‘Hate-crime’ laws. Ask Fred Goldman if he is “relieved” that this is not considered a “hate” crime because his son Ron was brutally murdered by O.J. Simpson NOT because he was white, NOT because he was Jewish, but because he was an eyewitness. ALL crimes are “hate” crimes. Why? Because a criminal perpetrating a crime obviously HATES property rights — whether it be the “property” of your body or the property of your personal possessions.
The madmen did well. Madmen being ad-men. In advertising terms, Bush was a ‘brand collapse’ whereas Obama, with his toothpaste-advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. And: In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. Glad I stayed home.
Goodbye and good riddance, American century. Hooray for Andrew Bacevich, last year an Obamacon with honour. (I gave that a go two years before the Obamenon and found it wanting — voted a Dem ticket and got... nothing.)
Of course the racist right blame the Mexicans for swine flu. BTW the killer Spanish influenza in 1918 was nothing really to do with España; the Spanish press ignored a news blackout and gave it a lot of coverage. BTW here’s a saint to pray for you during this scare. You can see a re-enactment of a New York street procession for him in The Godfather, Part II (more). Take that, ‘Mass and office’ and the cadence, and its orthodoxy in spite of itself, if nothing else of the BCP, throw them in a blender and you get more or less my religion. (Which works in more than one rite or language.)
DNA studies tie genetic variations to autism. One step up from knowing it’s genetic. BTW to see how some people on the spectrum thrive check out TV’s ‘Bones’. She’s sexy and successful and if she doesn’t have AS I’ll eat my hat. (She doesn’t officially but the actress says she and the writers know about the spectrum and incorporate that into the character.)
On Facebook. Warning: language. Much of what he’s describing is not bad. I like the interaction but prefer home pages and blogs (also interactive thanks to comments) where you can show off HTML skills and artistic talent to cookie-cutter social-networking pages that don’t necessarily work (at home I get a blank page for FB most of the time). Newsgroups and message boards seem to be going the way of the dodo and the BBS.
The Specter diversion. Old Arlen, who has been obediently toting Establishment water since he devised the “single bullet theory” for the Warren Commission (one of the first great instances of “magical realism” in modern fiction).
Why people like ‘Idol’ At heart a conservative show based upon merit and self-respect not self-esteem? Good points from John E. at The Old Hundredth but I don’t like it. With Sir George Martin I agree it’s cruel to pull people apart publicly and especially how they do it. They let a few ringers through to make fun of them on the air and of course they think they’re good until they’re crushed on camera; by the time you see them they’ve passed two auditions setting them up by telling them they are.
And does the world really need more melismatic Whitney wannabes?
Look homeward, America. Caleb Stegall on Bill Kauffman. American Little Englandism. I like it! To paraphrase Gore Vidal, one of Kauffman’s unlikely heroes, the real split lies between those who love the old American republic and those progressive dreamers who would sell their patrimony for a bowl-full of the centralized, mechanized American Empire. We’re a collection of throwbacks and throwaways, retreads and retrofits, hillbillies and hell-raisers, poet politicians and insubordinate patriots.
On the Free State Project A left-wing smear from CounterPunch (‘ultra-libertarians’, oh, my, and ‘can’t go to sleep; libertarians will eat me’) but given history I’m wary of such projects as any libertarian ought to be (they smack of English Calvinism including the kinds gone bad, from Plymouth Rock to Utah to SWPL) and Pam Martens asks a valid question: is it just a front for big business? (But remember, mercantilism is not real capitalism.) That said I tend to agree with the NHers allegedly referred to here:
So long as you are good neighbors and really support the political ideals that you talk about, then they are supportive.
Interestingly, most Protestants who move around within Protestantism don’t do so for doctrinal reasons, but because they either got married, moved, or had some other practical reason for jumping sides.
Actually, movement around Protestant denominations is not new. It just used to be based on the economic status of the individual and you chose your denomination on the basis of where you fit in, theology having very little to do with it.
Doubtless true since the 1700s.
The Sicilian Woman in the comments thread speaks for Bad Catholics and how they’re different from Modernists (who are really name-the-ethnic-group liberal Protestants) and is also a good libertarian here:
A turbulent time was about to hit a little over 10 years ago, so I went back to attending Mass, even though I disagreed, and still do, with many of the RC Church’s major tenets, because I remembered the routine — stand, sit, kneel, repeat. I needed, wanted, some formal way of recognizing God, and, even though the RC Church didn’t provide me religious tenets that I could believe, it did provide me with a time and place each week where I could take part in some formal observance.
That being said, I have no desire to change the RC Church. It is what it is, it believes what it believes, and it has a right to do so. Religious affiliation is optional. If someone doesn’t like a particular religion, one is free to find one that suits her/him (or start their own — it’s been done before with success).
When we sin we know we can’t bend the church to make it say it’s not really a sin. Objective truth.
Liberalism, conservatism and libertarianism. There are several factions of each. Ironically Union Liberalism finds itself in alliance with one of the schools of conservatism, Mercantilism. Mercantile Conservatives are the leading faction, and have been since the Republicans were called Whigs, and since the Whigs were called Federalists. Welfare Liberals are very much the core of American Progressive Liberalism. While there isn’t great concern for civil liberties here, economic liberties are completely dead within this tradition. Then there are the neoconservatives. These are the worst that conservatism has to offer.
Liberals versus the Nolan Chart. Liberals and libertarians appear to be talking about different things when the subject of civil liberty is mentioned. The biggest area of difference is freedom of association. Both the conservative and the liberal in that example are ascribing to libertarians a sort of legal positivism, an ideology that is as far removed from libertarianism as it is possible to be. The legal positivist believes something good because the law says so. From a legal positivist point of view, the libertarian call to legalize drugs is the same as the libertine call to do drugs, and the libertarian call to end group rights is the same as the bigot’s call to discriminate against those groups. It’s a straw man.
Conservatives versus the Nolan Chart. Mercantilism is not capitalism, and advocates for mercantilism are not the same as advocates for the free market.
Two kinds of liberalism. One supports unionization in order to achieve economic fairness for workers, one supports economic fairness for workers in order to achieve unionization.
Also from T1:9: mainline decline again. Specifically the Episcopalians. (Joseph Bottum has written the definitive piece on them and all the rest.) A few thoughts, fair game with no ad hominem or conservative Anglican cant. What if the ‘roots’ are neither Catholic nor ‘biblical’ (by which Protestants mean Luther, Calvin or some such) but political compromise (the English sovereign: ‘Believe or not; I don’t care as long as you don’t follow the Pope, deny the Real Presence and just use my Prayer Book’) so orthodox belief flew out the window in the ‘Enlightenment’ and is now on the way out even in name? Might the political correctness and do-gooderism be the old ruling class’s noblesse oblige (and trying to keep the proles good and obedient — to them) with a costume change (‘we’re not the Tories/GOP at prayer any more: see how cool we are’, a fake informality which is actually showing off claimed status and power) and slightly subtler means (than fines, jail and being hanged, drawn and quartered)?
Harman was the fruit of a high-level Israeli covert action. The torture story is proceeding full speed because it is mostly about Republicans but the Jane Harman story is already going away, largely because the mainstream media and the liberal blogs are refusing to run with it.
From T1:9: What unites the church is a common faith in Christ and a common share in the Spirit. Apart from this essential, Christians may have nothing at all in common. We differ from one another in temperament, personality, education, colour, culture, citizenship, language and in a host of other ways. Thank God we do. The church is a wonderfully inclusive fellowship, in which ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female’ (Gal. 3:28). In other words, in Christ we have equality. — John R.W. Stott
Speaking of good Protestants, Tripp explains the decline in churchgoing without the Chicken Little panic that sometimes afflicts conservatives. There is a statistically demonstrable and steady decline in church attendance. That’s not news and it accompanies a recent and seemingly rapid church building boom. Some say that what the church in America is encountering is the simple course correction after the WWII bubble. Rather like I understand the history of Ireland: in 1800 it wasn’t religious; then after RC emancipation there was a massive Catholic revival producing the pious Irish many remember; now it’s swung back to indifference. Of course religious liberty is not the same as indifferentism in principle like secular (neutral and fair on religion: freedom for all) and secularist (anti-religious) aren’t the same. I dare say the peaceable kingdom in which Tripp’s faith and mine (and those of no faith for that matter) could live would be neither of the religious right nor the Christian left but... libertarian.
Something for Antipascha (St Thomas Sunday): My 2,000th posting on OC.net. Douglas’ defensive ilk are a ha’penny a dozen in online Orthodoxy, where I’m only an occasional visitor. Fr Anastasios is an old friend.
Ethnics vs Baptodox with a chip on their shoulder? Take this as you will: from an e-mail. A well-informed Greek layman tells me that American converts to the Orthodox Church are regarded as “a bunch of Protestants” over at the Phanar.
RIP Mgr Stephen Dutko. Вечная память (eternal memory). More on this history. The YouTube above is of Orthodox Easter a week ago; he’s in the chasuble with the big cross (yes, very Tridentine) singing a solo part. Interestingly Russians have their families’ graves blessed today.
Ruthenian-American life: making pierogi at Monsignor’s parish. Of course this could be anywhere in upstate Pennsylvania. (Binghamton, NY is just across the border.)
Not your father’s National Review Which was a big nothing to begin with really as Murray Rothbard explains: America Firsters, libertarians like Frank Chodorov and other worthies were forced out by CIA agent Bill Buckley (who although he had genuine good qualities seemed as if the agency created a character to appeal to YFs... neoconnery with a Catholic gentlemanly veneer) who pushed sovietisation ‘for the duration’... in the name of anti-Communism.
Richard Brookhiser has bemoaned conservative criticism of Yalta.
Rights, schmights From the man whose election was supposed to be a milestone for civil rights
The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule a 23-year-old decision that stopped police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer is present. another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights.
Since taking office, Obama has drawn criticism for backing the continued imprisonment of enemy combatants in Afghanistan without trial, invoking the “state secrets” privilege to avoid releasing information in lawsuits and limiting the rights of prisoners to test genetic evidence used to convict them.
I can only conclude the human-rights mask is off and, as in the old Communist bloc, the left really believe in these things.
A 500th anniversary this week Of an instrument of great evil who changed history. Before I started reading Christopher Haigh (thanks, Dr Tighe) I used to give him the benefit of the doubt but although he personally wasn’t a heretic the rot set in during his reign depending on what he wanted politically. No wonder English Protestantism fell so hard in the 1700s; we’re feeling the aftershocks.
Same with free speech. Legislation which singles out hate crimes with special penalties, rather than treating all violent crime equally, amounts to unconstitutional punishment of bad speech or bad thoughts.
On politics and RC factions or churchmanships as we with Anglican backgrounds pick up on. I understand Mr Stacy McCain’s pride in his Scots heritage but their ‘independent faith’ is self-made and self-refuting, only one jump removed from the liberal Protestantism he probably doesn’t like; he’s living off the moral capital of Catholicism like most Protestants used to.
On single mothers by choice. A rude rant (warning: language) with a lot of truth. Of course the left can twist this into an argument for abortion but still true.
Today the U.S. Census tells us there are over 10 million single moms in America raising 2 children each without a dad (stop saying “single parent” by the way; barely 3% of single parents are dads who never married).
Only 38% of single mothers have been abandoned. That leaves over a million women a year having babies with no man, just because they want one.
Not only did they make themselves victims, but they brought another, more serious victim into the mix — their children.
Feeling sorry for blacks makes you feel like a Freedom Rider, but what if said blacks made themselves that way? Are paraplegics who got that way from driving drunk victims?
I wanted a motorbike really badly when I was 13 but I didn’t get one until I could afford my own at the ripe old age of 22. If you didn’t get around to meeting someone you can be with for, I don’t know, at least 18 years, I have some bad news for you. You can’t have a baby. Sorry. It’s not you. It’s the kid. It wouldn’t be fair.
Religion as self-worship. Or Andrew Sullivan tries to tell the Pope what to do as apparently the upper classes in Protestant countries have the charism of infallibility. A phenomenon not peculiar to the putative left: Hey, if George W. Bush can claim that “we don’t torture,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and still find an audience of true believers...
The racism of the left, on the New Haven firefighters’ case being heard by Scotus. We justify the rhetorical contortions that excuse black people from challenging examinations. Which falls more into the spirit of black uplift that you could explain ... in less than three minutes: teaching black candidates how to show what they are made of despite obstacles, or banning a test of mental agility as inappropriate to impose on black candidates?
Pope: the church interprets the Bible. Two points to remember: the community of believers, even the Pope, can’t renege on past definitions of doctrine and that community is not the same as the upper middle class in Protestant countries and their mores.
A traditionalist conservative criticises what he thinks is classical liberalism. A variation on ‘in principle it’s selfish’. But what’s been done by the putative right and left isn’t really capitalism and they don’t give a toss about liberty; they only pretend they do.
Mystery moggie After working 15 hours yesterday (until 1am), as I was leaving home this morning for 10 more hours I heard meowing on the other side of the wall and thought it was my little neighbour Fudge. When I opened the door I found this fellow, who enjoyed visiting my place, running under furniture and marking things (cat people know what that means). Didn’t recognise him at first but the mark on his nose told me he’s the roaming cat (but obviously a pet) who’s been hanging about for a few years; last saw him lying on my car in the winter keeping warm. I wonder if he won or lost that recent fight to be king or queen of the bins.
Normal blogging will resume once I catch up on sleep.
... is the difference between planting a tree in your backyard and e-mailing a machine-written plea for a global-warming treaty to your UN representative.
If you want war, work for justice. Those whose bumper stickers read “If you want peace, work for justice” simply take it for granted that there is no question what is just; if you want to find out, just ask them.
‘Capitalism is dead.’ Some people thought this in the 1930s and moved to the USSR. How’d that work out?
A left-libertarian on Christians in a secular society. Not secularist. Good points but worth contrasting to the political beliefs of Popes before the 1960s end of the world. I think the rumours of religion’s imminent death in America are greatly exaggerated.
Tea-party demonstrators and Vietnam demonstrators. When you think about you realise the hippies did little if any good (you had a surplus of kids, and affluent ones at that, looking for a good time and expecting the free ride they’d always known... what good did trashing uni libraries do?); all the dog work for good or ill in society (from civil-rights work to getting mired in Vietnam) was done by the ’60s I like, the early part or the logical continuation of the ’50s, men with buzzcuts and jobs.
It just ain’t none of my business. what you do with your body and your property as long as the no-harm principle is followed. The government pretends it’s its business... to make money.
World cop and American daddy. Again why doesn’t the Maersk Line hire a little private navy, seagoing security guards?
Land of the ’fraid, home of the barricaded. The United States spends two times more on its military than all the other countries of the world, combined. Yes, that’s right. All 200 or so of them. Combined.
Logan Circle at 5am Walking from Russian Easter to the train station where I watched Septa transit cops, some driving around indoors in a cart, honk at or pound the benches waking up the tramps sleeping on them
The synthesis of all the heresies Michael Liccione quotes an American RC priest (I’m guessing an older one) who thinks this is a good thing:
Faith (as modern Americans construe it) is not some objective reality into which they feel they should fit; rather, faith is the way people choose to assemble their ideals, in accord with the force or thrust of those ideals.
That, my friends, presents the basic spiritual problem from which all of America’s ecclesial and social ills flow.
Of course because it’s a culturally Protestant country: the happy hunting-ground of sectarianism as Mgr Ronald Knox called it.
SCOTUS said in 1992, and was believed almost without question when it repeated in 2003:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.”
That’s exactly the right our first parents claimed for themselves.
It works politically as long as the golden rule, the harm principle, is enforced but objectively of course it’s wrong. To anticipate the reaction a good friend of the blog, I agree that the neocaths sometimes fall into the same traps as their liberal opponents (just like fundamentalism is itself thoroughly modern unlike the traditionalism we both believe in) but this is still good and I give credit where it’s due.
Comment:
The really scary thing that I’ve begun to notice (being a recent Boston College grad and knowledgeable of all the goings-on there) is that cafeteria Catholicism is not purely a subjective choice which presupposes some form of inclusiveness. Rather, many of the faithful select their own dogma and then try to impose it on the Church as if the fate of the civilized world depended on it — it’s tyrannical, which is ironic since that’s the dissenter’s word of choice for the Vatican.
Liccione adds:
It’s subjectivity masquerading as objectivity. Everybody has a pope in their belly. In other words, the imperial self.
Russian Easter Top row: The St Anne banner and the tomb with the burial shroud. Second row: Mother Anna the resident nun reads from the Acts of the Apostles. After the midnight street procession round the block: in the foreground are the tsar’s old flag and an old Russian tricolour, again the national flag. World War II refugee Russians started the church in 1951. Third row: During the hours (offices) before Liturgy: Fr A in the altar and Fr Valery the deacon putting the thurible in motion. Fourth row: Fr A at the Great Entrance. As you can see the liturgical colour has changed. Blessing the baskets afterwards. Fifth row: Shrinking plastic wrap for eggs. Somebody gave me this one. Seems too pretty to use and has anybody else got a problem with using icons for something that will be thrown away? BTW that’s Our Lady of Kazan. Bottom: One of many ways great and small that real life is better than online: in this immigrant parish there’s no petty anti-Western rubbish as they have nothing to prove. Fr A in one of his Latin cassocks. White is traditional on a festal day in this tradition. The sanctuary aglow.
Spring bicycle ride: Upper Darby and Philadelphia Top: The Tower Theatre. Second row: I don’t know if they’ve got the retro stuff for su car boss but Manny, Moe and Jack would like to help. They’re effigies of the original 1940s owners of the chain; one of them had a cigar until PCness decreed he couldn’t any more. Third row: Concrete Gothic in West Philadelphia complete with gargoyles. Fourth row: Ah, Romanesque (known in England as Norman): the bus terminal that ought to be an abbey. As far as I can tell the acoustics would be good for chant. A detail in West Philadelphia. Fifth row: Interfaith. What part of West Philadelphia used to be. At right, this piece of Moorish-detailed splendour (AFAIK a Sunni house of worship) reminds me of Brendan Ross telling me the design of the mosque is stolen from Eastern church architecture. Bottom: A bit of 1920s Georgian revival in UD: ex-St Giles Church. I think the Episcopalians left in the 1990s.
From Jim Wallis Why we don’t really have common cause with the left on peace issues
Might will never make right in Afghanistan. True until he starts pushing for the US government (the same good folk who persecuted his ancestors) to send a corps of SWPL there and essentially try and turn the place into Sweden, which would be about as productive as the British and Russian military adventures there.
Orthodox Holy Saturday. From the Canon at Matins: In hades as well as in the tomb and in Eden the unique divinity of Christ was inseparable from the Father and the Holy Spirit. This was done for our salvation and we praise him: blessed art thou, O Lord, for thou savest us.
Chronicles has a go at the mainline. What follows is very familiar to regular readers but for the benefit of new people here it is: of course the mainline churches collapsed because there was no principle of authority really. Catholics East and West believe in an infallible church; Protestants left and right in a fallible thus fungible one. Mainliners coasted for a few centuries on the moral capital from Catholicism, inertia and mere social convention, although Modernism really got started in the ‘Enlightenment’. The Anglicans and Congregationalists seem to have been hit especially hard by that, with many Congregationalists turning into Unitarians (non-Christians) and lots of Anglicans (like Washington and Jefferson) becoming private nonbelievers but still giving lip service to orthodoxy following the old Prayer Book. Now it seems the other mainliners have caught up with them.
Why were English Protestants hit especially hard by the ‘Enlightenment’? Methodism and Anglo-Catholicism both were trying to remedy this. The English Calvinists caved. I understand the Congregationalists self-destructing but the Anglicans, although at the top their church was compromised by its dependence upon the state and the religious indifference (latitudinarianism) that resulted (essentially the forerunner of everything MCJ complains about), were at heart still mediæval village Catholics who wanted the Prayer Book services done right like their ancestors had the Mass (Anglo-Catholicism didn’t come from nowhere), and the creeds and Articles at least gave credal orthodoxy. Protestantism is self-refuting but the Scots including American Presbyterians seem to have held together slightly better than the English. P.S. Thank God that politically the English ‘Enlightenment’ wasn’t like the French! It produced the Constitution that Ron Paul defends: a framework of freedom for the faith to flourish in (all right, I’m done) and not anti-religious. Hooray for Edmund Burke.
‘Mo’ money’, less wealth. How Mr Obama’s government is living down to a bad stereotype (‘How to Make MO’ Money, Without Using YO’ Money’) not a good one (‘Hey, mon, what you mean you have only one job?’).
Outrageous!Obama gives amnesty to CIA torturers. New crusading liberal boss same as the old. Don’t blame me; I voted for no-one. So the Nuremberg defence works for Americans. ‘But we don’t torture any more (cough, out in the open)!’ doesn’t cut it. To the left: your president is a criminal and your T-shirt is not cool. The man chose to be a Chicago politician; all that matters to him really is power for its own sake.
A left-libertarian’s masterly criticism of the fake libertarianism of some religious conservatives. People who, in the unlikely event they took over, would use the state on you, then whinge when that same power is used on them. The Misesian argument that in true capitalism you don’t need civil-rights acts and anti-discrimination laws because a prejudiced businessman only hurts himself. Of course the orthodox are not ipso facto bigots.
Spring 2009 Top: a detail from Port Richmond. Second row: weather with mood swings, from flowers to the other night. Crikey, it was cold! An ethnic Russian from Alberta made that woollen knitted jacket: it works. Thanks, Nadia. Third row: from flora to fauna. A friendly shop cat (his owner says many people take his picture) and Taz the Italian greyhound. Fourth row: sawing off and chipping tree branches yesterday morning next to Runnemede and a friendly cop near work, actually a tribute statue titled ‘Oh, It’s You — Welcome!’. Fifth row: ‘Got it? Good!’ A shop owner whose approach to customers is direct. He sells old records to collectors. ‘Let us who mystically represent the cherubim...’ Bottom row: the old cinema is long closed. The art-house next to it.
Some jottings about the news
Ruthenian-American life: making pierogi at Monsignor’s parish. Of course this could be anywhere in upstate Pennsylvania. (Binghamton, NY is just across the border.)
Spring bicycle ride: Upper Darby and Philadelphia
