The Pittsford Perennialist

Carolina Chocolate Drops Perform "Pretty Girl With the Blue Dress On" and "Milwaukee Blues"

2012-02-28T21:25:00.002-05:00

Something to accompany this news about "the most visible members of a revivalist movement that, by nature of its existence, is doing away with the cultural perception that old-time music is nothing more than the soundtrack of a racist South" — Carolina Chocolate Drops blend tradition and new pieces on latest album.

English vs. Continental Conservatism

2012-02-28T21:24:00.001-05:00

"What sets conservatives apart from authoritarians and fascists?" is the question answered by Samuel Goldman — Right Minds. Most interesting to this blogger is the "point of difference between the conservative tradition as it developed in the English-speaking world and on the Continent," as articulated below:

Resisting the Great War

2012-02-28T21:07:00.002-05:00

"The First World War was not just a battle between rival armies, but also a powerful, if one-sided, battle between those who assumed the war was a noble crusade and those who thought it absolute madness," reminds The American Conservative's Adam Hochschild, author of a new book on the subject — The Untold War Story–Then and Now. An excerpt:

Old Right Peaceniks

2012-02-28T20:57:00.003-05:00

"With the United States now well into the second decade of what the Pentagon has styled an 'era of persistent conflict,'" writes Andrew Bacevich, "the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism (unofficial acronym WFKATGWOT) appears increasingly fragmented and diffuse" — Uncle Sam, Global Gangster.

Pat Buchanan "Since Ronald Reagan went home, the United States has attacked or invaded Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, and Libya" — For What, All These Wars? "How have the Chinese suffered these 20 years by not having been in on the action?"

Katie Kieffer, Constitutionalist

2012-02-28T20:55:00.000-05:00

Townhall.com's prettiest columnist and only supporter of Congressman Ron Paul debunks a fake conservative — How Santorum Fails Constitution 101. "I think Sen. Rick Santorum would make a great community organizer. Unfortunately, we are trying to remove, not re-elect, a community organizer in the White House."

Libertarians Against Contraception

2012-02-28T20:50:00.001-05:00

"Pope Paul predicted the social and family breakdown that would follow if humanity embraced sexual liberation as true freedom," reminds the LewRockwell.com Blog's Christopher Manion — And Now for Something Completely Different... More:

"Euthanasia Coaster"

2012-02-28T20:43:00.000-05:00

The LewRockwell.com Blog informs us of "a theoretical machine engineered to ‘humanely, with elegance and euphoria, take the life of a human being’" — The macabre concept of a 'euthanasia roller coaster' that thrills you... then kills you.

"After-Birth Abortion"

2012-02-28T20:37:00.000-05:00

"By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled" — University of Melbourne ‘Ethicists’ Call for Legalized Murder of Newborns.

Son House Performing "Death Letter" and "Grinnin' In Your Face" and the White Stripes Covering the Same

2012-02-28T20:36:00.000-05:00

William Byrd's "Mass for Four Voices" Sung by The Tallis Scholars, Directed by Peter Phillips

2012-02-25T21:31:00.003-05:00

The Avett Brothers Perform "The Once and Future Carpenter"

2012-02-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

Another Neocon

2012-02-25T21:25:00.003-05:00

Dr. Jack Kerwick of The John Birch Society's The New American exposes "another champion of Big Government who, when election time rolls around, talks the talk of 'limited government' and the rest" — Rick Santorum: No Conservative. The author concludes that "if it is a restoration of the Constitutional Republic for the sake of which our Founding Fathers labored indefatigably that Republicans really desire, they have but one candidate to whom they can turn this time around."

Resisting Technocracy

2012-02-25T21:21:00.001-05:00

Daniel Ben-Ami reviews "an inside view of how the current generation of politician-technocrats thinks" and finds "that those who pass for our leaders are largely anti-democratic, elitist and have little compunction about intruding into our private lives" — Delving into the mind of the technocrat.

The End of Materialism?

2012-02-25T21:15:00.002-05:00

"The more we look at the brain, the less it looks like a device for creating consciousness," argues The New Statesman's Colin McGinn — All machine and no ghost?

"Progressives" for War

2012-02-25T21:06:00.004-05:00

Antiwar.com's John V. Walsh offers "yet one more sign that the 'progressive' movement in the West has largely abandoned its antiwar, anti-intervention stance" — Progressives Embrace Humanitarian Imperialism – Again. (Linked to is a piece by Jean Bricmont, a principled voice on the Left — The Case for a Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy.)

William Byrd's Tristitia et Anxietas Sung by The Tallis Scholars, Directed by Peter Phillips

2012-02-24T19:52:00.002-05:00

Weiße Rose

2012-02-24T19:42:00.000-05:00

Lew Rockwell posts a link to "the pamphlets the heroic German student resistance movement released in 1942" — The White Rose Society.

Before There Was an Upstate New York

2012-02-24T19:38:00.001-05:00

There walked in these lands "an example of fidelity ... a model of purity and love" — Those devoted to Blessed Kateri 'walking on air' about canonization.

Servant of God Jérôme Lejeune

2012-02-24T19:20:00.000-05:00

A man "[k]nown for having treated and supported numerous patients affected by intellectual disabilities and for his commitment to human life" and "a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and recognized with numerous international titles" may soon have a new title — Doctor Who Found Cause of Down Syndrome Moves Closer to Canonization. "Numerous testimonies of prayer for the beatification of Jérôme Lejeune come to us from all over the world, sent by families who knew him, as well as by a new generation of young people involved in the Service of Life and of wise men happy to manifest that there is no contradiction between faith and science."

Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium Sung by The People's Chorus, Directed by David Lawrence

2012-02-21T22:11:00.001-05:00

In Lenten Music, Eric M. Johnson informs us that while "Tallis was regarded as an obedient English musician who adapted his religious views according to the ruler of the time, ... recent scholarship has revealed that Tallis, though he was employed by the Chapel Royal, never swerved in his devotion to Catholicism." The text:

Spem in alium nunquam habui
praeter in te, Deus Israel,
qui irasceris et propitius eris,
et omnia peccata hominum
in tribulatione dimittis.
Domine Deus,
creator coeli et terrae
respice humilitatem nostram.

Blaise Pascal vs. The New Atheists

2012-02-21T22:04:00.002-05:00

So begins The New Stateman's John Gray in his review — Religion for Atheists: a Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion.

Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells" Performed by Sarah Jarosz with Jerry Douglas and the Transatlantic Sessions House Band

2012-02-20T22:11:00.001-05:00

George Washington, Isolationist

2012-02-20T21:38:00.007-05:00

Libertas et Memoria rightly rejects the "holiday celebrating the various holders of that office, noble and ignoble alike," and "leave[s] for another time the honoring of presidents like John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton" — Washington's birthday. Instead, he suggests that "it might be a wise idea to read and ponder the summation of his public life, his majestic Farewell Address, issued by Washington as his final statement to the nation at the end of his presidency."

Indeed. George Washington's Farewell Address is undoubtedly "one of the great documents of American political thought," about which Bill Kauffman once said, "One doubts if any secular sutra has ever been violated with such brutal regularity… especially in its foreign-policy injunctions."

The Founder warns us against today's Israel-firsters, arguing rightly that "a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils." About those who would shed American blood and treasure in the Middle East, he explains, "Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification."

This, he argues, "leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld." Blowback, anyone?

Furthermore, as if having today's neocons in mind, he writes, "And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation."

Again, the current Iran-Israel confluct comes to mind with these words: "Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other." And those who refuse to drink the Israeli kool-aid: "Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests."

His final counsel in this matter: "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible."

Those Who Would "Immanentize the Eschaton"

2012-02-20T21:28:00.003-05:00

"Eric Voegelin diagnosed the neoconservatives’ disease," writes The American Conservative's Gene Callahan — Know Your Gnostics. An excerpt:

But the liberal democracies are liable to fall victim to their own form of “immanentizing the eschaton” if they mistake the genuinely admirable, albeit limited, order they have been able to achieve for the universal goal of all history and all mankind. That error, I suggest, lies behind the utopian adventurism of America’s recent foreign policy, in both its neoconservative and liberal Wilsonian forms. Voegelin’s analysis of “Gnosticism” can help us to understand better the nature of that tendency in Western foreign policy. (We can still use his term “Gnostic” while acknowledging, as he did, its questionable historical connection to ancient Gnosticism.)

Franz Joseph Haydn's Missa in Angustiis Performed by Det Norske Blåseensemble & Solistkor Oslo, Directed by Grete Pedersen

2012-02-18T22:00:00.002-05:00