Author: VD

To Hell with secular society

I no longer have any use for it. None whatsoever. I was raised and indoctrinated in the ideal of the “separation of church and state” and genuinely believed that it was best if religion was not permitted to dictate societal rules or even unduly influence society. But this has finally convinced me that the Muslims have the right idea and secularism merits nothing more than being stamped out, ruthlessly and without remorse:

It is a world-renowned work of literature and one of the foundation stones of the Italian language, but Dante’s Divine Comedy has been condemned as racist, homophobic, anti-Islamist and anti-Semitic. The classic work should be removed from school curricula, according to Gherush 92, a human rights organisation which acts as a consultant to UN bodies on racism and discrimination.

Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president….

Schoolchildren and university students who studied the work lacked “the filters” to appreciate its historical context and were being fed a poisonous diet of anti-Semitism and racism, the group said. It called for the Divine Comedy to be removed from schools and universities or at least have its more offensive sections fully explained.

Consider this. The Papal States produced La Commedia Divina, Catholic Italy produced Vivaldi, Anglican England produced Shakespeare, Christian Austria produced Mozart and Haydn. What have two generations of modern secularism produced despite its lofty claims concerning the female liberation and the unchaining of the human spirit? Avatar, Twilight, and The Vagina Monologues.

Camille Paglia was right. “Great art can be made out of love for religion as well as rebellion against it. But a totally secularized society with contempt for religion sinks into materialism and self-absorption and gradually goes slack, without leaving an artistic legacy.”

Secular progressives are totalitarians and book-burners every bit as fanatical as religious extremists they decry. They always have been, they just build their cultural walls one stealthy and dishonest brick at a time.

Now this is sad

I am a huge proponent of ebooks. They’re fantastic and I now prefer reading on my Android phone to an actual book. But that doesn’t one doesn’t feel a genuine sense of loss at this news of the classic encyclopedia series ceasing traditional publication:

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.

Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said.

In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.

If it weren’t for the pervasive political correctness that has infested encyclopedias for the last 20+ years, I would pick up a set. As it happens, I might consider picking up an older one, ideally the legendary 1911 edition.

Liberal atheists are cowards

It’s hard to illustrate their cowardice more precisely than the NYT’s rejection of an anti-Islamic ad copied directly from an anti-Catholic ad previously run in the newspaper:

Bob Christie, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for the New York Times, just called me to advise me that they would be accepting my ad, but considering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, now would not be a good time, as they did not want to enflame an already hot situation. They will be reconsidering it for publication in “a few months.”

So I said to Mr. Christie, “Isn’t this the very point of the ad? If you feared the Catholics were going to attack the New York Times building, would you have run that ad?”

Mr. Christie said, “I’m not here to discuss the anti-Catholic ad.”

I said, “But I am, it’s the exact same ad.”

He said, “No, it’s not.”

I said, “I can’t believe you’re bowing to this Islamic barbarity and thuggery. I can’t believe this is the narrative. You’re not accepting my ad. You’re rejecting my ad. You can’t even say it.”

We used the same language as the anti-Catholic ad. The only difference is, ours was true and what we describe is true. The anti-Catholic ad was written by fallacious feminazis.

This is exactly the sort of thing that Christians should do every single time anti-Christian propaganda is put forth through the mainstream media and every time anti-Christian views are displayed by irreligious individuals. Force them to publicly expose their hypocrisy. Force them to admit that they are actively taking sides in the cultural war. Force them to finally recognize that they are not secular and neutral as they feign to be, but are actively working against the survival of Western civilization.

The hurricane of fraud

Matt Taibbi on Bank of America:

There are two things every American needs to know about Bank of America.

The first is that it’s corrupt. This bank has systematically defrauded almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, homeowners, shareholders, depositors, and the state. It is a giant, raging hurricane of theft and fraud, spinning its way through America and leaving a massive trail of wiped-out retirees and foreclosed-upon families in its wake.

The second is that all of us, as taxpayers, are keeping that hurricane raging. Bank of America is not just a private company that systematically steals from American citizens: it’s a de facto ward of the state that depends heavily upon public support to stay in business. In fact, without the continued generosity of us taxpayers, and the extraordinary indulgence of our regulators and elected officials, this company long ago would have been swallowed up by scandal, mismanagement, prosecution and litigation, and gone out of business. It would have been liquidated and its component parts sold off, perhaps into a series of smaller regional businesses that would have more respect for the law, and be more responsive to their customers.

But Bank of America hasn’t gone out of business, for the simple reason that our government has decided to make it the poster child for the “Too Big To Fail” concept. Because it is considered a “systemically important institution” whose collapse would have a major, Lehman-Brothers-style impact on the economy, two consecutive presidential administrations have taken extraordinary measures to keep Bank of America in business, despite a staggering recent legacy of corruption schemes, many of which were simply overlooked by regulators.

The frightening thing is that this isn’t rhetorical exaggeration. The real case is almost surely much worse than Taibbi paints it. And he asks a very pertinent question of so-called conservatives.

“When did we make it the job of the taxpayer to buy failed companies, and rescue companies from their own bad decisions? How is that conservative?”

Furthermore, you smell bad

Mark Kruse of Grantland addresses bracketologists, for varying degrees of “address” that includes “pushing you down and kicking you in the ribs”:

The NCAA tournament is properly rated. Many think it’s one of the best sporting events of the year. That’s what it is. But the whole fill-out-the-brackets thing? TOTALLY OVERRATED. I don’t do it. I won’t do it. Because I want to be able to watch Montana beat Wisconsin or Harvard beat Vanderbilt or South Dakota State beat Baylor, and enjoy that unabashedly, without worrying about whether I “picked” them or not. You “had” Montana? You “had” South Dakota State? No. You didn’t HAVE anything. You don’t deserve to claim even the most peripheral form of ownership. Because it matters to the kids on those teams and their coaches in a way that it doesn’t and shouldn’t and could never matter to you. And because they don’t deserve to be depersonalized into pieces to be so cavalierly “picked” or not “picked” in some annual national gambling exercise. And because they also don’t deserve to be called “bracket busters” if they win. It’s insulting and selfish. The point isn’t that they’ve ruined your chances to win some dumb pool. The point is that they’ve done something unexpected, exhilarating, and empowering, for themselves and the people who know them, love them, and have invested in them. Your “pick” does not count as an investment. You say this gives you a reason to watch and to care? “Picks” make you care about the thing you’ve set up to give you a reason to care about the thing … NOT the thing itself. The thing is the thing. Your brackets are not. At stake in games over the next three weeks: goals, dreams, jobs, futures. That’s not enough for you? An interest based on brackets is an inauthentic interest.

I’m kind of with him on this one. I don’t bother with brackets, I just want to see upsets and Cinderellas and 15 seeds beating 2 seeds.

Fidelity survey

In light of the interesting information provided by the previous questionnaire, I’ve posted another set of questions related to one’s historical fidelity or lack thereof. It’s entirely anonymous, so you want to add to the data available for crunching, please visit Alpha Game and answer the seven questions there.

Autopetard-hoistery

Glenn Greenwald explains why the law demands hanging the anti-speech champions high on their own scaffold:

In June, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law. In that case, the Court upheld the Obama DOJ’s very broad interpretation of the statute that criminalizes the providing of “material support” to groups formally designated by the State Department as Terrorist organizations. The five-judge conservative bloc (along with Justice Stevens) held that pure political speech could be permissibly criminalized as “material support for Terrorism” consistent with the First Amendment if the “advocacy [is] performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” (emphasis added). In other words, pure political advocacy in support of a designated Terrorist group could be prosecuted as a felony — punishable with 15 years in prison — if the advocacy is coordinated with that group.

This ruling was one of the most severe erosions of free speech rights in decades because, as Justice Breyer (joined by Ginsberg and Sotomayor) pointed out in dissent, “all the activities” at issue, which the DOJ’s interpretation would criminalize, “involve the communication and advocacy of political ideas and lawful means of achieving political ends.” The dissent added that the DOJ’s broad interpretation of the statute “gravely and without adequate justification injure[s] interests of the kind the First Amendment protects.” As Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, who represented the plaintiffs, explained, this was literally “the first time ever” that “the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment permits the criminalization of pure speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity.” Thus, “the court rule[d] that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activity can be made a crime, and that any coordination with a blacklisted group can land a citizen in prison for 15 years.”

In August of last year, The Christian Science Monitor‘s Scott Peterson published a detailed exposé about “a high-powered array of former top American officials” who have received “tens of thousands of dollars” from a designated Terrorist organization – the Iranian dissident group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) — and then met with its leaders, attended its meetings, and/or publicly advocated on its behalf. That group includes Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Michael Mukasey, Ed Rendell, Andy Card, Lee Hamilton, Tom Ridge, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Michael Hayden, John Bolton, Louis Freeh — and Fran Townsend.

For some reason, those who favor an expanded role for government never seem to understand that a government with the power to do things you want necessarily has the power to do a lot of things you don’t want. But it’s hardly surprising that Giuliani, Bolton, and Freeh are legally considered terrorists. They have been for a long time.

It should be interesting to see how National Review reacts to this news in light of their inexplicable cheerleading for the nonexistent political career of John Bolton.

50,062

That’s how many words Word Dynamo estimates me to know. Now, I would argue that it’s an artificially low estimate, since it doesn’t include any Italian, German, French, or Japanese words. But despite its limited word list, the test is rather well-designed, as it keeps getting harder as you progress up the difficulty ramp.

Check it out and see how you do. And here is another benefit of homeschool. One of our elementary school age kids took the test and scored 20,090. Ender scored 43,814.

But speaking of homseschooled accomplishment, I would be badly remiss in failing to offer congratulations to the daughter of one of the original Ilk:

After correctly spelling “pickelhaube,” “idiopathic” and “pharmacology,” Elise Stahl of Greenfield won the seven-county metro-area regional spelling bee Saturday on the word “remand.” In the 16th round, Elise, 12, outlasted Eva Beeman Trelstad, 10, of St. Paul and Benjamin Pults, 13, of Maplewood to represent Minnesota at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in May.

Chalk one up for the Grizzlies! League sources were heard to say that Greenfield would be wise to consider turning the team’s drafting responsibilities over to the young Miss Stahl.

WND column

Greek default and eurocollapse

Even a regular observer might have lost track of how many Greek rescue agreements were announced over the last two years. A default was impossible. It had been prevented, we were repeatedly assured. And yet, despite all of these many success stories, the Greek government nevertheless announced that it would not be repaying 100 billion of the 206 billion euros it owed to its creditors, while simultaneously signing up for 130 billion euros in new debt. Needless to say, there is almost no chance that any of that new debt will be repaid; this is nothing more than another flimsy support in the giant, extend-and-pretend structure with which the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are attempting to shore up the global economy.