MIKE KING uses some strong language to comment on the West Point cadets who posed in a pre-graduation photo last week flashing the raised-fist, Communist salute:

As controversy over the photo emerged, the terrorist-sympathizing skanks in question quickly shifted into that “I dindu nuffin” mode that works so well for them — assuring detractors that the clenched fist pose was only meant as a show of sisterly solidarity, not cop-killing, bigotry or revolution. This explanation is, of course, a lie — itself an expellable offense from honor-based West Point. The clenched fist salute stands for Communist Power and/or one of its evil spawns, Black Power — and these catty cadets with scowls on their faces damn well know it! Read More »

YES, Capitalism is just as oppressive as Communism. In that vein, Stephen Turley has an excellent article at The Imaginative Conservative on corporate support for laws mandating unisex restrooms:

Predictably, the so-called “bathroom bill” was greeted with sweeping denunciations from the political left. What was surprising was the volume of outcry toward the law leveled by corporations such as Apple, Starbucks, Kellogg’s, and PayPal who, along with more than 100 CEOs, signed an open letter urging the repeal of this “discriminatory and radical new anti-LGBT law.”[1] Even the NBA suggested that it would move the All-Star Game if the law wasn’t repealed.[2]  Such tactics echoed earlier threats by Disney, Intel, Dow Chemical, and the NFL to boycott Georgia if its governor signed a so-called “religious freedom” bill, which would allow faith-based organizations to deny services to those who violated their religious beliefs.

But why on earth do CEOs care so much about this? Why do they act as if they have a dog in this fight? Why are they so adamantly siding with such a small percentage of the population?

I believe that the key to understanding this corporate solidarity with transgenders is to see it as part of a mass process known as globalization. Considered the defining trait of modernity, globalization involves what is in effect a worldwide social system constituted by a capitalist economy, telecommunications, technology, and mass urbanization.[3] What is crucial for us to observe is that globalization involves a social dynamic known as disembedding, which is a propelling of social and economic factors away from localized control toward more transnational processes. For example, think of your local mall: In one sense, the mass shopping complex is in fact local in terms of its proximity to consumers; but notice that the retail outlets that comprise the various stores at a mall are not local but rather national and international chains and brand names. This is especially the case with the latest releases at the movie theater or the offerings at the food court. This is disembedding: from the ubiquity of “Made in China” imprints on our products and consumables, to the mass influx of immigrant labor, both legal and illegal, and the ever-increasing “Orlando-ization” of our urban and suburban landscapes by chains and franchises, our lives are increasingly defined and interpreted by translocal economic and social processes.

Globalization is the inevitable outcome of an economic order that puts profit above all else.

Wilton Diptych, 1395

The Wreath with which we are to Crown  Our Lady Queen of May

We’ll twine the rose that early blows
With the lily of the vale;
And violet we won’t forget,
That scents the morning gale.

Chorus
Flowers are springing, birds are singing,
The earth is bright and gay,
Then let us weave a blooming wreath
For Mary, Queen of May. Read More »

THIS is a wonderful excerpt of a 1978 recording of Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in a performance of the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a symphonic suite based on The Arabian Nights. I am going to refrain from politically incorrect observations at this time. I don’t want to bore you, offend talented female musicians or insult conductors who think they are above wearing a tuxedo.

DAVID C. writes:

I hadn’t visited your website in quite a while but stopped by a few minutes ago to peruse your latest writings. I read “Feminist Jorge.” You are one of literally two people on the Internet who can be counted upon to write with incisive clarity on a regular basis. Always refreshing and always sad for being so rare.

As for feminist Whore-Hay, I actually left the Church some time ago because of his sort of nonsense. There is no Catholic Church and the beliefs you espouse, however beautiful, turn out simply to have no basis in reality. We both know the teachings of the Church cannot be meaningful if the Church itself is not real, and the wholesale abandonment of Catholicism by Catholic bishops proves that it is not.
Read More »

THE idea that the world is overpopulated and thus cannot sustain high fertility is one of the most well-funded ideas in the 21st century. Bill and Melinda Gates, for example, are developing new ways to sterilize humanity as we speak — and spending billions on it.

But overpopulation is also a patently false idea when presented as scientific fact, based as it is on subjective standards of what is good. It is a concept propelled into wide circulation by poor thinking and also by misanthropy — a real and true disdain for human beings.

In his book The Death of Christian Culture, John Senior explains why we cannot ever project scientifically that the world will have too many people and why we can confidently say, “The more the merrier:”

The Zero Population Group prefers contraception and abortion because, they say, the world cannot support geometrically increasing numbers of people. They have revived the error of the eighteenth century amateur sociologist, Malthus, who applied the abstract science of geometry to concrete, real, contingent, human — and therefore capricious — beings, which never works. If such and such a trend continues, he said, such and such occurs. But such and such a trend does not continue and surprises undreamt of occur. As it turns out — we know this not by geometric projection but by observation of what has happened — in the first stages of transition from an agricultural to an industrial society, there is a population spurt because medical technology reduces infant deaths. But then fertility falls off as industrialization advances. There are spurts again in times of happiness and hope; a few year’s peace after war, prosperity after depression, freedom from totalitarianism. There have been local jiggles upward when an ice storm breaks the power lines and kills the television set, when husbands and wives discover an unexpected night of happiness and hope away from the latest news.

But the chilling truth is that industrialism brings on paralyzing gluttony and greed in which the quality of life is quantified. Paradoxically, you cannot afford to have children in the affluent society. The world has never been so rich and wretched as in these air-conditioned Edens where another child would sap the payments on the second car. There is no population bomb today. Quite the opposite: the question is whether industrialized society can reproduce itself at all. Read More »

M. OLIVER HEYDORN critiques the political objective of full employment from a social credit perspective. Social credit advocates insist modern technology has rendered full employment impossible, and yet the fruits of technology, combined with a better and more just monetary system, can provide a basic income to all.

He writes:

One of the axioms of the existing economic order is the policy of ‘Full Employment’ (FE). Everyone must work for his daily bread or be dependent on those who do (via either redistributive taxation or increased public borrowings meted out in the form of welfare, unemployment insurance, pensions, etc.) when he is unable to work or when insufficient work is available.

Such a policy makes absolutely no sense. It is neither necessary nor possible to realize it.

It is not necessary because we are physically capable of producing everything that people can use with profit to themselves while only calling on a minority of the available labour force and the situation is steadily improving or deteriorating – depending on your point of view. Because of continuing (not to say ‘accelerating’) technological advancements, we can produce more and/or better with fewer and fewer people working. Indeed, it has been predicted that 50% of existing jobs in the US will be automated within 20 years. This is a hard fact of life. Insisting on full employment in the face of the fourth industrial revolution is simply puritanical foolishness which is bound to increase unnecessary strains and stresses until we reach a breaking point … from which they may be no return. Read More »

A FICTIONAL dialogue between a robot and a human being, written by Carey Henderson, a writer who has contributed perceptive comments here about popular culture.

ELLEN BROWN, author of Web of Debt, writes:

In November 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bank of North Dakota (BND), the nation’s only state-owned depository bank, was more profitable even than J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The author attributed this remarkable performance to the state’s oil boom; but the boom has now become an oil bust, yet the BND’s profits continue to climb. Its 2015 Annual Report, published on April 20th, boasted its most profitable year ever. Read More »

MOTHER of God, save us from this evil man. Save us by your maternal intercessions from this antipope who uses the code language and feel-good platitudes of revolution to denigrate the moral power of femininity; who seduces so many with his shrewd and preternatural sentimentality; who reveres worldly, masculine “success;” who trades in Marxist lies; who falsely accuses men of enslaving women by not paying them equal wages; who never speaks of the destructive envy and lust for power of feminism; who implies that women are not subject to the effects of Original Sin; who evidently believes the autonomous, material condition of women is more important than the spiritual and life-giving work they do for no pay; and who never once mentions you, Holy Queen, the highest model of feminine virtue, in his despicable propaganda piece on the role of women.

To thee our love and troth are given. 
Pray for us, pray, bright Gate of Heaven.
Sweet Day-Star! let thy beauty be 
A light to draw my soul to thee.

We love thee, light of sinners’ eyes! 
Oh let thy prayer for sinners rise.
Look at us, Mother Mary! see 
How piteously we look to thee.

Vittorio Crivelli

ALAN writes:

Do certain songs linger in the recesses of your memory and reassert themselves into your awareness from time to time?  They do for me.  Here is an example:

On some mornings in 2009, I would sit by my open window reading or writing and overhearing the happy sounds of children at play in the spacious backyard of a home nearby.

There were eight children, siblings and friends, ranging in age from infancy to about ten, and they were engaged in the innocent childhood joys of swinging, sliding, running, and laughing.  Watching them at play reminded me of my own boyhood.  I saw myself in one of the little boys.  And the thought occurred to me of how fast my transition from infant to energetic little boy must have seemed to my mother.  “Enjoy them when they’re young, because they grow up so fast,” are words I recalled hearing during my boyhood years but not fully understanding.

By 2009, I understood them perfectly.  The brevity and swiftness of life had become all too clear to me by then, and they were highlighted one day when I listened to the song “Sunrise, Sunset.”  I never saw the play for which it was written (“Fiddler on the Roof”) or the movie version.  But the song seemed to me to possess considerable merit and beauty.  Now I could understand and appreciate the lyrics far better than I did or could when I first heard that song in 1966.

That happened via the magic of radio.  I missed the Golden Age of Radio.  But I did not miss John McCormick.

The Beatles performed in St. Louis in the summer of 1966, but I did not go to see them.  I was beginning to appreciate things more refined than rock “music.” And I discovered one of them at midnight.

For thirty years, John McCormick had a midnight-to-dawn program on KMOX Radio in St. Louis.  He was “The Man Who Walks and Talks at Midnight.”  He was an old-school radio broadcaster and the best I ever heard.  His program could be heard throughout the Midwest and he was highly respected by other old-school radio broadcasters.

John McCormick

Read More »

A READER writes:

The latest mindless idiocy that European, Christian (at one time) millenials are wholeheartedly embracing, without thinking for a minute about what they are actually doing, is reported in The Gothamist in New York City:

Holi Phagwa is the springtime Hindu festival of colors, a ritual dating back thousands of years in honor of Sri Krishna. From a fascinating history of the tradition: “Inner illumination is the real Holi. The spring season is the manifestation of the Lord… Holi is said there to be His heart.” The celebration is visually recognizable because it features colorful powders which end up all over attendees to varying degrees, not unlike the Color Run.

There are several festivals around the city every year celebrating Holi, and Brokelyn recently questioned if they have gone from harmless celebration to cultural appropriation. “I saw it on Eat Pray Love and I was like ‘I gotta go to this,’” one attendee at a recent Holi celebration in Bushwick told them.

They are engaged in the worship of one of a multitude of silly, nightmarish pagan ‘gods,’ and proving useful tools for South Asian men seeking to find a silly white woman. I see this all the time now in New York. Read More »

Actress Lucy Liu

KIDIST PAULOS ASRAT, an Ethiopian living in Canada, writes:

Here is an interesting article: “Asian Americans are serious about influencing US elections – and Hillary Clinton could benefit.” As it points out, Asian-Americans are now the fastest growing ethnic group in America and their numbers are expected to surpass that of black Americans by 2060. Their political influence is also rising, and they favor the Democrats.

I have, since many years now, held the belief that Asians have no interest in Western culture, and have found a fantastic loophole with which to take advantage of it. I should say “loopholes.”

Firstly, they are considered the “model” immigrant: smart, calm, easily accommodating to the white American and Canadian culture, and better than those blacks (Africans and Caribbeans), Muslims, and even Eastern Europeans.

So, they get bypassed for many transgressions, including as you point out, the fascinating academic cheating that is being detected in the upper levels of universities. This of course must apply to the work force as well.

Secondly, the women, with the blessing of their fathers and mothers, have become successful at snagging that lost and foolish white male, who destroyed his family and culture by supporting and advancing feminism, thus discarding his own women and culture. There must be a special place in hell for men who abuse their women, which also means not providing for them safe and secure homes, families and societies. Read More »

THE ROCK star David Evans of U2 performs in the Sistine Chapel, Call Me Jorge reports.

MARY writes:

I am concerned about your support of Donald Trump. I will not take the time to list all of his moral depravities, nor his lies and corrupt behavior. Except one, he is not prolife and will continue to support Planned Parenthood. He is truly a pro-abort candidate. Can you please explain to me how you reconcile that with your support for him? No, I have never seen you outright say, ‘Vote for Trump!’ but I have never seen any negative posts about him on your site, only positive ones. Several positive ones. I am confused, and I am just curious as to your “thinking” on this, no pun intended.

        Thank you. Read More »

St. Francis de Sales

A READER writes:

The past several months have been some of the most tumultuous of my life, and I can say that without fear of hyperbole. One advantage to such circumstances is the heightened sense of constant reliance upon my heavenly Father, my Savior, and our blessed Mother.

On that note, I wanted to ask you if you have any recommendations of a good book or books on the topic of suffering, especially redemptive suffering. I ask because of my struggle to find holy meaning in the events of my recent months, and especially my desire to be meek and obedient during this time.

Your website continues to be a source of education, inspiration, and exhortation for me. I recommend it to anyone with whom I speak if the topic of blogs/websites/the internet comes up.

May our Father bless you as you serve him, my distant friend. Read More »

FROM MARK PERRY in The Wall Street Journal:

Based on Department of Education estimates, women will earn a disproportionate share of college degrees at every level of higher education in 2016 for the eleventh straight year. Overall, women in the Class of 2016 will earn 139 college degrees at all levels for every 100 men, and there will be a 610,000 college degree gap in favor of women for this year’s college graduates (2.195 million total degrees for women vs. 1.585 million total degrees for men). By level of degree, women will earn: a) 154 associate’s degrees for every 100 men (female majority in every year since 1978), b) 135 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 men (female majority since 1982), 139 master’s degrees for every 100 men (female majority since 1987) and 106 doctoral degrees for every 100 men (female majority since 2006). . . .

Now that there’s a huge (and growing) college degree gap in favor of women such that men have become the “second sex” in higher education, maybe it’s time to stop taxpayer funding of hundreds of women’s centers that promote a goal of gender equity that was achieved more than thirty years ago in higher education, at least in terms of earning college degrees? And perhaps the selective concern about gender imbalances in higher education should be expanded to include greater concern about the new “second sex.”

Of course, that will not happen. Feminists can still argue that there is great inequity in certain fields, such as engineering and mathematics. The reason there are not more female mathematicians is, of course, that girls are subject to “cultural norms that favor boys.” Ironically, the more women “succeed,” the more justification there is for government spending to help them “succeed.” Read More »