CONSPIRACY theories are a dime a dozen on the Internet. It’s better not to go there, as they say, which is why, as these theories pile up in connection with the latest big news event, I absolutely believe the Charleston massacre was real. I lament this terrible tragedy. I lament the evil it represents. Even though it obviously happened — how could this kind of thing possibly be staged, especially since a state senator was one of the victims? — one has to admit that there are staged qualities about it that feed into the conspiracy theories. They include the contrived-looking photographs of Dylann Roof with the Confederate flag, the improbability that a relatively small man could shoot and instantly kill nine people — without anyone running away or more victims being simply wounded — with a handgun which required reloading five times, and the instantaneous, theatrical reaction from the federal government, which is reportedly already giving $29 million to the victims’ families. Again, I assume these are just strange coincidences and oddities, but as further evidence of strangeness I offer this video from one of the burgeoning number of conspiracy-theory bloggers. Let’s just say these interviews in the video are abnormal reactions. Let’s leave it at that. (more…)

MAUREEN MALLARKEY offers excellent commentary of Jorge Bergoglio’s Eco-Cyclical at The Federalist. Her commentary is excellent, I should say, except that Ms. Mallarkey believes that it is appropriate for Catholics to criticize a true pope in this caustic and somewhat sneering way. It is appropriate to criticize a papal pretender in this way, but not a true pope. May Ms. Mallarkey come to see the truth. She writes:

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A SOCIETY that normalizes homosexuality is doomed to celebrate it and deify it in order to suppress the many unpleasant facts. Here’s the latest example sent by reader Jeanette V.:

As Pride Week gets underway in Seattle, Mayor Ed Murray unveiled new rainbow crosswalks at several Capitol Hill intersections Tuesday morning.

There are 11 crosswalks on Capitol Hill getting the rainbow treatment — for a total cost of more than $100,000 according to the city’s transportation director. Seven of those were painted and treated overnight and four others will be finished Tuesday night. (more…)

ALAN writes:

Here are some additional thoughts on a topic addressed here a few weeks ago:

Motion pictures convey a certain sense of life.  In most classic and ordinary old movies (both American and British), it is what Ayn Rand called a “benevolent sense of life,” a firm but often unarticulated conviction that values are worth pursuing and defending, that men are not helpless lumps of clay, and that it is both possible and desirable to create happy, decent, and productive lives by means of hard work, responsibility, and restraint.  The three movies I named in my original essay include elements of sorrow, tragedy, unhappiness, and wasted years.  But they also reflect a benevolent sense of life. (more…)

A READER at Lifesite News describes how she was threatened with arrest on an airplane to Mexico when she and her father complained about being forced to watch the homosexual propaganda TV show "Modern Family." In a quasi-totalitarian State such as ours, you don't need secret police. Almost every single citizen, like the flight attendants on this plane, is brainwashed by the Great Electronic Mind. A very effective public police force exists everywhere.

HERE’S an interesting article by Stella Morbito at The Federalist. Titled How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion, it’s about the psychological warfare techniques used (often unconsciously) by the mass media and savvy political groups:

[…]

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THOMAS O’MEEHAN writes at VDARE:

The very nature and motives of the people who want the Battle Flag gone is a fine reason to keep it. Put another way, whenever someone wants you to abandon part of your heritage, the healthy response is: “You first!” or perhaps something ruder. What kind of people challenge other people’s traditions and historical artifacts when they are not in any way hurt?

Southerners flying their old flag hurt no one. The liberal elite isn’t harmed. But they just want to follow their own puritanical tradition of enforcing their judgments on others. They claim that the old flag is an insult to black Americans; perhaps so. But in an age when groups leverage imagined psychic harm into political advantage, this is an excellent time to draw a line against such impostures. (more…)

JONATHAN VAN MAREN writes at Lifesite News:

When guys have been looking at porn for a long time, it’s a tough habit to break. And when you’re an anti-porn speaker (as I am), it’s tough to figure out how to make people quit a habit that has deeply rewired their brain and reshaped their attractions, using just words. So one of the things I’ve tried to do is illustrate just how evil porn is, by calling it what it is.

Porn is, at its root, sexual cannibalism.

[…]

Pornography is someone sexually consuming another for one-sided pleasure. That person exists only to fulfill his pleasures, his fantasies, his satisfaction.

Pornography, mass-produced and disseminated, is the perfect vehicle for enslaving men. (more…)

THE Supreme Court has no authority to impose same-sex "marriage" upon Americans, and thus no one is obliged to recognize it. Br. Alexi Bugnolo writes that the institution of marriage "can no more be changed by a government of men, than the nature of man could be changed by a government of men."

ILANA MERCER writes at her blog:

In the aftermath of the Charleston church massacre, US “news” media have been depicting the Old South African and Rhodesian flags as some kind of Nazi insignia, their display always and everywhere a predictor of a disturbed mind. Dr. Dan Roodt, director of PRAAG, for Afrikaner activism, sends this corrective comment:

“The orange, white and blue flag is based on the original European republican flag: It was first hoisted in 1572, after the first Dutch town called Den Briel was liberated from the Spanish Empire. To this day, and in homage to that flag, most European countries, including the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, etc., all have tricolor flags. Are they then all “white-supremacist” flags? (more…)

CAROLINE writes:

This Washington Post article about the recent college admissions hoax involving a Korean math prodigy just illustrates the wide schism between Asian values and that of the (late) West. I find myself agreeing with the Anti-globalist Expatriate’s analysis of Asia. I don’t think it’s good to have so many foreigners at our colleges and high schools. What about our own people? Isn’t a place at an elite (or other) college a limited commodity? Shouldn’t Americans be at American colleges and university? I do declare, when I go to Cornell, I often think that I’m in Seoul.

For one thing, because we allow so many foreign students to come here, there is no incentive for Asians to improve their own schools. For another, I believe they don’t care as much about the quality of American schools, just that they get a diploma from an American/European school. It’s a status symbol in Asia. (more…)

ALAN writes:

FRANK REGA writes:

THE MEDIA is staging a veritable orgy of distortion in response to the terrible massacre in Charleston, S.C. It’s not that the press is lying so much as exaggerating and ignoring anything that conflicts with the sensational, emotional narrative of white supremacy and violence against blacks, creating the distinct impression that violence by white supremacists is a serious national problem and that large numbers of whites hate blacks. It reminds me of an art exhibit I recently saw of African America art at a major museum. (more…)

SOME Father's Day reflections on the loss of paternal authority by Marian T. Horvat: Fearful of appearing authoritative or aloof to their offspring, many young fathers try to be a “good buddy” to their sons and daughters. Playing and joking and making life a game, they teach not only that life is not serious, but that authority is frivolous. The father, instead of showing the serious air of authority a child needs to be calm, stable and secure about his place in life, himself takes on the air of big child, dressing, speaking, inter-acting like a youth, even when he is far from it. He is the Big Boy, his son the Little Boy, and his wife takes on the role of Mother to all. In this is an inherent disorder. The wife has a difficult time finding the husband to obey and respect. The children begin to think themselves equals to the parents. The harmony and equilibrium of the home are upset, because paternal authority is lacking. We see the disastrous results of this syndrome around us everywhere today.

  HUNDREDS of thousands of Italians reportedly showed up for a rally in Rome today to protest same-sex unions and the official indoctrination of school children in androgynism. Unlike the Irish, who voted overwhelmingly in favor of same sex "marriage" last month, and similar to the French, who flocked to mass rallies, a significant number of Italians appear to understand that the welfare of children is at stake. They actually seem to get it and to be undeterred by the inevitable accusations of bigotry. From AFP: Holding aloft banners reading "The family will save the world" and "Let's defend our children", a sea of people crammed into the San Giovanni square near the Italian capital's historic centre to support family values. The square, which can hold an estimated 300,000 people, was overflowing with the young, elderly and parents with toddlers, an AFP photographer said, with many more demonstrators spilling into nearby streets. Organisers for their part said one million people were taking part. Italian police never provide figures for demos. "In my children's schools they are talking about families made up of two fathers or two mothers, without asking parents' permission," said 41-year old doctor Giuseppe Ripa, adding: "It's dangerous and wrong." Fellow protester Piero Uroda, a 78-year-old pharmacist, said it was "not honest to say these things to the very young, it's not like they are students who can debate these ideas." "I don't want gay marriage or gay adoption, the natural…

AN excerpt from the unpublished book, America Erased, by Lawrence Auster:

What are the practical results of [the] pervasive nihilism on white, middle-class Americans? What does the human product of a nihilist culture look like? As white America has progressively lost its belief in God, in objective truth and morality, in law, in nationhood and in race, whites have acquired an increasingly bland, complacent, pacific aspect. This seems to be true not only in the United States but in the white West as a whole.

One is especially struck by this ennervated quality in contemporary whites when observing them at their leisure, on Sundays, or on their innumerable vacations, or when they are shopping. In the all-white or predominantly white pockets of society, the environment is orderly and peaceful and aesthetically attractive, but something vital is missing. (more…)