JESSE POWELL writes:

There has been so much talk of the federal budget and the deficit due to the threatened government shutdown that I thought your readers might be interested in some historical background on these issues.

In fiscal year 1930, before the Great Depression gathered momentum, the federal government ran a budget surplus of 0.8 percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product); it took in 4.2 percent of GDP in taxes and spent 3.4 percent of GDP. At the depth of the Great Depression, in fiscal year 1934, the government ran a deficit of 5.9 percent of GDP (4.8 percent of GDP in taxes and 10.7 percent of GDP in spending). The government ran huge budget deficits during World War II, peaking at 30.3 percent of GDP in 1943, but by 1947 the government’s budget was in surplus and the debt from World War II started to shrink in relation to the size of the economy. (more…)

  KAREN I. writes: The adults shown in the pictures in your post may be "unintentionally naked" but they should have had a clue that their outfits could cause them to be exposed. The truly "unintentionally naked" are little girls whose mothers dress them in the revealing trash that is for sale in most popular stores these days.  Most of the clothes for little girls is awful, and it starts with babies. To illustrate my point, I am sending a picture of one of Old Navy's current offerings for infants, which is a ruffled polka dot bikini. I have seen babies in these things at the beach and it is sad. Not only is way too much of their delicate skin exposed, their little bellies stick out and their diapers show.

VISHAL MEHRA writes:

Regarding the recent discussion of the shamefulness of being pregnant, it is useful to read C.S. Lewis’s “Introduction to Paradise Lost,” in which he talks about how Milton handled pre-Fall sexuality.

Now by Christian doctrine, bodily shame is excluded pre-Fall but per Lewis, a certain bashfulness is not excluded and is entirely appropriate. This is the bashfulness we feel when we are praised or when a lover seeks us. C.S. Lewis says this feeling appears whenever a subject is made into an object.

So a pregnant woman may be expected to feel bashful, which is appropriate, and the family would be appropriately protective of the modesty. However, shame would be an incorrect attitude, both on the part of pregnant lady and the family. By the way, Lewis thought that Milton was not too successful in describing pre-Fall sexuality. His Adam is altogether lacking in modesty while Eve is too coy.

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THERE is a thin line between the state of dress and the state of undress, as this New York Daily News slide show of celebrities in short skirts and low-cut gowns demonstrates. People argue that today’s clothes are more comfortable than the less revealing clothes of the past. Are they?

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BELOW  is a suggested Easter menu. I will be posting the recipes, which are all tried and true, over the next few days. (more…)

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

                          William Butler Yeats

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
 
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air. (more…)

THERE once was a time when the pregnant woman shielded her distended belly from the eyes of the world. She wore loose smocks. Out of modesty and a sense of protectiveness for the unborn, she did not wear tight-fitting clothes. 

Today, this is not the case. Women wear T-shirts and bare midriffs. Most shocking of all, expectant mothers now have their portraits taken by professional photographers in the latter stages of pregnancy. The convention in these portraits is to display the swollen belly naked, perhaps stroked by the father or a sibling.

No one wants to see his mother half-naked and pregnant in a framed photograph on a shelf. No one. These portraits will be disturbing revelations. Children will be forced to view themselves as naked bulges, non-persons. But the expectant mother is not thinking about her child and the awesome responsibility ahead when she poses in this way. She is in love with her primitive fertility. Let the record include her moments as maternal goddess.

The modern woman doesn’t have much left of her femininity, so she glories in what she does have: her body. The more spiritually empty she is, the more triumphantly carnal she becomes.

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JEFF CULBREATH of What’s Wrong with the World goes a step further than I have gone with regard to Pastor Terry Jones and the burning of the Koran. He writes:

That the Koran is a book worthy of mass extermination by means of fire cannot be credibly denied by any Christian who takes his faith seriously. I’ve defended the burning of books many times in the past, and have often made the point that Catholics have no business condemning the burning of books in principle (although specific cases might be condemned on prudential grounds). Indeed, the Church solemnly applauds the destruction of harmful books… (more…)

THE music video “Baby” by Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber has received more than 500 million views on YouTube. The love song, wildly popular among teenage girls, breaks into rap with a performance by someone named Ludacris. The teenybopper gamely attempts to do his thing in the medium of rap, with its throbbing simulation of animalistic copulation.  The video is the story of a multiracial utopia in which the white boy progressively dispenses with his whiteness and wins the girl. (more…)

DEAN ERICSON writes:

It should be said that Koran burning is not primarily directed at Muslims — it’s directed at liberals. Liberalism, that mutant strain of extremist, fundamentalist liberalism, preached with religious fervor by our liberal priesthood, surging as a tsunami in the 1960s and commanding, “Thou shalt not discriminate!” — that’s for whom the Koran burning is intended. (more…)

KRISTOR writes:

I strongly second Dean Ericson’s recommendation of Henri Pirenne’s Mohammed and Charlemagne. It is one of the most important books of my intellectual history. I sort books that are successful, books I like, into two categories: those that extend or deepen my understanding, and those that revolutionize it. The former sorts of books generally work for me on account of their further clarification of insights gained from the latter sort. Of that latter, revolutionary sort, there are only a few. Pirenne’s is one. (more…)

MAX writes:

You seem to posit that all men, simply by virtue of existing, are obligated to seek a wife, marry, and have children, unless there is a real impediment to marriage (religious vocation, mental/physical illness, inability to financially support a family, etc.) Is this assertion correct? If so, why? I’ve never seen any doctrinal or legal obligations within the church’s tradition stating this, nor have I come across any rational argument for this in the (arguably limited) philosophy texts I’ve read. If I have your view on this incorrect, how am I incorrect?

If the above is NOT your position, and normal men are not obligated to seek marriage just by existing, how does this scenario work: (more…)

RESPONDING to a Muslim reader who protests my praise of Pastor Terry Jones, I wrote:

   CAROLINE BECKENHAUPT writes: After reading your post on Eugenia Ginzburg and Soviet Womanhood, I had to read her memoirs. I finally got Into the Whirlwind from the library. I started it last night, and I couldn't stop reading. I finally forced myself to go to sleep at 1 a.m. --unusual for me. I'm still reading today, in between kids' activities and vet appointments. She writes so evocatively, the tears always well up. I can't help comparing today with those wretched times. Of course, there are many things different, but one thing strikes me as being similar: scared people lying to themselves, to each other, in the name of a messiah figure, and what was assumed to be "normal" everyday life is turned upside down, and freakish things become mundane.

JIMMY CARTER continues to be one of the world’s most outspoken feminists. Yesterday, he said the exploitation of women was “the most serious and all pervasive and damaging human rights abuse on Earth.” (more…)

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

One of your readers wrote, in respect of the Muslim period in Spain and the enthusiasm of the Reconquista: “A few voices of rationality managed to save some key texts which among other things introduced Europe to Greek and Roman knowledge.” 

Another one of your readers wrote: “The Muslims were responsible for some great civilizations, exquisite art, the transfer and preservation of classical philosophy, and a civilization of tolerance (in Spain) for hundreds of years.” 

This notion that the West owes its civilization to Islam is a complete falsehood notwithstanding that many otherwise intelligent and educated people continue to believe it.  The continuity from Classical Mediterranean to Western European Medieval Civilization is patent, which is to say that knowledge of the Greco-Roman tradition never vanished, even though at times it contracted to a few monasteries and scriptoria.  Many scholars have understood this since the nineteenth century, but a French researcher, Sylvain Gouguenheim, has recently and brilliantly restated the facts in a remarkable book Aristote au Mont-St, Michel: Les racines grecques de l’Europe Chretienne (2008).  Regrettably Gouguenheim’s book has not yet been translated, but readers of The Thinking Housewife may access my review of it, at The Brussels Journal, here.  In that review, I wrote:  (more…)