A READER writes:

This study by Catholic scholar Dr. John Rao is hands-down the best historical and philosophical explanation as to why America seemingly cannot be a normal nation and why Americans seemingly cannot be or, more appropriately, are not allowed to be a normal people.

As the author demonstrates, the Americanist Religion has both a left-wing and a right-wing, a liebral and a conservative (or ‘cuck$ervative,’ as we now so affectionately know it) version of its “Exceptionalism” (even amongst the putative ‘far-Right’) and as we see in reality, are merely the left and right wings of the same bird — the Americanist Vulture — the replacement for the American Eagle.

An excerpt:

Generations of European observers, beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America, have remarked upon the effectiveness with which American society, motivated by its Anglo-Saxon spirit, has quietly repressed the emergence of sharp differences of opinion, and channeled its population’s efforts into limited, peaceful, but indiscriminately vulgar material goals. Their commentaries have been supported by numerous American writers who have felt the obligation to “drop out” of this society in order to live as full human beings. I am speaking here of men of the Right, and not of liberals, whose “anti-Americanism” is itself a form of the same Americanist mentality. One is reminded, for example, of T.S. Eliot’s assertion that the thinking American often sought to “lose himself” somewhere outside the national mainstream, in places like New York City, in order to maintain at least the illusion of intellectual and spiritual survival. (more…)

I DEFER again to Mike King of The Anti-New York Times on the subject of Scalia’s sudden death while alone and unguarded at a Texas luxury resort owned by a multi-millionaire Obama-supporter:

In examining the post-Scalia-death mania which continues to dominate the front pages of Sulzberger’s Slimes [The New York Times], we can’t help but notice the conspicuous absence of two elements that should be part of this wall-to-wall coverage: (more…)

HERE ARE two recent letters to the editor of the Chestnut Hill Local in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia:

Local Episcopal congregations committed to inclusion

Our neighbors in Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy may have seen the news out of Canterbury, U.K., that the Episcopal Church is “temporarily sanctioned” by the leaders of the Anglican Communion because our church created a marriage service for same-gendered couples.

As the Rectors of Saint Paul’s and St. Martin’s Episcopal Churches we would like to tell the community that nothing has changed nor will it at our congregations due to this news from our communion, the third largest church in the world. (more…)

FROM a weather forum discussion between a man who loves snow and a man whose enthusiasm for the stuff has waned. The man who wants more snow writes:

 Sometimes I have flashes of a life in a parallel universe where I live in a snowbelt region that receives 200+ inches. I’m just wondering if anyone who considered themselves a snow weenie ever got tired of that much snow. I think being born and raised in central Virginia I’m hardwired to appreciate what I get and the rarity of the snow events lends intself to the awe of heavy snowfall. Who here has moved from a sparse snow region to the jackpot regions? After a few season did you ever lose the passion for winter weather? I’m seriously considering a move north once the kids are out of the house.

(more…)

FROM an 1891 sermon by Bishop Joseph Georg von Ehrler:

1. God has given us various powers and faculties, of body and soul, that all being tried and tested by temptation may be employed for his service. Our eyes must be tried in order to ascertain whether, being led astray by the deceitful phantoms of sin, they are directed to evil, rather than to the true and unchangeable goods of heaven. Our ears must be tested in order to know whether they are open to evil and eagerly listen to it, or, on the contrary, open to God and his holy word, and closed to sinful words and discourses. Our tongue, our hands and feet, and all the members and senses of our body must be tested, in order to find out whether they serve the world, rather than God. For the same purpose, God searches the various powers and faculties of the soul, in order to test their fidelity to Him, and their real love for Him. He tries our understanding, to see if in the holy obedience of faith it bows to the teachings of revelation or rather relies upon its own narrow conceits. He searches our heart and our memory, the imagination and the will, and all the depths of our souls in order to discover whether we love him or adore another before Him. He tries the king upon his throne, and the lowest beggar among his subjects; he tries the father and the mother, the son and daughter, the master and the servant, the rich and the peer–everyone according to his calling and position in life, in order to test and to reward each man according to the depth of his love and the strength of his fidelity. (more…)

MIKE KING writes at The Anti-New York Times:

With the conveeenient passing of strict constitutionalist conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the last remaining threads holding together the remnants of true America has been severed. A closely contested court that had been ruling 5-4 or 4-5 on very important matters will most certainly shift to 4-5 and 3-6 with the Marxist usurpers winning every single time. Unless, of course, we are to believe that the Republican’t Senate will suddenly ‘grow a pair’ and block the path of the inevitable ultra-libtard replacement nominee — sure to be another “minority” and sure to be sold to us by the [The New York Slimes] as a “moderate” — until the new President is sworn in next January.

Away on a quail-hunting trip in Texas, Scalia had left a private party of 40 people at a secluded ranch and retired to his cabin. When he failed to show up for breakfast, a person involved with the ranch went to his room and discovered his body. A federal official, who asked not to be named (hmmmm), said there was no evidence of foul play (how would he know that without an autopsy?) and that Scalia died of “natural causes”.

Is it possible that a 79 year old man, even one who was seemingly healthy and remained active, simply died in his sleep of “natural causes?” Of course it is. (more…)

MAY Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died this weekend at a resort in Texas, rest in peace. Scalia suffered many defeats, but was an influential intellectual force who strove mightily for the impossible and defended doomed, outdated ideas such as that a man should not marry a man.

May Constitutionalism, a cause which Scalia upheld against the tide, also rest in peace.

Constitutionalism is the view that the original intention of the American Founders should be upheld by jurists. It is a dead cause. The Supreme Court, influenced for much of its history by the anti-Christian philosophy of Freemasonry, is the leading enforcer of practical atheism, of causes and federal interventions that the Founders never would have embraced. No matter who is appointed in Scalia’s place, that fact will not change.

If you want to get a sense of what a theocratic bogeyman Scalia, who was Catholic, is believed to have been by many, read the comments at The New York Times. They’re scary. Americans are so unschooled in the basics of religion, many believe that Scalia, who publicly distanced himself from Catholic teaching on the proper relation between Church and state, personified theocratic tyranny and was the embodiment of the Christian Taliban. (more…)

ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes: They think they want 'equality?' Then they should get it, good and hard. I've become convinced that the only way to even possibly reverse public policy lunacy like women in combat roles and unchecked immigration is to allow, even encourage, implementing these policies to their logical conclusions - which will then result in disaster, and force change via public backlash. This is what is happening in the EUSSR with regards to Muslim immigration today. It's essentially utilizing Marxist tactics in order to counter cultural Marxism: 'The worse, the better.' -- V.I. Lenin

JOE A. writes: I see articles like this one, by a woman who quit her smart phone, all the time now.  There is an inherent human yearning for companionship and experience.  Virtual reality is novel, and thereby attractive in a way, but it is not satisfying and, apparently, it starts to grate on a person. Organizations that further true human contact, experience, and camaraderie will be the new leaders, even priests, reintegrating the lost and the never-found into human society. Oh and for the record, there are no smartphones in my house.  No tablets.  We haven’t had cable television in years.  We use the internet for reading and research but otherwise we do real things with real people, just as Man did for the last 200,000 years of his existence.

A READER writes: The other day, a boy asked my teen-aged daughter whether she supported Trump or Hillary. She replied, "I don't know much about either. I'm a troglodyte." Her interlocutor looked confused, and when my daughter asked him whether he was familiar with troglodytes, he replied, "Sure. I just don't remember who are the Troglodyte Party's candidates for president."

WHETHER one million Jews (possibly less) or six million Jews (extremely unlikely) died in the Holocaust, many Jews died and were treated cruelly and callously. Brother Nathanael Kapner, an “Orthodox” Christian who was raised as a religious Jew, looks at the evidence in this video that the death camps were actually slave labor camps and that there were no gas chambers in any of the famous camps that held Jews in Germany and Poland. (more…)

THE feminist war horse has suffered a serious blow. It wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t come out and campaigned for Hillary Clinton right before the New Hampshire primary, and told women they would vote for Bernie just to attract guys. But she did, and Hillary’s serious defeat among young women (and all age groups except senior citizens) is a slap in the face to Gloria too. Perhaps women don’t want to be like the former CIA operative who was supported by foundations and major corporations in establishing her career as a phony anti-establishment figure. Perhaps they don’t want to be childless and discontented in old age, living with a three-legged black cat in an apartment. Perhaps many of them know that the feminist bargain (exchange dependence on a man for dependence on large organizations that will never love them) is not such a good deal. It’s not that she dedicated her life to something other than family that’s bad. Not everyone should marry and have children. It’s that she dedicated her life to satanic destruction and darkness. Perhaps she has lived too long, and is seeing the eclipse of her dark powers. (more…)

JAMES KALB writes that only someone as brash and forceful as Donald Trump could break through the tyranny of political correctness:

Trump’s been called a clown by those who guard the purity of our political culture.  The name-calling is silly in a country in which respectable opinion insists that two grooms make a wedding, and an organization that tears living babies apart and sells the pieces is a model of honor and public spirit.  They may paint Trump as a court jester who would be king.  But who wouldn’t root for the court jester—at least a little—in a world of supple place-seeking courtiers?

Since Mr. Trump is not “susceptible to pressure,” perhaps he could call a real investigation into 9/11. A New York real estate developer must know something about how skyscrapers collapse. (more…)

A NATION can be for God or for mammon. America is for mammon.

It’s not mammon for the people so that they can form healthy families and communities. It’s not mammon as an instrument for human virtue. It’s mammon as an end in itself and as a tool of power and control. Multiculturalism is a psy op. Sexual liberation is a psy op. Free trade is a scam. All are tools of financial exploitation.

We are an occupied nation. Just drive through the Midwest or the Northeast. Look at all the closed factories. You think that’s normal? You think that’s progress? You think that’s free enterprise? Yeah, it’s about as free as Soviet industry. Oh, what black deeds have been done in the name of freedom.

We need to defund a sick globalist oligarchy that upholds the rootless, cosmopolitan homosexual as its highest ideal* and destroys our borders and the middle class. We need to break up an enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of debt financiers and reclaim our money supply, ending the mass immigration, foreign wars and free trade this monetary system has brought us. Usury (the private sale of money at compound interest) is evil — a sin that cries out for vengeance because it is parasitic and leads to systematic failure over time.

The lengthy essay below is food for thought on this issue. It’s the final chapter from The Tyranny of the Federal Reserve, by Brian O’Brien, a book I have quoted here before. Any presidential candidate who embraces the Federal Reserve system is not working for substantial reform. (more…)

Alas! During this life, these fools love their folly, but at death they open their eyes, and confess that they have been fools. But this only serves to increase their fear of repairing past evils; and dying in this state, they leave their salvation very uncertain. My brother, now that you are reading this point, I imagine that you too say: "This is indeed true." But if this is true, your folly and misfortune will be still greater, if after knowing these truths during life, you neglect to apply a remedy in time. This very point which you have read will be a sword of sorrow for you at death. Since, then, you now have time to avoid a death so full of terror, begin instantly to repair the past; do not wait for that time in which you can make but little preparation for judgment. Do not wait for another month, not for another week. Perhaps this light which God in His mercy gives you now may be the last light and the last call for you. It is folly to be unwilling to think of death, which is certain, and on which eternity depends; but it would be still greater folly to reflect on it, and not prepare for judgment. Make now the reflections and resolutions which you would then make; they may be made now with profit--then without fruit; now, with confidence of saving your soul--then, with…

MANY practice serious austerities and penances for the sake of physical health or a good appearance, but consider the same type of sacrifices unessential to the life of the soul, as if God would be unmoved by concrete expressions of repentance. A few thoughts on this subject from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Granger, who was indignant at the decline of Lenten observances in the 19th century:

Groundless prejudices, idle excuses, bad example,–all tend to lead men from the observance of Lent. Is it not sad to hear people giving such a reason as this for their not fasting or abstaining,–because they feel them? Surely, they forget that the very aim of fasting and abstinence is to make these bodies of sin (Rom. vi. 6) suffer and feel. And what will they answer on the Day of Judgment, when our Saviour shall show them how the very Turks, who were the disciples of a gross and sensual religion, had the courage to practise, every year, the forty-days’ austerities of their Ramadan?

But their own conduct will be their loudest accuser. These very persons, who persuade themselves that they have not strength enough to bear the abstinence and fasting of Lent, even in their present mitigated form, think nothing of going through incomparably greater fatigues for the sake of temporal gains or worldly enjoyments. (more…)

  ASH WEDNESDAY, the first day of Lent, is a day devoted to the certain knowledge that we will die. Someday, somehow, we are all going to be gone. Someday no one on earth will think of us or remember us. It helps to know. "Dear soul, from what peril and fear you could free yourself, if you lived in holy fear, mindful of your death," Thomas à Kempis said. From Fish Eaters: In Genesis 3:19 we hear God tell us "for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return," but nowadays, when someone dies, they are rushed from deathbed to funeral home to be embalmed and to be worked over by a make-up artist so that that "dusty reality" is hidden from us. Their deaths are spoken of as almost an embarrassment; "he passed," they say, or "he is no longer with us." These comforting but sterile luxuries weren't an option in the past when plagues felled so many people that there weren't enough survivors to bury them, when bodies had to be stored all winter until the ground was soft enough to dig, when most of the children a woman bore died before they were able to grow up. In our culture, with our medicines and "funeral sciences," we are afraid to look at death, and we are a poorer people because of it. No matter how long science can prolong life, no matter how much embalming fluid is pumped…

REPORTS OF THE SHOOTING death in Chicago of Aaren O’Connor, a 25-year-old woman who had moved to the city a year and a half ago against the advice of her father, have some of the strange and confusing signs of manipulation with the intent of promoting “gun control.”

Aaren was shot in the head as she sat in her parked car Friday night in the Pilsen neighborhood while speaking to her sister on the phone, according to police reports. (more…)