STEVE KOGAN writes in response to this post about the feminist anthropologist Ellen Lewin:

In the second volume of her journals, Hope Abandoned, Nadezhda Mandelstam writes, “One of the most brilliant men in the history of mankind once said that as soon as thought dries up, it is replaced by words. A word is too easily transformed from a meaningful sign into a mere signal, and a group of words into an empty formula, bereft even of the sense such things have in magic. We begin to exchange set phrases, not noticing that all living meaning has gone from them. (more…)

    DENYS POWLETT JONES writes at the website Catholic Phoenix about the traditional Polish Easter Monday, known as Dyngus Day after a pagan water deity. He writes: For a few centuries, the historical record is silent in matters of Dyngus. Then, in the 15th century, the Easter Monday custom resurfaces in Poland—but now it has turned into a courting ritual, one in which young men seek out the village’s most eligible and desirable girls on Easter Monday in order to dump buckets of water on them and then whip them on the legs with pussy willows. I told you this was no laughing matter. Girls who ended the day bone dry and without any welts on their calves were considered virtually unmarriageable. Sometimes, apparently, the girls fought back against such antics—at one time, an additional custom was to throw pottery at the boys on Easter Tuesday, but in later times the younger generation, who naturally had no respect for the customs of their elders, couldn’t wait and went ahead and chucked crockery at the boys on Dyngus Day itself, sometimes even before the boys had started the conversation with an old-fashioned soaking. (Especially shameless girls turned everything on its head and took to dumping water on BOYS the day after Easter. O tempora, o mores!)  

  DUE TO the Easter holiday, I have not had a chance to post a number of comments that have come in since Saturday. I hope to post them later today. Also, here is an interesting remark from a reader about this post: At our Holy Thursday Mass, all 12 of those having their feet washed were men, generally representing an appropriate cross section of our more senior and more involved parishioners. In contrast, my wife, who is in Denver visiting family, told me that at the Mass at the Denver Cathedral presided over by Archbishop Chaput, about half of those having their feet washed were women. That surprised me, since as you know he is generally perceived to be an orthodox and outspoken bishop.

LAST MONTH in a dialogue about white nationalism, I made this statement:

If it came down to choosing between citizenship in a white ethnostate which identified itself as proudly “Jew-free” in its constitution and a nation that was suicidally multicultural, I would choose the latter.

I strongly stand by this statement and believe it is important for me to draw attention to it. (more…)

   “The death of the God-man is the spring of everlasting life."

THE LAST SUPPER was a feast for men, but no more. The custom on Holy Thursday, also known as Maundy Thursday, is to reenact Christ’s washing of the apostles feet. Most of the “apostles” who had their feet washed at the church I attended last night were women and I’m sure it was the same in the majority of Catholic churches.  So it is in the womanized church of today.

This is no criticism of the many women whose devotion is vital nor is it to excuse men for their absence. But Christ chose men for a reason. We can see today what would have happened if he had not. The faith would have withered a long time ago, drowned in emotion. When worship is feminized, men leave. When it is formed and directed by men, women do not leave. (more…)

  A NEW YORK TIMES writer takes his Passover meal with an oyster, inspiring this excellent discussion at VFR. This sort of irreverence - shellfish is prohibited under Jewish law - is typical. The liberal Jew sees himself as superior to his ancestral faith and scorns it every bit as much as he does Christianity.  As one commenter remarks: These people, be they liberal Jews or liberal Christians, are always liberals first, and their liberalism consciously or unconsciously is used to undermine their religion. Thus all the anti-Semites who think Jews are out to undermine Christianity ought to be sent the NYT article. The liberal Jews undermine and desecrate their own religion in the name of their One True Faith, which is transnational progressivism. Just as liberal Christians are not somehow "duped" by Jews, but undermine their own religion in the name of their One True Faith, which is also transnational progressivism (a.k.a. universalism).

IN THE PREVIOUS entry, a reader wondered at the popularity of the term “beta man.”

Vishal Mehra wrote:

Regarding this alpha-beta thing, we don’t see this usage in any older writers. So either they used different words for this phenomenon or the phenomenon of beta men is itself novel. Or the phenomenon itself is illusory and this classification is wrong and incoherent.

One characteristic of the beta man may help explain why the term has become so common. The beta man is white. No one refers to a non-white as beta. The need for a new name for the spineless white man may have been prompted by racial reality. Never has the white man been so weak. The beta man is not weak vis-a-vis women so much as he is weak vis-a-vis his own ancestry and heritage.  He is the dispossessed, a stranger in his own land, passively assenting to the decay of his civilization. (more…)

AT THE Last Supper, Christ bade a tender farewell to his dearest followers. “He loved them unto the end,” John tells us. His words and actions – the washing of the feet and the offering of his body and blood  – are those of a man who has reserved his greatest expressions of love for the end. Those present hung on his every word.

This was a feast for men. It was no accident that only men were there that night. “I appoint unto you a kingdom,” he tells the gathered disciples. Christ wanted men – and men only – to lead his following when he was gone.

However, the idea that in selecting men over women, Christ was conferring privilege is a gross simplification. It was not privilege first but responsibility he gave them.  At the meal, the apostles question the meaning of authority. As Luke tells us, “there was also strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.” And Christ explains what authority, or greatness, means. (more…)

ELLEN LEWIN, a professor of feminist anthropology at the University of Iowa, responded to a civil e-mail from College Republicans by telling them to “eff-off.” This is the sort of elevated discourse one can expect from the ideological storm front of gender discourse.

Personally, I would not wish to participate in a correspondence with Ms. Lewin, who was educated at Stanford and the University of Chicago. These rarefied degrees, combined with the unadulterated insanity and evil of women’s studies, are likely to produce not-so-nice manners. Something tells me Ms. Lewin would beat up a housewife, or like to. Below is a description of her work on the university’s website. Ms. Lewin believes men can be mothers – no, she believes men, preferably homosexual men, should be mothers – and the moon is made of blue cheese. Everything she promotes would be remarkably funny. If only it was a joke. Her foremost ideal appears to be the “gay father.” I wonder how much Prof. Lewin is paid to spread these insanities and evils into the tender minds of the young. Surely, it’s in the six figures.  (more…)

LAWRENCE AUSTER writes at VFR:

The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a series, “Assault on Learning.” Part 3 of the series is “Young and Violent, Even Kindergartners.” The article is largely a catalogue of violent attacks by young children on their teachers, though there is also a section on sexual misbehavior. The situation in Philadelphia’s black public schools as portrayed in the article is a nightmare that Dante would have had trouble conceiving. (more…)

  HAVE YOU ever seen a negative news story in the mainstream media about Earth Day, with its ritual obeisance to the God of Recycling? NewsBusters compares the coverage of Earth Day with the coverage of Easter.

PAULA KIRBY writes in The Washington Post of the depiction of women in the New Testament: (more…)

P. TRUSTER writes:

Regarding the post on “Two Kinds of Love,” it’s not clear to me whether all males are divisible into alpha and beta, winners and losers, or whether there are additional categories — gamma, delta, epsilon, etc.

I have to say that some of the alpha males I’ve known have been loathsome people, regardless of their ability to attract and entrap women who, as often as not, didn’t seem to be terribly happy with their men, in the long run anyway. (more…)