GRATEFUL READER writes:

I just went to the grocery store and  met a woman whom I have not seen in many years. She said that her daughter had had a baby some time ago. When I remarked that I had not known this and that, in fact, I did not know that she had gotten married, she said, “Oh, no, she’s not married. She had IVF, sperm bank, you know. She is a single mother by choice.” Alas. The daughter was a pretty, intelligent woman who attended an Ivy League college and is now nearly forty. I made polite conversation with the mother, but I don’t know what to say, or how to act toward her. Perhaps I should have looked at her in horror, dropped the package of meat in the crowded aisle, and said, “That is terrible! How could she do such a thing?” But I doubt it would help her to understand the truth of the situation.

Read More »

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes about the bridal designer Vera Wang (pictured here in her favorite workspace) and her Gothic gowns.

Read More »

The Loiterers, Walter Osborne; 1888

IN his short story “The Majesty of the Law,” the Irish writer Frank O’Connor describes the arrest of Old Dan Bride. (The story begins at page 30 in this online edition of his works.) It’s all civilized and orderly. You might say, both the arrest — and the crime — are quintessentially Irish.

A man’s shadow fell across the oblong of dusty light thrown over the half door before Dan looked round.

‘Are you alone, Dan?’ asked an apologetic voice.

‘Oh, come in, come in, sergeant. come in and welcome,’ exclaimed the old man, hurrying on rather uncertain feet to the door, which the tall policeman opened and pushed in.

The Ottoman Siege of Vienna

STEVE KOGAN writes:

In the winter of 1933 at the age of nineteen, the English travel writer and World War II hero Patrick Leigh Fermor began a trip through Europe that he later described in a series of works drawn from his notes, journals, memories, and reflections. The first book is titled A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube. The following passage is taken from his chapter on Vienna:

Read More »

ADAM writes:

It seems absurd to me that this country rewards people who illegally cross the border with free, taxpayer-provided public schooling. Public schools were created for the education of American children. Citizens would not have been willing to fund public education with their property taxes if they knew that the money would not be used to educate local children, but rather would be used to help settle “refugees” in their communities.

Read More »

A photo from 1915, well before the Age of Nudity, courtesy of British Paintings blog.

AT Zero Hedge, Tyler Durden looks at how, in the case of one GOP politician, high finance controls politics.

I MET Kate Millet in the late 1970s. A few other proud, brainwashed, starry-eyed feminists at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and I arranged to have her come speak at the university. We picked her up from the airport on a snowy night and took her to a fancy French restaurant, where she drank a lot of wine, so much so that we nervously wondered whether she would be able to deliver the tour de force lecture we were all expecting. During her talk, women in burkas burst into the lecture hall and chanted pro-Ayatollah Khomeini slogans. It was frightening — a chilling and foreboding convergence of revolutionary and totalitarian ideologies, though I didn’t know it at the time.

I must confess, I had not read all of Millet’s famous treatise, Sexual Politics. But then you didn’t need to read it. Millions of Marxists never read Marx. It was the same with feminism. You just knew it was all so true. Nevertheless, my secret impression of the author was of a woman who was boozy, physically unattractive, and bored.

At Front Page Mag today, Mallory Millet, sister of Kate Millet, reflects on her famous sister’s legacy. It’s an amazing behind-the-scenes look at an American revolutionary. I would like to post the whole thing it is so interesting, but go to Front Page and read it all.

Mallory joined up with her famous sister in New York City after having married and divorced an American executive working in Southeast Asia.

Read More »

ALAN writes:

Writing in 1963 about the so-called “civil rights” bill then being considered in Congress, Ayn Rand stated that the federal government “has no right to discriminate for some citizens at the expense of others.  It has no right to violate the right of private property by forbidding discrimination in privately owned establishments.  No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of other men.  A man’s rights are not violated by a private individual’s refusal to deal with him.”

She continued, “if that ‘civil rights’ bill is passed, it will be the worst breach of property rights in the sorry record of American history in respect to that subject…..” [ “Racism,” The Objectivist Newsletter, Sept. 1963, p. 36]

That “civil rights” bill, as we all know, was enacted in 1964. Americans today are still paying for it.

These judgments apply to the case of Gifford vs. New York State.  The Giffords’ refusal to accept agitators for “same-sex marriage” as customers does not harm those people in any way or violate their rights.  If it hurts their feelings, that’s tough.  Read More »

IMAGINE if Charles Martel had thought that the best approach to Islam was to “be present” while Muslims slaughtered infidels or if he had believed that there was “definitely not a clash between Islam and Christianity,” as “Cardinal” Petro Parolin, Secretary of State of the occupied Vatican, recently stated. The pronouncements on dialogue that emanate from the counterfeit Church of Conciliarism, which has overtaken the Catholic Church, render Martel and his warriors ridiculous swashbucklers who wasted their lives. As Thomas Droleskey writes:

While it is true that Christians and Mohammedans have lived for centuries in relative peace in such countries as Turkey, Iraq and Syria, this has been so because, at least for the most part, of the rule of “benevolent despots” who saw that it was in their own best interests to curb their own co-religionists’ natural desire to slay infidels. Even the pre-“Arab Spring” Egypt saw persecutions of Catholics and Coptic Rite Orthodox Christians by the regimes of both Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak (see Not Interested in Assisi III, Springing Back Into Power, Two Figures Of Antichrist In Search Of “Moderate” Musselmen and Francis and Barry’s Religion of Peace).

Read More »

Read More »

MASON writes:

I’ve been thinking about this trend of ALS Dunking for a few weeks now as it mushroomed and then died out on my Facebook feed. For me, the key insight to understanding this fad is vanity. Each video is an opportunity to show off the key Millennial virtues: humanitarian concern, physical beauty, wit, and popularity.

Importantly, consider how this video spreads. You’re supposed to be nominated to participate. A nomination is an invitation to sit at the cool kids’ table. Read More »

READERS are probably aware of the sickening reports from the Northern England town of Rotherham, where Pakistani gangs raped, threatened and assaulted an alleged 1,400 white girls over the course of 16 years. The crimes included in some cases dousing young girls with gasoline and threatening to light them on fire if they did not comply. The local police are accused of ignoring the incidents. Social workers reportedly were hesitant to publicize the problem out of fear of appearing racist. And, according to one source, local Muslim leaders were familiar with the activities of the gangs and hushed up the incidents.

According to Paul Austin Murphy, of Liberty GB, the outcry by the press is hypocritical. Muslim gangs prey on white girls in towns across England, he writes, and newspapers routinely cover up the race and religion of the perpetrators in the cases they do report:

Many of the newspapers which are now keen to point the finger at Rotherham Council were once part of the problem. National newspapers (as well as regional ones) – on the whole – hardly ever featured these cases. And even when they did, they too would never say that virtually all the perpetrators were Pakistani – never mind that they were Muslims.

The Daily Mail, for example, continues the problem by failing to mention the fact that the perpetrators were overwhelmingly Muslim. How can this – or any – newspaper castigate Rotherham Council when it’s committing the same wrong? The Daily Mail says that it was wrong for councillors, police and social workers to have been afraid of saying that the perpetrators were Pakistani. So why now is this newspaper afraid of saying that they were nearly all Muslims? Read More »

EPONYMOUS FLOWER reports on a pool mass at La Salle High School in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania. The boys dressed up. They’re wearing towels.

L.R., a female reader, writes:

Regarding the story about the nine-year-old girl who accidentally shot an instructor at a Las Vegas shooting range: Not only is it stupid to send children to have fun and practice with guns at those “theme shooting parks” that are supposed to be available for adults (specially for men only!), but it is also even more stupid to send a girl to try to practice such a thing since in reality women are much worse shooters than men!

I grew up with several scifi movies of women soldiers that seemed to know how to use guns and automatic weapons like in the Aliens movies but women are good in movies because they are fantasy. In reality, women and, even more, female teenagers and little girls are bad shooters and don’t have the same coordination as men when using any kind of guns.

Read More »

JAMES P. writes:

Take Beth’s message as a compliment! She is telling you your blog is everything you want it to be!

• Anti-feminist? Yes, good, and purposely so! “Feminism” has been a disaster for women.
• A housewife? Yes, and proud of it!
• Opposed to women in the armed forces? You bet! Women in the armed forces have caused immense harm to women and the armed forces.
• Homophobic? Yes, you oppose this aspect of the Left’s destructive agenda, including the characterization of this opposition as a mental disease (phobia).
• “A step back for all women”? Yes, you are properly questioning the claim that the social changes of the late 20th century actually represented progress for women. After all, if one is going down the wrong path, taking a step back is the right thing to do!

But, I am disappointed that Beth didn’t deploy the crushing accusation of racism, which we all know ends any argument in a complete triumph for the accuser and a decisive defeat for the accused.

Read More »

BUCK writes:

Just up the road from me there is going to be a huge celebration this weekend. It’s in Brookeville, Maryland, U.S. Capital for a day, 200 years ago yesterday.

I was aware that the anniversary was approaching and have mentioned it occasionally. Some people had no idea what I was talking about. “When was that? The Revolutionary War?” Even people who have driven north up Georgia Avenue many times, over many years, and who had to stop at the odd ninty-degree turn in the road dead center in town, didn’t know the historical significance. Just very old.

President Madison had to flee the White House from the attacking British. The British are the only “foreign” invaders to burn our White House, along with the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Capital, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and the chambers of the House and Senate. They were gentlemen though; they didn’t burn private residences or otherwise rape and pillage. We burned all of our own ships in the Navy Yard. It’s said that you could see the raging fires from 50 miles away.

Read More »

THERE are two striking aspects of this BBC rebroadcast of a 1960 interview with the British writer Evelyn Waugh, which was sent to me by a reader.

First, there is the stunning misrepresentation of the interview by Joan Bakewell, who introduces the rebroadcast with utterly false charges of rudeness and hostility on the part of Waugh, and similar mischaracterization of the writer by John Freeman, the original interviewer, who had posed a number of antagonistic questions to Waugh and accuses him of nervousness that is nowhere to be found. Why do they seem eager to attribute rudeness and even mental instability to the author? Is it their own egotism, their search for a titillating angle, or is there something else at stake?

Secondly, there is the interview itself, which is a memorable and fascinating glimpse of the author, who is open, candid and succinct, his lucid thoughts traveling visibly across a pudgy, Anglo-Saxon face devoid of conceit and concealment. Waugh says there is only one reason why he agreed to be interviewed on TV: poverty. Not many celebrities would admit to the financial self-interest in publicity.

Waugh remembers fondly the instruction his mother gave him before he went to school and being read to as a child, recalls the harshness of life at a British boarding school during World War I and briefly discusses his conversion to Catholicism. I highly recommend the whole thing.

Read More »