IN 1786, British portraitist Thomas Gainsborough completed this portrait of the wife of the playwright and politician, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The reproduction here does not come close to capturing the loveliness and interest of the rendered scene, with Elizabeth Linley Sheridan elegantly perched on a boulder overshadowed by foliage, billowing clouds in the distance. The expression on her face is serious and serene. As Sister Wendy Beckett wrote: Her loneliness and elusive charm are conveyed to us in her portrait. Only the grave and lovely face is solid; all else is thin, diaphonous, unstable. Her mood is echoed by the wistful melancholy of the setting sun. (Sister Wendy's History of Painting, p. 243)  In this age of smiley faces, it is a relief to view portraits of the unsmiling. When did it become unacceptable to have one's picture taken without an enormous grin? A smile does not contentment make. Mrs. Sheridan was a celebrated singer when she eloped with Sheridan, who later was unfaithful to her. She is famous for having said to him: “Take me out of the whirl of the world, place me in the quiet and simple scenes of life I was born for.” Mrs. Sheridan's unleashed hair in this painting suggests someone with a fanatic heart who could not happily be confined to the drawing room.

GRAHAM SPANIER, who was forced to resign as Penn State president last week in response to the Jerry Sandusky scandal, wrote an article in 1975 for the Archives of Sexual Behavior on wife-swapping. The academic article opens with this:

This article attempts to illuminate the understanding of swinging, or mate swapping, an increasingly common form of extramarital sexual activity. A theoretical formulation argues that swinging is a form of extramarital sexual activity which serves to define as good and acceptable a behavior that in other forms and in the past has been considered deviant or immoral.

Spanier, who earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University and studied wife-swapping for his dissertation, has been the object of criticism by conservative activists for years. (more…)

JOSEPH FARAH writes at World Net Daily on the question as to why the rapes and cover-up at Penn State occurred:

The answer is right in front of our faces – but nobody wants to state it. 

The more our society condones and glorifies aberrant sexual behavior, the more of it we will see. Period. End of story. (more…)

  AT his website, Theodore Harvey explains why he is a monarchist. He wrote this essay when he was a liberal. He has since become Christian and more conservative in his views: I believe that monarchy, with its colourful, inspiring, and unique pageantry, is worth the expense. I believe that there is something special and magical, something which words cannot quite describe, about a king or queen which a president can never hope to offer. I believe that the long histories of the world’s monarchies are glorious treasures to be cherished, and that present-day monarchs provide the only continuous link to that past. I do not want to live in a world where royalty exist only in fairytales and history books. I do not want to have to explain to my children that, yes, there used to be real princes and princesses, but all that has been abolished. I believe in keeping the great romantic tradition of royalty alive. That is why I am a monarchist.

AT the blog Collapse, which is about “making sense of the coming catastrophe,” the author writes:

Over time, societies will tend toward stabler and less complex forms of organization: toward monarchy and tribalism and away from democratic bureaucracy; toward smaller-scale economic arrangements and away from large, top-heavy corporations and distribution systems; and toward localized social governance and away from centralised federalism. It must, as a matter of social necessity arising from the variable and unpredictable availability of social resources and the comparatively static and unchanging nature of social organization. 

The hilarious thing is that nothing but a monarchical figure can halt this trend, and the trend (if not halted) leads us back to monarchy, anyway. (more…)

  THE BILL is $27,400 a year for secondary students of the Friends Central School in suburban Philadelphia to be taught everything they need to know about enlightened promiscuity by sex scholar Al Vernacchio.

DAN writes:

From the latest article by traditionalist writer Mark Hackard:

Four days after Gaddafi’s death, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released a white paper on international financial reform. The document has gained certain notoriety with its call for a world Authority and the birth of a new global society, a process shown to be already well underway. It speaks of solidarity and subsidiarity, brotherhood and charity, yet not once is there mention of the word sin. (more…)

DAN writes:

I was reading Mark Steyn’s latest article and this paragraph stood out (it refers to comments Ayaan Hirsi Ali made about Anders Breivik):

“He’s not a worshiping Christian but he’s become a political Christian,” said Ayaan, “and so he’s reviving political Christianity as a counter to political Islam. That’s regression, because one of the greatest achievements of the West was to separate politics from religion.” Blame multiculturalism, she added, which is also regressive: In her neck of the Horn of Africa, “identity politics” is known as tribalism.

Here we are exposed to the moral relativism of Hirsi Ali, in which “political Christianity” is some sort of Western counterpart to “political Islam.” (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

The November 2011 Atlantic cover story is an article titled “All the Single Ladies” by Kate Bolick, a 39-year-old woman who is childless and never married. It’s a sad, highly personal story about her life and, despite the evident unhappiness of Bolick, an endorsement of the single woman.  Traditional marriage is no longer a workable ideal, Bolick writes. She suggests we look to the matriarchal networks of black single mothers and primitive tribes for guidance.  (more…)

LAURENCE BUTLER writes in response to the post “In Defense of Monarchy”:

From time to time I’ve come across self-proclaimed monarchists. They usually pride themselves on iconoclastic opinions that they bring up way more often than necessary. I’ve regarded this with amused tolerance. (more…)

 JOE AMES is an alumnus of the Pennsylvania State University. He served as editor of The Lionhearted: Penn State’s Only Independent Newspaper from 1991 – 1993. The paper gained national attention when two female undergraduate students, both journalism majors and members of the student club “Womyn’s Concerns,” stole and burned thousands of Lionhearted newspapers on the lawn of its advisor’s State College law office, to the applause of Penn State faculty and administrators.

Mr. Ames, who earned both a bachelor’s degree in Humanities and an MBA at Penn State, offers his view of the recent scandal. 

 “WE are Penn State.”                                                                                  

Even those with superficial exposure to Penn State are familiar with its famous, antiphonal football chant, “We are Penn State.” Few people, even Penn State students and professionals, know its origin. In the late 1940s, the students of the football team heard rumours that SMU requested a meeting to discuss the exclusion of a black student from their upcoming game at the “Sugar Bowl.” The story goes that a student teammate spoke first and for the whole team, “We are Penn State. There will be no meeting.” The game was played, the black student went on to produce a score-tying touchdown, Penn State launched itself into the Civil Rights movement, and a righteous football cheer was born. 

“We are Penn State” implied personal loyalty to a fellow student as a matter of principle, and the principle was more important than their extracurricular football play.Yet for the 109,000 football fans packed into Penn State’s Beaver Stadium last Saturday, “We are Penn State” is a statement of identity similar to how Christians understand Christ’s remarkable statement in St. John’s Gospel, 10:30: I and my Father are one.

(more…)

WHILE the harassment of Herman Cain has quieted down, the sexual harassment industry rumbles along. See this description of the recent settlement of a suit by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against American Laser Centers in Fresno, Calif., which now must regularly educate its employees in anti-harassment etiquette, holding compliance training annually. The workplace becomes political training ground. What theocracy ever exercised such pervasive control over the lives of its people as our secular theocracy does? 

The problem with sexual harassment enforcement is not that sexual harassment doesn’t exist or that it is right. (more…)

THE DEATH last week of Barbara Grier, a publisher of books for lesbians, provided yet another occasion for major media outlets to lionize lesbianism. Obituaries of this obscure lesbian publisher appeared throughout the nation. Before the creation of Grier’s publishing house, the obituaries patiently informed us, lesbians were without pulp fiction of their own. Imagine the darkness in which they groped. In an obituary Sunday, the New York Times provided these facts about Grier’s life: (more…)

AT Throne and Altar, Bonald eloquently argues that monarchy is the solution to the ills of modern society and the highest form of government. His comments are in response to a few points I made here regarding democracy and Christianity, but he has developed this idea in other essays at his site. (My reference to a Catholic blogger in that post was not a reference to Bonald.)

He writes:

Democracy has always been the work of unbelievers, and it has always brought ruin to public faith. For many happy centuries, the Church worked with monarchical governments to build Christian societies; more than this, it was primarily the Church that lifted the barbarians from tribal democracy to territorial monarchy. Then two centuries ago, a gang of usurpers–atheists and freemasons all–imposed democracy first on English America and France, then on the rest of Europe. (more…)

THE MENSWEAR website Put This On is full of interesting, engaging articles on the subject of fashion for men who want to look like grownups, not oversized boys. Here is a wonderful piece on the virtues of corduroy, an address by Jesse Thorn to the Corduroy Appreciation Club. He writes:

This is not some fabric reserved for oily diplomats, or gentrymen of questionable morality. Corduroy is not weak! It is not effete or innefectual or elitist. Corduroy is a fabric built to take on the world. Tuck your corduroy trousers into your boots and feed the pigs. Roll up your corduroy sleeves and bring in the harvest. Put on a corduroy field jacket and go outside to build something.

What’s truly special about our fabric is that it [is] a fabric for being and for doing. For relaxed enjoyment and for taking care of business. For reading ancient tomes and for building great societies. Corduroy is the fabric of living.

… (more…)

EMILY HALL writes:

I saw this article in The Economist and as I read it I couldn’t help but shake my head. The title reads: “The Decline of Asian Marriage – Asia’s Lonely Hearts.” The subtitle follows with, “Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.” Hmmmm, you don’t say? (more…)