ALAN writes:

My father was an ordinary, patriotic American working man. He grew up in the 1920s, was an Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, and a loyal Catholic throughout his life. He understood that certain things are sacred and never open to negotiation. He knew that “No” is one of the most important words in life. He always played by the rules. His character would never allow him to play any other way.

Self-discipline, hard work, responsibility, self-restraint, and loyalty were the essence of his character. Decency was his middle name. In all my life, I never heard him use a profane word or expression. He enjoyed life but was no cockeyed optimist. He had no illusions about the follies and foolishness of most human beings. He had no use for the speed and busyness of modern life. He looked upon rock “music” as several grades below noise. He was certainly no Modernist. He never read a word of what Richard Weaver wrote. But he shared a profound distrust of what Professor Weaver called the “hysterical optimism” so typical of Modernists, i.e., the delusion that they are going to make the world over with “new ideas” and “new solutions” because they are so much “better informed” than those who preceded them. My father knew that Modernists usually make things worse by abandoning long-established ideas and principles. (more…)

WINNIE writes:

Living in New York’s Capital Region, I’ve grown up subject to the ugliness that is the Empire State Plaza – Nelson D. Rockefeller’s brainchild, the construction of which called for razing old ethnic neighborhoods and laid waste to “residential” Albany as such. (Ann Althouse had a thread about this monstrosity from a few years back.)

Here are but a few examples of what New York’s state workers are visually and spatially bombarded by as they arrive at and leave their jobs — as if the jobs themselves were not sufficiently soul-crushing. (“Art” & architecture as oppressor: part of the plan?)

As an antidote and a call to better attention, I recommend Roger Scruton’s documentary on Youtube. (more…)

NO ONE perceived as only good has genuine moral status as a human being. Most white Christians believe it is virtuous to deprive non-whites of moral status. In fact, it is wrong and dehumanizing to do so. At VFR, Jeff W. has an excellent statement on this issue: (more…)

SEE the descriptions by Thor Christopher at DoublethinkNot of black assaults last weekend in Chicago. Here is the real story, not the “coverupage.”

When it comes to black crime, most journalists are professional deceivers similar to the journalists in Jean Raspail’s apocalyptic novel The Camp of the Saints. They do not think. They throb. Steve Chapman of The Chicago Tribune throbs when asked why the newspaper routinely refuses to tell the race of flash mob attackers, whose primary aim is not to rob, which might imply something other than pure sadism, but to harm and intimidate.

The journalists in The Camp similarly do everything to avoid the facts as the terrible flotilla approaches Europe to beseige its native population. From Chapter 17:

And so, into the pressroom of the Élysée Palace, amid five hundred reporters all concerned more with rhetoric than truth, slipped the battering ram’s most recent recruit: the starving passenger of the pathetic fleet. The question was very well put. Not the principle question, to be sure. No frontal attack that might frighten off the faint of heart. But a question that checked the big issues at the door, and subtly aimed at the hidden, the most vulnerable spot: “…may I ask if the government has any plans to ease the plight of these poor, suffering souls? It’s reaching a point where we can’t sit idly by…” True, the West can’t sit idly by anymore. [Transl., Norman Shapiro]

(more…)

FOR 153 years, St. Joseph’s Academy in Brentwood, N.Y. was a Catholic prep school. As noted at The Remnant,  St. Joseph’s, which closed in 2009, has just reopened as a Muslim school. Its new purpose involves “inculcating the work view [sic] of Islam and its mission.” That should be a-okay for most modern Catholics. In 1999, Pope John Paul II kissed a copy of the Koran — and there was little objection. After all, a religion is a religion.

Imagine, however, the same thing reversed — an illustrious Muslim academy converted into a Catholic school. Muslims do not kiss the Bible. They do not believe all religions are basically one — and, in that, they are right.

(more…)

RENÉE writes:

I just started reading a book, The Long Dark T-Time of the Soul, by one of my favorite science fiction authors: Douglas Adams. It was written in 1988. In it is the most perfect account of a young woman’s relationship with pizza. I normally would only have laughed at it. However, because I am under the tutelage of The Thinking Housewife, I know this is a sign of the times.  I think you will appreciate the description:

“She enjoyed the notion that New York was home, and that she missed it, but in fact the only thing she really missed was pizza. (more…)