Future Campaign Funds

Why should he bite the hand that fed him?

UPDATE: See?

Too late to jump out

I am convinced by the truism regarding a frog and boiling water. If we brought anyone - anyone - from your hometown in the 1950's to present-day America, he would think, correctly, that we'd lost our social, spiritual, and psychological marbles.

I believe the same holds true for the state of assimilation - or lack thereof - of the Scimitar in poor old England. Thing is, apparently there too, none of persons who should be concerned are. As this story points out.

Persons for Profits

Jill Fallon points out the tragic and, from the prophetic viewpoint, sinful results of the economic stimulus efforts of the Last Self-Help Administration here.

Hacker

Fire Fancies ( 1891) - Arthur Hacker

When push comes to shove

Whilst the concern grows that they don't have a clue what they're supposed to be doing (trust me here), I have no doubts about the American soul.

Let someone just try something fishy. Just see what happens. I still have strong faith in America and Americans, them notwithstanding.

Doomed to Repeat Them

Our Lady of the Crag, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire

Here is what I consider a valuable discussion regarding similarities between the sad, so-called English "reformation" and the secularist state's arrogant and rapacious effort to silence Mother Church's voice, again.

Let me say that a good friend whose opinions I value greatly carries an animus against Fra Angelo. But this analysis is ostensibly too important to disregard for past regrettable events. The penal era in England has too much to teach us today not to examine comparisons and contrasts.

'Apparently Unconvertible' Religion

For the record, Father James V. Schall, S. J., on Hilaire Belloc's assessment of the Scimitar as the "apparently unconvertible" religion here.

Two Pieces of Good News - Maybe

Having said this, what is this about?

And, then, Spencer brings this from the Netherlands. Is it an ever so slight turning of the tide?

Leighton - PRB

Clytie (1890-92) - Frederic Lord Leighton

Shining Archetypal Example

What is it about the near-or-actual archetype of the stern, fierce Scimitar warrior (and his wife/servant counterpart, the prolifically fertile Scimitar mother with her many young offspring in tow) that seems the indomitable and inevitable master of the old, weary Christian West?

He hovers in the imagination of many Cassandras as surely as he marches with his fellows, the masters, on the streets of major cities of the dhimmis who provide an adequate breeding ground for demographic superiority and a blind eye to his hate speech and actions toward Jews and Christians, his elders.

It is the archetypal nature of this figure that I find upsetting. René Girard has exhibited sufficient evidence of the nature of the primitive sacred to show conclusively that those people not influenced by the Gospel are likely to have such unflappability. Whereas those who have heard the cock crow know their own culpability, question their innocence, and can be enervated by it.

Such is the dilemma of Ralph in Golding's Lord of the Flies and Shakespeare's Hamlet. Interestingly, veterans of the trenches in World War I, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, saw both the necessity of questioning one's fragile and dubious innocence and the absolute necessity of occasional legitimate defense.

But what is the reason for the strength, the psychological superiority, of the Scimitar figure? Why is this shining example, to use Lee Harris's phrase, without a masculine counterpart in the West? Is not Christ OUR "shining example?"

If so, then why are we enervated, degenerate (or un-generate) demographically, and quaking before an inferior "shining example" which leans so heavily on might, subjugation, and sacred violence?

Of course, the Old Testament prophets - Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah - would talk to us about judgment: that our present lack of vision and coming exile are by-products of our breaking covenant, not keeping the Torah, being adulterous, murderous, idolatrous. If we cannot see our Shining Example, whose fault is it? God's or our's?

In Government We Trust

The I Won is continuing his inroads into replacing government as the ultimate security blanket. Why not? After sweeping up traditional Catholics into his fold in November's election, he believes he not only can but will lead the charge for a progressive (sic.) agenda that includes the abominations you have read about constantly in the first weeks of his presidency.

W. Bradford Wilcox at Mercatornet examines what this will mean for the United States as it follows the secularist path already taken by the Old World here.

Hitchcock's Fluff Criticism

Carl Olson at Ignatius Scoop addressing a tempest in a teapot; namely, a recent reprint of James Hitchcock's "Boozy Apologists" (Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis) here.

We Don't Need No Catholic Bishops

On Gordon Peterson's Inside Washington this evening, regular panel member Colby King of the Washington Post blandly noted that the discussion regarding stem cell research (no mention of embryonic) needs to be calmed down. Why? Because there are bio-ethicists involved. So have no fear.

Krauthammer - O's Arrogance

Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics. (Emphasis added)

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

Dr. James Thomson, the pioneer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.

Read all of Krauthammer's op/ed here.

Rossetti - PRB

Before the Battle (1857-58) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti