COMMENTS have been added to the discussion on cremation. One reader says that my remarks against cremation show extreme insensitivity to those in grief. Also in that thread, Hannon writes:

The idea of returning to the earth, of the body having a resting place, seems very natural to me. Burning a body outside of need (pestilence, etc.) seems barbaric.

Who is not given pause for thought when they pass by a cemetery? The tombstones set me to wonder about the lives of those people. Recently, near the “30 Rock” building in New York City, I was amazed to see an ensconced cemetery behind an iron fence, grassy and antiquated looking, a brilliant juxtaposition of personal human history as against the backdrop of modern skyscrapers.

Reverence for those who have passed, in some measure, is a reflection of reverence for life. Cremation is sanitary, convenient disposal. Like the crosses posted at roadside tragedies in Latin America, appropriate reminders of death invite us to reflect on our own mortality and how our loved ones are dear to us. (more…)

THE feminist domestic violence industry is now officially in jeopardy after the House failed to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) at year’s end. This leaves a bill which is responsible for serious civil rights abuses hanging for the first time since it was adopted in 1994. The Senate last year authorized an expanded version that would have extended services to homosexuals, Native Americans and immigrants. But the House GOP did not bring it to the floor before its expiration.

Presumably some version of the noxious bill will be resurrected. In the meantime, expect many more crybaby stories about the evil “War on Women.” VAWA supporters have all but accused Congressmen of rape for their failure to move the totalitarian bill. See previous posts on VAWA here, here, here and here.

According to Phyllis Schlafly:

In its 17 years of operation, [VAWA] has done little or no good for real victims of domestic violence, while its funds have been used to fill feminist coffers and to lobby for feminist objectives and laws. Although every spending bill should be subject to rigorous auditing procedures in order to curb waste and fraud, VAWA has somehow ducked accountability for the nearly a billion dollars a year it doles out to radical feminist organizations. (more…)

ALAN writes:

“The only disadvantage of an honest heart is credulity,” wrote the British poet and statesman Sir Philip Sidney more than 400 years ago.  Many American parents and teachers are honest and decent.  But they are also credulous vis-à-vis authoritative-sounding assertions by education “experts,” “professionals,” textbook publishers, or the NEA.  If they hadn’t been quite so agreeable over the past half century, then perhaps we would not be in the mess today that Charlotte Iserbyt traces in her book.

Charlotte Iserbyt is an American patriot and one of the most courageous women in America today.  She knows that there is nothing innocent behind the radical changes made to American schools over the past half century.  So does Lynn Stuter, who has written many essays abut this, available at her website. (more…)

CREMATION has become much more common in recent years, and yet many people have given little thought as to why it was previously rejected in Western society. Here is an excellent and concise post at Tradition in Action on why cremation is a desecration of the human body.

One reason the burning of the dead was favored by pagans was, according to TIA, that they “disliked the sight of sepulchral monuments because they reminded them of death, which disturbs their earthly pleasures.” I think this is true today as well. People seem to find ashes cheerful and reassuring in comparison to graves and embalmed corpses. The latter are a downer and almost an impertinence. Ashes can be kept in an urn on a coffee table or a bookcase or can be scattered somewhere in a vacation spot, as if death is an eternal timeshare. An acquaintance of mine was at a memorial service a few years ago in which the ashes of a friend were thrown into the ocean. This was supposed to be an exciting tribute to the deceased man. However, the wind was blowing toward the shore and the ashes blew into the mourners’ faces.

Ashes, whether in an expensive urn or sprinkled over the sea, are trivial and even laughable remnants of a human being. They command neither respect nor horror.

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CICERO at Big Lie on Parade writes:

Police [in Gloucester Township] arrested a black Department of Corrections worker named Eddie Jones, 39, for stalking his girlfriend. While being processed at the police station, Jones overpowered the female officer who was guarding him, took her gun and opened fire causing injuries to three policemen including the female. Jones was eventually shot dead. Once again another example why there should be very few female police officers, except for dealing specifically with other female criminals. (more…)

AT Camera Lucida, Kidist Paulos Asrat, who lives in Toronto, offers a plan for reversing the mass influx of Asian immigrants that has culturally transformed Canada:

TEXANNE writes:

I discovered Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt for the first time yesterday. Her many remarkable experiences have led her to investigate the education system in the U.S., and she has an impressive collection of sources and documentation to support the assertions she has made in various articles and books. Some may be wary of her as a “conspiracy theorist,” but her description of the way in which the curriculum in her children’s elementary school first alerted her to a major and alarming shift in public education sounds just like what happened to me. (more…)

DANIEL S. writes:

While Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein, and the rest of the liberal establishment continue to manipulate the mass murder of school children to push through their totalitarian “gun control” agenda, Muslims that the Obama administration sponsored in Libya and Syria continue their own campaign against the remaining pockets of Middle Eastern Christianity.

Muslim militants in Syria kidnapped and murdered a young Syrian Christian man named Andrei Arbashe, then they dismembered his body and fed it to wild dogs. (more…)

SPEAKING of the commodification of children and the suicidally low birthrate of white Americans, this New York Times article about a lesbian’s efforts to procure a child is a revealing glimpse into the sentimental narcissism behind these phenomena.

Among the details: the child’s young, unwed mother chooses two lesbians to adopt her child because she wants to help homosexuals overcome exclusion; she is moved out of the birthing suite so that the two lesbian “mothers” can bond with the newborn alone; both the adoptive parents plan to take maternity leave and their families share in their project. So an adoption agency, a hospital, employers and grandparents all take part in the shocking pretense of lesbian “motherhood.” There’s also a strange and creepy romantic flavor to the relationship between the lesbians and the birth mother. It’s as if they seduce her into giving them — or selling them — her child.

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A NEWLY-ENACTED law banning adoption of Russian children by Americans prompted immediate outrage this week by the American press and politicians, who generally consider any desire by an American for a foreign child to be sacred and inviolable. The ban was signed into law by Vladimir Putin yesterday and is part of a larger bill that has nothing to do with adoption. John McCain, who has a daughter adopted from Bangladesh, called it “shameful and appalling.” According to The New York Times, McCain said, “The effects of this legislation are cruel and malicious. To punish innocent babies and children over a political disagreement between our governments is a new low, even for Putin’s Russia.”

Americans believe they have a right to any child anywhere who may be suffering.

I highly recommend this presentation, “International Adoption: In Whose Best Interest?” by Peter Dodds, an eloquent critic of the adoption industry and the modern practice of sending children far from their native countries to homes of affluent Westerners, typically those who have put off having children of their own until it is too late. The transnational adoption industry is largely unregulated, reduces children to commodities and violates their inborn sense of cultural identity. Many children who are adopted have at least one parent who is alive.

Putin, to his credit, brushed aside the idea that the thousands of adoptions a year by Americans were justified because America is a wealthier nation. (more…)

ACCORDING to new Census projections, whites will cease to be a majority group by 2043. Nonwhites, who now compose 37 percent of the population, will more than double in number, and become 57 percent of the total, if the projections are correct.

The L.A. Times reports that the white population will decline by nearly 20.6 million from 2024 to 2060. Almost one in three U.S. residents will be Hispanic. The Times reports that the U.S. will be “more diverse” as a result.

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  MICHAEL S. writes: Check out the photo with this New York Times article about crime in the city. Of course, it focuses on a beaming female police graduate. Note how much shorter she is than the men to either side of her. She's practically a MiniMe. The incumbent Chief Bloviator of New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, says: "The essence of civilization is that you can walk down the street without having to look over your shoulder." As usual, Bloomberg, you're wrong. The essence of civilization is discrimination -- deciding that one thing is better than another, that one state of being is better than another, and then choosing to do the work necessary to have that better thing. Being able to walk down the street without looking over your shoulder is one of the results of civilization, not its essence.

SARAH S. writes:

At Christmastime one sees family members and occasionally a revelation occurs. My grandmother is quite old, no longer able to drive or live alone in her own home. She will not think of selling the property that has been hers and my late grandfather’s for over 40 years. But what has puzzled the family is that she will not consider returning there with another competent family member who can cook, drive, etc. (rather than staying with her various children for a few months at a time). (more…)

IT IS widely believed that Christmas is celebrated on December 25th because the holiday is an adaptation of popular pagan winter festivals. Two writers, The Catholic Knight  and Taylor Marshall, refute this theory, pointing out, among other things, that it is reasonable to assume that Christ, who was conceived on March 25th, was born on the 25th of December. The Catholic Knight writes:

I submit to you that everything you’ve heard about the supposed “Pagan origin” of Christmas is false. It is much hyperventilation over nothing really. Not only is it false, but it is based on such poor scholarship that it ought to be embarrassing to anyone who embraces it. Sadly, it would seem the whole modern world has embraced this error, a serious error, which ought to give us some pause.

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    IN an essay on Christmas, the late Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira reflected on Mary's initial reaction to the birth of Christ: The iconography of the Renaissance completely deformed one aspect of Our Lord. It presented the Child Jesus as a foolish babe in order to give an idea of His purity. The artists of that period often presented Him as an inexpressive infant without showing any sign of His divine mentality. I cannot think that such a thing is true. On the contrary, I believe that everything we admire in Our Lord as a man – His goodness, balance, distinction, affability and strength, and especially His transcendence – was already manifest in the face and body of the Divine Infant.

THE MOST popular item on the Christmas wish lists of British children included in a recent survey was a sibling, according to The Telegraph. The tenth most popular request was for a father.

No doubt many children were disappointed when they found iPhones under the tree instead. The illegitimacy rate is about 50 percent in Britain and the average age of new mothers is 30. Asking for a normal family is sort of like asking for the moon, which was also included on some Christmas wish lists.

Santa Claus should get out of the toy and electronics business and start delivering brothers and sisters instead.

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THE IOWA Supreme Court has upheld a dentist’s decision to fire his assistant because she was highly attractive and wore tight, revealing clothing. The dentist claimed that working alongside the asssistant was a threat to his marriage.

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