CBC.ca: The Barra MacNeils' concert in Halifax

Concerts On Demand: The Barra MacNeils live in Halifax (May 15, 2011)

their website

Items of Interest, 19 October 2011

The energy trap by Tom Murphy (EB)

Richard Heinberg and Helena Norberg-Hodge Discuss the End of Growth (mp3)

Four Reasons Why We Need Less Gas

This is Your (Occupied) Land by Rebecca Solnit (Tom Dispatch)

On the solidarity economy: A Q&A with Mira Luna by Mira Luna (EB)

British 'Big Society' Author Sees Hope For Detroit

The Press and Panetta by WINSLOW T. WHEELER

Midnight in America by W. James Antle, III
A conversation with Pat Buchanan about his new book, released today.

Legionaries of Christ:
"Regnum Christi," the lay movement linked to "Legionaries of Christ", to become autonomous

Life After RC: Initial conclusions for 3gf/m and Is there hope for autonomy?

21 Days Away From Dumping the Federal Food Pyramid by Karen De CoSTER (on Mark Sisson's new book)

Dear Mark: Transformation Edition

Prince Harry A Fan of Barefoot Running

A different model for training priests

I was talking about this with MB again when I visited him in Yonkers, so here is a restatement of our discussion. I won't address the issue of clerical celibacy/continence, but if the rule were ever relaxed for the Roman rite at least to the extent that married men could be ordained to the priesthood, would their becoming priests not only solve the problem with the shortage of priests but also address other problems as well? Would this be a restoration of the practice of the early Church, choosing for ordination to the presbyterate qualified and holy elders of the local Church? This option presupposes the stability of communities so that the candidates are familiar to the faithful, even if there is no formal nomination process for the faithful.

It is likely that older candidates would have more emotional and spiritual maturity, and more experience from which they could give direction or address various pastoral issues. (However, age alone will not help those men who have been too emasculated.) They could be trained in philosophy and theology through a longer apprenticeship, after retiring from the secular world. They would still rely upon the community for support, unless it were permitted for them to hold another job. But that would require a very different sort of political economy than what we have today.

I would not say that this is the ideal model of ordaining men to the priesthood (though it is somewhat the model used by Opus Dei). But perhaps it could be used to supplement the normal selection of younger candidates, who go through the seminary. How old would these men be when chosen? Mid-40s or late 40s? Or their 50s? It might be preferable that the majority of their children had become adults. How much time spent in the exercise the priesthood would make the investment of community in such candidates worthwhile? And how early in the process could they become transitional deacons? (This underscores the importance of getting people to take better care of their health and become better informed, so that not only do they live longer but they are healthy, fit, and mentally sound longer as well.)

I believe that Aristotle, in his Politics, recommends that it should be the elders of a community who become devoted to divine things, including performing worship of the gods, once they have retired from the active life. Does this have some resonance with the practice of the early Church?

If older married men could become priests, would their discernment process be as difficult as it is for those who are considering celibacy?

Is there still a place for high school seminaries in the Latin rite? Candidates for the dioceses and the orders (for example, the Jesuits) tend to be older these days, and they have some life experience, but do they really have the maturity? Or a properly formed masculinity?

Deadliest Warrior

I think the premise for the show is rather dumb, since you can't really compare the skills of a historical group in the abstract. It's something armchair generals might do or bored geeks who don't do any real combat training. The technical illustrations for the show might appeal to some men, though. Couch potatoes.

SPIKE
U.S. Army Rangers vs. North Korean Special Operations Forces - Episode 303
www.spike.com
Spike Full Episodes Spike Video Clips Spike on Facebook

Time Kennedy is supposedly in this episode.

Items of Interest, 18 October 2011

'Catholicism' Series Comes to PBS
Chicago priest Father Robert Barron takes viewers on a catholic, and Catholic, journey
by Steven D. Greydanus

Local TV listings.

Age-Old Distributism Gains New Traction

The breakdown the populace of the United States into factions that transcend state borders, or the failure of the National Government to unify disparate elements? With the loss of a proper scale to the political community there is a loss of identity and solidarity. The criticism of those participating in OSW and such as whiners and slackers and spoiled has not been little. The latest example is the counter-protest mounted on twitter: "We are the 53%": Hardship over Societal Well-being



Going back to diversity? by Catrina Pickering

Why You Should Care About Food Policy With Judith McGeary

If You Eat, You Better Occupy Wall Street

John Robb, Why the US Middle ClASS IS Broken

It's Time to Break the Power of the Political Parties

Patrick Cockburn, How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land

Kelley Vlahos profiles Winslow Wheeler

Julius Evola, American "Civilization"
A Contemporary Evaluation of Francis Parker Yockey, Part 2

Stephen Pinker on Violence:
Delusions of peace by John Gray
Stephen Pinker argues that we are becoming less violent. Nonsense, says John Gray
The Better Angels of Our Nature: the Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes
WSJ
Guardian review
Big Think
A History of Violence

Thomas Fleming:
Barry of a Thousand Days and Republican Cain might be keen, but is he able?

Rod Dreher:
What I Wish Every Bishop Would Get
Nihilism, Emotivism, and Our Millenial Future

Overpopulation:
The secular humanists are raising the alarm again...
Feeding 9 Billion by 2050
Seminar Series: "Is the planet full?"

Population 7 Billion: It’s Time to Talk - WEBCHAT

I used to be a big fan of the Population Research Institute, and they are right to uphold natural law and the Church's teaching on contraception and abortion, but it seems to be rather naive about limits and the dependence of the global food system on cheap energy. The Green Revolution in agriculture which enabled industrial agriculture to support so many people was only possible because of oil. It would be right for PRI to recognize this, and push for local solutions and sustainable development.

Diet and Health:
Mark Sisson introduces his new book.

Bear Grylls

Music:
Enya My My! Times Flies!


Ensemble Caprice: La Follia and the Gypsies, San Francisco Early Music Society

Some Korea items

Korea Times: Pondering future of traditional 'hanok' villages

AllKpop: Lee Young Ae Graces Cover of Marie Claire Korea

Some anecodotal evidence at a certain notorious PUA blog:

I’m in Korea right now. What shocks me (even compared to when 6 was living here 5-7 years ago) is the profound change.

First, Koreans have almost no children. A couple might – might – have one child. The birth rate is so shockingly low that the population of ethnic Koreans is literally dive-bombing. Combined with emigration (a lot of smart Koreans want to get out – life is here brutal for most), ethnic Koreans are just not having children. At all.

Hordes of women aren’t getting married or having babies. There are record numbers of unmarried 35-55 year-olds. Many of these have never married, I’m not sure how much, but scores of them. The women don’t want to breed. Why?

- Suitable men are absent. The men are feminized, women have huge amounts of economic power on their own, and “dating up” is difficult: the working life for men is a savage grindstone that literally wears men out; they run like athletes just to stay in place, and most don’t quite make it. They have nothing to offer women who want a stable life. And the increasing power of women makes them often the equal or superiors of men.

Large numbers of women are having affairs with married men with means and moxy. Single guys go virtually unsexed. Their options are almost nil.

- Life is without recourse: One lost job can bankrupt a family. There’s no social safety net. No state pension scheme. Have kids – risk bankruptcy.

This means a comfy welfare state that would at least allow the same-ethnicity lower classes to breed doesn’t exist. If you’re not wealthy, and you take on the expense of a child, you may utterly doom yourself.

- Focus on success and education: The narrow focus on education and success means that kids are crushingly expensive. Men and women literally work themselves to death to pay for a series of classes, special exams and trips abroad to learn English.

Upshot:

No babies.

No woman wants to marry a farmer, so the farmers are required to go afield – to Vietnam, Cambodia, anywhere – to get a wife. Any wife. Just some girl willing to live in rural Korea. This means that the countryside is literally brimming with Phillipinas and Vietnamese and SE Asians.

These men have no choice.

The increasing power of women has made them unwilling to have anything to do with men who aren’t handsome, well-moneyed and with decent, stable jobs. And even then, having even one child can destroy the family.

With increasing female power has come divorce – now rending families and devastating the social fabric.

In this maelstrom, incidentally, it’s prime pickings for any Western guy who wants to date attractive women.

So ponder this, people. The US started down this road decades ago.

Either Korea allows immigration or it profoundly alters every social movement that has ripped it since 1975 or or forces people to breed at gunpoint.

The lack of babies is literally mass national suicide over here. The stats don’t lie: Korea is literally vanishing.

China’s not far behind, ironically, though with 1.7 billion more or less ethnically Chinese types in mainland China alone they’ll be able to absorb some demographic collapse.

The last factor is the elite in Korea. Almost all of them are American-educated. They value all things American, especially knowledge, over everything else. Liberal and marxist bullshit has driven itself deep into the Korean psyche.

What Kim Il Sung utterly failed to do, Harvard accomplished neatly.

Instead of lying about their intent to marry, couldn't men just demand that women have the same amount of savings and debt before they even talk about marriage, and that she be obligated to contribute an equal share to paying for the house, not just expenses? Women shouldn't complain if they want real equality -- 50% of burden of providing should be on them.

Fifth Ape Promo

Natural movement sutff: their blog post (via Mark Sisson)


Mark Sisson has a new book coming out, The Primal Blueprint 21-Day Total Body Transformation, which will be released on October 18, and he has a special contest planned.

Items of Interest, 17 October 2011

David Korten: Why I’m in Solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet
11 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement

How questioning economic growth left me feeling like a “Pilgrim from the 25th Century” by Rob Hopkins (EB)

Helena Norberg-Hodge:
"The Economics of Happiness," an interview with Helena Norberg Hodge (mp3)

A Conversation with Helena Norberg-Hodge, Part I

Peak Oil:
Review of Lieutenant Colonel Fleming’s U.S. Army War College thesis on Peak Oil by Rick Munroe
(the paper)

The Iranian Assassination Plot:
GARETH PORTER, How to Spin a Plot

Study debunks myths on organic farms by Paul Hanley

PJB reads an excerpt from Suicide of a Superpower - and a post from today, AD 2041 - The End of White America?

Paul Gottfried, What in the Hell is a Paleo?

History:
Revisionism about the First Crusade? Historian Peter Frankopan is challenging a millennium of scholarship in his view of the First Crusade

More BS trying to destroy male friendship in the name of homoeroticism: Power from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment”

Catholic:
Msgr. Andrew Burnham: The Liturgical Patrimony of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Reform of the Reform
Association for Latin Liturgy Conference at St. Mary Magdalen, Brighton

Music:
Blue Heron & Ensemble Plus Ultra: Stunning Polyphony

Ron Paul's Plan to Restore America

Ron Paul Announces Ambitious 'Plan to Restore America' The text.

The press conference:

A liberal view of history

This was posted at a certain FB group: The Air I Breathe by L.Neil Smith. Note the emphasis on the individual, an exaggerated notion of liberty, and progress. It is given as a libertarian view of history, which is but one liberal version of history, akin to the Whiggish interpretation. Christopher Ferrara has written against the Austrians about the origins of the development of English capitalism vis-à-vis the enclosures (parts II and III). I think Kevin Carson has done so well. There would not have been the development of modern English capitalism (or British power) without the state.

The protection of liberty as a check on the abuse of power and bad governments may be even more important in a republic than in those polities where only one or a few rule. Nonetheless, in itself it is not the end of society, and libertarians who take the negative conception of liberty or freedom too far so as to deny the government's legitimate protection of morality are wrong.

One can see a tension between traditional conservatism and liberal conservatism at websites like ISI and its First Principles Journal. Another thing to note is how many contemporary conservatives talk about "Western civilization" without acknowledging the centrality of Christianity to American or European civilization. Some may be trying to advance a post-Christian version of Western civilization or to communicate with a non-Christian audience; others are just liberals attempting to claim that their tradition goes further back in antiquity than it really does.*

Russell Kirk who is held dear by many conservatives, was not a liberal but a Christian and he held the Christian understanding of Western understanding. See his "The Common Heritage of America and Europe," for example. Other exponents of the Christian understanding would be Christopher Dawson (The Making of Europe) or Hilaire Belloc (Europe and the Faith).


Even if it is possible "in theory" to maintain certain aspects of Western culture without being them vivified by Christ, can we separate the de-Christianization of the West from the spiritual warfare that is behind it? Besides, while most conservatives in academia and so on are trying to spread their ideas and message to a broad audience, what are they doing, as citizens, to further the cause of localism (states' rights, for example), or to counter corporatism? Too many hold on to the ideology of capitalism as a part of their conservatism, many of whom do not have real-life experience as a producer or laborer, occupying rather privileged positions in society instead. The university, for the most part, no longer exists as a locus of culture, neither representing the community nor serving it and its interests. It's just another part of the system seeking to perpetuate it in order to preserve itself.

The time for lectures is over -- one must be an example of what one believes.

*This would not apply to paleolibertarians like Tom Woods who acknowledge the centrality of Christianity but nonetheless attempt to interpret the silver age scholastics as being precursors of the Austrian school.

Related:
An Austrian responds to Christopher Ferrara's book The Church and the Libertarian (a review of that book by Thomas Storck - letters to the editor)
Christopher A. Ferrara: The Church & the Libertarian: A Defense of Catholic Teaching on Man, Economy and State (mp3)
Paleocrat's YT channel

Russell Kirk: The Conservative Convert

Someone, I can't remember who and at what website (perhaps it was Alternative Right) posited the thesis that the success of Anglo-American civilization is due to the nuclear family being the dominant model of family organization, rather than the extended family. Was nuclear family always dominant in the United Kingdom, at all levels of society? And even if this is true, can such a causal relationship be established? Might it not be the case that the success of Anglo-American civilization (as measured in wealth and power) was due to the success of those forces concentrated control, which were able to do so because there was no effective opposition from other parts of society? Hence, the nuclear family, rather than being a director contributor to that sort of success, was too weak to prevent centralization and industrialization (and the concomitant loss of political and economic freedom).

25 Years with the Anonymous 4

The Choral Mix with Kent Tritle

A futile grand gesture?

“I would like to announce I have decided to convene a ‘Year of Faith’, which I will explain in an apostolic letter. This ‘Year of Faith’ begins on October 11, 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Vatican II, and ends on November 24, 2013, for the Solemnity of Christ, the King of the Universe. It will be a moment of grace and commitment to a more complete conversion to God, to strengthen our faith in Him and to proclaim Him with joy to the people of our time.”

-Pope Benedict XVI from this weekend

Insight Scoop: Benedict XVI announces "Year of Faith"; presents Apostolic Letter, "Porta fidei"

What does this add that we should not already be getting in the teaching we receive from our bishops and the homilies we hear at Mass? It is good for our minds to be directed to God, but should we not be practicing this mindfulness first of all?The theological virtue of faith is important as it is the beginning of the Christian life and our friendship with God, and provides the basis of our call to evangelize.But the "Year of Faith" sounds too vague; what we need is solid catechesis and teaching from our bishops. Like other previous special years, the local Churches will have some coordination with Rome to varying degrees. The diocesan bureaucracy may publicize the year and there will be special events.

But does it really do anything when the Faith is not being taught, and those who have authority
are not cleaning house? I suppose the pope is just doing his job, teaching the Universal Church. He can't just exhort bishops to make sure they are immersed in Sacred Tradition and to be good pastors, can he? One may not like this sort of direction constantly "coming from the top" but is there any choice when so many bishops are of poor quality? Or can the pope rely on orthodox bishops to police other bishops near them by declaring them out of communion when necessary? Is the authority of a fellow bishop sufficient, or does this need to be "ratified" by the pope? And does excommunication automatically entail the loss of episcopal authority? And what can be done about bishops who are not heterodox, just weak pastors?

Edit. The motu proprio.

Also from Zenit:
New Evangelization Council Gearing up for Synod
Dicastery to Present Initiatives to the Pope

Pontiff to Mark Feast of Guadalupe With Special Mass
Gesture of Solidarity for Peoples of Latin America

Saint's Secret: To Pray and Suffer
Author Tells Story of Luigi Guanella, to Be Canonized Oct. 23

Sandro Magister:
The Pope's Favorite Film: "Mission"
In the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church reacted to the secularist offensive in Europe with a spectacular missionary expansion on the other continents. Benedict XVI wants the miracle to be repeated today. His next voyage: to Africa

Pornography, Public Morality, and Constitutional Rights by Robert P. George

Public Discourse (via Mere Comments)

More rights talk:

When we bring this reality into focus, it becomes apparent that the familiar depiction of the debate over pornography regulation as pitting the “rights of individuals,” on the one side, against some amorphous “majority’s dislike of smut,” on the other, is false to the facts. The public interest in a cultural structure—in which, as Dworkin says, “sexual experience has dignity and beauty”—is the concrete interest of individuals and families who constitute “the public.” The obligations of others to respect their interests, and of governments to respect and protect them, is a matter of justice.

It is in a special way a matter of justice to children. Parents’ efforts to bring up their children as respecters of themselves and others will be helped or hindered—perhaps profoundly—by the cultural structure in which children are reared. Whether children themselves ever get a glimpse of pornographic images in childhood is a side issue. A decent social milieu cannot be established or maintained simply by shielding children from such images. It is the attitudes, habits, dispositions, imagination, ideology, values, and choices shaped by a culture in which pornography flourishes that will, in the end, deprive many children of what can without logical or moral strain be characterized as their right to a healthy sexuality. In a society in which sex is de-personalized, and thus degraded, even conscientious parents will have enormous difficulty transmitting to their children the capacity to view themselves and others as persons, rather than as objects of sexual desire and satisfaction.

Is this really a matter for particular justice, rather than legal justice and charity (or benevolence)?

A quick response to Gerald J. Russello

Conservatives, Politics & Culture: A Response to Claes Ryn (Claes Ryn: How Conservatives Failed "The Culture" - Modern Age)

Mr. Russello writes:

If one looks, there are ways to build a vibrant culture for oneself and one's family, but this is predicated on the same false prophecy if individual self-creation that liberalism has preached; it can ever be only a partial solution. What is lacking when Ryn wrote, and even now, are conservatives who can grapple imaginatively with the new technologies and media to develop a true counter-narrative to secular liberalism.

One might argue that the internet has enabled "conservatives" to communicate their ideas to a broad audience. They just need to advertise better. The problem though is that Mr. Russello seems to think in terms of mass culture that accompanies a polity that is too large. It is not clear what Mr. Russello is criticizing with respect to the individual and family -- maybe I need to read more Kirk. The problem, as he seems to be alluding, is that culture is not invented but inherited, but in order to be received one must first be a part of the community, so what is one to do if there is no community? Mass media will not replace community, nor will it really create it since its intended audience is too large and diffuse. What conservatives need to do is to rebuild [family] networks and recover what culture they can within a local community. Some areas may be better equipped to do this than others (e.g. the South). the internet may teach about the importance of culture, but virtual and intentional communities are not enough.



I hope the story of Jonah is not fiction -- he would make a good patron saint for me at the moment, assuming that he changed his attitude and became one of the just ones.

2011 Una Voce Symposium

Audio files for the following are available.

Opening Statements:
John C. Rao, D. Phil. (Oxon)
Director, The Roman Forum

Distributism: The Libertarian Caricature vs. the Reality
Christopher A. Ferrara

Distributism and the Coming Crash or How to Rebuild the World
John Médaille

Apparently Philip Blond was in the audience.

Related:
Occupy Wall Street by Ryan Grant

WNTA Radio Youngblood and Fleming

Apparently Dr. Fleming's appearances on the Paul Youngblood Show are being archived - I don't know if they will maintain a large archive or just the most recent episode. Last Friday's episode is up. (The zipped file.)

CFSC 15th Annual Conference: Food Justice: Honoring our Roots, Growing the Movement Community Events

Free and open to the public, November 4 - November 8

Community Food Security Coalition 15th Annual Conference

Today's Panhandle Country

I think it was a special tribute to Bill Monroe - archived audio.

Feist

Studio performance for Yahoo Music. Pitchfork interview. She also appears in the October 4 episode of Letterman.

Items of Interest, 16 October 2011

C4SS: Alternative Currency: Coming to Stores Near You?

Yes Magazine: Less is More: 5 Steps to Redefine Making a Living
Check out the New Livelihoods issue.

John Robb, LINKS: October 16, 2011

Lindsay Curren, OccupyWallStreet From Your Home and Targeting Banks in the Broad Light of Day

After the Storm: The Instability of Inequality by Nouriel Roubini (via the localizer blog)

Conservatives, Politics & Culture: A Response to Claes Ryn by Gerald J. Russello

Peter Gemma reviews Pat Buchanan's Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? Mr. Buchanan is scheduled to appear on the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday, October 25.


Alternative Right:
The Conservative Canon
Columbus Day and Us
The Sage of Cupertino by William Fankboner

More on Steve Jobs: A god of our age (via Insight Scoop - see this post)

Welmer, Entitlement Mentality Prompts Women to Put Themselves in Harm’s Way

Something on AG Holder and Fast and Furious - he didn't know anything and this wasn't meant as a ploy for stricter gun control laws? Really?

Will the US Military ever adopt maneuver warfare? Fabius Maximus: Attritionist Letter #7 – “Trust one another” is the motto (“trust be damned” is often the reality)

Catholic:
Jeffrey Tucker, Solesmes and Gregorian Rhetoric Revisited

Medievalists.net: The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars By Stephen O’Shea

Denigrating the Extended Family and Tribalism

Some who try to capture the mean and be the voice of "moderation" or of "reason" warn about the dangers of tribalism or of putting too much emphasis on the importance of the extended family. I think they are being contrarian out of pride. (Again, a criticism that could be leveled against myself?)

Do they really expect the central government to produce cohesiveness among a fragmented populace, or to force people to stay together when they lack a common identity and solidarity? With what do they have to compare tribalism? The atomistic individualism of contemporary American society, in which there is little solidarity and most relations are based primarily on contractual justice? Even the word "society" needs to be used loosely when referring to many population centers in the United States. How is this state of affairs supposed to be an improvement over tribalism?

Some may believe that this represents the impartiality lauded by liberalism. But the lack of significant connections or a network grounded first of all on blood ties is not the same as having the virtue of being just towards everyone. One can be "tribal" and nonetheless do what justice (and the order of charity) require towards others, unless one holds to a liberal conception of justice, which equates preference (based upon natural inclination and reason) with (immoral) bias.

Having preferences for one's own group, based upon family and one's connections to a community, is right and proper. How can North American critics have any idea of what this actually entails when they do not truly live in community in the first place. Some think their associations, taken together in their mind as a form of an intentional community, is the proper substitute for a local community. They are wrong, especially when they expand the notion of community to encompass the relationships with near-strangers on the Internet.

Act Of Valor (2012) Official Movie Trailer HD Navy SEALS

Yahoo! Movies - trailer.

It's taken the US this long to realized this?

AFP: With new threats, US Army must reinvent itself: Panetta

Teaching about 3GW and 4GW and similar concepts has been around for a while, and yet the Military Industrial Complex shows no signs of adapting. After all, preempting high-tech weaponry and its counters probably doesn't require expensive measures for which the American taxpayer has to pay. Who will be surprised if it is found that a "smaller but agile force" still needs expensive high-tech equipment in order to maintain superiority on the information battlefield? Is anyone going to tell the secretary about the impact of too much information on the OODA loop and how decision-making should be at the lowest unit level as possible, in order to facilitate flexibility? Who's going to school him on 3GW and 4GW?

I think this sort of talk about streamlining the military and preparing it for "unconventional" warfare has been around for a while,not just in the wake of the second Iraq War. I don't see the Uhmerican Empire making any substantial changes in its war-fighting.