Enough to take the Word Away from the Radicals?

I don't think so. What is needed? Resolution of an intellectual problem with logic? Or countering pride? One can only emphasize equality of dignity before grappling with sex differences and differences in functions and roles. It won't be that difficult to convince "secular" feminists that women are equal in dignity to men (though some may actually believe that women are greater in dignity); but women nonetheless having different roles within the family and community? That sort of inequality is precisely what is in contention. (And the religious basis for dignity will probably be irrelevant to the secular feminists, many of whom are atheists and/or hostile to religions deemed patriarchal.)

Zenit: Mariology Conference Participant Sheds Light on Christian Feminism, Respect for Human Dignity

Why does Zenit choose to avoid pressing the question of women having careers?

Dodd: It's a spiritual virginity and motherhood, as John Paul II had certainly brought out in his different teachings. For one thing, a woman who stays at home – whether she is a wife, or a wife and a mother, can see her equality of dignity, her importance of communicating her thoughts and ideas, first of all to her husband, and then secondly as a teacher for her children – whether she's formally home schooling them or not, because parents are always primary teachers of their children. There is a sense of her equal dignity, and her right, and her privilege to speak her mind and totally give herself to her husband, to her children, and to require and teach them to respect her if they don't.

In this answer it is only implied that men have the ultimate authority within the family. Would it be that controversial to say it flat out?

Related:
Archive for Dr. Gloria Falcão Dodd
her dissertation abstract

Two on a Disputed Question

Not a perennial question, as we probably haven't been asking the question that long - only since relations between men and women have become more casual.

FOCUS: Can Men and Women Really Just Be Friends? (a bit better than Boundless?)
Athol Kay: Men and Women Can't Be Friends

Counterculture

Mark Mitchell, The Culture of Hospitality

It's a good strategy for traditional localists and Christians as well. Moreover, Christians should rely less on organizations, professional charity-givers and more on "informal" communal bonds.

Might the movie about St. Augustine, Restless Heart, be helpful in helping us get some perspective about how to live as Christians in community? Might Blessed Frederic Ozanam be a model for layman, even though he was living in a nation-state in its heyday? Saints can resist the dehumanizing tendencies of expanding political units through love and the protection of community, but they must realize in some fashion what they are up against. It is not sufficient to accept the way things are and live like everyone else because it is "normal."

Louis Bouyer's dichotomy between the church of the faithful and the church of numbers is not a pastoral problem arising from the tortuous history of Church-State relations per se, but because of the nature of the polities and political power when coupled to the inclination to sin? What check can there be on the desire for power than for other men to be organized and to protect their communities? Should the Church be trying to keep up with the state, engaging it on its level through "power politics" or the ballot, instead of pushing it towards a more humane scale by fostering local communities, which can be the bases of evangelization that they should be? If any "institution" is capable of protecting communities, the small, humane group, it is the Church. Rather than accepting the "inevitable" expansion of polities on the terms set by those in power, the Church should have zealously guarded the rights of local communities. (Too often bishops were content to go along with consolidation and the imposition of one culture as being superior?) Subvert the state through love. Legal protections will not be enough, if the laity do not care about protecting the Church.

Has the treatment of hunter-gatherer groups by the "civilized" world been rather inhumane, for the most part, even by Christian missionaries? We do not need to become anarcho-primitivists to recognize that men have a better life in smaller groups, though there may be some arguments about how big an ideal city should be.

Looking through a recent issue of Valley Catholic, I see that most of the lay leaders getting recognition are women. What feminism in the Church?

How about the argument that since the Incarnation it is no longer possible... I can't remember the rest of the argument.

To have separate nations since all are one in Christ? Some cannot see how diversity can be reconciled with universality and oneness proper to the Body of Christ. They can only envision uniformity and a single culture and government.

Related:
Christian Democratic Party (FB)
Christian Democracy and America's Future

Being Civil in Mean Times by Robert Woods

Russell Kirk's Five Iconographic Cities

Russell Kirk and the Anamnesis of the West by Bradley J. Birzer

We, like the Romans of 43bc, have forgotten our past, our traditions, and, hence, may not have a future. And like Cicero, Kirk is serving us warning. Our order, Kirk argued, is organic. That is, it is cultivated over long periods of time. It is fragile, and it requires frequent nurturing. If one generation breaks the continuity of generations, by believing itself uniquely superior to other generations, culture decays rapidly. This is what Lewis meant with the “Abolition of Man.” In essence, by breaking the continuity of generations, we abstract ourselves from reality and life, if we can even call it life. We will drown in our subjectivity and arrogant and hedonistic individualism. “The American order of our day was not founded upon ideology,” Kirk wisely wrote. “It was not manufactured: rather, it grew.” Hence, we must honor and reform (not revolutionize) what men and women left us, discerning through prudence which traditions are good and which need to be changed or discarded.

I should be a sub driver.

The Feds Can't Catch the Cartels' Cocaine-Filled Submarines by Adam Clark Estes

Also from Yahoo:
AP Exclusive: Memos show US hushed up Soviet crime



Something on Christian Bale.

A Happy Statist

Community rights vs. states rights vs. federal law by David MacLeod (EB)

I just don’t see local communities making better choices than those made at the state and federal level. This may happen in isolated pockets, but by the same token you could see vast swaths of places overturning the few gains the environmental movement has achieved on the level of federal and state policies and regulations, which is exactly what the Tea Party wants to do.

Because people can do the wrong thing, he is content to concentrate power in the hands of the few, because environmentalists, acting as the conscience of the public, will continue to labor to get them to do the right thing. Who is going to guarantee their continued "success"? We have to put our trust in another elite, in this case certain scientists, because they know through science what natural ecological limits are and such. There is no consideration of what is Constitutional.

Related:
The man without a plan: Romney has no real food and farming platform
Chris Hedges, Globalized Growth Is the Problem, Localism Is the Solution
A Land Without Farmers

Kiroran Restaurant

in Sydney - Travel Channel. It's Uighur cuisine?

Daniel Larison on Limits

Temperamental Conservatism and the Importance of Limits

If there is one thing truly alien to a conservative temperament, it is the rejection of limits. The Republican nominees believe that there ought not be any limits to American power in the world, and if they do exist at the moment they ought to be overcome. They are convinced that growth can be without limit as well. As far as they are concerned, acknowledging and respecting limits are the equivalent of embracing national decline. Unfortunately, it is exactly their rejection of limits that exhausts national strength and natural resources more quickly and hastens the coming of decline in the future.

See also his The Shrinking Foreign Policy Debate, examining the differences between the two candidates.

JHK's latest is relevant on the point of limits.

Mt. Diablo String Band

Just heard them on Pig in a Pen on KPFA - great music! They'll be playing at Jupiter Cafe in Berkeley at 5 today.

Mt. Wow

MRAs and the Androsphere

Jack Donovan covers the differences (and overlap) between both: Long Live the Manosphere!

While there continues to be an overlap I will use the label MRM to refer to legal and political issues (e.g. divorce, visitation rights), but I am definitely not in agreement with the MRAs who are egalitarians.

Something from Catholic Land Movement: Community and the Church. Relatively easy to implement if you have some families interested in an agrarian vision of life and who are willing to settle in one place. What to do, though, about those who are trapped (or willing prisoners) in the big cities or suburbia?

2012 Berkeley Old Time Music Convention

This week, starting on Wednesday night, with a square dance at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library (Earl White Stringband with caller Evie Ladin).



I may go to the dance on Saturday evening.

Another Sunday in San Francisco

I haven't written up last weekend's experiences yet. I decided to go to OLF instead of the cathedral as there wasn't time to make it to the 9:00 Mass at the cathedral. (While I wouldn't mind listening to the Schola SF again, the rest of the liturgy is... lacking.)

Next door at St. Monica, the SFFD had some sort of special Mass/celebration? (There were a few womyn bureaucrats (those promoted to higher ranks) present. Are the men of the upper ranks as out of shape too? You see quite a few fat LEOs around here, as well. Why bother with the uniform?) During the divine liturgy, we could hear the bagpipes being played outside.

Fr. Kevin was the presbyter celebrating liturgy today - he reminds me of someone... a mix between Fr. McNellis at BC and the nephew's godfather, Mr. P.

For lunch, I tried the Pearl's Deluxe Burger on Post - a deluxe burger with cheese and bacon, small fries, and strawberry shake. The shake was made using a frozen mix and strawberry syrup, but it wasn't bad. It was thick like I prefer it, though it did taste rather fake. I ordered the burger medium, but it was well-done; a tad dry, and not that tasty. The fries were cooked with batter(?), so they came out looking and tasting a bit like tater tots, as well as onion rings. (Maybe the frying oil needs to be changed.) About $15 for the meal, cheaper than ROAM (I had tried the new location on Fillmore last week), but the difference in quality is palatable. The burger patty isn't much different from what you might get at Bongo Burger, Crepevine, or Bob's Giant Burgers.

Maybe I should give up burgers, since ground beef is rather limited in its potential.

Next restaurant to try: Gott's or Burger Meister.

Robert George Interview in America Magazine

From last year: 'Sustained by Faith'
An interview with Robert P. George by Kevin Spinale

Use Ecological Breastfeeding

(via The Thinking Housewife)

Matthew Stein: How Prepared Are You?

Peak Prosperity: Matthew Stein: How Prepared Are You?
Advice from the guru of personal resiliency
by Adam Taggart

mp3 - YT

When Technology Fails


Survival Kit - Part 1 and Part 2

More videos after the jump.

An Anarchist's View of Voting

Just Say “No” by Gary Chartier

Misc.
A Case for Classical Education

Carolyn Baker Defends LCWR

The impact of evolutionary nuns on shaping the next culture by Carolyn Baker

An instance of sticking with Team Woman? Far from being a threat to the Vatican, they are a threat to Catholic Christians and themselves if they are passing on heresy while engaged in their "good" works.

Those on the left may praise the LCWR because they are in agreement on what they consider to be important (and also because they are standing up to "patriarchy") but when it comes to questions about Christian dogma, they should mind their own business. But liberal busybodiness is a part of the post-Yankee mentality?

Another Piece on Jack Keruoac

New English Review (link from this comment at AmCon)

Women's Use of Tattoos

The Social Pathologist refers to a study linking tattoos on women to sexual experience in How to Screen the Good Girls from the Bad.

Does this correlation between getting tattoos and sexual experience apply overseas as well, for example to Korean female celebs who have adopted the trend of getting tattoos? I suspect it does. Maybe Koreans, in their naivete and idolizing, are a bit slow in realizing this, and those celebrities, no doubt, would deny it. That sort of scandal could cost them a portion of their fan base, so it's "all about being fashionable."

Related:
Brendan, Dalrock and Sluts. (NSFW)

Power from the People

Power from the people (new Community Resilience Guide) by Daniel Lerch (EB)

Chelsea Green
Greg Pahl
Resilience.org - Greg Pahl
Van Jones: Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst


(alt)

You Can't Have It All.

LGR fisks a piece that was mentioned in a combox in the androsphere: If You Don’t Hold a Door Open for a Woman, then “You Must be Horrendous in Bed”. The typical Uhmerican feminist, who believes in equality and yet unequally mandates that men be chivalrous. Well, logic and consistency aren't hallmarks of feminist think feel.

The Jack Kerouac You Don't Know

Given that the movie adaptation of On the Road will be released soon, this piece at TAC was of interest: The Conservative Kerouac. How many of those going to see the movie will remain ignorant of this side of Jack Kerouac?

Hooked on Cowboy Junkies

official site; MS and FB.

Principles of Sacred Music

NLM: The Music of Roman Hurko and the Principle of Noble Accessibility

Whereas music composed for the congregation needs to be “singable”, music composed for choirs needs to be accessible to the minds and hearts of the congregation as they hear it! It needs to communicate in a musical language that the faithful can readily receive, and which through its beauty and sacred character lifts hearts to the transcendent.

While polyphony fulfills the requirement for music composed for choirs in so far as it makes use of the aesthetic sense of the faithful, it is arguably not intelligible to most lay Catholics today, who do not know Latin. Should its use, then, be reserved for a select few?

The Southern Partisan

Southern Partisan has some online content, but it's limited. Are back issues available? Here's one article: Did Northern Aggression Cause the Civil War?. An oldier piece from Dr. Clyde Wilson that was originally published in Southern Partisan: The Yankee Problem. (The Yankee Problem Again.)


When Treason Becomes The Norm: Why The Proposition Nation, Not Islam, Is Our Primary Enemy (via CHT)

Misc.
Paul Craig Roberts on the duopoly: Disposable America