JEN ZORATTI, a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (as if there is such a thing), recently hailed the movie Obvious Child which “finally opens in Winnipeg this weekend.” The movie, she writes, represents a positive cultural development. For it is a romantic comedy that portrays abortion in a positive light.

Donna decides to have an abortion. And nothing bad happens to her.

Zoratti considers it outrageous that some people in this era of enlightenment still oppose abortion. The “subtlety of right-to-life tropes” is especially annoying. Anti-abortion activists are even arguing that terminating life in the womb is psychologically and medically harmful to women!! Do you believe it!?

From where I’m sitting, these are new tools of an old oppression under the guise of being “pro-woman.” All the more reason we need films such as Obvious Child to help de-stigmatize what is a common — and, in this country, legal — procedure.

Zoratti fails to mention that the overwhelming majority of these public critics of abortion are women themselves. Minor detail.

Don’t be fooled by this column into thinking Zoratti’s callousness towards women and children, her sense of superiority and condescension toward anyone who would not easily eliminate a human life in its formative stages, means she is devoid of maternal sentiments. She is not. In fact, she is extremely maternal. In another column, Zoratti effuses over of her dog, Samson:

Full disclosure: I am a dog mom.

My baby’s name is Samson. He’s a two-year-old Maltese/shih tzu cross — a handsome little fella with a wonky underbite, soulful brown eyes and a big personality. The kindly neighbour calls him “Mr. GQ” when he wears his charcoal grey J. Crew-esque turtle-neck sweater. (Yes, he owns a charcoal grey J. Crew-esque turtle-neck sweater.)

I regale friends and co-workers with what I think are adorable, witty stories about his various quirks. I flood my social-media feeds with photos. Samson in the porch. Samson in the park. Plaintive Samson. Artsy Samson. Samson in repose. On my desk at work is a framed photo of Samson and his dad, my partner. Our mothers refer to him as their grandchild. We’ve raised him from puppyhood. We can’t imagine our lives without him.

I am sure her friends are eager to see every last picture of Samson.

The nice thing about canine children is that they don’t stand in the way of a brilliant career as a newspaper ideologue. Samson, with his wit, his soulful eyes, his artistic depths, his interesting quirks, his “wonky underbite,” will never be an ornery teenager reminding his mother just how imperfect she is or keep her up night after night or require extensive moral education or be the subject of intense conjugal disagreement. As far as maternal investment goes, Samson is a remarkably good deal. Something tells me that Ms. Zoratti would be happy to oppress Samson’s real mother if abortion had been under consideration before her little darling was born.

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A.J. WEST, who comments as Anthony Gonzales at length in the previous entry, describes the first part of his fictional trilogy Wolves Among the Ruins here:

The Prince Dethroned begins with the death of Pope John Paul II and the unexpected election of an obscure bishop governing the small diocese of Palencia, Spain. This unknown bishop is actually a man of great resolve and integrity who has observed the autodemolition of the Catholic Church by men and women supposedly dedicated to its protection and the continuance of holy tradition handed on since the Apostles. He had protected his diocese but against all odds. Now he is thrust into the most powerful position of authority on earth and he will have to walk carefully.

What if a man were elected to the Papacy who was more like William Wallace (Braveheart) than Robert the Bruce, or more like George Patton than Dwight D. Eisenhower, or more like a Winston Churchill than Neville Chamberlain? How would such a man deal with the crisis, turmoil and scandals in the Catholic Church of the 21st Century; a crisis fomented by Masonic infiltrators, turmoil sown by Communist sabotours, and scandals spawned by Modernist pseudo-Catholics? Would he compromise and appease or would he deal with the threat directly. How would his actions affect the geopolitical landscape of Europe, the United States and the rest of the world?

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  FROM Authority and Its Enemies (Transaction, 1995) by Thomas Molnar: NOW my contention is that authority is analogous to love. Every act within the family is either a manifestation of authority (and corresponding obedience or refusal) or a manifestation of its absence. At first sight, love could be represented by a larger circle, authority by a smaller one inscribed in the first. Love is always present in the form of care, consideration, gifts, gestures, and so on, whereas authority needs a precise external sign, a regular affirmation, a direction. I once heard a father say how he envied his brother who merely had to signal to his teenage sons in order to silence them when he was talking with other adults. "My son would continue talking," he lamented in a resigned tone. The case of the two brothers displays similar situations and similar sentiments of paternal love, but they are made dissimilar by the presence or absence of authority. It is not difficult to conclude that love is more effective (and mutually more satisfying) when accompanied by authority. The latter indeed is a way of channeling love; instead of a general and ubiquitous emotionalism, love becomes structured, apportioned, is made directive, I would even say "educational" if the term had not been devalued as a part of the bureaucratic jargon. Anyway, love is formative and humanizing when coupled with authority; in combination, the two are the cement of the family structure.

DAN writes:

I check into your website daily and admire your thought-provoking and stylish essays/subjects.  I am 50 years old, married with four children.  I recently went through a horrendous trial regarding Francis, who I believe is a heretic, if not an outright apostate.  That is not something I broadcast, given the circles I travel in, but is more my opinion.  I entertain the sedevacantist thesis, and nearly embraced it completely.   (more…)

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.

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

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  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.

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:

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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.

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  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.

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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.  (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).

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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. (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? (more…)

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