FROM A review of Hilaire Belloc’s Economics for Helen by Dr. Peter Chojnowski at The Distributist Review:

There are several aspects of this text, which open up new vistas for those seeking an alternative to the materialistic determinism of both the Marxists and the Economic Liberals. All of these insights, on the part of Belloc, into the very fiber of the economic life of man, point to the fact that economics is grounded in two realities, both of which the Capitalists and the Socialists have overlooked: the divinely ordained goal-orientation of human nature and the freedom of choice originating in the spiritual principle of man, which is his soul.

What these two facts indicate is that economics is grounded in the psychological, spiritual, and intellectual life of man to such an extent that the orientations and demands of this life create economic facts and laws that cannot be circumvented. One mentioned by Belloc is the idea of “subsistence.” According to Belloc, “subsistence” is “the worth while of labor.” By this, he means that if a certain standard of living were not provided to the worker, on account of his work, labor itself would no longer be thought to be worthwhile and, hence, would not be engaged in. Belloc identifies this as an economic law, rather than a moral law. Here we see the advancing of a concrete example of an “economic law” which all nations and economic concerns must adhere to if they are to maintain a healthy economic life. Moreover, Belloc implicitly refutes his accusers who charge him with collapsing economic law into moral law. If a nation does not provide its people, in their generality and in their individuality, with work that can sustain a man and his family at levels acceptable within the context of the national culture, men will not work and the nation will not prosper. Of course, it is the obligation of the State to ensure that companies and enterprises uninterested in providing subsistence wages do not simply locate their factories in foreign countries and export their products to the “job-free zones” of the “developed” countries. (more…)

ADDING comments to the previous post, I came upon these truly wonderful versions of three songs by Stephen Foster: Old Black Joe, Some Folks Do, and Beautiful Dreamer. The Roger Wagner Chorale sings. The alternation of male and female voices is a particularly nice touch, but in general these singers are outstanding. Here is what the choral leader Roger Wagner (1914-1992) said of his singers: "Following one of our performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, a well-known local critic asked me, "What is this hypnotic power you wield over your singers? And why did you form the Chorale?" The first question is indeed flattering; however, just the opposite is true. Singers hypnotize me, especially when they are good. The second question can best be answered, I think, by telling something about the Chorale. Every Monday evening 200 singers converge on the Chorale studios to do one thing...sing. They sing choral masterworks, large and small, and find the experience good. School teachers, salesmen, housewives, executives, factory workers, students, professional musicians and others from all walks of life and from distances up to a hundred miles, come with one aim of trying to produce fine choral singing. Each has had some musical training, can read music and loves to sing. To them the Chorale is an ideal, as it is to me, and they dedicate themselves to it with an almost unbelievable devotion. (source) (He then went onto make the obligatory "creeds and…

STEPHEN FOSTER’S famous Some Folks Do is sung here by Charles Szabo.

Long live the merry, merry heart
That laughs by night and day
Like the Queen of Mirth, No matter what some folks say
 

“Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as “the father of American music”, was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlor and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best-known are “Oh! Susanna”, “Camptown Races”, “Old Folks at Home”, “My Old Kentucky Home”, “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”, “Old Black Joe”, and “Beautiful Dreamer”. Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them. His compositions are thought to be autobiographical. He has been identified as “the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century”, and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries.” (from Wikipedia) (more…)

  HENRY CLAY WORK (1832-1884) wrote his hit single Grandfather's Clock in 1876. It has been translated and sung around the world. In watching its pendulum swing to and fro, Many hours he spent as a boy. And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know And to share both his grief and his joy. For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door, With a blooming and beautiful bride; But it stopped short — never to go again — When the old man died.

JAMES N. writes:

My Dad, who was born in 1923, passed away on June 13. This song is said by some to be the most popular song of 1923. (more…)

GAIL A. writes: Thank you for posting that haunting music, accompanied by paintings and views of the serenity of the Hudson river and upstate New York, where I was born and raised. Having spent my formative years there and in neighboring Vermont from where my mother hailed, this was especially meaningful to me. I believe I became one of your indolent women in summer, however, as I sat transfixed before my computer while listening and viewing, taking away time from my duties of food prep for a cookout today. Music and art like this are so beautiful and sublime that they cause a magnificent sense of pain in a way that I am somewhat at a loss to describe. I also came down with a hell of a case of homesickness. Thanks anyway, and God bless you on this, our nation's birthday!

On April 13, 1930, William Schuman, a business student at New York University's School of Commerce, went to a Carnegie Hall concert of the New York Philharmonic with his sister, Audrey. "I was astounded at seeing the sea of stringed instruments, and everybody bowing together. The visual thing alone was astonishing. But the sound! I was overwhelmed. I had never heard anything like it. The very next day, I decided to become a composer," he later recounted. He fulfilled his desires. He left behind six symphonies, numerous other works for orchestra and choral/vocal pieces, including Mail Order Madrigals (1972), based on texts from the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalog. He chose three melodies from the early American Composer William Billings and arranged them for orchestra. These three works, "Be Glad then America," "When Jesus Wept," and "Chester," formed his New England Triptych. Shuman was Jewish and yet composed this explicitly Christian work, performed here by the United States Marine Band. Schuman (1910-1992) was president of Julliard and appeared on the game show What's My Line?

THE INDIANAPOLIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA performs 20th century composer Thomas Canning's Fantasy on a Hymn Tune by Justin Morgan. Justin Morgan (1747-1798) was an American composer who was also a farmer, horse breeder, singing instructor and municipal clerk in Randolph, Vermont. He owned a stallion who sired the Morgan horse breed. Canning (1911-1989) was a professor of composition at the Eastman school and composer-in-residence at West Virginia University. He wrote this beautiful interpretation of one of Morgan's hymns, "Amanda," a tribute to Morgan's wife, Martha Day, who died ten days after giving birth to their youngest daughter. The work accompanies in this video paintings by the Hudson River School painters.

SELECTIONS of American music will be the theme here over the next 48 hours in celebration for July Fourth, and I am starting with the early 20th-century stage tune Goodbye, My Lady Love, performed here by William Bolcolm and Joan Morris. The song was composed in 1904 by Joseph E. Howard, a Broadway songwriter of Tin Pan Alley fame.

According to Wikipedia:

Joseph Howard was born on February 12, 1878, in New York City. He grew up in a gang-terrorized part of the city and was frequently beaten by his father. His mother died when he was 8 years old, and he ran away to a Catholic orphanage, serving as an altar boy and singing in the choir. Avoiding his father, who had discovered the boy’s place of refuge, he rode a freight train to Kansas City, Missouri. There he sang in a saloon and sold newspapers. It was in Kansas City that he was discovered by George Walker of Williams and Walker who arranged for Howard to receive voice training. From Kansas City, he went to St. Louis, Missouri, where he had his first taste of the theater.^[1

Howard composed a number of popular stage hits, including “I don’t Like Your Family” and “A Boy’s Best Friend Is His Mother.” He died on stage while singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” on May 19, 1961. What a way to go!

 Goodbye, My Lady Love

So you’re going away
Because your heart has gone astray
And you promised me
That you would always faithful be

Go to him you love
And be as true as stars above
But your heart will yearn
And then some day you will return (more…)

  IN THIS fantastic video snippet of a 1984 interview, KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov explains why Communists were (and probably still are) interested in encouraging yoga among Americans. It creates an easily manipulated populace. (H/T Fitzpatrick Informer)

  “The thing that makes Judaism dangerous to everybody, to every race, to every nation, to every idea is that we smash things that aren’t true. We don’t believe in the boundaries of nation-state, we don’t believe in the ideas of these individual gods that, you know, protect individual groups of people. These are all artificial constructions and Judaism really teaches us how to see that. In a sense our detractors have us right in that we are a corrosive force. We are breaking down the false gods of all nations and all people because they are not real. And that is very upsetting to people.” --- Douglas Rushkoff, Jewish author of Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism

BEWARE OF Western nationalists who promote and glorify Vladimir Putin and his government, claiming they represent a rebirth of Christian civilization, Timothy Fitzpatrick writes:

A small minority of us in the Western nationalist movement feel it imperative to alert leaders and persons of influence in our sphere of the great Russia deception. For it seems the great majority in our movement are being deceived on a massive scale by a decades-old, highly sophisticated, and highly co-ordinated campaign to lure the Church and Western nationalists into a trap in order to finally clinch world communistic government. (more…)

To make things ‘perfectly clear’ is reactionary and stupefying. The real is not perfectly clear.

— Feminist, Jewish philosopher Avital Ronnell (more…)

ALAN writes:

Sixty years ago this month, my classmates and I marched in our parochial school parade. It began at the church and proceeded along the streets of our neighborhood for about a mile. Then all the children spent the day at the picnic rides and games. We were not there to express outrage or protest or make demands.

Color slides taken by my mother show my classmate and best friend, Jeff, and me in our pastel shirts walking in the parade and riding on the merry-go-round: Innocent childhood fun in a strong Catholic parish in a clean, orderly, all-white neighborhood where standards were upheld and lawlessness was negligible.

Last weekend, the St. Louis Public Library presented its “Gay Pride Parade” as part of its enthusiastic and unwavering support for every Leftist political cause your readers could name.

Such a parade would have been unthinkable to American libraries in 1958, as would:  Pandering to the lowest common denominator; acquiring books that celebrate thugs, whores, and profanity; stocking a children’s department with hundreds of new books slickly designed and intended to promote political causes; endorsing suicidal public policies like diversity and multiculturalism; offering music CDs that celebrate the vile noise called rap music; indulging in saccharine sloganeering like “The Library Rocks!”;  presenting “tributes” to psychedelic rock “music”; and banning the celebration of Christmas.

More proof of Lawrence Auster’s observation that what Americans could not have imagined in the 1950s, they make mandatory today.

People who permit such revolutionary changes to their culture do not have much moral-philosophical substance to begin with.  They are easy prey for well-trained agitators, provocateurs, and Fabian change agents.  Not only do they lack sales resistance to bad ideas, they are incapable of understanding why those ideas are bad.  In other words:  They are typical products of modern indoctrination-mendaciously-called-“education”.      (more…)

  HUNGARIAN FOREIGN minister Péter Szijjártó brilliantly masters  a bullying interview with BBC's Emily Maitlis as he defends immigration restrictions. At minute 4:00, he refuses to accept her charge of "xenophobia," a common Jewish slur against Western countries and individuals trying to protect their cultures and identity.

MRS. C. writes: Your post last week about the lack of grace in growing old brought to mind this poem I thought you might like: Let me grow lovely, growing old- So many fine things do; Lace, and ivory, and gold, And silks need not be new. And there is healing in old trees, Old streets a glamour hold; Why not I, as well as these, Grow lovely, growing old? --- Karen Wilson Baker

  AT THE terrific blog A Clerk of Oxford, Eleanor Parker, Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford, reviews the 1944 British film, A Canterbury Tale, which is set in wartime Kent and can be viewed online here: Love draws forth love, and I'm sure that one reason people love this film so dearly is that it's transparently born of love - particularly love for the countryside and the people of the director's own childhood home (Michael Powell was born in Bekesbourne and went to school in Canterbury, and several of the minor characters are directly based on, or played by, local villagers he knew). It's a film about love, of various kinds: love of home and nature, a poignant love for the lost and the absent, and a love of history which manifests itself in an intensely romantic, almost mystical sense of longing and connection with the past. In fact, the whole plot of the film is driven (this is a little bit of a spoiler!) by one character's desire to share his love of history with others. He goes about it in an obsessive and bizarrely coercive way, but the film argues - and itself superbly demonstrates - that the same goal can be achieved by wooing your audience, rather than bullying them: instead of frightening them or chastising them, invite people in to love what you love. There's no love story in this film - one of the things…