THE latest issue of Praesidium features an essay by Thomas F. Bertonneau on René Guenon, the French reactionary who died in 1951. Mr. Bertonneau’s article provides an excellent overview of the writings of a man who attacked “the stultifying massiveness of modern society, with its conformism on an unprecedented scale.” In the Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Guenon saw the glorification of quantity over quality as fundamental to the modern obsession with equality. Mr. Bertonneau writes:

The “Reign of Quantity” requires that its constituency live unconnected with any past in a kind of perpetual present, on the multiplying distractions of which the untutored mind remains stupidly fixed.  Guénon remarks how industry fills life with things, objects and devices, which monopolize attention, and which assimilate individuals to the pattern of the consumer.  In our own time the variety and fascination – and the idiocy – of these things have only increased.  (more…)

IN A 2008 discussion at VFR, the commenter Thucydides wrote:

Why is the idea of armed self defense so repugnant to liberals? It crosses their core assumptions in several ways.

First, the need for it suggests that human evil is a normal, expectable state of affairs, not something aberrant that is produced by some imperfection in collective social arrangements. The core liberal assumption is the sentimental faith that humans are essentially good and reasonable; violence is explained away as the regrettable result of anger proceeding from some form of injustice, real or imagined. The problem then is not the violence, and not human nature, but some social condition. (Small comfort to the victims!) (more…)

FIVE  years ago, at VFR, I proposed a plan for preventing school massacres. I called it “Three Teachers, Three Guns,” and suggested arming a minimum of three teachers in every school building (more in sprawling buildings). A sign could be placed on a school identifying its participation.

Today, despite all the talk of draconian gun control, something like this plan is actually being envisioned in some states. A Tennessee lawmaker is the latest to propose a bill for arming and training a small number of teachers. Legislators in a few other states– Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota and Oregon —  have discussed laws permitting teachers to carry concealed weapons in recent weeks. (more…)

  DANIEL S. writes: Here is how the Muslim world celebrated Christmas: In Pakistan, a Muslim mob armed with weapons attacked Christian worshipers in the capital city leaving Christmas services. In Egypt, the army foiled a plot for a Christmas day attack on a Coptic church. A similar plot by Chechen Muslim terrorists directed against Christmas services was disrupted in southern Russia by security forces. To top it off, Muslim terrorists in Mosul, Iraq slit the throat of a female Christian teacher.

WHEELER MACPHERSON writes:

I am encouraged by some of the comments, here and here, regarding cremation, funerals, and burial. I say “encouraged” because my heart rejoices at any glimmer of people weaning themselves from the control and ordinances of illegitimate authority. I believe the funeral industry is such an authority.

Some years ago, I read several books on death, dying, and funerals, including Lisa Carlson’s excellent “Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love.” I used this book as a jumping-off point for a Sunday School class on “A Christian View of Death, Dying, and Funeral Preparation.”

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IN The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton wrote of the Magi, the Eastern philosopher kings who traveled to Bethlehem under the guidance of a star. While the shepherds were drawn out of simplicity to the baby in the manger, the Oriental kings, carrying expensive gifts, were drawn by a longing for truth and wisdom.

The mere sight of the newborn satisfied their deepest intellectual yearnings.

Chesterton wrote in his chapter, “The God in the Cave”:

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. (more…)

I WAS away for a week during the Christmas season, taking care of a sick aunt in Florida, so I did not get a chance to watch the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day concert, which takes place in the magnificent Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. Fortunately, the concert, conducted this year by Franz Welser-Möst, can be seen in its entirety, complete with the famous Strauss waltzes, online at PBS until Jan. 16.

See my previous post on the Vienna Philharmonic, which has resisted feminization and multiculturalism in an era when most Western orchestras have been dramatically transformed by the entry of large numbers of women and Asians. As I wrote before:

The Philharmonic did not allow women to become full members until 1997. Between 1997 and 2010, a period during which many other orchestras became heavily female, it hired only three women. Paul Fürst, a violist, once stated in a documentary on women conductors:

There is no ban on women musicians playing here but the Vienna Philharmonic is by tradition an all-male orchestra. Our profession makes family life extremely difficult, so for a woman it’s almost impossible. There are so many orchestras with women members so why shouldn’t there be – for how long I don’t know – an orchestra with no women in it … A woman shouldn’t play like a man but like a woman, but an all-male orchestra is bound to have a special tone.

In America, the first violin sections of major orchestras do not look like this anymore:

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  THE DANISH painter Viggo Johansen painted several wonderful pictures of friends gathered around a table conversing in lamplight, their faces animated by deep conversation and intense rapport. They include this 1886 painting, Aftenpassiar, or Evening Talk. In each of the paintings, his conversing men and women appear in suits and elegant dress, as if intellectual communion is a formal event.

IN THIS interview with Jennifer Granholm, Tricia Rose, a professor from Brown University, expresses disbelief that the Violence Against Women Act was not reauthorized by the 112th Congress. But here’s the astounding part. The Ivy League professor maintains that Republicans did not want to move the bill because they did not want to protect Native American women who are “violated” by white men on tribal lands.

Granholm, without flinching before this fat lie, says Republicans believe Native American women are not “human enough.” And Rose, who looks ridiculously un-professorial in a silky purple blouse, reminds us that whites stole Indian lands.

These two well-dressed bullies are utterly at home with lies. For them, the ends justify the means. A domestic violence bill that presumes every man is a potential wife-beater is so inherently and undeniably good that any falsification of the truth, even the patently false claim that white men are routinely “violating” Indian women, is justified.

Rose is a professor of Africana studies and receives generous grants from major foundations for her virulently anti-white activism and mind-blowing ignorance. Her entire career is proof of the power women and nonwhites possess. Both Rose and Granholm are shocked that the whole world is not up in arms that VAWA has not been reauthorized and they blame it on a conspiracy to deprive young women of the enlightened truths of feminism.

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  SEE Carolyn's moving comments in the thread about cremation. She describes how her family and friends have made burial a more personal --- and also less expensive -- affair. When her grandson died as a baby, her husband made the casket himself.

DANIEL S. writes:

The cultural Marxist\feminist group FEMEN is back, this time “protesting” (i.e. stripping naked in public) from Sweden the recently drafted shariah-based constitution of Egypt. Taking the lead among these “protesters” is an Egyptian immigrant named Alia al-Mahdi. (more…)

COMMENTS have been added to the discussion on cremation. One reader says that my remarks against cremation show extreme insensitivity to those in grief. Also in that thread, Hannon writes:

The idea of returning to the earth, of the body having a resting place, seems very natural to me. Burning a body outside of need (pestilence, etc.) seems barbaric.

Who is not given pause for thought when they pass by a cemetery? The tombstones set me to wonder about the lives of those people. Recently, near the “30 Rock” building in New York City, I was amazed to see an ensconced cemetery behind an iron fence, grassy and antiquated looking, a brilliant juxtaposition of personal human history as against the backdrop of modern skyscrapers.

Reverence for those who have passed, in some measure, is a reflection of reverence for life. Cremation is sanitary, convenient disposal. Like the crosses posted at roadside tragedies in Latin America, appropriate reminders of death invite us to reflect on our own mortality and how our loved ones are dear to us. (more…)

THE feminist domestic violence industry is now officially in jeopardy after the House failed to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) at year’s end. This leaves a bill which is responsible for serious civil rights abuses hanging for the first time since it was adopted in 1994. The Senate last year authorized an expanded version that would have extended services to homosexuals, Native Americans and immigrants. But the House GOP did not bring it to the floor before its expiration.

Presumably some version of the noxious bill will be resurrected. In the meantime, expect many more crybaby stories about the evil “War on Women.” VAWA supporters have all but accused Congressmen of rape for their failure to move the totalitarian bill. See previous posts on VAWA here, here, here and here.

According to Phyllis Schlafly:

In its 17 years of operation, [VAWA] has done little or no good for real victims of domestic violence, while its funds have been used to fill feminist coffers and to lobby for feminist objectives and laws. Although every spending bill should be subject to rigorous auditing procedures in order to curb waste and fraud, VAWA has somehow ducked accountability for the nearly a billion dollars a year it doles out to radical feminist organizations. (more…)

ALAN writes:

“The only disadvantage of an honest heart is credulity,” wrote the British poet and statesman Sir Philip Sidney more than 400 years ago.  Many American parents and teachers are honest and decent.  But they are also credulous vis-à-vis authoritative-sounding assertions by education “experts,” “professionals,” textbook publishers, or the NEA.  If they hadn’t been quite so agreeable over the past half century, then perhaps we would not be in the mess today that Charlotte Iserbyt traces in her book.

Charlotte Iserbyt is an American patriot and one of the most courageous women in America today.  She knows that there is nothing innocent behind the radical changes made to American schools over the past half century.  So does Lynn Stuter, who has written many essays abut this, available at her website. (more…)

CREMATION has become much more common in recent years, and yet many people have given little thought as to why it was previously rejected in Western society. Here is an excellent and concise post at Tradition in Action on why cremation is a desecration of the human body.

One reason the burning of the dead was favored by pagans was, according to TIA, that they “disliked the sight of sepulchral monuments because they reminded them of death, which disturbs their earthly pleasures.” I think this is true today as well. People seem to find ashes cheerful and reassuring in comparison to graves and embalmed corpses. The latter are a downer and almost an impertinence. Ashes can be kept in an urn on a coffee table or a bookcase or can be scattered somewhere in a vacation spot, as if death is an eternal timeshare. An acquaintance of mine was at a memorial service a few years ago in which the ashes of a friend were thrown into the ocean. This was supposed to be an exciting tribute to the deceased man. However, the wind was blowing toward the shore and the ashes blew into the mourners’ faces.

Ashes, whether in an expensive urn or sprinkled over the sea, are trivial and even laughable remnants of a human being. They command neither respect nor horror.

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CICERO at Big Lie on Parade writes:

Police [in Gloucester Township] arrested a black Department of Corrections worker named Eddie Jones, 39, for stalking his girlfriend. While being processed at the police station, Jones overpowered the female officer who was guarding him, took her gun and opened fire causing injuries to three policemen including the female. Jones was eventually shot dead. Once again another example why there should be very few female police officers, except for dealing specifically with other female criminals. (more…)