GKC

The deadly serious whimsy of G.K. Chesterton: [Stanford Encyc Philos]

"Holy Writ by the manner of its speech transcends every science, because in one and the same sentence, while it describes a fact, it reveals a mystery". Gregory Moralia xx.1

In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave
If secret gold creeps on from knave to knave [Pope]

220: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts"
241: I do not understand what is meant by the burden of responsibility. By the burden of decision, yes. Whether to put on a coat, or write a dispatch upon which war or peace may depend. Its degree depends on the materials which are available and not the least on the magnitude of results which may follow. With the results, I have nothing to do.
‑‑‑: "Good is sometimes done" said one of his children. "Yes, but never by you. Never allow yourself to believe that ... One should always try to do right, but cannot count on doing good" (Lord Salisbury). Cecil, David The Cecils of Hatfield House

350: In 1775, the British Colonial Secretary on slavery: "We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a traffic which is so beneficial to the nation". [Lewis, Walker Without Fear or Favor: a Biography ... Roger Brooke Taney ]

"The world today produces more food per inhabitant than ever before. Enough is available to provide 4.3 pounds to every person every day". (Peter Rosset in the NYTimes, 1 Sept. 1999, A23]

"The most generous people in the world are the very poor, who assume each other's burdens in the crises which come so often to the hard pressed. The mother in the tenement falls ill and the neighbor in the next room assumes her burdens. The father loses his work, and neighbors supply food to his children from their own scanty store. How often one hears of cases where the orphans are taken over and brought up by the poor friend whose benefaction means great additional hardship! This sort of genuine service makes the most princely gift from superabundance look insignificant indeed ... The very poor give without any self-consciousness". p. 94 of Random Reminiscences of Men & Events (Sleepy Hollow Press 1984) by John D. Rockefeller. Yes, the original one, who made all their money.
JD also goes on to say: "I have been surprised to learn how far a given sum of money has gone in the hands of priests and nuns and how really effective is their use of it". [109]. He attributes this to "Organization".

A fine paragraph from Columban Mission (Sept./Oct. 1998 on Taiwan): "Most Taiwanese are bilingual, using both the Taiwanese and the Beijing or Mandarin dialects. On the surface, the Beijing dialect is almost always understood. If the object is to make yourself understood, then Mandarin is fine; but not if the object is to understand the people".

W.J. Bryan: "The Darwinian theory represents man as reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate: the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill the weak". (Cited in NYRB 19 Nov 98, p.62)

"Realism is possible, materialism is not". Einstein on physics to Roy Wood Seltara, 15 Feb. 1942.

"Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance" [Thomas Aquinas. S.Th. 2.ii.Q.66.art.7]

In defending Freetradism (NYTimes, 4/17/99), Alan Greenspan did not mince words as he intoned: "It would be a great tragedy to stop the wheels of progress because of an incapacity to aid the victims of progress".

73: Bedier citing Didron: "Il faut conserver le plus possible, reparer le moins possible, ne restaurer a aucun prix. Ce qu'il disait des vielles pierres, il faut l'entendre de nos vieux beaux textes"

"Anger is a useless emotion in war". [D.L. Sayers]

331: Has Life a Meaning? When we reject belief in a god, we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some pre-ordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of molecules ... All this just happened” [Peter Singer]

Μεγα bιbλov, μεγα κακov

41: [Baring in C]: "What can it matter what church one goes to? if one thinks it necessary to go to church?". "Catholics think it does matter" said Beatrice.
"Yes, but Protestants don't" said C. "That's the beauty of being a Protestant".
"Yes, but although they don't mind anything else, they do mind Catholics" said Beatrice.

More

"The landlords of the provinces undermined the agricultural and economic basis of the Empire by expanding their landed estates at the expense of the free peasant farmers". (David Nicol. The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453 (Cambridge UP, 1993. p.3).

"The horse and carriage did not evolve into automoblies, nor did railroads evolve into airplanes". David McCourt (NYTimes 27 Aug. 1998).

Dave Barry: "Xerox reported an $8 trillion profit, all in 50s".

"When Queen Mary restored the old faith in 1553, the sodomy law, along with all the rest of Henry's laws on treason and sedition, was repealed: "The love and favor of the subject towards their sovereigne rules & governor", says the preamble to 1 Mary, chapter 1 better assure the ruler's state than do "the dread and feare of lawes made with rigorous pains and extreeme punishment". The Whole Volume of Statues At Large, 2:199. [Cited in Bruce R. Smith Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England. 1994]

"In prose, the basic element of the structure is the sentence; in verse, the sentence makes its peace with the line, or the whole thing collapses". (A. MacLeish. introd. to Ogden Nash Selected Poetry. NY 1995)

. The Israeli abortion rate is estimated to be five to ten times higher in Israel than in Denmark, the USA, the United Kingdom, and Canada: “In Israel, abortion is not a controversial issue.”
Law: unlike the German legal system, the Israel legal system has declared some forms of life to be “wrongful,” and Israel appears to be the only country to permit “wrongful life” law suits. The Israeli legal system does not generally protect fetuses.
Genetic counseling: as opposed to many German counselors, “most” Israeli counselors believe the good society implies a “healthy” population. Far more Israeli than German counselors believe some forms of life to be “unworthy of living.” “Not only the state, but even more the medical establishment in Israel is pushing toward a wide use of screening tests, in contrast to the German medical establishment, which is responsible for not introducing such tests to the general public.” Unlike Germany, “cost-benefit analysis related to genetic abnormalities is not rejected in Israel.” “At the prenatal stage, non-tolerance towards the genetically deviant is the norm among Israeli counselors.”
The following list of Jewish characterizations of Jewish reproductive practices illustrates the historical inaccuracy of claims made by modern opponents of eugenics, who present eugenics exclusively as a racist and anti-Jewish mentality:

1884 The American Hebrew: “The law of fittest surviving, aided by the breeding of hereditary qualities in a pure race, has given the Jews a physiological and mental superiority which can be perpetuated only by the perpetuation of the race purity.”

1894 Cesare Lombroso: “The constant centuries-old persecutions functioned, as one would say following Darwin, as a selecting factor for the race as well as the individual.”

1895 Alfred Nossig: “biological superiority of contemporary Jews.”

1901 Maurice Fishberg: “the modern Jew is, physically and mentally, a product of natural selection, of a process of survival of the fittest which has been going on for two thousand years.”

1905 Max Levy: “the relation of the Jew to his surroundings and environment will follow the laws… clearly set forth by Spencer, Huxley, Darwin and other exponents of the theory of evolution.”

1910 The Jewish Chronicle: “Moses, the Lawgiver, was the first and greatest of all eugenists.”

1911 Arthur Ruppin: persecutions acted as a “selection process,” leaving only the smartest.

1916 Rabbi Max Reichler: “Neglect to hand on undimmed the priceless germinal qualities which such families possess, can be regarded only as betrayal of a sacred trust.”

1917 Yitzak-Issac (?) Ratner: “He [Abraham] was literally compelled by eugenics.” (date of publication may have been as early as 1910.)

1930 Hans Goslar: [Jewish] “eugenic efficacy.”

1939 William Feldman: “judicious selective mating…. Race hygiene was almost a fetish among them [the Jews].”

1940 Hyman Morrison: “only the sturdiest of the group survived.” Hart comments: “Published in 1940, Morrison’s polemic would seem to suggest that little reconsideration of Jewish history in the light of the laws of natural selection had occurred.”

1949 Isidore Simon: Jewish sacred writings demonstrate an intense interest in matters “that we today would call eugenics and heredity.”

McQueen allows Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Canada's most notorious abortionist and campaigner, his usual retort that the only children aborted were destined to become criminals anyway and that society is better off without them. "Basically my thesis is that abortion has eliminated many of the ills that befell society, because children are unwanted," he told McQueen. "Very often they've been mishandled to the point where they became antisocial, and accumulated so much hostility and hate in themselves, that eventually they take it out on other people, so they will become criminals." (http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Features/2007/12/17/4728323-sun.html)

Demand For Same-Sex Marriage Was Based on a Lie By Gwen Landolt
December 17, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Same-sex marriage was undemocratically passed into law in Canada in June 2005. The then Liberal government, aided by the secular media, argued that same-sex marriage was necessary on the basis of "equality" for homosexuals who were supposedly experiencing painful discrimination because they could not enter into legal recognized marriages with their same-sex partners. This, it turns out, was a lie.
Certainly many homosexuals themselves made clear at that time that same-sex marriage was not a concern in their community. For example, Gareth Kirkby, then managing editor of the homosexual newspaper, Xtra West, stated back on September 6, 2001, that:
"…In our culture, we haven't created the same hierarchy as has heterosexual culture. We know that love has many faces, and names, ages, places… We know that a 30-year relationship is not better, no better, than a nine-week, or nine-minute, fling - it's different, but not better. Both have value. We know that the instant intimacy involved in that perfect 20-minute [sic]…in Stanley Park can be a profoundly beautiful thing. We know a two-year relationship where people live apart is as beautiful, absolutely as beautiful, as a 30-year relationship where people live together. We know that the people involved in an open relationship can love each other as deeply as the people in a closed relationship…"
Mitchel Raphael, Editor-in-Chief of the Toronto-based homosexual magazine, "Fab" stated in an editorial in the May 5, 2005 issue:
"The gay marriage movement in Canada has been spearheaded by a handful of lawyers and a few homo activists who most queers couldn't name if their lives depended on it. …. For a multiplicity of reasons - queer apathy, for one - there has been no mass gay movement supporting same-sex marriage here in Canada."
Yet, Liberals working in close collaboration with the homosexual lobby group, EGALE, assisted by a compliant media, pushed through the same sex marriage bill despite the views of the public as well as of the homosexual community itself.
Those who opposed same-sex marriage for very valid reasons could not get a word in the media or in Parliament where very little dissent was permitted. Those who objected to same sex marriage were curtly dismissed as bigoted reactionaries willfully discriminating against deserving and decent same-sex couples who only wanted to publicly pledge and commit their love.
It turns out, however, according to recently released statistics, that pledging their love by legal marriage is not high on the agenda for homosexuals. Recently released federal figures from Statistics Canada indicate that less then 5% of homosexual Canadians have bothered to marry since same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005.
What is more, the lies and distortions by the media, and former Liberal government on this issue are still continuing. This was disclosed from a surprising source - namely the Ottawa Hill Times in its September 24, 2007 issue in an article written by its regular columnist, Tom Korski. The Hill Times, by the way, is a prominent newspaper distributed to all the politicians and bureaucrats on Parliament Hill on a weekly basis. In short, it's read by everyone who counts on Parliament Hill.
The article points out that the Canadian media is still covering up for homosexuals on the same-sex marriage issue by its failure to report the small number of homosexuals who have actually married in Canada and further that the media still takes its propaganda direct from the homosexual lobbyists EGALE. This only proves what we already know - the secular media is nothing more than a propaganda machine for the politically correct.
As usual, the ever prescient Gareth Kirkby of Capital Xtra makes clear how the work for same-sex marriage was a total waste of time and money. In an editorial in the October 18, 2007 issue of the newspaper he sums up the same-sex marriage issue as follows:
"Remember the headlines as media picked up on the propaganda of pro-marriage forces, like EGALE and Canadians for Equal Marriage? The headlines that claimed we were flocking to city hall and churches to get the deed done as courts legalized same-sex marriage province after province. And again, similar headlines as the lobbyists claimed we were rushing to say our vows out of fear that Stephen Harper would reverse federal legislation allowing marriages nationwide. EGALE claimed last October that 10,000 couples had married. It was a lie. Very few among us are eager to embrace marriage rights…"
"Didn't we just spend a decade and by some estimates $2 million to wage this fight? Didn't we just put all our other major issues virtually on ice because some couples, a few lawyers and a couple of out-of-touch lobby groups decided that same-sex marriage was the only thing that really mattered…"
"Marriage is a heterosexual institution designed by the church, endorsed by the state, with the intention of controlling the sexuality of women and by extension, their husbands. [Sic]…"
"I don't expect the wedding rate will pick up. We have something better in our relationships, something that allows for a variety of friendships, f… buddies, lovers, sisters and exes. We don't put all the pressures on one person …"
"We don't need the limitations of marriage. So we're taking a pass. But what a waste of time and money, and a tragic diversion of focus, in that decade-long fight. Let's move on to more important work."
Republished from the Nov/Dec 2007 edition of Reality magazine of REAL Women of Canada

“If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country,” H.L. Mencken complained of Harry Truman’s 1948 presidential campaign, “he would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayers’ expense.”

It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.
“Well, blind me with science!”.

bits & pieces

Buchanan, Patrick The Great Betrayal 1998

289: Free Trade is like watering the desert

Drane, Augusta Theodosia The Life of Saint Dominic [c189

"The silent eloquence of holy life has a larger apostolate than the gifts of tongue or of healing". Fine book. Mother Frances Raphael writes as a woman will, being more interested in the man than in his deeds.

Beckett's Godot: "Without God, a fashionable piece of existential despair" (Robert Lax)

Yet more

"Holy Writ by the manner of its speech transcends every science, because in one and the same sentence, while it describes a fact, it reveals a mystery". Gregory Moralia xx.1

In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave
If secret gold creeps on from knave to knave [Pope]

220: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts"
241: I do not understand what is meant by the burden of responsibility. By the burden of decision, yes. Whether to put on a coat, or write a dispatch upon which war or peace may depend. Its degree depends on the materials which are available and not the least on the magnitude of results which may follow. With the results, I have nothing to do.
‑‑‑: "Good is sometimes done" said one of his children. "Yes, but never by you. Never allow yourself to believe that ... One should always try to do right, but cannot count on doing good" (Lord Salisbury). Cecil, David The Cecils of Hatfield House

350: In 1775, the British Colonial Secretary on slavery: "We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a traffic which is so beneficial to the nation". [Lewis, Walker Without Fear or Favor: a Biography ... Roger Brooke Taney ]

"The world today produces more food per inhabitant than ever before. Enough is available to provide 4.3 pounds to every person every day". (Peter Rosset in the NYTimes, 1 Sept. 1999, A23]

"The most generous people in the world are the very poor, who assume each other's burdens in the crises which come so often to the hard pressed. The mother in the tenement falls ill and the neighbor in the next room assumes her burdens. The father loses his work, and neighbors supply food to his children from their own scanty store. How often one hears of cases where the orphans are taken over and brought up by the poor friend whose benefaction means great additional hardship! This sort of genuine service makes the most princely gift from superabundance look insignificant indeed ... The very poor give without any self-consciousness". p. 94 of Random Reminiscences of Men & Events (Sleepy Hollow Press 1984) by John D. Rockefeller. Yes, the original one, who made all their money.
JD also goes on to say: "I have been surprised to learn how far a given sum of money has gone in the hands of priests and nuns and how really effective is their use of it". [109]. He attributes this to "Organization".

A fine paragraph from Columban Mission (Sept./Oct. 1998 on Taiwan): "Most Taiwanese are bilingual, using both the Taiwanese and the Beijing or Mandarin dialects. On the surface, the Beijing dialect is almost always understood. If the object is to make yourself understood, then Mandarin is fine; but not if the object is to understand the people".

W.J. Bryan: "The Darwinian theory represents man as reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate: the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill the weak". (Cited in NYRB 19 Nov 98, p.62)

"Realism is possible, materialism is not". Einstein on physics to Roy Wood Seltara, 15 Feb. 1942.

"Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance" [Thomas Aquinas. S.Th. 2.ii.Q.66.art.7]

In defending Freetradism (NYTimes, 4/17/99), Alan Greenspan did not mince words as he intoned: "It would be a great tragedy to stop the wheels of progress because of an incapacity to aid the victims of progress".

73: Bedier citing Didron: "Il faut conserver le plus possible, reparer le moins possible, ne restaurer a aucun prix. Ce qu'il disait des vielles pierres, il faut l'entendre de nos vieux beaux textes"

"Anger is a useless emotion in war". [D.L. Sayers]

331: Has Life a Meaning? When we reject belief in a god, we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some pre-ordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of molecules ... All this just happened” [Peter Singer]

Μεγα bιλov, μεγα κακov

41: [Baring in C]: "What can it matter what church one goes to? if one thinks it necessary to go to church?". "Catholics think it does matter" said Beatrice.
"Yes, but Protestants don't" said C. "That's the beauty of being a Protestant".
"Yes, but although they don't mind anything else, they do mind Catholics" said Beatrice.

Odds & ends

The purpose of this blog is to provide "Pebbles for David's Slingshot", those odds bits of information which will help control the Goliaths of this world.

In today's NYObserver, there is a review by Daniel Mendelsohn of E.O. Wilson's latest contribution to the cacophony. He (rightly) dismisses Wilson as "a Mr. Magoo genially oblivious of everything he can't or won't see".

I use your position as an excellent example of the truism that a Liberal is but a Puritan without the secular power to enforce his opinion. Once the Liberal gets the power, the Puritan shows up immediately. The passion for order (power) trumps the sense of justice. And the fiddling with the facts begins. [To Fr. McBrien]

"I only had a roll in the sack; she got pregnant"

LONDON, May 7, 2008 - MPs of the Commons Home Select Committee were said to be shocked last week to learn that poor women and girls in the UK are being lured into the sex trade by job advertisements at job centres run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Denise Marshall, director of a government funded anti-trafficking organization, the Poppy Project, told the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that the government was acting as a "pimp" for the sex trade.
The jobs listed include stripper, webcam stripper, adult show hostess, lap dancing and work with an escort agency. Some vacancies listed the ability to "discuss sexual fantasies" as a useful skill. One ad, called "admin work" by the Jobcentre Plus website, said successful applicants would earn £10 an hour to "talk dirty" and perform sex acts live in front of a webcam.
The Department for Work and Pensions, however, said it is obliged to carry the ads because of a High Court decision in 2003. A spokesman for the department said, "Jobcentre Plus has a duty to advertise any legal job. Legal vacancies within the adult industry come within this." The spokesman said Jobcentres Plus was required to carry such ads after the High Court overturned their previous policy "which did not accept certain types of adverts connected with the sex and personal services industries".

Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking.

“There are philosophical or methodological objections to evolutionary theory. They have been very well voiced by Professor Karl Popper that the current neo-Darwinian Theory has the methodological defect of explaining too much. It is too difficult to imagine or envisage an evolutionary episode which could not be explained by the formulae of neo-Darwinism”. Sir Peter Medawar (p.xi)
“All I want to say is that most of this research dealt only with two factors, mutation and selection, in other words, the original Darwinian model. Popper is right; this model is so good that it can explain everything, as Popper has rightly complained.” Ernst Mayr (p.47)

Adult stem cells are programmed to make repairs, and so have resulted in numerous potential and real therapies. Embryonic stem cells are programmed to make babies, and have been impossible to control.

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."
"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: "ye must have faith." It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with." [Max Planck]

In these three books, Wills simply did not know enough to do the job. [Luke T. Johnson on Gary Wills’ three Jesus books]

‘Like the university, which she still resembles in several ways, the Church must shut her mind firmly against the needs of society. This is not only her age-long duty, it is also her only chance of turning out in the end to have served the needs of society. If she is to survive, the one thing she must not do is move with the times. She must pursue or regain her role as a force for order and continuity, stay as she is or was until the times move back to her, still or once more preach, not indeed torments or sectarian hatred, but an all-powerful, all-loving God and his divine Son. Whether she likes it or not, she has her obligations to my sort of person as well as to her communicants.’ [Kingsley Amis]