Latin Catholic by birth, Byzantine Catholic by the grace of God.
Pro: Restoration of the Holy and Universal Christian Roman Empire.
Caveat: The author makes no claim to being an exemplar of Catholicism or Monarchism (or blogging).
Under the patronage of St. George. Please view at 1024x768.

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Location: Upstate, New York, United States

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Self-necessitating problems

Closing on my new house today, I lost myself in piles of papers and details, which I let my wife inspect more closely and question as appropriate. And I was appreciative of my being married to a detail-oriented person, because I am a big-picture guy who is easily annoyed by detail people, occasionally including my wife.

This thinking brought my mind to the topic of armies. The only reason one country needs an army is because another country has one. So, there are two types of armies: the actor, or offensive army, which was formed to go out and do harm, and the reactor, or defensive army, which is then formed to solve the problems created by the former. The same theory holds true to a lot of concepts, like lawyers. You only need a lawyer because, in our complicated legal framework, your opponent will hire one. If you both went in and argued for yourselves, everyone would save many dollars.

Detail people are exactly the same way. We only need our detail people because there are evil ones roaming the countryside like Barbary pirates just looking to take advantage of a high concept man like myself.

Think of how much better the world would be if it were entirely populated by easy-going big-picture thinkers who didn't get bogged down in minutia. Nobody would care if your socks matched at business meetings, they would only care about business. Contracts could be one page. No one would try to confuse you with technical jargon, they would just supply service. We'd probably have a flat-tax, too.

Would quality suffer? Maybe somewhat. But we'd all be prepared for it, and understanding when problems occured. Fixing mistakes may happen more often, but would be much more relaxed, less combative, more satisfying, and generally less frustrating.

I think we'd all live longer.

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Good for Zion

Israel took out one of the biggest murderers in their midst. And the Muslims are upset? Israel killed a killer. Somehow, Muslim killers are more noble, they'd have us believe, especially since they kill innocents.


Is he with virgins... or pitchforks?

Monday, March 22, 2004

The whole world is against us, and itself

How can other Western nations side with the enemy? The Muslims have them slated for destruction as well. This includes Latin America.

Their problem, especially in formerly great Europe, is that they are jealous that we are on the top of the pile right now. But so what? We're the most vibrant example of Western Civilization there is currently, and their fate is inextricably linked to ours. If we go down, they go down next. Even if we weaken, foreign, hostile, and dishonest enemies (Islam and China being the biggest) get a leg up on their conquest.

As Chesterton notes, the chattering classes believe that "if you work to preserve your nation, you are a statesman. But if you work to preserve all of Christendom, you're just a crusader."

These sell-outs can be compared to Germany snuggling up to the Ottomans, the Byzantines making a separate peace with the Muslims (see how well that worked), or the French king jockeying for position during the late Crusades.

Speaking of France, many of these places aren't even nations anymore. I've been to France, just a few years ago. It's not a nation; it's a museum. For starters, no French live in it anymore. They're all Algerian or sub-Saharan African. The Frenchmen left are essentially museum-workers: tour guides, restaurant owners, and gift shop employees. Formerly vital structures like Notre Dame are practically vacant, taking in more tourists than parishioners. There is no vitality, no entrepeneurship, no industry, no big thinking, no vibrant classical culture... just death and dust and Americans willing to pay top euro to see it all.

The same fate is slated for all of Europe.

Monday, March 15, 2004

Spain chooses suicide

So, Muslims did blow up that commuter train... and the Spanish electorate chooses a Socialist government. Why don't they just give the keys to Bin Laden right now? Choosing an effeminate, pacifist political party isn't going to make Muslim terror go away. In fact, now they'll smell weakness.


Victims of the "Religion of Peace," from Israel and Indonesia, respectively

Meanwhile, Spain fills up with mosques as its native sons waste their lives on Ecstasy and dancing to bad Euro-techno in tacky clubs.

"Oh, but the Moors were tolerant rulers who loved Jews and promoted learning." Okay... if you believe that one, I understand how that Nigerian fortune spam e-mail scam stays alive. The Moors deeply persecuted other religions, the alleged "great thinkers" were actually heretical in their stances toward Islam, and most of the wealth and leisure was taken from the native populations.

Islam is a parasite. It moves in to an area, then it sucks the life out of it and takes the credit for any good. Why do you think the Muslim golden ages are always so close to the original conquests? Because the religion just takes from the existing cultures, be they Christian, Zoroastrian, Hindu, or anything else, using up the intellectual and economic capital. They plunder their neighbors, use up treasuries, borrow and steal ideas from native populations... and when these resources dry up, they fall into decay and disrepair.

It's repeated over and over again throughout the Islamic world. Look at the Ottomans. They ate up the treasure and talent of Byzantium, and then they fell apart. The Moors sucked the marrow from Iberia, and crashed and burned. Islam conquered Persia, chewed through Zoroastrian culture, and fell into collapse and stupidity when it ran out of food.

Now they are doing the same thing to Lebanon. Once one of the richest and most free states in the Middle East, Syria and it's allegedly secular Muslim government use up the native genius and plunder its riches. As Lebanese Christians continue to flee, and the population becomes increasingly Islamic, we'll see within our lifetimes Lebanon become a barren wasteland of despotism, Islamic hegemony, repression, and poverty.

Spain, it looks like you're next. Be warned.

Friday, March 12, 2004

Retroactive prayer

The New Oxford Review has an interesting article this month on why Catholics pray for the deceased. I always wondered why, as their judgement is already sealed, as opposed to those now dying or living healthily. Apparently, God, living outside of time, anticipates your prayers and takes pleas for mercy into account before you, within time, actually do the praying. So it helps to keep praying fervently for the salvation of anyone who died before us.


Let's pray granpa doesn't get an opportunity to buy one of these.

An interesting idea, for which I will have to remember to poke around in the Catechism. If it is accurate, it brings up some interesting questions. For example, when in school, I always thought it was mostly useless to pray that I did well on a test after the test was taken. Can you pray after the test was taken and God will anticipate it? I've been noodling that one for the last day or so.

Now, let's assume for the sake of example that God answers prayers to win scratch-and-win lottery tickets (I don't think he moves on that prayer too often, personally). It would seem a pointless prayer, because the tickets are already printed and packed and sitting there. Your only effect on the situation is whether or not to buy a ticket, how many, and which one. Assume you play one ticket a week of the same game at the same time of the week. Now, you're standing in front of the cashier, and you pray to win. The variables are locked: can your prayer have already been answered?

And no "with God, all things are possible" cop outs. We all already know that.

(Incidentally, the NOR, which is an amazing conservative-orthodox Catholic magazine, doesn't really have a website. The above is by a fan, I believe. So the article is not there.)

De-Conquista

Basques did this? I suppose. But it certainly doesn't add up to me. The Moors are once again marching for Spain; let's see if they have the cajones left to do anything about it.

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Nibbles has to leave me

I had to make the tough decision today to have Nibbles, one of my guinea pigs, put down tomorrow. She probably has lymphoma, and she's lost half of her body weight, and isn't responding to treatment.

She is the first pet I've had since I lost my Sheltie when I was 9. We love her so much, we went out and got two more pigs. She was always headstrong, very loud and vocal, loving, and greedy for food, especially carrots. We called her "The Queen" because she ran both her piggie peer group and our house. Now she just sleeps all day and won't eat, despite all our best efforts. It's tearing us apart to force-feed her twice a day.

Good-bye Nibbles, I'll always love you!

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

New Chesterton book

G.K. Chesterton's poem, Lepanto, is available fully annotated and with pages of scholarship from the American Chesterton Society.

Lepanto is the story of the Battle of Lepanto, where the whole of Christendom prayed the rosary for the defeat of the Ottoman fleet. We beat'em; long odds, too. It drove the Ottomans into their steady decline, and saved Rome from being sacked by Muslims. The day of the victory, October 7, is now the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. If not for Lepanto, you'd probably be living in a Muslim country right now.

As a bonus, the poem is really tough on Protestants, pacifists, and Mohammed.

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Pope candy-asses out ... AGAIN

The Vatican won't give the Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church a patriarch, which other Eastern churches have, because it could hurt relations with the Russian Orthodox.

Why does the Holy see try to impress schismatics, heretics, idolators, witch doctors, and other theological riff-raff?

Monday, March 08, 2004

Loving the East

I've been attending the Ukrainian Catholic liturgy every chance I get, which is about every two weeks. Last week I took the Eucharist there for the first time, and I goofed! Not opening my mouth wide enough, the priest whacked my tooth with the golden spoon they use. He gave me a little smile though, and I opened up wider for it.


Christ Pantocrator

Now I really feel homeless. I can't make the entire leap to Eastern Catholicism, I'm "Latin" deep down in many ways, but the Roman Rite is in such deep decay that it really doesn't provide me with any spiritual growth. And the Tridentine Mass, as practiced locally, is even more difficult to the uninitiated than the Ukrainian! The Ukies have English liturgies, and I'm comfortable enough with the missal now that even at all-Ukrainian liturgies I'm able to follow right along. But I can't even hear what the celebrant is saying at the TM.

So, I'll continue to be a refugee while my own house is under siege. Maybe I can come home once the Latins stop having patty-cake masses.

Friday, March 05, 2004

We need more people like this

"Lebanon will remain, as always, Lebanese without any labels. The French passed through it yet it remained Lebanese. The Ottomans ruled it and it remained Lebanese. The stinky winds of Arabism blow through it, but the wind will wither away and Lebanon will remain Lebanese. "

That's from the Guardians of the Cedars, a Christian Lebanese site dedicated to kicking Syria out of Lebanon. Not only must Syria pay for its crimes against Christianity, but we need more explicitly Christian political movements around the world.