THE MURDER TRIAL of Stephanie Lazarus, the former Los Angeles police department detective who is accused of slaying her ex-boyfriend’s wife 26 years ago, continues this week. Lazarus was charged with the murder of Sherri Rasmussen in 2009. The victim’s family had unsuccessfully pleaded with detectives years ago to consider a former girlfriend of their son-in-law as a suspect. (more…)
BARTHOLOMEW writes:
It’s funny that you’re posting about pets as replacements for people. Before I saw your posts on the subject, I was thinking of writing to you about something that happened to me today that well exemplifies your point.
I was walking down the street in a wealthy, urban neighborhood and I saw an exceptionally striking dog on a walk with its owner. I complimented the owner on the dog’s beauty, and he thanked me, genuinely, I think.
As I walked away, I thought that I, a younger man walking alone, would not have complimented, say, a parent on an exceptionally cute child passing by. (more…)
AS DISCUSSED in the previous entry, energies once directed to the human race are now lavished on cats and dogs. It’s not that cats and dogs don’t deserve human kindness and attention. They just don’t deserve so much of it. Call it the sublimation of maternal instincts. Call it cultural suicide. Call it what you will, but it’s a real observable phenomenon, the extreme manifestation of which is the animal rights movement.
In this piece, an Australian writer, Ruby Hamad, argues that feminism and animal rights are virtually the same movement. Women can identify with animals, she says, because both have suffered historic oppression at the hands of men. (more…)
DARREN R. writes:
Simple question: At what point can I honestly say modern liberal society worships women?
Laura writes:
Do you think a society that requires women to negate their femaleness worships women?
Excuse my language, but modern feminism is penis envy writ large.
THE DISCUSSION on the excessive love of dogs (and cats) continues in the previous entry. By the way, the painting above, A Boy with Dogs and Kittens, by the artist Claude Joseph Bail, who died in 1921, does not portray anything remotely decadent. It conveys the pure joy to be found in relation to animals.
CATHERINE H. writes:
I just wanted to bring up the two Catholic presidential candidates’ lack of ashes during last night’s debate. While Santorum attended Mass that morning and was photographed with a smear of ashes later in the day, I was nevertheless disappointed to see that he did not retain them for that night’s television appearance. (more…)
MRS. M. writes:
Recently my mother and I took my four year-old to a birthday party at a local mall. As we left the mall, I saw the strangest sight: two women in their 50s or 60s, appearing to be a “couple,” pushing baby strollers with a large pillow and a small DOG inside each one! (more…)
AT The Orthosphere, Proph makes the case against consensual politics. Democracy, he writes, is a “misrepresentation … of the nature and structure of reality”:
Existence is not reducible to a mass of equal and sovereign wills who must agree to coordinate their movements through space in order to avoid collision. Rightness and moral law are not determined by voting or even by choice; goodness is not convertible with consent; and authority, being rooted in God, transcends individual wills. Life under a consensual political system tends to inculcate its society with the delusion that “freedom” is the highest good, with the predictable consequence that the order of being, in all its determinism, comes to be regarded as oppressive and unjust. Thus, you wind up with people demanding taxpayer-subsidized elective sex change operations — how else can we be free of the tyranny of reality?
So prosperity misrepresents man’s spiritual condition, driving him to believe (falsely) that he is self-sustaining and self-actualizing; and democracy compounds the misrepresentation by driving him to believe (also falsely) that he is by nature free, that duty is an unjust imposition, authority something to be rebelled against, and reality itself something negotiable. A bad situation, indeed, and one in dire need of correction.
JESSE POWELL writes: A new group blog your readers will be interested in has launched! It's called The Orthosphere and, since its beginning on February 17, 2012, it has been active at a rate of three posts per day. It offers interesting commentary on religion, politics, and the various maladies of our sick culture. One thing I like about The Orthosphere is that it has a lot of testosterone and fighting spirit! It is an especially good blog for those wishing to explore spiritual and religious questions and for those interested in the political fight against liberalism. The four contributors so far are Svein Sellanraa (Dispatches from the North), Bonald (Throne and Altar), Proph (Collapse: The Blog), and our very own Kristor. The blog bills itself as a “movement of Christian traditionalist conservatives” with the appropriate slogan, “Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists” (a quote from Joseph de Maistre). I urge your readers to check it out!
ALAN writes:
In the 1950s-‘60s, small, family-owned grocery stores could be found in all big cities like St. Louis. My mother shopped at three such markets month after month, year after year, all within walking distance from where she lived. The grocers and their customers came to know each other on a first-name basis. Those markets remained in business for decades, but all are gone now. Half a century after my mother shopped at one of those markets, I stood at the gravesites of the three brothers who owned and operated it, remembering the reliable service they provided in that corner market for more than forty years. (more…)
OF ALL the Christian denominations, the Eastern Orthodox Church takes Lenten fasting the most seriously. Here are the prescribed rules, which include abstinence from meat, dairy products and fish throughout Lent and abstinence from olive oil and wine for much of it. The Orthodox Lent extends from next Monday to the Friday before Palm Sunday. (more…)
AT VFR, Kirstor points out what I have noted previously and, that is, even if the Catholic Church is exempt from the abortion and contraception mandates of Obamacare, ordinary citizens who are conscientious objectors will still be required to pay for these services through the required health plans. Therefore, it is not enough for the Church to seek an exemption for itself. It should fight Obamacare as a whole. Also, leaving aside the moral objections, any health plan that funds abortion and oral contraceptives is not a health plan in anything but name. Abortion and contraceptives harm the physical health of women. They are known causes of cancer. A health plan that subsidizes abortion and oral contraceptives is like an exercise plan that requires people to sit and not move.
IT WAS after three weeks of fasting that the prophet Daniel received revelation from God. Abstinence from food lifts the mind to higher things. It prepares the way for wisdom.
Since tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, it’s worth calling to mind the purpose of fasting. The fast teaches self-restraint, not just in regard to food but with all desires and impatience. After fasting, we may mysteriously seem less petulant and quick to annoyance. It trains the will, enabling it to acquire more endurance and strength. It also serves as reparation for sin, relieving us of nagging migraines of guilt, of which we may be partially unconscious. (more…)
SEE Mary's excellent comment in this entry about the Penn State coach who has allowed his players to embrace the grunge look. Like the operators of a homeless shelter who stand by while their visitors over-eat, the coach has surrendered.
THE U.S. medical establishment, operating under obvious profit-making motives, now condones the mutilation and poisoning of children and adolescents who say they are confused and unhappy with their innate sex. In the ultimate manifestation of societal hatred of male and female, “gender identity” clinics have appeared at major pediatric hospitals. These clinics have invented a devastatingly effective sales pitch, as shown in this AP story. They tell frightened and gullible parents, who may be suffering from mental illness of their own, that their confused children – boys who fantasize about being girls and girls who fantasize about being boys – may commit suicide if they don’t submit to puberty-blocking hormones and surgery. Girls as young as 16 have had their breasts cut off under the supervision of Dr. Norman Spack, of the Children’s Hospital Boston.
The denial of innate sex differences has reached the point of mass hysteria. We are in the grip of collective mental illness and medical sadism.
GRATEFUL READER writes:
On Sunday night, my family served a meal (prepared at our church) at a homeless shelter for women in a wealthy suburban town. My husband and son worked in the kitchen while my daughter and I took orders and served and chatted with the women. (more…)
ONLY in an environment in which feminist orthodoxy prevails would a major sponsor of breast cancer research be forced to fund an organization that causes breast cancer. In the recent controversy over the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s support of Planned Parenthood – the foundation withdrew funding from Planned Parenthood and then restored it under public pressure — evidence that abortion and contraception contribute to the incidence of breast cancer was ignored by the press.
Everything was said but the obvious. The Komen Foundation needed to stop subsidizing Planned Parenthood if it had any hope of integrity. (more…)
OF ALL the I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening stories, this one takes the cake. I wish it was satire. I wish I could turn to you, reader, and say this is a spoof or a very dumb joke.
According to Stars and Stripes, a small number of male soldiers in the Army have been asked to simulate pregnancy, complete with fake breasts and distended bellies, in order to better empathize with the pregnant and post partum female soldiers they will be training. Seth Robson reports:
This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers. (more…)