THOUGH Donald Trump now fully supports the official version of 9/11, he was probably the first major figure to question it publicly.

On that very day, he said the buildings could not have been brought down by plane collisions alone. Trump employed the engineers who built the Towers and was a real estate developer whose business was skyscrapers. He was highly familiar with the structure of the Twin Towers and insisted the closely-aligned steel beams could have withstood planes. Yet many, including civil engineers and architects, who have said the exact same thing during the past 15 years have been mocked and derided as “conspiracy theorists” and have been ignored by the mainstream media.

This is still timely. The foundation of the ongoing War on Terror, as Trump himself recently said, is 9/11.

Elliott Abrams

PRESIDENT Trump endorsed non-interventionism during his campaign, but he is now considering Elliott Abrams for Deputy Secretary of State. Abrams is an arch-supporter of the failed and destructive interventionist foreign policy of the last 15 years. This would be refilling the swamp big-time. An extreme interventionist, Abrams does not have a squeaky clean background. He was convicted of crimes for withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra affair. He has never seen a regime change he didn’t like and is committed to overthrowing the government of Iran. Daniel McAdams, in the exchange with Ron Paul below, says, “Everything (Abrams) has promoted has been a disaster.”

I especially recommend Paul’s comments, starting at roughly minute 11:00, about empire building and the War on Terror. In response to Trump’s plan to invest more in the military because it would be good for the country, he says, “This is disinvestment. This is taking wealth and capital away from our country and throwing it down the drain and creating more enemies. This is so negative, this whole policy.”

“I am convinced that the people who have to fight and pay for the wars, they don’t want this. But once it’s driven that there’s a Hitler out there and you have to destroy them … then [you’re told] you don’t love America” if you don’t support the War on Terror.

An Abrams appointment would be a big step toward further war in the Middle East. Interestingly, Abrams was adamantly anti-Trump during the campaign. Weird.

THE REV. Anthony Cekada, of St. Gertrude the Great Roman Catholic Church in Ohio, recently received ten months of treatment for bladder cancer under the supervision of an accomplished oncologist.

At the end of this period of surgery and chemotherapy, both of which were apparently successful, the priest thanked the doctor. He then returned the favor and gave the doctor, who had described himself as “spiritual but not religious,” a theological diagnosis.

In a sermon called “Faith, Feelng, Authority, Healing,” Fr. Cekada recounts their interesting conversation. Read More »

DUCCIO di Buoninsegna; Appearance to the Apostles; 1308-11

NOT a single one of the Apostles ever laid eyes on or read what we know of as the Bible. If the Bible is the infallible source of the Christian religion, then how could they be true Christians? If the Bible is the means to salvation, how could Our Lord’s dearest friends and followers have been saved?

Christ did not tell the Apostles, “Go forth and write Bibles and distribute them.”

He said, “Go forth and teach ye all nations.”

AN AUSTRALIAN professor of quantum physics recently objected to changes made in university physics standards to attract more women:

Delivering the 2017 Australia Day address on Tuesday, Professor [Michelle] Simmons said it was a “disaster” to try to make physics more appealing to girls by substituting rigorous mathematical problem-solving with qualitative responses.

CHINESE PARENTS, most of whom have only one child, are sending their children to American high schools in the hope that they will be admitted to top universities here. Brook Larmer of The New York Times reports:

In 2005, only 641 Chinese students were enrolled in American high schools. By 2014, that student population approached 40,000 — a 60-fold increase in a single decade — and it now accounts for nearly half of all international high-school students in the United States. “Parents realize that they have to start earlier if they want their children to get into a top U.S. university,” says Nini Suet, founder of Shang Learning, a boutique consultancy with headquarters in Beijing that charges $25,000 to $40,000 to help Chinese kids prepare for and apply to American boarding schools. “Families are looking for any edge they can get.” Read More »

PENELOPE writes:

If this isn’t jihad, what is?

From Express:

Read More »

JEAN BISCHEL writes:

You have many good and beautiful posts. To comment on the evils which deluge our society is useful. However, to post obscene pictures and to refer to other blogs that are vulgar is not helpful. It only puts thoughts and pictures into our minds that we should not have. Catholics are taught to avoid immoral literature and pictures. You are not helpful by posting such material. A good example of this is today’s comments and pictures from yesterday’s Super Bowl. I would not want my grandchildren reading your website. Read More »

DR. THOMAS A. DROLESKEY writes:

We face a very insidious situation at this time as a president undertakes some actions that are undoubtedly in the public interest while winking at the institutionalization of grave evils. What makes the situation even more insidious is that the raging hatred that is organized and funded by all manner of Judeo-Masonic sources predisposes many Catholics who were up in arms against the efforts of the administrations of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro to institutionalize and protect more and more moral evils under the cover of the civil law by means of taxpayer dollars to keep their peace, if not totally ignore, policies by a Republican president to promote the same evils by the same means.

To wit, none other than the practitioner of Kabbala named Ivanka Trump Kushner, who is the wife of presidential counsel and fellow Kabbalist Jared Kushner, prevailed upon her father, President Donald John Trump, not to issue an executive order that would give employers more freedom to protect themselves, their families and their employees from sodomites in the work place:

Ivanka Trump also weighed, behind the scene, on a policy matter. Along with Kushner, she discouraged a possible executive order that would have affected LGBTQ workplace rights and she supported a White House statement pledging to leave intact a 2014 executive order that protects workers for federal contractors from anti-LGBTQ discrimination, according to a person with knowledge of Ivanka Trump’s role in the discussion. Her involvement was first reported by Politico. (Ivanka Trump Has Big White House Role Without A Title.) Read More »

THERE seem to be some “self-absorbed, Promethean neo-Pelagians” and “leprous courtiers” afoot in the Eternal City.

Call me Jorge reports on the hundreds of anti-Francis posters that appeared in Rome last weekend.

Courtesy of Novus Ordo Watch

“POPE” Francis, who, like his immediate predecessors, has fooled millions of decent people into believing one doesn’t have to be Catholic to be “Catholic” (or Pope), found spiritual inspiration this weekend in that most wholesome of cultural events — the Super Bowl. (See video below.) I have never heard anyone  — even die-hard fans — argue that this modern-day gladiator show promotes world peace and self-sacrifice, but leave it to the motor-mouth in the Occupied Vatican to come up with that particular bit of globalist, pseudo-spiritual tripe. Can you imagine St. Peter, the first Pope, waxing eloquent over the Stupor Bowl … the thought is too outrageous and blasphemous to contemplate.

But if a real Pope were to speak on the Super Bowl, you would expect that he would condemn it. Big-time, modern sports spectacles threaten world peace and self-sacrifice. Sports can indeed be healthy and normal, but the Super Bowl is garbage. No matter how good the chicken wing recipes and fun get-togethers may be, the Super Bowl brings satanic music rituals, false patriotism, intense commercialism, militaristic arrogance, unhealthy sports regimens and a mob mentality into millions of homes. It is corrupting, Frank, not ennobling. The athletic industrial complex is bread-and-circuses that corrupt the normal man’s desire for fun and athletics, and distracts men from the fight to defend their souls, their homes, and their nations from those who use “world peace” as a pretext for world conquest.

Jorge Bergoglio is everything Freemasons ever wanted in a Pope — and more. It’s taken centuries of covert plotting and revolution to achieve this triumph. He’s the gift that keeps on giving.

See commentary at Novus Ordo Watch.

Update: Thomas A. Droleskey reflects on how sports has changed and how “what was once a legitimate diversion became an obsession.”

IN HIS 2011 book, School-Induced Dyslexia and How It Deforms a Child’s Brain, the late author and education reformer Samuel L. Blumenfeld argued that the whole language or “progressive” method of reading instruction had caused a massive increase in illiteracy, especially among blacks, and a skyrocketing number of diagnosed cases of “dyslexia.”

Elementary school children in public schools are taught to read today by memorizing a few dozen “sight,” mostly one-syllable, words. The traditional phonics method involves sounding out the letters and gradually progressing to bigger words.

According to Phyllis Schlafly:

The change from teaching school children to read by phonics and replacing phonics with the so-called “whole word” or “look-say” method was fully debunked in the landmark book “Why Johnny Can’t Read” by Rudolph Flesch in 1955. Unfortunately, the truth had no impact on public schools, which stuck with the new method because it was part of “progressive” education. It was brought to Teachers College at Columbia University with a $3 million grant from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who then sent four of his five sons to be educated by Dewey’s progressive ideas.

Blumenfeld was thus not alone in contending that the whole language approach had been a disaster, causing “learning disabilities” and behavior problems. Literacy rates among black students especially declined. His 2011 book includes this testimony from the teacher, Paul Lukawski:

I have been a high school English teacher for 14 years. I remember in college wanting to know how to teach children to read. I went to a teacher college established in 1910. The school had one of the oldest teacher colleges in the country. Its College of Education enjoyed an excellent reputation. I asked three different professors how do you teach reading. I received three different vague responses.

After I completed my second year of teaching, I realized that my students could not read. I taught grades nine through twelve. The second year, I had three classes of ninth graders. I assigned the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird for them to read. I realized that most of my students could not read the novel’s literate narrative. Read More »

MIKE KING offers ten reasons (warning: vulgar photos) to hate the Super Bowl, including the excessive commercialism, the degeneracy of the halftime show (whatever happened to marching bands?), the mindless militarism, the psychotic narcissism of the players and the “misguided passion” of fanatical fans:

Nothing wrong with a little diversion and fun cheering for your hometown team; but many of these “fans” display a passion so intense that a straight-jacket is warranted. If only they would get as agitated about Obongo and Fed robbing them blind, or their children’s future in a permanently depressed economy, or the innocent people in faraway lands being killed by the US-Israel led Axis of Evil, or the never-ending flood of “migrants” being pumped into America, or the potential coming wars with Russia and China, or the fact that their elementary school kids are being forced to learn the joys of homo-anal sex and cross-dressing. What pathetic losers these people are!

WHEN PEOPLE who don’t believe in God come before God, He will not believe in them.

When people who believe God exists, but act as if He doesn’t exist, come before God, He will act as if they don’t exist.

When people who reject the rights of God come before God, they will have no rights.

When people who are ashamed of God come before God, He will be ashamed of them.

Those who stone prophets will eat the dust of their own hatred for all eternity.

IF “toxic masculinity,” to borrow a phrase from the opposition, is the display of unprovoked aggression, then Trump has had a week of it.

Issuing a sudden ban on travel from a country that has not been responsible for terrorist acts in America (Iran); conjuring the phony script of 9/11 that has already dragged us into unnecessary war; justifying the detention of a five-year-old boy at an airport; overseeing drone strikes in Yemen that killed innocent people, including children, and supporting the aggression there by Saudi Arabia; engaging in outright war-mongering against a nation with which we have concluded a non-aggression pact (Iran)?

Trump better get his act together. He’s looking like a bully. This isn’t what those who voted for him wanted, especially those who were alarmed by Hillary’s war-mongering. Let nationalists not be fooled by his talk or actions against abortion. Real men don’t pick fights.

Children of the Sea, Jozef Israëls; 1872

ALAN writes:

In “The Baby Philosopher,” you wrote:

                “The baby is not capable of conceptual thinking. But still he acquires an important philosophical premise early on through all this investigation. He is mostly a scientist, but he starts to become a philosopher too….”

Entirely correct. Few people understand that what is often dismissed as “just playing” is not always play and is never “just” anything, but rather the most earnest endeavor by an infant to make sense of what he sees, hears, and feels.  No endeavor in life could be more earnest or less corrupt.

But your essay also struck a chord in my memory because of that phrase about “the baby is mostly a scientist…” In a letter printed by a St. Louis newspaper in 1971, I wrote:

       The claim that very few children would acquire any more than a very superficial grasp of science if artificial motivations were not used is a ludicrous conjecture. Actually, all evidence indicates the opposite.  Indeed, every baby is a scientist and remains such until the schools have mutilated his natural love of learning by turning it from an active into a passive process. 

The occasion for my remarks was a clash of opinions with a philosophy instructor about Charles Silberman’s book Crisis in the Classroom (1970).  The instructor contended that Silberman’s critical assessment of mindlessness in American public schools was unfounded.  He also made the common mistake of confusing schooling with learning.

I contended that Silberman’s assessment was valid and that schools are not about learning but about training for docility.  I argued that the most important things children learn, they do not learn in school or because of school.

Silberman’s work was funded by a private company.  The philosophy instructor was employed by a tax-supported “community college.” People who feed at the public trough are not likely to welcome suggestions that what they do can be done better and at less cost by private schools, companies, or families.

In 1971, I was quite young and my views on the matter of education vs. schooling were not fully formed.  Nor was I exempt from being influenced by a few writers who leaned Leftward but also echoed my sentiments against compulsory school attendance laws.  Some of what I wrote then was poorly expressed or just plain wrong.  But I stand by the essence of the paragraph quoted above. Read More »

Democrats and liberals accuse Republicans of conducting a war on women. Assault, rape, and murder are the worst things that can be done to a woman. I would bet a lot of money that most of the assaults, rapes, and murders of women are done by people who identify as liberals, and if they voted or had a party affiliation, it would be Democratic.

— Walter Williams

FORTUNATELY, we know the status of women has vastly improved. Otherwise, judging from the history of Western art, we would be tempted to conclude otherwise.

A few examples:

Madonna and Child with the Donor, Pietro de’ Lardi, Presented by Saint Nicholas, Master G.Z.; 1420-30

Head and Shoulders of a Woman, Leonardo Da Vinci; ca. 1500–1505

Young Mother Sewing, Mary Cassat; 1900

Self-Portrait, Alice Bailly, 1917

Woman and Pears (Fernande); Pablo Picasso; 1909

Roberta’s Construction Chart #2, Lynn Hershman Leeson; 1976

Isa Genzken. Schauspieler (Actors) (detail). 2013.