Tuesday, January 31, 2012
The Only Anti-War Candidate
Noting that "Paul clearly dislikes wealth-sapping programs like Medicare and Social Security, but he is just not as fiery in his rhetorical opposition to entitlements as he is in his pleading against a fiat currency and for a peaceful foreign policy," she writes that this "opposition to war is not just situational but ethical." Her conclusion:
- He'll keep on running, but the odds are he won't be the Republican candidate this fall, and his anti-war views will probably get most of the blame for that showing. But Paul has already won. And he did so by picking the absolute best thing—the most important, life and death issue—about which to be a purist.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Paleolibertarianism, Peace, Ron Paul for President
The Good War?
Looks like a good read. Sir Max Hastings' The Korean War was the second finest standard war history this blogger has read, after Sir Hugh Thomas's monumental The Spanish Civil War. But the book that "builds the clearest case possible that war is to be avoided at (almost) all costs" was the decidedly non-standard Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker.
Labels: Albion, America the Beautiful, Corea, Deutschland, Holy Mother Russia, Iberia, Italia, The Written Word, War and Rumors of War
The Church Militant
"Should the Church submit, its moral authority in America would disappear," Mr. Buchanan writes, also noting that "this a battle the Church must fight [and] it is a battle the Church can win if it has the moral stamina to say the course."
Labels: America the Beautiful, The Catholic Faith, Tyranny
Quote of the Day
Labels: America the Beautiful, Race Matters, The Catholic Faith, The Dismal Science
Rightism ≠ Racialism
- Some will say that you can recognize the “Right” based on racial and nationalistic ideology, but the fact is that there simply is no unique correlation between groups which textbooks have labeled as rightist and such beliefs. For example, Italian fascism — and the ideology was born in Italy — never had a racial or ethnic component. And this changed only a few decades after its birth when, pandering to Hitler, Benito Mussolini enacted some anti-Jewish laws during the waning days of his regime. Even so, these measures were condemned at the time as un-fascist.
Then there was Francisco Franco in Spain. While labeling him a fascist is more than a stretch, it is fair to say that he was on the Right, as he was a traditional monarchist. Yet he certainly had no racial agenda. And the same can be said about the man who patterned himself after Franco, Augusto Pinochet of Chile. On the other hand, socialist Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe is well-known for his oppressive racial policies.
Of course, all the supposedly “rightist” men I just mentioned were nationalistic. But so were the communist Soviets and Chinese, and so are the present-day pseudo-communist Chinese and the old-line reds the North Koreans. The fact is that nationalism, a form of tribalism, is man’s default, his norm all throughout history. Why, in the Bible itself we see how peoples such as the Samaritans, Jews, and others exhibited group patriotism and looked down on one another, yet no one even today thinks of labeling them Right or Left or considers it unusual. What is unusual is the rather odd anomaly known as the internationalism of contemporary Western pseudo-elites (and do you want to wager on what will be the norm 100 years hence?).
Of course, getting back to racial/ethnic agendas, it could be pointed out that as an example of elevating your group above others — and since nations typically have been defined by race and/or ethnicity — nationalism is at least a first cousin to ethnic and racial pride. But all this means is that most groups of every political stripe have kinship with such pride.
Labels: Leftism, Politricks, Race Matters, Rightism
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Civil Wars Perform "Barton Hollow," "My Father's Father," and "Between the Bars"
Joy Williams, it seems, was once the darling of Contemporary Christian Music™. Thank goodness she left that behind.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music
Ron Paul and the Church
Labels: America the Beautiful, Paleolibertarianism, Ron Paul for President, Separated Brethren, The Catholic Faith
No Blood for Israel!
Perhaps it's time to revive the old "love it or leave it" canard and ask these neocons, "If you love Israel so much, why don't you move there?"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Persia, War and Rumors of War, Zionism
A Woman's Right to Choose (to Kill Her Daughter)
Labels: The Culture of Death, The Fairer Sex
Saturday, January 28, 2012
W.A. Mozart's "Great Mass in C Minor" Performed by the Alice Millar Chapel Choir and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra
The American Revolution and the Six Nations of the Iroquois
- The American armies, waging total war, systematically destroyed all the Indian settlements that they reached. Houses were burned, apple and peach orchards chopped down, caches of corn, squash, cucumbers, beans, and tobacco and dry fields of ripe corn, hay, and other vegetables were put to the torch. Five hundred Indian dwellings in two dozen settlements were reduced to ashes, nearly a million bushels of corn were incinerated.
[....]
In 1784..., the federal representatives adopted a conscious policy of destroying Iroquois self-esteem, corrupting their leaders, and subverting their political system. James Duane, who had been lately a delegate to the Continental Congress and a member of its Committee on Indian Affairs, in advance of the treaty advised the Governor of New York to break down Iroquois morale at Fort Stanwix by every device of psychological warfare available to his commissioners. "They assume a perfect equality," he wrote; this attitude was to be broken by constantly treating them as inferiors, as a dependent minority group. It had been the custom of New York, Pennsylvania, and Crown commissioners for a hundred years to follow Indian usage in councils. Now these rituals were to be abandoned. "Instead of conforming to Indian political behavior We should force them to adopt ours—dispense with belts, etc." Their very existence as a political unit was to be denied. "I would never suffer the word 'Nation' or 'Six Nations,' or 'Confederates,' or 'Council Fire at Onondago' or any other form which would revive or seem to confirm their former ideas of independence, to escape ... they are used to be called Brethren, Sachems & Warriors of the Six Nations. I hope it will never be repeated."
[...]
This policy was out into effect at Fort Stanwix, where the initial Indian speakers were cut short in their delivery, informed that Great Britain had given their lands to the United States, and ordered peremptorily to sign articles of submission and cession. American spokesmen pointed their fingers at the Indians to emphasize each instruction: "... it made the Indians stare. The speech was delivered... in a language by no means accommodating or flattering; quite unlike what they used to receive." The credentials and authority of the chief Indian spokesman—a Mohawk warrior authorized to make peace on behalf of the Six Nations and all their allies and confederates, including the Ottawa, Chippewa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mississauga, Miami, Delaware, Shawnee, Cherokee, Choktaw, and Creek—were impugned, and the very existence of such a confederacy denied (although its reality was assured enough). And behind the whole proceeding lay a pose of withering contempt on the part of the white delegates, many of whom were slaveowners and only too ready to regard the Indians as lesser breeds. Washington, himself a slaveowner, about this time compared "the savage" to "the wolf" as "both being animals of prey though the differ in shape." And Washington, like many another American official, had before the Revolution become an investor in abortive schemes to acquire the same Indian lands whose final relinquishment was a prime object of the treaties at forts Stanwix, McIntosh, and Finney.
Labels: Albion, America the Beautiful, Atrocities, Indian America, Race Matters, The Empire State, War and Rumors of War
True Exceptionalism
Mr. Pillar quotes the definer of the term as saying that we Jeffersonians "believe that the specific cultural, social, and political heritage of the United States is a special treasure to be conserved, defended, and passed on to future generations." This is, of course, true of any true patriot of any true country.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Foreign Policy, Paleolibertarianism
America's Postwar War Death-toll
Labels: America the Beautiful, The Culture of Death, War and Rumors of War
Hyperpolyglots
- He spoke them so well, and with such a feather-light foreign accent, according to his Irish biographer, that English visitors mistook him for their countryman Cardinal Charles Acton. (They also said he spoke as if reading from The Spectator.) His ability to learn a language in a matter of days or hours was so devilishly impressive that one suspects Mezzofanti pursued the cardinalate in part to shelter himself from accusations that he had bought the talent from Satan himself.
- Among the more impressive workhorses is Alexander Arguelles, who, at the time of his first meeting with Erard, is an unemployed academic and jogging enthusiast living in California. Arguelles reads novels in Dutch, writes and reads classical Arabic, and translates Korean for cash on the side. But he also spends twelve hours every day learning languages and obsessively cataloguing his progress. In his case, the hyperpolyglottism appears to be simply compulsive behavior.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Corea, Indian America, Italia, Las Américas, Linguistics, The Catholic Faith
Friday, January 27, 2012
W.A. Mozart's Requiem Performed by the Wiener Symphoniker and Wiener Staatsopernchor, Directed by Karl Böhm
Labels: Classical Music, Musica Sacra, Österreich, The Catholic Faith
"It's not a Catholic thing. It's a natural thing. It's a human thing."
- Our society has caricatured natural law as some medieval tool the church is using to justify its own unique and antiquated system of teaching. Of course, the opposite is true. Natural law theory is not uniquely Catholic, it's human.
Some of the greatest exponents of the natural law, like Aristotle and Cicero, never heard of the Catholic Church. These things we teach are not true because they happen to be taught by the church. We teach them because they happen to be true. Their truth antedates the church.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Perennialism, Philosophy, The Catholic Faith, The Culture of Life
Jonah Goldberg Half-Right
- He said of the military: "At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They're not consumed with personal ambition. They don't obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach."
That is disgusting.
What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn't America any longer. He's making the case not for American exceptionalism, but Spartan exceptionalism.
It's far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn't want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Neoconnerie, Republic Not Empire, Tyranny
The Federalist Papers as Guide to the Constitution?
- Third-string "political philosophers" and "Constitutional scholars," and even learned jurists, have made an icon out of The Federalist, but it is only one of many discussions of the Constitution. It was a partisan document designed to overcome the objections of New York, and was not very convincing to its audience since ratification passed in New York by the narrowest possible margin Furthermore, it discusses the Constitution as it was merely a proposal under consideration and not the Constitution as ratified by the people of the States, who made their intentions clear in the undisputable language of the 10th Amendment. The authors – Madison, Hamilton, and Jay – were all disappointed that the Constitution did not centralize power as much as they would have liked, yet realized what they had to say to win over the majority. On the part of Alexander Hamilton, contributions to The Federalist were outright dishonest, because once he got into power he worked to do all sorts of things that he claimed the Constitution did not authorize.
The Federalist, which we see cited all the time as the key to the Constitution is speculation and was never ratified by anybody. But handicapped thinkers read Madison’s philosophical ruminations, nearly all of which have been proved superficial and wrong, and imagine themselves participating in deep thoughts about government and learning about the true Constitution. This is part of the long-established practice of treating the Constitution as something sacred handed down by divine wisdom rather than understanding it by its real history.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism
President John Tyler's Grandsons
Labels: America the Beautiful
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper Performs "Sunday Shoes," "Aubergine" and "Crane Your Neck""
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music
An American Roepkean Moment?
European Christian democracy gave us the great Wilhelm Röpke, or rather vice versa, who "concluded that free markets' vaunted efficiency and affluence can exact social and spiritual forfeits, ... envisioned a positive and more extensive role for the state, as rule-maker, enforcer of competition, and provider of basic social security," but "remained a political decentralist." His magnum opus, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market, should really be read by all.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Europa, The Catholic Faith, The Dismal Science
The Statism of the Union Address
The dystopian vision: "Government and labor and business working in tightly controlled concert, with nice people like Obama at the reins--all the inventions coming out of massive government or corporate labs, and all the resulting products built by a heavily unionized workforce that knows no worry about the future."
Labels: America the Beautiful, The Dismal Science, The Military-Industrial Complex, Tyranny
U.S.S.A.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Commies, Paleoconservatism
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper Performs "Regarding Ascending the Stairs" and "Almond Colored Sheets"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music
Rochester's Best Beer in America's Best Can

"Our take on the 16th century German legend has turned out to be a legend in its own right," says the brewery of its Genesee Bock Beer. "For every spring since 1951, our brewery has carefully crafted and lagered Genesee Bock Beer. The result is an exceptionally hearty, full-flavored beer with a slight malty finish—and a perfect way to celebrate the snow melt."
Bock "is historically associated with special occasions, often religious festivals such as Christmas, Easter or Lent," and has "a long history of being brewed and consumed by Bavarian monks as a source of nutrition during times of fasting."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Deutschland, Drink, Rachacha, The Catholic Faith
The Father of Reaganomics on "Washington’s Grotesque Hypocrisy"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, The Dismal Science, War and Rumors of War
Robert Burns Quoted by Ralph Nader
- And would some Power the small gift give us.
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us…
- Can the most militarily powerful country in the world, many of whose people and soldiers are opposed or have serious doubts about why we are continuing to pursue these senseless undeclared wars of aggression that create more hatred and enemies, look with empathy at what those people, whom we are pummeling, are going through? Will the Pentagon, which doesn’t estimate civilian casualties, let its officials speak publically about the millions of such casualties—deceased, injured and sick—that have afflicted innocent Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis?
Will our current crop of political candidates for Congress and the Presidency ever reflect on the wise words of our past Generals—Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall and earlier Smedley Butler—about the folly and gore, not the glory of war?
Labels: Albion, America the Beautiful, Paleoconservatism, The Military-Industrial Complex, The Written Word, War and Rumors of War
Remember Fallujah
- The Nuremberg Charter, as well as the Geneva Conventions, drawn up in 1949 and approved by the US Senate, make it clear that collective punishment, as practiced widely, particularly on the Eastern Front in World War II by the Nazi Wehrmacht, is a war crime. As Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention puts it:
- No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
Other Geneva Conventions were also violated by the US assaults on Fallujah, which featured the deliberate targeting of hospitals and ambulances, as well as the active refusal to allow male non-combatants to flee the scene of impending battle, the execution of wounded or captured enemy fighters, and the denial of protected status to boys under the age of 18 who were seeking to flee the scene of battle.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Atrocities, Conspiracy Analysis, Mesopotamia, The Fourth Estate, War and Rumors of War
Tel Aviv's Candidate
'Twas Russell Kirk who reminded us, "Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Neoconnerie, War and Rumors of War, Zionism
Gary North on the Fall of Kodak
- Kodak's executives made a fundamental mistake in 1975. This mistake is almost universal. It did not understand what business it was in. If you had asked a Kodak executive what business the company was in, he would have said "the film business." Kodak was famous for its film. But it was not in the film business. It was in the photography business. Kodak film buyers bought the film in order to get pictures.
- In 1995, Kodak charged Fuji with trade violations in Japan. Kodak complained to the U.S. government under section 301 of the U.S. Trade Representative's rules. The government in 1996 prudently turned the case over to the World Trade Organization, which had opened for anti-business in 1995. This was the first case where the WTO decided on an antitrust issue, took Fuji before the World Trade Organization. It lost the case in late 1997. From the beginning, Kodak had a hard time proving its case. Japan had eliminated all tariffs on imported film in 1994. It had been slowly reducing tariffs on film for years, yet Kodak could not increase its market share in Japan. Fuji blamed Kodak's lack of competition.
Here is the irony of Kodak's case. In 1994, Kodak had brought a lawsuit against the U.S. government asking that the antitrust limits placed on the firm in 1921 and again in 1954 be removed. Kodak had a dominant share of the U.S. market, the government claimed. "Only because we offer better products," Kodak replied. Kodak won the case. The limits were removed. Then Kodak asked the government to go after Fuji in Japan.
The hypocrisy of Kodak is obvious to anyone who understands economics. The company believed in domestic dominance apart from antitrust, but it also believed in antitrust intervention in Japan. It was focused on government, not customers.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, Nippon, Rachacha, The Arts
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Johnny Cash Performs "The Ballad Of Ira Hayes/As Long As The Grass Shall Grow"
The Man in Black playing Indian. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and Cash is probably more Indian than the likes of Ward Churchill or Jamake Highwater.
I stumbled across the latter song doing some research on the book I'm currently reading, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, about the local prophet Handsome Lake. The song, written by Peter La Farge, refers to the flooding of the Allegheny Reservoir in violation of the Treaty of Canandaigua. The former song is about Ira Hayes, "one of the six men immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, Indian America, War and Rumors of War
The Late, Great Joseph Sobran on the Honorable Ron Paul
Labels: America the Beautiful, Anarchism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Ron Paul for President
Merchants of Death
"Yes, we’re the world’s foremost 'merchants of death,' the title of a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the U.S. in 1934," says Mr. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), of a time when "most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers. The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany’s Krupp, France’s Schneider, or Britain’s Vickers."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Europa, The Military-Industrial Complex, War and Rumors of War
Monday, January 23, 2012
Cloud Cult Perform "Chain Reaction," "Step Forward," and "The Ghost Inside Our House"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Classical Music, Folk Music
Some Advice for Ron Paul
Labels: America the Beautiful, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Ron Paul for President
Mass Burials in Obamaland
On these shores, the editors of Taki's Magaizine report that "500 bodies—including the corpses of an estimated 100 babies—were crammed into a storage unit designed for 300" — Stacking up Debt (and Bodies) in Illinois.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, The Dismal Science
80%
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Josquin Desprez' Præter Rerum Seriem Performed by the Gabrieli Consort and Players, Directed by Paul McCreesh
Michel de Montaigne’s "Of A Monstrous Child"
Labels: Family, The Catholic Faith, The Eldest Daughter of the Church
Steve Sailer on the French, Freud, and Autism
Mr. Sailer's devastating conclusion:
- I'm not hugely optimistic about the efficacy of the "American" approaches, but the good news is that they at least tend to be more motivated by attempts to find something to help the children than to keep elderly acolytes of a defunct dogma employed. Aged Freudians guilt-tripping the moms of autistic kids doesn't do anybody any good, except keeping the old shrinks from realizing they've wasted their lives.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Family, Health, Pseudo-science, The Eldest Daughter of the Church
War Without End, Amen
- Isn’t Ron Paul a social conservative? He opposes abortion, gay marriage and promiscuous sex, he has never been divorced and certainly supports family values, but he believes in limited government. Two of his brothers are ministers. Why then are evangelical leaders now opting for Santorum, and before him Gingrich? The one big area of disagreement with Ron Paul is war; foreign wars and the domestic one against drugs. For this they oppose him. Santorum supports unending war in Afghanistan, backing Israel without limit and a new war against Iran.
Earlier there was a major far leftist candidate who supported all the issues that evangelicals oppose, and was a vocal proponent for expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank and promoting the war on Iraq. He was overjoyed when open homosexuality became allowed in the military, he supports abortion, gay marriage and the leftist agenda for big, intrusive government; power to labor unions as well as expanded, unconstitutional police powers within the U.S. Evangelicals adore him and went all out to support him 2006, when he lost his primary race and ran as an independent for the Senate. He is Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Persia, Ron Paul for President, Separated Brethren, War and Rumors of War, Zionism
Friday, January 20, 2012
Vaticanomics
"If they wish to give back to the economy its true role, if they wish to overcome the idea that society does not grow just by producing more, we must recover conjugal love, the first community where people learn not only to produce, but to build" — The Family Presented as Antidote to Economic Crisis.
Labels: Family, The Catholic Faith, The Dismal Science, The Holy See
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Horse Feathers Perform "Belly of June" and "Thistled Spring"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music
William Byrne on Edmund Burke
Labels: Albion, Paleoconservatism, Philosophy
Steve Sailer on Women's Boxing... and Men's
- Boxing (men's) used to be a big sport at the Olympics, and the short bouts were more exciting than long professional title fights. But it was always rife with ridiculous decisions, corruption, brawls between cornermen, and other bad craziness.
Plus, guys pounding each other in the head is just too brutal. I went to some preliminary rounds at the 1984 L.A. Olympics. First, they had flyweight bouts (something like 107 pound max). Those were a lot of fun because these guys couldn't seem to do much serious damage to each other. Then they had heavyweight bouts. One heavyweight caught another one under the chin with an upper cut that lifted the poor bastard clear off the floor. He laid on the canvas for 20 minutes until they strapped him to a cart and wheeled him away. That was the last time I went to a boxing match.
Labels: Albion, Sport, The Fairer Sex
What Is the Greater War Crime, Urinating on Dead Enemies or Mass-Murdering Civilians?
Where’s the outrage over the drone attacks controlled halfway around the world killing women and children?
Labels: America the Beautiful, Central Asia, War and Rumors of War
Hey, Obama Supporters!
- (1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (14) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Politricks, Tyranny, War and Rumors of War
Local Company News
Sad news for an "iconic Rochester company, whose history dates to the late 19th century and the technical and marketing genius of founder George Eastman" — Kodak files Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Local or not, it's hard to shed too many tears over a company whose main strategy in recent years had been "to pursue patent infringement claims against major companies."
In other local news, we'll lose a "century-old vacant brewhouse... as part of Genesee Brewing Co.’s plan to.... restore a 110-year-old building to house a museum, alehouse and microbrewery" — Brewhouse can be razed, board rules.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, Drink, Rachacha, Technology, The Dismal Science
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Crooked Still Perform "Sometimes in This Country," "The Golden Vanity" and "Locust in the Willow"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music
John Zmirak on the Separation of Church and State in America
- In an American context, given our constitutional heritage and the large body of legal decisions solidifying its interpretation, on nearly any issue, Christians of any denomination should reject the assistance of the State. Our efforts to capture it, the courts have made it clear, will always fail. Any attempt to infuse the activity of the government with the moral content of a revealed religion will be rejected, in the end. Indeed, the more our own institutions cooperate with the government, the more they will be compromised; hospitals which take federal funds will be subject to secular ethics on issues like contraception, end-of-life, and even abortion. Religious colleges accepting federal grants will eventually be federalized, and so on.
It seems clear that the public sphere in America is irretrievably secular. So the only logical response of Christians must be to try to shrink it. Instead of attempting to baptize a Leviathan which turned on us long ago, we’d do much better to cage and starve the beast. We should favor low taxes—period, regardless of the “good” use to which politicians promise to put it. We should oppose nearly every government program intended to achieve any aim whatsoever. We can make exceptions here and there: We can favor the protection of innocent lives, which would cover things like fixing traffic lights and throwing abortionists into prison. But that is pretty much that. Christian public policy should focus not on capturing the power of the State but shrinking it, to the bare minimum required to enforce individual rights, narrowly defined. Likewise, the share of our wealth seized by the state must be radically slashed, to allow for private initiatives and charities that will not be amoral, soulless, bureaucratic and counterproductive (like the secular welfare state). Instead of asking for handouts to our schools in the forms of vouchers, we should seek the privatization of public schools—which by their very nature, in today’s post-Christian America, are engines of secularism. And so on for nearly every institution of the centralized State, which has hijacked the rightful activities of civil society and the churches, and which every year steals so much of our wealth to squander on itself that we can barely afford to reproduce ourselves. (So the State helpfully offers to replace us with immigrants, but that’s another article.)
Labels: Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, The Catholic Faith, The Holy Father
Why "Intellectual Property" Is Inconsistent With the Right to Property
Mr. Richman concludes that "cheaper technology and the increasing unenforceability of IP may be ushering in a full-fledged economic revolution marked by smaller, flatter, even nonhierarchical worker-owned firms in a newly decentralized competitive marketplace. In other words, the postcapitalist world could look like a genuinely free market."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Freedom, Paleolibertarianism, The Dismal Science, Tyranny
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Femicide in Chindia
- The statistics are sickening. The UN reports approximately 200 million girls in the world today are ‘missing’. India and China are said to eliminate more female infants than the number of girls born in the US each year. Lianyungang in China has the worst infant gender ratio on record with 163 boys born for every 100 girls. Taiwan, South Korea and Pakistan are also countries in which unwanted female babies are aborted, killed or abandoned.
Labels: Atrocities, Corea, The Culture of Death, The Fairer Sex, The Middle Kingdom, The Subcontinent
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, or Mars, the God of War?
Daniel Nichols rightly sums up the above video of "folks who call themselves Christians" in "the party that calls itself prolife" "respond[ing] to the Golden Rule, the one articulated by, you know, the guy most of these folks claim to follow" — Insane. In the comments Thomas Storck gives the distributist nihil obstat:
- Despite his grave faults, I think a vote for Ron Paul can certainly be justified. I can hardly think of any American president ever who suggested we should apply the golden rule in our foreign policy. But Leo XIII made it clear that nations are bound by the moral law as much as individuals.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Heresy, Paganism, Paleolibertarianism, Peace, The Catholic Faith, The Culture of Death, The Kingdom of Hawai'i, War and Rumors of War
Monday, January 16, 2012
Martin Luther King Jr. on "The Mike Douglas Show"
With the antiwar message that got him killed.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Peace, Việt Nam, War and Rumors of War
"Beer Is Proof that God Loves Us and Wants Us to Be Happy"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Drink
Land of the Free?
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, Freedom, Tyranny
False Friends
(Speaking of Israel and false flags, to my knowledge, the questions raised by Mr. Raimondo's exposé of "[t]he story of Israel’s underground army in America – and its foreknowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks" have never been adequately answered — The High-Fivers.)
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, War and Rumors of War, Zionism
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Nicolas Gombert's Missa Media Vita In Morte Sumus Sung by The Hilliard Ensemble
Labels: Albion, Early Music, Musica Sacra, Polonia, The Catholic Faith, The Low Countries
Pat Buchanan Canned From MSNBC
Progressives can be proud that they've removed the anti-war right's most prominent voice from his most mainstream audience, as reported on by Timothy Stanley — The Color of Cowardice.
Questioning the influx of foreigners into this country, it seems, is beyond the pale for the left-liberal. The mass murder of foreigners in their own countries, however, is perfectly acceptable to him.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Left-Liberalism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Republic Not Empire, War and Rumors of War
Gardasil?
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Family, Health, The Fairer Sex
The Skyscraper Index Strikes Again
"Lawrence said that historically, skyscraper construction had been characterised by bursts of sporadic, but intense activity that coincided with easy credit, rising land prices and excessive optimism, but often by the time the buildings were finished, the economy had slipped into recession."
Austrian Business Cycle Theory, anyone? Mark Thornton of the Ludwig von Mises Institute explains — Skyscrapers and Business Cycles.
Labels: Architecture, Decline and Fall, The Dismal Science, The Middle Kingdom
Friday, January 13, 2012
"Here and Heaven" and "No One But You" Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, and Aoife O'Donovan
Labels: America the Beautiful, Classical Music, Folk Music
Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, and Aoife O'Donovan Perform and Discuss "The Goat Rodeo Sessions"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Classical Music, Folk Music
"A Half Step Away From a Cellar-full of Canned Goods and 9 mm. Rounds"
- Twenty-one percent of his $2.4 to $5.5 million was in real estate, 14 percent in cash. He owns no bonds. Only 0.1 percent is invested in stocks, and Paul bought these "short," betting the price will plunge. Every other nickel is sunk into gold and silver mining companies.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, Paleolibertarianism, Ron Paul for President, The Dismal Science
Korczak Ziolkowski and Crazy Horse
The John Birch Society's Sam Antonio on the "great believer in private enterprise and individual initiative" behind what "will be the largest mountain carving in the world" — Crazy Horse Memorial: A Tale of Two Stories Told in Stone. An excerpt:
- Korczak’s vision was to have Crazy Horse built by the interested public and not the taxpayer. He so strongly believed in the free-market system that he twice turned down $10 million of federal funding. He knew that federal funds would mean federal control over the project. He felt the government would not complete the carving and not carry out its humanitarian goals.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Indian America, Polonia, The Arts
Boccaccio's Three Rings in America
Labels: Al-Islam, America the Beautiful, Freedom, Italia, The Catholic Faith, The Chosen, The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Antonio Vivaldi's Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera Performed by Emiko Morimoto, Yuki Negeshi, Haruko Motohashi, and String Ensemble Yamato
Labels: Albion, Early Music, Italia, Nippon
War Without End, Amen
Labels: America the Beautiful, Neoconnerie, Persia, Politricks, The Military-Industrial Complex, War and Rumors of War
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Heinrich Schütz' Ist Nicht Ephraim Mein Teurer Sohn and Der Herr Ist Mein Hirte, La Chapelle Rhénane, Directed by Benoît Haller
Good Germans
Labels: Atrocities, Deutschland, The Chosen, Tyranny
Ancient Liberties Upheld
Our latter-day King John is reported to be similarly unpleased — Supreme Court delivers a knockout punch to the White House. "Will the government continue to test the bounds of religious liberty?"
Labels: Albion, America the Beautiful, Freedom, Separated Brethren, The Catholic Faith
My Weggies
Folks around here define themselves by the Wegmans at which they shop. Mine, "one of the oldest on the area," pictured above, is within walking distance in East Rochester, NY. I prefer its quieter, retro-ambiance to the truly incredible Super Wegmans near which I used to live, which I've heard attracts industry people from all over the country.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Consumerism, Rachacha
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Gabriel Urbain Fauré's Super Flumina Babylonis, Performed by Orchestre de Paris and Chœur de l'Orchestre de Paris, Directed by Paavo Järvi
Vespers psalm for Thursday's Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary set to XXth Century music.
Labels: Classical Music, Musica Sacra, The Catholic Faith, The Eldest Daughter of the Church, The Other Modern
T.P.R.
Labels: Linguistics, The Middle Kingdom
Unintended Consequences?
Labels: Conspiracy Analysis, Health
Hope Locally
Labels: America the Beautiful, Drink, Food, Rachacha, The Dismal Science
"A profound disquiet..."
Labels: Decline and Fall, The Holy Father
Philippe de Monte's Super Flumina Babylonis Sung by The Sixteen, Directed by Harry Christopher
Vespers psalm for Thursday's Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary set to XVIth Century music.
Labels: Early Music, Musica Sacra, The Catholic Faith, The Eldest Daughter of the Church
Monday, January 9, 2012
Franz Liszt's Ave Maria Sung by the Kosova Pilharmonic Choir, Directed by R. Rudi
Something to accompany Elena Maria Vidal's post about "a massively literate man whose philosophical identity defined itself as carefully and with as much conviction as Wagner’s" but whose "conviction differed from Wagner’s especially in their view of the Christian religion" — Franz Liszt, God and Civilization.
Labels: Classical Music, Eastern Churches, Musica Sacra, Österreich, The Catholic Faith
Fortunate Son
- My sons are all adults and they've made decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president. I respect that and respect all those and the way they serve this great country.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Heresy, Neoconnerie, Việt Nam, War and Rumors of War
"Utopia Is Only Ever One Ban Away"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Drink, Drugs, Paleolibertarianism
Saturday, January 7, 2012
The Priests and Shane MacGowan Perform "Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth"
Nothing says Epiphany quite like the Little Drummer Boy.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Classical Liberalism, Eire, Popular Music, Punk Rock, The Catholic Faith
The Invisible Hands Strikes Locally
"Kodak will likely emerge from its impending bankruptcy with its name still intact," the author concludes, "but it will be a shadow of its former self: much smaller, much more focused on high-end commercial printing equipment, and severely chastened by the inevitable operation of the free market. The consumer is better off as well, enjoying the refinements developed by Kodak’s competitors since the digital camera was first developed by Kodak in 1975 but then ignored by the company until it was too late."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, Rachacha, Technology, The Dismal Science
Rick Santorum vs. Constititional Conservatism
- One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Neoconnerie, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Politricks, Traditionalism
Of the Many Reasons to Oppose Rick Santorum...
Labels: America the Beautiful, Neoconnerie, Politricks, The Culture of Life
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Handsome Lake
Finishing the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the "German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr," and "participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism... involved in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler" and whose "view of Christianity's role in the secular world has become very influential," I begin the story of Handsome Lake, the "Seneca religious leader of the Iroquois people" who "preached a message that combined traditional Haudenosaunee religious beliefs with a revised code meant to bring consciousness to the Haudenosaunee after a long period of cultural disintegration following colonization" that "is still practiced today."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Deutschland, Indian America, Perennialism, Separated Brethren, The Written Word
Ron vs. Rick
Labels: America the Beautiful, Freedom, Neoconnerie, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Politricks, The Culture of Death, Tyranny
Ron Paul, Freemason?
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Freemasonry, Ron Paul for President, The Empire State
Thursday, January 5, 2012
"What Child Is This" Performed by Jeanette Köhn, Nils Landgren, Lars Danielsson, Johan Norberg, Ulf Wakenius, & Bugge Wesseltoft
Vespers hymn for Thursday's Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, taken up tonight as I put down the more daunting Liturgy of the Hours, a few days ahead of Ordinary Time to be sure.
Labels: Albion, Early Music, Jazz, Scandanavia, The Catholic Faith
Whose Side Are You On?
- Indeed, Santorum's politics are nearly the essence of Bushism. Paul represents the full-throated rejection of the same. If Paul is well-known for his strong anti-war views and sharp criticisms of U.S. interference abroad, Santorum has been no less outspoken in favor of ever more intrusive and interventionist policies. While Paul has been the lone voice warning against a rush to war against Iran, Santorum demands a more combative Iran policy. Santorum's campaign rhetoric reads as if it were a caricature of neoconservatism. He believes that the U.S. is at war with "Islamic fascism," which he sees a global threat on par with 20th century totalitarianism. He insists that we must promote democracy, but we must never allow democratic elections to empower Islamists. Oh, and terrorists hate us because we are free. U.S. policies have nothing to do with it.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Foreign Policy, Neoconnerie, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Ron Paul for President
Eight Words That Cannot Be Spoken on American Television
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Ron Paul for President, Zionism
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Rev. Gary Davis' "Candyman" Performed by Hot Tuna
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, Rock 'n' Roll
Ominous Local News
I hope they at least leave on the sign on our city's mots iconic building — Kodak shares plunge further on report of possible bankruptcy filing. I made it a special point to buy Kodak Printer Paper the other day. Oh, the irony — How Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975.
Labels: Architecture, Decline and Fall, Rachacha, Technology
Baroque Paraguay
Labels: Early Music, Europa, Las Américas, Musica Sacra, The Catholic Faith
Nihil Sub Sole Novum
Labels: Modernist Tomfoolery, Separated Brethren, The Internets, The Maghreb
"Luddite from Space"
- Before Fahrenheit 451’s firemen came to burn books, the public deserted books. “I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths,” the story’s Professor Faber remarks. “No one wanted them back. No one missed them.” In attempting to please the masses, publishers took care not to offend the market and produced books “leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm.” Attention spans waned in the wake of competing technology. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth-century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”
In the novel, people stopped reading before the state stopped them from reading. The predictable result was an ill-educated society fit for neither leisure nor the ballot. Women discuss voting for a candidate because of his handsome looks and abdicate the responsibilities of motherhood by dumping their children in front of television sets. The over-medicated, air-conditioned culture is awash in suicide, abortion, child neglect, and glassy-eyed passivity. Sound familiar?
Labels: America the Beautiful, Futurism, The Written Word
"A Civil Rights Movement for Tuba Players"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, Las Américas
Catholic Anti-Libertarians
Labels: Paleolibertarianism, The Catholic Faith
Who Cares If He's Catholic? He's a Would-Be War Criminal for God's Sake!
- Romney and Gingrich don’t lag far behind in their ravings against the Islamic Republic. Obama ratchets up sanctions against Iran while supposedly telling Netanyahu that the US will not endorse any attack by Israel on Iran. Only Ron Paul stands out against this deranged chorus. Given a chance, I’ll vote for Paul, even though he hasn’t a prayer of taking over the Oval Office.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Persia, Ron Paul for President, The Catholic Faith
A Sad Sign of America's Engineered Decline a Manufacturing Power
Also reporting that "a similar Swedish move is occurring at the AAK (AahusKarishamn) oils and fats processing plant, in Louisville, Kentucky," Mr. Macaray perceptively says, "Say what you will about the Swedes, they’re shrewd and resourceful. Accordingly, they were perceptive enough to realize that the United States no longer qualifies, technically, as a 'country'—at least not in the way that Sweden qualifies as a 'country.'" It was our own "elites" who decided to redefine us as a non-country.
I remember once meeting a Southerner in the airport of Ulsan, where I spent the first three of mu fourteen years in Korea. He seemed a bit embarrassed that he had been brought over by his employer, Hyundai, for training. I probably should have been embarrassed that I was there working at a university founded by the same company, even if I had been sent there by my alma mater.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Corea, Decline and Fall, Dixie, Scandanavia, The Dismal Science
Governor Cuomo Pledges to Further Bleed the Upstate
- Another key to powering our economic growth is expanding our energy infrastructure. Just as President Eisenhower’s interstate highway project propelled the nation forward in the 1950s, today the energy grid provides critical infrastructure and an opportunity for economic growth.
We have an excess of generation capacity and tremendous wind power potential in Upstate and Western New York and north of the border in Quebec. We have tremendous energy needs Downstate. Just as we built the New York State Thruway to unite distant parts of the state, we will develop an “Energy Highway” system that will bring excess fossil-fuel energy from Western New York downstate, and also tap into Upstate’s potential for renewable energy, like wind power.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Secession, The Empire State, Tyranny
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Henry Purcell's Te Deum Performed by The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, Directed by Timothy Brown
The "Te Deum" in English to accompany this article on the "ancient Latin hymn in rhythmical prose" — The 'Te Deum' in English and the Hymn's History.
Labels: Albion, Anglicanism, Early Music, Musica Sacra, The Catholic Faith
NGOs and the NWO
"Does the United States interfere in the internal affairs of nations to subvert regimes by using NGOs to funnel cash to the opposition to foment uprisings or affect elections?" he asks. "Are we using Cold War methods on countries with which we are not at war—to advance our New World Order?"
"As Leon Trotsky believed in advancing world communist revolution, neocons and democratists believe we have some inherent right to intervene in nations that fail to share our views and values," he notes, asking, "But where did we acquire this right?"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Novus Ordo Seclorum
No Change, But There's Still Hope
Infowars.com's Aaron Dykes on "the treacherous legislation" which the American Civil Liberties Union says "will damage both his [Obama's] legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law" and has Human Rights Watch saying that "Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law" — Obama’s Signing Statement on NDAA: I have the power to detain Americans… but I won’t.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Politricks, Tyranny
Monday, January 2, 2012
Wilco Perform "Impossible Germany"
Thanks to reader Pints in NYC and his comments to this post last year — The Band's "The Weight," Elvis Costello & the Imposters, Ray LaMontagne, Levon Helm, Nick Lowe, Richard Thompson, Larry Campbell & Allen Toussaint.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Deutschland, Folk Music, Nippon, Rock 'n' Roll
The Heroic Glenn Greenwald on Ron Paul and Barack Obama
Mr. Greenwald perceptively writes, "Ron Paul’s candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America’s Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it’s one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception," noting that "Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality."
Labels: Paleoliberalism, Paleolibertarianism, Paleoprogressivism, Ron Paul for President
Katie Kieffer Stands Up For Ron Paul
"Misconstruing Paul’s foreign policy views and leveling him with ad-hominem attacks is intellectually intolerant and nonstrategic if we want to defeat Obama's socialist policies in 2012," writes Townhall.com's prettiest and perhaps smartest* columnist — The Real Ron Paul Stands Up.
Of course, to "defeat Obama's socialist policies in 2012" only to replace them with Romney's socialist policies is no victory, but she clearly explains to her neocon readers that "Paul simply maintains that the unintended consequences of our current foreign policy are that we provoke violent retaliation while we accrue substantial debt and lose precious American lives."
* I would have thought this position to be held by Thomas Sowell, but in a recent article mentioning "[t]he surprising support in the polls for Congressman Ron Paul," he foolishly asked, "But does anyone seriously want to put the fate of this nation in the hands of a man who can casually brush aside the danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism?" — Republican Voters' Choices. Miss Kieffer has a wiser answer to the question, "Is he pro-Iran?" She writes, "Paul’s preference for leveraging amicable neutrality and aggressive diplomacy tactics toward Iran is often construed as supporting Iran. He simply questions how realistic a nuclear bomb threat is from Iran."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Foreign Policy, Neoconnerie, Ron Paul for President
The Late Great Joseph Sobran on Politics in America
- If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Anarchism, Paleolibertarianism, Politricks, Ron Paul for President
Good Cop, Bad Cop, Miscarriage of Justice
Labels: America the Beautiful, Family, Law
Guns Don't Kill People
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Max Reger's Mariä Wiegenlied Sung by King's College Choir, Cambridge
The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, is celebrated today.
Labels: Albion, Classical Music, Deutschland, Family, The Catholic Faith