Chesterton on Common Sense

  IN THE entry on why studies regarding children raised in homosexual households should be ignored, a commenter provides a lengthy compendium of relevant quotes by G.K. Chesterton. Here is one: The child is an explanation of the father and mother and the fact that it is a human child is the explanation of the ancient human ties connecting the father and mother. The more human, that is the less bestial, is the child, the more lawful and lasting are the ties. So, far from any progress in culture or the sciences tending to loosen the bond, any such progress must logically tend to tighten it ... This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilisations which disregard it.  

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A Lesson in Family Polemics

 

DENNIS DALE writes:

I happened upon your post about debating liberal family members and felt compelled to tell my own story.

Recently I drove from Seattle to Southern California with my daughter and her boyfriend — he a committed lefty, she not yet committed (she has her father’s inborn good sense). We were, like Red Riding Hood, bound for Grandma’s house. Grandma, my former mother-in-law, is an old, ill-informed, militant feminist who works as a therapist for the transgendered. She has taken up the cause of homosexuality with religious fervor.

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Happy St. Nicholas Day

 

St. Nicholas Eve, Richard Brakenburg; 1685

HERE is a detailed description at the St. Nicholas Center of the history and legends surrounding St. Nicholas, who was born in third-century Greece on December 6. The account includes the stories of how this patron saint of children and unmarried women provided the dowry for three poor girls and how he saved a ship from sinking. He is also the patron saint of sailors:

Several stories tell of Nicholas and the sea. When he was young, Nicholas sought the holy by making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There as he walked where Jesus walked, he sought to more deeply experience Jesus’ life, passion, and resurrection. Returning by sea, a mighty storm threatened to wreck the ship. Nicholas calmly prayed. The terrified sailors were amazed when the wind and waves suddenly calmed, sparing them all. And so St. Nicholas is the patron of sailors and voyagers.

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The Sociopathic Social Sciences, cont.

 

PERFESSER PLUM writes:

Ignore not only studies of same-sex households, but almost all research in the so-called humanities.

I’ve taught at several universities—in sociology and now at a college of teacher deaducation—since 1970. I can tell you that left-leaning, so-called liberal, progressive, “critical” research on family, gender, feminism, social justice, equality, disadvantage, discrimination, achievement gap, and the rest of the assortment of agenda-driven writing is mere propaganda. It is an effort by the self-appointed and self-anointed Gnostics in “liberal” arts and education, and their lesser light (as-yet-untenured) useful idiots, to take over the entire apparatus of how to identify and define societal problems, how to think about problems, and what (the only correct) sorts of solutions there might be. (more…)

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The Downside of Small Houses, Exhibit A

  There was an old woman    Called Nothing-at-all, Who lived in a dwelling     Exceedingly small: A man stretched his mouth     To its utmost extent, And down at one gulp     House and old woman went. (Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes, Cupples & Leon Company, 1930)

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The Necessary Militance of Housewives

 

WRITING at The Remnant, Solange Hertz wonderfully expounds upon an important subject: the necessary militance of housewives. Home and the entire private sphere of mores and manners that is properly a woman’s domain, she writes, are safeguarded not with gentleness and tact alone, but with the willingness to fight and engage in feminine warfare. Being a rather militant housewife, I couldn’t agree more.

Hertz writes in her essay, “The Housewife as Guerilla”:

While others may cover themselves with glory before the cameras on the video battlefield, the guerrilla is doggedly jamming the channels, sabotaging supply lines or planting counterpropaganda in recreation areas. Women, not because they are naturally underhanded, but because they are women, take to this naturally. (more…)

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Why You Should Ignore Studies of Same-Sex Households

 

ANOTHER study came out this week indicating that children raised by homosexuals fare worse than children in other households. The study, which is actually a re-evaluation of an earlier study that was more positive, appeared in the journal Demography. Here is a recap at the Heritage Foundation.

Truthfully, I am not very interested in this study or in the other studies on the issue, regardless of their conclusions. Although it is perhaps necessary that such studies be done, I do not consider them useful. Focusing on studies is a major distraction and a losing battle. We do not need studies to know that same-sex households are harmful to children.

Here are the reasons why I recommend you also ignore these studies: (more…)

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A Call to Anti-Feminists

 

JEREMY MORRIS writes:

Here is an article by Andrea Roltgen at Freedom Outpost that you will enjoy. There is nothing contained in it that you are not aware of already. But I particularly enjoyed the manner in which she describes the problem. The quote that follows gave me a chuckle, as well as a reminder of how despicable the average male has allowed himself to become. I see it every single day.

“A man would once be ashamed if he was unable to provide fully for his family. Now, he stands in the checkout line, blissfully equipped for the job of throwing Fruit Loops on the checkout belt, while his “partner” wields a government cash card. He’s got his Xbox at home, his beer and his chips. He’s got no clue whatsoever that this is a degradation to his very core. “

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The Fluke Vote

 

JONATHAN V. LAST,  at The Weekly Standard, closely analyses the role of single, unmarried voters in the recent election, a subject which has been discussed here before. The number of single voters increased by a remarkable six percentage points from 2008. Last writes:

To put this in some perspective, the wave of Hispanic voters we’ve heard so much about increased its share of the total vote from 2008 to 2012 by a single point, roughly 1.27 million voters. Meanwhile, that 6 percentage point increase meant 7.6 million more single voters than in 2008. They provided Obama with a margin of 2.9 million votes, about two-thirds of his margin of victory. (more…)

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Federal Court Blocks California Law

 

LIFESITE News reports:

A federal judge has temporarily barred California from enforcing its ban on reparative therapy for children and teens. California is the first state to place restrictions on reparative therapy, which is designed to help people with same-sex attraction fight their homosexual urges and develop healthy relationships with the opposite sex. Homosexual activists claim the therapy harms same-sex attracted youth by making them feel as if their sexual urges are bad or wrong, leading them to depression or even suicide. (more…)

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A Black Woman’s View of Interracial Marriage

 

NESSIE writes:

I read some of your posts on interracial marriage and would like to add my voice from a black perspective (I am a black woman).

A black male friend of mine was recently engaged to a white girl. I had a weird visceral reaction to the news, but could not put it into words until recently. (more…)

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Rule No. 1: Seek Friction

 

JAMES P. writes:

Julia writes in the entry about her relative’s homosexual “wedding:”

“(Please don’t use my real name if you publish this! My relative is a nasty, outspoken gay rights activist who lives on the West Coast with his millionaire partner. He hates Catholics with a passion and he would have no qualms about posting awful things about me, and getting his friends to do the same, if he found out I wrote this.)” (more…)

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The Meaning of a Lost Glove

 

ALAN writes:

One morning last week I was walking along a residential street in south St. Louis when I noticed, there on the sidewalk in front of me, a child’s glove.  No one else was walking nearby.  Evidently it had been dropped and not missed at that moment.

So what? So this:

It struck me the moment after I saw it and walked past it. The child’s glove reminded me instantly of something sacred and solemn:  A mother’s devotion.

It reminded me of my mother’s attentiveness to her little boy’s well-being on winter mornings more than half a century ago when she made sure I was dressed warmly before she let me go outside to play in the snow.

It reminded me of winter mornings in 1957-’59 when I walked through freshly-fallen snow on the seven-block path through Marquette Park to St. Anthony of Padua parochial school.

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Drop Down, Ye Heavens

 

THIS Gregorian chant, Rorate Coeli, or “Drop down, ye Heavens from above,” is sung by Schola Cantorum. It is a beautiful recreation of lines from the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 45:8) and is often sung in Advent, which begins today. Here is an English translation:

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

Be not angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity : behold the city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, Sion is made a desert. Jerusalem is desolate, the house of our holiness and of thy glory, where our fathers praised thee.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One. (more…)

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A Bright and Shining Moment

 

I READ yesterday the news stories about the first same-sex wedding ceremony at West Point’s chapel and was completely uninterested. This “wedding” between two elderly lesbians, whose enormous smiles belie an immense disdain for our heritage and for civilization itself, was news around the country but it is not news. It’s just another all-too-predictable ceremony of the liberal state. These two women, and homosexuality itself, are convenient characters in the drama. These uplifted swords, with their evocation of America’s martial past, and this Gothic chapel, with its reference to the fortress of Christianity, are magnificent props. They serve in the most theatrical way to affirm the power of the liberal state and to proclaim its victory. It has conquered our most treasured institutions. It has stolen right up to the foot of the altar. Liberalism has defeated the greatest competing authorities to itself: traditional morality, masculine initiative and the family. It has defeated God himself. This wedding is an assertion of power. There have been many like it for years and there must be more and more ceremonies of its kind. For the forces liberalism has conquered are the forces of life itself.

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A Not-Very-Benevolent Sexist Pig

 

READERS are racking up very poor scores in the sexism test mentioned in the previous entry. Terry Morris comes in at the very bottom on his “benevolent sexism” score.

Mr. Morris writes:

I often act as though I’m going to be a gentleman and hold the door open for my wife, then suddenly close it in her face just as she is about to go through. The more people there are around to witness this, the more likely I am to do it. But she’s starting to catch on. (more…)

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Why Marry?

 

IN PENNSYLVANIA, a “single mother” who earns $29,000 a year takes home a total of $57,326, counting welfare subsidies and benefits, according to a state official quoted in The Delaware County Times. A single mother who earns $69,000 takes home $57,045.

Imagine if the same level of support were given instead to couples who had been married for a minimum of four years and had two or more children. There would be a rise in fertility and an explosion in the numbers of women who could stay home. I’m not advocating that kind of state support, but just illustrating how much the government encourages family breakdown and how we all pay for it.

Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge goes into these numbers and their effect on motivation in detail.

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