E. MICHAEL JONES in the latest issue of his magazine Culture Wars has a fascinating article on John Updike, whom he sees as the personification of what Christopher Lasch called “the Culture of Narcissism.” Updike reinforces one of Jones’s enduring themes, which is cultural revolution as the rationalization of sexual transgression by Western elites. Jones has argued his thesis over the years by focusing on some of the West’s most famous intellectuals and theorizing about how their sexual transgressions influenced their thinking. Here he delves into the life and work of Updike. The novelist was well known for his adulteries and, according to Jones, these led to the growing perversion of his art and his increasing identification with cultural subversion. As an example of Updike’s cynicism when he was firmly established as one of America’s leading literary stars, Jones offers this quote from Updike’s autobiography:

I read and talked into a microphone and was gracious to the local rich, the English faculty and college president and the students with their clear skins and shining eyes and inviting innocence, like a blank surface one wishes to scribble obscenities on.

According to Jones,

DR. MARIAN HORVAT recently reported on the “Nuns on the Bus,” who have begun another national tour:

Now, top on the list of issues for these sisters are immigration reform, health care, and economic justice, certainly not pro-life or anti-“gay marriage” issues. “Vote people first” – is the motto. That is to say, vote Socialism first, vote Catholic second or not at all. The agenda is pure and simply social justice.

The sisters are all aging with typical short hair cuts, many in the Nuns on the Bus signature blue t-shirts, all in secular dress, in short, the modern “sister.” “Vote people first! Vote people first!” shouted these sisters and folks all gathered together on Day One of Nuns on the Bus. This translates quite simply to “Vote Democratic,” which explains Joe Biden’s presence for the grand kick off.

(more…)

  WHILE Americans sit by and watch the perfectly legal baby-selling industry grow bigger and stronger by the day, in France there are many thousands of people willing to hit the streets and protest the commodification of children through surrogacy and other gestational services. In September, a French appeals court approved the adoption by a lesbian of the child of another woman conceived through artificial insemination. This is a significant development in a country where surrogacy and donor fatherhood is banned. On Sunday, protests are planned throughout France by the Manif Pour Tous forces. Galliawatch has the story.

ANN BARNHARDT has a good column about Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who entered the United States after coming in close contact with Ebola. Also see the commentary at DailyKenn. Barnhadt writes:

So there is tremendous chatter about this guy from Liberia, and we now have enough of the backstory to see just how maliciously negligent the so-called protection agencies really are.  But what I want to focus on is Thomas Eric Duncan – the Liberian who after hauling his sister’s still living yet rapidly disintegrating body to and from the hospital thought it would be a great idea to take a three-legged flight to Dallas, and then just casually forget to mention at the Dallas emergency room the whole “I hauled my sister, dying of Ebola, to and from the hospital a couple of weeks ago.” (more…)

  B.E. writes: Our beloved Lawrence Auster catalogued Non-Islamic Theories of Islamic Extremism, which included such absurd "causes" for jihad as desire for fame, humiliation, sexual frustration, and the like. Well, a new theory has popped up: Islamic extremism, specifically ISIS, is caused by― global warming -- climate change! So if you want to stop Islamic "extremism" (i.e., Moslems acting as Moslems always have), drive a hybrid car, don't use plastic shopping bags, and use CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulb).

WILL writes:

This came across my feed today, and it seems right up your alley. Of course, the headline buried the lede. The couple in question rejecting their artificially inseminated baby is a lesbian couple, not “white parents.”

From NBC News:

A white Ohio mom is suing a sperm bank for sending her vials from a black donor, saying her biracial 2-year-old will be stigmatized by her family and the “intolerant” town where they live and has to travel to get her hair done.

(more…)

AS more and more information comes in about Jesse Matthew, the 32-year-old black former football player accused of abducting University of Virginia student, Hannah Graham, who is still missing, some compelling details have been revealed. Matthew has also been linked through DNA evidence with the murder of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington in 2009 and the rape and assault of a third woman, police say. Two other Virginia women have disappeared in that area.

Judging from the headline of The Washington Post’s story yesterday, these allegations are completely out of character for Matthew. The Post’s headline was, “Suspect in Hannah Graham disappearance described as popular athlete, ‘gentle giant.’”

This is a grotesquely misleading headline, as is the article itself.

(more…)

EDWARD BARTLETT writes:

More evidence that the campus radicals care more about having an “issue” to promote … than addressing the problem of hyper-sexualized campus environments.

Of note, the Sex Week is co-sponsored by the University of New Mexico Women’s Resource Center.

(more…)

  "It is a smaller sin to follow evil which you think is good, than not to venture to defend what you know for certain is good. If we cannot endure threats, injustice, poverty, how shall we overcome the flames of Babylon? Let us not lose by hollow peace what we have preserved by war. I should be sorry to allow my fears to teach me faithlessness, when Christ has put the true faith in the power of my choice." --- Saint Jerome, Prologue to the Treatise Against the Pelagians

SEE the report at the DailyKenn blog.

(more…)

NOVUS ORDO WATCH reports on the Holy Spirit Chapel at Berkeley University:

The perpetrators of this infernal dungeon are Stephen De Staebler (sculptures) and Mario J. Ciampi with Richard L. Jorasch (architectural design). The work was commissioned — you guessed it — in the latter half of the 1960s, when the new religion of Vatican II began to be implemented.

More photos of this pseudo-liturgical crime scene, if you can handle them, can be found at this link. …

One thing about this is positive, however: It gives perfect external expression to the diabolical Modernist religion. This hellish “worship space” is to Catholic sanctuary what Francis is to Pope, what the Novus Ordo Sect is to Catholic Church, what Modernism is to Catholicism. The Vatican II Sect has nothing to do with the Catholic Church of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, whose last known Pope was Pius XII, and the more it is externally manifested, the better.

To see what a Catholic church looks like on the inside, click here.

(more…)

THIS scrumptious-looking pizza cake (recipe here) is another marvelous example of the virtually limitless creativity of a pizza-based culture. Why stop at four stories? Go for ten or twenty!

(more…)

  ACCORDING TO Fox News, Virginia State Police say they have evidence that links Jesse Matthew, the 32-year-old black football player and former taxi driver who is suspected of abducting missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham, with the kidnapping and murder of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington in 2009. Harrington was last seen at a Metallica concert in Charlottesville on Oct. 17, 2009. Her body was found three months later.

FROM Lifesitenews, the story of Janna Darnelle:

In the fall of 2007, my husband of almost ten years told me that he was gay and that he wanted a divorce. In an instant, the world that I had known and loved—the life we had built together—was shattered. (more…)

  MARK STEYN writes: [M]any westerners are willing to live with a certain amount of decapitation rather than abandon the multiculti pieties.

  IN ADDITION to threatening the due process rights of the accused, California's new campus anti-sexual assault bill, signed by Governor Moonbeam yesterday, is a major affirmation of fornication. The government is essentially saying that it's okay for students to engage in de-personalized promiscuity before marriage, just as long as they go about it the right way.