AT The Orthosphere, Dr. Thomas F. Bertonneau describes the breakdown in reading ability and discipline he has witnessed as a literature professor. Increasingly, students tell him they cannot understand assigned readings and about ten percent flatly refuse to read at all, probably because it is too demanding. He writes:

Post-literacy is both a symptom of the general breakdown of North American society and a cause of many other aspects of that disaster. It combines insidiously, for example, with the trends of narcissism and group-identity that have so distorted our “liberal” politics; it helps make people vulnerable to propaganda and demagoguery; and it stultifies the cultural scene by deleting the ability to think. Indeed, post-literacy has an ideological expression under such terms as “critical thinking,” which is a euphemism designed to equalize groupthink with actual ratiocination and judgment. “Offense” and “discomfort” are likewise ideological constructions rooted in the post-literate “shame culture.” (more…)

THE New York Times’s has a front-page obituary today of the former New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka, who in addition to being a self-described “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist,” was a hater of whites, a Nazi sympathizer, a Muslim convert and one of the worst poets ever published. There are two reasons why Baraka’s poetic junk reached the light of literary day — the color of his skin and his hatred of white civilization.

But even liberals had a hard time loving him — not because of his sympathies with genocidal Communism, but because he ranted against Jews. The New Jersey legislature eliminated the position of poet laureate purely in an effort to fire Baraka for his poem “Somebody Blew up America,” which blamed 9-11 on Israel. See John Derbyshire’s literary analysis of the poem.

Lawrence Auster wrote in 2002:

What the mainstream media has not mentioned is that, apart from those four lines attacking Israel, the rest of the 292 line poem, which I found at the black web site bet.com, is a ceaseless invocation of hatred against whites as the source of virtually all the evil in the universe. Needless to say, no one has demanded that Baraka/Jones resign over that.

There would be something comical about millions of white suburbanites turning to their newspaper over breakfast coffee today and reading approving commentary about this breathtakingly hateful poetic garbage that blames every conceivable evil in the world on them — it would be funny, if it was not true.

(more…)

    A 1910 photograph from the website British Paintings.

RACISM is killing black men, according to a new study. CBS reports:

Accelerated aging and a greater likelihood of suffering from an age-related illness at a younger age are two consequences being linked to African-American men who have experienced high-levels of racism throughout their lives.

A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that African-American men who reported high levels of racial discrimination, or who have internalized anti-black attitudes themselves, have an increased risk of premature death and chronic disease than white people.

Previous research has documented African-Americans’ shorter life expectancy and greater risk of chronic diseases, but this new study is the first to link racism-related experiences to accelerated aging at the biological, cellular level.

By the way, notice the clever use of the passive voice. If the first sentence had said, “High levels of racism are causing accelerated aging and age-related illnesses in African-American men,” the falsity of it would have been much more apparent.

(more…)

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

European geopolitical analyst Sören Kern writes about The Islamization of Britain for the Gatestone Institute.  Westerners, read it and weep. There are really no bright spots in Kern’s account of British officialdom’s unfailing capitulation to alien Moslem agitators’ every Sharia-driven demand that the traditional life of Britain be suppressed so as not to give them offense.  Kern appears to confirm the late political philosopher Lawrence Auster’s verdict on once-Great Britain: for now, at least, and for actual Britons, the Sceptr’d Isle is dead.  Her Majesty’s Government is her people’s enemy and her enemies’ friend.  And it is supposedly a Conservative government.  The same, of course, is true of almost every social institution of any importance. (more…)

JAMES N. writes:

Your recent posts on the question of the papacy are quite provocative. I have a couple of things for you to consider.

Since I was a Protestant for 59 years, you could say that I recognize Protestant thinking coming and going. To me, the Protestant paradigm falls over the issue of authority, specifically, authority to govern the Church and to speak with authority about the meaning of Scripture.

(more…)

AS promised, I would like to examine briefly another excerpt from the Rev. Antonio Spadaro’s account of comments  “Pope” Francis made before a gathering of the heads of religious orders. It is an important excerpt because it helps us understand the revolutionary phraseology of Vatican II. Francis here is discussing the formation of priests:

  A RUSSIAN blogger, Mat Rodina, aptly describes Britain: The UK is like that crazy and broke aunt, who was once a lady of the court, but has since partied, gambled and sorted out her fortune into just enough to survive and nothing more. However, she has still retained all those old dresses, nicknacks and furniture to fill her old and aging house that she can not afford to repair or maintain and that one day will collapse from rot. Sure, for those who happen to be riding by or walking through the yard and not looking too closely, it appears grand, but once they move into one of the rooms, they start to realize the lights flicker, the heating is unstable, the pipes leak and mice are in the walls. In a related matter, Prince George baby memorabilia has been put on deep discount:  

AN American who teaches philosophy at Paris University is disturbed to find that the French openly display negative attitudes toward nonwhite immigrants. Justin Smith, writing in The New York Times, tries to make sense of the “rising xenophobia in France:”

In the past year I have witnessed incessant stop-and-frisk of young black men in the Gare du Nord; in contrast with New York, here in Paris this practice is scarcely debated. I was told by a taxi driver as we passed through a black neighborhood: “I hope you got your shots. You don’t need to go to Africa anymore to get a tropical disease.” On numerous occasions, French strangers have offered up the observation to me, in reference to ethnic minorities going about their lives in the capital: “This is no longer France. France is over.” There is a constant, droning presupposition in virtually all social interactions that a clear and meaningful division can be made between the people who make up the real France and the impostors.

(more…)

FROM G.K. Chesterton’s “The God in the Cave” in The Everlasting Man:

It is still a strange story, though an old one, how they came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names; Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that moves all the sages. They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward. But even in order to understand that reward, we must understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was the completion of the incomplete.

(more…)

BUCK writes:

In an earlier entry, I mentioned that my sister became pregnant at the age of 19. She ended up marrying the much older man for his name only. She never saw him again after the wedding.

Last year, my niece — my sister’s daughter who was now age forty nine — learned via a persistent phone call to her mother, that her father was dead. My sister twice hung up on the unfamiliar caller, who asked questions that annoyed her, rather than getting to the point and seizing her attention.

(more…)

MODERNIST Catholic theologians and pontiffs have often used inflated and unclear language to convey revolutionary ideas. Jorge Bergoglio is, as we all know, a master at diffusing this rhetorical fog. His famous interviews and first “apostolic exhortation” were riddled with revolutionary code words and familiar phrases newly defined, as well as new terms of his own, such as “self-absorbed promethean neo-Pelagianism.” See Atila Sinke Guimarães analysis of some of Bergoglio’s “papal slang.”

“Pope” Francis’s most recently published “interview,” comprised of comments he made during a conversation with Superiors General of various religious orders on Nov. 29, 2013, is no exception to this trend. There is much that is disturbing in it, but I offer today only one excerpt from the conversation as recorded by the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, S.J.:

“I am convinced of one thing: the great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery. It is a hermeneutical looked at from the periphery, and not when our viewpoint is equidistant from everything. Truly to understand reality we need to move away from the central position of calmness and peacefulness and direct ourselves to the peripheral areas. Being at the periphery helps to see and to understand better, to analyze reality more correctly, to shun centralism and ideological approaches.”

(more…)

  "O God, who on this day didst manifest Thine only-begotten Son to the Gentiles by the guidance of a star: graciously grant, that we, who know Thee now by faith, may be led even to contemplate the beauty of Thy Majesty." --- Collect of the Epiphany of Our Lord, Roman Missal, 1962

  T.D. writes: Apropos of our discussion of the evil nature of American military interventions, it seems Al Qaeda aligned forces have captured Fallujah. You may recall this was the site of a major Marine offensive back in 2004.  One of my drill instructors at OCS saw action in Fallujah.  After 4500 dead, a trillion dollars and the destruction of the Christian community, all we have to show for our invasion is the capture of major cities by our sworn enemies.  Maybe we can send in some female Marines to recapture the city, as long as it doesn't require heavy lifting or scaling walls.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

THE New York Times recently profiled “stay-at-home” husbands of Wall Street executives, a minor but increasingly common phenomenon that fulfills the treasured fantasies of feminists. Go to the sidebar of the piece and watch the short, telling video about the life of little Beckett. His mother says she would pull her hair out if she were to stay home and fortunately her husband loves it. What is it like to have a mother who publicly proclaims that she couldn’t stand caring for you? The modern world is a desert of maternal aridness.

(more…)

ALAN writes:

I agree with your recent remarks and those of Anthony Esolen regarding “destroying the imagination” with modern toys and games. They prompted these thoughts:

On ordinary evenings in 1952-’54, my grandmother held me on her lap as she enjoyed the weekly half-hour episodes of “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” on our black-and-white television. She had been born long before television, before commercial radio, before automobiles and airplanes.  She was quiet, conservative, straight-laced, and a lifelong Catholic.  She enjoyed the kind of humor offered on television in the 1950s by Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Spring Byington, Eve Arden, and Art Linkletter. She also enjoyed TV westerns because she knew they incorporated an iron moral code and would never permit evildoers to go unpunished.

Little things can be powerful reminders. The melody of the 1920 song “Love Nest” was used as the theme music for the Burns and Allen show.  Hearing that melody every week while sitting there on her lap is one of my oldest and earliest memories. The voice of announcer Harry Von Zell – distinctive, warm, soothing, never frenzied – is also part of that memory. (more…)

ROBERT SHAW’S arrangement of this beautiful and ancient carol can be heard here.

(more…)