Say what you will about "repressive" Victorian society.

And I'll tell you that some behaviours damn well NEED to be repressed (hello, Quebec! Freedom of speech isn't one of them). A Victorian gentleman would not leer at a woman, never mind be verbally vulgar, grope her, or worse. Far worse. What on earth to make of stories like this? Happening in "civilized" Europe? God save us from those who do not respect the dignity of the human person.
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Want to understand the Middle East?

Graph representing historical alliances, wars and grudges in  Middle East.

Good luck. A friend recently told me that it is nearly impossible for most westerners to comprehend what's going on "over there." And after reading these two pieces (by Ben Shapiro and David Warren), I believe him. God help us. Going to pray for Our Lady's intercession with my olive-wood rosary from Bethlehem, and then make some chocolate chip cookies. 

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Fretting over the demise of western civilization?

Or perhaps I should say, "Fainting in the sultry glebe"? Yeah, me too. As if you couldn't tell (we have an entire category devoted to that). Well, shame on you. And me. Though it is just a teeny bit surreal when some of us on the planet are listening to Chopin, and others are throwing their feces around ...and yet secular leftist humanists shrilly insist that all cultures are equal. They are not. But why cry or rant over it? Pray instead. And embrace beauty. And do not be afraid to proclaim that no one and nothing has brought more beauty to the world than Christ and Christendom. 

And mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa for so often failing to remember all of the above.

Now go to the Divine Office site and listen to this hymn (sung by the Choir of Christ's College), and then pray the Office for the hour where you are.

The Lord My Pasture Shall Prepare

The Lord my pasture shall prepare
And feed me with a shepherd’s care;
His presence shall my wants supply
And guard me with a watchful eye;
My noonday walks He shall attend
And all my midnight hours defend.

When in the sultry glebe I faint
Or on the thirsty mountain pant,
To fertile vales and dewy meads
My weary, wandering steps He leads,
Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,
Amid the verdant landscape flow.

Though in a bare and rugged way,
Through devious lonely wilds, I stray,
Thy bounty shall my pains beguile;
The barren wilderness shall smile,
With sudden greens and herbage crowned,
And streams shall murmur all around.

Though in the paths of death I tread,
With gloomy horrors overspread,
My steadfast heart shall fear no ill,
For Thou, O Lord, art with me still;
Thy friendly crook shall give me aid
And guide me through the dreadful shade.

“The Lord my pasture shall prepare” by Choir of Christ’s College; 

Words: Joseph Addison, 1712.

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Are you ready for the new religion?

The French Revolution with their goofy re-invented Republican Calendar and attempted abolition of Catholicism had nothing on this. Who needs goddesses of Reason and Liberty when you can have a coy, 65-year-old airbrushed goddess-man wearing a push-up bra? The scary thing is how seriously the talking heads are taking this. (And I guess we MUST take it seriously, because it's the new theocracy.)

Following are comments from the Prophet Brendan O'Neill (he really is). I wonder how long it'll be before they stone him to death for not scraping to the new deity (aka a certain photoshopped Vanity Fair covergrrrrl, and all he/she/it stands for):

It’s iconic in the traditional sense, too, in that it’s being venerated as an actual icon, a devotional image of an apparently holy human. It’s an image we’re all expected to bow down to, whose essential truth we must imbibe; an image you question or ridicule at your peril, with those who refuse to genuflect before it facing excommunication from polite society. Yesterday’s Jennermania confirms how weirdly authoritarian, even idolatrous, trans politics has become.

Thomas L. McDonald at patheos goes one further:

I have a more serious reason for resisting it. Normalization of transsexualism is not just the trailing edge of the gay rights movement: it’s the leading edge of the transhumanism movement. It’s a deeply gnostic sense of the body that is at cross-purposes with a healthy understanding of the individual. It’s also driven by the idea that we can redefine fundamental issues of humanity by mere acts of will. It is the Nietzschean will to power applied, forcefully, to the body and sexuality itself.It’s bad enough when this will to power warps instruments of civilization such as the family and marriage, but in transhumanism it seeks to bend the meaning of our embodied being. Nothing good can come of this.

He points out that science is no longer based on truth (biology, emperical evidence, and so forth) but is "merely a matter of assuaging hurt feelings." It stands to reason that politics, religion, education, economics, and the rule of law must therefore follow.
Well, if you can't beat em, join em. To hell with 2015! Let this be Year 1, BC, of our Brave New World (the BC, of course, stands for "Bruce-Caitlyn".) And let's rename North America too, while we're at it. Maybe we can call it Trans-ill-vain-ia or something.

Oh, and in future, being cast out of polite society will surely be the least of our worries. Reign of terror? You ain't seen nothin yet. There are guys roaming the planet who don't give a tinker's dam about hurt feelings (except their own). There won't be any Bruce-Caitlyn debate with these monsters.

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Stupid question: How do you "counsel" someone who wants to chop off your head?

This is why these barbarians have been gaining ground. If only there was a cure (other than decapitation) for Delusional Liberal Leftyism.  I chuckle at the persistent use of the appellation "Norwegians" for the accused. Hint: their names are NOT Sven, Jorge and Nils. 

Neighbouring Denmark [...] has tried what it calls a soft approach, reintegrating foreign fighters through counselling and assistance in finding housing and work.

Maybe Marie Harf can get a job in Denmark if she loses her current situation. On a related note, war is horrible, but at this point, what's the alternative?  

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As I was saying... Procrastination

Not the forehead of the author, 

who was regrettably too sick to attend Ash Wednesday Mass

Oh my. There are lots of reasons why I haven't been blogging much... well, at all. But some things are just better kept inside, or in the confessional, or at the therapist's, at least for the time being. (Just kidding about the therapist... not that there's anything wrong with seeing one.) Actually, I was seeing a therapist for a while-- a physiotherapist, for my ruined knees (thanks, volleyball and badminton! I love you dearly, but you wreck people's joints), but I had to stop seeing him, because I didn't have time, due to a bunch of other challenges in my life, which I can't talk about (yet) because they involve other people, who have a right to privacy.

It's also hard to blog about funny stuff (or crow about vintage kitchen finds from Value Village) when people on the other side of the planet are being decapitated by Random Lone Wolf Mentally Ill Marginalized Underemployed Violent Extremists of No Particular Religion, simply for being Christian  Egyptian "citizens". I'm rambling.

We were talking about procrastination, which I am really horrible at combatting. That and laziness, which make for a pretty deadly combination, because it does things like prevent you from telling friends how much the friendship means/has meant to you, and then they die and things like that. Thank goodness for heaven (if I get there), where I may get another chance.

So here it is, the 4th day of Lent, and I'm only now getting around to thinking about what I should "do" to observe it.  I know you are not supposed to brag about your mortifications, but this is not really bragging so much as informing. And sometimes by telling other people what you are doing (or giving up), it helps or inspires them. Or not. But for starters, I have decided to give up Not Blogging for Lent. I hope that helps a bit with both the laziness and the procrastination.
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"He enjoyed it."

I agree. There is no other explanation. I'm going to go cry for a little while now. God help us all.
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The Sultan spells it out

Even human monsters are human. They explain things in terms of their egos. They are always defending themselves against some form of oppression and looking for someone to sympathize with their outrage.
Muslim terrorists are no different. The Taliban just poisoned a girls school as part of their campaign to defend Afghanistan from women who can read and write. Hamas fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus in defense of Palestine. Tamerlan Tsarnaev put down a bomb next to an 8-year-old boy in defense of Islam.

Islam, as one of the great world religions, has a long history of needing to be defended against small boys, blind female poets and elderly cartoonists.

[...]
 Western liberals like to think of Islam as a private religion, in the tradition of most of its extant religions, but it isn't. Islam cannot function for very long as a private religion just as Communism could not function for very long as a private experiment on a few communal farms. It is an all or nothing system. Its fundamental expression is public. In private, it withers and dies.
The private Islam need not be defended with bombs. The public Islam must be. And as with so many totalitarian systems, when it speaks of freedom, it means slavery, when it talks of peace, it means war, and when it claims defense, it means attack.

As I've said, he's the Jewish Mark Steyn.

Daniel Greenfield. Read it all. 
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Because you never know when those 'artistic' skills will come in handy

Just EWWWW. From my local paper:

Horrifying, not least because somewhere on the planet, it's happening. Pretty much every day. Not simulated. And not with beach mats. God help us.

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A Tale of Two Americas

If Ansar al-Sharia and their various allies around the globe have their way, Lena Dunham would be treated exactly as was Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for the crime of urging girls to read.

And it is the Tyrone Woods of the world who are out there every single day where their lives are literally on the line doing their damndest to protect a 26-year-old Lena Dunham's right to act like a "Girl" on HBO.

But where is Dunham politically? Oh right. She's with the guy who knew Tyrone Woods was trapped there in Benghazi determined to rescue his colleagues from some seriously deadly war-on-women types.

Damning. Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator
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The relativistic idolatry of "Peace"

Peace: I don't think that word means what you think it means.  Mybad.  Forgot to post the link. Andrew McCarthy at NRO. "Sharia and Freedom"

Religion as cosmetic reverence shorn of substantive content is a virtue only the postmodern, post-doctrinal West could love: its self-congratulatory elites having evolved beyond anything so quaint as doctrine and arrived at . . . nihilism. Ratzinger knew better. Doctrinal differences never lose their salience because it is doctrine that defines a believer. To airbrush our differences — even for the well-intentioned purpose of elevating “peace” as a transcendent value — is to deny the essence of who we are.

[...]

There is no common concept of God, and the mush that passes for this feel-good illusion cannot obscure that real faiths exist. They are different because they represent different claims about ultimate truth. One cannot apprehend what those claims are, and how the believer is apt to act on them, without studying doctrine and respecting the divergences between faiths. Substantive differences, civilizational chasms, and supremacist ambitions do not evaporate just because we wish to believe everyone wants “peace.”

[...]

Sharia-compliant Islam is ascendant. In the Middle East, about 80 percent of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan tell pollsters they desire to live under sharia strictures. Even in the Far East, in Indonesia, where the practice of Islam tends to be more moderate due to its syncretism with other traditions of worship, sharia is on the march — preferred by half the population . . . and rising. Throughout the West, including in the United States, governments are under pressure from their swelling, aggressive Muslim communities to accept and adopt sharia standards — legitimizing them in our law and our culture, even as their brute repression of speech degrades our capacity to assess the wages of conferring legitimacy.

"Peace" at the price of sharia? No thank you.
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Flannery, as usual, has proven prophetic

Even when she's only making up titles.

You can't have free speech if it makes some people really, really mad.

The very right that laid the foundation for Western civilization is increasingly viewed as a nuisance, if not a threat. Whether speech is deemed imflammatory or hateful or discriminatory or simply false, society is denying speech rights in the name of tolerance, enforcing mutual respect through categorical censorship.

Coercing people into 'respecting' one another: good luck with that. 
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Maybe it was motivated by an earnest desire to share the sizzling crispy tastiness

We are truly beyond satire: in a world where synagogues and churches are bombed or torched; Jews, Christians and assorted diplomats are murdered; flags are burned, beheadings are routinely called for; riots du jour; girls and women barbarically injured or killed (by their menfolk and sometimes even their mommies!) in 'honour' violence (or just for fun, as in FGM); Free Speech having its throat slit before getting thrown under the bus...  by Americans!

...Cops in Canada are calling bacon a hate crime. (Cuz, like, a pile of bacon on the sidewalk is morally equivalent to killing an ambassador and stuff.)

Is it a hate crime if he wanders into the wrong neighbourhood?

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Mr. Greenfield and his Steynesque ways

It is a mistake to think of such riots as a reaction to blasphemy. One might as well call the Fourth of July a reaction to fireworks. When the weather is warm, the economy is lousy and some politician stands to benefit from shouting, "Death to America" at an embassy or a fried chicken place, then the internet cafes in Cairo and Karachi begin buzzing with bearded men eagerly searching for something properly blasphemous to outrage the sensibilities of Muslim burghers waiting around to be shocked by the decadent infidels with their cartoon-drawing, chess-playing and kite-flying ways.


Blasphemy for Fun and Prophet

Could he be the Jewish Mark Steyn?

This guy is hilarious, even when he's scary.  Daniel Greenfield aka Sultan Knish.

"We are trying to hammer home the message that Salafists are normal people," an Egyptian Salafist told CNN, without acknowledging that Salafists with hammers are the last thing that anyone wants to see. "We eat the same food, drink the same beverages and frequent the same hangouts. So don't be surprised when you find Salafists sitting next to you at Costas, sipping lattes." And then possibly blowing up the place on the way out.

From his article "All the Islamophobia You Can Shake a Stick At."
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Barry does Vegas

As only Mark Steyn can tell it.

The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming "We love you," too drunk on his celebrity to understand that this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. [...] 

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: "And obviously our hearts are broken..." Yeah, it's totally obvious. [...]

When it comes to a flailing, blundering superpower, I am generally wary of ascribing to malevolence what is more often sheer stupidity and incompetence.

A must-read.

Say what you will about Dubya, but never in a thousand years would be have behaved in this manner.
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I don't always agree with everything he says

But Daniel Greenfield sure has a way of cutting through the lying wimpy dhimmified rhetoric of Obama, the MSM, academe et al.

In Libya, we already had a tyrant like that, and we hunted him down and watched him be sodomized to death by the brave Libyan people in the name of freedom, democracy and apple pie. And then nearly a year later, the brave Libyan people were playing with our ambassador's corpse the way that they had with their tyrant's-- because once you unleash the savages, they don't just go back to hoeing olive trees and dragging sacks of sand through the desert. Why would they, when they can make ten times as much by enlisting in a militia and burning our consulates to the ground?

[...]
There are no bloodless victories, but we can choose whether to bleed our enemy or to bleed our hearts. And when our hearts bleed for the enemy, than the blood sooner or later stops being a metaphor and becomes a sticky dark red liquid on the boots of the brave Afghan people, the brave Iraqi people, the brave Libyan people or the brave Syrian people and all the other brave peoples we will set out to save from the hells they make for themselves.

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Thanks, Communism!

Russia is reeling in horror as crosses are cut down, relics are stolen from churches, and a mother and daughter are found murdered in their apartment with the words “Free Pussy Riot” scrawled on the wall in what appears to be their blood, following the conviction of the leftist “punk rock” band for an obscenity-laden protest in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral earlier this month.

LSN
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This ought to be self-evident

Alas, in the beyond-satire world in which we live, it takes The Steyn to point out the stuff of basic logic (and freedom). I fear for the future of western civ.

It’s easy to cheer on the thugs when they’re thuggish in your name. [...] It’s not about marriage, it’s not about gays, it’s about a basic understanding that a free society requires a decent respect for a wide range of opinion without penalty by the state.

I don't speak Communist "basic truth" Chinese

But I still think I can translate part of this news story, which is (incredibly) even being reported outside the prolife media.

The Shaanxi provincial government said in a statement that a preliminary probe had confirmed the case was "basically true"
"Crap--we got caught. Some comrade's head is going to roll."

The government did not pinpoint exactly who the perpetrators were,
"Cuz, like, it's us!"

but vowed to avoid a repeat of such a case,
"From now on, we will not get caught when we do forced late-term abortions. There will be no photographs."