Ukraine.

 

I recently ordered a wood carving of Our Lady of Pokrov from a Ukrainian Catholic artist on Etsy. He and his employees reside in Lviv, near Poland. 

But the deluded tyrant who is attacking his homeland has made it clear that he will not settle for less than vassalization of the whole land. I told him to not worry about completing the item and use the money as he sees fit.

I pray for his safety and for all the victims of aggression in this war.

 

Stop polishing Putin's backside.

Apologetics for Vlad the Poisoner have become a staple for some on the right, and it needed to stop years ago. 

Now would be a belated, but still good, time to quit. And never stop quitting.  

You can be opposed to American military intervention in an aggressive war by a nuclear power and not take up the cause of the probable loony who has the nukes. 

But just as distressing was the speech Vladimir Putin gave to announce it to the world. Earlier today I wrote a piece that in one line offhandedly suggested that Putin was a rational actor. I repent of having written it. If that ranting, grandiose, aggrieved wreck of a speech was delivered sincerely, then Putin has addled himself with his own propaganda, is now unpredictable, and will likely drive his nation and others to a disaster. I grant that there may be insincerity in it as well. But reports of his meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron suggest that Macron was subjected to six hours of this same ranting and could never bring Putin down to what Europeans see as the brass tacks: the Minsk agreements, the withdrawal of Russian irregulars, and a series of next steps, including diplomatic talks on the long-term security arrangements of Europe.

His speech featured the Russian litany of post–Cold War grievances, namely the broken promise not to expand NATO. “They try to convince us over and over again that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance, saying that there are no threats to Russia. Again they propose that we take them at their word. But we know the real value of such words,” he said. More disconcerting, he suggested that the expansion of NATO was meant to “serve as a forward springboard for the strike.”

Here's a background confirmation of Macron's concerns about Putin, which is significant given the French president's efforts to develop a good diplomatic relationship. 

There's a fair and reasonable argument to be made that NATO expansion was an antagonizing mistake. But that argument has to take into account the fact that Russia's neighbors have ample reasons, grounded in history and atrocity, to clamor to join. 

American apologists for foreign strongmen have never been lacking. As a child of the Cold War, whataboutism was born of that conflict, and left-wing defenses of the poor murderous Soviet Union were more abundant than the average Soviet harvest. It is disgusting to see the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens do the very same thing on behalf of a former KGB agent. 

It's beyond appalling watching American oligarchs and celebrities kow-tow to Xi. Seeing soi-disant patriotic conservatives doing the same for the tyrant in Moscow (who has clasped hands with Mao 2.0) is inexcusable.

The Children of Modernity.

All of Hitler's political ideas had their origin in the Enlightenment. These included the concept of the nation as a higher historical force, the notion of superior political sovereignty derived from the general will of the people, and the idea of inherent racial differences in human culture.

These were distinct derivations from Enlightenment anthropology which rejected premodern theology and the common roots and transcendent interests of mankind. The cult of the will is the basis of modern culture, and Hitler merely carried it to an extreme. The very concept of National Socialism as the "will to create a new man" was possible only in the twentieth century context as a typically modern, antitraditional idea. 

The same may be said of the Nazi search for extreme autonomy, a radical freedom for the German people. Hitler carried the modern goal of breaking the limits and setting new records to an unprecedented point. For no other movement did the modern doctrine of man as the measure of all things rule to such an extent. 

Thus Daniel Bell has judged that all self-centered, subjective modern culture stresses the "triumph of the will"--one of the most common Nazi concepts--and that Hitler is another typical product of modernity.

This also holds with regard to social and economic programs. No ruler in modern times has gone to such lengths as Hitler to acquire, among other things, the natural resources necessary for a modern economy. Nazi Gleichschaultung ["co-ordination", the process by which NSDAP control extended throughout society] and the effort at status revolution tended to unite German society and overcome class distinctions for the first time in German history. 

Though Nazi antiurbanism is said to have been inherently reactionary, radical antiurbanism has become a major trend of the late twentieth century. In fact, though the German war economy promoted de facto urbanization and greater industrialization, rather than the reverse, an ultimate Nazi economic goal was to balance farm and industry. When sought by liberals, this is frequently deemed to be the height of enlightenment and sophistication. Finally, Hitler was well in advance of his times in his concern about ecology, environmental reform, and pollution.

Truly large-scale genocide or mass murder is a prototypical development of the twentieth century, from Turkey and Russia to Germany, Cambodia and the countries of Africa. The unique Nazi tactic was to modernize the process, to accomplish the mass murder more efficiently and surgically than other great liquidators in Turkey, Russia or Cambodia have done. Nor was Hitler's genocidal program any more or less "rational," since the goal of mass murder is always political, ideological, or religious and not a matter of practical economic ends, pace Stalin or Mao Tse-Tung. 

--Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism: 1914-1945, pp. 203-204 (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1995). 

Bari Weiss channels Saint Anthony the Hermit.

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'”

Bari Weiss, driven out of the NYT, talks about a world gone mad with Brian Stelter, the latter of whom is baffled by the very idea.

"Where can I start? Well, when you have the chief reporter on the beat of COVID for The New York Times talking about how questioning or pursuing the question of the lab leak is racist, the world has gone mad. 

When you're not able to say out loud and in public there are differences between men and women, the world has gone mad. 

When we’re not allowed to acknowledge that rioting is rioting and it is bad and that silence is not violence, but violence is violence, the world has gone mad. 

When you're not able to say the Hunter Biden laptop is a story worth pursuing, the world has gone mad. 

When, in the name of progress, young school children, as young as kindergarten, are being separated in public schools because of their race, and that is called progress instead of segregation, the world has gone mad.

There are dozens of examples."

Weiss and several like-minded old-school liberals have established the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, doing what self-styled civil liberties organizations used to do, but now oppose, in the name of the ascendant religious ideology. 

Ultimately, Weiss and company will lose. The tides are running too strongly against them. But that does not mean it is not a fight worth having, much less that one should not stand up and be counted.

One generation's defeat can lay the groundwork for their great-grandchildren's victory.

Before you read this, ask yourself: "How much faith do I have in humanity?"

Because it will be lower when you are done.

The handcuffing of an eight year old, charges drawn up during the hearing into alleged wrongdoing, denial of medication and solitary confinement for a fourteen year old: just a few scenes from the life of the Rutherford County, Tennessee, juvenile justice [sic] system.

When "due process" means "duly processed."

A nightmarish read.

 

This is one of the school boards our Attorney General is rushing to protect.

A ninth-grade girl was raped in a public school bathroom in Loudoun County, Virginia.

The male student (alleged) rapist in question got access to the bathroom by...wearing a skirt.

Naturally, the Loudoun County School Board had the father of the victim arrested when he protested the bathroom access policy.

Oh, and the (alleged) rapist has offended again (allegedly) after being arrested.

Not that our conflict-of-interest-ridden AG will care about any of that. 

The good news about America's demographic collapse is that public school boards will be a much smaller part of American life in two generations. But in the meantime, they have become positively Catholic in their determination to be regarded as infallible and treated as unaccountable. And that will invariably come with a victim list.

And they now have the law enforcement machinery of the federal government and narrative-shaping cultural forces in their corner.

Oh, and "back the blue," eh? 

Not when they do crap like they did to Scott Smith.

 

 

 

"We regret that you noticed our enlightened book-burning."

You can tart it up all you like, but at the end of the day, you're still burning books.

And even more piquant: Catholics instigated it.

A book burning held by an Ontario francophone school board as an act of reconciliation with Indigenous people has received sharp condemnation from Canadian political leaders and the board itself now says it regrets its symbolic gesture.

The “flame purification” ceremony, first reported by Radio Canada, was held in 2019 by the Conseil scolaire catholique Providence, which oversees elementary and secondary schools in southwestern Ontario. Some 30 books, the national broadcaster reported, were burned for “educational purposes” and then the ashes were used as fertilizer to plant a tree.

Neat to see the resources of the Faithful so carefully-shepherded into the ground.

As White Goodman said in Dodge Ball: "It's a metaphor--but it really happened!"

The gauleiters of inclusion are, as stated in the title, just sorry that it came to the attention of the public:

“We regret that we did not intervene to ensure a more appropriate plan for the commemorative ceremony and that it was offensive to some members of the community. We sincerely regret the negative impact of this initiative intended as a gesture of reconciliation,” [school board spokesperson Lyne] Cossette wrote.

The old liberal consensus is on its deathbed, and illiberalism is ready to grab the spoils.

But here's the thing: this version isn't the only possible illiberal future. And behavior like this makes other versions more attractive.

"Democratic Memory."

Spain's left passed its whitewashing of Republic atrocities and free speech suppression law yesterday. Spaniards who, like one of my high school's exchange students, were glad that their grandparents fought for their faith and nation are now in legal danger for expressing that.

Exaggeration? Not in the slightest, as Stanley Payne, America's foremost historian on Spain, carefully explains.

The proposed law is highly punitive. Symbols, meetings, or statements judged to approve of the Franco regime and the victors in the civil war are deemed infractions against “historical and democratic memory.” Proposed penalties include an elaborate schedule of fines ranging from two hundred to a hundred thousand euros, the closing for a period of six months to two years of any entity found in violation, and the confiscation of the means or goods involved in any such activities. That this law will dramatically restrict freedom of expression and thus violate the Spanish Constitution is apparently irrelevant to the Sánchez government.

The Law of Historical and Democratic Memory is the most dramatic, arbitrary, and punitive proposal concerning discussions of history anywhere in the Western world. Yet the attitude it reflects is fairly common on the left, which increasingly uses governmental or nongovernmental means to restrict and punish speech that defends rightwing views, movements, and figures past or present. Politicized interpretations of history are, of course, not new. But Spain’s proposed law is a stark sign of the way the contemporary left seeks to weaponize history to achieve its goals and silence all dissent.

 . . .

The very opposite characterized the Democratic Transition of the late 1970s, which had been grounded in a keen awareness of the failures and crimes of the past and a determination that they not be repeated. As Paloma Aguilar, the leading researcher on the role of collective memory in these years, has written, “Few processes of political change have drawn such inspiration from the memory of the past, and from the lessons associated with it, as the Spanish case.” It would be difficult to find another instance in which awareness was greater. What was agreed upon was not “silence,” but an understanding that historical conflicts should be left to historians, and that politicians should not revive old grievances in their jostling for power.

Far from being “silent,” during the Democratic Transition historians and journalists were active in the extreme in all media, flooding the country with studies and accounts of the civil war and the Franco years that did not disguise the most atrocious aspects. The formerly defeated Republican army veterans were granted full recognition and pensions, with attendant honors. The Spanish state-sponsored official ceremonies of homage to fallen Republicans and former revolutionary leaders who were responsible for many atrocities returned to Spain amid public applause. Later, detailed and objective scholarly studies appeared which, though incomplete, for the first time placed accounts of the repressions by both sides on a more precise footing. All this was the opposite of “forgetting,” and it was much more careful and exact than the current agitation about historical memory, which is allergic to fact or serious research.

Communism is to historical study what strokes are to neurological function. Spain's opposition party has promised to repeal the law when they return to power. 

May it be soon.

[Host's note: Comments which do not discuss the provisions of the new Spanish law will not be published.]

Biden used "genocide" to describe the Armenian Genocide.

This is unequivocally a good thing. 

Long overdue, and bravo.

The declaration even said "Constantinople"...

This is the future Big Tech is building.

A world where slavery is acceptable so long as you adhere to HR's newest inclusivity memo.

 Hat-tip to Don and Steve Skojec for the find.

 

Unflagging apologist for papacy which hides treaty with government that operates concentration camps develops sudden interest in transparency and religious freedom.

 

Ah, Villanova's Massimo Faggioli. What can you say about a guy who calls the Holy Spirit "she" and thinks Francis is super, if not radical enough?

A lot, I suppose, but the most important part is that he is a hearty cheerleader for this pontifical era, and hails the secret concordat with the Chinese Reich as "geopolitical repositioning."

No matter the unrelenting persecution wrought on those he is supposed to regard as brothers and sisters under said shameful agreement.

The reality is, Faggioli is quite comfortable with Church-State entanglement--so long as it aligns with his political preferences.

With the right government, Massimo is very, very Vichy.

To be fair, he recently claimed to be able to discern nascent fascism in the world. 

No, not in Xi's China. But rather in the phenomenon of Catholics supporting the Trump Administration, which he attempts to describe in this characteristically-loggorheic-yet-empty meditation.

So it should be no surprise that this defender of Vatican-enforced submission to the State insists that an American circuit court judge be subjected to a religious test and her ties to a Catholic charismatic group be explored in minute detail, should she be nominated as a Supreme Court justice.

For the freedom, of course:

Such a request to examine the covenant may seem unseemly to some. After all, the Constitution says that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust.” Catholics and scholars of Catholicism know how important this foundation of freedom is in the history of American Catholics; anti-Catholic bigotry is an old and ugly story in the United States.

But this is not a matter of anti-Catholicism or even liberal bias against conservative Catholics. Barrett’s nomination would raise an important new problem: Is there a tension between forthrightly serving as one of the final interpreters of the Constitution and swearing an oath to an organization that lacks transparency and visible structures of authority that are accountable to their members, to the Roman Catholic Church and to the wider public?

Say what you will about Massimo, but he knows his shell games. He moves from potential concerns about Barrett's group to a general critique about potential problems with charismatic movements in general, never specifying anything untoward about the People of Praise. 

And he does so whilst touting about wide-open conscience protections and freedom of thought in the Church...even as he issues oily demands for Catholics to be brought to heel.

Three-Card Massimo can be fun, when you know what to look for.

Meanwhile, membership in the Knights of Columbus has been deemed to be disqualifying by the Democrats' vice-presidential nominee and Massimo was silent. Despite, you know, Knights being open with their vows and being fully in line with Catholic dogma. Because he's already crafted a rationale to smear them, with just a whiff of plausibly-denied racism, of course.

So, yeah, he's happy to see Catholics he doesn't care about get squashed by the State for any reason. He's a sincere partisan. But his arguments here are patently insincere.

Hollywood has always loved totalitarians.

First it was letting Nazis censor scripts in order to keep those sweet Deutsche Marks flowing.

Then it started a love affair with communism, which never really ended. 

Now, in an exemplary example of American efficiency, Hollywood has decided: why not both?

Xi's China has Hollywood on a choke chain, and the moguls are pantingly-happy to roll over.

Disney just dropped the live-action version of Mulan on its streaming channel.

And it's Sino-fasctastic!

The Chinese regime pre-cleared the script, and it was filmed in Xinjiang, the center of the Uighur ethnic cleansing operation. Oh, and Disney profusely thanks Communist Party agencies for their assistance in the credits.

After the film’s release last Friday, observers noted another controversial element: in the final credits Disney offers “special thanks” to eight government entities in Xinjiang, including the public security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang where several re-education camps have been documented.

The film also expresses thanks to the “publicity department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy Region Committee”, the Chinese Communist party’s propaganda department in Xinjiang. Disney has been approached for comment.

China has faced international scrutiny over its treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, where it is estimated at least 1 million residents have been detained in extrajudicial internment camps. Uighur women have reported forced sterilisations and birth control as part of a government campaign to suppress birthrates, in what experts have described as “demographic genocide”.

According to media reports before its release, Mulan was shot in about 20 locations in China, including the Mingsha Shan desert, part of which is in Xinjiang, and the Tuyuk Valley, an oasis village east of Turpan.

Filming took place in 2018, the same year China’s “strike hard” campaign in Xinjiang ramped up with the construction of the camps. According to researcher Adrian Zenz, Turpan was the first documented case of “re-education” or political indoctrination used against Uighurs to “eradicate the soil for the breeding and spread of religious extremism”.

Activists calling for a boycott of the film are now highlighting its links to Xinjiang, while other researchers noted that the public security bureau in Turpan oversees at least 14 internment camps in the area.

Human rights advocates have called on Disney to be transparent about its dealings with authorities in Xinjiang. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Disney shared its script with Chinese authorities and consulted with local advisers in order to guarantee a release in China.

Bonus: the lead actress loudly praises the Hong Kong police for their crackdown on protesters.

Remember this the next time some celebrity takes a Brave(TM) political stand on something that happened in the West. 

For the right amount of money, the movie industry would film a buddy comedy on a mass grave.

Just a reminder: Putin is evil.

America has no shortage of fans for foreign strongmen of every possible stripe.

So the fact the KGB gangster in Moscow has a fan base is hardly surprising. 

But it's still infuriating to hear his alleged Christianity touted when regime critics are the subject of assassination attempts, successful or otherwise. 

May the Lord grant the brave Mr. Navalny a complete recovery.

Tests conducted on Russian dissident Alexei Navalny at a German hospital indicate that he was poisoned, but doctors said Monday they do not believe his life at immediate risk.

The Charité hospital said in a statement that the team of doctors who have been examining Navalny since he was flown from Siberia and admitted Saturday have found the presence of “cholinesterase inhibitors” in his system.

Cholinesterase inhibitors are a broad range of substances that are found in several drugs, but also pesticides and nerve agents. However, doctors at Charite said at the moment the specific substance to which Navalny was exposed is not yet known.

The bastard.

Not unexpected, but I wasn't expecting it today:
 
Erdogan and his puppet Islamist court re-converts Hagia Sofia to a mosque.

Say goodbye to the frescoes--this time, forever. 

The light dims even more.

Uighur life in exile.

I am not the slightest fan of the Turkish strongman who is trying desperately to subvert what is left of the Republic of Turkey, but at least he is doing the right thing by taking in Uighur refugees from China. 

This essay offers a snapshot of a refugee neighborhood in Istanbul and the efforts to preserve the memories and folkways of a battered people. Preservation of culture is an act of resistance, as the experience of Iron Curtain Eastern Europe demonstrates. 

And said preservation can lead to a national resurrection, as that same experience also demonstrates.

 

"Never Again What?"

New York really is the most awful place in the United States.

All apologies to the good people who are there, among whom I count friends. 

But this fills me with a loathing I cannot quantify.

Behold your future, America: calling on the authorities to raid Jewish kids at school...and getting them to respond.

All the while loudly pretending that it's about health in a city where people have been packed armpit-to-armpit in violation of the law for weeks, whether at protests, the subways or just chilling in Central Park. Not to mention all the elderly slaughtered by State edict forcing the infected into nursing homes by their In-Case-of-Fire-Break-Glass hero.

Sure--you're all about health.

The reality is, they can safely stick it to Orthodox Jews, that's what really drives this and gives them that warm, happy feeling.

These shiny jack boots/

Are longing to stomp/
Right through the very heart of it/
New York, New York

I wanna to wake up/

In a city that welds Jews out/

And find I'm king of the parks/

Top of the rats

Those little school Jews/

Are going to pay/

We'll make a brand new Kristallnacht/

In old New York/

If we can make it there/

We'll make it ev'rywhere/
It's up to you, New York, New Yooooork!

That's the spirit!

The Jewish residents who had been welded out of their parks while thousands have marched unimpeded in America's worst pandemic zone responded eloquently yesterday.

With bolt cutters.

More footage here.

Bravo! Let's see how the Jew-hating twerp responds.

And a word to New York's municipal workers: stop following these orders.

"Bullshit."

Rand Paul, explaining why the surveillance state is all watch and no dog.

They are collecting your phone records as we speak. They did not miss a beat, even though we voted on reform, all your phone records are being collected and stored in Utah. Did it stop the attack in Paris? No.

Just like it didn't stop the Tsarnaevs, or the Chattanooga terrorist, or the Arkansas recruiting center terrorist, or the Beltway snipers, or the Jewish Community Center terrorist, or the Fort Hood terrorist...

Another reason Rubio gives me the hives. Compare Ted Cruz, who makes a bit more sense, even if he's not as good as Paul on this issue.

Trump's candidacy must go down in flames ASAP.

I'm hoping it goes down in flames, period, but if he's backing this, now would be the time.

Now, the question is, did he endorse mandatory registration?

I happen to think that Trump is an ill-informed opportunistic blowhard who doesn't believe a lot of the crap he's peddling. 

Ed Morrisey (also not a Trump fan) puts together a case that Trump was talking about immigrants, but that doesn't help much, given the other crap he's peddled recently:

Allahpundit remarked yesterday that he couldn’t tell if Trump was being serious, or if Trump was in effect trolling the reporter. In this exchange, Trump is serious, but possibly confused between what Hillyard asks — registering all Muslims — and what Trump seems to answer, which is registering Muslim immigrants. When Hillyard catches up to him the second time, Trump stops answering his questions when asked to explain the difference between his proposal and the registration of the Jews in Nazi Germany, as the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” plays surreally in the background. It appears that Trump has no idea what Hillyard means.

The problem with assuming that Trump’s only talking about Muslim immigrants is the interview yesterday, when Trump at least did not object to special IDs and warrantless searches for Muslims regardless of their status. Two days ago, he was talking about having the government shut down mosques, which also doesn’t sound like Trump’s limiting his actions to Muslim immigrants. But even if this is a case of two people talking past each other, the questions from Hillyard aren’t terribly difficult to figure out. Instead of listening to them, Trump just seems to uncork a series of platitudes that are non-sequiturs to the questions, without bothering to reframe the question first. He looks lost, and then even more so when Hillyard makes the obvious comparison to the Nazis and the Jews.

Either way, it’s an appalling idea, and one that flies in the face of the First Amendment. First off, what’s the need for a special database for Muslim immigrants, even if Trump is just talking about immigrants? All legal immigrants get “registered,” and fixing the visa system would ensure that they get tracked along with everyone else. Putting Muslims in a special class is not just unconstitutional, it’s unnecessary, and proposing it is needlessly provocative politically.

Look, I think our hypersensitive approach to combatting Islamic terrorism is counterproductive and reality-defying. The reports of the slaughter refused to name the obvious source of the attacks, then the bodies of the slain haven't cooled before the media is hard at work, peddling worries about a backlash against Muslims and an entire American political party can't even say "radical Islam." It's an obscene, grotesque spectacle that doesn't get better with age. 

But what Trump is apparently proposing is even more obscene. One doesn't have to bathe in the treacly PC drivel to recognize that fascism isn't the right response.

God have mercy. 

A horrific policy becomes a little less horrific.

China no longer has a one child policy. 

It now has a two-child policy.

The ever-wise and knowledgeable central planners in Beijing have finally noticed the demographic iceberg, and are screaming "hard a'starboard!"

As with Captain Smith's helmsman, the turn is too late:

Opponents say the policy has created a demographic “timebomb”, with China’s 1.3 billion-strong population ageing rapidly, and the country’s labour pool shrinking. The UN estimates that by 2050 China will have about 440 million people over 60. The working-age population – those between 15 and 59 – fell by 3.71 million last year, a trend that is expected to continue.  

There were no immediate details on how or when China’s new “two-child policy” would be implemented. But [Stuart] Gietel-Basten [a University of Oxford demographer] said the policy change was good news for both China’s people and its leaders, who stood to gain from ending a highly unpopular rule.

“From a political, pragmatic perspective, loosening the policy is good for the party but also it is a good thing for individual couples who want to have that second child. It is a kind of win-win for everybody,” he said.

“Millions of ordinary Chinese couples will be allowed to have a second child if they want to – this is clearly a very positive thing.”

 Experts said the relaxation of family planning rules is unlikely to have a lasting demographic impact, particularly in urban areas where couples were now reluctant to have two children because of the high cost.

“Just because the government says you can have another child, it doesn’t mean the people will immediately follow,” said Liang Zhongtang, a demographer at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science.

Gietel-Basten said: “In the short term, probably there will be a little baby boom particularly in some of the poorer provinces where the rules have been very strict, like in Sichuan or in parts of the south. But in the long term I don’t think it’s going to make an enormous amount of difference.”

But entirely aside from efficacy--at least some of the horrors of the old policy will be lessened. And that is worth celebrating.