From ReasonTV

• Coming apart.
• Destroying Latin America.

Should peace prevail? Of course!
From LRC

A note on modernity
From Modestinus

Mass: Jubilate Deo, omnis terra, alleluia

DEARLY beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

Burke, yes. Minarchy, yes. Anarchism? I listen but no.

Mount Ephraim and Voorhees, NJ






’49 Merc, which James Dean fans love. The Rebel Without a Cause car’s in a museum.




A period cliché my dad thought ugly at the time, but a nice car nonetheless.

Donna gives Ginger a pat. There were lots of pug/shih tzu mix types and a couple of German shepherd puppies, one a long-haired Old German Shepherd, the base for developing the more famous, rather modern breed (late 1800s?).



WWII display.


The diner’s a ‘time portal’ like the car shows and the Skipper playing lost 45s late Saturday night on WVLT 92.1, and the food’s not bad. Real diner food, not modern fine dinering.


A dead mall, once Echelon. Renamed Voorhees Town Center, most of one end of it is now city hall (I wonder if the police station and jail are in there) or being turned into offices. Basically a Macy’s, a Boscov’s (local family chain based in Reading, Pa.), a loud kiddie arcade (loud machines; not a lot of people), an OK food court and little else. The evangelical card-and-gift shop and Victoria’s Secret are next to each other. Why not?


Thanks, black America: from the joy and love in jazz, Motown and the Philadelphia sound to keeping the dress-hat industry alive.


Nicer weather: after Mass today.

Cold War tech glitches that almost nuked the world
WarGames more or less really happened only it wasn’t a kid hacker. From Cracked.

From Takimag

• Gavin McInnes on abortion. Neither a religious so-con nor buying the left’s bullshit. Smart libertarian middle ground.
• Manufacturing human rights or again the left as a Christian heresy. A libertarian might say there is a universal human right, the golden rule or not to be harmed, the non-aggression (not pacifism but not starting the fight) or no-harm principle.

Specially sourced ice cubes and handmade cigarette boxes: How ‘Mad Men’ crew spend $15,000 an episode creating ’60s look
From John Boyden

Of course the actors don’t really drink on the set. Like Dean Martin only pretended to on stage. Actors say never do a drunk scene actually drunk. Do it when you’re tired.

Me on the show here, here, here and here.

Western Rite Orthodoxy and Uniatism, or can a church really have more than one rite?
One has its own bishops.

Interesting. Regular readers know my line. There is only one real difference between the two churches, an inch wide and infinitely deep. Probably impossible to reconcile. (So much for the idea of uniates as bridge churches? Lowercase; Uniate = Greek Catholic.) But whether it is, by someone smarter than me, or, as I think, one side gives in and joins the other, then what?

Anonymous’s description of Greek Catholicism is like my idea of ‘Cathodoxy’, Orthodoxy brought on board with Rome, what Greek Catholicism should have been but isn’t; Greek Catholics are very Novus Ordo-fied though better than standard Novus. That and the varyingly byzantinized WROs make me wonder: on paper of course the church can have many rites but it’s awfully hard to pull off. The majority rite ends up squashing the others, intentionally or not.

Chris Jones is right that the uniates on either side make sense given each one-true-church claim but I think of Catholic priest Ernest Skublics writing that they’re the ultimate nasty statement about the other side. (Russian propaganda about the Ukrainian Catholics, complaining because they resurfaced and took back the parishes the Russians under the Communists stole from them, makes that clear.)

The two one-true-church claims are a little different. Rome’s is more nailed down so it gives the Orthodox a lot of leeway. Namely, it doctrinally acknowledges their orders* and thus their churchness (Protestants aren’t churches) while falling short of being the church. Born Orthodox get the benefit of the doubt so venerating Orthodox saints is not a problem. (The tiny Western-convert-driven Russian Catholic Church, which liturgically commemorates Orthodox saints, has a line: ‘We have bishops – the Russian Orthodox and OCA – but right now they’re not Catholic.’) Although it’s benevolent to the other side, of course it doesn’t teach that the church is divided. It can’t. The Orthodox dogmatize that they are the church and have sacraments, full stop. Everything else, from mirroring Rome’s recognition (eternal memory, Archbishop Vsevolod of Chicago; met him; fine person) to ‘Graceless hereticsssss!’, is in their range of allowable opinion.

Sure, looking a little like the ‘wrong’ side makes the rank and file uncomfortable. Lots of cradle Catholics have never heard of the Greek Catholics are are freaked out when they learn of them.

Both uniatisms come generally in two versions, one closely following the ‘real’ thing on the other side, what Rome tells the Greek Catholics to do and what Antiochian WRO’s like, and the other changed or unique to its side, what most Greek Catholics do and what ROCOR WRO is like. I get it; understandable because of the one-true-church claim, but if you’re going to byzantinize it so much, why bother?

Besides having the full Greek, Russian etc. liturgy, ‘Cathodoxy’ should have what I think are the best and almost unique things in Orthodoxy: grassroots traditionalism (populism, church from the ground up) and Leonid Ouspensky’s view of icons, halfway between a picture and a sacramental presence, which may not be ancient but I like it. Possible under Rome? I’ll leave that to the experts. Like the reigning Pope.

The Catholic legitimate liturgical movement, the one before Vatican II (yuck), not ‘aggiornamento’ or ‘liturgical renewal’, was really interested in the Eastern rites. Probably found something in their grassroots traditionalism too.

Greek Catholicism had a couple of big chances. The Ukrainian Catholic Church in the beginning, at the end of the 1500s, was much bigger than now: the metropolitan of Kiev and much of the Ukraine and Byelorussia; it had a chance of bringing Russia (which didn’t break with Rome until years after 1054) back in. The Ukraine declined and Russia absorbed it so that was that. Ukrainian Catholic = ex-Polish Galicia. The Melkites started when a patriarch of Antioch converted in the early 1700s; that just caused a schism and the Orthodox faction got another patriarch from the Greeks, the Antiochians now.

Notes from the underground: 20th-century Ukrainian Catholic history is heroic, how a traditional Catholic church survived 40 years of modern persecution. Take notes, whether the next one comes from the SWPLs grown up or the Mohammedans (both Christian heresies?).

Христосъ воскресе!

From Ad Orientem.

*Criteria for validity are easy: credal orthodoxy so basic the Nestorians pass, unbroken claim of succession of bishops and historically consistent orthodox doctrine about the Eucharist. (Why the Anglicans don’t have it: Cranmer and the Articles on the Eucharist.) The closest to a branch theory the faith comes but not an actual branch theory.

Trying to lead a whore to culture
Taki at his mag

Hungary decommunizes
In your face, EU. From Andrew Cusack.

Tiger Woods recently wanted to be a Navy SEAL
Steve Sailer at Takimag

Shoot, scoot and keep your mouth shut
I don’t hate the police. Quite the opposite. But they’ll tell you they can’t prevent harm to you, only try to catch the perp when it’s too late.

In Zimmerman’s case, Martin was an athletic six-foot-two-inch tall football player that had him on his back pounding on him. Martin got what he deserved.

From LRC.

Primarily predictable in Pa.

Results for Pennsylvania Republican Primary (U.S. Presidential Primary)
Apr 24, 2012 (99% of precincts reporting)
Mitt Romney: 463,960 = 58%. Our default next president. Not with my vote.
Ron Paul: 105,340 = 13.2%
Newt Gingrich: 83,781 = 10.5%
Other: 146,723 = 18.3%

Five futuristic technologies invented in the wrong century
From Cracked

Japan did not want war with the US
FDR did. From LRC.

From RR

• Freedom is agreeable. LP candidate R. Lee Wrights.
• The real Summit of the Americas scandal.
• Ten rules of the “war on terrorism.”
• An America of inequalities. Our Third Worldification, the death of the postwar American dream. We’re peons and there are a few very rich and well-connected.
• European austerity: What’s actually happening?
• Problems of empire. The wars aren’t worth it.
• Unplugging Americans from the Matrix. Ways Red China is better. Scary. But in a way it reminds me of a friend’s trips to Minsk. No pretence of democracy; like real old European monarchies, as long as you stay out of politics you might be freer and happier than here.
• The normalization of dystopia.
• The real injustice of the Trayvon Martin case. We seem to have stopped talking about the case itself and unconsciously substituted for it our usual litany of social anxieties.
• Obamacare and unlimited government.
• A journo discovers the Christian left. Not news of course, from well-meant Catholic social opinion (sanctified welfare state that’s for peace and tries to promote family values) to the left as a Christian heresy. Of course besides being economically self-refuting, the Christian left has no traction because as cultural churchianity goes away (Catholic self-destruction at Vatican II; mainline decay), the kids cut out the churchy middleman and are just PC.
• Zimmerman’s apology. Of course he feels bad about taking a life but it probably wasn’t murder.
• Independent and principled? Behind the Cato myth.
• Do unto others … A lesson for foreign policy.
• Tax-increase theater.
• Prostitution and empire.
• Ann Coulter is essentially right. Those who fear anti-black racism should favor that blacks arm themselves.
• No justice in Florida teen’s slaying.
• Planet IRS. The US taxes citizens abroad unlike other countries so people who love their country end up giving up citizenship.
• Medical marijuana: What is Obama thinking?
• What are we to do with our ignorant governors?
• Let’s occupy the irony.
• For the first time since the Great Depression, more Mexicans are leaving than entering.
• Ron Paul: Romney could stumble.
• Who needs the white working class? Guilting them works only once and they’ll blame Obama for the depression. Romney’s the next president.
• The Violence Against Women Act and the war on men.
• The man the banks fear most.
• Is America a free country?

Primarily
In my precinct, the second voter and first Republican to show up at the polls cast his ballot for you-know-who. In Pennsylvania and the other elections today, don’t forget to vote for his delegates too. The primary’s just a beauty contest as my man says.

Spring weekends: photos and videos
This weekend:


Before heading out.



The Silver Diner in Cherry Hill: nailing the look, but with fine-dinering modern food.



The Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood. Beautiful golden-era building, even though being in a Freemasons’ building was just a bit unnerving. Not pictured: the original phone booth with no phone in it anymore.


The openers: Lights Out. Young men keeping doo-wop alive.

92.1 WVLT, the best station in South Jersey (for stepping back in time), presented the show.


The Dovells, down to two original members, demonstrating their big hit 50 years ago. Things I learned that night: they weren’t from Bristol, Pa., but Overbrook High School (Wilt Chamberlain went there). They did the early-rock commercials for Robbins 8th & Walnut, which as of a year ago, thanks to the depression, isn’t at 8th & Walnut anymore. Jerry Robbins, the man with the diamond in his beard, was there; I saw him. Says his son’s store in Newark, Del. is keeping the family tradition.







Headliners Jay and the Americans, actually the Americans and a talented soundalike.

As you can imagine, most of the audience were original fans including Philly ‘Bandstand’ dancers.

Mass at Mater: Misericórdia Dómini plena est terra, allelúia: verbo Dómini coeli firmáti sunt, allelúia, allelúia. I think blog regular dcs helped take up the collection.




A cold heavy rain couldn’t scare my man Ron Paul nor me from Independence Mall. Nor a very young crowd. We have a future.



Lunch at Weber’s, one of the few remaining Stewart’s Root Beer drive-ins.
Two weeks ago:






New Hope, Pa.

Sal Savioni does it again: a French-designed little dress that looks great on Donna.

Consumer report: fun with shaving
Did a test contest this morning, using a different razor for each side of my face. The contenders: my 1960 Gillette and a 2012 Weishi. Guess which one won.

From LRC

• Universities as globalist training schools. Not like our real internationalism: trade with all; political entanglement with none.
• More on why they hate us.
• Ouch! The recruiter didn’t tell you about that. The military has its proper job; getting hurt in Afghanistan isn’t part of it.
• The war on cash. ATM-card convenience means the government tracks you down to the last penny.

Why punk-rockers make good conservatives and libertarians
Gavin McInnes at Takimag

‘Death by foreclosure’ killings

Going on, quietly, around the country ever since the housing swindle first unraveled.

The collapse might have set off Sergeant Bales. From Daniel Nichols.

Good post on the SSPX’s possible reunion with the official church
By Modestinus. In most places I imagine it doesn’t feel like the official church has turned a corner away from Vatican II but around here it does, certainly if you’re looking for it. Like an oil tanker turning, a train stopping, a glacier moving or name the simile, it’s been turning that corner among younger people for about 20 years, speeding up under Pope Benedict (here the Mercedarian friars started running Our Lady of Lourdes, on paper he freed up the old Mass and, best of all, he spread the reform to the whole church by fixing the Novus Ordo in English). I think his strategy is to let Vatican II fade away. I’ll be optimistic here and say it’ll take decades, not centuries. It didn’t take long for V2 to do its harm; it won’t take too long to undo it. That ‘pre-conciliar’ is a living tradition – people from then are still around to make sure the young’uns bringing it back get it right – helps.

70 years ago yesterday: 30 seconds over Tokyo
I’m a WWII revisionist – it was unnecessary for Americans – but this was a great military feat (technically a failure because all the planes were lost). A tribute to the Greatest Generation.

From RR

• Trolling for kids. I’m not anti-military but this is largely true, except: In the militarist society in which we live... It’s time we all recognized that the US has been transformed these past few years into a modern-day Sparta. Eyeroll. Lefty hyperventilation. True when there was the draft. There are signs of it, such as the TSA and militarized police (the next to the last time I was pulled over, the officer looked like he was dressed for a SWAT operation; then again the suburb was slightly ghetto). Civil society is being starved by an annual $1 trillion spent on war. Familiar lefty argument: health care not bombs. They trust the same state that bombs Afghanistan with your life. That really means they want to lord it over you and are jealous that someone else can. (The Vietnam War protesters weren’t for peace; they were cheering for the wrong side.) Crony capitalism = fascism = the military-industrial complex; real capitalism = trade with other countries (real internationalism; why do they call us isolationists?) = peace with the military doing its proper job of protection.
• Mix-matching class and race, or the unfairness of egalitarianism (forcing equal outcomes like affirmative action) and denying the right of freedom of association. (One of Sailer’s points besides racial differences on average is that white liberals sneakily self-segregate too: why they’re so competitive about their kids’ schooling, why Portland, Oregon, is theirs and why Burning Man’s price is so high and it’s hard to get to.)
• Did the founders expect the courts to declare laws unconstitutional?
• ‘Weary’ Australia speeds up withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• ‘Catholic’ versus ‘Protestant’ ethics. Pretty good description. Obviously I don’t agree with his conclusion. The big-tent church of everymen and Bad Catholics, not perfectionism like some trad places; the real pre-conciliar church.

RIP Dick Clark
A familiar face and voice from the golden era, a great popularizer of rock’n’roll, ‘The World’s Oldest Teenager’ for whom (thanks to being rich enough for plastic surgery?) time really did seem to stand still, somewhere in the ’70s (so I sort of associate him with modern cheese), until that stroke about 10 years ago finally slowed him down. It was clear from his New Year’s cameos he was no longer well.

It all started at 46th & Market here, but not by him: ‘Bandstand’ on WFIL, which Philly kids would ride the subway, El or bus to and dance for TV until Clark moved the show to LA in ’64. You can’t miss it from Market Street or the El: still has a big broadcasting dish:


By the way there were no live performances on the show: everybody mimed their records.

Wasn’t Jerry ‘the Geator’ Blavat’s show a rival?

The talking heads have been saying Ryan Seacrest has Clark’s mantle. I don’t follow ‘Idol’ and have a problem with the funny auditions being unfair, if they still do that (being set up for very public ridicule: after one or two pre-broadcast auditions wrongly telling you you’re good enough, being ripped apart by the judges at the televised one*), but I like the different concept and wonder why they didn’t come up with it sooner: a game show where in theory anybody can become a star, seriously. (‘America’s Got Talent’ is a nicer ‘Gong Show’.) Real stage performances, some very good. Different from the music biz ‘Bandstand’ was part of in the golden era but by how much? Not very much from manufacturing stars like one of our local boys, Fabian (I’ve seen him: good-looking but can’t sing).

In my range of pop-music listening (mostly 1930s-1960s, the swinging smoothness between cornball and the world going to hell) my musical sweet spot is about where the big bands segue through r&b into early rock (there were direct connections: a Benny Goodman sideman was in Bill Haley’s Comets; Elvis first appeared on TV on the Dorsey brothers’ show). I like the original big-band ‘Bandstand’ (the name’s part of that continuity) theme:


By the way Donna and I are looking forward to seeing Jay & the Americans and the Dovells (we saw them once before) this weekend.

*If it’s fair, a cold audition, Simon Cowell-style honesty’s right.

A reminder: libertarianism ≠ the modern conservative movement
Why I’ll stay home again rather than vote for a McCain or Romney. Republicans always do an impression of us when they’re out of power. From the Mises Institute.

Cracked goes to the movies

• Stupid gun myths.
• Outdated things they still have. Like the Catholic Church still looking and sounding like the Catholic Church. Because its production values were better; it was more photogenic. Now of course the Pope’s slowly bringing it back.

From Takimag

• Same election, different year. Yawn. You know what I think: blame for the depression and used-up white guilt will sink the president; the presidential-looking white guy will win. I don’t care; I’m not voting for him. (Reason not to spite-vote for someone just to piss off the libs: ‘Anybody but Gore’ Bush invaded Iraq and now we’re paying four bucks a gallon for gas.)
• Bibi’s dilemma, and Barack’s. Pat Buchanan has a point: the man wants to be re-elected more than anything including the good of the world.
• Early-childhood re-education. The weenies’ war on nature.

Job applicants’ limbo
From Ad Orientem

Population control
What the government, and the SWPLs who love it, really think of you. From MCJ.

Tax Day

Are there any pre-modern models of social order that you would support using as a model or an ideal toward which to direct society today?
Owen at Modestinus, from here:

And if so, how, or, rather, what would the outline of the transition look like? And if not, what new or hybrid model/ideal of social order would you support?

With regard to the question of whether or not traditionalists (of varied sort) are moderns I think we have to ask, do they actually propose something that would, if effected, constitute a real break from modernity? But the question that goes hand in hand with that is the question – how do they propose we get from here to there? If there is no viable way to get out of modernity, or no plausible thesis presented, then isn’t it correct to refer to even those who rage against modernity as still nonetheless moderns?

From RR

• It’s possible to have borders that are both open and secure.
• What if the government never took the Constitution seriously?
• The two capitalisms: free market and corporatism.
• Latin America: end the drug war.
• Where’s the justice for George Zimmerman? Sorry, George; it doesn’t fit the narrative.

From LRC

• WWII: Churchill, Roosevelt and the Faustian bargain. Regular readers know my position. I like the Greatest Generation very much. (Yesterday at Super Sunday in Media, Pa., in front of the old armory/Pa. Veterans’ Museum I’ve been to, I met a fellow who looks a bit like Gene Kelly and was a gunner’s mate 2nd class aboard the Missouri in carrier Task Force 38/58. Told me about two kamikaze crashes and burying literally half of one of the pilots at sea the next day. The surrender ceremony with MacArthur in Tokyo Bay? He was there.) That said, we should have stayed out of it. Let the two big tyrants in Europe knock each other out and make a deal with Japan just like with Red China now. What happened: At a press conference on June 24, 1941, two days after Hitler’s attack, the President stated that “the United States would give all possible aid to Soviet Russia.” That’s the real story of the war not covered in John Wayne propaganda films. Communists like Henry Wallace in the government. We helped the Soviets, worse than the Nazis, win the war.
• More ‘the sexes are just an idea’ nonsense. Messing with the Swedish language, ironic, as more than one blog has pointed out, because besides safe cars, kit furniture, Europop, socialism and award-winning depressing art films, Sweden’s famous for sexy stars such as Ann-Margret (and a false idea from non-Swedes that the place is full of swingers).
• 19 stories you aren’t hearing about. Not true of the freak tornadoes. Of course much of the non-news is culture-war crap. As @TAC wrote: Since Obama has adopted the Republican Party’s militarism, continued the Bush-era attack on civil liberties, and instantiated the national version of Romney’s universal healthcare, where else can they draw contrasts? The culture war is all that’s left. Non-stories such as the candidates’ wives’ mommy wars. News: A few weeks ago, Barack Obama signed an executive order that would allow him to take control of all food, all energy, all health resources and all transportation resources. This was an update to an old executive order, but the Obama administration made a change that would allow Barack Obama to do this even in “non-emergency” situations. (Edit for wordiness: non-emergencies. It’s what I do for a living.) Sadly, the talking heads on television were strangely silent about this. A dictator. Hey, look, a distraction! All Trayvon, all the time. That ‘low-rent tragedy’ in Florida as I think Steve Sailer called it: media race-baiting, pushing the myth of modern white-on-black crime. (NBC busted for making things up.) The government divides and conquers the people.

From antiwar.com

• What the laws of war allow.
• Syria: let’s you and him fight.
• Reasons not to vote for Gary Johnson, whom this article says is the presumptive Libertarian candidate. He’s for invading Uganda and keeping our bases in Afghanistan.
• Obama has shown a hostility to whistleblowers that exceeds that shown by President Bush.

From LRC

• The big bank theory.
• Jackie Robinson anniversary. It is a wonderful opportunity to remember that it was the marketplace that initiated this collapse of racial barriers, not the state! While governments were still criminalizing inter-racial marriages, enforcing a variety of “whites only” ordinances, and forcing “back-of-the-bus” seating, owners of private businesses saw the profit-seeking advantages to their teams of employing talented black players.

Why do people leave the church?

Russian Easter
The world’s biggest Slavic Easter egg? In Canada. From Hilary.

Христосъ воскресе!

Sonar pictures of Titanic at bottom of Atlantic
From LRC


Tie-in marketing that probably backfired.

RIP.

Ordinariate: Croydon group starts
Almost half a congregation has followed a vicar into the church

Latest rumour: is the SSPX coming back to the official church?
Only Pope Benedict could pull that off. From NLM.

I’ll always credit Archbishop Lefebvre. More than the quasi-independent priests (who also get credit*) who started before him, such as Fr Gommar DePauw, he had the clout not only to keep it going but to get the official church to keep it going.

It’s Not About Latin™ and he wasn’t an extremist. He was fine with the 1965 instructions (I’m not crazy about them) and I understand the Society in Europe does the readings at the altar in the vernacular.

It’s about religious liberty and ecumenism, which rightly understood (not indifferentism) are fine.

If the Novus Ordo were high-churched enough, would I let go of the Tridentine? No. I don’t trust the NO. (A friend has pointed out to me examples of the heretical intent behind parts of it though it’s not heretical. Painful to listen to when you know the background. Bugnini, the Cranmer of the ’60s.) The Tridentine’s the gold standard, the analogue of the Byzantine Rite; Novus is a tolerated experiment in my book (even though it’s what most Roman Riters use; not a problem now in English thanks to this Pope).

*I know they were a contradiction. No bishop, no church.

The State Department is Israeli-occupied territory
From Joshua

Another sign of the decline and fall of newspapers
Great Caesar’s ghost! Somebody bought the Inquirer high-rise and plans to turn it into a casino.

I’m happy videoing, writing and proofreading on the Web for whoever will pay me.