Sunday, April 6, 2025
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Robert Carter
Carter was always said to have great integrity, but acting on his principles even when it essentially ruined him financially was an example of virtue few followed.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/robert-carter-and-manumission
Augustine
"And lo, I was now in my thirtieth year, sticking in the same mire, greedy of enjoying things present, which passed away and wasted my soul, while I said to myself, 'Tomorrow I shall find it. It will appear manifestly, and I shall grasp it. Lo, Faustus the Manichee will come and clear every thing! O you great men, ye Academicians, it is true then, that no certainty can be attained for the ordering of life? Nay, let us search the more diligently and despair not. Lo, things in the ecclesiastical books are not absurd to us now, which sometimes seemed absurd, and may be taken otherwise, and in a good sense. I will take my stand where as a child my parents placed me, until the clear truth be found out. But where shall it be sought or when? Ambrose has no leisure. We have no leisure to read. Where shall we find even the books? Whence, or when procure them? From whom borrow them? Let set times be appointed, and certain hours be ordered for the health of our soul. Great hope has dawned: the catholic faith teaches not what we thought, and vainly accused it of. Her instructed members hold it profane to believe God to be founded by the figure of a human body. And do we doubt to knock, that the rest may be opened? The forenoons our scholars take up: what do we do during the rest of the day? Why not this? But when shall we pay court to our great friends, whose favor we need? When shall we compose what we may sell to scholars? When shall we refresh ourselves, unbending our minds from these intense cares?'" (6.11.18)
Friday, April 4, 2025
Amma Sarah said, ‘According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts.’
Another time, two old men, great anchorites, came to the district of Pelusia to visit her. When they arrived one said to the other, ‘Let us humiliate this old woman.’ So they said to her, ‘Be careful not to become conceited thinking to yourself: “Look how anchorites are coming to see me, a mere woman.” ‘But Amma Sarah said to them, ‘According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts.’
She also said to the brothers, ‘It is I who am a man, you who are women.’*
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Monday, March 31, 2025
Vladimir Soloviev, “The Russian Church and the Papacy” (1889)
“No amount of argument can overcome the evidence for the fact that apart from Rome there only exist national churches such as the Armenian or the Greek church, state churches such as the Russian or Anglican, or else sects founded by individuals such as the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Irvingites, and so forth.
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Friday, March 28, 2025
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Monday, March 24, 2025
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Friday, March 21, 2025
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Monday, March 17, 2025
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Friday, March 14, 2025
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Propaganda
Modern definitions of propaganda include: persuasion through careful curation of true information, selective omissions, hamhanded emotional appeals instead of evidence, ‘framing’ to shape perception, appeals to cherry-picked authorities, and diligent suppression of counter-narratives.
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Monday, March 10, 2025
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Saturday, March 8, 2025
Friday, March 7, 2025
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Dwight D. Eisenhower Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercrossofiron.htm
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Monday, March 3, 2025
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Friday, February 28, 2025
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Monday, February 24, 2025
Montana Cowboys, Adam Smith, and Trump
Dreams of ownership enticed our ancestors to leave the Old World and build a new country. They did not want to work other people’s lands. They did not want to be taxed by feudal lords for the rest of their lives. They wanted to own the fruits of their labor. They wanted to own their own farms. They wanted complete control over their economic fortunes — beholden to no-one. Needless to say, most of their descendants have forgotten why freedom is impossible without private property. Renting everything from a handful of oligarchs and governments, as Sheridan’s cowboy points out, means that we end up working entirely for them and never for ourselves.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/02/montana_cowboys_adam_smith_and_president_trump.html
Sunday, February 23, 2025
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Pope Pius XII, Message on Women’s Duties in the Social and Political Life of Today (October 21, 1945)
“Equality of rights with man brought with it her [woman’s] abandonment of the home where she reigned as queen, and her subjection to the same work strain and working hours. It entails depreciation of her true dignity and the solid foundation of all her rights which is her characteristic feminine role, and the intimate coordination of the two sexes.
Monday, February 17, 2025
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Friday, February 14, 2025
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
How to Dress Like a Gentleman—And Why
If I were to give my younger self some advice, I would tell him to start with a dark navy suit, a gray suit, two white shirts, two light-blue shirts, and a pair of black shoes—loafers or oxfords.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Monday, February 10, 2025
Low-Carb Mongolian Ground Beef and Cabbage
From facebook:
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Saturday, February 8, 2025
Friday, February 7, 2025
Thursday, February 6, 2025
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Monday, February 3, 2025
Sunday, February 2, 2025
What Natural Law Can and Can't Do
Natural law is invoked in a wide range of contexts, sometimes reverently and sometimes with deep skepticism. Here, Howes explains clearly what natural law is and why it is useful. In general it is not good for supplying definitive, unassailable answers to difficult moral questions. Rather, it supplies a framework for debating moral questions fruitfully. It complements virtue ethics by presuming that human nature and human thriving are real things, and that morally good behavior will promote the latter. But its greatest value may flow from the affirmation of a moral standard that transcends positive or civil law, and the belief that applying human reason to difficult questions can bring us closer to the truth.
https://lawliberty.org/what-natural-law-can-and-cant-do/?mc_cid=53bea83e27&mc_eid=b9d5525f77
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Friday, January 31, 2025
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
The Obama Record on Deportations: Deporter in Chief or Not?
Sunday, January 26, 2025
In fine [Latin in and finis.] In the end or conclusion; to conclude; to sum up all.
In the end or conclusion; to conclude; to sum up all.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Friday, January 24, 2025
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Monday, January 20, 2025
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Recipe for gluten-free bagels
From Facebook:
I made good bagels today. It took me a couple of tries to tinker with my current recipe and I am sharing it here in case someone wants to give it a try. I was going to take more photos, but I froze them before I was able to.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Excerpt, from Elegy in a Country Churchyard Thomas Gray, 1751
. . . Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial Fire, Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of Time did ne'er unroll: Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of the fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. . . The EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown; Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send; He gave to Misery all he had, a tear; He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God.
Monday, January 13, 2025
Sunday, January 12, 2025
‘A Catholic in the Room’ Second Thoughts on Hilaire Belloc
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/%E2%80%98-catholic-room
He has argued in favor of the ordination of women as priests and deacons, and has suggested that this could eventually lead to the creation of female cardinals.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Steinfels
https://archive.org/details/hilairebelloc0000wils
https://archive.org/details/hilairebelloc0000wils/page/292/mode/2up?view=theater
Hilaire Belloc