REPRESENTATIVES of major pizza chains have contacted me today to say they have heard that I am not accepting advertising. They have also noticed that I have not yet made my fundraising goal. They think it’s a big mistake to reject ads at this crucial juncture. They say studies show that my readers are part of the cheap mozzarella demographic and would benefit from seeing photos of pepperoni, sausage and white rubber while lamenting the downfall of civilization. Hard to believe, I say, as the two activities seem intrinsically opposed. But they say that I just don’t understand the psychology of advertising. Pizza photos satisfy deep human yearnings. Everyone benefits from seeing melted cheese. Everyone.

But wouldn’t I be violating cherished principles? Wouldn’t I be selling my soul if I took ads from Little Caesars or Hungry Howie’s Pizza and Subs? Astute readers might even accuse me of hypocrisy. It’s a terrible ethical dilemma. Aristotle said we must do things at the right time, in the right way, and for the right purpose. Easy for him to say. Sometimes principles are so darn expensive.

If you would rather not see this site become a part of the Pizza-Industrial Complex, please donate. I have made great progress toward my goal of keeping this site alive.

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A recent Army press release describes with expert bureaucratic evasion the phony progress being made to integrate women into combat:

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III said the changes won’t — and shouldn’t — happen overnight, but rather, they should be deliberate and incremental.

“The first and largest obstacle the Army must overcome for integration is the culture,” Chandler said. “There is still a perception in some parts of the Army that female Soldiers won’t be able to do the same things as their male counterparts, or that we won’t be as successful if we have them in combat arms organizations. I think the people saying these things are a vocal minority.”

Even in a calculated piece of propaganda riddled with absurdities about preserving standards and lies about the physical capabilities of women, it’s impossible for the Army to disguise the facts. Equality means changing the entire military culture. Those who perceive the obvious are the disturbingly and mystifyingly “vocal minority.” Strange, that so few people want to be part of this minority. Golly, why don’t more people want to find themselves exiled from polite society and out of a job? (more…)

  [thermometer height=250] QUITE a few people would like to see this site continue at its current level of activity. I have gotten a lot closer to my goal today. Thank you for your generous contributions. Please see the previous post for the gruesome and shocking details of this site's income. These figures may make you question my sanity if you have any idea how much time I have spent at this. As an added incentive, I will be mailing a homemade Pizza Civitavecchia right before Christmas to anyone who donates $75 or more tonight (by midnight EST). Pizza Civitavecchia is rooted in a time before the Pizza-Industrial Revolution. It's an Italian sweet bread that is often made for Easter, but is fantastic at Christmas time too. The ingredients include ricotta, rum, anise seeds, cinnamon, lemon zest, butter and a yeast sponge. It makes unbelievably good French toast. I don't mean to knock fruitcake -- you know, the stuff with lurid-colored candied fruit that Jane S. makes every year, but this is a great alternative.

THANK YOU very much to readers who have generously sent donations and supportive notes in response to my last post about scaling back. Here is a relevant message from a reader:

Michael writes:

Regarding efforts to raise funds for the website, why not put up one of those thermometers on the side indicating the goal to be reached and where you stand with funds raised? As it is, we cannot tell how much is needed, ballpark at least, to maintain the site. If not a thermometer, it could be any device indicating funds needed. Let the peeps know what you need and see if they step up.

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THANK YOU to the small number of readers who have responded to my latest fundraising appeal. I am grateful for your support and especially for the support now and in the past of some who have given repeatedly. There are those who understandably cannot give anything.

A free press is never really free. There are always serious costs, mostly in labor and time, to producing any kind of ongoing publication. For magazines, the cost of the paper and mailing are small compared to the cost of labor. One of the hallmarks of anything done well is that it appears effortless. I like to think that is the reason so few readers help to sustain this particular garden of ideas. They mistakenly believe it doesn’t require great personal sacrifice on this end. (more…)

MONTHS ago, I informed readers that I was involved in an effort to start the American Traditionalist Society. Serious progress has been made on this project. One of the main purposes of the society is to bring together in various ways those who share many of the views expressed here. Unfortunately, I have to put aside my own involvement in this effort for now. I apologize for not being able to make this a reality yet. Organizing people is not one of my strengths. Others have great abilities in that area that I do not possess. Also, in some ways, I do not conform to the commonly agreed-upon definition of traditionalism.

Even so, if I were wealthy, I would buy an island off the northern coast of Maine and establish the headquarters of the American Traditionalist Society immediately. There would be no seminars, fancy conference rooms or PowerPoint demonstrations on this island. Our meetings would be strictly anti-modern in form and even the gulls, normally undiscriminating, would decline pizza. Instead, people would come in small numbers to walk and listen to the ancient vespers of the sea. (more…)

HERE is a terrific post by the blogger Matt Walsh on the “hook-up culture.” He writes:

Casual sex has liberated us, yet casual sex produces so many regrets. The landscape is rife with people who have felt the sting of our “hook-up culture.” (more…)

LAST YEAR, Thomas F. Bertonneau posted an excellent series of essays on the disintegration of modern education at The Orthosphere. With his generous permission, I will be posting all four of the essays, which focus on T.S. Eliot’s writings on the subject. The first essay is below.

           T. S. Eliot, Culture, and Higher Education, Part I

Thomas F. Bertonneau

In the fall semester of 2012, beginning in September, my longstanding interest in what I call modern non-modern dissentient discourse found its articulation in a senior-level seminar on six authors whose work centrally constitutes the critique of modernity in the twentieth century.  These are, Nicolas Berdyaev, T. S. Eliot, René Girard, René Guénon, José Ortega-y-Gasset, and Eric Voegelin – thinker-writers whom contemporary college students likely never have encountered.  The main aims of the seminar were several: To alert students to the existence of the coherent, two-century-old tradition of dissent from the liberal-materialist worldview that they take almost entirely for granted and that the higher education establishment actively discourages them from questioning; thereby to introduce into their curriculum and, as I hope, into their education, actual intellectual diversity; and to demonstrate that the prose of criticism can be philosophically rigorous and spiritually challenging without relying on neologisms, the tropes of “transgression,” or hortatory phrases that, despite their intoxicating hyperbole, really amount to no more than slogans for rousing the rabble.  (more…)

  ANTHROPOLOGY LIFE magazine reports an exciting and potentially ground-breaking discovery. Scientists have come across a remote South American tribe that has never eaten, or been exposed to, pizza. The Zuga-Zuga of the Amazon rainforest are believed to be the last people on earth to remain untouched by the Pizza-Industrial Complex. Tribe members have never even seen a stuffed mozzarella stick. Scientists view this as a rare opportunity to study the effects of pizza consumption. Over the next two years, the Zuga-Zuga will be slowly introduced to a pizza diet. The tribe, which will be trained to use cell phones for quick delivery, will be divided into three groups. One will eat Domino's, another Papa John's and the third Giordano's Tropical Delight Stuffed Pizza with Canadian Bacon and Pineapple. If after two years, tribe members demonstrate some of the same thickening of brain cells and midriffs common among American pizza-eaters, there is the distinct possibility that Obamacare will provide three hot meals a day in a three-star French restaurant to anyone addicted to pizza. If not, the Amazonian tribe members will be given a lifetime's supply of coupons for the brand that wins out in a phone survey of their preferences. Scientists have spent years looking for anyone on earth who has not had a slice. This thrilling discovery is the talk of deliverymen everywhere.

JEWEL writes:

This piece by Randy Engel is perhaps the definitive, most exhaustive case against the normalization of sexual perversion. Enough with using the word “gay” or even “homosexual.” It’s perversion, period.

Interestingly, a number of other Catholics have denounced Engel for all the usual reasons for her criticism of Pope Francis, calling her slanderous and histrionic. My reading of this document is that she is on sound territory. My own experience with lesbians is that they are violent. They are angry, bitter and violent. I really think that it comes from not being with men in traditional marriage. I will give you an example.

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DON VINCENZO writes:

Next week, the nation will find itself wrapped up in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy. Anyone who watches television or enters a bookstore or supermarket will immediately confront the multiple books and magazines showing pictures of the late president and his family. (more…)

  NOTICE the basic indifference with which the Hispanic woman interviewed in this video reacts to the alleged rape, beating and kidnapping of a white girl by a group of black teens in Hollywood. The woman blames the incident on "circumstances" and says the assailants' lives were ruined too, as if there is no difference between being a victim and a violent criminal. If anyone publicly expressed sympathy for a gang of whites who brutally raped and kidnapped a black girl, he would see crowds of protesters at his door.

SAM writes:

The article you quote about women who find casual sex unsatisfying is illustrative of a moral outlook that exhibits all of the worst traits associated with the illiberal “vice” of “Puritanism.” The term “Puritanism” as liberals use it is difficult to define, but it often means something equivalent to “willingness to inflict or allow gratuitous pain and suffering in the interests of some trivial moral aim.” And here we have feminists exhibiting it in spades. (more…)

FROM a talk by the nineteenth-century priest Fr. Arnold Damen, S.J.:

In the sixteenth century Protestantism did away with the authority of the Church and constituted every man his own judge of the Bible, and what was the consequence?  Religion upon religion, church upon church, sprang into existence, and has never stopped springing up new churches, to this day.  When I gave my Mission in Flint, Michigan, I invited, as I have done here, my Protestant friends to come and see me.  A good and intelligent man came to me and said:

“I will avail myself of this opportunity to converse with you.”

“What Church do you belong to, my friend,”  said I.

“To the Church of the Twelve Apostles,”  said he.

“Ha! ha!”  said I, “I belong to that Church too.  But, tell me, my friend, where was your Church started?”

“In Terre Haute, Indiana,”  says he.

“Who started the Church, and who were the Twelve Apostles, my friend?”  said I.

“They were twelve farmers,”  said he; “we all belonged to the same Church, the Presbyterian, but we quarreled with our preacher, separated from him, and started a Church of our own.” (more…)

  "We must remember that if all the manifestly good men were on one side and all the manifestly bad men on the other, there would be no danger of anyone, least of all the elect, being deceived by lying wonders. It is the good men, good once, we must hope good still, who are to do the work of Anti-Christ and so sadly to crucify the Lord afresh…. Bear in mind this feature of the last days, that this deceitfulness arises from good men being on the wrong side." ---   Fr. Frederick Faber, Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 1861

  FEMINISTS have yet to figure out a way to make impersonal, dehumanizing sexual encounters "equal." Men seem to have more fun. Why is this so? One sex expert offers her opinion: Part of the problem ... is that women still may be stigmatized for having casual sex. The idea that women are "stigmatized" for having casual sex is just plain laughable. In fact, they are stigmatized for not having casual sex. But a sex expert is not a rational creature. In her eyes, even though women are not, on the most basic animal level, enjoying casual sex, they should be encouraged to have more casual sex. The world of sex science is not scientific at all. It is grounded in superstition.