Adiós and good riddance, liberal newspapers

• LRC picks:
  • Gary North: Adiós and good riddance, liberal newspapers. The Internet is empowering.
  • Paul Craig Roberts: Washington thinks you’re stupid.
  • How the U.S. empire took over from the British. The powers that be of course were smart: the plan dates back to the late 1800s, the height of British power. They knew Britain was limited; the U.S., essentially a continent, not so. The world didn’t see it until the war (Ike, D-Day, etc.).
• From RR:
  • IRS manual detailed DEA’s use of hidden intel evidence.
  • Government-enforced unreality watch: the military isn’t really conservative. The Pentagon is poised to extend health care, housing and other benefits to the same-sex spouses of military members by the end of August.
  • The New York City Police Department has agreed to purge a database of names and addresses of people stopped by police under the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk program but later cleared of criminal wrongdoing. I get it but will go off the libertarian reservation and side with law and order: seems like good police work (abusus non tollit usum), like profiling (the conservative sin of noticing patterns). I understand that stop-and-frisk works: New York streets are much safer. I like visiting New York but haven’t for a long while.
  • I’m pro-military but this isn’t a peace president. But he gets away with it because the Cathedral is now in charge — it does what it wants — and of course they can call all his critics racists. President Obama ... vowed that he would fight to end across-the-board budget cuts that have shaken the military. The well-meaning anything-but-Bush culture-war voters didn’t mean to vote for this. But my impression, backed by an informal video survey, is most of his white liberal support didn’t research their candidate; they just wanted to look cool.
  • Why should anyone give a damn if an athlete chooses to use performance-enhancing substances? I don’t. But as businesses, sports have the right to make rules, which really are based on what their customers want. Customers want the myth of clean sports. So it’s fair.
  • The U.S. capital oughtn’t be Tel Aviv. Rand Paul has three times attempted to restrict aid to Egypt and once tried to also do the same for Pakistan and Libya. All three attempts failed by large margins in the Senate. As I have noted a number of times, I find Paul’s campaign against foreign aid laudable but ultimately hypocritical because he carefully exempts Israel from any such sanction in spite of the fact that Tel Aviv is by far the largest single recipient of assistance and is in violation of both international law and US policy with its continued occupation of the West Bank.
  • Shut up, Bill Maher. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Nothing but a smartass Cathedral preacher.
  • The United States should give former NSA contractor Edward Snowden immunity from prosecution in exchange for congressional testimony.
• From TAC: Who’s middle-class?
• Orthodox churchmen’s positive reactions to Pope Francis. Gives me the same sinking feeling as reading Ware’s The Orthodox Church. Underneath the excellent liturgy, far superior to the Novus Ordo, and valid orders, there’s nearly nothing there, like liberal Protestantism. Credal orthodoxy but no coherent moral theology. The Orthodox view of divorce and remarriage has never made sense to me: ‘sometimes adultery is OK’. That said, the original reason for it makes sense: so the wronged party wouldn’t starve to death. And it’s never been a bone of contention between the sides. The Melkites kept it for 200 years after going under Rome. Still, outward traditionalists supporting liberalish low-church Francis should be cause for pause. Once modernity hits those pre-modern ethnic cultures, they’re toast. Witness ethnic Orthodox attrition in America, a longtime, pervasive problem. Sure, our churchmen did a number on us with the council, but we have a foundation on which to rebuild (the magisterium plus the living memory of Cardinal Spellman’s Powerhouse and Going My Way?); small-time, we are. (Trads have kids. We have a future.) Anyway, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev)’s culture-war ally approach is of course good. But dialogue has gone as far as it can. It’s all or nothing. The church can’t renege on defined doctrine. Why should it? It has upheld the essentials of the faith. The Orthodox can either come fully into the church, which should leave their fine rite alone (moral support for us trads), or we should say goodnight.
• Dreher: True recent story of mysterious, holy priest. That he sees grace here suggests to me he’ll eventually be back in the church.
• Sailer Notices Things™: Fashion’s gay mafia tend to be — in their aesthetic tastes, feelings of superiority, and cruelty — pretty much Nazis. Gay fashion designers barely even pay lip service to the dogmas of equality, so they never thought the rules of diversity applied to them. And for the last several years, they’ve been hearing constantly about what huge victims they are, so that's just made them even more self-centered and self-indulgent. Also, two theories about transsexualism (a mental illness) in men: either extremely effeminate gays who are frozen out, since gay men of course are attracted to masculinity, or straight but very narcissistic men whose turn-on is a feminized version of themselves.
• Take a walk. Walk like a man. Mental and spiritual health. President Truman and I may have little in common but we have the same coping tactic for frustration. Can’t stand the heat? Someone else is the problem? Can’t fix the problem? As the Chairman of the Board sang, that’s life. I don’t smoke nor really drink (of course not on the job). I know the literal paths of my ‘corporate campus’ well. During the allowed breaks, I go for at least one 15-minute walk every day. After dark. Cold out? Better still. Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer quotation’s true too.