AT The American Thinker, Don Wilkie explains why he moved his small manufacturing business out of Detroit. He blames government. But when one reads carefully, one discovers it wasn’t government so much as a corrupt and dishonest workforce. In order to get one good employee, Wilkie had to hire eight. But the workers he fired in order to get that one good employee came back to haunt him when they accused him of violating their civil rights or said they had been injured on the job in order to get Workers Compensation benefits. He had to go to extreme fortress-building measures to make sure his buildings were secure, but these were nothing compared to the problems with the workers. He writes:

After a period of time, my insurance company put me in what was called the “Assigned Risk” pool. What that meant in practice was that my Workman’s Compensation insurance costs doubled overnight.  Every new employee hired became a huge financial burden not in terms of wages but in terms of Unemployment and Workman’s Comp costs. (more…)

DON VINCENZO writes:

The summer edition of West Point Magazine demonstrates beyond cavil that “inclusiveness” and “diversity” are the hallmarks of the institution that gave us Generals Lee, Grant, MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton. We learn that Nadja West, a 1982 graduate of West Point, has been promoted to a two-star general. General West is both female and black. Female cadets are omnipresent in the photos and stories that comprise the magazine.

The cover is a clear indication of what is perceived as the U.S. Army’s future. An aging white officer is pictured with his successor: a female, probably Hispanic or black. That emphasis on the “diversity” of future graduating classes at West Point can be seen throughout the magazine. What is evident from each of the articles is that the military academies, especially under this administration, have bought the feminist siren’s song of “inclusiveness” and “diversity” as much as other higher education institutions. (more…)

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

Two cheers for Prince George Alexander Louis!  Hip, Hip …

I should give three if Prince George were intended to become a Catholic monarch one day.  But Great Britain’s last Catholic sovereign, James II of England and VII of Scotland, was driven illegally from his dual throne in 1688 in “The [in]Glorious Revolution,” undoing such good as the Stuart Restoration had accomplished.  Might that eruption and its aftermath – the generally dismal sequence of Germanic Protestants on the throne since – have anything to do with the morally moribund state of no-longer-Great Britain?  Speculation, and no doubt idle.

Which leads to an update from what our late and greatly missed comrade, Lawrence Auster, was wont to call the Dead Island.  David Cameron, the contemptible chancer now squatting in No. 10 Downing Street, has embarked on a crusade (The Telegraph‘s term, not mine) against children’s seeing pornography on the Internet. Well, bully for him.  Can anyone imagine an easier political target for some cost-free grandstanding?  (more…)

THE DISCUSSION continues in the entry, “What Destroyed Detroit.” Bill R., who has eloquently held his own, responds to a reader who says Africans, when comparing themselves to American blacks, are “very glad to be in Africa.” Bill writes:

With all due respect, it is utterly the opposite. Let me begin by drawing your attention to a book review recently published in The Wall Street Journal of a book called Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau. Miss Raboteau appears by all accounts to be, in her political beliefs at least, a rather predictably liberal American black academic (or mixed race, according to the article), convinced, for example, that race is nothing but a social construct. The reviewer describes the book as “the author’s decade-long attempt to discover just where, if anywhere, an African-American might feel at home.” Suffice it to say for the present that her quest turned out to be something of a disappointment. To quote one passage from the article, “Many Ghanaians she speaks with—some of whom appear to still own slaves—concur. Most are incredulous that blacks from the U.S. should wish to come back. At one point a taxi driver mistakes her for a white woman and launches into an unchecked tirade about blacks: ‘These blacks truly expect too much. . . . Don’t they know that if tomorrow a slave ship arrived at Elmina to carry us to America, so many Ghanaians would climb on board that this ship would sink to the bed of the ocean from our weight?'”

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  EIGHTY people were killed in a train crash outside Santiago de Compostela in Spain on Wednesday night. The driver of the train was reportedly exceeding the speed limit by some 40 miles an hour when it crashed into a wall. Many of the passengers were tourists or Catholic pilgrims to the famous city, which is the destination point for the Way of St. James pilgrimage. "Santiago" is Gallician for  Sanctu Iacobu, or St. James, to whom the city's cathedral, below, which was built in the 12th century, is dedicated.

KARL D. writes:

The Oxford dictionary is now changing the definition of marriage in light of legalized homosexual marriage. In other news, homosexual activists are up in arms over the treatment and sometimes physical beatings they have been receiving in Russia. I don’t condone the beatings of homosexuals, but like most Western homosexuals they claim to be about “rights” but are more about putting it in your face and forcing you not only to accept them, but to cheer them on as well! Why the need for a “gay pride” parade? Why the need for public “Kiss in’s”? Russia actually has anti-homosexual propaganda laws which forbid the promotion of homosexuality to minors. Something which they seem to find beyond the pale and were protesting.

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HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

“Catholic” Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court’s liberal majority in last month’s Windsor decision, pretended that the majority’s attack on the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act was limited to striking down its provisions forbidding federal agencies to recognize homosexuals’ “marriages.”  Conservative commentators, Catholic and otherwise, warned even before the Supreme Court had handed down its unconstitutional ukaze that overturning any part of DOMA would throw open the door – through judicial abuse of the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause – to forcing all states to recognize any homosexual “marriage” contracted in any other state. They were right. It did not take long for what pro-marriage advocates warned against to happen.

In a sad situation — sad because one of the men is near death — two Ohio-resident homosexual men have sued to compel that state to recognize their Maryland “marriage,” contracted on an airfield in Anne Arundel County in the jet chartered to fly them to and from Maryland, as the ALS-afflicted member of the pairing could not move.  (more…)

M. MASON writes:

While engaged in online research about 19th century gardens I came across an article in the Shreveport Daily News of April 26, 1861 that I thought might interest you.  Titled “The Marriage Ring,” it gives a short historical overview of the symbolic matrimonial love-token which, the article states, “Many women regard as a precious treasure and preserve with great care.”  Then a certain personal story is related:

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IN a June column, Phyllis Schlafly wrote about Obama’s efforts to introduce universal preschool, which is in this case another name for day care. This is one of the most cherished fantasies of feminists despite massive evidence that day care does not benefit children in the long run. It’s not enough that children are imprisoned from ages five to 18. Obama wants to get them earlier. Schlafly wrote:

Under the media’s radar, Obama has been aggressively promoting one of his fiscally extravagant projects announced in his 2013 State of the Union Address: “preschool available to every single child in America.” The plan for the federal government to take over the care of preschool children, a longtime goal of the feminists that used to be called universal child care, is now (probably to sound academic) called Pre-K. (more…)

SUSAN-ANNE WHITE writes from Northern Ireland:

I am somewhat confused by your post and comments about the new royal baby. Have you changed your opinion of the Duchess of Cambridge, now describing her face in flattering terms? In a previous post, you described her as “mesmerizingly insipid.”

Your post about the new royal baby included reference to the fact that Prince William will take “paternity” leave, and you have nothing to say about that, even though the whole idea of paternity leave is a capitulation to feminism. (more…)

BUCK writes:

Jay from Goshen argues in this post that progressive policies and politics didn’t destroy Detroit, but that blacks did. Or, as I extend it, that modern liberal policies and politics, implemented by a ruling white majority, aren’t destroying our civilization, “others” are.

Three years ago, there was a discussion at VFR, kicked-off by a discussion between Bonald and Alan Roebuck at Throne and Altar. They debated which threat to us was greater: liberalism or Islam. Mr. Roebuck brought the discussion to VFR. He stuck to his guns and eventually secured the agreement of Lawrence Auster. Others of us, as did Bonald, argued that modern liberalism is the supreme threat. I’m more convinced than ever, that it is the threat of all threats – that modern liberalism spawns the others. (more…)

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU has a new piece at The Brussels Journal about the thinkers Eric Voegelin and René Guénon. In “René Guénon and Eric Voegelin on the Degeneration of Right Order,” he examines their understandings of the post-Alexandrian world, when rival generals sought control of the vast empire. The new empires that emerged became a “graveyard of societies,” wrote Voegelin, destroying concrete and distinct societies. The obliteration of traditional ways parallels that of modernity. Bertonneau writes: (more…)

THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a boy is posted outside Buckingham Palace. According to the Daily Mail, Prince William will now take two weeks paid paternity leave.

Kate Middleton had a beautiful smile in her last public appearance, and in photos taken throughout her pregnancy. Birth is a marvel. The miracle never grows old.

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MANUEL VALLS, the French Minister of the Interior, is pictured here observing the end of the Ramadan fast at the Grand Mosque of Paris last week. A day later, French police were busy subduing riots of Muslims in Trappe in the Versailles region. The riots began after police attempted to fine a woman for wearing a full burqa.

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KARL D. writes:

DON VINCENZO writes:

Much to my surprise, the extent of the continuing decline of the traditional, nuclear family has now become a fact of life in a place that I thought it would not happen as quickly: Italy. In an article in the Italian national newspaper, Corriere della Sera (July 10, 2013), the Italian government reported that the number of children born to non-married couples has increased steadily. As a national average, from 8.1 percent in 1995, 20.4 percent in 2009, it now has reached 24.5 percent in 2011.

The north led the way with the area of the Alto Adige reaching nearly 42 percent, and the lowest in the southern region of Basilicata at 10.3 percent. (more…)

A READER from Croatia writes:

I am your faithful reader for two years now, but this is the first time that I’m writing to you. Excuse my grammar. I haven’t written a letter in English for some time. I’m from Europe — Croatia to be exact. I study law but in my spare time have many interests one of which is frequent visits to your blog. Please receive my admiration for your activity.

I think Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his Harvard address that nothing is forbidden in the West, but there is a fine mechanism which separates fashionable ideas from the ones which are not fashionable. From that time, this mechanism has gotten a little uglier. (more…)