THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I recently asked the students in my “Writing about Literature” course to compose a short essay by applying the criticisms made by Romantic writers and poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge – and their modern defenders – against the purely rational society that modern people have inherited from their Enlightenment ancestors.  I asked, what would those authors say about a modern university?  In assessing the responses, it is probably a good idea to correct for the fact that students frequently write or say what they imagine the instructor wants to read or hear and for the tendency of contemporary college students to take things with alarming literalness.  Nevertheless, the responses hold out some interest.

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FATHER Francis Xavier Weninger explained in 1876 why we pray for the souls in Purgatory:

“In that abode of sorrow the departed souls hunger after the possession of God, and with so famishing a desire that nothing on earth can be compared with it. They thirst after the fountain of eternal life with that thirst which knows no comparison in this world. They suffer; poor and destitute of all worldly goods. Yea! they are even deprived of all those consolations which at times lessen our desires, and afford us moments of repose. Here upon earth, though we long and sigh ever so much after a thing, still we can sleep; and the pains produced by our heart’s desires in our waking moments leave us, we feel them no longer. We can engage ourselves in other occupations; other cares may distract our minds. We may, at times, enjoy various pleasures, and partake of the good things of this life. Now all these things remove, or, at least, soothe the pain and care of our desires. Not so, however, is the condition of these distressed souls. They have no refreshing slumber; they are incessantly awake; they have no occupation; they can not indulge in other cares, in other distractions. They are wholly and continually absorbed with the burning desire of being liberated from their intense misery.” (more…)

THIS Rosh Hashanah sermon by Rabbi Jeremy Gordon, of New London Synagogue in England, is quite a piece of work, a succinct statement if ever there was one of Jewish advocacy for the mass invasion of Europe by Middle Eastern refugees. The ordinary Jew, Gordon says, must not fear the radical transformation of Britain and other European nations. The refugees should be permanently accommodated because to do otherwise would be a betrayal of Jewish history. In the sermon, which is posted at the website of Support Refugees, a consortium of Jewish organizations offering assistance to the asylum seekers, Gordon explains:

We are in danger of forgetting that we are the people who are supposed to have the deepest understanding of the life of a Fiddler on the Roof; understanding the way in which people flee the country of their birth because staying is just too horrible a fate to wish upon our children is the deepest insight of our Jewish national memory. Loving the stranger is our central ethic. This is what it means to be a Jew. There may well be less Jews keeping Kosher than was the case a hundred years ago, and there may be less Jews here on Second Day Rosh Hashanah than was the case even thirty years ago, and I can live with all that. But I can’t live with this. I can’t live with the notion that the Jewish people have forgotten what it means to be Jews.

Loving the stranger is our central ethic. Gordon does not mention that the principles he advocates for Britain are not endorsed by Israel, which offers automatic asylum only to Jews. Why is Gordon not advocating the same policy for the Jewish homeland?  Nor does he mention that the brotherhood advocated by Maimonides is a brotherhood extended only to other Jews. Hating the stranger is closer to the central ethic of the Talmud, which even says it’s okay to murder, defraud and lie to gentiles. (more…)

DR. Hsiu-Ying “Lisa” Tseng was convicted of second-degree murder last week for allegedly over-prescribing prescription painkillers to three men who were addicted to the drugs. According to The New York Daily News: (more…)

ED HUNTER writes:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wanted to do a video on the Trump movement. They are a Leftie organization, but they treated us more or less fairly. I am in the video and they tried to trip me up with the usual racist stuff, but I think I deflected it, Auster-style. I refused to toe the PC line, which shocked them. (more…)

KEVIN MacDONALD writes about the Jewish reaction to Donald Trump, whose anti-immigration stance some see as reminiscent of Nazi Germany. This is not surprising, as Jews are taught from infancy by their own culture that they are hated.

There has been extraordinary, almost unhinged anxiety among some Jews about Donald Trump’s campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination. It has no solid basis, but unfortunately it does speak to their profound neurosis and alienation from the historic American nation. (more…)

Dr. THOMAS A. DROLESKEY writes at Christ or Chaos:

One of the many consequences of the lack of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces flowing out into the world involves the false, infantile belief that to criticize someone for anything is to “hate” him.

Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and many of his supporters are quick to denounce any and all criticize of him and his lawless policies as racists who are filled with resentment against a black president (who happens to be half Caucasian as well, of course).

To oppose the chemical and surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn is said to engage in a “war against women.”

Those who oppose the promotion of the sin of Sodom under the cover of civil law and all throughout what passes for popular culture are said to “hate” homosexuals, lesbians, mutants and other practitioners of perverse sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. “Homophobia” has even been denounced by officials of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. (more…)

  FEMALE convicts in Italy celebrate Antipope Francis's message of universal salvation. Halleluia! Everyone goes to heaven.

FROM a 2014 piece by Peter Kwasniewski, Ph.D.: One day in New Jersey, years ago, I was standing on a train platform waiting to catch a train into New York City. Seeing beautiful and well-dressed young women waiting at the platform, on their way to work, I thought: How many of these women are committing themselves to a life of singlehearted devotion to Mammon, the god of the world, without reaping any of the benefits that would arise from a life dedicated to the true God? They are celibate, after a fashion, but they are not virgins; they make sacrifices day after day, but reap no salvation from them, and bring no immortal souls into the world. They might have sex, but no children; thus, they lose the chief glory and merit of the married woman. Once they have a child, they then frequently hand over the burden of work to someone else, losing the greatest opportunity and privilege of all, that of nurturing and educating their own offspring. We know that there are cases where daycare cannot be avoided and is chosen as a last resort; and yet, could one truly say it is unavoidable in the majority of cases? So many modern women are a set of absolute contradictions: their lives are consecrated, but to a false god who takes away the blessings of virginal faith; they are lying down with their husbands, but choose barrenness; when they bear children…

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.  (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.

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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. (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. (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.” (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.  

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: (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?) (more…)