Victory at sea and more

• Chris Johnson explains church and "openly gay." Of course the mainstream today is deaf to this or thinks it's hypocritical. Classic Anglo-Catholicism at its best was like this, echoed in the convert Fr. John Jay Hughes (A-C alum and now-retired Catholic priest who's bisexual): sure, "openly gay" but mostly that's not our business, but at the same time teaching what the Catholic Church teaches on this. And those parishes still had families with children then like most other denominations.
• RIP Fr. Nicholas Gruner. I wasn't a follower (I'm about doctrine, the Mass, and the office, not private revelation) and he was a big self-promoter like a televangelist, a sensationalist ironically untraditional, but he said things about the church that needed to be said but that the mainstream doesn't, and reached people who don't read highbrow religious books or journals.
• MGTOW: Red-pill podcasts by Sandman in Toronto.
• LRC:
  • The totalitarian war on cash.
  • 175 years of great ocean liners. The golden age of Cunard, such as the Queen Mary. The United States, pre-space age streamlined and co-designed by the Navy as a fast troopship, is the last winner of the Blue Riband, shortening the trip from New York to Southampton to three days in 1952 (to party and romance in style, if you don't get seasick in the North Atlantic). Of course the transatlantic jetliner, the 707, put real ocean liners out of business by '69; the Queen Mary is a museum in greater L.A. (been aboard; the romance of the 1930s and the British Empire) while the United States is docked here in Philadelphia with people trying to save her. I hope whoever does keeps her United States Lines colors instead of junking up her paint scheme. Cruise ships today look ridiculous, not "yar" like the grand liners or the small Pacific Princess ("The Love Boat," built in Germany in '71 and alas just scrapped in Genoa; like most '70s TV the show was a come-on, all talk and no action with a dose of corn syrup); top-heavy, unseaworthy-looking floating hotels built for max occupancy but just asking for a Poseidon Adventure disaster (one big storm or wave and it'll be "Nearer My God to Thee"). That and the cruise lines are run on the cheap despite the nouveau luxury; the British and Norwegian companies use flags of convenience, registering the ships in Third World countries with lower costs and lower standards such as for safety. (Possibly also why those ships have outbreaks of disease, as if seasickness weren't bad enough.) We don't have a big merchant marine on paper anymore although of course the freighters and tankers are still around; lots of Scandinavian and Dutch officers with mini-UNs of polyglot "diverse" crews (as it has been been for centuries at sea). Civilian careers at sea aren't something Americans are interested in anymore, even though the feds have had the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, copied from the Naval Academy, since '38 (bet you've never heard of it); during the war there was the U.S. Maritime Service, civilian but federal, of course based on the Navy. Merchant sailors from the war relatively recently got veteran status; because we got into the war, German U-boats used our shipping right off our East Coast for target practice. If you sailed in the convoys, you likely died. Brave. It still takes guts (and muscles, and a strong stomach) to sail but that went above and beyond. (The Queen Mary, painted Navy gray, was the Allies' fastest troopship; warship escorts couldn't keep up with her, but nor could Admiral Dönitz's U-boat wolfpacks. We fought the same submarine war vs. Japan and won.)

GOP hypocrisy and more

• Takimag: The GOP's Rush to suicide. What Limbaugh said is great but it's hypocritical of the party.
• Bob Wallace: Feminism was born of boredom, not oppression.
• The Anti-Gnostic:
  • Read it, learn it, live it: the cops ain't comin'.
  • Ron Paul's strangely pedestrian rant. Contrary to Dr. Paul's jeremiad, Social Security and Medicare have become one of the few effectively populist programs keeping the elder-middle class afloat. The commenters at the OP point out Dr. Paul's most hilariously obvious omission: the government's unrestrained immigration and deliberate social atomization. Libertarians, it seems, have their own sacrosanct Narratives, as Dr. Paul blithely criticizes one of the few government programs which allows the serfs on the tax farm to put some of that money back in their own pockets. What's intriguing to me is how all the democratic, conservative and libertarian Narratives are now converging around the same set of universalist ideals: diversity is a good, in and of itself; culture is just individual preference, to the extent it exists at all; multi-national business entities are tempered by pure competition and won't engage in self-aggrandizing behavior. It's almost as if a single elite stratum is funding all the various political outlets in this byzantine scheme to set the terms of the debate, you know?

Bruce Gender, burning Baltimore, and more

• Bruce Gender, burning Baltimore, and more. Takimag's Week That Perished.
• Before The Godfather, a lot of movie gangsters were actually Jews making fun of Italians. A lot like Sacha Baron-Cohen acting out Polack jokes for 90 minutes as Borat.
• How and how not to run a business.
  • Just changed shoe repairmen. My new guy is a little farther away but worth it because he puts on a professional show. The old guy, in my town, has the hippie ethic, in other words slothful and arrogant. He thinks he's the only game in town (and he's close on that) so he can treat you any way he wants. He's very good at re-soling shoes but he opens his shop when he damn well feels like it, even though he advertises regular hours, and if he's not done on the day he said to come get your shoes, tough. He'll make you wait half an hour or more. Addio.
  • When one of my wardrobe workhorses, one of my 50-year-old suits, got a hole in a pocket the first time, I went to a snotty Main Line tailor (non-WASP) who charged me a U.S. Grant and made me wait three weeks. Now I get it done in three days for $6 at the Korean cleaners in my neighborhood.
• RIP Jayne Meadows Allen. A beauty: another part of the golden era passes into eternity.

The a**hole factory and more

• Part of what's wrong with America now: The asshole factory. Our economy doesn’t make stuff anymore. So what does it make?
• "Time and Life," the latest "Mad Men." Way to flip the script! We love to hate Pete; we don't HATE him, because he's well-crafted, not all evil or a cartoon. One minute we're cheering for good-guy Ken getting back at him and Roger, then in a moment we're cheering for Pete punching out that snotty headmaster. Cue "Scotland the Brave" on the bagpipes! Maybe ethnic Scots can educate me: was that clan feud (MacDonalds vs. Campbells) still going on in America in 1970? Is it still? Also, a reminder: Scots are not WASPs. Those are the ethnic English; even part of England, Devon and Cornwall, isn't English but Celtic like the Scots, Welsh, and Irish; until the 1700s they didn't speak English. Of course after centuries in America, Pete's family would be at least part WASP. I like Trudy: Alison Brie is adorable and Trudy is one of the show's only nice adults, Ken being another. Anyway, the corporate intrigue was fascinating too.
• Did the Archbishop of Chicago give Communion to the non-Catholic governor of Illinois? If so, his mistake; nothing to do with our teachings. The governor is a public figure; Archbishop Cupich probably knew better, which would deserve a public rebuke from Rome in order to teach people. Anyway, it fits the whole "AmChurch" nonsense since Vatican II: fulfilling American Protestants' dream of separating us from the pesky Pope ("Roman dictator" as the KKK used to call him), turning us into a Protestant denomination. The Episcopalians have long dreamed of thus absorbing us, hence taking in Italian schisms, backing the Polish National Catholic Church, partly supporting Slavic Greek Rite schisms to Orthodoxy (lending them churches), and "Hispanic outreach" now. (Anglicans like the Orthodox but don't take them seriously; they probably know they're illegitimate so they cozy up to the Christian East for the appearance of validation: "Catholicism minus the Pope." Those churches of course only recognize themselves really.) Can you imagine a WASP governor in the '50s going to the altar rail at St. Patrick's or Holy Name and the cardinal (such as our late lion, Cardinal Spellman) giving him Communion in the spirit of the American way? Me neither. Both Catholics and WASPs had more integrity then. By the way, some information from a friend in Spokane: Cupich was a terrible bishop. He had a Native American smoke ceremony during his instillation, he was politically left, he banned the priests, deacons & seminarians in the diocese from praying outside of abortion clinics or being involved in any pro-life activities, and our seminary went from burgeoning (25 young men studying for the priesthood + 10 older married men in diaconate formation) to 2 guys. Liberal Christianity does not impress secular liberals and drives away the devout. The civil war in the church is far from over but Pope Benedict put us on the offensive. Right. And of course, we know how the story ends ultimately! The gates of hell will not prevail against Rome.

The weekend

Meet me at the Diamond Diner: champagne '63 Impala, Hainesport, NJ.

Not shown: Jamaican jerk chicken with spiced beans and rice at the Berlin Farmers' Market. Also, the Medford Lanes all-stars in a no-tap tournament but they're so good they don't need no-tap: four- and five-baggers.

New old stuff from the Town Talk flea market, Delaware County Community College.

All the man who sold me this glossy photo knew was he got it at an auction. The piece of cardboard protecting it just says "Marilyn Monroe 1954." She's so radiant here, sitting in a car giving an autograph. Got the frame separately.

I don't smoke but this ashtray design is the next best thing to having a boomerang or kidney-shaped pool.

Home.

Catholicism vs. Anglicanism

And I'm not really talking about modern controversies, though they have their part in this debate. A recently ordained Continuing Realignment clergyman but a conservative Christian brother I've known online for years (I think his background is free-church evangelical; he's not an ex-Episcopalian) wrote yesterday on Facebook he had to "unfriend" someone, something to do with a churlish comment by this person, who happens to be Eastern Orthodox (both this deacon and I passed through Orthodoxy at some point; sometimes for conservative Western Christians things seem like "any port in a storm"; I'd bet you a couple of rubles the jerk's a convert), laughing at Rick Warren's son committing suicide. Horrible, as any decent person will agree.

Actually the proximate cause of the FB dumping: he deleted a perfectly irenic comment of mine saying that we'll have to continue to agree to disagree re: his contempt for the English Reformation.

Some commentary from an observer:

As much as the Orthodox insist that Western Christians worship a wrathful God, some of them seem to be making up for the wrath they believe God is lacking...

The deacon:

Just so it's clear, it's not my intent to indict the Orthodox Church because of the bad behavior of some of her sons. But her theology of human volition, which accounts for her traditional view of the suicide, looms large among the reasons I departed from that church to return to a theological tradition that manifests a sound Pauline and Augustinian anthropology.

So the deacon's blaming traditional Christianity (which here happens to be Orthodoxy) for the rudeness.

Another observer: I do notice EOs do get defensive of Pelagius. Somebody else noticed! They try so hard to deny they're really Catholic that they end up Pelagian about original sin and Lutheran about the Eucharist. Probably a complete surprise to real folk Orthodox lighting candles to their favorite saints, just like folk Western Catholics. (Orthodox liturgy in its pure form is medieval Catholic: the service is sung for hours while the people walk and or/tune in and out as they please.)

Off I go, not meaning to get into a Catholic/Protestant slugfest but that's what it became:

I hate the "Reformation" too but as far as I know am not a troll. As Fr. Anthony Chadwick has wonderfully explained, there's a difference between negative comments and troll comments. A troll has an "I know what you did last summer and I'm going to destroy you" tone. I publish negative comments on my blog but as soon as I detect the troll tone, all your comments will be deleted unread.

After Orange II, theological controversy in the Western church lurched back and forth between its modified Augustinianism and the Pelagianizing bent (and sometimes outright Pelagianism). The Reformation in large part represents the triumph of the Augustinian school, which unfortunately led to schism and fragmentation. Just prior to the Reformation and in response to what some scholars call "Neo-Pelagianism", Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine forcefully opposed the movement in his De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum. The English Reformation, though not influenced directly by Bradwardine, nonetheless carried his torch. It's what Articles IX, X and XVII are all about.

Well-meant but wrong. There is only one church and that church has always defended God, Christ, the Trinity, the hypostatic union, the Mother of God, bishops, the Mass, and the option of using images. Anything that breaks with those and with the church, no matter how well meant, is wrong. We Catholics who know history feel for Martin Luther; as I like to say, if I'm as Christ-centered as the Missouri Synod, I'm doing it right. But still.

Forgive me, John, but talk to the hand.

(I underestimated this fellow's hostility to the church.)

That I'm not a Protestant isn't exactly news.

(Even when I was just a born Episcopalian, I didn't want to be a Protestant!)

My brother John Beeler is a member of the One-nest and Truest of the Two One True Churches. ;)

(Pretty close to what I believe.) Actually there are at least four one true churches! (Four ancient apostolic "Catholic" churches.) Us, the Orthodox, the Monophysites (old-school), and the Nestorians (old-school). As William Tighe explains, every ancient church claims that. Five one true churches counting the confessional Lutherans. Seven counting the Churches of Christ and the Pentecostals.

John, as that Melkite bishop said, "we're all schismatics now." ;)

That Melkite bishop was talking nonsense ( = no church). (The "Orthodox in communion with Rome" who teach and counsel online should be excommunicated. They are a plague, in but not of the church.)

Do you agree with Fr. Jonathan Mitchican's (an Episcopal priest) take on classic Anglicanism? He says they claimed to be the true church in the sense of being the best of the ancient churches thanks to being "reformed" (Protestant) too. Sort of like the confessional Lutherans. To such Anglicans, we're a church with real bishops but in grave error.

Yes, I track with Fr. Jonathan. John, since you're a pretty trad RC, tell us: is there any forgiveness for the one who commits suicide?

Regarding suicide, with any mortal sin there are three criteria: grave matter (which suicide is), sufficient reflection, and full consent of the will. The church says oftentimes suicides are mentally ill so the second and third criteria aren't met. So the short answer is yes.

And how long, pray tell, has the Church of Rome been giving this answer?

I think I see where you're trying to go and am not buying. The church has always defended the essentials I listed. The Orthodox are wrong because they disown us despite both of us holding those same essentials; they're basically a group of tribal/nationalist cults. I respect Fr. Jonathan too even though of course I don't agree with him.

Being blunt, the difference between you and the Episcopal Church is one of degree, not kind. They are a logical conclusion of the English "Reformation."

Where I'm trying to "go" is to elicit your answer on when the Church of Rome changed its mind on the subject. Any answer on when the Roman Catholic Church liberalized its teaching on suicide?

I'm not taking the bait, Deacon. If I did, I might as well believe in women priests and gay weddings. Anyway, where do you get off attacking the Catholic Church because some Eastern Orthodox mocked a Protestant who committed suicide?

Anglicanism is a valid branch of the Two One True Churches, but we also make certain accommodations for Protestant churches with a different ecclesiology. Rome — always shifting, but happily in the right direction — now says that these communions are outside her canonical boundaries and therefore not in the "church" but can be called "ecclesial communities." They don't bother to explain that "ecclesia" means "church."

Well, John, you're the one who jumped in here wielding the flaming sword of the One-nest and Truest of the Two One True Churches. What did you expect me to do? Any word on when the Church of Rome liberalized its teaching on suicide?

I don't like the gobbledygook euphemism "ecclesial community" but its real meaning is fine: "group of Christians sort of like a church but not a church." A church has bishops we recognize so it has the Mass: the Orthodox, for example.

Anyway, I think a common misunderstanding is that the church, in not having funerals for suicides, is giving them a ticket to hell. That's not what that or excommunication means. Nobody in the church is denying that suicide is "grave matter." We can't and don't pronounce on who is in hell or going there.

"Anyway, I think a common misunderstanding is that the church, in not having funerals for suicides, is giving them a ticket to hell." That's exactly what it meant at one point in history. Right?

You may not like the word "ecclesial community", but that is the term now employed by your Magisterium. So, unless you're ready to go SSPX or something, you're stuck with it.

Very funny. You claim we're untrustworthy because we allegedly renege on our teachings, but the real Anglicans now have women priests and gay weddings. From claiming the Pope claims too much power to wielding a power the Pope never dared to. The only other option is Orthodoxy, which both of us tried and found wanting.

John, are you going to answer the question?

Fine. The Romanists are a bunch of untrustworthy wops. I'm going to be received back into the Episcopal Church tomorrow, by a lesbian priest. Happy?

I'm not going to say what you want to hear, that the Catholic Church changes its teachings so the only option is Anglicanism as envisioned by its framers. I grew up Episcopal; as far as I know, you didn't. I've been to the Catholic martyrs' shrines in England. I'm glad you're a brother conservative Christian but I still say no to Anglicanism.

I'm simply asking you to answer the question of when Rome liberalized its view on suicide.

Not taking the bait. The church has always taught that suicide is grave matter. Some churchmen may have thought all suicides go to hell, like Fr. Leonard Feeney thought all non-Catholics do, but that's not doctrine. Like limbo's not doctrine. Thanks; play again. Seriously, I didn't come here to bash conservative Anglicanism so I'd appreciate it if you'd lay off the Catholic-bashing.

John, I submit the reason you're not "taking the bait" (i.e., not answering a question though you've been asked several times to do so), is because you and I both know what the answer is. Feeney and his fellow ultra-trads are simply taking the old view, which Rome has happily liberalized. But indeed it used to teach that all suicides go to hell. Do you disagree?

I think you're confusing grave matter with mortal sin. The Pope CAN'T teach that suicide isn't grave matter any more than he could approve women priests, abortion, or gay marriage. Turning Fr. Feeney, for example, into a strawman for the whole Catholic Church is something I'd expect from an Episcopalian arguing for gay marriage. I'm as horrified that some Eastern Orthodox mocked Rick Warren's son as you are, so why attack me or Catholicism on this?

Sigh. I'm not attacking you or the Catholic Church. I am happy that on this issue the Church of Rome has moved to a more liberal position that is in accordance with both what we know about mental illness and its historic Augustinianism. I just want you to admit that this is in fact what happened; the church changed its mind. The Orthodox Church lags far behind, though there does seem to be some movement by some clerics and theologians in the right direction. The guy I unfriended is a representative of Orthodoxy's traditional view.

OK, now I think I understand you. We agree about suicide and mental illness. Great! No need for you to use Catholicism as a punching bag. You think I'm bad about Anglicanism? I have a Catholic friend online who, though never an Anglican, is angrier at them than I was (and I have an excuse: women's ordination and the rest felt like sucker punches 35+ years ago). He literally writes "Fakedy fake fake!" every time I mention the Anglicans.

"I just want you to admit that this is in fact what happened; the church changed its mind." That's the Episcopal line.

I think I've done about all I can do here.

An observer:

Pastor Rick is a terrific servant of God. I attended Saddleback for 8 months when I lived in Cali. My experience with one of my Episcopal colleagues in Cali was to criticize Warren inspite of the huge difference he is making. Ironically, this priest had a dying church and was hardy making a difference at all except in the area of polarizing people.

Yep. The mainline, even when it's pretty in a high-church way, is going down the drain while evangelicalism's doing pretty well.

The Episcopal Church has become sort of the Edsel of denominations. It's as if a marketing team had surveys and focus groups to come up with a church to please as many people as possible ("Catholic... but cool and open-minded too!"), but it flopped.

I think I understand liberal high church's appeal. It's just that it's obviously not from God (the church fathers and the councils wouldn't recognize its fallible, fungible church) and besides it doesn't appeal to many anyway.

Interestingly I understand that while many/most lay Episcopalians, in that WASPiest of the WASPs denominations (it's English!), identify as Protestants of course, most Episcopal priests now don't, which doesn't mean they're would-be Catholics like I was; rather, they equate "Protestant" with evangelicals like Rick Warren, whom they look down on as ignorant and dangerous.

Also, the more liberal and "diverse" the Episcopalians try to be, the richer and whiter they get. Blue-collar folk who want to follow Jesus aren't comfortable with them.

Almost everything I liked about the Episcopal Church was at one point illegal in it.

Update: Continuum: At first, American Anglo-Catholics saying yes to the Catholic faith (as they saw it) and thus no to the Sixties. Realignment: Credally orthodox but Episcopalianism before Teh Gay. Slightly less liberal Protestantism; the Episcopal Church 20 years ago. They have women priests. Globally, most conservative Anglicanism is low-church, classically Protestant, not would-be Catholic.

The sexes and more

• Should be obvious but it's a mad world: 10 reasons why "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" is wrong, especially when Army cadets do it. I'll add a manosphere point (red-pill, not necessarily pickup-artist): it's hard for the socially awkward to learn this, but we straight men trying to empathize with the women we love by doing these things don't get their love or respect. These lose them. Makes sense when you think about it. Women want strong men, and nobody respects a man who demeans himself like that (echoing Gavin McInnes' points). What makes this harder to learn is that liberalism is a Christian heresy; our Christian culture values humility and defending the underdog. Gestures like this are chivalry knocked off course. A manosphere point: mainstream relationship advice pushing these things is worse than useless. Stunts like this are why the Russians, the Chinese, and ISIS are laughing at us.
• Chutzpah. Bruce Jenner to the still beautiful (America's Junior Miss 1963) Diane Sawyer: "I'm a woman." If she could speak freely: "Like hell you are!" Actually some radical feminists have round-tripped to reality, agreeing such demeans real women. As Steve Sailer has noted, what's with these older guys suddenly doing this? Testosterone drop with age? More likely a rare fetish, transvestism taken up a notch: "becoming" the women they love. But there's more to this poor man's story. The Left was all ready to pour their acceptance and tolerance on Bruce Jenner when he came out as a transgender. Now that he has come out as a Republican, he will be kicked to the curb. Just watch! OR the GOP will try to use him in another of its catch-up me-too marketing plans, sucking up to the liberals in charge, which always fails. (Same thing: real woman Carly Fiorina running for president. Another failed corporate head like Herman Cain.) Pictured: Miss Sawyer on top of the world, in the world's capital, March '63.
• Hillary Clinton: Political cartoon from likely a distant cousin. I've met such. Same name? Pacific Northwest? Hey, cuz.
• Matthew Weiner guest-edited Metro yesterday. Predictable liberal garbage. "Mad Men" is superior "Happy Days" to me but I know what he's up to: dancing on the grave of the golden era. Actually it's not dead; five years ago I realized I could bring much of it back and so I did. (I don't do kitsch.) Like the old joke about dogs: because I can. Anyway, Metro ran a typical piece about "unequal pay." If you didn't know better, you'd think women are paid on a lower scale because men are big meanies as bosses. (A proposed answer all the white knights and manginas are supposed to buy, literally: transfer payments in the form of more paid leave, etc. Nice-guy betas are still footing the bill but the women don't have to have sex with them. Communism doesn't work; take away incentive and your economy crumbles.) What they don't say: there is no real pay gap; of course women are paid the same wages. The difference is on average the sexes are different, wanting different things, so many women hate the rat race and quit it as soon as possible, ideally (to them; what most really want) marrying well (getting their MRS degrees) and having kids. So their average pay of course is lower. Men work longer and harder. Actual quote from a Metro mangina (metrosexual?): "testosterone-addled." If it wasn't for testosterone, women would be living in grass huts if at all, as Camille Paglia says. By the way, I know Metro because I do the crossword riding my commuter train.
• Speaking of economics, of course McDonald's proposes more automation as an answer to the well-meaning folks who want to raise the minimum wage. Those jobs by nature aren't living wages.
• "You are there": England in color, 1928, the world my late rector was born into, in London, a year earlier.
• Predictable feel-good Catholic stuff but still nice. Catholic England would have been great today, writes one of us in a British Catholic journal.
• Cultural conservatives have barely begun to fight. Answering Rod Dreher's surrender proposal. By the way, Est Quod Est gets at least one thing wrong about Dreher: he's not a Russophile. Indeed his blog has his objections to Putinism, for example, trying to prove Dreher's liberal bona fides. I don't think Dreher knows any Russians or other real Orthodox; his church is largely his creation, the Russians being his flag of convenience. What might be morbidly entertaining: if Dreher's ego clashes with ROCOR, as the Russians don't take too kindly to insubordination (imagine talking back to Putin; me neither).

Alexander Dugin, culture warrior: "American liberalism must be destroyed"

From Facebook: Alexander Dugin is a "Kremlin insider," an "informal adviser" to Putin. Seems another reason for conservatives including Catholics to like Russia. For the newbs, no, I don't want Russia to rule America, and neither does Russia (they're not Communist anymore; all they want is the Eurasian empire that's their historic right), nor do I want to go into schism.

Much of Russian politics today, especially the retaking of Crimea, is based on Professor Dugin's ideology.

According to Alexander Dugin, the twenty-first century will be defined by the conflict between Eurasianists and Atlanticists. The Eurasianists defend the need for every people and culture on Earth to be allowed to develop in its own way, free of interference, and in accordance with their own particular values. Eurasianists thus stand for tradition and for the blossoming variety of cultures, and a world in which no single power holds sway over all the others. Opposing them are the Atlanticists. They stand for ultra-liberalism in both economics and values, stopping at nothing to expand their influence to every corner of the globe, unleashing war, terror, and injustice on all who oppose them, both at home and abroad. This camp is represented by the United States and its allies around the world, who seek to maintain America’s unipolar hegemony over the Earth. The Eurasianists believe that only a strong Russia, working together with all those who oppose Atlanticism worldwide, can stop them and bring about the multipolar world they desire. This book introduces their basic ideas. Eurasianism is on the rise in Russia today, and the Kremlin’s geopolitical policies are largely based on its tenets, as has been acknowledged by Vladimir Putin himself. It is reshaping Russia’s geopolitics, and its influence is already changing the course of world history.

Professor Dugin is the author of many books. Two that are quite thought-provoking are "The Fourth Political Theory" and "Putin vs. Putin".

"The Fourth Political Theory" states that all the political systems of the modern age have been the products of three distinct ideologies: the first, and oldest, is liberal democracy; the second is Marxism; and the third is fascism. The latter two have long since failed and passed out of the pages of history, and the first no longer operates as an ideology, but rather as something taken for granted. The world today finds itself on the brink of a post-political reality — one in which the values of liberalism are so deeply embedded that the average person is not aware that there is an ideology at work around him. As a result, liberalism is threatening to monopolize political discourse and drown the world in a universal sameness, destroying everything that makes the various cultures and peoples unique. According to Alexander Dugin, what is needed to break through this morass is a fourth ideology — one that will sift through the debris of the first three to look for elements that might be useful, but that remains innovative and unique in itself. Dugin does not offer a point-by-point program for this new theory, but rather outlines the parameters within which it might develop and the issues which it must address. Dugin foresees that the Fourth Political Theory will use the tools and concepts of modernity against itself, to bring about a return of cultural diversity against commercialisation, as well as the traditional worldview of all the peoples of the world — albeit within an entirely new context. Written by a scholar who is actively influencing the direction of Russian geopolitical strategy today, "The Fourth Political Theory" is an introduction to an idea that may well shape the course of the world's political future.

In "Putin vs. Putin" Prof Alexander Dugin thinks that Vladimir Putin stands at a crossroads. Throughout his career as the President of Russia, Putin has attempted to balance two opposing sides of his political nature: one side is a liberal democrat who seeks to adopt Western-style reforms in Russia and maintain good relations with the United States and Europe, and the other is a Russian patriot who wishes to preserve Russia's traditions and reassert her role as one of the great powers of the world. According to Dugin, this balancing act cannot go on if Putin wishes to enjoy continuing popular support among the Russian people. Putin must act to preserve Russia's unique identity and sovereignty in the face of increasing challenges, both from Russian liberals at home and from foreign powers. Russia is no longer strong enough to stand on her own, he writes. In order to do this, Russia must cooperate with other dissenting powers who oppose the new globalist order of liberalism to bring about a multipolar world, in which no single nation wields supreme power, but rather several major powers keep each other in balance. Russia is crucial to this effort, in Dugin's view, and indeed, its own survival as a unique and independent civilization is dependent on a geopolitical shift away from the unipolar world represented by America's unchecked supremacy.

With Russia in the news often lately, please take this opportunity to hear it "from the horse's mouth" concerning current affairs and the future direction of Russia.

• Letter to the American people on Ukraine.

Хорошо.

Of course Western Christians including Catholics fall for Atlanticism; it's a Christian heresy. Which reminds me: Ross Douthat, writing about Pope Francis (silly clickbait headline, but the gist is don't worry; Bergoglio's not as radical as he's made out to be), nails Vatican II, which at face value I don't have a problem with. Since American liberty worked so well for Catholics here in 1959, why not the rest of the world?

The tsar visited America once, circa 1890s, when he was still crown prince, and liked it here, but didn't think that liberty would work in Russia. Russians have strongmen like Putin and Lukashenko because they like them.

Also, Russell Kirk: “Capitalism” and “socialism” both are 19th-century ideological tags; they delude and ensnare, as do all ideologies. Sounds like the Popes.

The "Mad Men"-osphere

This might lose or not hold the interest of those who don't watch "Mad Men," and actually few outside the elite seem to, but:

The countdown's on; the final episodes are being broadcast Sunday nights (me, Monday mornings, bought online per episode). It's 1970, a year I remember (the character Kevin Harris and I are the same age); the golden era is phasing out (and I've been chasing it since); the show began set 10 years earlier (style pointers).

As I've mentioned a few times, the leftist hipster elite seems to love this show. The ostensible plot is really celebrating their parents winning the culture war; the nostalgia is probably unintended but even they feel it. Rather like I understand with Fifty Shades of Grey, the political incorrectness is part of the turn-on. So I imagine many/most viewers would denounce red-pill/manosphere principles (really just street/home truths about human nature and the sexes, and social skills, not necessarily about pickup-artist cads) yet the show dramatizes them well. (Don Draper is "a miserable drunk" as the actor who played him has said, but the girls watching can't get enough of him, as they pretend to cheer for Peggy Olson.) It's part soap opera, part soft porn as much as American Movie Classics can get away with, which by modern standards isn't much. Sadly, a show about nice people wouldn't sell (wouldn't get viewers). Centered on Ken Cosgrove and Trudy Campbell (they and Megan Draper are arguably the show's only nice adults), you'd have a show about Middle America then, like a better version of "Happy Days." The name and setting fit: back then, Madison Avenue and its surrounding culture were crazy.

So I'm watching it for same reasons as others but in reverse: celebrating the golden era AND getting a look inside the lefty brain as it celebrates the era's fall.

Anyway, a manospheric look at the final episodes so far.

Joan Harris' (played by the pretty and ferally sexy Christina Hendricks) new beau: looks don't matter so much for men (he's very average, no Don Draper), or when men get older, they get better! I didn't grow up with his type but I recognize it: an alpha from the golden era but, midlife crisis, already into Me Decade selfishness? (Or maybe his marriage was awful; who knows?) A man of means, he gets the girl, early on, because of that and because he's not needy; he loves Joan but she's not calling the shots, even with her considerable appeal which would cow a lesser man (and turn her cold just like that; Joan is cold most of the time). The manosphere point: with men, it's about the attitude, not the looks.

Then you have the other extreme, poor clown Harry Crane, whom the Sixties ran over like a truck (while alphas Roger Sterling, until very recently, and Don have changed very little; Don still has his pomaded short hair and fedoras; Harry started off as a bow-tied version of me). You know his pass at Megan will fail; no rapport to begin with, and he just pours on the compliments; desperation. The man has no game and nothing to build on there anyway.

Glen Bishop's weird but alpha: the attraction with Betty Francis is mutual.

The manosphere isn't just about sex: that socially tone-deaf young blond adman (reciting Don's line out of context so it backfired) also lacks alpha state control (control of his emotions, saying "f*ck" at a meeting) but had the guts to talk back to Don, knowing he'd get fired, but it's ineffectual beta rage until/unless he learns game.

Some other notes: Sally Draper's speech sounds suspiciously 2015; not obvious anachronistic slang ("like... awesome"), a subtlety maybe hard to counteract/control in a teenager (Kiernan Shipka probably can't hear the difference), but "Mad Men" is usually a stickler for details like that. (Which accidentally produced nostalgia: sales of Lucky Strike and Canadian Club have actually gone up.) Namely I hear vocal fry and 2010s "Really?" in her tone. January Jones sounds like that in real life but in character as Betty, she and the others sound like what I consider normal; I'm of the last generation to grow up before Valley Girl talk was invented/became a national thing (I remember when it started, in the early '80s, all because Moon Unit Zappa recorded a song making fun of the haughty high-school girls she hated).

Quality: Matthew Weiner's keeping us guessing to the end.

First Things' boogeyman: Russian Orthodoxy

Orthodox terrorism. This isn't getting the reaction from me they're fishing for: revive Cold War (and older) Russophobia, defending Western liberal values. (A renewed opportunity for Sacha Baron-Cohen to tell more Polack jokes with his Borat character.) My answer is more Realpolitik and questioning those values (which are Christendom's bastard). I don't believe that Orthodoxy is the church but am not angry at the Russians for believing there is only one true church. Catholics do too! Russia's behaving very historically for Christendom. There are hardly any Greek Catholics in the Crimea (part of Russia) or in Russian areas of the Ukraine, so frankly the Russian Orthodox aren't my problem. The Kyiv Patriarchate isn't really Orthodox and is kind of a tool of Western liberals. (Parallel: what if American Protestants and the government got American Catholics to secede from Rome and elect their own Pope, claiming all Catholics here? How would/should real Catholics react?) In the Orange Revolution, President Yushchenko belonged to the KP; it's in part a Western-backed, anti-Russian schism. As I like to say when explaining the Ukraine and our meddling there, imagine if China got California to secede from the Union and turned it against us, including sending military trainers there. Russia's not Communist anymore (meaning they're not out to get us in America) so again they're not our problem, plus America doesn't trade with them. We don't NEED Russia for natural gas or anything else; any sane person just wants to keep the peace. (Nixon: they'll never be our friends but we can't afford to be their enemy either.) And... they are estranged Catholics; even though they hate us because we don't answer to their empire, our mission as Catholics remains to reconcile them to us if only working through prayer and example. (Our vision of the church includes them; theirs doesn't include us.)

Better estranged Catholics than the secular humanist overlords here, and the Russian Byzantine Rite beats the Novus Ordo.

By the way, the onion domes on this church are uniquely Ukrainian.

Христосъ воскресе!

"Why trust the church fathers?" From a denomination that doesn't.

• Mass: Misericordia Domini plena est terra, alleluia. Book of Common Prayer translation of the gospel. The Good Shepherd, the name of what was one of the Philadelphia area's few Anglo-Catholic parishes, a place I knew on and off from 1985 until about 2010. Its core group is now in the church, the Community of Blessed John Henry Newman, and some former parishioners are with me at Our Lady of Lourdes.
• Ask an Anglican: why trust the fathers? Fr. Mitchican well explains the classic Anglican position. They say the English (Fr. M is an American and an ex-Catholic) excel at irony. He and his school of thought make a good case for the church here, only his denomination undermines that same case for itself. "We trust the judgment of the church, except when we don't." First, Erastianism in England: Henry VIII dispensed with the church whether he meant to or not. As a result, Fr. M's Episcopalians think the church is neat but nonessential: "we can change the matter of the sacraments by vote." (Fallible and fungible: all it takes for apostasy here is a General Convention vote.) The best of them now are liberal high church: with us orthodox Catholics and not like Catholic liberals they believe the creeds and in the sacraments and love our stuff. But anybody thinking logically can see through it, so the Episcopal Church loses people like crazy. The kids cut out the churchy middleman (fallible and fungible: why waste my time Sunday morning when I have a loving community somewhere else?), going right for secular humanism, the Christian heresy that's the logical conclusion of Protestantism. The Vincentian canon (St. Vincent: everywhere, always, and by all) gives you the consensus of 1) the church, 2) Eastern Orthodoxy and its offshoots such as the Copts, and 3) old Anglo-Catholics, more or less Catholicism, not Episcopalianism. We don't believe the fathers are infallible (they made mistakes and contradict each other); we believe the church is. Saint Athanasius may not have worshipped from a Book of Common Prayer, but he would recognize in our liturgy the same faith that he defended against the Arians in the fourth century. No. Neither the biretta nor the iconostasis had been invented yet but he would have recognized the faith and the church in those liturgies, not the ones in the king's denomination. (By about 600 the text of the Roman Rite Mass would have been familiar to us traditionalists. We have the second oldest Eucharistic consecration prayer still in use, second to the Nestorians.)
• I don't blog to pick on the Episcopal Church but this one's too good to pass up. The new "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You" sign is fitting because the shield tilts to the left and most of it's now missing.
• A case for Hillary Clinton as president. She's actually less ambitious than Obama and won't do much to try to prove herself because she wouldn't have to; her whole point would be she's a woman. One of the writer's points: a wake-up call for men. But how would that be if she's just a symbol, really a do-nothing president, relatively a good thing? I worry she'd start a war in order to compensate. She has a shot but my guess is in the Punch-and-Judy show of our politics (in which the GOP and Dems only pretend to be against each other), it's the Republicans' turn so whoever they cough up will get it. Putin is the kind of thoroughly corrupt leader American men could actually be proud of (instead of the thoroughly corrupt leaders they actually have). He's an Eastern version of the Bad Catholic: an action-packed life probably fighting and sexing but he knows he's a sinner, showing up at Mass occasionally to light a candle asking a prayer of the Mother of God. The Russians are estranged Catholics; better that than the ex-Protestants running us.
• Car-show season is here! At Johnson's Corner Farm, Medford, NJ, for a little one. I'm not a mid-'50s Chevy person; the best car there again was Jim Vertolli's '58 Pontiac.

Ugh, "post-Christian." And more.

• The Anti-Gnostic: The culture war is over. We lost. So what do we do about it? Regular readers know my line. A friend anonymous online (smart considering the oppression; the other side, now in charge, forces you to apologize then ruins you anyway) has explained Rod Dreher to me; I don't hate him but his Benedict Option is a Soviet-style surrender. Better the lesson of the Ukrainian Catholic Church under Soviet rule. They didn't surrender; they went underground in a modern society.
• Some Eye of the Tiber satire that gets it right: San Francisco Catholics petition God to remove Jesus from the Trinity, because they're more righteous (defending the oppressed and the outcast) than he is. (Referring to attacks on Archbishop Cordileone.) A perfect answer to the mainstream media (MAG, media and government; the Cathedral, etc.) game "Survey Says," attacking the church: "Rome says this, but OUR SURVEY of American Catholics says THAT, so take that, you celibate weirdos!" (They wish the church were a democracy like a Protestant denomination.) But that they care so much about a church they ostensibly don't believe in is a backhanded testimony to its having grace and the truth.
• The French spoken on "Mad Men." Not speaking it, I didn't realize the English (French name?) Julia Ormond (the magnificently nasty Marie Calvet) can't speak it, or least sound like a native speaker. I thought I picked up that the characters sound more continental than Québec. (Megan's parents are supposed to be from France; Jessica Paré really is French-Canadian.) Also, "Calvet" is not a French-Canadian name (again, the father's supposed to be Parisian or something like that), and no way a Québec girl Megan's age would be named "Megan." (From the comments: it's as if, tin-eared, the English Lane Pryce sounded like he was from Atlanta and the lead characters were, anachronistically, Liam Draper and Ashley Olson.) By the way, Peggy's supposed to be a Brooklyn girl; where's her accent? They should have made Peggy Midwestern.

One quarter of American women are on psych meds

Bob Wallace, a smart red-pill guy but a manosphere critic (an unbeliever who agrees with the church that much of it's sinful, plus there's no such thing as alpha dogs):

One quarter of American women are on psychiatric medication. I have found they get this way this way when they lack husband, home, and children — then they blame their lack on men. Then the men run because of the attacks on them. The problem gets worse. This feedback system can be broken by attacking the weakest link only I don't know what it is.

Don't miss the comments thread.

Sure explains foreign mail-order brides (better, of course: meeting a nice girl while traveling abroad, or even going expat; I understand South American women are nice; lower cost of living so if you have an income and know Spanish, you're in), MGTOW, and even, ew, sexbots. The women Bob describes spurn the geeks but don't want anybody else (Haruko or Natasha) to have them either (they wish the geeks were dead, but they live off their funds); fallen human nature. ("I don't need you!" "Fine. Susie, this is my waifu." "LOSER!")

Modernity's (MAG, the Cathedral, political correctness, feminism, egalitarianism) doctrine teaches women they're supposed to want something they naturally don't (be a macho executive), while putting down the things their instincts scream at them to have (home and husband, that is, marry a macho executive and bear and raise his kids). The corporation and state as your sugar daddy and fake husband ("I don't need a man!"*) just don't cut it in the long run when you end up alone (the lie of "Sex and the City," a rotten show: "me and my BFFs"; unrealistic expectations of single life like the milder but still toxic "Friends"). (Sure, all of my references are dated. I didn't really follow these then and don't follow the new stuff. I watch what you think I do: the news and old movies and TV shows, from "Sea Hunt" to Danny Thomas; "Mad Men" being the exception for obvious reasons.)

*Meaning no boring nice-guy provider husband; rather, "the carousel," a continuous (contracepting and aborting) party with charming jerks ("sexy strangers"; instinct — going for a man with strong genes — but knocked off kilter) until your looks hit the wall and/or your ovaries dry up; the nice guys, plural, pay for your life but you don't have to have sex with them. "Sex and the City": women imitating men at their worst ("women who act like gay men," or "is this about three hookers and their mom?"), which again doesn't come naturally to them. Or eatpraydump the beta after you've gotten the kid you want (the Leif and "conservative mommy blogger" Jenny Erikson story, or joining a conservative church doesn't make you immune), live off alimony, etc., from him, and keep riding the carousel for a while.

"It takes all kinds," or a down side to the "beta," etc. labels Bob hates: even Roissy agrees that around 1960, average nice guys and girls were glad to have each other.

Lincoln the dictator and more

• Abraham Lincoln and the inversion of American history. Seen semi-blasphemously as a Christ even then. (The state as your church.) Actually a dictator who suspended the Constitution and was only about trying to keep the Union together by any means. (As for religion, he was at the theater on Good Friday.) The South had the right to secede, Lee (a devout low-church Episcopalian under an almost-Catholic president, Jefferson Davis) was a hero (actually against secession but, offered command of the U.S. Army, he wouldn't take arms against his home state), and Sherman a war criminal (my great-great-grandfather, George Washington Wylly, surrendered Savannah to him).
• From 1994: Jewish Murray Rothbard on America's political false religion. During the 1820s, the Protestant churches in the Northern states of the U.S. were taken over by a wave of post-millennial fanatics determined to impose on local, state, and federal governments, and even throughout the world, their own version of a theocratic statist kingdom of God on earth. As I say, our left is a Christian heresy: trying to stand up for the weak and oppressed, they deify minorities for being such and try to erase the sexes or deify women, depending. Interestingly, relatively recently, the government pushed the Pilgrims' story as THE American founding myth. (The Northern Protestants who are the SWPLs' church fathers.) What about the Anglican Cavalier adventurers who were here first, founding Virginia?
• A troll down memory lane. How a clickbait-ized TV station baited Memories Pizza in Indiana. It's all one jump from gladiatorial games.
• History I've recently learned. Joe McCarthy was right (the Hollywood Ten were guilty as sin): not only our government (such as Henry Wallace) but our press was riddled with Communist spies (such as the repentant Whittaker Chambers), part of our helping the USSR win WWII, which they won thanks to Lend-Lease but had to deny since it proved Communism doesn't work.
• Fred Reed on feminist nonsense. Bob Wallace and others nail this: feminists are childish and envious, wanting men's power without the responsibility. (Camille Paglia et al.: without men you'd be living in grass huts if at all.) Trivializing real rape, with some semi-literate writing, from Vassar, and the fact that on average women in combat is a very bad idea (makes no sense biologically: men are on average stronger and women more valuable reproductively so a healthy society protects its women; we stopped being a healthy society about 40 years ago). By the way, there's no glass ceiling/unequal-pay plot: women on average hate the rat race (they have a point) so they quit it as soon as possible to be married with kids (also trying to beat the biological clock); men on average work harder and longer so they make more. Elementary as Holmes said to Watson.
• Fr. Chadwick on church labels. This phenomenon affected me because, due to Vatican II, for a long time (and still so in places), the high churchmen outside the church (a contradiction, but they think they're the church — the Orthodox do — or a branch of it), Anglicans and vagantes for example, had more of the basics, from credal and sacramental orthodoxy to traditional liturgics, than real Catholics locally, so who's "Catholic"? (I believe Apostolicae Curae. To believe the Eucharist and holy orders are possible without the church's intent isn't apostolicity but magic, and the church doesn't buy the Dutch-touch argument.) In '80s America, you often had to look outside the church to learn this stuff, so I did. (It was a little easier to find, if you were looking for it, in the Catholic Church in England.) I first heard of the Anglican Catholic Church around 1979 or '80, and I thought, "That means we're Catholic too, just like I was taught" and "Why leave over the new Prayer Book? We don't use it!" The other shoe dropped a couple of years later when I found out about Bishop Spong, women's ordination, and the Thirty-Nine Articles. Anyway, I understand they've changed, from would-be Catholics minus the Pope (the old Tridentinesque American Anglo-Catholicism, different from the would-be Roman British version) to something like real classic Anglicanism (Fr. Robert Hart et al.: mild Calvinism but with bishops) but retaining the later would-be Catholic trappings (crucifixes, chasubles, etc.). Traditional Anglicanism is the Articles and "the north end"; most such believers say it's "Hooker without the Erastianism." In 20/20 hindsight it's only a short jump from hijacking the church to do what the king wants to voting to change the matter of holy orders and matrimony, so even though Henry VIII and Cranmer never imagined women priests or gay weddings, these logically result from their principles and precedent. (Or on their own, wrong terms, the Episcopalians are right.)

The Pacific war, Jews and political correctness, and what does the Anglican patrimony have to offer the church?

• What does the Anglican patrimony have to offer the church? I've met Richard Upsher Smith. The answer lies ... in the origins of Anglicanism at the beginning of modernity. From what I can tell, that's exactly Anglicanism's and the rest of Protestantism's problem. (Anglicanism: mild Calvinism with bishops.) Smith seems to argue its modernity is why it's perfect for re-evangelizing the West. Actually, including after reading this, I tend to agree with a friend who remains anonymous online and is virulently anti-Anglican (he literally says "Fakedy fake fake!" whenever I mention Anglicans), just with a different tone from his. Smith seems to be defending aspects of Anglicanism; no sale. I guess I'm anti-Anglicanism of course but not anti-Anglican. My friend claims the patrimony has nothing to offer the church; Anglo-Catholic alumni should just be Roman Riters (he's a "fusionist," basically reform-of-the-reform; Novus Ordo but let's retrofit it with some of the old, high-churching it). Sorry, no; I've heard that "give it all up" rap before, not only from the Orthodox (who fantasize about byzantinizing Christendom so they really think my religious origins are worthless) but from Novus Ordo Catholics left and right (JP2's devotees) going back to the '80s: "Give up that artsy old-fashioned stuff and become a charismatic." No. Sed contra, you don't have to buy the modernity including the Protestantism and Erastianism (a feature not a bug in Anglicanism) to learn from Anglo-Catholicism (not exactly Anglicanism) at its best: the possibility of a semi-congregational version of traditional Catholicism in classic English with some great hymns. My parish by choice (a conservative magnet in the archdiocese) has most of that, especially the hymns with organ, but our main Mass happens to be in Latin and of course American Catholicism isn't run semi-congregationally. As I like to say, everything in church polity except the papacy and the episcopate is negotiable. That and American Catholics getting over their Irish low-church bias (pre-dating Vatican II) would do us a world of good and the liberals wouldn't know what hit them. (Parishes owning their own property, married priests... "and you're c-c-conservative?!" The Christian East, including American Greek Catholics historically, teaches the same lesson.) Also, in America, the old Book of Common Prayer has about the same place culturally as the Tridentine Mass; it was our way of saying no to the Sixties, nothing really to do with Cranmer. (Also, Cranmer was orthodox enough that hybrids such as the American Missal — the BCP's Communion framed by the Tridentine Mass — mostly work; the church doesn't allow Cranmer's Eucharistic prayer, which is fine with me.) Why when I'm at an English-language Mass (about five or six times a year) I say the first Gloria and Creed I learned, same as the Continuing Churches. My guess is Pope Benedict XVI saw the ordinariates as a way of reinforcing the conservative Catholic revival. They're small but good, with their influence extending beyond themselves (I'm not in the American ordinariate). By the way, again, the irony of Anglo-Catholicism: what started in the 1830s as an intellectual movement not about ceremonial, positing Anglicanism as the true answer vs. Catholicism (as classic Anglicans did), reacting against Catholic emancipation in Britain including Ireland, ended up imitating the Catholic Church.
• Steve Sailer: it's always fun when political correctness conflicts with itself. So are Jews part of the left's sacralized fringe as historic victims or are they evil whites, oppressors? Vis-à-vis America regarding Israel and the Palestinians.
• LRC: Why we fought Japan in WWII. China was a longtime spoils we were defending, which we ended up losing to the Communists, whom we'd just helped win the European war. We were saps.

Pascha with Putin, pinup models, and more

• Putin goes to church at Easter; of course he ties religion with patriotism. Which has its place but the state never owns the Catholic Church. He's in schism but this new Constantine is one of my heroes; our chief executive is very much not.
• Britain is one of the least religious countries in the world. Creepy because it obviously used to be a Catholic country, centuries ago. I would have put Britain second or third behind the Scandinavian countries. Australia's in the top five; Canada in the top ten. Basically, English Calvinists, including America's founding fathers, lost their faith at the "Enlightenment." So British countries are a ground zero for this stuff.
• Understanding Anglicanism. Besides the Erastianism, one of its features, not a bug. William Tighe (a Catholic, in the Ukrainian church by choice) and the Conciliar Anglican's Fr. Jonathan Mitchican (an ex-Catholic) have explained Anglicanism to me so, years after leaving, I understand and respect it for what it is, not what I thought it was or wanted it to be, even though I don't agree with it. An unusual version of mild Calvinism that kept governance by bishops. Then there's the matter of "true" Anglicans being the ones whose bishops are invited to Lambeth (so the Episcopalians are in, like it or not), but that's recent and not all real Anglican bishops went to the first conference! So it almost comes down to Catholic Bill Buckley's joke: an Anglican is whoever says he's one.
• Finland's schools are among the best not because they're laid-back and liberal, which wouldn't work here. It's because they're advantaged on average because they're Finnish.
• Big Mother FlyING Car Show pictures. Most of mine are up; a pro, Brian Hughes Photography, took pictures of the rockabilly pinup models, featuring one of my favorite cars, a '58 Pontiac Star Chief (still with its second or third owner, Jim Vertolli, who got it from his dad's dealership in Vineland, NJ, around '65). Of course I realize the tattoos say that to them it's camp/kitsch, but there's beauty and talent in the photos all the same.

Super Sunday

• My shop and flea-market finds this weekend: a space-age glass and an antique picture of Our Lady of the Rosary. Her, St. Dominic, and I don't know who the nun is: St. Catherine of Siena? (A Dominican tertiary; she didn't live in a convent.)
• Super Sunday in Media, Pa. The Media Theatre's neon on.
• A critic of the ordinariates. Followers of the scene know that the Americans' Prayer Bookiness compared to the English is our symbolic resistance to the Sixties, fitting perfectly in the frame of the Tridentine Mass in the American Missal, for example. (But I have no time for Cranmer as such. The "Reformation" was evil.) He has a point that the Continuing denominations leave a lot to be desired but this whole piece strikes me as the same Novus Ordo trash I heard in the '80s about how great the "renewal" is ("WE get lots of people in RCIA"). I've heard that rap before: give up that artsy stuff and become a charismatic. No, thanks. As for the "renewal," around here I just see a broke archdiocese closing parishes and schools. They've spent down the clout they earned before Vatican II. The basis of the proposal was that an unspecified but very large number of disaffected Episcopalians was poised to go over to the Catholic Church. Bishop Pope estimated the number in the 1993 meeting with Ratzinger at a quarter million, about 25% of then-TEC membership. No way.
• Social-justice bullies: the authoritarianism of millennials. Lefty social justice is a Christian heresy.
• Pat Buchanan: the long retreat in the culture war.
• My guess for the presidency next year: business as usual. Either Jeb or Hillary (lots of people would vote for her just because she's a she): if Jeb, the media will witter about a conservative revolution but of course it wouldn't be; the usual suspects would be pandered to as the Republican Party tries to look cool. More foreign wars as "humanitarian." Because neoconservatives are really liberals. If Hillary, you'd get the same thing but going about it in a different way: she'd play the hawk to look tough (trying to please the mainstream right "despite being a woman") plus service her usual leftist constituency.

Low Sunday 2015

In the Catholic Church, today is both Quasimodo Sunday AND Pascha.

• Mass Quasi modo geniti infantes, alleluia at Mater Ecclesiae, where a Divine Mercy shrine was set up in front of the pulpit; it's all about Jesus so that's great. Today with the flea market at the high school (Tina Fey's alma mater) in the next town and the Super Sunday street fest in the county seat, the vigil Low Mass at Mater was my choice for our Mass this weekend.
• Some notes on radical and integralist Catholics.
• Donna now has true vintage sunglasses from yours truly, in time for this year's car-show and flea-market circuit.
• Martha Stewart's basics of mothproofing. Essential if you wear vintage.
• One of the best lunches I've had: Just-cooked jerk chickens with spiced beans and rice from Little Negril, the Jamaican restaurant at the Berlin Farmers' Market, set up outside in the flea market.
• Χριστός ἀνέστη! (This week I'll be saying that to Christos and his crew at Colonial Kitchen.) Христосъ воскресе! Today this year the estranged traditional Catholics of the Orthodox communion as well as our relatively small Greek Catholic communities in their homelands (mostly in the far western Ukraine) celebrate Easter. My tribute to Russia: hoping Putin's a new Constantine. The Russians just had a literally all-night round of services including a midnight street procession and of course Mass (Liturgy), dwarfing our famous Christmas midnight Mass. On paper, Easter is Catholicism's No. 1 feast ("Christ our God... trampling down death by death"; rightly co-opting the natural feast of spring renewal); culturally, in the West Christmas rules (me: et Verbum caro factum est; et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est; everything else is commentary; even secular people love the Yule fest of cheer in the dead of winter and getting gifts) while at least for Russians, Easter is in fact THE feast in the Christian East. By the way, on their Low Sunday, culturally the Russians skip Mass and head out to the cemeteries for the priest to come bless their families' graves, where they have a small party.
• A P.S. What's your opinion of the Orthodox Holy Fire in Jerusalem? Miracle or pious fraud? I believe it's real.

Showbiz headlines

• Hamm hazing? Jon Hamm, who portrays Don Draper on the hit AMC series "Mad Men," helped brutally initiate a male student in 1990 and was charged with hazing while he was a member of the subsequently disbanded Sigma Nu fraternity at the University of Texas at Austin. Pictured, Jon Hamm in the university's Cactus Yearbook's 1990 edition. The expected reaction: Figures. Popular kid is jerk (chicks dig jerks). In other news, sun rises in east. But you shouldn't jump to conclusions. The story just says Hamm was in Sigma Nu and was charged; apparently he wasn't convicted. By the way, Roissy reports that Hamm is "a PC p*ssy" in real life; that and bullying aren't mutually exclusive. And hazing is too dumb for Draper.
• The show's only good guy. Hamm's right that Draper's a miserable drunk but he's catnip for chicks both on the show and among its few viewers (the elite likes it so it's influential despite few viewers), and that Ken Cosgrove, a blond seldom seen (because good guys aren't good soap-opera story lines?), is the real catch for them. Loved the revenge in "Severance," the most recent episode. He deserves that. It wasn't evil; Ken's not. Just fitting. Also, he's a man: as sweet as his wife is, he won't live off her family's wealth (but nothing wrong with it as backup, such as getting him the connections to get him his new job).
• "Mad Men" is a Jewish show even though there are no Jewish main characters. Because of Matthew Weiner. You know my line: a lot like Norman Lear's intent with "All in the Family," he means to celebrate the fall of the old gentile America by elaborately re-creating it like a piñata; the nostalgia's (obviously why I watch) probably unintentional. (Seeing Draper as a hero; sales of Canadian Club and Lucky Strike going up; echoes of what I wear in modern fashion.) Like I said, I'm not taking his victim bait just because Ken dislikes Catholics (Ken called his old agency "black-Irish thugs"); Ken has faults like a real person. Steve Sailer explains the Jewish angle: Weiner didn't grow up a victim (his dad was a doctor and he went to prep school), and a lot of dramatized American anti-Semitism is really a depiction of the older, assimilated German-bred Jews (who started country clubs, for example) historically discriminating against Russian Jews.
• Barry Manilow's "married"? I only read of the gay rumor a few years ago. He's like a latter-day Liberace: similar female fans. Again, not taking the bait. My line remains "as long as he's not harming someone, it's his business, not mine." He's made great pop music over 45 years (I recommend 2:00AM Paradise Café, jazz pop for grownups and I understand his favorite of his albums). Regarding the plastic surgery, he doesn't look bad, just different. Very gentile-looking now. Understandable given the anti-Semitic-sounding vicious comments about his looks 40 years ago.
• "No homo." The narrative preaches nonstop now that gay is good but male friendships are demonized.
• Ex-Army:
  • Chuck Baldwin on Rand Paul's pros and cons. Rand's the best of the mainstream bunch.
  • The liberal narrative on TV. I prefer Jack Webb's '60s but not Sixties version: subtly integrated, depicting real equal opportunity as it should be.

Conservative flops and more

• Takimag: How and why Hollywood's conservatives have failed. The minute you put any political adjective before “entertainment,” you’ve doomed yourself. Successful “conservative-friendly” films are most likely to come from popular source material with a huge following (the Bible, Narnia), from A-listers with the clout to bring pet projects to the screen (Eastwood, Gibson, Parker & Stone), or from inspiring real-life stories (“Soul Surfer,” “The Blind Side”). In all cases, the idea is the same: start with a compelling story, and let the “message” emanate organically. So whenever conservatives go on a tangent about “we need to make some balls-out conservative films,” the lessons of the Abes should be remembered. Never start with your message and work backwards. Also, it seems alliances with the anti-religious don't work. An American Carol sounds bad: A leftist Michael Moore-type anti-American filmmaker is given the “Scrooge” treatment when patriotic ghosts like JFK and General Patton show him the true meaning of something-or-another.
• Another part of the golden era passes into eternity: RIP Stan Freberg. My favorite is the commercial that parodies several others (can't find a copy online anymore): "Get out of my house!"
• Glad I could help. A reader: Wanted to say thanks. I've learned quite a bit from your blog. Long story, short: Raised Byzantine Catholic. When I was in high school my dad took a job offer in a place that didn't have a Byzantine Catholic parish, so we became Eastern Orthodox. Something has always felt like it was "missing," for lack of a better word. A friend, who reads your blog, showed me an essay which discussed Eastern Orthodoxy. Ever since then I've tried to read your writings as often as possible. Such switches by born Greek Catholics are now extremely rare and have been so at least since I first got to know them 30 years ago; then again the first Greek Catholics I knew were refugees from the western Ukraine who chose exile over schism. Another reader wasn't Catholic until recently but, a Westerner born Protestant, trying to be Orthodox for over 10 years left this person turned off by what the late Gerard Bugge called its "anti" spirit. (He tried Orthodoxy for a few years and later ran "A Catholic Page for Lovers," one of the first Web apostolates.)
• Anime and decadence. Japan is decadent and is committing suicide with impressive grace and style. This is intentional Cathedral and MacArthur policy. Mark Bonocore, whom I think speaks Japanese, explained the country to me once: a medieval society punished (MacArthur) for World War II so it was dragged into modernity (before the war it was medieval but with modern technology: the planes and ships that attacked Pearl Harbor); understandably the Japanese can't handle it.

Against democracy, questioning the Nolan chart, liberalism summed up, and more

• Rand Paul's running for president. Probably the best of the mainstreamish bunch but I won't vote Republican for him. Rand's not his dad, who would have made a wonderful president; voted for Ron in two primaries and he's one of the only candidates I've gone to see in person, once in the rain.
• The Anti-Gnostic: Democratic Man, criticizing democracy and America's consumer approach to religion. A word from Fr. Stephen Freeman.
• Steve Sailer: Matthew Weiner on how "Mad Men" is driven by his resentment of WASP country clubs. As a social commentator, Weiner is on the winning side in the culture war. Yet, as an artist, he senses a void in the brave new America. While he may lack the vocabulary to articulate it, this longing helps give "Mad Men" its romantic aura that lifts it above its own soap-operaish and soft-porn tendencies. ... “Adding money and education doesn’t take the rude edge out of people.”
• Ex-Army:
  • The Nolan Chart, part I. Maps aren't the terrain but still useful.
  • Part II.
  • Liberal: "Everything I don't like must be banned. Everything I like is a human right so it must be paid for by someone else."

The show: the resurrection of Don Draper

A few notes/spoilers as I watch the "Mad Men" episode "Severance":

Still just after the golden era but not full-on Sixties/'70s: my guess is still '69 or maybe '70 (awful wide ties and lapels and loud shirts). When did L'Eggs come out? I remember but don't know the date.

Roger's Sixties-ed out with long hair and a mustache but Don still has his pomade and hat, thank God.

"You're not just smooth. You're Wilkinson smooth."

Don's a Manhattan playboy. Megan's just about history but Jessica Paré's still in the credits.

"Dear Penthouse Forum..." Diana the waitress is one of my types. Guess "I know you" and "my name is Don" are all the game he needs. I was expecting a twist like Diana was really Midge, his mistress in '60, or even Rachel Menken Katz living incognito, very soap-opera.

A we-know-better feminist morality play with the still ferally sexy Joan and Plausible Deniability Peggy (the one the hip girl viewers pretend to identify with). At least the story line's interesting (trying to save a client, a L'Eggs rival, by going upmarket to Macy's). And fashion's been kind to Peggy.

Ken has lost his eye for good and now has been sacked. One of the show's only good guys. Deserves sweet revenge.

Update: Don calls Megan his ex-wife but they're mid-divorce.

Ken's still one of the good guys even if he doesn't like us snappers (partly why McCann had him fired). More a fault than a vice. He's not evil. I'm not taking Matthew Weiner's we-know-better victim bait.

Peggy's romance is charming.

It's April-May 1970.

Was Thomas Cromwell the grandfather of the American dream?

This writer seems to think so. The strange thing is despite America's deep anti-Catholic roots in men such as Thomas Cromwell via the "Enlightenment" deists who were our founding fathers, it was a great home for Catholics until the Sixties. So American religious liberty can work. By the '50s, many/most Americans accepted and liked us; there were Protestants afraid the U.S. was becoming a Catholic country. But for the Sixties, it might have happened.

England is both appealing and creepy because unlike here, it used to be a Catholic country; the people were driven from the church by force. There are reminders everywhere such as the names of the old churches and colleges the Anglicans stole, yet their mainstream hates the church. Their elite knows what it all means and says "I will not serve."

Christopher Haigh writes that by 1600, in Shakespeare's time, most of the English had resigned themselves to the new religion but still treated it with the same easygoing conduct but reverence people in Catholic countries and cultures (immigrants and ethnics in America) do the church. Catholic recusancy was for the rich and for martyrs; the extreme Protestant hotheads (the Pilgrims; the New England Yankees who are SWPLs' godfathers) hadn't gotten their way yet. Their revolution and the later "Enlightenment" pretty much did in Christian faith among the English.

P.S. I've been told the Popes told Poles to obey the tsar and the Irish the king; in 1776 I would have stood with George III. We weren't under English religious law so his Protestantism wasn't our problem (the Crown actually decided a court case in favor of other colonial Protestants against the Anglicans), and he was an anointed Christian ruler. Loyalty oaths matter. And he claimed nowhere near the power our government does.

A Catholic case against Christianized seders

Today's Mass, both the Christian Passover and Christian temple sacrifice, making present the one offering of our one priest and victim: Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum, alleluia.

Why Christians shouldn't have seders.

I'm inclined to agree because this issue was settled in the Book of Acts. Christianity isn't Jewish anymore; the new covenant replaces the old. (Before 3 p.m. Good Friday the head of the church on earth was Caiaphas; afterwards it was St. Peter.) But I give good-hearted evangelicals credit, even though they seem to have edited out this part of scripture. Mainstream society including most Jews accuses them of being anti-Jew; on the contrary, because of their reverence for the people of the Old Testament and of Jesus, many are the biggest Zionists and seem to hold Jews in the same regard we do the saints. (Many Jews hate them but are willing to use them for Israel's sake.) They think the old covenant is still in force so Jews have a hotline to God (ironic since the German "Enlightenment" hit them late but hard; many are unbelievers); the new covenant is for gentiles like them and us.

Happy Easter!

Big Mother FlyING Car Show

At the Flying W airfield, Medford, NJ.

Music by the Black Flamingos.
Bought: Big Slick pomade.