ROBERT M. writes:

A few thoughts on Paul C.’s comments in the entry, “What Happened to Those Urban Enclaves:”

1.The WASP establishment already lived in the suburbs or in private places in the city. So this urban redevelopment wasn’t going to affect them at all. If anything it was going to bring cheaper gardeners, maids, etc. closer to their doorstep. And enable them to get out to their country homes faster.

2. The public sphere was destroyed. Because of the so-called “rights of the oppressed” you didn’t have to be polite anymore. Any person began having the right to barge into a social situation, no matter how customary, and just demand “free-speech,” “rights,” “acceptance,” ”recognition,” etcetera. So everybody retreated indoors and watched television. But the same cultural manipulators were waiting for them on the tube, lo and behold! Including a picture of suburbia presented by Leave it to Beaver. No wonder they soon moved. (more…)

Introibo Ad Altare Dei reports on the plan for female deaconesses. (more…)

PAUL C. writes:

How do you respond to those who say we should not be worrying about the synod in Rome because Jesus will not let anyone change dogma?  They say the person would be struck dead. (more…)

THE SCENE last week at the Cathedral of Mar de Plata in Argentina as feral bands of women, some masked and half naked, observed the pro-abortion March for Women by attacking Catholics praying and standing watch. From Lifesite News:

The women tore down the outer gate of the cathedral and hurled glass bottles and feces at the young men standing guard. When they  attempted to burn down the Cathedral the police began taking measures to  disperse the hordes.

Father Gabriel Mestre, the “Vicar of the Cathedral,” reportedly gave this shocking statement:

“[O]ne has to accept the dynamic and the dissent, and in fact in the Church we have to accept it because I think that more than half is in favor of legal abortion, and for that there are proper avenues, within a pluralistic and democratic society to generate policies which each from his ideological frame of reference considers as an appropriate way to progress, just like happened with ‘marriage’ equality or with divorce.” (more…)

  A BIT of apple lore and more paintings can be found here.

AS more supermarket jobs become mechanized (which should be a good thing in the long run as human beings can be freed up to do better things), the people who work for the large supermarket chains foreshadow the change. More and more of them appear to have been trained to act like machines.  Social interaction in the store is a scripted experience. A friend wrote to me yesterday:

Shopping has become less human. The insidious music and the robotic employees—in the sense that they have a script:  “Did you find everything you need?”  [“No. Let me hold up the line so I can fetch the things I forgot.”]

My new favorite is the way they are now trained to answer the phone at Joann Fabric:  “Joann Fabrics and Crafts. How may I inspire you?” Nauseating. Whatever happened to the small talk one occasionally participated in at the register, or bantering with shop employees?

While I’m on the subject, the most awful thing (to me) is the way businesses don’t have “customers” anymore, rather “guests.”  There was nothing wrong with being a customer, as in bringing one’s custom to a shop.  It was a dignified human relationship, that of customer and shopkeeper.

I loathe the way consultants/advisers, whomever, tamper with our beautiful language. It is a form of warfare. (more…)

FROM The Daily Caller: Two NASA supervisors were criminally indicted Tuesday under U.S. espionage laws for “willfully violating” national security regulations while allowing a visiting Chinese foreign national to gain “complete and unrestricted access” to the space agency’s Langley Research Center, according to the U.S. Attorneys office for the Eastern District of Virginia. The indictments of NASA Langley supervisors Glenn A. Woodell and Daniel J. Jobson cap a federal investigation into the two supervisor’s decision to permit Bo Jiang unrestricted access for two years at Langley. Bo Jiang was deported back to China in 2013.

A society without divorce is not a society without marital conflict. It is not a society without martial unhappiness. It is not a society without marital separation. Conflict is inherent to marriage, just as it is to life itself. For some it is much worse than others. A society without legal divorce is beautiful not because it is easy but because it is idealistic. Loyalty is super-human. Loyalty is beautiful precisely because it does not suit us. It infuses society with the transcendent in the same way a palace beautifies the lives of the poor who live nearby. Marriage is art, not instinct. Marriage is will when not feeling. At Crisis, Anthony Esolen reflects on the traditional Catholic view of divorce, in light of the family synod in Rome. His essay is nice, but it is unlikely to move the hearts of revolutionary "bishops" in Rome who fulfill some of the worst stereotypes of male clergy who know nothing about marriage. Of course, it is difficult! The vow itself is a sign of difficulty and obstacles, you committee crunchers! We don't vow to eat lunch everyday. We don't vow to take a shower. We vow to do things that are impossible. All times have been "challenging times" when it comes to marriage. Imagine standing at the gate of a medieval town and saying to a group of invaders, "But look how beautiful our houses are!"  They would not be there if there wasn't something to destroy.

FROM an essay by the Catholic author John Rao: Americanism makes us men without a country, just as it makes us men without an authoritative state, a network of real institutions with traditions and esprit de corps, men without a history. Americanism seeks to replace the nation with an ideology, patriotism with an ideological, fideisitic religion. But ideology cannot take the place of faith, the state, the city, the family and everything else of importance to national life. It cannot take the place of a real nation. And, hence, it leaves the American suspended in a limbo which the Americanist would have us believe is a model for the cosmos as a whole.  

HURRICANE BETSY writes in response to the post about a Korean-American wedding: I know a businesswoman who dealt with east Asian women who emigrate to the U.S.A. and Canada to work, and marry white men.  She told me that these women have an agenda that would curl your toes.  And it ain't "love."

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes at the Sydney Traditionalist Forum's Symposium 2015 that a "conservative" is: A historyless, cultureless person who believes that life today is normal, and that things have always been normal; and who judges that Globalization must be good for people because it is merely an improvement on what is normal – that is, the subjection of everything to Economy. A Traditionalist, by contrast, grasps Globalization as the exportation of crisis not only to every quarter of the world, but to every city, town, and village of every niche of every quarter of the world. A Traditionalist grasps that Progress is deeply abnormal, globally existential in its implications, and that its crisis-mongers cannot be bought off. The price of stopping them is much higher than any simple bribery – and there is no room for hedging.

A POET from Indiana offers compelling proof of discrimination by publishers against white male literary artists. From The Federalist: The literary journal Prairie Schooner published “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve” by Yi-Fen Chou in its Fall 2014 issue, and the poem was referred to the Best American Poetry 2015 anthology, which accepted it and published it this fall. Then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire, because “Yi-Fen Chou” was actually a cynically chosen pen name for Michael Derrick Hudson, a white male poet from Indiana. After his acceptance, Hudson confessed his white male identity to anthology editor Sherman Alexie, who decided to include the poem anyway. Poetry is a subjective business. But Hudson’s revelation that “The Bees….” was rejected 40 times under his real name is revealing: “If this indeed is one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print, but I’m nothing if not persistent….” Kidist Paulos Asrat found the same phenomenon at work a few months ago when she tried to organize a program on Western Civilization at the public library in multicultural Mississauga, Ontario.

TIBERGE at Galliawatch reports that at least some French students are now being taught to refrain from referring to Germanic invaders during the Middle Ages as "barbarians." They were "migrants." See other posts from Tiberge on the latest news in France.

HERE’s more defiance from the French Nationalist singers, Les Brigandes, who have had enough of the New World Order. In their song, “I Found a Sword,” they evoke Joan of Arc. (more…)

JEWISH author Leora Tanenbaum writes in The New York Times (full article here) that it’s fine if preteen girls look like sluts on Halloween. As long as they feel good about themselves, it’s fine: (more…)

CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS reports:

A new UN report claims that “73% of women have been exposed to online violence.” To combat this alleged epidemic of sexist mayhem on the web, it calls for draconian measures—including more government supervision and censorship of the internet. Before anyone acts on these UN recommendations, let’s check out a few facts. (more…)

ALAN writes:

A week ago, a group of Koreans were in St. Louis for a wedding.  The day after, while they were visiting the Gateway Arch, thugs broke into their rental van in broad daylight in downtown St. Louis and stole their passports and five traditional Korean dresses.  This photograph shows the elegantly-attired wedding party on the day before the theft.

This incident caught my attention, but not because of crime by black thugs, which is as predictable in St. Louis as night following day.  (more…)