ALEX writes:

After watching the unfolding nastiness in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other places I thought of another byproduct or even possible source of these gatherings. People who are inclined to act out quickly without thinking and go rioting produce not only violence but also generate spiritual entities or attachments which breed more violence and may attach themselves to those around them. These attachments go on to influence others in negative ways, including negative thinking, violence and paranoia. Anyone in such an environments is subject to these attachments and therefore mental disturbances, physical addictions, etc. (more…)

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

In my Western Civilization course this semester we have studied Homer’s Odyssey, Plato’s dialogues Symposium and Phaedrus, the Letters of Epicurus, and Athanasius’ Life of Saint Anthony – all under the theme of the “Quest for Order.”  As supplements to the reading, I screen relevant films for the students – for example, a beautiful filmed performance from Zurich in 1977 of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (1940) and Roberto Rossellini’s Socrates (1970).  These items of cinema have an obvious relation to the reading-list, but I also recently screened Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress (2011), about four quirky coeds at the fictitious Seven Oaks University who conclude that the slovenliness of contemporary college-life is intolerable and who resolve to redeem decorum as much as they can in their own chapter of academia.  Among the simple gestures undertaken by Violet, Rose, Heather, and Lily are: To dress nicely, even elegantly, every day and to act like civilized people always.

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FROM NJ.com:

New Jersey residents are fleeing the state in droves, but the loss is primarily being offset by a continued influx of immigrants from other countries, without which the state’s population would be declining precipitously.

Between 2013 and 2014, New Jersey lost at least 55,000 residents who left for other states, the continuation of a trend that’s been going on for decades as people flee the state to retire, to seek a lower-cost of living and jobs in places that have been quicker to recover from the recession. (more…)

ALAN writes:

On Tuesday nights when I was a boy, I would lay sprawled on our living room floor to watch the TV western “The Rifleman.” It featured Chuck Connors and Johnny Crawford in stories about a rancher and his young son in New Mexico Territory in the 1880s. The most impressive elements in the series were its bedrock moral code, the love between father and son, and the unforgettable theme and background music.

In the second episode, telecast on Oct. 7, 1958, young thugs assault the Rifleman and burn down the house that he has bought and decided to make into a home for him and his son.  But the Rifleman was a man, not a compromiser, a feminist, or a boy-man.  So before the episode ended, he nailed those thugs. There were no sob-sisters to intervene on their behalf, and concern for their “civil rights” was not uppermost in his mind.

Instead, he made them rebuild what they had destroyed.

There is a lesson there that American white men could learn—if they were in a frame of mind to learn anything.  But American white men hate lessons as much as they hate responsibility. That is because most of them are still adolescents. (more…)

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whom I cannot take seriously because she resembles a hostess in a nightclub more than the leader of a major city, comes under more criticism today. From Fox News:

Despite a firm denial by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a senior law enforcement source charges that she gave an order for police to stand down as riots broke out Monday night, raising more questions about whether some of the violence and looting could have been prevented.  (more…)

AS REPORTED AT FOREIGN POLICY:

In a letter obtained by Foreign Policy, two Democratic members of Congress are urging the Obama administration to ban a Dutch lawmaker from entry into the United States due to his controversial views on Islam. (more…)

ANDREW KURTZ writes:

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

An article at the website Politico piques me. In “Americans bomb Pew test of basic political Knowledge,” Nick Gass reports that according to a recent Pew poll “only one-in-three Americans knows how many women serve on the Supreme Court, but 91 percent can identify Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years after his assassination.”  According to Gass, the same poll indicates: (more…)

THE riots and political rage in Baltimore over the last few days represent mass denial and projection — even if the police acted wrongly and unjustly in the death of Freddie Gray. That’s because the overwhelming violent risk to black Baltimoreans does not come from the police. It comes from their fellow citizens.

Baltimore, in 2013, had the fifth highest murder rate in America. The victims and the perpetrators were overwhelmingly black, judging from lists of the victims and accused. Here is a list of the 233 homicides from 2014. Look at the high number of black shooting victims. Among them was Michael Mayfield, a 17-year-old member of Edmondson-Westside High’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps who played baseball and was a “youth ambassador” and peer mediator. He was shot in the head while sitting in a car outside his grandmother’s home and the suspect is described as black. The murder is believed to be a case of mistaken identity. The 2014 death tolls also includes Allan Foster, a 56-year-old black retired roofer who helped organize the March of Dimes’ annual Great Chesapeake Bay Swim. From a news report after his death:

Most evenings, the 56-year-old and his wife walked to a neighborhood store to play Keno, which is what they were doing moments before Foster was gunned down Thursday outside his Irvington home in Southwest Baltimore.

Marcia Simpson-Foster, who said her husband didn’t have any trouble with anyone, believes it must have been a case of mistaken identity.

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FOLLOWING an article in The New York Times about the relatively small number of women engineers, a commenter writes: Is this a solution looking for a problem? Certainly there should be no roadblocks to women choosing any line of work they desire. But do we need more female engineers for the sake of having more female engineers? Why not put an editorial about how most garbage collectors are male and what can be done about it.

THE Daily Mail has photos of the events today in Baltimore, where 15 police officers have reportedly been injured and a national state of emergency has been declared due to looting and rioting in response to the death of a 25-year-old black man, who was denied proper medical attention in police custody. “Protesters” can be seen throwing rocks at a commuter bus, smashing police cars and slashing firehoses being used to put out a fire. Bear in mind that much of this is being done in front of television and news cameras. The family of Freddie Gray has publicly pleaded for the rioting to stop and many other blacks have condemned it, while Jesse Jackson, in his speech at Gray’s funeral, incited rage and envy among the city’s black population, thereby essentially supporting the rioters. One of the leaders of the rioters is Malik Shabazz, former chairman of the New Black Panther Party, reports WND.

A commenter at The Baltimore Sun writes: (more…)

THERE would almost certainly be many more Anglo-Saxons in the world and the British welfare state would probably not exist, as the 800 monasteries and other charitable institutions destroyed during the “Reformation” might still be functioning. Dominic Selwood looks briefly at what Catholic England might look like today. When England broke with Rome, the English broke with each other as well.

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EMMA SULKOWICZ, the famous “mattress girl,” used Columbia University, the international media, and the federal government, to bully and defame a fellow student with whom she had engaged in sordid encounters and who was no longer interested in her, according to a lawsuit against the university filed by the student, Paul Nungesser, who was publicly accused of rape. [WARNING: The text of the lawsuit is extremely pornographic. I only recommend you read it if you are thinking of sending your son or daughter to the Ivy League. Perhaps this will dissuade you or reassure you if your child will never end up at this sort of high-priced collegiate gutter. The Ivy League is a gutter. Poetry, love, romance — all dead at the Ivy League.] If the documented e-mails are authentic, the repeated public charges that Sulkowicz was raped, which were publicly defended by her physician parents, constituted an extraordinary witch hunt, a hoax and a case of widespread journalistic malfeasance and orchestrated mass revenge. (more…)

DOGS can be such wonderful and irreplaceable companions.With all their canine charms and loyalty, they fill some of the loneliness of the modern world and make everyday life so much more delightful. But there is a weird blurring of the distinction between the animal world and the human today. Dogs have become way too important. It’s creepy.

Reporting on yet another liturgical abomination — a “Catholic” funeral for a dog in Belgium — Novus Ordo Watch writes: (more…)

BOTH Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who died in police custody in Baltimore last week, prompting angry protests this weekend, and Walter Scott, who was shot to death in South Carolina by Officer Michael Slager, would probably be alive today if they had not fled from the police. They set in motion the events that led to their deaths. Fleeing the police is practically an admission of guilt.

That’s not to say the officers who arrested Gray acted properly or that Gray shouldn’t have received medical treatment immediately when it was clear that he was injured or that he should even have been pursued. (It seems, judging from the reports so far, that the police mistreated him and he should have been rushed to the hospital right away.) That’s also not to say Slager should have shot Scott. But police in violent cities like Baltimore can’t possibly protect blacks from other blacks, who are their primary victimizers, unless their authority is recognized and respected.

Here is a shocking video of a Russian journalist robbed during the protests.

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Sexual passion is an especially effective form of social control because it is so internalized by the fornicator that he feels that in defending his passions he is defending his very self. The government, then, that incites and protects the gratification of these passions will gain a hold over its citizens in a way more deep-seated than any other. --- E. Michael Jones, author of Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control

IN light of the feminist poison that continues to come from the Vatican II Church, it’s worth recalling Pope Pius XII’s beautiful words in 1942 on the role of women in the home. The Holy Father speaks of ideals that many of us fall short of, but that deserve our deepest admiration:

The mother is the sun of the family. She is its sun by her spirit of generosity and sacrifice, by her constant readiness, vigilance, delicacy and tact in all that touches the happiness of her husband and her children; she radiates light and warmth. …  (more…)