Learning the First Notes All Over Again. In Fellini’s film “Orchestra Rehearsal” the Conductor suddenly found himself in the midst of a revolt. The musicians had long murmured against the Conductor on account of his rigorous methods, demands and practice sessions. The exchanges between them and he were bitter. And time did not heal the… Read More Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal.
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him: or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels: thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast subjected all things under his feet”—Heb 2:5-7… Read More The Image of God vs. the Myths.
When a friend called me this morning with the news that Susan Sontag had died at the age 71, just about the first thing I thought was, “well, we’ll have a huge, hagiographical, front-page obituary tomorrow in The New York Times.” Check to see if I am correct. In the meantime, as you prepare yourself… Read More Susan Sontag: a Prediction by Roger Kimball. 2004
Or, where the Left would take us. by Roger Kimball.The New Criterion. On The Passion of Michel Foucault by James Miller. Michel Foucault’s personal perversions involved him in private tragedy. The celebration of his intellectual perversions by academics continues to be a public scandal. The career of this “representative man” of the twentieth century really represents one of… Read More The Perversions of Michel Foucault
The Easter cards we see in ordinary stores give no hint of the shock of the disciples at seeing the empty tomb and beholding the risen Christ. And certainly not of the terrible trauma and ignominy which Our Lord had just gone through: the betrayal, the arrest, the torture and brutal execution of the Son… Read More Christ’s Victory Over Death and Postmodern Despair
SH —> A.I. : I am curious what ‘you’ think of and how you might critique the following. I’m not asking you to make or pass any kind of theological or philosophical judgment. I’m primarily curious what you think of the coherence of the thesis.. If you wish, please also discuss how modern philosophy might… Read More A.I. Critiques an Approach to Theism and ‘Man’ (m/f)
“I appeal also to philosophers, and to all teachers of philosophy, asking them to have the courage to recover, in the flow of an enduringly valid philosophical tradition, the range of authentic wisdom and truth — metaphysical truth included — which is proper to philosophical inquiry — John Paul II, Fides et Ratio # 106… Read More John Paul II’s Battle Against Nihilism
Digital media analyst Hito Steyerl in another context has stumbled onto important, undeniable truths. She writes, In this new age of artificial stupidity, technological disruption has turned destructive. Its greatest victim is reality itself. “This rise of artificial stupidity is the antithesis of, or rather the millions of shabby little cousins to, artificial intelligence. Just… Read More The rise of artificial stupidity
Helen Pluckrose outlines some of the arguments later explored in depth in her bestselling 2020 book, Cynical Theories (co-authored with James Lindsay). The essay charts the pernicious influence of postmodernist thinking on two generations of academics and activists. If you want to understand how we got to a place where microaggressions are denounced as violence… Read More Postmodernism and its ImPaCt
I don’t mean to rain on Patrick Madrid’s (or anyone’s) parade. But consider. He writes in bold letters on ‘X’ that the Beatles are the “Greatest Band in History. Don’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like The Beatles!“. But the Beatles cast both genius and deepest shade. I’m in my 7th decade of life. I’ve loved… Read More The Beatles and Where We Are.
Samuel T. Francis+ wrote, “… [M]odernism denies or ignores God and concentrates on secular knowledge and action. Human knowledge then can be only empirical; moral statements can be only relative or factual, there being a dichotomy between fact and value; and human action cannot be modeled on transcendent or spiritual gods that either do not… Read More Modernism & ‘Science’s’ One-way Street.
Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on “How the New Deal Coalition Fell Apart” in the DNC Chicago riot of 1968. After a moment of goofy kidding around mimicking the “Yippies,” Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland tell the most dramatic story of this seminal event which many of us saw on our TVs, horrifying our… Read More The Riot That Tore the Democratic Party Apart: Chicago 1968.
Young supposedly privileged women are being taught in school to retool their own desires. They are told they need to be instructed by “experts” on how to be socialized, whereas most often young men learn to socialize themselves, on route to innovating and building the world. Retooled privileged Women seem to aspire to and do best… Read More The Corporatization of Women
When Scripture’s creation-based, anthropocentric revelation is rejected, and an evolutionary animal continuum (from amoeba to man) is presupposed as the only reality, then human beings begin taking their cues for behavior from the animal-insect world. This rationalization has reached tragically absurd levels today as witness postmodernist writer Steven Shaviro’s longing for the sexual autonomy of… Read More From Creation and Family to the Petri Dish
By Norman Podhoretz. Sex, drugs, America, the middle class, and “poetry power”: reflections on a literary entanglement of 50 years’ duration. by Norman Podhoretz, 1997. “Allen Ginsberg, Master Poet of Beat Generation, Dies at 70,” proclaimed the headline on the front page of the New York Times for April 6, 1997. Reading it, I was moved more deeply… Read More My War With Allen Ginsberg
Before there was Gloria Steinem or Michel Foucault, there was Dada. And it was deadly serious. Kickoff, Demolition time. “Dada thrives on contradictions. It is creative and destructive. Dada denounces the world and wishes to save it.” So says one narrator of journalist-filmmaker Mick Gold’s Europe After the Rain, a 1978 Arts Council of Great Britain documentary… Read More 1914. Europe After the Rain.
“THEY’ (you know who) have burnt done another Catholic Church in northern France. Who would hate Jesus enough to burn down a thousand churches a year ?” And CNA 2021. Why France is losing one religious building every two weeks. 40 churches have burned since 2023 while Pope Francis has not stopped posing and laughing… Read More Another Catholic Church Burns in Northern France. Then there is Canada.
James Lindsay writes (Listen below), “We need a perspective shift. It’s extremely common to hear people saying how “insane” or “crazy” Woke Marxism is, or to rhetorically ask “what are they thinking?” perhaps with a suggestion of “it won’t work.” Marxism is destructive, on purpose, and being befuddled about their destructive programs doesn’t help us stop them. In this episode of… Read More Why Woke is More Than Merely Insane
Mark Groubert, a Jewish Trump supporter [who was wrong here speculating on likely Harris V.P., pick] says Kamala Harris must be taken seriously. Consider: She has the money, is said to be extremely calculating, very ambitious, she knows how to play all the way to the end game in political chess, and is used to… Read More Why Harris May Have the Last Laugh
And the philosophy of science. The Philosophy of Science challenges a fundamental facet of the modern outlook: that science as such can answer ultimate questions about ourselves, the universe, and God. Disdaining mere discussion or mordant criticism of purely scientific conclusions, Sheen opens science to a realm of thought commonly diminished at best and denigrated… Read More Marx and Hegel: The Philosophy of Communism
New York Times 7/7/24: Even as vote counting was still underway across France on Sunday night, one thing was clear: The left-wing coalition called the New Popular Front did much better than expected and helped deny the far right a victory. Projections show the coalition coming out in front and gaining dozens of seats —… Read More Communists, Socialists, Greens, far-left Parties surge in France
The Real Mao and China. Steven W. Mosher knows Maoism well. “As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.” This is certainly true of the leaders of… Read More An Interview on Mao’s Evil. Steven W. Mosher.
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War Independent, UK. 1995 For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works… Read More Independent, UK: Modern art was Government ‘weapon’.
Attacking the prevenient natural order, finitude itself, gender theory is ground zero. Dr. Margaret McCarthy, interviewed by Dr. Larry Chapp here, “received her doctoral degree in theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute at the Lateran University in Rome (1994), with a dissertation on the contemporary theology of predestination. Since then, her teaching and writing… Read More Gender Theory: “The Atomic Bomb of Nihilism”
Solange Strong Hertz. Quis ut Deus? Who is like God? The very name of St. Michael, Commander-in-Chief of the Church Militant, is a question. So capital a query immediately suggests another which must have preceded it: Who thinks he can be like God? Answers to both are given in Scripture, for God would not have… Read More The Primacy of Lucifer
“…she tells us that “of course” she could “provide good arguments as to why looking at gender this way is wrong. Tempted as she might be … it turns out that she’s not going to bother with that stuff much. Instead, she wants to give the people what nobody was really asking for: a deconstruction of the… Read More What is Judith Butler afraid of?
For some reason I thought it was another book about our frivolous TV shows and general culture (Seinfeld, Larry David’s vicious Curb Your Enthusiasm —pick your nonsense— and I already knew this about the culture. But then things got darker. Very recently I somehow bumped into this reading. I listened. I couldn’t have been more… Read More I’ve had the book for decades. But I never read it. “Shows About Nothing.”
Be it near or still a ways off, Jesus the Lord said regarding the last times, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there… Read More Does God send wars as a punishment for sin?
… but pay attention to what is said” — Thomas a’ Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. Begging With Confidence January 27, 2024 Around us, evil on evil is unfurled? “Fear not,” said Jesus, “I’ve overcome the world” (Jn. XVI, 33). On the last day of 2023 a Franciscan priest of the Capucin Friary of Morgon… Read More “Do not inquire, ‘Who said this?’
81% of Enlightenment Americans approve. Divorce in America Gets a glow Up.Axios. Jan 27, 2024. Divorce has become a major life milestone replete with specialized parties, large support networks and a whole industry ready to capitalize on the big change — just like weddings. Why it matters: Cultural attitudes toward ending a marriage have become… Read More Divorce in America Gets a Glow Up
2 Thess 2: 7… the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor… Read More For this reason God will send strong delusion…
Research associate at The Heritage Foundation Emma Waters weighs in on the ‘girl boss’ vs. ‘trad wife’ on social media. CC Note regarding radical feminism: “The corporate strategy has largely been: make children and families appear to be ‘oppression’ (the home a jail instead of a nest) and keep everyone f–king every which way (even… Read More Rise of the Tradwife: Gen Z Bringing Back Gender Roles
Though they take the credit, feminists, radical or otherwise, actually had little to do with the progress of women in the latter half of this century. The trends that would of themselves produce today’s results were in place at least by the early 1960s. Once such things as the right to vote and the right… Read More Remaking Human Beings. Robert Bork.
Era of the Traditional Family Over in America Recent Survey Suggests| National Catholic Register “The family used to be the core unit of society. Increasingly, it’s now a lifestyle choice. And troublingly, the Americans who could benefit most from the stability of marriage and family life — working-class individuals and those without a college degree —… Read More Sign of the Times: The Traditional Family.
Recent discoveries are making Jewish, secular and agnostic scholars reconsider a century’s worth of skepticism towards the New Testament accounts of Jesus. (Pinned Dec. 18, 2022) By Robert Hutchinson, via The Blaze.com. The entrance to the Mary of Nazareth International Center in central Nazareth doesn’t look like much. It’s just a simple doorway off narrow… Read More New Discoveries About Jesus of Nazareth
BBC: “Did big tech know I was gay before I did? … I was watching a lot of Netflix and I was getting more and more recommendations for series with lesbian storylines, or bi characters. These were TV series that my friends – people of a similar age, with a similar background, and similar streaming… Read More Is Big Tech & Media Coming Out About Shaping Our Perceptions?
“The question of gender—who we are as men and women—has never been more pressing, or more misunderstood. Weaving personal experience with expert knowledge, Dr. Abigail Favale provides an in-depth yet accessible account of the gender paradigm: a framework for understanding reality and identity that has recently risen to prominence. Favale traces the genealogy of gender to its… Read More Abigail Favale on the Genesis of Gender
Vaclav Havel waves to crowds in Prague, shortly before becoming Czech president in December 1989. Kamila Valenta writes in America, “I was 17 years old when I heard the Lord’s Prayer spoken in public for the first time. It was in November 1989 during the Velvet Revolution, which brought freedom to Communist Czechoslovakia. The crowd… Read More The Lord’s Prayer, Freedom, and the Spiritual Vaclav Havel
Aldous Huxley stated plainly, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption [SH: note that desire preceded investigation]. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with… Read More Huxley’s Faith and Confession
“Do you know that we are tremendously powerful already? … I’ve reckoned them all up: a teacher who laughs with children at their God and at their cradle is on our side. The lawyer who defends an educated murderer because he is more cultured than his victims … is one of us…. The juries who… Read More Dostoevski on the Revolutionaries
Catholic Critique 