International games

The BS Race Game that we play here in America, where "youths" and "young people" engage in all manner of thievery, thuggery, assault and murder but One Particular Identity Marker about them is loudly silent, --unless their name is Zimmerman--is also played in other countries inhabited by Foolish White People.

In this story, a "prominent researcher" in Sweden cut off his young wife's lips and ate them, because of his wounded "honor". "He doesn't seem to regret a thing; he believes she insulted him."

Hint. Gee, I wonder what Swedish ethnic/religious group that might be? You know how touchy the Swedes are about their women and their honor. Evangelical Church of Sweden members?

The folks in the comments section know the game and tracked down the little bit of info that the paper neglected to mention. His name: Hodjattallah Rabbani.

Earlier in 2012, a very liberal do-gooder Jewish couple in Oakland --a Tenderloin clinic doctor and a jail psychologist--were strangled in their new home by their "troubled" 15 year old 200 pound Karate blackbelt adopted former foster child, who then stuffed their bodies in the family car and tried to torch it. The state is trying the kid as an adult, but no pix of him are to be found. Wonder why? His name is Moses Alfredo. The Alameda Country Inmate search engine has him as Hispanic. Not White enough, like White Hispanic George Zimmerman,  to show on film.

From another old world

B is traveling and sent this pic from Vienna, once a great center of European civilization. The statue is of Hercules and the Hydra, one of the Twelve Labors depicted in sculpture around the Hofburg, the old imperial residence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Repression or suppression

I have lived in San Francisco for 20 years. I have seen two movies about the Zodiac killer, but I have never heard a word until now about the Zebra killers. A Black on White murder spree in the mid 70's, stretching over 179 days, with 16 White deaths and 10 White people wounded. All in this city.

If the races had been reversed, we'd have a parade every year and we'd all know about it.

The race "rules" in America are complete BS.

Sister Blovia of the UnNamed Savior

In preparation for meeting their Rome-appointed episcopal overseers, the nuns who are part of the LCWR have published this prayer: (bolding not mine, but from another site).

God’s Spirit
A Prayer for our Sisters

In this time of pain and promise,
we call on God’s Spirit to bless
the leadership of LCWR, of our
Congregation, and all women religious
who strive to live the gospel in these
uncertain times.

We call on the Spirit of God to reveal
the way forward that is faithful to God’s
dream for us and our lives together.

May all who are called to engage
in prayer and conversation come to
the table with hearts that are open,
transparent, and faith-filled. May their
reflection be marked by a deep listening
to the voice of the Spirit at work in
our world.

May the holy ones who have gone
before us inspire us by their courage
and wisdom and affirm that we are
not alone.

May we continue to faithfully live the
questions of our time and witness to
the people of God that we are women
at home with mystery and filled with
fierce hope for our shared future.
Amen.

by Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Chris Koellhoffer

Aside from the literary unmerit of the tired faux-intense tone and the empty hyped phrases, plus the fact that it is not a prayer, speech directed to God, as much as a set of self-referential hortatories, here's a hint to Sister Chris and her fellows (!) about what the basic problem is: Whose Name, very like yours, is totally missing from this text?


__

Victim privilege

Because my patients here in San Francisco are, well, here in San Francisco, it is not uncommon for them to include politics in their relational issues with families of origin. Quite understandably, they assume that they are good people, on the side of the angels of tolerance and open-mindedness, and that their benighted relatives are somehow possessed by the dark demons of the Right Wing, "against" many of the values and structures that my patients identify with. Because they identify with these values and stances (and people), they experience their kinfolk's disagreement as threatening and inimical to their way of life, even of their existence.

Fair enough. But because they unthinkingly cast themselves as the underdog victims in the scenario, it never occurs to them that their families might find them just as threatening and inimical. They always start out assuming that their genetic opponents act out of mere selfishness or spite or from self-imposed ignorance, that is, that they are fearful, spiteful and mean. For no reason at all.

I mean no disrespect to the people I work with --because I like them-- but that is an adolescent attitude. A perhaps unavoidable stage, but not one you want to set up house in. With regret, I think of it as the Armistead Maupin syndrome.

Because my work is therapy, not politics, I only address this conflict when it serves the growth of a more conscious relationship with their families. Not to change their voting habits or who their heroes are (no matter how much I disagree) but to help them to realize that their own choices and stances are not without powerful effects in the world and that Mom and Dad may feel as threatened by them as they feel by their parents.

It's easy to believe that people or groups that we perceive as powerful and/or parental are immune to fear. Or have a right to it.

Newton, Heraklitus and Jung walk into a bar

Whilst (!) reading a review of a book on contemporary America, I came across a word that I like: hypermoral. That captures what I mean by high-mindedness, an ethical disorder typical of (but not limited to) liberals and well-documented in Burnham's 39 Articles.

Any kind of morality worth having must, it seems to me, be appropriate to the capacities of the subject in question. No one expects dogs or toddlers to act like nuns. In our case, the subject is the human race as it is, what Jung called empirical man, what Christians call fallen man. Most human moral codes call for a stretching of those capacities. I have more than once complained of the perfectionist streak in Jesus' teachings. On the other side, for example, the moral codes of warrior peoples certainly ask men to be braver and tougher than many of them ordinarily are. But a moral code which decides on high-minded goals simply because they are high --and the higher the better-- is no more usefully humanizing (and indeed far worse) than the identification of the good with the difficult.

As a form of Christian moralism without Christian beliefs, liberalism combines the worst of both worlds. And like some strains of Christianity, liberalism can only accept the ideal human, never humanity as it is. On the contrary, deep within liberalism lies a disdain and hatred for ordinary human life as it is actually lived.

Being convinced by Newton's Third Law, and by Heraklitus and Jung that enantriodromia is a reality, that extremes tend to provoke and turn into their opposites, I find it natural that the crypto-fascist hypermoralism of the post 60's cultural regime should give rise to the Anti-Political-Correctness of the overtly fascist traditionalist reaction.

Gullivering

Four of the peoples in Jonathan Swift's satirical masterpiece have remained in my memory.

The Lilliputians, of course, who, though tiny, can overcome a giant Gulliver by sheer force of numbers and ropes.

The heady and arrogant Laputans on their flying rock in the sky, blocking out the sunlight of the Balnibarbi.

The Brobdingnagians, whose laws can have no more words in them than the twenty-two letters in their alphabet.

And the Houyhnhnm --pronounced whinnim--, those rational horse-creatures who have to contain the savage Yahoos --aka humans. And who, though recognizing Gulliver as a superior kind of Yahoo, expel him nonetheless, in case he encourage more of his kind to invade their land and threaten them with their dirt and beastliness.

I deny any connection between these fictional groups and any non-fictional groups of people I regularly write about here on Ex Cathedra.

(No Houyhnhnm was harmed in the making of this blog.)

La forza del destino

There are few things Thomas Sowell writes that I disagree with. His theory that Blacks picked up their bad behavioral habits from redneck Whites was one of those. And then this, where he tries to soften his normal pessimism:

Demography is not destiny. But the history of Balkanized and polarized societies in the 20th century is a history of horrors that we dare not ignore.

We are not at that terrible point yet. But that is the direction in which we are headed, under the spell of magic words like "multiculturalism" and "diversity," which have become substitutes for thoughts, even among those who pride themselves on being "thinking people."


Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is permeated with ideologies of group grievances and resentments, painting each group into the corner of its own separate subculture, instead of drawing them into the mainstream of the American culture that made this the greatest nation on earth.

Unless this fashionable Balkanization is stopped, demography can become destiny -- and a tragedy for all.

Demography is not destiny? I don't really see how that works. It may not be sufficient by itself to explain what drives history, but the movement of peoples sure as hell is in the top three.

And what would stop our "fashionable Balkanization"?  Had a pleasant and stimulating chat on the weekend with an infamous homo fascist author who is actually a nice guy, and very bright and insightful. One of his points --which he makes in his latest book as well-- is that groups act in their own self interest*. It does not necessarily make them evil, but when their interests collide with other groups', problems arise. (See "demography is destiny"). And history, despite liberal self-deception, shows that these are rarely resolved by peaceful negotiation.





*Except, apparently, foolish White people.


___

Babble on

The Book of Genesis  Chapter 11

¹ And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
² And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
³ And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
⁴ And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
⁵ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
⁶ And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
⁷ Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
⁹ Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

In the Bible's Tower of Babel story, the still-monolingual human race --doubtlessly dominated by patriarchal males-- decides to build a (phallic?) tower up to heaven. The Lord is not amused, and so he destroys their command-and-control capacity by infusing different and mutually unintelligible languages into the men. End of the Tower.

One way to read this story is to hear it as a warning about inherent limitations. Although created in the divine image and likeness, men are not God. We are limited by our nature. This is something all conservatives agree on, that the fundamental block to utopia is the nature of man (as well as the conditions of life on planet Earth). No matter how god-like we become, we are not gods. With very little tempting, we turn beastly. And, if you expand your horizons, the nature of the planet itself provides a larger limit: scarce resources and contingent events.

Contemporary liberalism seems to me to want to correct the Biblical story: to re-create a common language so that the project of tower-building can be completed. Because liberalism really recognizes few limits to human intellect and, above all, to human will.

Popular kultcha

I dipped into BBC's The Borgias second season. Soap opera cartoons in expensive clothes. Not in the same fictional universe as The Sopranos.

And I peeked at the continuation of Spartacus. Lots of flesh and blood. Lots of pseudo-Shakespearan language. Under all that macho muscle and testosterone, the plot is about men obsessively searching for lost wives. Pretty boring, all in all.

The Marx Brothers films I saw on Saturday with B: I forgot how very verbal Groucho's humor was, and rapid fire, dizzyingly so. Harpo is a deranged Trickster.

Losing my religion

It's amazing even to me how many of the 39 Articles of the Liberal Religion I don't subscribe to anymore. Some I never did, some I used to and a few I still do. But only a few.

The themes in Burnham's (somewhat repetitive) list are: the equality of everybody everywhere, the obligation of the successful to the unsuccessful, the rights of everybody to have what they think they need and the obligation of the State to provide it, the belief that talking can solve every conflict, etc.
The underlying assumption is that human nature is good and that all human groups are equally smart, moral and capable, unless blocked by unfortunate circumstances (that are usually, and ironically, the doing of other not-so-good humans in groups.)

One of the funny ones, which shows how this list has aged, is 19. Corporal punishment, except possibly for small children, is wrong. Nowadays, it is most wrong for small children.

And of course, liberalism holds for freedom of expression, except now when "offensive" or "hateful" toward Official Sacred Victim Groups. Freedom of expression, without the above exception, is one of the few articles I still like.

One of my recent thoughts is that the Founding Fathers' Constitution was based on some social and demographic assumptions which they thought immutable. The dominance of White English-speaking Christian Males is the primary one.

I find a similar assumption in the Liberal camp, one which John Kekes pointed out. All these ideas assume the continuation of nation-states: popular sovereignty, one-man-one-vote, borders, support of risings against tyranny, etc. But the logical of liberalism is based on common humanity, not common nationality. Liberalism aka Progressivism has no inherent self-limiting principle. Nations are simply matters of habit. If, in Obama's America, the rich must "pay their fair share" and US Whites must repay their karmic debt for slavery, what is to stop the whole rest of the undeveloped world from taking the same attitude toward America as a whole? To pay its fair share and repay its karmic debt? Whether the privileged minority resides within a nation or comprises the whole nation, what is the real difference? So there is nothing in the Articles which could stand in principle against a globally united government which would be utterly dominated by Third World peoples, who would then have the "right" to dominate and despoil the First World countries that gave birth to this bizarre faith.

That is what is happening now, in Europe and America. Liberals have no defense against it and indeed, must convince themselves to welcome it, and their own demise.

Whites: the most foolish people on Earth.

The 39 Articles

James Burnham listed these in his book on liberalism. The more of them you agree with, the more liberal you are. 1. All forms of racial segregation and discrimination are wrong.

2. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.

3. Everyone has a right to free, public education.

4. Political, economic or social discrimination based on religious belief is wrong.

5. In political or military conflict it is wrong to use methods of torture and physical terror.

6. A popular movement or revolt against a tyranny or dictatorship is right, and deserves approval.

7. The government has a duty to provide for the ill, aged, unemployed and poor if they cannot take care of themselves.

8. Progressive income and inheritance taxes are the fairest form of taxation.

9. If reasonable compensation is made, the government of a nation has the legal and moral right to expropriate private property within its borders, whether owned by citizens or foreigners.

10. We have a duty to mankind; that is, to men in general. 11. The United Nations, even if limited in accomplishment, is a step in the right direction.

12. Any interference with free speech and free assembly, except for cases of immediate public danger or juvenile corruption, is wrong.

13. Wealthy nations, like the United States, have a duty to aid the less privileged portions of mankind.

14. Colonialism and imperialism are wrong.

15. Hotels, motels, stores and restaurants in southern United States ought to be obliged by law to allow Negroes to use all of their facilities on the same basis as whites.

16. The chief sources of delinquency and crime are ignorance, discrimination, poverty and exploitation.

17. Communists have a right to express their opinions.

18. We should always be ready to negotiate with the Soviet Union and other communist nations.

19. Corporal punishment, except possibly for small children, is wrong.

20. All nations and peoples, including the nations and peoples of Asia and Africa, have a right to political independence when a majority of the population wants it.

21. We always ought to respect the religious beliefs of others.

22. The primary goal of international policy in the nuclear age ought to be peace.

23. Except in cases of a clear threat to national security or, possibly, to juvenile morals, censorship is wrong.

24. Congressional investigating committees are dangerous institutions, and need to be watched and curbed if they are not to become a serious threat to freedom.

25. The money amount of school and university scholarships ought to be decided primarily by need.

26. Qualified teachers, at least at the university level, are entitled to academic freedom: that is, the right to express their own beliefs and opinions, in or out of the classroom, without interference from administrators, trustees, parents or public bodies.

27. In determining who is to be admitted to schools and universities, quota systems based on color, religion, family or similar factors are wrong.

28. The national government should guarantee that all adult citizens, except for criminals and the insane, should have the right to vote.

29. Joseph McCarthy was probably the most dangerous man in American public life during the fifteen years following the Second World War.

30. There are no significant differences in intellectual, moral or civilizing capacity among human races and ethnic types.

31. Steps toward world disarmament would be a good thing.

32. Everyone is entitled to political and social rights without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

33. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and expression.

34. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

35. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

36. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security.

37. Everyone has the right to equal pay for equal work.

38. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions.

39. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Diagnosis and prognosis

One reviewer of James Burnham's work pronounced him an excellent diagnostician but a less than perfect prognosticator.  His assumption that Soviet Communism would endure was based on a prior assumption that things would remain as they are. And, of course, they rarely do. It is good to be reminded that accurate diagnosis is not the same as predicting the future.

Flashing back to the alternative future Covington draws in his Northwest novels, the White Apocalypse is provoked by the steady increase in all the liberal movements we are now so familiar with. They not only do not stop or get derailed, but increase both in extent and power. And if you follow the Seven Pillars to their logical conclusions --the replacement of one set of powerful groups with another set-- the bizarro world he describes is not off the mark. A recent wag described a big segment of these people as "Red Guards on tofu." After all, who would have thought that a plea for the decriminalization of sodomy would, within a single lifetime, lead to a national debate on same-sex marriage, and the default identification of its opponents by the culture's elite as h8ful bigots ?

Even now, if you keep your eyes and ears open and know where to look for information, you can see that every Official Sacred Victim Group is only emboldened to pursue more power, status and resources, using more State coercion and social control, by every new victory. "Progress" never stops. So why is Covington's nightmare so unthinkable? And why then would his extreme alternative reaction be so surprising?

There are moments when I constellate a variety of events into something larger. I am aware that I am naturally a glass-half-empty type and that I am paranoid...or at least suspicious...about groups, but that does not mean I am automatically wrong. Take the incidents of Blacks, alone or in groups or in flash-mobs attacking Whites. Certainly the MSM wants to avoid telling us about them while it froths things up with the St Trayvon Passion Play and Soap Opera. But since the Internet has broken the hold of our media masters, you can discover all kinds of things they don't want you to know. And even as cool-headed a man as Thomas Sowell wonders if there isn't an undeclared (and censored) race war going on. If there is, what would stop it? And if, after 50 years of White America's post-MLK obsession about bettering the state of Blacks --including electing a "Black" president-- Black resentment is still spilling out in anti-White violence, what signs are there that this "intifada" will calm down?

But predictions are tricky, as Yogi said, especially when they are about the future.

Just because

Captain George Fredrick Wilson, a British seaman whose career lasted from 1884-1935

Handsome fella.

A blunt metaphor

from European Traditionalist Guillaume Faye

Mental AIDS: the collapse of a people’s immune system in the face of its decadence and its enemies. Louis Pauwels coined the term in the 1980s and it set off a media scandal. In general, the more the neo-totalitarian system is scandalized by an idea and demonizes it, the more likely it’s true

With biological AIDS, T4 lymphocytes, which are supposed to defend the organism, fail to react to the HIV virus as a threat, and instead treat it as a ‘friend’, helping it to reproduce. European societies today are [similarly] menaced by the collapse of their immunological defenses. As civil violence, delinquency and insecurity explode everywhere, police and judicial measures that might curb them are being undermined. The more Third World colonization damages European peoples, the more measures are taken to continue it. Just as Europe is threatened with demographic collapse, policies which might increase the birth rate are denounced and homosexuality idealized. Catholic prelates argue with great conviction that ‘Islam is an enrichment’, even as it clearly threatens to destroy them

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds

HT to FB friend HS

White Apocalypse

When I was doing my tour last week through some of the White Nationalist sites, places that are now more taboo in our culture than gay porn, I skip-cruised through H Covington's online novels about his proposed Northwest Republic.  Of the several surprises I found, and some of the shocks, the most interesting one was the sense of humor. Although the good-guy characters are not great literary creations, they are not rigid one dimensional cartoons. We do not think of people who admire National Socialism as also possessed of a love of joking and laughter, especially at their own expense. The Bad People, though, are irredeemably bad: no Black, Hispanic, Jew or Homo displays anything but the faintest trace element of human worth. But, hey, this is propaganda. Sorta like reading HuffPo in reverse. A land of altered consciousness and White Apocalypse.

There is a definite stream of Apocalypse in the books. Apocalyptic literature, found in both the Old and New Testaments, is the voice of the extreme, where the Yes or No, Either/Or is the stuff of life. The Children of Light vs the Children of Darkness and not a bit of grey area in between. It is the voice that believes final survival to be the only issue.

The United States of America as portrayed in these books takes all its bad characteristics and puts them on steroids. Multiculturalism, feminism, political correctness of all kinds, every leftliberal cause, is ramped up to an untethered conclusion, making for an ugly and hellish Alice in Wonderland society. (Ex Cathedra holds that an egalitarian society must be a police state; here it is played out in detail.) South Park's "Death Camp of Tolerance" on a continental scale. So when the Northwest folks erupt with extreme prejudice and no exceptions or hesitations, the bizarre background against which they are reacting really does make them seem preferable. Although the Northwest good-guys are implacable when it comes to Bad People, and they make no attempt whatever to hide their loathing of them, life --especially for White people-- in the ultra-decayed superpower is, by comparison, so bizarrely nightmarish that --as with The Sopranos-- you find yourself kinda rooting for the side you know you're not supposed to.

It's as if your only two choices are to live in a triumphant and fundamentalist Mormon theocracy, or Detroit.

Mean People Suck

organic smoothies through a biodegradable straw.

Study suggests that organic food lovers are ungenerous and judgmental.

Heh.

This and that

Santayana I think it was who described the difference between classical religions, eg Catholicism, and Protestant modernism. He used the metaphors contrasting a Renaissance Roman fountain and a rural well. In the first case, you drink from waters flowing through a complex and beautiful structure that predates you. In the second case you drop your pail down a dark hole and bring up likely muddy water, in which you see your own muddied reflection. Tendentious, to be sure, but not altogether off the mark. Like religion vs spirituality.

Reminds me of the diff between the Divine Office, the ancient services of Matins and Vespers and Compline, etc. vs the "Spirit-filled" spontaneous prayer-drivel that Catholic charismatics used to inflict on us. No contest.

American Catholicism reminds me of English Catholicism in the 1500's. When the English State began to assert control, although the process was not as smooth, swift or welcome as the old histories lead us to believe, most of the Catholics became State Christians. Listening to liberal Catholics shrink in horror that "the bishops and the Vatican" would stridently oppose "President Barack Obama" [hic genuflectitur] makes me see them as first of all, creatures of the liberal Democrat State. After all, it embodies the values they really worship.

I'm taking B to another cultural event this weekend: a Marx Brothers marathon at the Castro theatre. Groucho Marxism, the only kind worth a damn.

Two female soldiers are suing the US for being excluded from combat. It prevents them from career progress, says the suit. Part of feminism's drive to ensure that no all-male spaces exist. The ideology of universal equality is a cancer.

The egalitarian infection reminds me of 1984. The goal of the torture is to get the victim to actually believe that 2+2=5. The Long March has been very effective. On a taboo race-realist site, a White woman panics when she realizes she and a group of other middle aged White couples have booked a weekend at a place where 300,000 Blacks party and crime rates soar. Judges have forced business there to remain open to avoid discrimination fines. When she expressed her fears to her husband and the others, their response was, "Well, now we'll get to know what it's like to be a minority."

Speaking of crime and Blacks, it's common to read that Blacks make up 13% of the country and account for more than 50% of the crime. But it's actually 3% of the country, because the vast majority of the crime comes from Black males 18-39. Obama's sons.

Getting caught up on my Brit TV dramas. Season 2 of Sherlock. Season 2 of Downton Abbey. Found a great free download site. Also followed up on Game of Thrones. Downton 2 isn't so tensely driven as the first season and has a few flawed attempts to create it: the presumed-dead heir shows up, having had amnesia and now so disfigured from the war that no one can recognize him, so he has a fit of pique and leaves? Cheap soap opera ploy. The first and third of the Sherlock 2's were very good, riffing creatively on the originals. The middle one's connection to Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles was not so cleverly or complexly done.

It's been quite cool in SF this spring, but sunny and clear and bright. That helps a lot.

Shouldering

Constitutions and constituents

A festival of Latinate words.

A few weeks ago I offered some unexpected praise to Mohammedans and to White Nationalists. Not folks noted for their friendliness to men like me. It was in recognition of their bruthal but refreshing frankness about insiders and outsiders, us and them, and who's supposed to be top dog and have "privilege". While liberal democrats have the same hierarchical structures, they lie about them through their teeth all the time. As I noted, I dislike this kind of hypocrisy not because it is unethical but because it is insulting to my intelligence and a waste of energy and time. The Allah-worshippers and the leukophiles may not be charming, but they have the ring of truth about them when it comes to human tribalism.

I have particular opinions about Islam and Muslims because I have made it my business to inform myself about this religion, while most people prefer to avoid knowing and just rely on slogans. Religion of all kinds is a longstanding interest of mine. My first high school history essay was on the Five Pillars of Islam. I have read the Koran (decades ago, before it was in the news). And I have investigated Muhammad's career, Muslim history, and the welter of hadith which are part of what makes Sharia, Islam's encompassing code of holy law. I have read a primary source of this code, al-Misri's Reliance of the Traveller. I have read through some of the on-line Muslim sites where they go for fatwa for themselves, to see how all this plays out in the contemporary world. I am not an expert about this expansionist theocracy, of course, but I am not uninformed.

What can I tell you? I'm a pinhead, a pointy-headed intellectual.

Of late I have also started investigating the White Nationalists. This is a realm far more taboo than Islam. After all, as we know, White Racism is the most evil force in human history...along with Patriarchy (White Patriarchy especially!). Even reading a book against it, in the presence of a sensitive Personne de Couleur, can get you thrown out of the university library.*

It's a small world, this White one. Almost totally male. And unsurprisingly, quite sectarian. Voices range from enraged expletive sputtering to deeply intellectual exploration. One of the more interesting sectors is the NorthWest Republic, an idea about creating a separate national homeland for Whites in the American NorthWest. One Harold Covington is a major voice for this movement, having written several novels describing it, as well as --and here's the link to the posting title-- a constitution for this imagined country. Although frankly anti-POC, and deeply anti-Jewish,  it is not White "supremacist" but "separatist". It does not want to rule non-Whites, just get away from them. All non-Whites are invited to leave the new country on their own or be buried there. Unapologetic tribalism.

The American Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers, quite naturally, for men like themselves. They didn't write it for the French, and certainly not for women, Indians or Blacks. They assumed a particular constituency for their very particular constitution. Both Washington and Adams were clear on that. Ben Franklin even wondered if that particular constituency could pull off such a thing as a republic which would not --like every other republic before it--devolve into a mobocracy, oligarchy and/or tyranny.

Well, that seemingly homogeneous** constituency, even in its varied forms, is fading away. Barring some kind of apocalyptic transformation, it seems that the anti-Straight White Male Christian coalition composed of liberal Whites and feminists and gays and the Peoples of Color have demographics on their side. In the end, constituents determine the meaning of constitutions. No piece of paper can finally thwart determined majority desire. (Unless, like the now fading White majority, it loses all its nerve).

So I found the post- (and anti) American NorthWest Republic constitution very interesting. It makes no appeal to Enlightenment universalism. (Look how that turned out.) It is frank in its valorizing of White survival above all, the traditional roles of men and women in the family, and the dominance of a particular culture and demographic. It recognizes classes of citizenship, based on accomplishment rather than mere birthplace or age. It outlaws Jews, homosexuals and race-mixers. There are, therefore, no non-European-descended people in the NWR; its whole point is the demographic survival of the now-dying-off White race: less than 1 in 5 humans and birthrates dropping fast.

Lawyers are outlawed, too. Duelling is a regulated but regular form of settling disputes between men, since civil suits are largely forbidden. Although it is a democracy with frequent elections, it is a single-party state, there is only a unicameral legislature and an executive (who is limited to a single term)***. And the judiciary is not a third branch of government. Judges are restricted to fact-finding and are constitutionally forbidden from sitting on an elevation higher than the defendant.

One interesting alternative balance-of-power element in this one-party two-branch state is that the constitution guarantees the absolute right of all citizens and residents to unlimited, untaxed, unlicenced and unregistered ownership and carry of weaponry. We'd see how polite a society a thusly-armed society would be! The police, though, like the British bobbies, are unarmed.

It is not capitalist, but promotes a kind of Caucasian juche, national self-reliance. Interest on loans is forbidden. It is also not libertarian: national service is universal, and healthcare and education are provided by the government. Income and private property are never taxed, but corporate bodies and sales are. Religion is free, but clergy may not earn a living as clergy and religious bodies are taxed like corporations. Rights are listed, but so are responsibilities. And the constitution, once ratified as the primary law, may not be amended. No "living document" here!

A fascinating exercise in post-American imagination in which you can see the White Nationalist point of view trying to avoid any repeat of the multicultural situation which gave rise to this movement in the first place. An unusual mix of statism and unfettered private life.

The US Constitution assumed its constituency, which is now being consumed by another one. The NWR constitution, learning from that mistake, makes its constituency abundantly clear. The US document came from a very self-confident culture and was focussed on freedom from tyranny; the NWR's is from a threatened tribe focused just on survival.  And it does raise a question. If it has been perfectly natural for ethno-states to exist in history, for Japan to belong to the Japanese or France to the French --or Ireland to the Irish and not the British-- on what ground is a race-state ruled out of court? **** After all, a tribe is a tribe.

As with Sharialand, it's no place for a man like me, but it doesn't insult your intelligence by polite lying and time-wasting hypocrisy.

***

*I remember this incident but couldn't find the material. There's too many hits when you google library, offensive, racist. (Thanks to Anonymous for finding the link for me.)

**Although Black slavery was the fundamental background problem driving the War Between the States, --and was a central problem in the Constitution's creation--the war was fought between these "homogeneous" White English-speaking American Men of Christian heritage. Not unusual; indeed a distinguishing species pattern. As with families, neighboring tribes with only minor differences can become violent enemies: Serbs and Croats, Tutsi and Hutu, etc. Most American liberals hate American George Bush and Republicans more than they ever did Osama Bin Laden.

***Like the Dominican Order, whose 800 year old Constitutional governance structure remains substantially intact!

****Liberia, founded for and by ex-slaves from America, restricts citizenship to persons of Black African heritage. Clearly racist. Americo-Liberians, a mere 2.5%, dominated the native Blacks until 1980's coup. When was the last time you heard anybody calling for an anti-racist boycott against them? Enjoy the dancing in this article about the country.

Stubborn remnants

There are some parts of my life that I seem to have let go of when the time came for it; others remain somehow alive in me long past their due date. In working with my patients in therapy, it strikes me how some of them will constantly return to certain periods, like high school, for instance, when I hardly ever think of those same years.

But there is a season of my life that remains alive in me, and probably always will, the years I was a Dominican friar.

Except for the eventually dismantling power of my unruly eros, --and the neurotic drive in my character which makes belonging to any group both chronically desirable and chronically repelling--the Order of Preachers was a perfect match for a man like me. Even after a quarter century's distance, I still can feel twinges of loss when I remember moments of that life. I still use the Net to keep track of its doings.

I once tried to make clear for myself what it was I was looking for in a religious community, since I had not found one that really suited me. When I was younger, I had sort of fallen in love with the image of St Francis of Assisi and wanted to be a Franciscan. But then I met the Marianist Brothers, who taught me in high school, were a very likeable bunch, warm and friendly men, but locked into a pretty limited set of work options (mostly high schools) and above all, marked very much by their 19th century French foundation and its structures and pieties*. They did have one outstanding and unique attribute. Prior to the post-Vatican II revolution, they were the only religious order in the Church which allowed laybrothers to become superiors in a community that was a mix of priests and unordained members. I also spent a summer with a Benedictine community in upstate New York which had tried to go back to something closer to the original Rule, but as much as I enjoyed that experience, it revealed that I was not a rural contemplative. I had a need to communicate what I learned.

The four items that I named in my list were these: a respect for intellect and study, a rich liturgical and symbolic life, an adult community style that mixed hierarchy with democracy, and a variety of kinds of work. I actually went through the Catholic Encyclopedia as well as books that listed all the Orders of men. It came down to two groups: the Oratorians and the Dominicans.

Aside from the fact that there were very few Oratorian houses, I was not a fan of the Counter-Reformation's style, and this group had been founded then. But the medieval world had always felt more like home to me  --the Dominicans began in 1216-- and there was a group of them nearby. So off I went to see them. To my pleasure, I discovered that they considered their life to be based on Four Pillars: liturgical prayer, study, common life and a mission of preaching, broadly conceived. A kind of intellectual and active monasticism, it matched my list. If I'd had to create a community out of my own desires, I could not have done better.**

Those years were turbulent ones in the Church and the community I lived in had its own very turbulent history, --to which I certainly contributed my unfortunate share--so I cannot say it was easy or serene. On the contrary. But it connected with deep parts of my soul and I felt at home in its traditions, in a way I have never known since. I loved the rhythm of the daily Offices and the default assumption that serious learning was a good thing which you never stopped. As one of them said to me, "If you break your vow of chastity, we'll deal with that and get you back on track. But if you can't read a book, out you go."

Unlike the family-style Marianists, the Dominicans were not really nice guys. A more masculine ethos and plenty of interpersonal and intellectual conflict. (They had, after all, been a big part of the Inquisition!) But there was also plenty of laughing. And excellent food!

When, years later,  I finally realized that I could not stay the course, it was a heartbreaking failure for me. It was never the case that the Order let me down. I just could not hold together the tectonic oppositions in my own strange soul. (Probably still can't.) I was proud and honored that I had belonged and not proud of myself for deciding to leave. I simply had to. And although any reader of Ex Cathedra can tell that this non-practicing Catholic alumnus is still tied to the Faith, I really miss the Order far more than the Church it belongs to.

When B was in Italy a couple of years ago, he stayed in Bologna, where St Dominic is buried. He went to the basilica to visit the tomb and found the marks of the 800 year old Order's history all around.

He told me that he felt jealous of me then, that I'd had the opportunity to be a part of something like that. I understood.

*One of my layteachers, when he heard I was thinking of joining them, pulled me aside and pleaded with me not to waste my intellectual gifts in a group that had no real use or appreciation for them. He was not wrong.

**All the "Justice and Peace" BS and the baleful influence of the feminist Dominican sisters is a temporary product of Vatican II syndrome, which the Order was happily ignorant of for 750 of its 800 years.
___

Non declinism

Architecture.

Heroes

I thought I'd try watching it. Thirty minutes into it and I already hate most of the characters. If I see one more Magic Negro Genius Child Savior of the Planet I'm gonna fart. Hell, look at the one we have in the White House.

Yeah, I know it's fiction.

But I hated X-Men, too.

Oh, well. Cranky old man.

Musings afore lunch

If Heraklitus is right and character is fate, I'm screwed.

During a Mothers Day phone call, my mom mentioned that a company my bro in law is working for might open a store in SF and there was some talk of asking me to manage it. (Very doubtful on both counts.) I laughed to think that I would end my days selling dishes and silverware. I mentioned to her that one of the shocks of my life came when I realized that, despite my own values and how I come across to people, I am a very restless man. She said that I had already done everything under the sun, so it would not be odd to her. My family is very good to me but I sometimes wonder if they talk about me in puzzled terms of "What the hell is up with that guy now?"

Quite ironically, in the last year I have seen two museum exhibits based on women's fashions at the instigation of very guy-ish Mr B. But in both cases, his and my interest was in the technology rather than the aesthetics. In one exhibit, there were dozens of very complex dresses all made out of paper. And in the second, dozens of talking (and singing) mannekins.  I continue to be baffled at the obsession of homosexual men with women's clothing and hair.  I understand the psychology of it intellectually, but I really don't "get" it.

Found a funny quote from Hannah Arendt, of all people. In every generation Western civilization is invaded by tribes of barbarians. We call them "children."

Pointier and pointier

Although my store of recondite ephemera is not as vast as my friend jpnill's, whose Abraham Abulafia-like comments often leave me feeling as uneducated as a Democrat, I do have quite a lot of intellectual dust littering the byways of my brain. Yesterday was proof.

I made my first Wikipedia entry. I corrected the caption of a picture in an article about Armenian monasticism. You don't want to know. Although if you do.

And while brushing up on the latest arguments over the rite of adelphopoiesis, I found a site with this on it:

N'eo ket sklaer hag-eñ e talveze da unaniñ daou zen a vage karantez an eil ouzh egile evel un doare unaniezh heñvelrevel pe evit unaniñ daou vignon pe div vignonez.

I recognized the language.

Under Pol Pot, I would not have lasted ten seconds.

_____

My Sharia amour

If you're interested, a frank Mohammedan tells it like it is. No taqqiya here.

Embrace Islam. Or make a peace treaty. Or accept a dhimmi pact. Or be at war with us.

(Posting title is Mark Steyn's btw.)

Second class citizenship

This is one of the thought-bombs that people use to end a discussion. Like "separate but equal" or "racial profiling" or "H8" or "ethnic cleansing" or "racist".

I am, I have discovered, actually in favor of second-class citizenship. Not surprising, since a lot of my opinionating and H8ing on this blog is a reaction to the coercive egalitarianism worming its way through a once great civilization. This time the barbarians didn't even have to attack and sack; they just talked the Romans into surrendering because, if they didn't, it would make the barbarians feel bad and that would mean that the Romans were not nice people. Bang vs whimper? Whimper's the odds-on favorite.

Take gay marriage. I'm not in favor. Some kind of civil union would be just fine, IMHO. But that would mean, wait for it, second-class citizenship. Well, gay unions are second-class,

Now I am not talking about individual unions, of course. The kingdom of Heterosexia is littered with the detritus of marriages gone bad. Were this not the case, soap operas --and at least half of modern literature, popular and highbrow--would have no plots. This is not surprising or even slightly novel: if men and women had the natural inclination to bond and raise children amicably without any other centrifugal forces at play, we would not need the institution of marriage. People would have just been shacking up happily, successfully and peacefully since forever. Never happens. Maybe we'd like to be Bonobos, but we're not. Much more Chimpy.

And on the other hand,  I know same-sex couples whose relationships, while not perfect --who's is?--, are admirable, worthy of respect. But the thing is, society cannot exist without marriage, ie, male-female marriage. Can't be done. No one ever has done it, no matter how flawed or varied the particular arrangements have been. But no society needs gay unions. Not necessary. At all. So aside from personal or group ego issues, I don't see why gay marriage is any kind of a moral necessity.

The only world where it can become The Next Big Thing is in the world of coercive egalitarianism, where the driving energy not only of politics but of culture is liberalism. Which, to repeat Ex Cathedra's definition, is a systematic program of replacing historically successful groups with historically less or unsuccessful groups, replacing Oppressor Classes with Sacred Official Victim classes, by means of State power and PC social control. A dictatorship of the victimariate. And the Seven Pillars of this "social justice" cult are multiculturalism, feminism, redistributionism, pacifism, secularism, transnationalism and environmentalism.

The LGBT movement is a sub-part of feminism, whose aim is to replace patriarchy with matriarchy by getting us all to believe and act as if the sexes were interchangeable  and that men, therefore, when not pathological, noxious, criminal or stupid, are entirely optional.

In a world based on nature and common sense, there would be all kinds of classes of citizenship and a lot of them second. Even now, we consistently discriminate against minors, not allowing them to tell us when they are ready to join the electorate or leave school, but dictating from an oppressive adult viewpoint based in our hegemony and fear.

Equality is a trance.

Reconquista, continued

New births in America are now mostly NonWhite. 


_______________

Sorry I missed it

Not.

Love the lingo from Sister Trish about the Assisi Interfaith Dialogue:

The aim of the gathering was to encourage ecumenical thinking “outside the box,” to reignite the ecumenical flame by an interactive process which would identify and shape, as well as put into practice, productive pathways for dialogue in these times...to advance the dialogical cause. Many of the presentations reflected this process, with the conference facilitating an enormous range of perspectives and a rich conversation.

H8ers In Living Color

In the wake of O's evolution on gay marriage, we meet again the well-known fact that Blacks, and Black churches, are famously and massively against this idea. And indeed, famously unfriendly to gays. Hence, the down-low phenomenon, which certainly doesn't help to slow Black HIV infection rates.

James Lileks, on Ricochet, responds. His relevant remarks begin around 9:46 and end around 11:04.

Yeah, those hateful, bigoted, ignorant Mormons.

ExCathedra can't help noticing that these very moral Christian Black folks also support in reality, if not in theory, the single most self-destructive behavior in their racial group: a 70 percent illegitimacy rate. Be that as it may...

Thoughts in the dark

Been awake since just before 3 am. I made the mistake of saying how glad I was to be able to sleep through the night. Now for two days, I wake up in the dark.

I like Capn Jack Harkness a lot. A great male character. But his Torchwood crew are emotional morons, especially Gwen and mummy-faced Owen. I know these flaws create drama, but... Just sayin'.

My sister died 8 years ago today. Getting that call in the middle of the night was like being struck with thunder and having a limb cut off. Thomas came over and got me through it. Can't remember much except him holding me and me stuffing towels in my mouth so the crying and howling wouldn't wake the neighbors.

When groups assert that they are "equal" and want social and legal validation for it, someone should say to them, "So prove it, and we'll see." How many groups would fail? I can think of a few that have. "Equality" has become a trance.

The majority-minority game is way off now. Has been for way too long. As I continue to notice, the majority dances to the tune of the minority. All this stuff about gay marriage. For how many people?

On a rightwing site re an article against gay marriage, ran up against some really nasty stuff. Not the usual conservative behavior, but it does happen.

Who escapes their Zeitgeist? When I listen to the social justice Catholics carry on as if their current concerns and lingo are just good old traditional Christianity rather than the just-made-up soft socialism of post Christian Europe, I think of the Catholics of, say, the Counter Reformation, for whom the assertion of Catholic power through the state was second nature, too. Liberal Catholics are statists as well, but see themselves as the nobler part of a larger "human" coalition. God, could anything be more locally Zeitgeistish?

Half watched a flick called Voodoo Moon. Good Lord, what an incoherent disaster. Whoever wrote it and put it together...all the same guy, actually...was off his meds. Just drek. Even made terrifically sexy Eric Mabius unappealing. How do people get these things funded?

Speaking of funds, the world's, the country's and my finances are not looking good. My Own Private Big Fat Greek Financial Meltdown.  Makes the years when I was flush seem like someone else's life.

When I started out dating again in 2006, I wondered if I was still emotionally intact. Turns out I was, for better or worse. But I wonder again if chronic anxiety wears away the capacity to connect.

Or sleep through the night.

Worth repeating

Unintended consequences.

Women

Tintoretto's Temptation of Adam

An appreciative reader took the time to write, and to correct a factual mistake I made in posting Fins des siecles, for both of which I thank him. And he also had some issue with what he called my "stealth misogyny".

A couple of thoughts in response.

One is, I don't think it's so "stealth". Since a lot of this blog functions as a place for discharging my negative reactions --so I don't bore or alienate my friends with them-- I think I am pretty consistent in directly attacking certain kinds of females and female behaviors.  Phallic females who take advantage of the current feminist and reflexively anti-male Zeitgeist to compete with males by disrespectfully trashing them but expecting no pushback because they are, after all, girls. Women who invade male space with their anger and then want to play the victim when they do get pushback. Labile females who want to play the Big Boys' games and then collapse into helpless little girls when it suits them, expecting that they will get respect for the former and soothing for the latter. And characters like Olivia in The Shooting Party or Monroe in The Misfits, or Taylor in Reflections in a Golden Eye, who use male vulnerability to their sexual attraction in order to act like narcissistic irresponsible children and again, expect no consequences for whatever harm they do. Or feminists and animus-possessed women in general.  In regard to these types of characters and behaviors, I am with Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, who writes his female characters as men, and then "removes all reason and accountability."

And I respond to the term misogyny rather as I do to racism, homophobia, or xenophobia. Regardless of the user's conscious intention, they carry a pre-packaged PC software program which is supposed to elicit a defense against the charge. I refuse to enter a plea because I don't accept the validity of the category in the first place. All these words assume that the only acceptable moral attitude toward women, non-Whites, gays, or foreigners --all Sacred Victim Groups in liberal parlance--must be positive and that the burden of proof lies on those who are unimpressed or unfriendly in any way. I disagree. I dish out praise and blame as I see fit.

About Elizabeth Taylor's acting all I can say is that I am not alone in my estimation of her talent. Just google "Elizabeth Taylor" and "mediocre". But that is a question of taste. De gustibus. I'd rather watch a Jacqueline Bisset, Lauren Bacall, Olympia Dukakis, Juliane Moore or Julia Roberts.

And whether or not my reader can respect a man who appears to be insensible to the charms of a beautiful woman, well, what can a Kinsey Six say to that? I remember a wise old fella who defined charm as manipulation that you like. Where I sense manipulation, it is true, female beauty leaves me not only unmoved but hostile. Women, beautiful or not, who have a natural sense of self-worth and an un-game-playing warmth and frankness about them, I quite like, both when they are exuberant and when they are vulnerable. My women friends are all like this.

And again, thanks for writing.

PS. I am a pro-patriarchy type ("It's Mother Nature's way!"), which means that I think that men and male values should predominate in a society. I think that societal sexual equality is as illusory as the classless society, and I certainly don't like the dominance of women and feminist values. I actually think that this is better for most women overall, as well as for men, but many people nowadays would consider my attitude misogynist.

Light in the loafers

So after White man Billy Clinton becomes the first Black President, straight man Barack Obama becomes the first Gay President.

Granted, this is Newsweek, the dying chickflick of dying dead-tree newsmagazines, but, Good Lord, no shame, no dignity, just stupid silliness.

The liberal obsession with Sacred Victim Groups only grows.

Fins des siecles

I watched (1985) The Shooting Party, a weekend on a country estate in soon-to-be dismantled Edwardian England. It is 1913 and the impending war will change much. James Mason's last film performance.

Premonitions of the rise of the social welfare state, class conflict, romantic pacifism, loony animal rights and the landed aristocracy losing a sense of purpose. The slaughter of the birds by the men presaging the slaughter of the men by other men.

Altman's 2001 Gosford Park showed that the shooting parties were still going on in the 30's --another pre-war precipice-- but you can see the transformation in the characters, even as the structures remain somewhat in place. (I wonder if Altman ever acknowledged the likenesses, which are many.)

A note once more about my utter tone-deafness to female allure. Pauline Kael had this to say about one of the actresses and her character:

And Judi Bowker as the guileless Lady Olivia, the wife of thick-headed Lord Lilburn (Robert Hardy), looks at the camera with a direct gaze that makes her seem infinitely beautiful. When the tall, slim young barrister Lionel Stephens (Rupert Frazer), declares his love for her, you think, Of course - how could he look into her clear eyes and not imagine depths of mystery?"

Well, she certainly stood out among the women, but all I could see in "her clear eyes" were depths of vacuity, somewhere in the neighborhood between a porcelain doll and a retarded child. She often has played these types: Claire of Assisi in Brother Sun Sister Moon, the deranged child-saint in Agnes of God , an untethered novice in In This House of Brede and in the silly Clash of the Titans she was Princess Andromeda.

Where some see mysterious unearthly beauty, I see an empty and annoying shell. She is a more reticent version of similarly doll-like actress Amanda Seyfried, whose feminist self-esteem drives the gleeful narcissism of her characters.

In a strange way, The Shooting Party reminded me of The Misfits (1961), which also featured a brainless and hysterically sentimental anima woman, Marilyn Monroe, bewitching men whose world  is also on the brink of extinction.

Aside from Ms Bowker, I liked the film quite a lot.

Unlikely bedfellows

Jack Donovan, author of Androphilia and his just-published The Way of Men, unambiguous atheist and indeed a former Satanist*, is an advocate for what he calls paleo-masculinity, a frankly patriarchal manhood proudly out of step with the contemporary society of Bonobos created by feminism and globalism. Although partnered for many years with another man, he also rejects the idea of same-sex marriage. He co-authored Blood Brotherhood, based on Nathan Miller's historical and cross-cultural research on organically male forms of ritual bonding. What is so unappealing about gay marriage for him? It makes the sexes interchangeable, denying the fundamental and foundational differences between men and women.

Two Bishops of Rome, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, refuse to accept the massive tide of feminist calls for "gender equality" and thus reject definitively either same-sex marriage or the ordination of females to the Catholic priesthood. Underlying a lot of the culturally palliating pablum the Church puts out in regard to women --because women are numerically dominant in Western Christian churches--there remains a rock-bottom theological assumption that the sexes are not interchangeable. And, that the female sex does not belong inside the central circles of Catholic sacraments and governance. The Pope was not titled Patriarch of the West for nothing.

Donovan has a mordant archetypalist's eye for things-as-they-are, nature red in tooth and claw, and an allergy to comforting fictions, pleasant denials and unsustainable illusions and lies about what humans are made of. His guiding spirit might be Darwin, but not Deuteronomy. The Roman Catholic tradition, although saturated with the Bible, also maintains an almost equally powerful interest in the contributions of human reason, created by the rational Creator of a basically intelligible universe**. But even in that transcendent light, the dimorphism of the human species into male and female appears definitive.

Although Benedict would agree with Jack that "a world that's out of step with human nature is not rational", their two different approaches to that nature also provide the material for opposite valuations of homosexuality, although founded on similar intuitions. Perhaps the differences lie in the contrasts between natural law and the law of nature, one a project of ethical reason, the other an amoral description of human, animal and planetary behaviors .

Catholicism, with a teleological version of natural law, cannot understand how sexual activity that cannot lead to procreation is in line with the natural (and sacred) ends of the activity. For Rome, non-procreative intercourse is rather like chewing food for the taste and never swallowing it for nourishment. For Donovan, it simply occurs in nature and there is no reason to make it a matter of ethics; for him it's all about how it practically unfolds, either supporting or dismantling the patriarchy. Patriarchy, in my own droll phrase, is Mother Nature's way, a condition for human flourishing. Or in Donovan's trenchant words, "A society dominated by women and effeminates cannot survive."

Opposed on same-sex eros, but both sure that men and women are opposite sexes. A homosexual atheist and the Popes. Unlikely, uh, bedfellows.


*Not in the supernatural Rosemary's Baby style, but in the Satan-as-symbol, Objectivism-on-steroids style of Anton LaVey.

**Benedict provoked Muslims to violence simply by pointing out that propagation by violence is inherent in Islam! His larger point was a civilization founded on reason vs those founded wholly on will. The Greco-Christian God is logos. Allah is sheer Will.

__

The Seven Hills

My sister-in-law just texted me with a question about Rome. I lived there and have visited twice since...but not for a long time now...and she and my bro are making their first trip there this fall.

Got me thinking about The West, or what used to be called Christendom. Rome, like all of the West, is multilayered, literally. Beneath the Dominican church of San Clemente you can go down from the contemporary building (a 12th century structure with Baroque ornamentation) to a 9th century church, then lower to the streets of the neighborhood as it was during the times of the Caesars.

The city embodies the Roman assimilation of Greek culture and style and then the Christian city on top of that, and now the secular post-Enlightenment society that marbles through it (or vice versa). In Rome you find Athens and Jerusalem working out their vibrant and tense relationship. Further makes me think of identity: who we believe ourselves to be, part of what groups, what streams, what futures. Who our friends are and who our enemies. What our inherited pride is and what darkness we carry from our ancestors.

Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, Germano-British...

I once tried to make a list of The Seven Cities of the West as a symbolic way of marking out what makes Western Civilization unique. It was hard to come up with just seven. (History and identity are never as neat as my Five mind would like them to be.) Athens and Jerusalem for sure. Then Rome, of course. Paris, London and Berlin...for the French, English and Germanic contributions. See, already we have seven. What about Madrid, which marked all of Latin America? And then for the northern New World: Washington and New York? 

This leaves out the Slavic realm, both Catholic and Orthodox, with Moscow and Constantinople. Huntington separates these nations from The West.

And for the West's future? Los Angeles?

When "we" teach our history to our children, it is always from a particular point of view. When I was in grade and high school, even a bit when I was at Columbia, with its Core Curriculum, the great narrative arced from Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, through post-medieval Europe (Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment) to America. Now with the Post-Colonial and Globalist (Marxian) story in the ascendancy, that arc is seen mostly as a saga of oppression. White Westerners teach their children to be ashamed.

Aggiornamento

The new Sherlock series has a scene where Sherlock and Watson are confronted by Dr. Moriarty ("Jim") and threatened with imminent death...but Jim's cellphone rings --the ringtone is the BeeGee's "Stayin' Alive" :) --and he has to take the call. Holmes and friend get to live another day.

Liberals hate federalism

Gay blog Gawker is outraged at Barry for not following up his personal support of gay marriage with a push for Federal legislation. O's placing of the legal issue with the states outrages him. (Did I say outrage twice?)

Well, before Roe v. Wade, abortion was a state-by-state issue, too. So was slavery. There are 44 states in which gay men and women are currently barred from marrying one another. Obama's position is that, while he would have voted the other way, those 44 states are perfectly within their rights to arbitrarily restrict the access of certain individuals to marriage rights based solely on their sexual orientation.

That is a half-assed, cowardly cop-out... Equality is not a state-by-state issue. There is no reason other than ignorance and hatred that two men can get married in New York and not North Carolina. At a time when vindictive hucksters are rolling out anti-gay marriage amendments across the nation, and when conflicting state and federal laws portend an insoluble morass of divorce, custody, and estate issues, and when gay Americans are turning to the U.S. Constitution and the courts to seek an affirmation of their humanity, "it's a state-by-state issue" is a shameful dodge.

(My italics and bolding, btw.)

Equality, the obsession of the Left, can never be less than a Federal issue, right? 'Cause any equality issue --and everything with them is eventually an equality issue-- is too important to leave to local yokels in states. So really, what good are the states after all?

And if you oppose an equality agenda, you are ignorant and hateful. There can be no argument against equality.

At the founding it was certainly true that the states were massively important to the people of the United States. Over time, especially after the War Between Them, they have come to seem, especially to liberals, just local departments of the Feds, good for nothing but sending congressmen to DC. After all, we're all Americans, right, and don't we have a right to "have our humanity affirmed" --so speciesist-- by Washington? And states' rights, clearly enshrined in the Constitution, have become a codeword for racial segregation.

Outrage on, girl.

Another reason to read Klavan

Andrew Klavan was voted the favorite of Iowa Teen Readers and won the coveted (but virtually unknown) Golden Apple Award:

One kind of interesting thing about this golden apple is if you look closely you’ll see it actually contains a reflection of me. I thought that was cool. My wife says the reflection is not there all the time, but it’s been there every time I looked so I think she is just messing with my head hoping to drive me insane so that I’ll let her use the remote.

Blunt words

From exiled race realist John Derbyshire:

Conservatism, Inc. or otherwise, is a white people's movement, a scattering of outliers notwithstanding.


Always has been, always will be. I have attended at least a hundred conservative gatherings, conferences, cruises, and jamborees: let me tell you, there ain't too many raisins in that bun...

This isn't because conservatism is hostile to blacks and mestizos. Very much the contrary, especially in the case of Conservatism Inc. They fawn over the occasional nonwhite with a puppyish deference that fairly fogs the air with embarrassment. (Q: What do you call the one black guy at a gathering of 1,000 Republicans?  A: "Mr. Chairman.")

It's just that conservative ideals like self-sufficiency and minimal dependence on government have no appeal to underperforming minorities—groups who, in the statistical generality, are short of the attributes that make for group success in a modern commercial nation.

Of what use would it be to them to embrace such ideals? They would end up even more decisively pooled at the bottom of society than they are currently.

A much better strategy for them is to ally with as many disaffected white and Asian subgroups as they can (homosexuals, feminists, dead-end labor unions), attain electoral majorities, and institute big redistributionist governments to give them make-work jobs and transfer wealth to them from successful groups.

Which is what, very rationally and sensibly, they do.

So it's not the "white" that bothers me. Heck, conservatives might just as well be honest about it, since it's so almighty bleeding obvious.

Truer words

Related by a teacher on another site:

One day I asked the bored, black faces staring back at me: "What would happen if all the white people in America disappeared tomorrow?"

"We screwed," a young, pitch-black boy screamed back. The rest of the blacks laughed.

Decline and fall

Prudential Financial just interrupted my country music station with an ad for retirement services, featuring "Mujahid Abdul Rashid" as their exemplary customer.

America is fading fast.

But when you elect a race scam artist like Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency, who could be surprised? I watch him sitting there in the White House and I feel like I'm living in an occupied country.


If I were Consul of America, all the authors and supporters of the 1960's immigration reform acts would get the Pope Formosus treatment, Edward Kennedy being first in line.

Eternal return

When I first set out to explore my new city twenty years ago by walking down Market Street from the Castro to the Embarcadero, I discovered, to my surprise, that from Van Ness to Powell Street was largely an urban wasteland, a bit like the old Times Square pre-Giuliani. Yesterday I did a reprise of the 3.5 mile hike, and nothing has changed. The same lowlife in the midsection. And although SF's Black population is now only 7%, --half of what it was two decades ago--the majority of the street riffraff are Black. They overflow further into downtown, but the regular folks who work or shop outnumber them there.

(Oh, and for the sake of racial balance, I passed by the few tattered remnants of Occupy SF: a few die hard old white hippies and a bunch of white bums).

As I waited to cross one of the downtown streets, a silver sedan turned right off Market against a red light and, were it not for their leisurely pace, would have run into the two dozen pedestrians just stepping off the curb. They pulled back, but it was very close. Someone banged the car with a fist. The driver jammed on his breaks and stopped in the middle of the street, got out and turned around yelling at the crowd he had almost run down that he would whip the ass of the motherfucker what hit his car.

I have no hope that the race issue in America will ever be over.

In a nunshell

How to be both pretentious and pathetic at the same time.

A scriptural mystery revealed

What was St Paul referring to in that much discussed and oblique passage of his second Letter to the Corinthians (12:7-9)?

At last we know.

HT to jpnill