Valerie June Performs "Astral Plane," "Two Hearts," "Shakedown" & "Got Soul"

Donna The Buffalo Perform "I Love My Tribe," "Don't Know What We've Got" & "Forty Days and Forty Nights"

Local band and hosts of the GrassRoots Festival of Music & Dance, reported on here — Roots Report.

Urinals in the Ladies' Room: Altars of the State Religion

"You have to admit," says Steve Sailer, "this is very strange" — World War T in the Women's Room.

"[I]s this some kind of religious mania?" the thought-criminal asks. "Reproduction and sex are important religious themes. It used to be socially advisable to believe in a virgin birth, but now it’s necessary to attest that you believe that if Bruce Jenner hoists his evening gown up to use the urinal at an expensive resort, he’s a woman."

1520%

"Asylum seekers commit rape and sexual assault at a rate 15.2 times that of native Germans;" just one of the hate-statistics reported here — Foreigners, Refugees, And Crime: The Stone Cold Truth. Too bad most moderns are innumerate.

At the Western End of the Burned-Over District

One finds "the world's largest concentration of mediums — people who can communicate with the spirits of the deceased" — A day in Lily Dale: Photo essay of people, places in Upstate NY hamlet.

I grew up close enough but never went, for obvious reasons. It always seemed like a place for middle-aged white ladies.

The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio Perform "Move On Up," "Memphis," "Untitled," "Concussion," "I Don't Want to Play That," "Tacoma Black Party," & "Top Going Down, Bottom Going Up"

None Dare Call It McCarthyism

The "I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government" that Jared Kushner felt compelled to intone today against the Russophobic MSM was reminiscent of the ""I am not now and never have been a member of the Communist Party" used by those testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the main difference being that then the threat was real.

Rodney Atkins Performs "These Are My People"

Having grown up on "old country" and never having been able to stomach "new country," I had never heard of this gentleman until he performed after a Rochester Red Wings game last night. Say what you will about the music, it is heartening that there is an outlet for the sentiment expressed in the song's title.

Backcountry (2014)

Backcountry (2014) might share a country of origin and a cast of main characters with a film recently reviewed here, Two Lovers and a Bear (2016), but that is where the similarities stop. For those in the mood for a tight, smart, suspenseful film, as I was when I watched it, I cannot recommend the former highly enough. Enjoy.

Suffragettes, Abortion, and Voting "Rights"

Living in the town where Susan B. Anthony is buried, it's hard to miss this story — Marchers celebrate 100 years of voting in New York State and Suffragist City Parade celebrates Susan B. Anthony's impact on multiple issues.

In the latter article, we read that "Alicia Compton and Brooke Ophardt brought their daughters to march; they were walking with Planned Parenthood." That's a great message to one's children: I'm fighting for the right to have killed you before you were born.

Only after reading that "a number of groups participated saying Susan B. Anthony was a universal suffragist whose legacy goes beyond voting rights" and reading about the "Nursing Friends of the Susan B. Anthony House" do we read of "Feminists Choosing Life of NY, a pro-life organization," ... "which believes Susan B. Anthony herself was anti-abortion."

This group has been placing a number of ads in the local paper recently, quoting Ms. Anthony and Alice Paul, below, who strikes me as the prettiest suffragette, and said it most clearly: "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."


That it is, explaining why college-age males are the most pro-abortion demographic in the country.

That aside, I will leave it to history to decide whether enfranchising women was a good move. However, I do think our founding fathers and others in the Anglo-Saxon tradition had the right idea in opposing universal suffrage. Arguments can be made for or against this or that group, but the idea of limiting voting "rights" seems a good one.

Not giving the vote to people based on sex, race, or property owning status may perhaps be outdated, but good arguments can be made for denying the vote to the illiterate, those dependent on their parents (i.e., millennials), the government dependent, the government employed (these latter two categories for clear conflicts of interest), &c.

Russia Will Never Be Free...

... until she abolishes the Russian gay propaganda law ("for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values") and mandates that people like Harmonica Sunbeam, pictured above, enter her schools to "read aloud... about a boy who wore a beloved dress to school every day" — Child Indoctrination.

The Juice

... has been set loose — Former Buffalo Bills star O.J. Simpson is granted parole, to be released in fall.

Jean-Philippe Rameau's Orchestral Suites from Les Boreades, Les Indes Galantes, Naïs & Zoroastre, Performed by Jordi Savall & Le Concert Des Nations

Free-Love, Open-Marriage Sect to Visit President Trump's White House

Not quite, but there is some history behind this story that "America's last flatware maker, an Upstate New York company, has caught the attention of President Donald Trump as part of his effort to boost American manufacturing" — Trump invites Upstate NY flatware maker, America's last, to White House.

The company in question, Sherrill Manufacturing, "was founded in 2005 when Matt Roberts and Greg Owens bought the factory and equipment from their former employer, Oneida Limited," which "originated in the late-nineteenth century in Oneida, New York" and "arose out of the utopian Oneida Community," who, "believ[ing] that Jesus had already returned in AD 70, making it possible for them to bring about Jesus's millennial kingdom themselves, and be free of sin and perfect in this world, ... practiced communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), complex marriage, male sexual continence, and mutual criticism."

Complex marriage?

The Oneida community believed strongly in a system of free love (a term Noyes is credited with coining) known as complex marriage, where any member was free to have sex with any other who consented. Possessiveness and exclusive relationships were frowned upon. Unlike 20th-century social movements such as the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, the Oneidans did not seek consequence-free sex for pleasure, but believed that, because the natural outcome of intercourse was pregnancy, raising children should be a communal responsibility. Women over the age of 40 were to act as sexual "mentors" to adolescent boys, as these relationships had minimal chance of conceiving. Furthermore, these women became religious role models for the young men. Likewise, older men often introduced young women to sex. Noyes often used his own judgment in determining the partnerships that would form, and would often encourage relationships between the non-devout and the devout in the community, in the hopes that the attitudes and behaviors of the devout would influence the non-devout.

Contraception?

To control reproduction within the Oneida community, a system of male continence or coitus reservatus was enacted. Noyes decided that sexual intercourse served two distinct purposes. The primary purpose was social satisfaction, “to allow the sexes to communicate and express affection for one another”. The second purpose was procreation. Of around two hundred adults using male continence as birth control, there were twelve unplanned births within Oneida between 1848 and 1868. Young men were introduced to male continence by women who were post-menopause, and young women were introduced by experienced, older males.

Noyes believed that ejaculation "drained men’s vitality and led to disease" and pregnancy and childbirth "levied a heavy tax on the vitality of women". Noyes founded male continence to spare his wife, Harriet, from more difficult childbirths after five traumatizing births of which four led to the death of the child. They favored this method of male continence over other methods of birth control because they found it to be natural, healthy and favorable for the development of intimate relationships. If a male failed they faced public disapproval or private rejection

"Complex marriage was abandoned in 1879 following external pressures and the community soon broke apart, with some of the members reorganizing as a joint-stock company," whose heirs will visit the President. The Oneida Community and their free-loving ways may be gone, but two other Burned-Over District heresies from the same time, Mormonism and Adventism, have gone global.

The Faith, Piety, and Humanity of Samuel de Champlain

From Champlain's Dream:

Foi et piété, faith and piety, sustained him in a special way. Champlain’s faith was not at all like that of English Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, who were driven by an ethic of striving to prove that they were God’s elect in a world where most people were condemned to depravity and damnation. Champlain’s faith was Roman Catholic, not in the sense of emphasizing a particular denomination of Christianity, but in the original and literal meaning of catholic as encompassing all humanity. His aspiration to this large ideal of Catholicism was Champlain’s driving passion. He believed that all people and all things were of God and revealed His divine purposes. This idea lay at the root of Champlain’s insatiable curiosity about the world—a form of faith and piety that was very different from most other people in his time, and many in our own.

[....]

Humanité was a word that also appeared in the writings of Champlain. It signified that all people in the world are God’s creatures, endowed with immortal souls and powers of reason. In Champlain’s understanding, it was a Christian ideal that embraced all humankind. This altruism was shared by others in his circle of French humanists, especially his mentors Henri IV and the sieur de Mons. Many of his companions in North America shared it too: Pont-Gravé, Lescarbot, Razilly, Hébert, Giffard, the Récollets, the Jesuits, and others. This idea arose from the deepest wellsprings of their Christian faith. In our secular world, Champlain’s Christian faith has been perceived as ethnocentric by secular ethnographers. But it was precisely that faith which inspired the principles of humanism and humanity on which modern ethnography rests.

As good as the book is, earlier, there is this mistaken bit:

Champlain began his benefactions by announcing in his own inimitable way, “I desire now, O my God, that the most holy Virgin your mother should inherit everything that I possess here in personal property, gold, and silver.” The language was a little confused on the Trinity, but it was crystal clear on Champlain’s earthly intent.

Champlain was right and it is the author, talented and insightful as he is, who is "a little confused" on Mariology, as understanding Christ as true God and true Man leads to recognizing Mary as the Mother of her Creator. This understanding, in turns, leads to the understanding of "the original and literal meaning of catholic as encompassing all humanity" and "that all people and all things were of God and revealed His divine purposes."

West Coast Craft Brewer Talks to Our Local Beer Reporter

About "the future of craft beer and the never-ending battle against macro-beer" — Big beer is evil: Stone Brewing co-founder Greg Koch explains. An excerpt:

I had my first beer epiphany in 1987 when I had an Anchor Steam for the first time. I was living in downtown L.A. and it was this little hole-in-the-wall called Al’s Bar. It just so happened that they had Anchor Steam on tap. I had never had any beer like that before. I had two reactions. One, I was elated to see that beer could actually taste like that. My other reaction was that I was angry because I realized at that moment that all of my previous beer-drinking years had been stolen from me by the lies of The Man telling me that other stuff was beer.

I felt compelled to join the revolution, to fight for people’s access to great beer, my own included. Collectively as an industry, we’ve been successful beyond my wildest dreams. But we are always going to continue to fight for access to the marketplace because the Man wants to have us go the other direction. They want to own it, they want to obfuscate, they want to control, and they want to play by a different set of rules.

I had a similar epiphany around the same time with my first Samuel Adams. These days, however, I'm more likely to reach for a Narragansett Beer, which, however macro, is far behind Mr. Koch's brand (cf. Brewers Association Releases Top 50 Breweries of 2016), is cheaper, and, though originating in exotic Rhode Island, brewed locally here in Rochester.

Clinton Crime Family Strikes Again?

"The mainstream media’s silence over Klaus Eberwein’s death is deafening," writes Zero Hedge's Tyler Durden — Haiti Official Who Exposed The Clinton Foundation Is Found Dead. "Where have we heard this before?" he asks. "Untimely deaths seem to follow the Clinton’s around."

White Policeman Shoots and Kills Unarmed Black Woman

That's the headline we would have gotten has the race been reversed; instead, gets material — Vox Posts 2000 Word Article on Minneapolis Police Shooting Without Mentioning Name of the Cop & — Washington Post Runs 1200 Words on Minneapolis Police Shooting, But No Mention of Shooter's Name, Immigrant Status, Color, Ethnicity, or Affirmative Action Pokemon Points. Mr. Sailer notes that while here in the US, "it’s just Bad Journalism to not bore your readers to death upfront so that they stop reading before anything subversive of The Narrative is revealed," "the deplorable Daily Mail tries to interest its readers in stories by putting interesting facts and pictures near the top of its story" — Unarmed Immigrant Woman Shot by Minneapolis Police.

Hańba! Performs "Korporancik," "Żandarm," "Gmachy," "Żyda Bić," "Budżet," "Bij Bolszewika" & "Niemcy się Zbroją"

A Catholic Analysis of the Warsaw Address

Fr. George W. Rutler's analysis — President Trump’s Warsaw Speech. In it, Prof. Zbigniew Stawrowski is quoted:

The fundamental cleavage is not the West v. Islam or the West v. the rest, but within the West itself: between those who recognize the values of Judaeo-Christian Graeco-Roman culture and those who use terms like “democracy,” “values,” “rights” but pervert the latter. So it means democracy of the elites, values of secularism, rights to kill Charlie Gard, marriage that has nothing to do with sex, sex that … is a “private” matter to be funded by the confiscatory state and your duty to support this incoherence…

Hilaire Belloc, in The Great Heresies, called this the "the greatest moment of all," writing

The Faith is now in the presence not of a particular heresy as in the past-the Arian, the Manichean, the Albigensian, the Mohammedan-nor is it in the presence of a sort of generalized heresy as it was when it had to meet the Protestant revolution from three to four hundred years ago. The enemy which the Faith now has to meet, and which may be called "The Modern Attack," is a wholesale assault upon the fundamentals of the Faith—upon the very existence of the Faith. And the enemy now advancing against us is increasingly conscious of the fact that there can be no question of neutrality. The forces now opposed to the Faith design to destroy. The battle is henceforward engaged upon a definite line of cleavage, involving the survival or destruction of the Catholic Church. And all—not a portion—of its philosophy.

Dr. Theordore Dalrymple of AIDS, Piercings, and Transsexualism

"A religious sensibility (which is now utterly alien to us, thanks to the belief that progress is illimitable) would protect us from the harmful illusion that anything less than having all our desires satisfied simultaneously is anomalous or unjust," the good doctor writes, noting that "our demand that incompatible desires be met at the same time imposes strange obligations on others" — Everyday Snowflakes. The continues:

I first thought about this during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when it was demanded of us that we should believe incompatible things simultaneously, for example that it was simply a disease like any other and that it was a disease of unprecedented importance and unique significance; that it could strike anybody but that certain group were martyrs to it; that it must be normalized and yet treated differently. For example, tests for it alone of all the thousands of ills that flesh was heir to had, by legal prescription, to be preceded by pre-test counseling. It was a bit like living under a small version of a communist dictatorship, in which the law of noncontradiction had been abrogated in favor of dialectics, under which all contradictions were compatible, but which contradictions had to be accepted was a matter of the official policy of the moment.

Human beings are funny. I remember a patient who insisted that her AIDS be treated as a disease like any other, but who also made sure we never forgot that she had contracted it voluntarily by deliberately injecting herself with the blood of a friend with AIDS. She was not suicidal, at least not in the sense that she wanted to die there and then, or anytime soon. Rather, she had a Byronic notion of the disease, a romantic conception of it as a badge of superior sensibility, which is to say that those who suffered from it were in some way morally superior to those who did not, and thus were imbued with a moral authority that others did not share. And yet at the same time she demanded to be treated matter-of-factly. By demanding this difficult psychological feat of us, recognition and nonrecognition at the same time (a feat to which, by the way, we proved equal by the exercise of self-control), she was in effect exerting her power over us. It was all very pathetic, a consequence of her thirst for significance in a mass society.

The demand for recognition and nonrecognition at the same time is surely one of the reasons for the outbreak of mass self-mutilation in the Western world in an age of celebrity. A person who treats his face and body like an ironmongery store can hardly desire or expect that you fail to notice it, but at the same time demands that you make no comment about it, draw no conclusions from it, express no aversion toward it, and treat him no differently because of it. You must accept him as he is, however he is, because he has an inalienable right to such acceptance. As a professional burglar once asked me, how could I expect him to give up burgling when he was a burglar and burglary was what he did?

I think the same dynamic (if I may call it such) is at work in the current vogue for transsexualism: “You must recognize me and not recognize me at the same time.” In this way, people can simultaneously enjoy the fruits of being normal and very different. To be merely the same as others is a wound to the ego in an age of celebrity, and yet we are herd animals who do not want to wander too far from the herd. And in an age of powerlessness we want to exert power.

What will be the next attempted reconciliation of our incompatible desires?

Biology Denialism

Writing for that alt-right organ The Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente asks — Why are some gender activists denying science? An excerpt:

The doctrine of non-binaryism holds that biological sex has nothing to do with gender, that gender exists along a continuum, and that the differences between the sexes are socially constructed. Babies are born as blank slates, and the extent to which they identify as male or female depends on their environment. Evolution plays an insignificant, if any, role in sex differences, and even the obvious differences in reproductive function are incidental to people’s self-identity. (Confusingly, transgender activists often argue that their gender identity is hard-wired, and that children who identify as the other sex were “born that way.”)

It seems ridiculous to have to argue this, but the science is settled. The two biological sexes (and there are only two) are broadly (though by no means perfectly) coterminous with gender. This holds for nearly every species in the animal kingdom, even us, and for all societies on Earth. Close to 100 per cent of the human race is born with a set of either male or female chromosomes. A small number of people are born with chromosomal and/or reproductive abnormalities, and these people are commonly identified as “intersex.”

Many sex differences are biological, and they matter. Sexual differentiation is driven by sexual reproduction, which is the basic mechanism of animal evolution. It’s the way that animals get together and pool their DNA. Anyone who claims that sex differentiation is a socially constructed myth, or doesn’t matter, must have flunked Biology 101. As current research shows, even our brains are different.

None of this is to argue that we should force people to conform to gender stereotypes, or punish them if they don’t. If people want to identify as transgender, fine. If they want to raise their kids in a gender-neutral way, fine. If they want to self-identify as polygender, demigirl, or transmisogyny constrained – well, whatever. (Let’s just please, please leave the kids alone. The research says that most kids with gender issues resolve them by puberty.)

Sobran on Belloc on Islam

"Never mind the terrorists; check the birthrate," concluded Joseph Sobran on October 25, 2001 — Belloc’s Prophecy.

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives Perform "Mississippi Railroad Blues," "Whole Lotta Highway (With a Million Miles To Go)," "Old Mexico" & "Time Don't Wait"

The Real News on Russiagate

Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo asks — Was Trump Junior Framed?

Chateau Heartiste's Roissy answers — The Set-Up Of Donald Trump Jr With A Russian Honeypot.

"Lorena" Performed by Michael Martin Murphey, Jed Marum and Friends

This "soldier’s favorite for both armies, North and South during the American Civil War" (the War of Northern Aggression), is heard at the beginning, middle, and end of The Beguiled (2017). The girls in the film, however mispronounce the name of the title not as "Loreena" as it would have been pronounced back in the day, but as "Loreyna" as in Lorena Bobbitt, which for all I know may have been intentional, as a reference to that personage would make sense given the film's plot.

For a great contemporary rendition of this lovely song, listen to Del McCoury's "Lorena" from Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War. The lyrics:

Oh the years creep slowly by, Lorena
The snow is on the ground again.
The sun flows down the sky, Lorena.
The frost gleams where the flowers have been,

But the heart beats on its warbling now.
As when the summer days were nigh.
For the sun can never dip so low
a down affections from the sky.

A hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held thy hand in mine,
And felt thy pulse beat fast, Lorena,
Though mine beat faster more than thine.

A hundred months 'twas cloudy May
When up the hellish load we climb
To watch the dying of the day
And hear the distant church bell chime

We loved each other then, Lorena,
Far more than we ever dared to tell.
And what we might have been, Lorena,
Had but our loving cross fared well.

But then, 'tis past the years you're gone
Our lord call up their shadowy forms
I say to them lost "Here sleep on,
Sleep on, nor heed life's pelting storm"

It matters little now, Lorena
The past is in the eternal past
Our heads will soon lie low, Lorena
Life's time is ebbing oh so fast

There is a future, Oh thank God
Of life, this is so small a part
'Tis dust to dust beneath the sod
Up there, up there 'tis heart to heart.

Red-Pilled Southern Gothic

The Beguiled (2017) is a tight, atmospheric, suspenseful, and thoroughly enjoyable film set in Virginia towards the end of the War of Northern Aggression. With society having had basically collapsed, the Southern Gothic an almost post-apocalyptic feel. It's plot centers on a wounded Yankee soldier who is taken in by the Southron women and young ladies at an all but abandoned Catholic boarding school for girls. Let us just say that things do not go as expected.

In addition to those charms, the film gives an accurate portrayal of the inner works of male and female hindbrains, even that of the youngest and most innocent girl in the film, and what happens when we do not keep in check our baser instincts. This Christianity Today review hints at that — ‘The Beguiled’ Reveals the Cracks in Our Imagined Selves.

As a snobbish cineaste, I can say the film's Palme d'Or at the Festival de Cannes. I was beguiled, however, as to why the film's reception, while good, was not as stellar as it should have been. Take this review from USA Today, a dumbed-down newspaper for dumbed-down populace — Sofia Coppola's mundane 'Beguiled' is much ado about nothing.

I doubt film critics are smart enough to notice my red pill interpretation. (Heck, even the director likely did not see this, but I stick to my interpretation as one of the tenets of postmodern criticism is that the work stands apart from its creator.) These stories suggest why critics needed to be careful praising the film — Sophia Coppola’s “Beguiled” So White and Sofia Coppola asked Kirsten Dunst to lose weight for ‘The Beguiled’.

The "so white" angle is not even worth countering, as if you're a white director, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't include black characters, as the directress indicates if you read between the lines in this story — Sofia Coppola Addresses The Beguiled's All-White Cast Controversy. Said the directress, "I left some things out from the original movie and book where they felt exploitative," mentioning "a very stereotypical 'sassy' slave character that I didn’t want to spotlight." Only receasting this character as a Magical Negress would have satisfied the critics.

As to asking the actress to lose weight, sorry but Ms. Durst suggesting it being "so much harder when you’re 35 and hate working out" and "eating fried chicken and McDonald’s before work" are not really valid excuses for the art. Robert De Niro is but one actor that comes to mind for having radically transformed his physique for a role. For the sake of verisimilitude, with the women and girls surviving on their own farming, they should have been rather emaciated. The least believable part of the film was the Union Soldier's fawning over Durst's character's "delicate beauty" when in profile she had a double chin. I was fawning over her "delicate beauty" just six years ago in one of my favorite films ever, Melancholia (2011), but there seems to have been a lot of "fried chicken and McDonald’s" in the intervening years.

Joan Baez, Earl Scruggs, and Friends Perform Bob Dylan's "Love Is Just a Four Letter Word"

Would Canada's Bill C-16 Violate America's Establishment Clause?

I refer to this — Canadians Could Face Hate Crimes Over Using The Wrong Gender Pronouns. The "progressive gender theory" behind the bill has no basis in science, which identifies two sexes and some unfortunate intersex individuals caught in between for whom compassion and medical assistance is called for. The 58 gender options of FB or NYC's 31 Genders are nothing more than articles of faith. Could someone of one of FB's 27 genders unprotected by NYC sue accordingly?

Pray for Little Charlie Gard

The Russian Church protests against the Strasbourg decision to withdraw life support from the seriously ill British boy, joining Pope Francis, President Donald J. Trump, his parents, pictured above, and hundreds of thousands of others — ‘If He’s Still Fighting, We’re Still Fighting’: Charlie’s Parents Deliver 370,000-Signature Petition to Hospital.

Joseph Sobran on Why They Hate Us

Western man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible. It's Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself. Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared. The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will, because they don't grasp what it really means: humiliation. The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn't conscious of it. And, superiority excites envy. Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call minorities.

Quoted by Roissy — The Great Men On Racial Envy.

Guðrið Hansdóttir Performs "I Defy"

At the Summarfestivalurin in Klaksvík.

The Handshake

Two silverbacks meet in the wild and size each other up as equals, decide not to fight. That's my amateur analysis; here's another's — Who's in control? Body language expert shares Putin, Trump G20 observations with RT. Reports back in January hinted at a far cooler place for the two greats to have met — Trump wants Putin summit in Reykjavik & Kremlin looks to Reykjavik for Putin-Trump summit.

"From Unitarian Utopianism to Catholic Constitutionalism"

A new anothology allows us to follow the evolution of one of our country's greatest minds — Orestes Brownson's Republican Remedies. An excerpt:

Orestes Brownson (1803-1876) spent 50 years thinking through the tensions between the American experiment and modernity. His voluminous writings display a critical mind, a man of principle willing to question his own principles.... Brownson ended up defending the American constitutional order; republican government; and individual liberty, particularly with respect to religion. His belief that the Declaration of Independence launched a quest that never could or should be completed gave way to doubts that man could ever thrive amidst such an unending democratic revolution. As a young man, he was a devotee of human emancipation and held, with a fanatic's reformist zeal, religious views akin to today’s liberation theology—perfectible humans build heaven on earth. Had Brownson not changed his mind, he would have been a precursor to 20th-century progressivism. Instead, he is a corrective to it, and the emancipationist aspirations of our age.

Samuel de Champlain on Torture and Cannibalism

From Champlain's Dream:

Torture and cannibalism of captives was an ancient custom among these nations. Not all Indians in the northeast practiced it. Acadian nations did not usually treat warrior-captives that way. But the evidence of archaeology indicates that the Iroquois and their northern neighbors had used torture for centuries. Scholars have explained this ancient custom as a ceremony or ritual, rooted in cultural practice and religious belief. Everyone was required to play a role: the audience, the torturers, and most of all the victim, who was expected to endure his torment with courage, dignity, and stoic calm. Many did so with amazing strength and resolve.

Champlain understood this ritual atrocity better than some ethnographers have done, and he refused to accept any part of it. He hated Indian torture. It offended his deepest ideals and created a major obstacle to his grand design. He observed that the explicit purpose of torture was to commit an act of vengeance and retribution, designed to exceed the horror of tortures past. This was the foundation of Champlain’s judgment that the Indians had no law. He meant that their conception of justice was to punish a wrong by a greater wrong. That way of thinking was very different from an idea of law and justice as the rule of right.

He also recognized that Indian torture was also rational and functional in a very dark way. In the warrior cultures of North America, the continuing practice of torture was a way of guaranteeing a state of perpetual war. It meant that the work of retribution would always need to be done, and warriors would be needed to do it. For Champlain it was utterly destructive of peace and universal justice.

Black Snow (2017) & Two Lovers and a Bear (2016)

Black Snow (2017) and Two Lovers and a Bear (2016), two films from opposite poles of the Americas, made a nice Netflix double-feature last night, and had more in common than just bleak, snowy landscapes.

"Baby Fever"

A new term I learned yesterday, when our waitress, a black American, admiring the cuteness of our youngest, said to him, "Now, don't you go givin' me 'baby fever.'" How is it that this most natural of sentiments is so effectively destroyed in some populations?

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki's Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra, Performed by Elżbieta Chojnacka & Narodowa Orkiestra Symfoniczna Polskiego Radia, Directed by Antoni Wit

"That woman is playing like her life depended on it!" exclaims a commenter. "I love when Górecki gets all metal like this," says another. Also, sad news: "R.I.P. Elisabeth Chojnacka ( 10.IX.1939 – 28.V.2017)."

President Trump's Warsaw Address

Three reports — Trump in Poland: West’s Will to Survive is ‘Fundamental Question of our Time’, Donald Trump, in Poland, Urges West to ‘Defend Our Civilization’, & Trump Interrupted 6 Times in Poland with Chant You'd Never Think to Hear Overseas. The chant, of course, was "Donald Trump! Donald Trump! Donald Trump!"

Below, three MSM "analyses" are debunked by Steve Sailer as only he can:

First — Vox: "Trump’s Speech in Poland Sounded Like an Alt-Right Manifesto". Notes Mr, Sailer, "Only vicious, hateful extremists would dare ask: 'Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders?'"

Second, "[f]rom The Atlantic (whose name, by the way, needs to be changed because it invokes the hateful, discriminatory white nationalist concept of 'the West')" — In "The Atlantic," Peter Beinart Accuses Trump of "Paranoia" for Invoking "The West".

Third — TNR: Poles' Love of Poland Is Based on "Atavistic Loyalties to Territory and Shared Kinship". "You know, when you stop and think about it, in his lack of deference for Poland’s 'territory' — lines on a map that were justified via atavistic loyalties to territory and shared kinship — Hitler was really kind of ahead of his time."

When the Left Was Right About the Global Economic Elites

Near the Sociology wing of the university I work for, there is a table where free stuff is set out, and this week I picked up a VHS video from 2001 titled UPROOTED: Refugees of the Global Economy. The blurb touts the film as "a compelling documentary about how the global economy has forced people to leave their home countries."

The film, we read, tells "three stories of immigrants who left their homes in Bolivia, Haiti, and the Philippines after global economic powers devastated their countries, only to face new challenges in the United States," and these stories "raise critical questions about U.S. immigration policy in an era when corporations cross borders at will."

One can read from this blurb without even watching the documentary to see how the discourse has shifted on this topic in the last fifteen years. Then, "the global economy... forced people to leave their home countries." Now, the same "global economic powers" that "devastated... countries" somehow empower people to "cross borders at will" like corporations. The same "global economic powers" who were the villains in 2001 are now in 2017 the heroes, empowering migration and diversity while the villains are anyone who questions the goals of "global economic powers."

These "global economic powers" have, to borrow the terminology from my leftist days, "co-opted" the issue brilliantly with "diversionary tactics." Today, even to question the vision of http://www.conservapedia.com/George_Soros is beyond the pale of polite discourse.

Local Ballplayer Makes The News

Back home in South Korea — 박병호, 트리플A서 43일 만에 홈런. The news is that Byung-ho Park hit his first home run in the Triple-A after a 43-day drought. Two stories, the first from the organization that brought him here — Twins still waiting for ByungHo Park to find his swing — and the second from down here on the farm — Coming to America has been a challenge for Red Wings' Korean-born slugger ByungHo Park.

Georg Friedrich Händel's "Water Music" & "Music For The Royal Fireworks" Performed by Le Concert Spirituel, Conducted by Hervé Niquet

The first piece being performed locally by the Albany Symphony in celebration of this bicentennial — Concert series marking Erie Canal's 200th to be held on barges, tug boat, along canal.

The second piece to celebrate the event a dozen-score-and-one year ago today, put in their proper context by the heroic and beautiful South African/Canadian Jewess Ilana Mercer, "paleolibertarian author, columnist, blogger and thinker," here — Jefferson and the Declaration: Anglo-Saxon to the Core.

"America the Beautiful" Performed by the Jazz Ambassadors

Holly Macve Performs "No One Has The Answers," "The Corner Of My Mind," & "Golden Eagle"

Trumplemania

In one of the first MSM analyses of the Trumpening worth reading, Jake Pearson writes, "Wrestling aficionados say the president, who has a long history with the game, has borrowed the time-tested tactics of the squared circle to cultivate the ultimate antihero character, a figure who wins at all costs, incites outrage and follows nobody's rules but his own" — Smackdown! Trump's insult act comes from pro wrestling hype.

Perhaps this piece's worth comes from its having "wrestling aficionados" as its source, not inbred beltway types.

#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

"Glorious," rightly says Roissy of the above-posted video of "The Trumpinator retweet[ing] a gif lovingly prepared by a Redditer, of Trump administering Stone Cold Steve Austin’s Stunner finishing move on FraudNewsNetwork (neé CNN)" — Trump The Ironclad Chad.

See the Seneca White Deer

This fall — White deer, military mysteries at former Seneca Army Depot to open to tourists. Below, a repost of a post of mine on the topic — Do Virginia Dare's Descendants Survive in the Finger Lakes?

This story had me revisiting some recent fanciful speculations regarding the old colonial legend about Virginia Dare, the first white child born in what are today these united States in the Roanoke Colony, being turned into a white doe by an Indian shaman. [See Virginia Dare, The White Doe.] Miss Dare was born in 1587. If she had indeed been turned into a white doe, this would have likely occurred when she was an adolescent or young adult, say, in the first decade of the XVII^th Century.

Could her cervine descendants, or her spirit as the Indian version of the legend has it, have passed from sanctuary among the Croatan, who perished as a people to disease, to the Tuscarora people, and traveled north with them after the Tuscarora War to settle in Iroquois Country and later become the sixth nation of their confederacy?

This would be yet another connection between the Great State of North Carolina and Upstate New York, the two outposts of Anti-Federalism in the late XVIII^th Century. I made two trips south to the state two years ago, two months apart; here are my reports — Back From Dixie and Back in W.N.Y. From W.N.C.. On the former trip, one of the highlights occurred at the Elizabethan Gardens, where I paid homage to the incredibly lovely Virginia Dare Statue.

The Quebe Sisters Perform "Cold, Cold Heart" & "Every Which a Way"

These Texan lasses played the Rochester International Jazz Festival while I was further north.

Back from Québec

The Fête nationale, a.k.a. Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, or rather its eve, was celebrated on our first night. Our second night took us to the Stade Canac, a delightfully dilapidated ballpark that serves poutine and French wine, to watch the Dominican Republic vs Québec Capitales, a team of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball. The Hôtel du Nord, an affordable place that made our stay even more affordable with its kitchenette, was our home for the first two nights, and the stunning Parc national de la Jacques-Cartier, thirty minutes north of the city, for the rest of the week. Samuel de Champlain was my travel companion in the form of Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer of Albion's Seed fame. Happy Fête du Canada on her sesquicentennial.