May 29, 2010


Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.”

- General Logan, Memorial Day Proclamation, General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

May 26, 2010

What Fools Do

"Now there sits a man with an open mind. You can feel the draft from here." - Grouch Marx

Just exactly how erumpently asinine was it for congressional democrats to stand up and applaud Mexican President Felipe Calderone’s denouncement of Arizona’s immigration law? The Internet hath not space to contain a proper answer. Let us here, however, provide you sundry observations of our own.

Instinctually, family members do not take kindly to a guest who comes into their home and sharply criticizes one of their own. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Intellectually, thinking persons are quite often stunned when encountering one who lacks the mental capacity to acknowledge the bone-snapping irony of his condemning others for refusing to pay the damages on a catastrophe for which he himself is responsible. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Politically, elected officials have rarely endeared themselves to their constituents by associating with a foreign leader sharply critical of sensitive domestic issues. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Ethically, one must question the integrity of a leader who would deliberately misrepresent the truth before an international forum for reasons we can only assume involve murky wheelings and dealings with another failing regime. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Morally, most find abhorrent the notion of a national leader standing before another nation’s government and demanding they renounce their own laws designed to protect the sovereignty of their own nation. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

By any measure, congressional democrats are, at best, fools; for standing up and applauding a sock-puppet like Calderone in this instance is what fools do. As for those constituents who continue to support these fools—no doubt believing them to be heroic champions of “social and economic justice,” “racial equality,” or guarantors of a permanently dependent and thus democrat voting majority—they may, in fact, be something worse.

Cheers,

Charlie

May 17, 2010

Faith, Reason and Lunacy

A funny thing happened on the way down the slippery slope at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: someone dared utter, “STOP!”

Father Robert A. Wild, president of the university, rescinded the offer of a deanship made to Dr. Jodi O’Brien, currently a professor of sociology at Seattle University. Why? A quick glance at O’Brien’s curriculum vitae pretty well answers the question. Some highlights: How Big is Your God? Queer Christian Social Movements; Seeking Normal? Considering Same Sex Marriage; Wrestling the Angel of Contradiction: Queer Christian Identities; “Do it on the Web" Emerging Discourses on Internet Sexuality; Phone Sex, Fantasy and Disembodiment.

Oddly Wild felt that perhaps the author of such material might not be the best person to publically represent the 119 year old Catholic institution’s College of Arts and Sciences, the largest of the university.

Naturally all hell has broken loose.

Charges of homophobia (had we mentioned O’Brien is a lesbian?), sexism, intolerance, and injustice swarm like locusts. Legal complications regarding the botched handling of the offer process have defenders of Wild and the university laying low. And fingers are pointing in all directions as to how the offer was ever made in the first place.

Behold the fruits of political-correctness. Marquette, like nearly every other institution of higher learning in America, has long been bending over backwards to appease the ever-increasingly preposterous demands of the champions of that which is politically fashionable: gay rights, multiculturalism and, of course, “social justice.” That among these champions—many of whom are in positions of considerable influence—are some who, by their efforts, seek not to further Marquette’s Catholic Jesuit mission but to destroy it, has likely never occurred to university leadership. Perhaps now it has.

Would that this awakening and subsequent attempts to gain footing so far down the post-Vatican II free fall proves not only successful, but seminal to the Church’s long lonely climb back to Catholicism.

Cheers,

Charlie

May 11, 2010

Goodbye Britannia

Rare is the occasion we allow another to speak for us. In this case, however, we shall happily make an exception. Our dear friend and colleague Mr. John Derbyshire of National Review has summed up our feelings regarding present-day Britain to perfection. We could add very little if we tried.

Mr. Derbyshire--for those of you who don't know--is a fellow British ex-pat who, like us, has grown weary and apathetic towards the Mother Country as she clearly no longer cares a whit about her own glorious heritage. Right then... it's off to America!

Take it away Derb:
We have a result in the British general election. David Cameron's Conservative Party has won a plurality of seats in Parliament, but not enough to govern firmly. It's hard to get very worked up about this, as the three parties in contention can fairly be described as Left of Center, Center-Left, and Tree-Hugger Left.

Certainly there is nothing conservative about David Cameron's Conservatives. It would be very difficult indeed to name anything they wish to conserve: not Britain's ancient demographic core, not the nuclear family, not restraint in public financing, not liberties of speech or assembly, not public respect for the Christian religion, not Britain's traditional wariness of European entanglements, not Britain's traditional warmth towards and co-operation with the old British-settler nations, not civic order and the suppression of crime by fair policing, not respect for rank and authority, not control over the national debt … There is no subject you can name on which Cameron's "Conservatives" wish to conserve any more than Gordon Brown's Laborites, though I'll concede that neither party would call in the U.N. to force a macrobiotic diet on the population, as Nicholas Clegg's Liberal Democrats would. Cameron and Brown may want to make homosexuals a Designated Victim Class, with special rights and privileges, but Clegg's party would make homosexuality compulsory. In this respect, at least, the Brits have dodged a bullet.

Frankly, I'm past caring. The old England I grew up in, the England of stoicism and bitter beer and dry humor, the England in which it was bad form to take public affairs too seriously, the England of puddings and bobbies and weird regional accents, of casual snobbery and dim old churches and the smell of soft coal burning, the England of, as George Orwell famously wrote, "old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning" — that England's as dead as the Wild West. It's been replaced by a multicultural bazaar with a feral underclass and a vast, suffocating public sector, neither of which it can any longer afford. The educated classes are sunk deep in ethnomasochism — hatred of their own ancestors, of themselves really. Teenage girls get pregnant and are given public housing and a dole, while married couples struggle to pay their tax bills. The borders are open to foreign agitators who loudly declare their hatred for Britain, while old folk who survived the bombs and shortages of Hitler's war are sneered at as Nazis. When you come home to find burglars have looted your house, don't bother calling the police; they'll just give you an incident number for the insurance company; but try flying the national flag in your front yard — a squad car full of cops will kick your door down and tase you in the living-room for "racism."

I couldn't care less about Britain any more. I'm nostalgic for what used to be, but I don't have any illusions any of it is coming back. These smooth-faced managerial types aim only to drag their country further along the road to perdition, with just minor differences in the speed of dragging. I said my goodbyes to England long ago. Let's turn our attention to a place that is still, in spite of some of the same dismal trends, a real country.
All sad. All true. Let's not make the same bloody mess of these United States shall we?

Cheers,

Charlie

May 7, 2010

"The country has spoken — but we don't know what they've said."


UK election results demonstrate voters' indecision about non-choices. Tory, Labour, Lib Dem... more of the same, to be sure. We are depressed, yet relieved ... as we now live in Wisconsin.

UPDATE: Good riddance Gordy!