Jordi Savall's Jérusalem, la Ville des Deux Paix: la Paix Céleste et la Paix Terrestre, La Capella Reial de Catalunya & Hespérion XXI

Alessandro Scarlatti's Sedecia, Re Di Gerusalemme, Performed by Il Seminario Musicale & Philippe Jaroussky, Directed by Gerard Lesne

Kate Madison's Born of Hope (2009)

The blurb:

A scattered people, the descendants of storied sea kings of the ancient West, struggle to survive in a lonely wilderness as a dark force relentlessly bends its will toward their destruction. Yet amidst these valiant, desperate people, hope remains. A royal house endures unbroken from father to son.

This 70 minute original drama is set in the time before the War of the Ring and tells the story of the Dúnedain, the Rangers of the North, before the return of the King. Inspired by only a couple of paragraphs written by Tolkien in the appendices of the Lord of the Rings we follow Arathorn and Gilraen, the parents of Aragorn, from their first meeting through a turbulent time in their people's history.

New Used Books for Summer

Having just last night finished the first of the above books, I decided to return today to the same bookseller to find another read and came away with three, all published in 2012 (not that newness is a good thing in and of itself—in fact, the opposite is usually true).

Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century was the best book of I've read on secessionism since Bill Kauffman's Bye Bye, Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels, and their Underdog Crusades to Redraw America's Political Map. It was well worth its price if only for editor Donald Livingston's excellent essay "American Republicanism and the Forgotten Question of Size," the best short history and defense of republicanism I have yet come across.

Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure jumped out at me, having not long ago visited what was, and what by rights still should be, the Kingdom of Hawaii. I have long been interested in this story for its local angle involving one of my heroes, as mentioned on the dust jacket: "The annexation of Hawaii was extremely controversial; the issue caused heated debates in the Senate and President Cleveland gave a strongly worded speech opposing it." Here's that speech, in which the great Buffalonian denounces "the lawless occupation of Honolulu under false pretexts by the United States forces" — Grover Cleveland Opposes the Annexation of Hawaii. This was long before all this "support the troops" nonsense, when we were still free, and even the president could speak the truth.

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future was an obvious choice, having ten months ago repatriated from fourteen years south of the DMZ. That the book is authored by Victor Cha, a man who gave his time to the Bush régime is cause for concern, but he seems like a decent enough fellow. Leafing through the book, I feel nostalgic for my favorite ever detective novels, set in North Korea, the Inspector O series by James Church.

Finally, In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival would be an obvious choice for anyone moved by the story of the Kakure Kirishitan (隠れキリシタン), one of the most fascinating of our religion's two-millennia history. The epicenter (and later hypocenter) of these events and much more is a city which I visited once but left a strong mark, and about which I have written a lot, including several blog posts — Nagasaki and Me, Nagasaki, Mon Amour, Was the A-Bombing of Nagasaki a Deliberate Attack on Catholicism?, Münster and Nagasaki, A Very Different Bomber Mission Over Nagasaki — and two articles — The Holy City of Nagasaki and Japs and A-rabs, Not Fellow Christians.

From Free Vermont

Second Vermont Republic founder Thomas Naylor argues that "all military aircraft should be banned not only from the Burlington International Airport but from Vermont’s airspace," making her "the country’s first military no fly zone, just like Libya was during the recent war" — A Vermont No-Fly Zone?

[SVR was the subject of the final chapter of the wonderful Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, which I just finished reading last night.]

Pat Buchanan Debunks the Woodrow Wilson Cultus

"Chiefs of state who bring peace and prosperity get snubbed," writes Peacenik Pat, "while Woodrow Wilson is deemed 'Great' or 'Near Great'" — Ranking the Presidents. More:

Consider Warren G. Harding. After his 1920 landslide, he died in office in 1923. His successor, Calvin Coolidge, was elected in a landslide in 1924, and in 1928 Herbert Hoover won another Republican landslide. Yet historians rank Coolidge as mediocre and Harding among our worst presidents. Liberal ideology has never lacked for a warm dwelling place in the history departments of America’s universities.

Wilson’s second term was an historic failure. After winning in 1916 on the slogan, “He kept us out of war!” he plunged us into a European bloodbath that produced 116,000 U.S. dead and a Versailles treaty that rewarded our imperial allies with new African, Middle East and Asian colonies, giving the lie to Wilson’s promise that this was a war to “make the world safe for democracy.”

Wilson–not Harding, Coolidge or Hoover, all of whom tried to ease the vindictive terms imposed on a defeated but democratic Germany–set the table for Nazism. Adolf Hitler was born at Versailles.

In 1918, Wilson lost both houses of Congress, and his party was crushed in 1920. Americans concluded that his second term had been a failure. Yet historians mark him as Great or Near Great.

Harding brought us out of the Wilson depression of 1919-1920 without any Obama-like intervention in the economy, cut the income tax rate by two-thirds, gave us the Washington Naval Agreement, the greatest arms reduction treaty in history, and worked to alleviate the most onerous aspects of the Versailles treaty that Wilson had imposed on Germany.

Harding and Coolidge gave America the greatest prosperity it had ever known, the Roaring Twenties, and the people rewarded them accordingly.

Who's Behind the Calls for Syrian Blood?

Taki Theodoracopulos blames "Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar," "[a]ll three [of whom] are experts in oppression, religious zealotry, and paying zillions to Washington lobbies" — Syria: Whipping Boy of the Unholy Triple Alliance.

"The Syrian conflict has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with the new Cold War between the West and Russia. The latter supports Syria’s secular regime, just as Uncle Sam and his stooges in Europe support the Gulf’s kleptocracies and the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands."

ObamaRomneyCare

From the "Hard Left," Dave Lindorff debunks "a decision that... has raised taxes on some of the nation’s poorest people" — Why the ObamaCare Ruling Stinks. More:

The real losers in the latest Supreme Court decision, however, are the people of the United States. Not those who will be required to go out and buy some over-priced, minimal coverage, rip-off insurance plan offered by the private insurance industry, or to pay a “tax” to the IRS for not doing so, but everyone.

This is because the Affordable Health Care Act is not affordable. It does little or nothing to control health care costs, which are destined to continue to gobble up an ever increasing amount of the total US Gross Domestic Product as well as of corporate profits and families’ incomes.

The new federal version of Romneycare simply prolongs the day when the US finally does what it should have done decades ago, should have done during the first Clinton administration, and should have done at the start of the Obama administration: namely expanding Medicare to cover all Americans.

Instead of going for this option when he had broad and enthusiastic support as the newly elected president, Obama deliberately shut out all discussion of the Canadian-style approach to national health coverage — a national program of government insurance for all, with doctors’ rates and hospital charges negotiated by the government — and instead devised a scheme that leaves the whole payment system in the hands of the private insurance industry, and effectively lets doctors and hospitals charge what they can get away with.

Obama did this because he was a huge recipient of money from all sectors of the health care industry — the insurance companies, the hospital companies, the American Medical Association, the big pharmaceutical firms, and the medical supply firms.

ObamaRomneyCare is at its core an enrichment scheme for nearly all elements of the Medical Industrial Complex, with the possible exception of the lowly family practice physician, nurses, and hospital workers.

While we might not agree with the above solutions, we can agree that leftists who are celebrating the "victory" are entirely clueless.

Kim Yu-na's Barefoot Triple Axle

The Pump-Action Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500

"Andrew Tuohy compares the 2 most popular, reliable and affordable [shotguns] in the US" — Shotgun Shopping? "I'd happily carry either one through the woods and not worry about whether they're going to work when I need them to."

The Green Garden Diva

Linda Vinciguerra has quite a garden — Scottsville woman carves out a multi-themed garden.

Gillian Welch, David Rawlings & Ricky Skaggs Perform "By The Mark"

The latest number I've learned on my $23 guitar — Gillian Welch, By The Mark.

Out-Librulling Libruls

Gavin McInnes has "found the only way to calm this yelping beast is to speak to it in its own language" — Living with Savages. An example:

I love gays. They’re wonderful. This is why I find it so hurtful when people keep describing the Catholic Church as a place where boys get raped. They know full well it’s not toddlers getting molested but adolescent boys. It’s very clear the ones doing the touching are frustrated homosexuals at war with their own libidos. Catholic-bashing is tantamount to fag-bashing, and we need to have an open discussion about the inner struggle that gays face.

I myself have often used this one, which is entirely true:

[T]he saddest part about illegal immigration [is that i]t only benefits rich whites in both countries. Poor Mexicans on both sides of the border are worse off for it, and black workers in California are the first ones to lose jobs to illegal—sorry—undocumented workers.

This one also works:

In fascist economies, the government chooses CEOs to run various monopolies and then leaves them to their own devices. Wait, that sounds like Obama choosing GE to run the Council of Jobs and Competitiveness and Monsanto’s ex-attorney to run the FDA. The liberal will find this as perplexing as you do.

[The spelling in my title is Flannery O'Connor's.]

Drones Over Denver?

The Denver Airport Conspiracy comes to mind — Mystery object nearly causes mid-air collision.

Obamacare Upheld

The New Beginning says it best — "The Constitution is dead" again. "How many times will we have to repeat this before we act accordingly, instead of appealing to it as a defense of our proscriptions?"

John Hartford's "You Can't Run Away From Your Feet" Performed by Casey Driessen with Jayme Stone's Room of Wonders

"Sacred Wounds, Moral Injuries"

"The psychological wounds of PTSD are now recognized — but what about the ethical wounds of training to kill?" asks The American Conservative's Nan Levinson — “Moral Injury” & Modern War.

Quo Vadis, Europa?

The WaPo's Anthony Faiola and Michael Birnbaum report on a "German alternative to convince markets the euro is here to stay" that "would mark a radical step forward in European integration through a 'political union' in which countries in the region would act more like American states, sharing an elected president and even a pan-European army" — Germany offers vision of federalism for the European Union.

We've seen how that's panned out for the once-sovereign "several states" of the then small-u united States.

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer

The WaP0's Annie Gowen reports on allegations against "the telegenic head of one of the country’s largest antiabortion groups" — Arlington lawsuit says priest sexually assaulted woman during ‘exorcisms’.

Innocent until proven guilt and all that, but with the notable exception of the subject of the post immediately below this one, it seems celebrity is generally not good for priests.

Former Bishop of Rochester Declared "Servant of God"

Good news from Rome — Fulton Sheen Declared Venerable. (Looks like we have a new intercessor for our daughter.) It was during his time here that Servant of God Fulton J. Sheen issued "his denunciation of the Vietnam War in late July 1967."

T.S. Eliot's Faith

The New Statesman's Adam Kirsch reviews a volume that spans the poet's "increasing involvement with Anglicanism that would lead to the major biographical events of these years: his confirmation in the Church of England, followed by his naturalisation as a British citizen" — The Letters of T S Eliot Volume III: 1926-27 - review. Some insights:

Just at the time Eliot is about to enter the Church, we find him apparently saying that he does not believe Christ existed and in any case that he doesn’t “like” Him....

Eliot, a product of the Harvard of William James, suggests that he is drawn to Christianity as a pragmatist – that is, because it “works” for him, not because he is convinced of its truth as a proposition.

Elsewhere, he writes: “The Christian scheme seemed the only possible scheme which found a place for values which I must maintain or perish . . . the belief, for instance, in holy living and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, austerity.” This well describes the austere spirit of Eliot’s life and work in the years covered by this volume and will only become more apt in the years to come, as his marriage descends into further horror and his public image becomes even more formidable.

It is good, therefore, to have in the letters at least one example of the way Eliot’s Christianity could console as well as discipline.

Anti-Lennonism

A conservative blog for peace links to an interesting article beginning with the facts that "the revered icon of peace and love had a serious problem with violence against women" and that "the greatest victim of Lennon’s character failings was his oldest son, Julian" — An anti-John Lennon piece.

Some of the Young Fogey's own observations: "Yoko Ono stalked him, maybe looking for money for life, which worked," and "Howard Stern has a nice side: he’s always defended the wronged Cynthia Lennon, the real peace-loving wife."

J.S. Bach's Allemande from the French Suite No. 6 Performed by Jayme Stone and Joe Phillips

I only learned of this fellow's performance at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival after it happened. As I post, Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers are playing.

Who Was Edmund Burke, the Man?

The American Scholar's Brian Doyle answers that question — The Right Honourable Mr. Burke. The first two paragraphs:

Everyone claims Edmund Burke as his patron saint, political forefather, lodestar and compass point, ancestral bulwark against the tide of whatever seething modern ill he despises. The right wing trumpets Burke, who excoriated the murderous rebellion in France; the left wing salutes Burke, who excoriated his imperial colleagues for their overweening and rapacious greed in India and America; Christians celebrate Burke, who considered religion a crucial and indispensable pillar of civic life; the Irish savor a native son who became, as Hazlitt noted, “the chief boast and ornament of the English House of Commons”; the English honor the writer and orator of “transcendant greatness,” as Coleridge wrote, with his usual casual attention to spelling.

But Edmund Burke the actual man is faded away—the man his wife called Ned, fond of vulgar puns and lewd jokes, an ample man, thin as a lad and then never again; the chatterbox “never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off,” as Samuel Johnson said (probably with a tinge of self-recognition); the man whose first schooling was in a ruined castle in rural Cork, because Catholics were forbidden education under imperial law; the man who lost one son early and the other too soon; the man who would launch into such furious and vituperative speech in Parliament that his friends would have to haul him down into his seat by his coattails; the man “quick to offend [but] ready to atone,” in his own words; the man whose one refuge from politics and creditors, friends and enemies, passions and plots, was a tiny “root-house,” as he called it, a mile from his heavily mortgaged estate house through the Buckinghamshire woods—a “tea-house,” as a young friend described the place, set amid “roots of trees, moss, and so forth, with a … little kitchen behind and an ice-house under it.”

Going Solo?

The American Interest's debunks a book that foolishly lauds "relatively new data showing that more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million—roughly one out of every seven adults—live alone" — Selfishness as Virtue. An excerpt:

Klinenberg is rarely explicit about his convictions, which saves him the trouble of seriously assaying their implications, but he finally gets to the point directly in his conclusion, asserting that “living alone is an individual choice that’s as valid as the choice to get married or live with a domestic partner. . . . [I]t’s a collective achievement—which is why it’s common in developed nations but not in poor ones.” Klinenberg cites Sweden as a model to be emulated.

This is a novel position, to be sure, considering that no known civilization in human history has lauded solitary living as a social ideal. Either the extended family or, since the Industrial Revolution, the nuclear family variant of it, has been a universal social norm for at least the past 10,000 years and arguably much longer than that. And you don’t need data to see why: Society needs children and children need families.

That, however, is actually the least of it. What the Founders knew, but so many contemporaries seem to have forgotten, is that the well-being of any society turns not just on its capacity to procreate but on its ability to transmit a tradition of moral reasoning, and the values that attend it, to future generations. Drawing from the Hebrew prophets and the Greek philosophers, they recognized that values are in flux as virtuous or venal cycles reverberate across generations. Not that moral development is to be feared, or that change is in principle to be disparaged, but development and change has to be carefully nurtured by sentries on the lookout for indulgence, corrosion and selfishness. The Founders understood that the good life can only be safeguarded by a good society, and that this indelible connection bestows obligations on individuals to invest in the acculturation of future generations.

Jonah Goldberg, Almost Right, but Dead Wrong

The American Conservative's Scott Galupo debunks the neocon's latest book — Clichés of Tyranny. An excerpt:

The big argument of The Tyranny of Clichés is that liberals’ misuse of terms like “ideology” and “pragmatism,” and their lazy reliance on empty phrases like “social justice,” “diversity,” and “community” are part of a deceptive agenda to “expand and enhance the State’s mastery over our lives.” An ideology, if you will, that refuses to speak its name.

There’s a problem of coherence here: several of Goldberg’s examples of liberal clichés—“Power corrupts,” “Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,” “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” “Violence never solves anything”—may easily be interpreted as expressions of anti-statism. There’s also the fact that in a policy environment where a purportedly liberal U.S. president keeps his own personal terrorist “kill list,” and at a time when a scandalously high number of Americans are in jail, Goldberg’s worry over such influences is unwarranted and more than a little puzzling.

Who Were the First Hippies?

Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog links to his own article noting that hippies "emerged with incredible suddenness over about a one year period between 1966 and 1967" — The Original Nature Boys. "Were they a totally novel development, as they were portrayed at the time?" Mr. Sailer takes us back two decades earlier:

In 1948, jazz crooner Nat King Cole was on Top of the Pops for eight straight weeks with the single “Nature Boy.” The song became a standard and was recorded by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee. (Much later, director Baz Luhrmann had a haggard Ewan McGregor type out the chorus at the end of his 2001 film Moulin Rouge.)

The record set off a brief journalistic frenzy in 1948 over its hitherto unknown lyricist eden ahbez, who had long hair and a beard, dressed in a robe and sandals, ate only fruits and nuts, had given himself a Book of Genesis first name and cosmic A-to-Z last name, and lived in a tent under the first “L” in the “Hollywood” sign.

In other words, years before the word was coined in the 1960s, this guy was a hippie. He and the dozen or so other robe-wearing proto-hippies who hung around a German couple’s health-food store in Laurel Canyon called themselves “Nature Boys.” Hence the song’s odd title.

He goes back further to "make the case for the origins of the hippie phenomenon in late-19th-century Germany" and even suggest that "in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Levin, Tolstoy’s mouthpiece character, is a rich 1870s Russian hippie."

[I might mention at this point that Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's anarcho-Christian tome The Kingdom of God Is Within You, which I stumbled upon at the 1988 Anarchist Survival Gathering in Toronto, led me back to my baptismal faith. This leads me to note Mr. Sailer's failure to mention that Abbie Hoffman famously canonized Servant of God Dorothy Day as "the first hippie." The founder of the Youth International Party was probably wrong and should have known better and called her "the first yippie."]

Mr. Sailer ends by quoting a hippie author who suggests, perhaps rightly, that "the actual anomaly was mid-20th-century mass culture," and concludes:

Hippiedom is really just a perennial sub-culture…as old as the first humans that ever walked upright.…That’s why hippies will never go away…because they’ve always been here anyway.

Abigail Washburn and Kai Welch Perform "Last Train"

Rod Dreher Goes Home

And looks back two centuries to "a merry rebellion against the boring hegemony of strip-mall America [that] may be the best thing we can offer the nation that devoured us" — West Florida Republic: The birth of US imperialism. Perhaps I need to pick up the book on the subject which I put down — Long Live the Republic of West Florida!

Return of the Rota

"Boxes where parents can leave an unwanted baby, common in medieval Europe, have been making a comeback over the last 10 years" — The 'baby box' returns to Europe. The article notes that "the UN says [this] violates the rights of the child." Murdering them, I suppose, would not.

I first learned of this custom on the other side of the world — Kumamoto's Rota.

Divine Interventionism?

Jonathan Cook rightly reminds that "that we have no right to play God" — The Evils of Humanitarian Wars.

Speaking Truth to Power

Hats off to this "former U.S. president [who] is accusing the current president of sanctioning the 'widespread abuse of human rights' by authorizing drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists" — Jimmy Carter Accuses U.S. of 'Widespread Abuse of Human Rights'.

Joseph Haydn's Harmoniemesse, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Peter Dijkstra, Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariss Jansons

Peter LaFarge's "As Long As The Grass Shall Grow" Performed by Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, and Pete Seeger

A song with words from the (broken) Treaty of Canandaigua that came to mind during our trip to the Seneca Nation of Indians, with a rather cold night in a tent at Allegany State Park and an educational visit to the Seneca Iroquois National Museum. It was good to take the kids to where some of my fondest kid memories were made, and to teach them the joy of sitting around a fire.

Antonio Vivaldi's "Summer" Performed by Mari Silje Samuelsen and the Trondheim Soloists, Directed by Øyvind Gimse

Ralph Nader Is Not Afraid...

... to end his latest article quoting "conservative author Patrick Buchanan [who] wrote some years ago: 'If they [large U.S. corporations] are not loyal to us, why should we be loyal to them?'" — What About Some Corporate Patriotism? They don't call the man who earned this blogger's vote in '08 "Old Right Nader" for nothing.

Local Coverage of Local Story Gone Viral

The Brighton-Pittsford Post has the depressing story (from the other side of town, I must note) — Video of Greece students mocking bus monitor goes viral — and the somewhat hearteneing dénouement — Fundraiser for harassed Greece bus monitor: $300,000 and counting.

The Democrat and Chronicle reports that the victim rightly "told police that she’s happy to let the school district handle the students’ punishments" — School bus monitor Karen Klein won't press charges, Greece police say. The D&C as we call her rightly opines that "our culture is in a state of decline in terms of entertainment, politics and public discourse" — Editorial: Greece school bus bullying a new low. "If this episode doesn’t shake the community into reassessing its apathy regarding disrespectful and abusive behavior, the community may be beyond repair." More from the paper — Karen Klein saga: Kids behave badly because they disregard consequences.

Saddest of all, perhaps, "the exposure has had a darker side, too: thousands of furious and sometimes threatening emails directed at Richardson and other officials in the Greece Central School District and the town of Greece and death threats and other harassment directed at students alleged to have participated in the incident" — Karen Klein: Thanks, but don't harm the kids.

Abigail Washburn Performs "City of Refuge," "Taiyang Chulai," and "Bring Me My Queen"

"Abigail Washburn planned to study law at Beijing University, but her love of bluegrass landed her a record deal instead," the blurb tells us. "Still, China remains in her heart: Her latest album, City of Refuge, mixes American bluegrass with Chinese folk music." Why not?

An Inglorious Bicentennial

Justin Raimondo debunks "the first neocon war, i.e. an unnecessary war of choice" — 1812: The War Party’s First ‘Success’. He reminds us that "the Brits burned Washington and routed our militias, while the glorious conquest of Canada – where, Americans were told, the inhabitants would shower us with rose petals at the moment of their 'liberation' – was rudely repulsed by the ungrateful Canadians."

Mr. Raimondo also reminds us, "The war was unpopular, both here and in Britain. The New England states, where the Anglophilic Federalists held sway, were hot-beds of antiwar sentiment – and outright sedition. Led by Massachusetts governor Caleb Strong, a cabal of Federalists held secret negotiations with the British government, proposing the secession of the New England states from the Union."

"An Inconsistent and Unsustainable Philosophy"

When Leah Libresco realized she was following one, she left it behind — Atheist blogger decides to turn Catholic. More:

The 22-year-old Yale graduate says she came to believe “that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant. It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth. And there was one religion that seemed like the most promising way to reach back to that living Truth.”

“When I was talking to a post-modernist friend afterwards,” Libresco said to CNA on June 19, “I told him, 'I guess you were right. (The concept of) “Truth” was a gateway drug.'”


“He replied, not very much in jest: 'Told you so.'”

Natalie Merchant Performs "These Are the Days"

Local girl I practically grew up with whose music I often here as muzak around here.

A Nobel Deserved

Stuart Jeffries looks at "the guy who punched out Gabriel García Márquez, his rival for the title of Latin America's greatest writer" — Mario Vargas Llosa: a life in writing.

O-bomb-a Unleashed

Congressman Ron Paul warns that "the use of drones and the lowered threshold for their use to kill foreigners has tremendous implications for our national security" — Unconstitutional Use of Drones Must Stop — and John W. Whitehead laments that "once again, we find ourselves skating dangerously close to becoming a nation ruled not by laws but by men" — Has the President Become a Law Unto Himself?

KORUS FTA

"The false gospel of free trade" rightly denounced by Pat Buchanan, who writes, "Instead of a trade policy crafted for the benefit of multinationalist corporations, we need a new trade policy that puts America and Americans first" — How Korea is Cleaning America’s Clock.

Crooked Still Perform "Little Sadie" and "Ain't No Grave"

Here's to the Town of Middleborough's Board of Selectmen!

The WaPo frowns upon this story from "a state with a storied history of Puritan-inspired prohibitions" of "a proposal that would, among other things, impose a $20 fine on public profanity" — First Amendment be damned.

First Amendment? The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" [emphasis added]. It says nothing of the Town of Middleborough's Board of Selectmen (a great name for a legislative body, I must say).

In fact, the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Constitutional libertarianism should end at the federal level. (Remember nearby Connecticut had an established church until 1818.) We must stand up for the freedom of local bodies to make their own laws.

Anarcho-Monarchism in Bulgaria and Beyond

"A specter is haunting Europe," writes Charles A. Coulombe, "and pace Marx, it is the specter of monarchy" — Return of the Kings. More:

The Balkan royals began once again to play supporting roles in their homelands’ public life. Simeon II of Bulgaria was perhaps the most successful. Acting as the focus of a grassroots political movement, he was elected prime minister in 2001.

But after leaving office in 2005 with a solid record, the King assumed the same sort of quasi-royal role his brother monarchs of Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, and Albania had. He met secular and religious dignitaries, gave out decorations, and advertised his country abroad. He did everything a reigning constitutional monarch would do, save opening and closing parliament and receiving ambassadors. This satisfying if anomalous position, financed by his regained lands rather than tax dollars, annoyed the class in power. To choke off his activity, they used that weapon so beloved of “democratic” oligarchs everywhere and took him to court to steal his lands once more. They just won a major victory: The country’s Supreme Court has ruled that Simeon’s hunting lodge at Krichim does not belong to him, opening the legal path to pilfering the remainder of his estates.

John Taverner's Kyrie Leroy, Dum Transisset Sabbatum, and Mater Christi Sanctissima, Sung by Cappella Nicolai

Luigi Cherubini's Missa Solemnis No. 2, Stuttgart Bach Collegium, Gisela Burandt, Pamela Coburn, Martin Thompson, Martin Wanner, Helmut Rilling

Sri Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan Performs Unnai Naan Santhithen, Manmatha Leelaiye, Mannil Intha Kaathal, Ottakathai Kattiko, & Chinna Rasave

Carnatic music for the people.

A Niagara Fronteir Salute to Nik Wallenda!

The Flying Wallendas fly again — Nik Wallenda becomes first person to walk tightrope across Niagara Falls. I'm sure the media were not pleased by his incessant prayers.

Nanci Griffith Performs "Love at the Five and Dime"

Rita was sixteen years, hazel eyes and chestnut hair
She made the Woolworth counter shine

A great way to begin a song. Country music sure can tell a story.

Mat­thew 19:12

Misreadings of that and other verses in the same gospel have, since 1967, been linked to "three par­tially or fully am­pu­tat­ed pe­nises; four pairs of cas­trat­ed tes­ti­cles; three am­pu­tat­ed hands and 11 se­verely dam­aged eye­balls" — Gospel of Matthew linked to bizarre trail of self-mutilations.

That's an average of one self-severed penis every fifteen years in a country of hundreds of millions. That's hardly moral panic material, but expect the atheists to try to get what they can out of this.

What's Wrong With Jefferson

"A lot of what Jefferson wrote came from a stunningly ancient, squarely pre-modern place, and this attribute makes his writings uncannily prescient, in addition to elegant, politically astute, and brave," writes Will Hoyt, but what he wrote "was couched in Enlightenment terms that undermined the Anglo-Saxon vision he was trying to uphold, and therefore his project was, in effect, destined to fail" — The Flaw in Jefferson’s Idea of Ward Republics.

An Anti-Imperialist Primer

Joseph E. Fallon eulogizes (cacologizes?) what "will be remembered for being arguably the shortest-lived imperial misadventure in history" — Imperial Dusk.

Steve Sailer Debunks Another Myth

Nobody ever believes me when I point out that playing golf was considered a hugely fashionable activity for women in the 1920s. How could women have been allowed to even play sports before Title IX, much less to have been encouraged to play by countless magazine covers?

Read more — The Fairway Flapper.

Devo Performs "We're Through Being Cool"

The classic, which "starts with Gerry Casale singing a sunday school tune into a vocoder (with pixellated visuals to match)," comes to mind reading of this local research — Concept of “cool” has warmed, veered from its origins, study finds.

The Kinks Perform "Village Green Preservation Society"

"The Village Green Preservation Society" is the first new song I've decided to learn on my new $23 guitar. "God save little shops, china cups, and virginity."

Post-War Allied Atrocities

The LewRockwell.com Blog links to historian R.M. Douglas's report on "the largest episode of forced migration in history" carried out "by order of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union" — The European Atrocity You Never Heard About. Not surprisingly, "the sexual victimization of female expellees... was on a scale to rival the mass rapes perpetrated by Red Army soldiers in occupied Germany."

"By any measure, the postwar expulsions were a manmade disaster and one of the most significant examples of the mass violation of human rights in recent history. Yet although they occurred within living memory, in time of peace, and in the middle of the world's most densely populated continent, they remain all but unknown outside Germany itself."

Claudio Monteverdi's Madrigals, Book IV Sung by I Fagiolini

Set to music written in 1603, The Full Monteverdi (2007) was directed by John La Bouchardière.

Western Media-Appointed Good Guys Strike Again

If you were paying attention you would not be surprised about these "attacks on the people of Tawargha [that] are so severe that the United Nations has labeled them 'war crimes'" — After Libya's War, Acts Of Vengeance.

Now, if the official "bad guys" had been accused of this, this "one more fact about the town that was destroyed" would not have been buried at the end of the article: "In this overwhelmingly Arab nation, most of Tawargha's population was black." No, if the actors were reversed, that bit would be front and center, and the phrase "ethnic cleansing" would have rightly been used in the headline. The fact that the "liberal" media egged on our first "black" president to aid militias that have basically wiped a black city off the face of the earth is just too "complex" not to obfuscate.

Likewise, news that "the infamous Houla massacre in Syria, which the US and NATO hoped would be the casus belli for their planned invasion, was in fact carried out by rebel forces" should come of no surprise — Implosion of The Houla Massacre Story — Is Anyone Paying Attention?

Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams Speak Truth to Power

"It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a 'socialist,'" says the former, rightly noting that "[w]hat President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands" — Socialist or Fascist.

To "readers [who] protested [his] counting Social Security among government handout programs that can be described as Congress' taking what belongs to one American and giving to another, to whom it doesn't belong – legalized theft," the latter asks "what standard of fairness justifies taxing the earnings of workers who are less wealthy in order to pass them on to retirees who are far wealthier" — Duped by Congressional Lies.

Good Old-Fashioned "Insubordinate Americans" in the Military

"Dissent in the armed forces is a patriotic tradition," reminds The American Conservative's Chris Bray — Revolt in the Ranks. Only in neo-America would "an activist organization called Oath Keepers [that] brings together military personnel who agree to resist unlawful orders" be met with this reaction:

News media have reacted with urgent hostility. In 2010 a typical story in Mother Jones blasted the group under a headline about an emerging “Age of Treason,” warning darkly that soldiers were openly pledging to defend the fundamental law: “At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution—but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey ‘unconstitutional’ orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government.”

The great Bill Kauffman's quip about Mary Harris Jones that "[t]he real Mother Jones... was to her namesake magazine as Thomas Jefferson is to The Jeffersons" from Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals comes to mind. The phrase in the title of this post comes from the same book, in which the author reminds us that "Robert Frost put his faith in the 'insubordinate Americans,' throaty dissenters and ornery traditionalists."

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Words spoken a quarter-of-a-century ago today, The New American's Bruce Walker reminds us — Twenty-Five Years After Reagan's Berlin Wall Speech. I was no Reaganite then, nor am I one now, but of our last five presidents, he was surely the least bellicose and the only one remotely deserving of the title "peace-maker."

School's Almost Out

Daniel Nichols posts the above and other works — Flannery O’Connor, Cartoonist.

Crooked Still Perform "Come On In My Kitchen"

The Real Sexual Revolution

Steve Sailer on research suggesting that "humans’ transition to monogamy was much more radical than the sexual revolution of the 1960s — even though it went in the opposite direction" — The Protohuman Beta Revolution.

The Next Pope?

Sandro Magister says "the signs are pointing to a single candidate," a churchman from "one of the most secularized regions of the planet, a talented theologian of the Ratzingerian school, now the prefect of the Vatican congregation that selects new bishops, and above all for many years a missionary in Latin America" — Classroom Exercises on Who Will Be the Next Pope.

Jan Dismas Zelenka's Missa Votiva Performed by Collegium 1704, Directed by Vaclav Luks

Paleocons Remember Ray Bradbury

"Ray Bradbury may be at peace, but I doubt he’s resting," says Bill Kauffman, who sees "the boy from Waukegan as a Midwestern regionalist" — Ray of Light.

"For all that Bradbury was entranced by the future, nostalgia suffused his work—often with a dose of lightheartedness," writes Charles A. Coulombe of "a bona fide American Romantic, cut from the same cloth as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Edgar Allan Poe" — Someone Righteous This Way Went.

God Save the Queen's English

"It isn’t only old farts who should stand up for standard English," says Brendan O’Neill, but also "those of us who want to understand the world, and change it" — The revolutionary potential of the Queen’s English. "When people doll up declining linguistic standards as ‘cultural diversity’, they’re really making a virtue out of dumbness, turning illiteracy into just a variant form of literacy."

William Byrd's Ave Verum Corpus Sung by The Tallis Scholars, Directed by Peter Phillips

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, with a reminder that "the accentuation placed on the celebration of the Eucharist acted to the detriment of adoration as an act of faith and prayer addressed to the Lord Jesus, truly present in the Sacrament of the Altar" — Pope says Vatican II did not reject Eucharistic adoration or processions.

William Byrd's "O Lord Make Thy Servant Elizabeth Our Queen" Sung by The King's Singers

O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our Queen to rejoice in thy strength:
give her her heart's desire, and deny not the request of her lips;
but prevent her with thine everlasting blessing,
and give her a long life, even for ever and ever. Amen.

A prayer composed by a crypto-Catholic for a very anti-Catholic monarch.

His Holiness the Pope on Her Most Britannic Majesty's Diamond Jubilee

Below, in its entirety, the text of a "letter, read out at a service of Thanksgiving in Rome," which "was attended by Cardinal George Pell, as well as Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, and Christian leaders from different denominations and ambassadors from around the world" — Pope praises Queen’s 'inspiring example':

I write to offer my warmest congratulations to Your Majesty on the happy occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of your reign.

During the past 60 years you have offered to your subjects and to the whole world an inspiring example of dedication to duty and a commitment to maintaining the principles of freedom, justice and democracy, in keeping with a noble vision of the role of a Christian monarch.

Your personal commitment to cooperation and mutual respect between the followers of different religious traditions has contributed in no small measure to improving ecumenical and interreligious relations throughout your realms.

Nicely worded, but not enough to rid this blogger of his knee-jerk Jacobitism (Seacaibíteachas), sharing as he does not only a religion but also a birthday with the Old Pretender. (Long live his rightful heir King Francis II of England, Scotland, France and Ireland!) For those interested, two of my earlier posts on the Jacobite theme and how it relates to our country — Jacobite New York (1682-1688) and Jeffersonian Jacobitism.

Murray N. Rothbard on Puritan Economics

Anarcho-capitalism's premier exponent looks back to how "once again the quiet but powerful economic laws of the market had triumphed over the dramatic decrees of the coercive state" and why "the theocracy no longer attempted a comprehensive planned economy in Massachusetts Bay" — The Failure of Wage and Price Control in the Massachusetts Theocracy.

Lisa Hannigan and John Smith Perform "Little Bird"

"Glad you've taken a liking to her," says M. Jordan Lichens to me in my last post of her music. Said liking was taken precisely while watching the above number, which is about as lovely as a performance of a song can get, especially at 3:01 when she looks right at you.

War and the Abstraction of Human Beings

Ha Jin's heroic novel War Trash has the following insight:

To be able to function in a war, an officer is expected to view his men as abstract figures so that he could utilize and sacrifice them without any hesitation or qualms. The same abstraction was supposed to take place among the rank and file too—to us every American servicemen must be a devil, whereas to them, everyone of us must be a Red. Without such obliteration of human particularities, how could one fight mercilessly? When a general evaluates the outcome of a battle, he thinks in numbers—how many casualties the enemy has suffered in comparison with the losses of his own army. The larger a victory is, the more people have been turned into numerals. This is the crime of war: it reduces real human beings to abstract numbers.

Theology and Science vs. Magic and Technology

Another fascinating post by Steve Sailer beginning with the fact that "[t]he broad index of the Shanghai exchange fell 64.89 points on Monday, a figure that recalls the Tiananmen Square events on June 4, 1989," seen in the light of "New Zealand historian S.A.M Adshead [having] contrasted the world-historical implications during the last 2000 years of 'the preference for theology and science in the West, for magic and technology in the East'" — Chinese numerology and world history.

"Arabists" Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul

Respectively, they call into question the neocons' latest call for war — Syria's Insurrection Is Not America's War and War Drums for Syria? — while the former reminds us that "the 'Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul type' of Republican has been purged" and by whom — How Bill Kristol Purged the Arabists.

Tolerance

A conservative blog for peace brings us the above reminder.

Back

I'm back from the great states of Texas and Florida, trips made to the former for business and the latter for pleasure. At the conference in Houston, I had the pleasure of walking out in disgust of a plenary by Donald Rumsfeld Robert Gates. There, I also had the pleasure of daily mass at the nearby Annunciation Catholic Church, and the disappointment of a visit to the Rothko Chapel. Not being separated from my family made the trip to Bonita Springs, Florida the far more enjoyable of the two.