Elizabeth Lewis, John Singleton Copley; 1771

“Apples are still more various, yet rigidly retain their own species, and are highly useful in families, and ought to be more universally cultivated, excepting in the compactest cities. There is not a single family but might set a tree in some otherwise useless spot, which might serve the two fold use of shade and fruit; on which 12 or 14 kinds of fruit trees might easily be engrafted, and essentially preserve the orchard from the intrusions of boys, &c. which is too common in America.

“If the boy who thus planted a tree, and guarded and protected it in a useless corner, and carefully engrafted different fruits, was to be indulged free access into orchards, whilst the neglectful boy was prohibited–how many millions of fruit trees would spring into growth–and what a saving to the union. The net saving would in time extinguish the public debt, and enrich our cookery.”

— Amelia Simpson, American Cookery; 1796

“REMEMBER that it is not the multitude who are being saved, but the elect of God. Be not then affrighted at the great multitude of the people who are carried here and there like winds on the waters of the sea.”

— St. Basil, Letter 257, 4th century

Fr. Edward Leen, C.S.Sp.

“A European politician, in a pronouncement of fairly recent date, stated that Christianity had failed. It did not seem to him that his assertion needed proof. The actual condition of things in his own country and in other countries appeared to him to be ample justification for what he said. Yet the statement, so far from being indisputable, can be shown, on analysis, to betray a gross confusion of thought.

“Christianity has not failed, for the simple reason that it has scarcely been tried. It certainly has not been tried on any extensive scale. It could be branded with failure, if having been guaranteed by its founder to be able to achieve certain definite results, it had been, when put to the test, found wanting. But if Christianity is but imperfectly or incompletely applied to the task of reducing to order the confused issues of human existence, it cannot be blamed for the relative chaos which results.”

— Fr. Edward Leen, Why the Cross? (Sheed and Ward, 1938)

MANY girls go through a tomboy stage. Most grow out of it and embrace femininity.

Chloe Cole was prescribed toxic drugs and had her breasts removed. But she’s still a girl.

FROM Chris Fogarty’s book Ireland 1845-1850: The Perfect Holocaust And Who Kept It “Perfect:”

What England extracted from its colonies varied from country to country. In addition to usurping the land for distribution to its Crown- connected undertakers, it also looted the colony’s other resources. For example, from Australia from 1851 through 1862, after the easiest gold was gone, 21 million additional ounces of gold were taken into the British Government’s Gold room in Melbourne. Fertile Ireland’s main resource was the human energy that produced a torrent of agricultural products. The Irish were made tenants on their own land, and forced to pay rents that consumed most of their year’s labor. With force supplied by the British army, Irish output was commandeered by English landlords (many if not most absentees) on the basis that the English, not the Irish, owned the land on which it was produced. Read More »

The Faustus character, from whom we get “Faustian bargain”, is believed to have been based on John Dee. (1620 printing of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

FROM a 2017 article by Jude Duffy at Fitzpatrick Informer:

“John Dee, the occult magician at the court of Elizabeth I, was apparently the first person to coin the term “British Empire”, so from the very get go the Empire was an occult cabalist project—all its main propagandists, and indeed actors, being occultists of one sort or another.

According to Stuart Piggot’s book The Druids, Dee “grew up surrounded by the controversy and currents” of what became known as the British Empire—and “sought to merge the Arthurian Imperial tradition with cabalistic interpretations of Hebrew scripture”.

“Dee created the concept of British Israel, which gave the British and the Jews a common racial identity, and invoked biblical prophecy to show the inevitable triumph of British imperialism, the British as Abraham’s seed were to inherit the earth.”

Far from being simply an ethnocentric take on Biblical Christianity, Dee’s pseudo-genealogical supremacist theory was steeped in pagan druidism, being “Christian” only in the sense that New Age pantheism is “Christian”, i.e., it co-opted elements of Christian doctrine and ritual, the better to insinuate itself almost effortlessly into the mainstream of British Christian life.

Read more.

 

JOE had read this site from the very beginning, back in 2009, and for many years, he sent me links to interesting news, almost every day. He was a fighting patriot, a family man and a Ham radio enthusiast who had retired involuntarily from his career in finance because of poor health.

I hadn’t heard from him for a while and thought maybe he finally gave up on this site because I disliked Donald Trump. (I never get upset when someone stops reading me. After all, I get pretty sick of me too. In fact, I’m surprised anyone does read it.) But something didn’t seem right. I finally did a little research and unhappily learned of Joe’s death at the age of 57 several months ago. He left behind his wife and two teenaged sons.

I was  saddened to know Joe was gone. I send my sincere condolences to his family and pray for his eternal rest.

FROM The World at the Cross Roads by Boris Brasol (Hutchinson, 1921):

There can be no compromise with the Attilas of the Twentieth Century. To compromise is to surrender. It is only the coward who surrenders in face of impending danger. There is no other issue than to accept the challenge. The strategic plan of the enemy is known. There is no mystery about it. This plan itself predetermines the measures of defense to be adopted by those who are attacked. The enemy preaches class hatred. The answer to this challenge is cooperation between the classes. The enemy strives for economic destruction, which must be counteracted by economic construction. The enemy seeks to undermine religious faith. Accordingly, the consolidation of religious faith and the fight against atheism must be urged. The enemy spreads the plague of internationalism. There is no other way to combat this plague than by giving support to the national ideal and national tradition. The enemy appeals to the ignorant. He uses the ignorance of the masses as a means of throwing them under his control. Ignorance can and must be combated by education. The enemy is trying to dissolve the family because it is the nucleus of the present social order. There is probably no task more urgent to-day than the protection of the family and its stabilization. The enemy has declared war on art and beauty, and accordingly, it has become the duty of the enlightened part of humanity to cultivate art and beauty, to disarm brutality by aesthetics, to bring nearer to the masses the immortal creations of genius. Such are the lines of defense, such are the tactics. Read More »

COMMON SENSE is the basic wisdom that comes from everyday encounters with reality. You don’t have to be super-smart to have common sense. You just have to live in the real world, not a make-believe world.

Not many people today have common sense. The smarter someone is, the less likely he is to have it. Schools have destroyed common sense. Television propaganda has destroyed it. Myth and lies presented as “history” have destroyed it. Movies and spectacles have immersed people in make-believe, drenched them with illusions. In a totalitarian society such as ours, people have to abandon the truth just to survive and put food on the table. The lie is all.

The belief that truth is subjective and that objective reality doesn’t even exist has also so softened the cognitive faculties that sense cannot penetrate. The windows are shut. The blinds are drawn. The mind is darkened and dormant. No one’s home.

Common sense is now uncommon.

Sadly, you cannot talk much with people who lack common sense. It’s a dead end. Read More »

MARCUS GARVEY, the enormously popular black nationalist leader, gave this speech in 1920.

“In 1916, Marcus Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Branch in Harlem. Emphasizing unity between Africans and the African diaspora. He campaigned for an end to European colonial rule across Africa, and the political unification of the continent. He envisioned a unified Africa as a one-party state that would enact laws to ensure Black racial purity.

“He was committed to the Back-to-Africa movement, arguing that many African-Americans should migrate there. The UNIA grew in membership and Garveyism ideas became increasingly popular. Garvey was a dramatic and invigorating public speaker. Harlem History features one of Garvey’s most powerful speeches from 1920, on Leadership and Black Empowerment.” (Video notes at Youtube)

My previous post on Garvey can be found here.

ROBERT ROBBINS of CatholicEclipsed defends the celebration of Columbus Day.

Please don’t call the holiday celebrated today “Indigenous People’s Day.” Those who have conceived this particular deconstruction of the past have no concern for the true welfare of the “indigenous” and are simply using their descendants as pawns in the project to overturn Christian civilization for good.

As Robbins explains, Christopher Columbus was not a saint, but he was an undeniably great man who fulfilled a noble mission. Here is Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical on Columbus, Quarto Abeunte Saeculo:

He was distinguished by this unique note, that in his work of traversing and retraversing immense tracts of ocean, he looked for a something greater and higher than did these others. We say not that he was unmoved by perfectly honourable aspirations after knowledge, and deserving well of human society; nor did he despise glory, which is a most engrossing ideal to great souls; nor did he altogether scorn a hope of advantages to himself; but to him far before all these human considerations was the consideration of his ancient faith, which questionless dowered him with strength of mind and will, and often strengthened and consoled him in the midst of the greatest difficulties. This view and aim is known to have possessed his mind above all; namely, to open a way for the Gospel over new lands and seas.

Read More »

TRANSPORT yourself to the interior peace of the cathedral in 17th-century Zamora, Spain while listening or praying to this motet, “O Gloriosa Virginum,” from the exquisite vesper music of Juan Garcia Salazar who was maestro de capilla at the cathedral.

ALAN writes:

As another example of the kind of television entertainment that Americans found rewarding in 1959 in comparison to today, continuing from my previous essay, I offer the following:

This memory is from Tuesday nights in the midst of winter in the years 1958-1961. My mother was very selective in the matter of TV entertainment, but one variety program earned her approval and favor — and mine.

Many years afterward, Carol Burnett wrote, “…too few people remember what a fabulous weekly comedy variety show Garry Moore hosted…”  [Carol Burnett, This Time Together, Three Rivers Press, 2010, p. 48]

Indeed true. But I am one of those few. From the little man pushing a lawnmower in the opening scene to the unforgettable scene at the close, I remember it clearly and fondly. It was an hour-long variety program, filled with comedy sketches and highly-polished song and dance routines — and all of it in black and white. It never occurred to us for a moment that color could have made it better.

Garry Moore, who started out in radio, was a family man. Read More »