Casa di Bambini in Asmara

KIDIST PAULOS ASRAT, who lives in Canada today, was born in Ethiopia. Her father worked for the government of Emperor Haile Selasie and the family fled to France during the civil war of the 1970s, which was followed by catastrophic famine. Miss Asrat is at work on a memoir of her life, and it is a fascinating story. Her first chapter is online. It begins:

My earliest decisive moment was when I was left behind for the first time for school. I was a little more than two years old, and my father had moved us to the northern province of Ethiopia, which was later to be the ground for bitter civil war, and its eventual secession.

It was part of the government’s program to fill official posts by the Emperor’s Men, so to speak, throughout the country, to quell dissatisfied grumblings of the influential ethnic groups like the Tigray (of the north) who wanted to end the centuries-old stranglehold on Ethiopia by the Amhara. But the Amhara were confident in their quest, and in the correctness of their quest. They were on a mission to make Ethiopians out of all the ethnic groups of the country: Tigray, Eritrea, Gojjam, Somali. To be a nation was to be modern.  Read More »

SVEN writes:

I was in Fairbanks, Alaska, the state’s second largest city the other day. Back before the Alaska Railroad was built, it was at the end of the earth as boomtown in the Klondike Gold Rush. Travelling there required a dangerous voyage from Seattle to Nome, and then a treacherous journey through the heart of Alaska by a Yukon riverboat.

I had an extra hour, so I stepped into the historic Church of the Immaculate Conception, which sits on the banks of the Chena River in the downtown area. It actually survived the 1927 flood when it floated down the street. In terms of architecture or decoration, it’s not too unusual. I’ve seen countless Lutheran churches in North Dakota that look a lot the same, although most are sadly abandoned, casualties to the automobile and declining church attendance. In a way, churches like these are special precisely because they used to be so unremarkable. Building churches was a form of sacrifice, and everyone pitched in to build the most beautiful church that they could afford.

What’s striking about this church is the effort that went into building it so far from the rest of the world. The stained glass windows would have had to be carefully imported from the states. The boards would have been made of very expensive and carefully milled local boards. Although there are many trees in Fairbanks, they tend to be stunted so it can be difficult to find sawmill quality timber. Any special hardwood items, such as the pews, would have been imported as well. All of the fancy wood work would have been done by local craftsmen.

Read More »

Little Boy Writing a Letter, Norman Rockwell

OUR culture is producing highly motivated girls and boys who are alienated from school and achievement. Boys have always rebelled against the dull routines of school, but the malaise we see today is more intense and pervasive, a product of unprecedented focus on boosting the morale of girls and of a world in which everything traditionally expected of men and women has undergone radical change. Heroism has been demonized. Boys understandably find it all boring. On some unconscious level, they know school is not about reality. Electronic games also consume much of their energy and motivation.

Gallons and gallons of ink have been spilled already on this subject. In his book, Boys Adrift, Leonard Sax, whom I have written about before, does a good job of describing the problem:

The hostility I’m seeing toward school among so many boys—no longer confined to black and Latino boys in low-income neighborhoods, but now including white and Asian boys in affluent suburbs—is also new. If you’re my age, or older, you can remember forty years ago when the Beach Boys had a major hit with their song “Be True to Your School”: “Be true to your school . . . just like you would to your girl.” That song describes a boy who is proud to wear a sweater emblazoned with the school’s initials, a boy who insists that allegiance to one’s school should be on a par with the enthusiasm a boy has for his girlfriend. There is no trace of irony in the song. If you’re my age or older, you remember Sam Cooke singing “Don’t know much about history . . . but maybe by being an A-student, baby / I could win your love for me” in his song “Wonderful World.” It’s hard to imagine any popular male vocalist singing such a line today, except as a joke. Can you imagine Akon or 50 Cent or Snoop Dogg or even Taylor Hicks singing, without irony and in all seriousness, about wanting to earn an A at school to impress a girl? I can’t. Read More »

IT ALL seems like good fun. But is it? Dr. Marian T. Horvat wrote in 2004:

Exploiting the skeletons, ghosts, vampires and demons, even in the ludicrous form of costumes and masks, the modern Halloween does more than obliterate the memory of death – it is a kind of invitation for our children to be accustomed to the worst side of Paganism, which is its familiarity with horror and the devil. Read More »

A PLANNED PARENTHOOD doctor and a co-worker talk about dissecting aborted fetuses that will be sold for research. This is in the eleventh undercover video by the Center for Medical Progress:

“One of our POC persons is really into organ development,” she explained. “She’ll pull out kidneys, and heart and like heart we frequently see at nine weeks and she always looks for it.”

“Well it’s cute,” the Whole Women’s Health official said, laughing. “It’s cute.” Read More »

PATRICK BUCHANAN asks, “Is the pope toying with heresy?”

Interesting question. (Food for thought here.)

This is sort of like asking in 1918 whether Lenin is toying with political radicalism. Wake up, Mr. Buchanan. There is no excuse for you to be asking questions that have already been abundantly answered.

Novus Ordo Watch

Our indebtedness is like a diet of cheap pizza. It slowly immiserates.

WHEN reading about our $60 trillion national debt or the escalating figures for consumer indebtedness, what is your first reaction? Do you think, “We’ve got to stop spending!” or “Our government is giving our future away to welfare deadbeats and bureaucrats?”

If these are your very first thoughts, let me respectfully suggest that you don’t understand our monetary system.

When you see those mounting figures for indebtedness, the first thing you should think is:

“We are the victims of a colossal swindle. Something is wrong, not with us, and not with welfare recipients, but with the system.”

Indeed over-indebtedness is inherent to our financial system. We can never collectively emerge from what is in effect debt slavery, from cycles of boom and bust, and from the centralized power of high finance which controls public opinion, politics, government and business, we can never emerge from these burdens without significant monetary reform and a new philosophy on the nature of economic life.

But first we have to come to grips with the problem. And there is a major problem. Yes, we deplore Communism and Socialism. But Capitalism as it exists is ruinous too. That’s not because a market economy is bad. That’s not because profit, investment or private ownership are bad. That’s not because Capitalism makes some people rich. These things are good. The problem is two-fold: a monopoly of credit in private, profit-making hands and the inability in the modern economy, which benefits from centuries of labor-saving innovation, for income from labor and savings to match the costs of production. These defects in the system are causing misery in a world that actually can produce enough goods and services to give people, all people, the basic necessities and free them from crushing fear for the future.

Our financial system is out of touch with reality. Our usurious monetary system is strangling family life, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Someday people will, let’s hope, look back on this era as they now look back on the pagan slavery of Ancient Rome. They will wonder how people ever could have put up with such widespread financial oppression, with its attendant social conflict, and how they were ever fooled into thinking they benefited from what the writer E. Michael Jones calls “state-sponsored usury.”

Let me offer some background from a few critics who have stated the problems. I’ll return to the subject in future posts with more from those who have studied these issues and suggest solutions you don’t hear about from our politicians or the mainstream media.

First, most people don’t understand how money is created and circulated. Though Congress is vested by the Constitution with the power to create money, it is actually created by private banks who then loan it out at interest: Read More »

HERE’S a very good polemic against feminism by Paul Joseph Watson, who offers many reasons why many men don’t want to marry. One quibble: He says the mother at home should be equally respected as the careerist mother. But society cannot equally value two contradictory ideas. If it thinks the mother is the heart of the home then it does not want her to be absent unless absolutely necessary. (Warning: Mildly vulgar language. Why must so many intelligent commentators resort to ugly, four-letter words?) Read More »

THE New York state Senate blocked a transgender rights bill from passage eight times, yet Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented the proposed regulations by executive action last week. Individuals can be fined up to $100,000 for discriminating against a cross-dresser, which means if someone does not want an attention-seeking, steroid-crazy female impersonator working in his small business or interacting with his children, he can be financially destroyed.

WHAT really happened before Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected to the papacy on October 26, 1958? This video explores the mystery of the white smoke.

Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea

THERE was one bright spot to the anti-family Synod in Rome, which ended this weekend as it started, with cowardly and ambiguous accommodation to the spirit of feminism and the Sexual Revolution. That bright spot was the speech of a Romanian doctor, Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea, who  grew up under Communism. Dr. Cernea did not get all hung up on a psychotherapeutic guilt trip. She did not speak a single line of feminist boilerplate. She did not blather on about false mercy. She obviously knows totalitarianism when she sees it. The Sexual Revolution is a form of political exploitation, she said. Any accommodation to it is an accommodation with tyranny.

Material poverty and consumerism are not the primary cause of the family crisis.

The primary cause of the sexual and cultural revolution is ideological.

[…]

There is continuity from Lenin’s sex revolution, through Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, to the current-day gay-rights and gender ideology.

Here is her entire presentation: Read More »

Miniature of God creating animals and birds

IN his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, in which he designated the last Sunday of October as the Feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius XI explained the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King. God has rights not just over the individual conscience, but over society at large. The separation of religion and politics, particularly the one true religion and politics, is a world disaster:

17. It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them. Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia.

18. Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.” Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.” [Quas Primas, Dec. 11, 1925]

Most people today obviously do not accept this proposition. Secular democracy is considered the height of enlightenment. God is too spiritual to be involved in the temporal affairs of government. He is no universal and absolute Monarch, but a kind of supreme personal therapist. It is best for government to proclaim religious neutrality and pluralism so that all can be free to practice their beliefs in private.

There are many problems with this thinking, as the Holy Father explained. First and foremost, society itself is the creation of God.

Now God has endowed man with a nature such that he cannot live otherwise than in society. As a social being, then, man must have God as his final and supreme end. Unless we hold this we must hold that man finds the end of society in society itself, which would be to make of society an idol. Societies are not eternal. It is clear then that their ultimate end lies in this — that, in and through them, the intellect and will of their members should attain to God. [The Social Rights of Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ the King, adapted from the French of the Rev. A. Philippe, CSS.R. by the Rev. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sr.; 1932]

Societies as much as individuals have two choices: to recognize God or reject him. Societies are either atheist or religious. There is no such thing as a neutral government. Fr. Robert Mader wrote in his book Cross and Crown:

Religious neutrality is an impossibility.  No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be subject to the one and despise the other. That is God’s word and therefore an article of faith… There are no neutral governments, no neutral schools, no neutral press, no neutral clubs, no neutral families … This applies to the life of nations. Periods of neutrality are periods of transition, of groping indecision. They are time of twilight between day and night. After the time of neutrality comes the time of service of one master, in which either Christ or Satan will be king. After the liberal twilight comes either the Russian night of persecution or the new Sun-Day of the Kingdom of Christ.

Secular government is never truly secular. Secular democracy deifies the people, asserting that power and authority come from the people when in reality they come from God. The people can only select their leaders, not become the source of authority itself. No human being can rule unless God allows it and every human being is subject to his moral authority.

“Hear ye therefore, ye kings and understand; learn, ye that are judges of the ends of the earth. Give ear, you that ruleth the people, and that please ourselves in multitudes of nations; for power is given to you by the Lord, and strength by the most High …” (Wisdom 6:2-4)

See further reflections on this great feast in defense of the supernatural order on earth by Dr. Thomas Droleskey. Every traditionalist should be a supernaturalist, someone who abhors the pretense in public life that there are no divine realities that are meaningful and no civil obligations to God. In the end all the serious social problems of our day are affected by the immense, overarching problem of institutionalized naturalism, which says that this world is all, and the systematic dethronement of Christ the King. “Wherever the breath of Naturalism has passed,” wrote the great Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, France, “the very source of Christian life has dried up. Naturalism means complete sterility in regard to salvation and eternal life.” In the face of almost universal naturalism, we must, at the risk of ridicule, indifference and scorn for our supposed backwardness, uphold Christ’s ancient and everlasting dominion over the entire social order. As Saint Pius X wrote:

“That the state must be separated from the Church is an absolutely false thesis, a very pernicious error … This thesis inflicts grave damage onto civil society itself; for it cannot prosper or last a long time when place is not given there to religion, which is for man a supreme rule and sovereign mistress for the protection of his rights and duties. [Vehementer Nos, 1906]

Do you think you will “win friends and influence people,” as Dale Carnegie liked to say, if you uphold this doctrine? No way! It is sheer heresy against our civil religion, which falsely holds that civil authority comes from the people, not God. So what! Go ahead and be backward. Influence yourself by openly proclaiming it, without the slightest illusion that secularism will be defeated in your lifetime. Save yourself from the social nihilism — that atomizing, dispiriting spirit — that surrounds us.

Secrets d’histoire naturelle Centre ouest de la France; 1480

[Images courtesy of It’s About Time blog.]

Ozzie and Harriet, twenty-first century edition

A lesbian interracial couple moved into a suburban St. Louis neighborhood last spring and all hell broke loose almost instantly. In the past six months, the police have been regular visitors to the home of Maritha Hunter-Butler and Melanie Anthony, a couple that would be banned by any normal, middle class neighborhood in any normal society, even if they had not exhibited the sort of aggressive, bullying behavior they have been charged with since they moved in. But, as we know, the monstrous Id of the Sexual Revolution rears its fiendish head throughout the land. The women have, if the reports are correct, brought a toxic mix of racial resentment and homosexual entitlement to the neighborhood. This is the cultural reality of normalized lesbianism — not Ellen DeGeneres glamor, but two psychologically disabled and cruelly misled women pooling their resources to partake of the suburban dream. Hunter-Butler was previously convicted of murder-for-hire and has been charged with punching a neighbor in the face. Anthony recently exposed herself to neighbors while making obscene gestures in the presence of children. The women are together raising three boys. (Their very worst offense is perfectly legal!) Their dogs are allegedly out of control.

I feel sorry for anyone trying to sell a house in this enclave. The NAACP is involved and Ferguson protestors are on the alert. Neighbors should start boarding up their windows now. Read More »

THE Russian writer Nikolai Starikov says the United States government has abetted the migrant invasion of Europe. The goal? To weaken its own allies and prevent a strong alliance between Germany and Russia. This is a must-see interview. Whether Starikov is correct about the U.S. role in the invasion, and the reasons for that support, he convincingly argues that the migrant crisis has been directed from above. Read More »

A Kenyan woman at Henry Makow’s site offers six reasons why careerism is a bum deal for women. She writes:

I would like to tell you of some of my conclusions I have come to from observations and experiences at employment, for males and females. God created us differently and to do otherwise is to upset nature.

First of all, there can be no equal treatment at the workplace for males and females in terms of pay. How can you compare a female ( single – has fewer bills, married – has husband to also support her) to a male who has to provide for himself and his family?

Second, women should not be given managerial positions in mixed gender employment settings.  A  woman commanding a man is against nature and God. The man can’t talk back to the boss because he has a family to feed. He feels anger and that is directed against other females in general. I think that’s something very wrong! Yet society is encouraging this to be the norm and calls it progress. Read More »

ROBERT M. writes:

A few thoughts on Paul C.’s comments in the entry, “What Happened to Those Urban Enclaves:”

1.The WASP establishment already lived in the suburbs or in private places in the city. So this urban redevelopment wasn’t going to affect them at all. If anything it was going to bring cheaper gardeners, maids, etc. closer to their doorstep. And enable them to get out to their country homes faster.

2. The public sphere was destroyed. Because of the so-called “rights of the oppressed” you didn’t have to be polite anymore. Any person began having the right to barge into a social situation, no matter how customary, and just demand “free-speech,” “rights,” “acceptance,” ”recognition,” etcetera. So everybody retreated indoors and watched television. But the same cultural manipulators were waiting for them on the tube, lo and behold! Including a picture of suburbia presented by Leave it to Beaver. No wonder they soon moved. Read More »