DAN R. writes:

Matthew Richer at VDARE gets to the bottom of things in this column, with his description of the Robert Copeland incident as the “criminalization of dissent.”  Technically, of course, he’s incorrect in that Copeland will not go to jail, but what difference does that make when the objective of intimidating people into silence can be accomplished through non-violent means, i.e., the new means of “polite totalitarianism” (a coinage of writer Ronn Neff from The Last Ditch)?  As an aside, it’s not even all that interesting–and certainly not surprising–that Mitt Romney, a part-time resident of Wolfeboro, should join in the chorus, though it surely adds to the depressing overall effect.

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A Grateful Reader writes:

You write often about the dangers that modern technologies pose to persons and to their interaction in community–dangers that arise from a turning away from reality, from what is true, good, and beautiful. An article by Russell Hittenger, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, expounds upon Christopher Dawson’s apocalyptic remarks about technology. Dawson did not define modern technology as only what we think of as “labor-saving devices, such as automated implements or pistons, which replace repetitive human acts.” Rather, he writes, “most distinctive of contemporary technology is the replacement of the human act.” And by contemporary technology he refers to medical and psychological as well as engineering advances. For instance, “the contraceptive pill supplants chastity; the cinema supplants recreation, especially prayer; managerial and propaganda techniques replace older practise and virtues of loyalty, etc.” He sees in the application of this technology a change in habits and customs of peoples, making their interactions less humane and human, less cognizant of human dignity, and encouraging them to treat each other and even themselves as objects in a material world rather than subjects of a metaphysical world.

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HERE’S a nice bit of propaganda for baby selling. A British woman, Tara Sawyer, says she is so “addicted” to being pregnant that she is happy to be a surrogate mother and will continue to bear — and give away — as many children as possible, reportedly for no pay. She is the maternal counterpart of all those British women who go on binge drinking sprees in pubs. But she gets pregnant instead. She’s a gestational drunk. In keeping with her narcissistic view of pregnancy as something that is good because it makes a woman feel high, she says she has felt no attachment to the three babies she has given away to homosexuals, even though they were her biological children. Her husband goes along. Supposedly no pay is involved, so technically we cannot call him a pimp. The British national health service subsidizes it too.

How did Tara’s story end up in the newspaper? Did an enterprising reporter come across Tara? Or did someone who profits from surrogacy contact the newspaper? We will never know. But one thing we do know is that the baby-selling industry in the United States and Britain is big and there is almost no chance of it being ended under our existing political order. Read More »

KARL D. writes:

I find nothing more entertaining than when liberals eat each other for lunch. I just sit back and smile. We are now finding out more as to why Jill Abramson was fired from her job as editor of The New York Times. From the gist of it it seems it was mostly due to all the faux testosterone that Abramson was throwing around. Something almost all female high flying execs do. At the same time she was pulling out the feminist big guns to complain about her pay package compared to the last editor who was (gasp) a male. She has been replaced with the first black editor of The New York Times. So all the liberal stars are back in alignment. Yet there is still a big stink in feminist land about her firing. I suppose in the prevailing view Abramson should have had the job for life, simply because she is a woman. Above is a photo of Abramson that her daughter uploaded in her support after she was fired. Kinda says it all doesn’t it?

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JAMES N. writes:

After some reflection, I’ve developed some nuanced opinions about this story of the police commissioner in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. This guy was sitting in Nolan’s, a family restaurant with a small dining room and bar. When you dine at Nolan’s, your fellow diners are not far away.

Excuse the profanity, but he called Obama a “f***ing nigger,” and when a person close by demurred, he snapped back something to the effect, “Yeah, I said it!”

Now when I was growing up, people, particularly our elders whom we were taught to respect, didn’t call anybody a f***ing anything in public. That remains a standard to which we should aspire. If this man had called Obama a “f***ing asshole,” for example, he should have been embarrassed at the least, especially if, as is quite likely, there were children within earshot.

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The Garden of Eden, Unknown Master; 1410

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AT Traditio, a traditionalist Catholic site, a reader writes:

Dear TRADITIO Fathers:

I was wondering whether you would offer a Mass of Reparation for the terrible and blasphemous “Black Mass” scheduled at Harvard University. I want to offer a stipend for offering a Mass for this cause.

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TK writes:

I stumbled upon your site some time ago by accident while I was googling something. Since then I’ve read most of your posts and archives. The word ‘awesome’ is a word that is so overused these days that it’s lost its meaning. There are few things that are truly deserving of being called awesome now, but you are without a doubt, one of them. You have the ability to put to pen such profound ideas and see right through the foolishness that is rampant today. I love your unapologetic clarity on race, a difficult thing to do on a complicated and touchy subject. Thank you for sticking up for your people. Thank you for sticking up for men. Thank you for your time. You are appreciated.

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A female academic at Clarissa’s Blog blasphemes the dogma of equality by criticizing women employees. The writer calls herself a feminist, but how could she be when she is a heretic in this way? She seems to want the social benefits of calling herself feminist when she clearly is not. Her essay illustrates why the workplace is a happier place when it is dominated by men. She writes under the heading “I Don’t Want to Hire Women:”

Yes, I said it. You cringed when you read it and I cringed when I wrote it, and even more so when the thought first occurred to me. I am a woman, a feminist, a mother, and a passionate entrepreneur. I don’t just stand for equality – I have crashed the glass ceiling in every aspect of my life. I get extremely angry when I come across articles that insist there are gender differences that extend beyond physiology. I am fortunate to have had female role models who taught me through their own examples that I can accomplish absolutely anything I desire. Read More »

Roy Rogers and Lynne Roberts in Billy the Kid Returns

ALAN writes:

In a brief essay titled “What We Have Lost,” Lawrence Auster wrote in 2006 that “there is an endless supply of cinematic treasures from the Hollywood Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s….” for people who want to enjoy worthwhile movies.  What has been lost, he said, is the moral framework, masculine authority, and benevolent sense of life reflected in such movies.

I agree. One category of movies fitting that description but that he probably did not have in mind is the B-Westerns. In this connection, may I offer the following thoughts about a man who gained prominence through those Westerns and was certainly an American traditionalist:

ROY ROGERS: A REMEMBRANCE AND APPRECIATION

I first became aware of Roy Rogers when I was a boy in the 1950s.  On some Saturday mornings in the cold weather months, my father and I would watch Roy’s half-hour television program. Or he would listen as I read aloud portions of Roy Rogers adventures in the Little Golden Books my mother bought for me.  And like other American boys, I wore cowboy hats and shirts and shot cap guns in make-believe cowboy games with my friends, classmates, cousins, or in the rich terrain of boyhood imagination. The pillow on my bed took a terrific beating as I helped Roy by punching the daylights out of western outlaws, an achievement my mother seemed strangely unable to appreciate. Then many years went by. I grew up and forgot about my boyhood western heroes like Roy, Gene, Hoppy, Sky King, and The Lone Ranger.

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JOHN D. writes:

Blasphemy, traditionally conceived, is a statement which is derisive of God. In the past, society punished blasphemous statements both formally (through law) and informally (through societal censure). Of course, we are now free to make blasphemous comments about God without any adverse social or legal consequence. Indeed, such comments are often praised as courageous and thoughtful. They litter our public airways. No one would dare censure such comments. While society has abandoned the traditional object of blasphemy (God), it has not, it turns out, abandoned the concept of blasphemy altogether. However, its concept of what is sacred has changed.

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“POPE” Francis in his daily homily on Monday spoke approvingly (and humorously) of baptizing Martians. However, the homily was a very serious and cleverly ambiguous argument for abandoning Church teaching, a homily in which Bergoglio blasphemously suggests that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Revolution. From Vatican Radio:

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SAM writes:

I believe that we have finally reached the point where it is impossible to correct the thinking of liberals through any kind of dialectical process. One of the hallmarks of dialectical reason is the use of a technique known as the reductio ad abusurdum or the “reduction to absurdity.” Utilizing this technique, one demonstrates that the premises underpinning a certain theory logicaly entail something so repugnant to reason that the only rational response is to go back and figure out which of them needs to be rejected. No more, apparently. Witness this article.

For centuries, narcissism was rightly regarded as a spiritually dangerous, anti-social, and highly undesirable vice. Christopher Lasch, whose work is a mixed bag, nevertheless correctly classified it as a kind of pathology. (Although the therapeutic language ubiquitous in modern times utterly obscures the distinction between moral and psychological pathology; a distinction vital to a correct understanding of the human condition.)

In response to Lasch, the feminist Elizabeth Lunbeck now argues that what he describes as narcissism is really something laudable; an advanced form of social consciousness, as it were.

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AT American Renaissance, Michael Smith, “a public defender in a large southern metropolitan area,” vividly describes his experience working for black defendants.

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Le Grand Saint Michel, Raffaello Sanzio,

I WILL give five dollars to any reader who can find a single instance of a feminist complaining about the fact that Satan is always referred to as male. Isn’t it strange and perplexing that feminists worry about the lower numbers of women at the top — among CEO’s and other muckety-mucks — but are silent when it comes to the relatively low numbers of women in the working trades and even much lower, among criminals and drunks who live on the streets? I have never encountered a feminist who was upset that there are not more women mowing lawns, fixing sewer lines or working as “tree surgeons.” Hmm, I wonder why. Similarly, endless verbal indignation has been spawned by the terrible injustice of referring to God with masculine pronouns. Liturgical texts have been thoroughly revised to deal with this inequity. Worshippers are expected to use clumsy grammatical maneuvers to avoid references that are masculine. We are supposed to imagine God as an androgynous force or, better yet, as a woman, which would only be fair.

But no one — at least no one outside the inner circles of demon worship — suggests that Satan should be a she. It does seem like a feminist issue. It does seem unfair to women, doesn’t it, that such a powerful entity is imagined to be male?

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PERHAPS others have picked up on the intense irony of Harvard President Drew Faust’s bargain with the devil. Committed to “free expression” at all costs, she gave the okay for a Black Mass, or a “reenactment of a Black Mass,” to be sponsored by the adult school adjunct of the university. The Satanic Temple, a cult that is also sponsoring a monument to the devil outside the Oklahoma State building, apparently infiltrated the citadel of tolerance and planned the event at a Harvard bar. It reportedly has now been canceled because the bar, not the university, backed out. Read More »

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

A sadly very confused Austrian man, Tom Neuwirth, has won the Eurovision Song Contest.  For those unfamiliar with the ways of postmodern Europe (now very loosely interpreted: Azerbaijan sends contestants), the Eurovision Song Contest is a freak show in which the post-nations of post-Europe send contestants to vie for their nation’s honor by singing pop songs that are almost unimaginably bad.  The worst — to my ears, not the judges’ — is usually awarded first prize.   Read More »

SHERYL SANDBERG, Facebook chief operating officer and corporate feminist mega-celebrity who has made more than a billion dollars on the social networking company and her best-selling campaign to portray the overwhelmingly masculine world of Internet technology as glamorous and amenable to female ambition, has pledged to join with other billionaires and give away half her earnings to charity.

Many of the recent news reports about Sandberg’s pledge refer to her as a “self-made” billionaire. No one is entirely self-made (Sandberg went to Harvard and worked in the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton). The idea that a person is “self-made” is just plain absurd, but among the people who “made” Sandberg is her mother, who gave up her own career ambitions in her early twenties to focus on her children and home. This irony is generally lost on journalists who hyperventilate over Sandberg’s success.

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