Saturday, November 1, 2008

This Ain't Hobbiton

The worst of this election's absurd nonsense is that people near and dear to me are so taken by this Pied Piper of the Culture of Death, Barack Obama. He has promised to sign the Freedom (sic.) of Choice Act first and foremost after becoming President of the United States.

They see in him no earthly man, but a symbol, a non-George W. Bush, an archetype. I see in him an internal mediator who pulls on his trousers one leg at a time - regardless of his promises to "change the world" - who will disappoint his followers for a plethora of reasons, as the inevitable enantiadromia after his gutterish triumphal entry turns ugly.

I do not pity the man. He doesn't have an epistemological or ontological leg on which to stand. I do, however, pity those, as I say, whom I love who are blind to the mythopoeia that swirls about him. And I am angry; angry at what this nation is about, legally, to become. The United States of America will face consequential judgment, and well deserved.

So where is a hobbit to find a piece of land, some freedom(s), and a place to worship and raise a family in peace?

The Maronite Church

Curt Jester Jeff Miller shared this on Maronite Christians, who have always been in union with the Pope:

Mark Steyn - Crashing Symbol

Obama's a better symbol than president.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Angela Bassett(hound)

... and her Church Dogmatics class go wild tonight. [ht: Estate Vaults]

Diddy Retort - A Righteous Dude

[ht: Maggie's Farm] I do like this guy.

Courtesy and Chivalry

From the EWTN archives comes a beautiful essay by John Saward, The Grace of God in Courtesy. [ht: Mary Victrix]

Courtesy is the mark of a Christian knight. To be more than a mere warrior, a man must be gallant in considerateness as well as courage. In late medieval literature, the exemplary knight is decked not just with iron mail, but with the whole armor of the virtues, of which courteous chivalry is the helm. Of Sir Gawain it is said that "his cleanness and his courtesy crooked were never," and in The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer's Knight is praised as a "worthy man" who loved
"chivalry, truth and honor, freedom and courtesy." When he was ritually blessed by the bishop, the new knight made promises touching chiefly on faith and charity: unfailing obedience to the Church and a constant readiness to defend the widow and orphan. The secret of chivalry was in the soul.

There is evidence to suggest that it was not in the court, but in the cloister that courtesy was first practiced and promoted ...
Read all ...

Be Not Afraid!

The Velvet Hammer Lady warns - and I admit I agree with her on it - the Axelrod propaganda ministry is employing PsyOps to keep conservatives and Christians away from the polls. The MSM is doing a splendid job convincing voters that it's all over, so, in short, just stay home and cry in your cornflakes, yahoos.

Don't believe it. Go. Vote. Don't be duped by deceptive appearances and propaganda. Don the full armor of God (Eph. 6, 10-24) and vote for life, love, truth, goodness, and beauty.

Krauthammer - The True McCain

Charles Krauthammer: Obama vs. McCain 1 more time.

Convert Magdi on the Scimitar

Catholic News Service reports that Magdi Allam, convert and journalist, has expressed in a letter to the Holy Father grave concerns regarding relations between the Catholic Church and representatives of Islam.

Magdi, whom the Holy Father baptized at last year's Easter Vigil, said he was writing with the "deference of a sincere believer" in Christianity and as a "strenuous protagonist, witness and builder of Christian civilization ...

"Islamic extremism and terrorism are the mature fruit" of following "the sayings of the Quran and the thought and action of Mohammed," Magdi stated in the letter to the pope.

Read all ...

Goebbels Redux

A name you may want to remember, David Axelrod.

And why his Goebbels-like methods are so effective.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

They're Coming to Take Me Away, Haha

Patrick Archbold reports on Obama's plan for a National Civilian Security Force. And, of course, they would never use the word "jihad" because it is only an inward spiritual struggle. And, then, there will have to be a Junior Civilian Security Force to develop good Politically Correct skills and sensibilities, right? Watch for yourself:

The Day the Music Died

Albeit on the Catholic end of the apocalyptic spectrum (the "spread the blessed salt" ilk), Spirit Daily actually does a passable job of ringing the changes of cultural meltdown in MYSTERY YEAR OF 1973 SAW MASSIVE INFLUX OF OCCULT, ABORTION, AND HOMOSEXUALITY NOW SET TO PEAK AS ELECTION 'EMERGENCY' (that's their shouting, not mine).
(T)he entire society was involved in pharmakeia. There were other hidden occult aspects. There were the drums of rock and roll in the Sixties and Seventies, which often promoted carnal impulses. (In Africa and other lands, they use similar beats to "conjure" spirits.) There was the ritual of sex: occultists perform illicit acts as a rebellion against God, even on makeshift altars, and now it was known as the "sexual revolution." In pagan times, it was called "saturnalia"; it is a word Sanger's own ex-husband used in describing what she was really promoting. In occult rituals, obscene performances are watched by a group, and with pornography, we had that, too, in America, in a massive way: The year before 1973 was release of an epic x-rated movie starring a woman they called Linda Lovelace but would have been bettered named Loveless. Lost on so many is that 1973 was also the year the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a disorder.

[ ... ]

Abortion was lost in the headlines but it was the most nefarious act in U.S. history and it can also be seen as a blood sacrifice: the sacrifice of the innocents. A massive ritual was set in place -- joining saturnalia and drugs and one that now takes us to a looming precipice.

Those who doubt an occult underpinning -- or at least the influence of Satan -- should know that at some abortion clinics, witches work as escorts, and there are even pagan rites: "The lights were low, and Native American flute music played softly. A counselor held the woman's hand, whispering words of comfort as she began to surface from a guided meditation. Then the doctor showed the woman a covered silver bowl that held the tiny remains of her six-week pregnancy. She curled her fingers around his, and her face, now damp with tears, softened as he began their ceremony of letting go," says one description.

Wiccans, who consider abortion a "sacrament," are encouraged to work their magic on the area surrounding the clinic: "Finally, many individuals and groups have been helping to magically (sic) protect the building and property ... This has been done by magical and psychic shielding being put on and around the property...." says one manual.

Read all …

Corpus Christianum - An Invitation

From the members of Corpus Christianum comes this video invitation at Gloria TV. Come join our merry band of chivalric prayer warriors.

The New Gay - Conservatives, Christians, Catholics

Alexandra Petri writing in The Harvard Crimson nails what in post-modern parlance can only said thusly: Conservative is the New Gay. [ht: Matthew Archbold, CMR]
The other day, a friend of mine made a heartfelt confession. I’d known it was coming, and I was prepared to offer support. I swaddled her shoulders in a rainbow blanket, played Elton John softly in the background, and reassured her that no matter what, she would always be the same person. This was only one small facet of her personality, and it wouldn’t change the way we thought about her. If anything, we would love her more for her honesty.

But when she blurted out, “Alex, I think I’m conservative,” I realized that I had been deluding her with false hopes. I couldn’t bear to look at her. Clearly, this girl I had always thought of as an intelligent, rational being was secretly a sub-literate moron. All those times we‘d innocently joked about Bristol and Levi, she’d been harboring perverted desires to do things like watch FOX News and vote for McCain. “At least tell me you still think Sarah Palin is Satan,” I pleaded. She shook her head and muttered something about the liberal media distorting things, but I couldn‘t quite make it out over the sound of our friendship crashing to an end.
Read all …

* * *
What Ms. Petri admirably thematizes is a par-for-the-course anthropological fact in Girard's mimetic theory; namely, fallen human nature always seeks a scapegoat so as to revitalize our conventional cultural structures of ritual, myth, and prohibition. The act of scapegoating itself, unconscious though it normally is, is a playing out of ritual, rehearsing of myth, and enforcement of the prohibition(s) that is part and parcel with culture.

What is of interest here is that even post-modern naïveté about these anthropological realities cannot abjure the one thing one must never do to maintain culture's rituals, myths, and prohibitions - one must not name the victim/scapegoat.

But Ms. Petri does. Whether or not she realizes it, she is pulling back the mythological curtain and revealing the appalling fact of what gives the primitive sacred its power - the fallacy that the victim/scapegoat deserves to be victimized and scapegoated and the supposed innocence of his persecutors. In other words, once one sees that the mob is not innocent or righteous and its victim is not a devil or monster, the jig is up.

Conservatives are innocent of the default liberal accusations and attacks, structurally. One may say that the Obama campaign, the vast falderal that is sucking so many into its vortex, is simply the latest expression of the mob feeling righteous in its search for new victims.

Obama is merely the froth on the cauldron. A mob and its leader that are sincere can be sincerely wrong; every hubris-filled humanist utopian project of the twentieth century was wrong, from Stalinism to National Socialism, from the Khmer Rouge to the abortion-ritual "sexual liberation" genocide now underway. Without the true transcendence of the biblical faiths - including understanding of Origin Sin - such projects are doomed to end in sacrificial violence.

Conservatives in general, Christians more specifically, and the Catholic Church in particular are indeed the "new gay." Read: the victim of choice by the default liberal oligarchy of the West. What shall happen in post-election America will be most telling.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Cardinal Egan - Bravo

.- In a strongly worded article published next to a moving photo of an unborn baby in the womb, Cardinal Edward Egan, Archbishop of New York, compared tolerating abortions to the reasoning used by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin to commit mass murders.

The cardinal begins his column for the latest edition of the archdiocesan newspaper “Catholic New York” by explaining that “the picture on this page is an untouched photograph of a being that has been within its mother for 20 weeks. Please do me the favor of looking at it carefully.”

[ ... ]

Cardinal Egan continues: “Adolf Hitler convinced himself and his subjects that Jews and homosexuals were other than human beings. Joseph Stalin did the same as regards Cossacks and Russian aristocrats. And this despite the fact that Hitler and his subjects had seen both Jews and homosexuals with their own eyes, and Stalin and his subjects had seen both Cossacks and Russian aristocrats with theirs.”

“It is high time to stop pretending that we do not know what this nation of ours is allowing—and approving—with the killing each year of more than 1,600,000 innocent human beings within their mothers. We know full well that to kill what is clearly seen to be an innocent human being or what cannot be proved to be other than an innocent human being is as wrong as wrong gets,” he adds.

“Do me a favor,” Cardinal Egan writes, “Look at the photograph again. Look and decide with honesty and decency what the Lord expects of you and me as the horror of ‘legalized’ abortion continues to erode the honor of our nation. Look, and do not absolve yourself if you refuse to act.”

“Have you any doubt that it is a human being?” Cardinal Egan asks.

Frodo in a World of Boromirs

"For me," writes Kurt Luchs at First Things, "the Dark Lord’s terrible ring holds another meaning, one that might serve as a warning for any age, but particularly, I fear, for our own. I see in it the lure of political power, specifically the ultimate power of the modern nation-state. And I must admit, even in trying to discuss this concept with most of those nearest and dearest to me, I feel like Frodo in a world of Boromirs."

Monday, October 27, 2008

Secret Message of Bumper Stickers

Writing in the June issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Colorado State University researchers suggest that people with bumper stickers are more likely to be aggressive and angry people, or at least aggressive and angry drivers ...
The amazing thing is that the aggression didn't change with the sticker's message. Drivers who chose peaceful messages like "Visualize World Peace" were just as obnoxious on the road as those who slapped "My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student" on their bumpers. [ht: Estate Vaults]
Read all …

Bella Star Interview

Why Eduardo Verastegui is using his star power – and more – to help McCain and Governor Sarah Palin win the votes of Latinos here.

Chivalry at the Polls

From the Obama Festival in Denver

But seriously, come voting day, November 4, given the in-your-face thuggery the Big O has come to expect from his devotees, I strongly recommend some chivalric expectations. Meaning? If you see harassment either before one gets to the polling center or as voters leave, discern the situation, and decide on the brave thing: escort and befriend anyone you see being given a hard time.

You don't need to don your rapier - although a rapier wit may be helpful - nor go looking for trouble and throw yourself into the fray. Just keep a weather eye about you.

After all, you never know about these BACCHAE types, do you?

Sunday, October 26, 2008

But First Give Me a Carmel Macchiato

Matthew Archbold relates the chaos, the angst, the horror of the white liberal riot.

Martineau - PRB

The Last Chapter (1863) - Robert Braithwaite Martineau

Vote Early ... That's All



Just in case you haven't heard, as Pam Geller reminds us, it ain't over till the fat (fill in the blank) sings.

Are Doomed to Repeat It

As friend and mentor Gil Bailie has shared in his work explicating the mimetic theory of René Girard, Euripides' THE BACCHAE is perhaps the finest pre-Christian narrative depicting the inner workings of the primitive sacred. If you do not feel up to the Greek Tragedians, may I recommend The Dionysus Mandate ? (Reader Discretion Advised - at least that's what my sister said, who couldn't believe I let my father read it.)

Drawing no comparisons with our present political/cultural situation - I name no names (this time) - one sees in TDM how easily moderns are drawn into contemporary expressions of the neo-pagan; even those progressives who believe themselves outstripping the "worn-out" and hackneyed truths of the Catholic faith are apt to fall into the primitive sacred ditch.

Indeed, it is precisely those who feel themselves at the forefront of social justice issues, and for whom it goes without saying that the Catholic Church is a bastion of patriarchal power mongering and superstitious mumbo-jumbo, who most easily fall into the ways of Dionysus, that wrathful young god.

Up Mt. Cithaeron with Big O

From a Girardian view of the election campaign, it is so much fun to be part of the (self-) righteous entourage of the youthful god as he takes them up Mt. Cithaeron (cf. Euripides' THE BACCHAE). Never mind it will lead to more human sacrifice - invalidating all limits on abortion (read: infanticide) as well as eliminate all restrictions on governmental funding of the same. This is par for the course as far as paganism goes.

But, you must understand, the Bacchae following Barack feels righteous; after all, they are opposed to more deaths in Iraq. And the bacchanalia following Big O is soo much more fun than following Moses up Mt. Sinai, or Christ up Calvary.

Oh, yeah, and one last thing: be careful around them. They can get brutal. Just ask Pentheus.