A Pennsylvania German reward of merit, 1810-1830

IN THE Danish author Isak Dinesan’s short story, “Babette’s Feast,” the story upon which the well-known and remarkably faithful 1987 movie of the same name is based, General Loewenhielm rises at the end of the spectacular feast that Babette, the former French chef, has prepared in the rustic, ascetic home of the two pious Lutheran sisters who took Babette in as a servant after she fled revolution and the events of Bloody Week in France. Loewenhielm is deeply moved and wants to deliver a toast. The meal, so improbable and sublime, has profoundly affected him.

It has affected the other guests too. The elderly religious friends of Martine and Philippa are unaccustomed to sensual pleasures of this kind. They normally dine on simple fare such as split cod and bread-and-ale soup. They had been alarmed as Babette prepared for the feast, which was to be in honor of the ladies’ deceased father, the leader and prophet of their sect. They had wondered if Babette intended to use the beasts and various herbs in the kitchen to bewitch them. Instead, under the influence of Blinis Demidoff, Cailles en Sarcophage and Veuve Clicquot, they experience a joy and delight they had rarely, if ever, known. They are rejuvenated and their various enmities magically evaporate. Instead of being bewitched, they are filled with a child-like innocence and purity. They laugh under the effects of this mysterious convergence of spiritual and bodily forces.

But for the worldly Loewenhielm, the decorated military figure who counts the queen herself among his friends, the feast has a clear philosophical meaning. He had been suffering in recent days with thoughts of the emptiness and vanity of his life, of the successful career he had built beyond Berlevaag, the Norwegian coastal village where the meal takes place.

Under the influence of Babette’s meal, his disquiet and self-recriminations dissolve. He has a revelation: No matter what course he had taken in life, God’s grace would have been awaiting him.

Here is his toast before the gathered guests as told in the story:

“Man, my friends,” said General Loewenhielm, “is frail and foolish. We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason we tremble …” Never till now had the General stated that he trembled; he was genuinely surprised and even shocked at hearing his own voice proclaim the fact. “We tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! that which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!”

IN THE entry about the demonstrating French feminists who cursed Christianity and opponents of homosexual “marriage,” Daniel S. writes:

With Christianity gone from the public square and from the hearts of most Frenchmen, an old enemy has returned. Islam is now set to surpass Catholicism as the dominant religion in France. The hedonistic nihilism of the decadent, spoiled bourgeoisie will naturally crumble before the soldiers of Allah that now populate large portions of France. It might be boobs for these spoiled children today, still playing out their silly rebellions against any father figure, but it will be burqas tomorrow when the Muslims, with their eternal will power, assume the upper hand.

Read More »

AT The Orthosphere, Kristor offers a reasonable guide to survival and affecting the culture. In the immediate future, he recommends:

1. Resolve to pay no more PC jizya (beautifully spelled out in the Solzhenitsyn essay that has been discussed a lot lately in the wider orthosphere). Tell the truth, and call a spade a spade: calmly, politely, and without being obstreperous about it, but nevertheless firmly. Without making a big deal about it or calling attention to yourself, fail to appear for the public rites of Moloch. If you must thus appear, quietly fail to meet the requirements of the rite. Read More »

TIBERGE at Galliawatch has another must-read post on one of the recent demonstrations against same-sex unions in France. She writes:

Nude women, part of the “Femen” group disrupted the march and sprayed the demonstrators with tear gas. Their naked torsos were painted with blasphemous slogans such as “F… God”, “F… Church” and “In gay we trust” (photos below).

These obscene paid “professionals” were supported and seconded by a well-known French “journalist” and militant lesbian named Caroline Fourest, who had already demonstrated in favor of gay marriage on Saturday and had been pushed back by the police.

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SJF writes:

Here is a sermon by Fr. Jackson of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Littleton, Colorado on the election, culture, history, World War I and how Catholics should respond to recent events. He wrote:

So what to do? C.S. Lewis knew the Great War was the end of Christian rule. So he wrote that from here on out, we are not called to rule but to sabotage. We are not being called to win an earthly victory. We are simply being called to battle. And to understand the first thing we have to do to be in the battle, I’ll turn back to Tolkien [and The Lord of the Rings.]

When the hero Frodo sees that the great age of Elves was passing, and the age of men was beginning, he says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” His friend Gandalf says in reply, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

I thought you would enjoy his thoughts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

KEVIN V. writes:

Here is today’s State Department announcement, sent to all employees:

2012 National Transgender Day of Remembrance

National Transgender Day of Remembrance is observed on November 20th each year to memorialize those who suffered or died as a result of anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. Such persons were victimized simply because they failed to meet someone else’s expectation of how they should identify or present themselves. Globally, the transgender community is among the most vulnerable and most misunderstood of communities, often facing lives of persecution, humiliation, poverty, exclusion, and rejection – even from their own families. Read More »

IN rejecting the current American order, it is a big mistake to idolize the Founding and seek to return to an earlier point in our political history. As a reader noted in the previous entry and as Lawrence Auster points out, we couldn’t have gotten here unless America was flawed from the start. Mr. Auster writes:

The official documents of the Founding defined America in terms of universal equal freedom (the Declaration of Independence) and neutral government procedures (the Constitution). It did not define America as a religiously, culturally, and racially specific nation. Yes, such culturally specific definitions were a part of the Founding, but were not stated with the same force, explicitness and authority as the equalitarian, procedural aspects. Read More »

HERE IS another example of fraktur, colorful documents made by Pennsylvania Germans in the 18th and 19th centuries. This marriage certificate was made in 1839 in Northampton, Pennsylvania. Here is a translation:

I, Maria Stüwer, entered into the state of matrimony with Johannes Spriegel, on the 14th day of March, in the year of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, one thousand eight hundred and thirty seven. In God’s name we commenced, his spirit leads us on the right path, to announce the state of householding. Because it is still so unknown to many, we bring the verses into bright light, informing those the teaching breaks. [In English] Made by Daniel Stephen Horn, Teacher, September the 3rd, 1839.

HERE is good news. Thousands of people turned out in cities across France for two different demonstrations, yesterday and today, against a bill that would legalize homosexual marriage and adoption. Tiberge writes about the events at Galliawatch.

Notice how the banner above calls attention not just to marriage as one man and one woman, but to the child as having both a mother and a father. Homosexual marriage involves the unjust deprivation of children of their natural parents and homosexual adoption deprives the orphaned child of surrogates for both his mother and father. Behind the banner is a sign calling for parity in marriage, mocking the left’s constant calls for parity with equal number of men and women in all spheres of life. And below is another great sign, which says, “A father, a mother — One doesn’t lie to children.” That’s a terrific statement.

Read More »

CHRISTINE SMITH writes:

I came across this song by the Quebec band Mes Aïeux on Youtube. I think these Québécois are onto something. The song didn’t end with as much “punch” as I had hoped, but they bring up some good points about the degeneration of culture.

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AT Galliawatch, the blogger Tiberge, who writes about the nightmarish conquest of France from within, writes:

The Plutonic forces of destruction cannot be stopped. We have to let them run their course to make way for the new. But we must, at the same time, do whatever we can to see to it that the new order, built on the ashes of the old, is not devoid of memory. That it is, instead, totally aware of what happened, of who was responsible, of what was done and not done to prevent it, and of the responsibility to keep alive the best of our efforts.

AT Minding the Campus, Clark Whelton discusses the linguistic chaos that extreme tolerance and open-mindedness created. He writes:

In the mid-1980s, American English was overwhelmed by a linguistic mutation that transferred the burden of verbal communication from speaker to listener. Because it sidestepped the need for vocabulary and clarity, and because its shapeless syntax shielded speakers from the risk of saying something insensitive or incorrect, this new mode of expression won rapid acceptance, jumping from campus jargon to national discourse with astonishing speed. It was, like, you know, like, whoa. I mean, I’m like omigod! It was, hello, you know, totally amazing, and stuff.

He says the trend has basically run its course, which is surprising to me.

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NUMEROUS comments have been added to the excellent discussion in the entry on whether American traditionalists can rightfully view themselves as dissidents similar to the Soviet dissidents who fought Communism. In that entry, Henry McCulloch writes:

I agree with [Lawrence] Auster that American traditionalists (Americans, in this comment) can no longer dissent from the U.S.A. in the same way Solzhenitsyn dissented from the USSR, although Americans’ view of the U.S. government should parallel Solzhenitsyn’s view of the Soviet Communist Party.  Americans traditionally do not dissociate their country from its government, despite early Americans’ wariness of government.  Solzhenitsyn, by the time he emerged from the gulag, certainly dissociated Russia from the Soviet Union; indeed he viewed the Bolshevik Revolution and all its works as largely alien irruptions into Russian life.  In his mind, Russia and the Communists’ Soviet Union were not at all the same thing.  Solzhenitsyn was right about that, even as he was also right not to deny Russians’ complicity in Communist crimes.

Any successful future in post-America for Americans will be despite the U.S. government, which is as anti-American as the Bolsheviks were anti-Russian.  Mr. Auster says it’s no longer enough to be a dissident, because dissenting implies one seeks the restoration of a previous order.  But no restoration of the old American order is possible.  That America is gone.  Thus the United States that was the legitimate government of America is also gone, succeeded by a U.S. government actively hostile to most Americans.  This is not quite the situation Solzhenitsyn thought Russia was in under Communist rule.  If Solzhenitsyn had believed the Russia buried under the rubble — to borrow a Solzhenitsyn title – of Communism was dead, his life’s work would have been meaningless.

Mr. McCulloch’s comment continues in that entry.

ANDY writes:

EMBOLDENED supposedly by Romney’s loss among women, liberal Democrats and Tories are scrambling for new ways to make motherhood obsolete, The Daily Mail reports. It all boils down to more of the same old socialist plans for subsidized childcare, parental leave and affirmative action, which all boil down to making motherhood more unappealing. Read More »

IN THE recent entry on an article titled “Going Solzhenitsyn,” in which a writer argued for traditionalists to look to Soviet dissidents for inspiration, Lawrence Auster maintains that it is too late for dissidence. Here is his comment in full:

My only quibble with Robert Oculus’s article is the title and the concluding phrase, “We must now go Solzhenitsyn.” I think it’s too late for that.

Let me explain. Read More »

GUILAIN writes from France:

Reading my recent description here of French women and their terrible fashions, one could think that I had never come across a beautiful, feminine woman.

Actually I have. It happened during my first year in college (six years ago). There was a young woman who always paid great attention to makeup, grooming and clothes. Her outfits were modest, but truly elegant. Most of the time she wore pants (I wish she hadn’t), but a few times she exhibited delightful skirts. I admired particularly that she never, ever appeared with androgynous shoes, but always with nice women’s shoes. She stood out thanks to the way she dressed, but that’s not all.

She also was full of feminine grace which one could admire in her movements and smile. And she was a Catholic. One of the last thing she told me before she moved to Paris (four years ago) was: “I like France.“

This one sentence was arresting. Why was it important? Read More »