Some random thoughts on the passing scene.

One of the most infamous events in the rise of fascism in the previous century was Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.  A bunch of German brownshirts went around in a planned riot, smashing the windows of their target minority group.  No doubt they said it was a righteous protest.

When somebody tells you "I am totally anti-fascist," while acting just like a fascist (for example, smashing windows and setting fires in an oppressed minority neighborhood), they are not just telling you a breathtaking, bald-faced insolent lie.  They are gaslighting you.  They are trying to make you lose hold of reality.  When they do this, you ought to ignore everything they say, and concentrate solely on what they do.  By their fruits you will know them.

When people start smashing windows and setting fires, you do not have a peaceful or even non-violent protest.  You have a riot.  When the window-smashing and fire-setting starts, it is time for all people of good will, who care at all about the community they are in, to leave and go home.  Leave the murderous, thuggish criminals out in the open, with no crowds to hide in, like a cockroach on a plate.  Let the cops round them up.  If they are smashing windows and setting fires, that proves that they hate you and everyone in your community.  They are your enemies.  Give them no aid and no comfort.  Let the cops have them.  Better yet, help the cops get them.

If President Trump is our first Jim Crow president, as Rebecca Hamilton says, he is doing a really bad job at it.  After all, the point of Jim Crow is to keep Blacks poor, disenfranchised, separated, and downtrodden. 

When an administration provides historically black universities and colleges with record funding (and at record durations), and oversees the lowest unemployment rates for blacks in decades, and sees blacks open 400% more small businesses in its first year than they had owned in the year prior, none of that helps keep blacks poor, ignorant, separated, disenfranchised, and downtrodden.  If that's a try at Jim Crow, it's a yuuuuuge fail.

You Are Probably Washing Your Hands Wrong

Most people do not adequately wash all surfaces of their hands.  This visual guide (my source) is almost adequate:

Large format PDFs can be downloaded from this page
Between washing your thumbs and scrubbing your palm creases with your fingertips, you should also wash your wrists, at least a hands-width down your arms.  Total time from "Give us this day our daily bread" through "Holy Mary, Mother of God," including your wrists, should be about 25 seconds.  And your hands should be wet and soapy for that entire 25 seconds.  I'd do an alcohol-based hand rub the same way.  It's the combination of friction and either soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer that actually gets rid of the germs.

Finally, once you're done, don't touch the bathroom faucet or door with your hands.  Use a dry paper towel.  It's almost certain that those surfaces have been contaminated by some person who washed their hands inadequately, or not at all.

Mercy, Compassion, and the Prodigal

I am a huge fan of These Stone Walls.  Fr. Gordon Macrae has an entirely unique point of view in the blogosphere -- a priest sent to jail, probably for life, for crimes of sexual abuse he did not commit.  His voice is consistently one of justice, mercy, and compassion.  He deserves your attention and prayers.

In this post (go read it first.  Go read it now.), he takes Raymond Arroyo and Laura Ingraham to task for their expressed desire that soon-to-be nonogenarian Theodore McCarrick be sent to jail for his crimes.  They argue that because McCarrick has not repented, he deserves no mercy.

Perhaps he doesn't, Fr. G will admit.  But he is eighty-nine years old.  The elderly and frail are treated very badly in prison by the young and thuggish who make up the majority of its population.  Justice perhaps need not offer mercy to the unrepentant, but compassion says we should not put a man who will soon be ninety into a population that greets those like McCarrick with chants of 'Kill the priest!  Kill the priest!  Kill the priest!'  And if we are not going to kill McCarrick ourselves, then it is unjust to put him among those whom we can reasonably foresee will do so without our sanction.

Read the comments too, where compassion is likewise extended to Arroyo and Ingraham.

May God bless Mark Shea, who appears to have a beam in his eye. 

He starts with a quote from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity:

"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils."

Mark does so because his Usual Suspects are leaping all over Papa Francis, wailing and gnashing their teeth, and howling allegations of heresy, for things like his pious exhortation to stay close to one's guardian angel, perhaps by giving it a name (there is actually an instruction not to use names for angels, unless it's already mentioned in scripture; I reckon God has already given each angel a name of its own, and it is not important for you to know), his denigration of small-t traditions, and his use of a ferula-style crucifix.  Mark points out (rightly) that it's tendentious, and that the Christian thing to do is to love the Pope, and to interpret his actions in an empathetic and charitable manner.  He decries the drip, drip, drip of venom and hatred that these wrathful people actually enjoy pouring out on the Pope, and again, he is right to do so.  Nor is this the first time Mark has exhorted his foes to pray for their enemies, especially people he likes or feels sorry for; he once did the same for Lady Gaga.    But as I pointed out then, he typically ONLY does this for his allies.  When it comes to his enemies, he says this:

"[Their] goal is to destroy him [Papa Francis] and to remake the Church in the image and likeness of Christianist culture war Pharisees certain of their own righteousness.  They want that smaller, purer Church.  And by smaller, they mean not only “purged of all those we hate” but “purged of any teaching not in keeping with ideas solely convenient to the needs of the Party of Trump, the magisterium of FOX, and dogmas of Good White Christianists.  The goal is to whittle piety down to the Extraordinary Form, Purge the Gays and Liberals, and Magic Abortion Away.  Racism, misogyny, the worship of Mammon and Power, Pornocracy for rich white men, cheating workers of their just wages, death for all those whom the Party of Trump wants to kill, destruction of evangelism for all those the Pure wish to expel or block from access to grace, caging of brown children, nativism, enrichment of the rich at the cost of impoverishment of the destitute: these are the real goals of the Perfecti.  And they will hide behind the unborn and victims of sexual abuse to achieve those goals."

The vitriol, hatred, condemnation, and venom are palpable.  I cannot help but fear that Mark is determined to think his enemies are as bad as possible.  May God grace him with love for his enemies greater than any martyr of the Church.

P.S.:  Mark also recently wrote a piece on Pope St. Paul VI.  I recommend it highly; it is a great piece.

Whaddaya know?

Years ago, I wrote a piece comparing vampires to the Culture of Death.  I even linked to it in my sidebar.  I thought it was pretty good.

And what do you know?  Father Dwight Longenecker has come to much the same conclusion.  Regarding him as a writer far superior to myself as I do, I suppose I can regard this as a bit of validation of my earlier opinion of the piece.

Popes of Christian Unity

There's a video that's been making the rounds; I came across it via the Anchoress.

Fr. Z has been calling Papa Ben "the Pope of Christian Unity" for many years, because of his initiatives to bring back into the Church every Orthodox, Anglican, and SSPX member, both lay and clergy. I have been tremendously excited by it all. As these people return, they will help make all things liturgical new, something the Church desperately needs, and I ask God that those initiatives continue and bear much fruit.

But this video demonstrates that Papa Francis, too, is a Pope of Christian Unity. And though it is not my intention to disparage any of the more mainline Protestant denominations, I think that Papa Francis is reaching out through the Charismatic Catholic Renewal (and between Rev. Know-It-All (who wrote a 15 part series on it) and Oswald Sobrino, I'm convinced the CCR is God's work) to invite back into the Church the most dynamic and energetic of our separated bretheren. This is really exciting to me. While I have no doubt that we need a renewal of the liturgy, we also need a renewal of evangelical zeal. After all, "both/and" is the typical Catholic way to go /|;^)

One final thing. The only people who would deny that great evil has been abroad in the world for many years -- since Pope Leo XIII penned his famous Prayer to St. Michael in 1886 -- are fools and collaborators. But where evil abounds, grace does also. God is sending us the grace we need, particularly through our popes. Be not afraid. Or if you prefer, "Pray, hope, and don't worry."

Blogrollin' 112

If, for some bizarre reason, you prefer my writing to that of David Warren, what's wrong with you?

His latest essay, Breeding Instructions, describes with empathy and beauty the joy found in a large family united in their struggle against poverty. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

It also describes (and refutes) a few of the lies population planners tell themselves about large families in desperately poor times and places. These lies are embedded deep within their worldview, and implicit in their expectation that poor people must join the rich in not having children. Why do they tell (and believe) these lies? Do they hate the poor? Or perhaps they suffer from acedia (on which both Max Lindeman and Darwin have recently written)? Or perhaps I fret too much; surely their hatred and self-deception arise from the mystery of evil.

The Robertsons of "Duck Dynasty" UPDATED

The whole world has no doubt heard how the Arts and Entertainment network has fired Phil Robertson, the patriarch of "Duck Dynasty," for saying what every Christian should believe regarding sexual morality in a straightforward manner. He may no longer appear on A&E. I got the story from John C. Wright, who posted the actual commentary that got Phil fired, rather than any of the libelous or slanderous things falsely attributed to him. I can readily believe that Pat Archbold is right about what A&E wanted: a reasonable facsimile of "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," a way to mock country folk and Christian belief. And also about what they got: a loyal audience that absolutely loves the Robertsons for being God-fearing Christian country folk, and that makes A&E a whackload of money for putting the Robertsons on the air. And for what it's worth, the Robertsons appear to be loyal to their patriarch, and have no interest in doing the show without him.

I've never seen "Duck Dynasty." I'd rather have the telly off. My wife, who likes telly, generally prefers crime drama, SyFy originals, urban fantasy, and monster movies (no zombies), with a few specific sitcoms thrown in. But I would like for the Robertsons of Duck Commander to more or less stay on the air. From what little I know of them, they're the sort of people that, even if they were as desperately poor as I am, I'd like to have for neighbors.

So, if I were Phil Robertson, this is what I would do: provided there's no anti-competition clause in the contract with A&E that prevents it, I'd take the show's concept to Country Music Television. It doesn't have to be called "Duck Dynasty" for the fans to find it there. And CMT is run both by and for people who are a lot more like the Robertsons than the Arts and Entertainment network. I suspect they're a little less likely to fold because of the first call from GLAAD or their fellow-travelers.

UPDATE: Audrey Assad is not merely a wonderful musician, songwriter, and performer. She also has steelmanned Phil Robertson's argument against homosexual acts, reaching largely the same conclusion from a much more humane and human place, namely, the Theology of the Body.

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"

As Moxie Marlinspike points out, the idea that only people who have something to hide have anything to fear from our surveillance state is a load of crap. As he points out, there are far too many laws for any of us to know what they are and not break them.

The common law dictum that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" can only rationally apply to common law. It is impossible to be knowledgeable about all the new federal statute, regulatory, and case law of the last year alone!

There is greater risk: California's state legislature has previously done away with the statute of limitations, and is planning to do so again. There is a WSJ article entitled "Sacramento's Nonprofit Shakedown," but I don't have access to it behind the paywall.

We are not trying to walk through a minefield of legal problems. No, we are law enforcement's targets in a shooting gallery, and either blasted or spared based upon their whims, prejudices, and moods. We live under appointed despots.

Blogrollin' #109 (I checked)

I found Charming Disarray's traditionalist post on Papa Francis through Pentimento. The great bit is at the end:

But I will say that if we have a pope who will demonstrate through example that appearance matters less than internal disposition, then it stikes me that that is exactly what our current image-obsessed culture needs. And people think God doesn't know what He's doing.

I'm not a traddie myself. I have sympathy for them, and I think they're doing good things for the Church -- the liturgy IS important. I also think that while the Extraordinary Form probably isn't important to Papa Francis the way it is to Papa Ben, he has no history of hostility towards it, and I don't see any reason why he'd approve of any either. I offer the concerned traditionalists some advice from St. Padre Pio: "Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer." And from myself: be open to how the Spirit will use Papa Francis.

An HHS Mandate Simile

I have stolen this entirely from Frank Weathers of Why I Am Catholic.

As you may (or may not) be aware, proposed rules regarding access to pornographic services have been in the making for some time now. This letter to you is a notice that marks the next step in this process. As some religious organizations, and individual members of said religious institutions, had problems with accepting our prior rules on pornographic services, modifications have been adopted as noted in the following paragraphs.

The proposed rules would make two principal changes to the health services coverage rules to provide all citizens with pornographic services coverage without cost sharing, while taking into account religious objections to said pornographic services to members of eligible organizations, including eligible organizations that are religious institutions of higher education, that establish or maintain or arrange health coverage. First, the proposed rules would amend the criteria for the religious employer exemption to ensure that an otherwise exempt employer plan is not disqualified because the employer’s purposes extend beyond the inculcation of religious values or because the employer serves or hires people of different religious faiths.

Second, the proposed rules would establish accommodations for health services coverage established or maintained by eligible organizations, or arranged by eligible organizations that are religious institutions of higher education, with religious objections to pornographic services coverage. The proposed rules also propose related amendments to other rules, consistent with the proposed accommodations. The Departments intend to finalize all such proposed amendments before the end of the temporary enforcement safe harbor on August 1, 2013.

Pornographic services will be provided at no cost to you, automatically. You will not even have to search for it, except by consulting TV guides, and by using remote controls. If you currently have access to cable television, all adult pornographic pay-per-view channels will be unblocked and made available to you without cost sharing. Also, by simply having television reception (via cable, or via the airwaves), or internet access via iOS devices, our government, understanding how important this service is to our citizens health and well-being, is making sure that the benefits of pornographic services (understood as dignified, uplifting, and morally good for society) will be provided by your local broadcasters/ purveyors of media without cost sharing by no later than the implementation date of August 1, 2013.

You, as a consumer, personally do not have to do anything regarding this service, as it will automatically become available to you through every broadcast medium, with no cost sharing. Currently, free pornographic services require you to at least initiate a Google search, or even pay a fee for viewing pornographic content via your cable television provider, or a certified pornographic services provider. But no more. You do not have to decide if you would like pornographic services, as that decision has been made for you. Therefore, you do not have to “opt in” to gain access to these services available to you with no cost sharing.

Depending on the narrowness of the broadcast/cable/ISP markets in your area, however, the numbers of channels with pornographic services content will vary. We are requesting your comments during the next six months while we seek ways to partner effectively with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Apple TV, Yahoo!, Google, et.al., to expand access to pornographic services so the benefits of streaming this important, healthy, content, in accordance with this mandate, without cost sharing, can begin by the deadline stated above without delay.

Here comes the kicker.

Did we mention you won’t have to pay for this service? As we feel that pornographic material is vital to the health and well-being of our citizens, parental controls on this programming will be disabled. Your children will not need to ask your permission to utilize pornographic services, as the benefits of utilizing pornography are self-evident to all. Of course, as your conscience dictates, you may decide to forgo the pornographic services provided by the proposed rules on your own.

The benevolent Uncle Sam wouldn’t want to violate your First Amendment rights, you see.

Furthermore, nothing in these proposed rules would preclude employers or others from expressing their opposition, if any, to the use of pornography; require anyone to use pornography; or require video entertainment providers to supply pornography if doing so is against their religious beliefs.

Here ends my outright theft from Frank Weathers.

I have to say, I like this way of explaining what the HHS mandate actually does to us far better than the bacon in a kosher deli argument.

Blogrollin' on Executive Fiat Mass Murder

Was Bush's decision that his people could torture captives gravely evil and utterly inexcusable? You bet. Has Obama done even worse? You bet! (salute to The Anchoress, whose post here is worth reading.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hot Air's story, which has the video, in case embedding doesn't work right.

Does this excuse Bush's use of torture? Nope. It just demonstrates that our Ruling Class has no respect for the rule of law, for morality, or for us, regardless of which side of the aisle they may call home. I have no solutions. I agree with Zippy when he says that national office elections are basically theater meant to reconcile us to being the subjects of the Ruling Class.

Blogrollin'...and TERRORISM!!

Well, it would appear that my government may well regard me as a terrorist. (Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist for the link.) I have strong political views, I dissent from the policies of the regime, and there are those who may find me intimidating. We've come a long way from the original usage of the word, which was the means the Revolutionary French government of the 18th century tried to intimidate its people into complete and utter submission.

Vive l'Eglise! Vive la Justice! Vive la Liberté!

Who We Should Occupy

Salute to John C. Wright, who had this on his blog:

I like this guy. He tells the truth, and he has his head on straight.

One of his points that I'd like to more strongly emphasize is that smaller businesses are crowded out by regulation, and megacorps are the natural adaptation of business to extreme regulation. Furthermore, a megacorp is always going to have an easier time ensuring that no regulations to onerous to survive will affect them, by buying legislators, sending its lackeys as moles into regulatory agencies, or both.

Another is that subsidy and bailouts are theft, not laissez faire or capitalism.

A third is that we in the US also have a central bank, and it's the Federal Reserve. And it is almost entirely outside the law.

I Want This Gun Control!!

Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist:  Some gun control I can give my ringing endorsement!!

Want to know why I'm in favor of this proposal?  Here's the numbers.

Assault Weapons Round-Up!

I could spend a lot of time writing about the new attempts to impose victim disarmament gun control, but others have done it for me, and better than I was likely to do.  So that means it's time for an assault weapons round-up!

First, William M. Briggs, Statistician to the Stars!

Firearm Homicides Dropping.  Assault Weapons Ban Not Correlated With Decrease In Homicides. No Need For New Restrictions.

Darwin Catholic, on the whole matter:

Assault Weapons Part 1:  Battle Rifle to Assault Rifle

Assault Weapons Part 2:  Assault Rifles vs. "Assault Weapons"

Assault Weapons Part 3:  Gun Control

I'll add that beyond target shooting, high capacity semi-automatic battle carbines are the deterrent weapon of choice for (say) a single shop proprietor or home owner, faced with a rioting mob.  This is all the more so if he's using highly frangible rounds, which do not have overpenetration issues.

Why Single Payer Is a Bad Idea

I've long opposed any government takeover of medicine. Harry Mount explains why here. There's an exception to the scenario he paints, of increased demand, reduced resources, longer lines, and surly service -- the politically connected will get moved to the head of the line, and treated with deference, because in a politically controlled system, the politically powerful are in charge.

Salute to Big Pulpit.

What Losing Liberty is Like

You've probably heard increasing tyranny and ratcheting regulation compared to boiling a frog slowly or (to borrow a phrase from an infamous tyrant) slicing away at a salami. But (salute to Donald Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek) there's a far better analogy, more stark, more sobering, more depressing, and more realistic: the Salmon Trap.

On Newtown, CT, and Policy

I ran across Larry Correia's statements on mass shootings and what makes people safe in Mark Shea's commentariat.

Larry Correia may truly be one of the most qualified of people to discuss the issue of how gun ownership and use affect criminal behavior, including mass shootings like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. I have seen nothing I think you would do better to read if you wish to be informed on the relevant issues, especially not anything I've written.

Blogrollin'

Salute to Fr. George David Byers, of Holy Souls Hermitage. I wept, and choked up with emotion. Watch it through to the end.



Additionally: Read John C. Wright's excellent time-travel story. It too delighted and moved me so, so deeply.