LAWRENCE AUSTER writes:

I agree that to make mocking comments at the sight of a person getting hit and presumably killed by a car is wrong. I agree that Richard Spencer by allowing such comments to be posted reveals the ugliness that is at the core of his website. But I don’t agree with the commenter who says that it was wrong of Spencer to post the video itself. The behavior of the young man who dances backward into the street until he is hit by a car is an emblematic expression of the modern, self-esteeming self in its black incarnation. People today, including whites, are so full of themselves, so easy on themselves, so in love with their cell phones and other gadgets, and therefore so out of touch with objective reality, that they repeatedly do wildly foolish and dangerous things that get themselves injured or killed. Read More »

DAVID K. argues in the entry “Lesbians and Neighbors” that a reader should take the gift of a stroller from his lesbian neighbors.

I HIGHLY recommend Kristor’s examination of the difference between hypocrisy and uncertainty in this recent entry on interfaith marriage. He looks at two parents who choose to take their children to church even though they themselves do not believe.

Other interesting comments have also been added to the discussion on whether it is good to take children to church when parents do not fully accept the faith.

Daniel Mitsui

AT ALTERNATIVE RIGHT, a video of a black man who is hit by a truck while dancing in the street, and presumably killed, is gleefully savored by hateful commenters.

By the way, if hatred is expressed at a website by commenters, and not denounced by moderators, the latter are implicitly endorsing those sentiments. In this case, Richard Spencer obviously does accept the commenters’ views as he treats the incident, in which a man is injured, as a joke.

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IN HIS inspiring and provocative reflections on mountains and their effects on the psyche, Thomas Starr King spoke of the importance of learning to see. He wrote:

To learn to see is one of the chief objects of education and life. First as infants we learn to push the world off from ourselves, and to disentangle ourselves as personalities from a mesh of sensations. Then we gain power to detect and measure distance ; then to perceive forms and colors; and at last to relate objects quickly and properly to each other by a sweep of the eye. And this process is crowned by the poetic perception of general beauty, in which our humanity flowers out, and by which we obtain possession of the world. ” The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Read More »

KRISTOR writes:

The Corset Revolution would presumably herald the downfall of the movement that began with the public burning of bras.

Laura writes:

Yes, of course. The revolution must come full circle and make some dramatic statement involving underwear. We cannot project an image of seriousness otherwise. 

Why did they burn bras anyway? I forget.

Here’s an article claiming that the bra-burning is a folk myth. Also, I have been unable to find an image in online archives of anyone burning bras; perhaps it never happened. I’m inclined to believe it never did happen. No woman in her right mind, even a radical feminist, would burn her bra. [SEE the comment from a reader below whose sister and friends did indeed burn their bras.]

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MANY wise and sensible things have been said here in recent days about corsets, especially in relation to the traditionalist revolution. But let’s be honest, ladies. Corsets have a double meaning.

Michael S. writes:

The Bayreuth Festival re-designed its website a few years ago. As part of the new design, each production is now associated with a different object (stage prop?) that supposedly communicates its meaning. For Das Rheingold, for instance, we have golden apples. That, I understand. For Parsifal, a gaudy chalice. OK, well, the chalice part makes sense. For Götterdämmerung, a suitcase. Now, I’m not so sure. A meat grinder for Siegfried? Or some such contraption. As for the Meistersinger deer-type animal, I have no idea. And given the nature of Bayreuth productions so far this century, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.

But for Die Walküre… check out the red corset-thingy.

Laura writes:

The Ride of the Valkyrs meets Hooters.

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WHAT DOES it mean when two people of different faiths marry without either giving up his faith for the other? It means neither is serious about what they believe and their children will believe in nothing.

By the way, the wedding pictures of Chelsea and Marc suggest a fairly typical modern couple: an exultant, confident bride and an insecure, timid man. Read More »

JAMES M. writes:

My neighborhood, I suppose, has been found to be adequately friendly to homosexuals and so several lesbian couples have moved in over the last year; I’m sure that they network. I could throw rocks and hit three of their houses (not that I would throw rocks at them). They seem to try extra hard to keep their lawns and landscaping extra tidy, so they can appear as normal as possible, and keep people from fussing at them or thinking ill of them. Or maybe all six of them just like to mow. I am making assumptions, but this is in the middle of Kentucky.

One of the couples lives two houses over from my wife and me, and they recently made a quite neighborly and friendly gesture towards us, offering to give us their stroller (they have an adopted little boy who is now in kindergarten). Read More »

THE EFFORT to legalize same-sex marriage achieved another significant victory yesterday with the California federal court ruling striking down Proposition 8. In light of this development, it is time for traditionalists to consider civil disobedience in the realm of marriage.

In short, the State’s role in marriages is tyrannical, forcing couples to participate in an institution that strips them of their property and civil rights in the event of divorce and that may no longer resemble traditional marriage in the most fundamental way. The State is a third party in marriage and it views the marriage contract essentially as a commercial transaction between individuals. Given that marriage has long been defined by the State as a commercial agreement, it makes sense that no one should be excluded from forming such a bond in a way that alters its non-commercial aspects. Two pieces, here and here, explore the idea of couples declining to obtain civil marriage licenses as an act of resistance and self-protection. In the American colonies, no one was required to obtain a state marriage license. This is a return to our historic roots. Read More »

SO MANY important issues have been discussed here lately that you may have missed the recent entry on corsets. Perhaps no topic of conversation at this site will confirm its image of evil, reactionary thought than this. I have decided to plow ahead with this pressing matter. The state of women’s clothing is in disarray.  Read More »

MARKYMARK writes:

I’ve been following the debate between Alan Roebuck & Asher about taking back the culture.  Here’s my take: It’s a lost cause.  Stick a fork in us; we’re done!  Anyone foolish enough to try taking back a declining culture WILL be punished!  A declining culture is like a person with dementia; once dementia sets in, there’s no stopping it; whether a culture or person gets dementia, once they’ve got it, that’s it.  In other words, there is nothing we can do to stop the inevitable, other than to enjoy the show. Read More »

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has overturned California’s Proposition 8, which bans homosexual marriage. Vaughan’s ruling comes hot on the heels of District Judge Susan Bolton’s stay against implementation of Arizona’s immigration law. These two decisions, coming together so closely, and considered along with Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s Ricci decision (later overturned) and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s behavior as Dean of Harvard Law, prompt me to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a “liberal judge.” A so-called liberal judge is merely an enforcer. The California decision, a slap in the face to the California electorate, will undoubtedly increase the likelihood of a congressional fiasco for the Democrats in November. My main point, however, is my sudden insight: a liberal judge is not a judge; he or she is an enforcer. Read More »

IN A FEW DAYS, the midsummer meadows of New England will outlive their prime. The milkweed and the goldenrod, the Queen Anne’s lace and the thistle are already beginning to flag and fade. The scent of grass and mineral that rises from the hidden, exhaling earth is not as forceful as it was weeks ago. There is not much time to spare.

I am not from New England and do not live in New England. I have no vested interest in making the assertion that the New England meadow is unsurpassed in splendor. It’s the simple truth and you don’t have to be the owner of a New England meadow or an investor in meadows to believe it. The angle of northern light, the meterological conditions, the legacy of spare Puritan and agricultural architecture, the lassitude of rural economies, the supporting role of lake and mountain, and, last but not least, the character of rural New Englanders who allow meadows the requisite freedom to do their thing – all these add to the immediate impact of the New England weed-strewn, unmowed meadow.

I do not drink a bottle of wine all at once and I prefer not to look at a meadow “in the face,” so to speak. I like to see it from the corner of the eye, to avoid the full-blown arresting encounter and disabling intoxication. This was not always the case. When I was young and stupid, I gazed at meadows without shame. Did I ever lie in a meadow? That is something I will never reveal. If I said yes, I’d be open to the charge of hedonism. If I said no, you would say, “You see, she is joyless.”

“Waste is of the essence of the scheme,” Robert Frost said. Meadows elicit thoughts of wastefulness and of the arguable decadence of beauty. What use is the experience of the summer meadow? Will we retain it in winter? What will these glorious snapshots of hay and weed do for us in the long run? Why must the butterflies flit the way they do, the same way they did last year and the year before? Couldn’t they spare those of us who live in the world of earnest toil, the world of non-flitting, the suggestion that all is essentially good, that the nectar can indeed be drunk again and again?

The meadow is a philosophical problem waiting to be solved. Only the insensible, the weak-minded and the grief-stricken watch the New England meadow fade without an answer.

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IN THE entry on Alan Roebuck’s essay on the culture war, Jesse Powell offers a fascinating mathematical argument for why social renewal is inevitable.

Daniel Mitsui

THERE HAVE been many important comments added today, including Alan Roebuck’s response to the argument that the culture war has been lost and ongoing additions to the debate about the men’s rights movement. I recommend all of the discussions posted since yesterday. The continuing discussion of false rape allegations and jury nullification is important. In that entry, Jesse Powell writes:

By no means is the time for debate over, it has only just begun! I see my giving actual statistics on how many women are raped per year and how many men are in prison for rape has gotten under MRA skins. The reason why I brought up those facts is because it seemed to me there was a lot of hyperbole being thrown around about the system viciously going after large numbers of men indiscriminately and I wanted to bring the conversation back into some kind of reality by showing that the number of men in prison compared to the number of rapes that occur is not so large and may even be smaller than it should be. Basically, what 200,000 women being raped a year and 170,000 men in prison for rape means is that the average punishment inflicted upon a man for raping a woman is about 10 months in jail. Is this too high? My inclination is to say it is too low. There may not be any way to improve this potential injustice against women but it does illustrate the point that the hyperbole being thrown around about unjust and extreme victimization of men for no good reason is not supported by the facts.

Sure, you can say the women lie to the surveyors and say they were raped when they weren’t. Also, a fact MRAs conveniently ignore, is that it is just as possible that women fail to report rapes to the surveyors that did occur. The good thing about using the National Crime Victimization Survey as a source is that the women have no incentive to lie to the surveyor one way or another. In the study I cited by Kanin the women who lied about rape always had one motivation or another to do so. The woman gains no benefit by lying to the surveyor and so surveys should be one of the most reliable ways to gain accurate information. Read More »

STEPHEN writes in this entry about false rape accusations:

While Paul Elam’s suggested response [of jury nullification] is easily recognized as being over-the-top, to simply dismiss it without considering why he would suggest it is matter of ignoring the elephant in the room.

Elam’s idea, while I (mostly) disagree with it, did not simply spring from the mind of some deranged misogynist. It was born of a growing frustration. It is a symptom of the continuing systemic disenfranchisement of men in this society, wherein men are increasingly seen as evil sexual predators, allowing for the suspension their rights in favor of “protecting” their female victims and where women are increasingly seen as victims, again allowing for the suspension of the rights of men so as to favor women. Read More »

JOSH writes:

I’ve been a long time reader of Lawrence Auster and have had the pleasure of lurking your site for six months or so after he made your writing known to me.

At root of both the “feminist” movement and its modern mirror, the men’s rights movements, is radical homosexuality (devout dykism), i.e., radical sexual autonomy. Radical sexual autonomy is the biological “goal” of liberalism and the easiest way for a “default elite” to stay in power after convincing a populace to deny Supremacy. A populace in a state of anti-Supremacy and willing to embrace homosexuality is a self-annihilating populace. Read More »