WOULD you like a Christmas TV special wholesome enough for the whole family? This 1953 episode of the detective series Dragnet may fit the bill. I recommend it for families with children over the age of eight. (There's nothing salacious in it for younger children, but the topic of crime is not appropriate for them.) In this episode, detectives Joe Friday and Frank Smith investigate an important case on Christmas Eve in Los Angeles. The statue of the Baby Jesus has been stolen from the manger of a local church. They want to recover it by Christmas Day. The famously stone-faced Friday and Smith take the case so seriously that they devote the entire day to the investigation despite other pressing cases. I won't spoil it for you by revealing the results of their investigation, but I will tell you that the crime is happily solved. Note: * The politically incorrect banter about differences between the sexes * Acting that is so bad it is good * The Brooklyn accent of the Hispanic priest * The respectfulness of the two hard-boiled detectives * The joke about how priests and detectives would be out of business if there were no thieves * The bums at The Golden Dream Hotel who know the true meaning of Christmas Do you wonder why more shows like this are not made today? Catholics were a major, organized force for decency in movies and TV when this show was made.…

  SHE IS one of only two women in history conceived without sin. The other is Eve. She is the Immaculata, patroness of the United States, the Mother of humankind, the Queen of Heaven. She reigns with humility, tenderness and compassion. God willed from the beginning of time and the moment of her conception that she would crush the head of the serpent, the cause of Eve's downfall and the source of all evil. We honor and praise her Immaculate Conception today. May she help us through her intercessions to love our enemies, deliver us from our faults and embolden us in battle: Thou art the ark of salvation; the one creature unwrecked in the universal deluge; the white fleece filled with the dew of heaven, whilst the earth around is parched; the flame which the many waters could not quench; the lily blooming amidst thorns; the garden shut against the infernal serpent; the fountain sealed, whose limpid water was never ruffled; the house of the Lord, whereon His eyes were ever fixed, and into which nothing defiled could ever enter; the mystic city, of which such glorious things are said. We delight in telling all thy glorious titles, O Mary! for thou art our Mother, and we love thee, and the Mother's glory is the glory of her children. Cease not to bless and protect all those that honour thy immense privilege, O thou who wert conceived on this day!…

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  SHOES are everywhere -- not just because of common rudeness. This photo (above) of a Paris street near the Bataclan massacre is one of probably thousands of similar shoe pictures, allegedly photos of the shoes of the victims or those fleeing the event, that have appeared in the media after reported vehicle and gun massacres. Typically the shoes are Nikes. However, these shoes from the Las Vegas attack do not appear to be Nikes: Here in the San Bernardino attack, one of the atttackers allegedly -- and absurdly -- fell out of his (or was it her?) shoes: Oddly enough, human beings who are shot with modern weapons or struck by vehicles do not normally fly out of their shoes. People who are running away from danger do not typically sail out of their shoes though it does sometimes happen. (Check with police officers or rescue workers to verify this.) Why then are we so often shown pictures of empty shoes at the scenes of alleged terror attacks? These shoes are part of a code. The planners of these events are communicating with each other. If you would like to understand exactly why these shoes are there, and why photos of abandoned shoes (and sometimes still occupied shoes such as here and here) appear prominently in the media after these events, I highly recommend this interview with Ole Dammegard. (I'm sorry about the macabre photos but the truth is, they are probably every…

  WHEN out in the world, occasions may arise when we are tempted to give in to impatience with the almost incredible rise in bad manners. We should hold our temper, and remember that boors are made, not just born. Our ancestors would be astounded at the level of common incivility today, but bear in mind that many people have never been taught otherwise. My husband has a way of keeping his cool. When he comes across people on trains and in cafes who put their feet up on the furniture -- this is common practice today, he wants to go up to them and say, "Get your feet down now!" But he doesn't. It's just not a good idea. Instead he discreetly takes a snapshot of the offender. He has acquired extensive documentary proof that many people today think the world is their bedroom. You might say, they "have no boundaries." Here is a picture he took yesterday on a commuter train. This spoiled brat should have been tossed out the door and onto the platform, but most likely he will be leaving his footprints on walls throughout the region. These photos will never solve anything. But they are evidence, taken at the scene of the crime. And somehow that makes things better.

  A NOTE TO READERS: Almost every week, I receive requests from advertisers to place paid posts on this website. I never accept these offers. The income would not be very large, but more importantly, I'd like to preserve this small, out-of-the way space as an ad-free zone. Advertising makes it hard to think. And that is the purpose of this blog, to inspire you to persevere in the hard work of reflection, especially about the ideas and news stories you come across elsewhere. If I have helped you question an idea you took for granted, and headed you in the right direction, that is success. Talented writers make a living doing what they do at major publications. But there are things they don't dare question. This blog has been in existence for almost ten years. That is a remarkable fact given that it receives no significant financial backing. I am entirely independent from all who are pushing an agenda, and so are the others who write posts for this site. Many writers on the Internet use pseudonyms, often very weird ones. I write under my own name, and I take full responsibility, as hard as that may be, for what I say. People have gone to jail for some of the truths and opinions expressed here. I hope you will consider that. It has kept me awake once or twice! When you visit a museum, you may spend $25 to…

  RedSilverj tells it like it is.

  FROM The Wall Street Journal: Abortion is legal in most of Europe, but its proponents are bent on suppressing efforts to change the minds of mothers considering it. Witness France’s ban on a television commercial showing happy children with Down Syndrome (DS). Produced to commemorate World Down Syndrome Day, the commercial showed several cheerful children with DS addressing a mother considering abortion. “Dear future mom,” says one, “don’t be afraid.” “Your child will be able to do many things,” says another. “He’ll be able to hug you.” “He’ll be able to run toward you.” “He’ll be able to speak and tell you he loves you.” Read more here. So many women, with legal abortion used as eugenics, have lost the opportunity of a lifetime.

  THE fish is made for the sea and the hawk is made for the open sky. But the human soul is made for eternity. We were made to swim in changelessness, to soar above the little things. And yet here we are. In the wilderness of time. Can we put our feet nowhere and stay? We look inside and see chasms of bewildering nothingness. When a small child goes to a rocky beach, he has an instinctive urge to pick up a pebble and throw it in the water. He likes to toss things around. But he is fascinated by the 'plunk' of the little stone in the water. It is the sound of depths. We throw ourselves into life. As we do, we hear mysterious depths. They are within ourselves. An ocean within. Or an infinite sky. We only feel truly ourselves when we are soaring in it. If this vastness is truly nothing, or an impersonal infinitude, then all is meaningless. If it is something, then everything is possible. The founder of only one religion said that everything is possible -- on the condition that we love Him.  How odd. Moses didn't command people to love him. Muhammad didn't say his followers must love him. Neither did Confucius or Martin Luther. But Jesus said we must love Him.  Only an egomaniac -- or God -- would demand that sort of devotion. Infinitude and finitude -- can we fathom these…

SALWA BACHAR at Tradition in Action looks at the cult of ugliness in fashion: [I]t seems that society has completely lost its sense of beauty. Even with immodest fashions, there were always some elements of aesthetics, charm and refinement. Now, all beauty is thrown out the window and the goal becomes to look as ugly and devilish as possible.

I ONCE MET a middle-aged married couple who lived in a beautiful house. It was a handsome stone house built in the late nineteenth century with a lush, well-maintained garden and very tasteful furnishings. The kitchen was a replica of a colonial kitchen except it had the most powerful and expensive appliances. The kitchen floor was covered with a rustic, brick-colored tile. The antique maple farm table in the dining room could seat at least ten people comfortably and exuded warmth. It was hard not to struggle with feelings of envy when visiting this house.

One day, the husband turned to the wife — they had no children, but one much-loved dog — and said to her, in all seriousness and with a grave expression of contempt on his face,

“You don’t interest me anymore.”

The wife was a frightfully intelligent and accomplished woman. Very interesting in many ways, but yet she didn’t always think on her feet. She should have responded with something like,

“What’s your point? You stopped interesting me the day after we were married.”

Instead she just said, “Really?” Or something similar.

He had found somebody else who was interesting.

With those few words — cold, callous, cruel words — the legal machinery of divorce was set in motion, like a truck with bad brakes barreling down a hill. In less than a year, the beautiful house was emptied and sold. She moved to the country. He moved in with his girlfriend.

The moral to the story is obvious: A house is not always a home. Even the most beautiful house, one that outwardly speaks of entrenched and unassailable traditions, one in which the birds sing with contentment in the garden, as if there were no better place to live on earth, is not always a home. One can live in a castle and not have a home. One can live in a hovel and have a home.

You can live in modest shabbiness and find your spouse, if not always entertaining, always interesting. In fact, poverty itself is very interesting. Something is always going catastrophically wrong when you are poor. Little things become big things. Perhaps that’s why it’s harder for a rich man to get to heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. He’s led to believe things will always unfold beautifully.

Build your house, but don’t forget to keep your home. (more…)

ALAN writes:

It is doubtful that Leftist Revolutionaries have employed any tactic more lethal in their war against traditional America than their prolonged attack on American families.  The worst thing about that is not that they are so zealous in working toward that goal; that is to be expected.  It is rather that generations of Americans have made it so easy for them.

I never had the benefit of a large family. Someone will protest immediately that large families are not a benefit but a burden. I concede that both are possible, but I suspect that most people who come from large families would say they are a benefit far more often than a burden.

The neighborhood where I grew up and attended grade school was populated mostly by German, Polish, and Slavic families, many of whom had lived there for 70 or 80 years.  One of my classmates who lived in the same block where I did remembers families with ten or more children.

A newspaperman wrote in 1967:

 “One feature of the neighborhood is its many large families—households of 10 or 15 children are not uncommon.”

    [Richard Krantz, “The ‘Scrubby Dutch’ of South St. Louis”, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Feb. 8, 1967 ]

On my daily walk to school in the 1950s, I often walked past a house owned by a Polish family who had 10 children.  The children slept on cots placed throughout the house. Meals were served in three shifts.  Not only did they get by; they took pride in caring for their property and the alley out back.  That was part of the moral fabric of people who lived in that neighborhood.

Three blocks away, there was another family with 15 children.  “We assigned each of the children chores,” their mother told Mr. Krantz, “and when they left for school in the mornings, all the beds were made and shoes were never left lying on the floor.”   (more…)

  TO the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say. But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind—put…

It is not enough to have love for our neighbor—-we should notice of what sort it is, and whether it is true. If we love our neighbor because he does us good, that is, because he loves us, and brings us some advantage, honor, or pleasure, that is what we call a love of complacency, and is common to us with the animals. If we love him for any good that we see in him, that is, on account of beauty, style, amiability or attractiveness, this is love of friendship, which we share with the heathens. Therefore, neither of these is a true love, and they are of no merit, because purely natural and of short duration, being founded upon motives which often cease to exist. In fact, if we love anyone because he is virtuous, or handsome, or our friend, what will become of this love if he should cease to be virtuous, or handsome, or to love us, or, still worse, if he should become our enemy? When the foundation upon which our love rested, sinks, how can it support itself! The true love which alone is meritorious and lasting is that which arises from the charity which leads us to love our neighbor in God and for God; that is, because it pleases God, or because he is dear to God, or because God dwells in him, or that it may be so. There is, however, no harm in loving him also for any honorable reason, provided that we love him more for God’s sake than for any other cause. Yet the less mixture our love has of other motives, the purer and more perfect it will be. Nor does this hinder us from loving some, such as our parents and benefactors, or the virtuous, more than others, when such preference does not arise from the greater good they do to us, but from the greater resemblance they have to God, or because God wills it. Oh how rare is the love of this sort, which deserves to be called true love! Nolite amare secundum camem, sed secundum spiritum sanctum—-Love not according to the flesh, but according to the Holy Spirit.

— St. Francis de Sales

[Thank you to Brenda] (more…)

  ON THIS rainy day, I would like to say something I have never said to readers before: Don't ever, ever, ever, ever forget your umbrella, especially when it is raining heavily. I say this with absolute certainty and profound awareness of the drawbacks of having no umbrella. I value umbrellas more than most people. I value them because I never, ever, ever, ever remember my umbrella, especially when it is raining heavily, or any other time. That's not entirely correct. On a few, very few, occasions I have remembered an umbrella. But it was nowhere to be found when I remembered it or it instantly broke the moment I opened it. I have discovered, after years of careful, scientific observation, that some people are genetically predisposed to remember umbrellas and to possess unbroken ones. These people are greatly to be envied. I am not so genetically disposed. I could count on one hand the number of times I have ever been in the rain with a functioning umbrella. Some where in the distant past, an ancestor with very strong umbrella-forgetting genes fell in with someone with equally strong umbrella-forgetting genes ... and the rest is history. I hope you have not had the same cruel and embarrassing fate. In which case, please do! Please do! Please remember your umbrella! Enjoy what others never do.

KYLE writes:

As calls for gun control accelerate, it’s important for Americans to learn about successful uses of the right to bear arms against tyrannical government. In 1946, in Athens, Tennessee, armed World War II veterans confronted a crooked political machine, and won. Known as the “Battle of Athens,” this episode perfectly illustrates the potential threat to liberty that the Founding Fathers foresaw when adding the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Since the Civil War, McMinn County was a solid Republican county until Paul Cantrell, a wealthy southern Democrat, was elected sheriff in 1936. Cantrell closely associated his campaign with the Administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, winning re-election for sheriff in 1938 and 1940 and then state senate in 1942 and 44. After becoming a senator, his former deputy, Pat Mansfield, took the reins of sheriff and continued the corrupt fee system by which money was generated from every arrest made by deputies in the county. The more arrests, the more money they made. The revenues were funneled into illegal gambling operations, and allegedly helped Cantrell and his cronies launder profits. The scheme became so bold that traveling buses passing through the city were stopped and passengers harassed and falsely arrested for public drunkenness.

“Deputies routinely boarded buses passing through and dragged sleepy-eyed passengers to the jail to pay their $16.50 fine for drunkenness, whether they were guilty or not. Arrests ran as high as 115 per weekend.” Seiber, L. (1985). The Battle Of Athens | AMERICAN HERITAGE. [online]

The political landscape of McMinn County changed further as Cantrell’s grip on the county tightened. Citizens suspected election fraud and reported their suspicions to the U.S. Justice Department in 1940, 42, and 44 to no avail.

“The 1940 election sent George Woods, a plump and affable Etowah crony of Cantrell, to the state legislature. Woods promptly introduced “An Act to Redistrict McMinn County.” It reduced the number of voting precincts from twenty-three to twelve and cut down the number of justices of the peace from fourteen to seven. Of these seven, four were openly Cantrell men. When Gov. Prentice Cooper signed Woods’s bill into law on February 15, 1941, effective Republican opposition died in McMinn County.” Seiber, L. (1985). The Battle Of Athens | AMERICAN HERITAGE. [online]

Over 3,000 combat veterans returned home to McMinn County in 1945, comprising 10% of the population. They became natural targets for the grifting scheme of Cantrell because they were young men who frequented local bars. The veterans decided to run their own candidate in the 1946 election on a non-partisan ticket with an independent group called the G.I. Non-Partisan League. Tensions between the citizens group and the local authorities would come to a head on election day, August 1, 1946.

(more…)

  Pilgrims' Hymn By Stephen Paulus Even before we call on thy name To ask thee, O Lord, When we seek for the words to glorify thee, Thou hearest our prayer; Unceasing love, O unceasing love, Surpassing all we know. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, And to the Holy Spirit. Even with darkness sealing us in, We breathe thy name, And through all the days that follow so fast, We trust in thee; Endless thy grace, O endless thy grace, Beyond all mortal dream. Both now and forever, And unto ages and ages, Amen

MANY WHO are brave in the absence of an enemy, show little valor in his presence; and, on the other hand, many who tremble before the battle, are the boldest in the hour of danger: we should not be afraid of fear. Walk always near to God, for the gentleness of His shadow is more salutary than the brightness of the sun. --- Saint Francis de Sales