduced by Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, is a provocative challenge to today's financial system. It is not a realistic alternative at this point, but it is well worth considering. From a website devoted to Douglas's work: Clifford Hugh Douglas was a household name throughout the English-speaking world during the so-called inter-war years of the twentieth century. His work, like that of so many of his contemporaries, has been ignored by mainstream studies of political economy. Here you can read how he influenced his contemporaries and discover what happened in Alberta. Shortly before his death in 1952 Clifford Hugh Douglas surveyed the landscape near Aberfeldy in Scotland, turned to a close colleague and said: “You know, T.J., I think the time is approaching when we shall have to challenge this monstrous and fantastic overgrowth of industrial expansion – fundamentally. Really, you know, I personally can see nothing particularly sinful about a small dynamo; but this thing we’ve got is past a joke. If it isn’t a joke, it is Satanic.” More interesting articles on Social Credit can be found here.
BP. DONALD SANBORN writes: Common sense, what in philosophy we call the first principles of reason, knows that from nothing, nothing comes. It is impossible, in other words, that being come from nothing. This same common sense tells us that the cause of anything must have a perfection more than the effect has it. For example, a young pine tree cannot reproduce itself, since it does not yet have the perfection of its nature. When it achieves maturity, it is able to produce pine cones and reproduce the species. So the nature of pine must be more perfect in the mature tree than in the seedling which it reproduces. This is true of all living things. Reproduction occurs when the nature achieves perfection. In children, for example, the nature is not yet perfect, and unable, therefore, to reproduce. In old age, the nature is declining and unable to reproduce. Evolution requires that something higher come from something lower. The gorilla becomes a man. They attribute this to mutations caused by cosmic rays. While it is true that accidental mutations may occur within a species (change in color, for example), it is impossible that a higher species evolve from a lower one, since this would mean that something more is produced from something less, or that something comes from nothing.
THIS BLOG has been idle for a few days while I set up a new computer. Thanks to donations from readers, I was able to buy a new laptop and am making the transition from a nine-year-old machine. I am very grateful for your support. I also have a new e-mail account with encrypted messaging, which also took some time to set up. I can be reached at laurawood@thinkinghousewife.net. Readers can be assured that all correspondence with me is confidential (to the limits of modern technology). I will also be receiving messages at my old address for now. Regular blogging should resume by tomorrow or later today.
THOUGH the divorce rate in Africa is not increasing dramatically, women are becoming much more enthusiastic about leaving their husbands, according to a recent article on the phenomenon in West Africa. The New York Times makes interesting references to some of the causes of this shift:
Across West Africa, people are pouring into cities from the countryside, leaving behind parents and local traditions. The push for women’s rights has expanded, with more nations signing on to international commitments to gender equality. Governments have passed laws against domestic abuse and discrimination against women, and many nations now have ministries of women’s affairs. (more…)
