We saw tonight why Barack Obama wanted to dismiss culture war issues as "phony." Far from being phony, they are the most important issues there are, because they define who we are. Once again, Pat Buchanan was right.
Just saw the notice of Pat Buchanan retiring from his column. Pat's column was always a model of clarity, civility, courage, and conviction. It was a great gift to America and a great inspiration to me.
My tribute to Pat Buchanan on his retirement. Few in politics could match his wit, intelligence, depth and breadth
of knowledge. And could match his decency or his courage. We were lucky to have him:
It turns out that "free trade" with China has been a disaster, impoverishing large sections of America and leaving the country as a whole weaker and poorer. Pat Buchanan is proven right, once again:
@DouglasKMurray
Your attack on Pedro Gonzalez was ill-informed, illogical, and impertinent.
American conservatives don't need foreigners lecturing us on how broad our movement should be or who should be acceptable to us.
President Trump in Cedar Rapids yesterday:
“You know there was a man, Pat Buchanan, a good guy, a conservative guy….”
“Wow! Young people, they know him.”
I favor admitting all the Afghan refugees that can be housed at George W. Bush's ranch, Barack Obama's mansions in D. C. and at Martha's Vineyard, and at whatever undisclosed location Dick Cheney currently calls home.
Jared Kushner and his allies ruined the America First agenda while privately thumbing their noses at Trump’s base. These people formed the America First Policy Institute and are waiting to rejoin the White House for a second term. I spoke with an insider:
Regina Caeli, a seasonal treat:
Joy to thee, O Queen of Heaven. Alleluia!
He whom Thou wast meet to bear, Alleluia!
As He promised hath arisen, Alleluia!
Pour for us to God thy prayer. Alleluia!
Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
For the Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.
Pedro Gonzalez and Tucker Carlson have more wisdom, fortitude, and genuine concern for America and Americans than we have any right to expect at this point.
You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child.
(Didache,A.D. 70)
Russian ideology, mindlessly adopted by some ignorant American conservatives, insists that Ukraine is a phony country inhabited by a phony people.
People don't fight, or die, or kill for phony countries. Yet Ukrainians seem to be doing all those things, in large numbers
1). Jonathan Chait has an article on the War on Christmas. First he denies there is one. Then, it turns out, he approves of it: he describes how the suburban Detroit public school he attended went from celebrating Christmas to celebrating "holiday," and he says that's good.
Amy Coney Barrett was not my first choice. But she's a good choice. And replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Barrett is infinitely preferable to squabbling over Barrett's imperfections and running the risk that Biden will fill the seat.
Ann Coulter is an astute observer of the American judiciary. She had John Roberts pegged from the beginning.
I wish Donald Trump woumd heed her advice and at least consider nominating Miguel Estrada to the Supreme Court.
Douglas Murray is charging
@emeriticus
with "anti-Semitism" because he commented unfavorably on the appearance of two Jewish individuals.
The fact that Pedro has commented unfavorably on the looks of numerous non-Jewish individuals goes unmentioned.
A baseless libel, then.
ONE:The Ukrainians have had enough success on the battlefield to prompt the Russians to offer to end the war by a return to the status quo ante bellum, albeit on a de jure basis.
Austen Ivereigh has a piece in America praising Francis' ten-year pontificate for releasing the full power of the Church. Given the decline in Catholic practice in so many places over the past decade, one wonders if the man learned to write in North Korea.
@RorateCaeli
One of Three:
The new Canadian anthem, inspired by Justin Trudeau:
O, Canada,
My jail and former land,
Fear and servile love, from all thy sons demand.
With trembling hearts we see thee rise,
A GULAG cold and bleak.
I do not think Russia has benevolent intentions toward its neighbors. I am appalled at the possibility of war between Americans and Russians for one simple, though entirely sufficient, reason: it would be a disaster for America and Americans:
Today is the seventh anniversary of the death of an exemplary Christian, Jim Skerl. If you do not know his story, I encourage you to read this. If you do know his story, I encourage you to share this.
We need more like him.
Two Ways of Dying
A wonderful tribute by Clyde Wilson to the greatest thinker to regularly grace the paged of Chronicles, the incomparable and irreplaceable Sam Francis:
Forty years ago today, "Brideshead Revisited" premiered on British television. As a filmed adaptation of a book, it has never been surpassed, equalled, or, frankly, even approached.
@roddreher
Thanks for this!
The wider point is this: Pat Buchanan has been right about EVERY major issue facing America since the end of the Cold War. If had been elected president, America would be in much better shape than it is.
@VDAREJamesK
Mr. Chu is apparently from Broadview Heights, Ohio, a short walk from the suburban neighborhood where I grew up. An odd place to hang your hat if you extoll multiculturalism or dislike white Americans.
Goodbye, Cleveland Indians. A perfectly honorable team name ditched to appease a tiny minority of malcontents. They may call the team "the Guardians" now, but who would want to be guarded by someone who acted like that? "Geldings" works better.
SIX: America has been seriously harmed by our 30-year experiment in globalism. Fighting another war not related to any vital American interest might well prove fatal to our country.
Worth posting every time withdrawal from Afghanistan is under duscussion--until it happens.
Bring the boys home. Replace them with neocon warmonger like David Frum, if necessary.
Benedict XVI’s last Urbi et Orbi, Christmas 2012 — Piazza filled to the brim, all the way to the Via della Conciliazione and beyond.
Now Francis can’t get faithful to fill even the first half of the square… 11 years of nightmare and discouragement.
Do not give a dime to Bari Weiss, Douglas Murray, the proposed University of Austin, or any other phony conservative trying to part you from your hard-earned money.
But Murray was also working with Bari Weiss, a supposedly "anti-woke" lib who is never more vicious than against people to her right. Irony: the woman who tried to cancel me is starting a university as an "anti-cancel-culture academic project."
@davidharsanyi
Pat Buchanan's criticism was always of specific individuals and specific policies. To suggest that Pat ever blamed "Jews", collectively, for anything, is a scurrilous lie.
Also, he happens to have been right about the invasion of Iraq: it was a disaster.
There has never been a ruling class like ours: simultaneously convinced of its crushing intellectual superiority, yet boundlessly ignorant of virtually everything.
Before Eric Zemmour, Before Tucker Carlson, there was Pat Buchanan.
It's well and good that Rod Dreher is praising Zemmour. But, first, Dreher should apologize for slandering Buchanan.
@emeriticus
Keep telling the truth,
@emeriticus
.
Truth has never been a particular concern of Jonah Goldberg and Co.
They are interested in protecting the powerful, bamboozling the rubes, and getting rich themselves.
Pope Francis has not never made any voting age diocesan bishop in Eastern Europe a Cardinal. The only group less favored by Francis than Eastern Europeans are American conservatives.
Hard to find a copy today but these are not only the best written articles and columns I've ever read, they constitute the basis of a coherent Middle American radicalism. Once you finish it, all of our most important political problems make sense
@Sanny_Rudra
I am not the "Tom Piatak" buying the English soccer team. I am sure he is a fine fellow, but I am not him, he is not me, we have never met, and are not closely related.
@emeriticus
If I were a Ukrainian nationalist, I'd be more concerned about the immediate threat posed to my country by Vladimir Putin than about threat that might be posed to my country in the future by George Soros-funded NGOs
Courts used to worry about state actions that would "chill" free speech. What is happening to the Brimelows, if not corrected, will do more than "chill" free speech; it will put it in a Gulag-like Siberian deep freeze, in which dissent would virtually disappear.
This is a transcript, with many links, of Peter and Lydia Brimelow's discussion of NYAG Letitia James's attack on us, and its threat to VDARE's very survival.
2). By the time my sister's children attended a different suburban Detroit public school, that school ignored Christmas, but taught children about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa:
A significant fact, yet largely-ignored. In his ten years as Pope, Francis has not made a single diocesan bishop in East Central Europe a Cardinal. Not even the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
1. The casual cruelty of this pontificate is remarkable. The Diocese of Cleveland has had a Latin Mass authorizes by the Diocese since 1988. Over time, organically, the number of parishes offering the Latin Mass grew to ten.
@emeriticus
Ukraine is asking the International Criminal Court to investigate whar happened at Bucha. This is similar to the Polish Government in exile asking the Red Cross to investigate what happened at Katyn. The Ukrainians
don't act like they have something to hide.
FIVE: Therefore, unless something changes on the Russian side, we need to find a way to deescalate this situation, to allow Putin a face-saving way to back down, and to begin the process of gradually withdrawing from Europe without leaving our allies in the lurch.
Two of Pope Francis' loudest partisans, Australia Ivereigh and Massimo Faggioli, are wailing that the American bishops have nothing about Jan. 6, 2021 on their website.
Contra Ivereigh, Jan. 6 is not "this most solemn moment of national reflection." It's a partisan totem.
@austeni
Is it obviously "of God" that priestly vocations have steadily declined since 2013? That the % of Argentine Catholics has plummeted? That the German and Belgian bishops have voted to bless homosexual unions, defying Rome and upending 2,000 years of Christian teaching?
@JoelWBerry
Western civilization resulted from the mixture of Roman civilization with the folkways of the Germanic tribes, as mediated by the Western Church. The emphasis on personal liberty was more a contribution of the Germanic tribes than of the Romans.
@bradleydevlin
@emeriticus
@amconmag
It would be nice if this article at least mentioned something about Russia's horrific treatment of Estonia, if only to give the reader some perspective. But I see little recognition at the American Conservative that Russia has ever done anything wrong, ever.
@EduardHabsburg
1).The Treaty of Trianon never would have happened if the Magyar elite had shown a modicum of respect for the non-Magyars who also lived in the Ķingdom of Hungary.
Barack Obama is articulate but has never made a memorable speech. The reason is that his views are utterly conventional. He’s unable of saying anything outside of the elite consensus. He’s a walking, talking Atlantic magazine subscription.
Bishop Baetzing points out that the Belgian bishops' conference also got away with implementing rules for a homosexual blessing, and therefore the German bishops will go ahead, too.
@Chris_SmithsJ
Amen! There are good and holy priests who wear cassocks, biretas, and lace. There are good and holy priests who do not. We need more good and holy priests, period.
@austeni
There are numerous other objections, including that the delegates are not representative of the universal Church, that synodality has been disastrous in other ecclesiastical communities, and that synodality is being imposed in an authoritarian manner, inter alia .
@SrNatB
@Synod_va
John Paul II authoritatively stated that the Church can never ordain women to the priesthood. Do you enequivocally accept that the Church can never ordain women to the priesthood, Sister Nathalie?
Evelyn Waugh's birthday. Born 28 Oct 1903.
"It is no longer possible . . . to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests."
@emeriticus
Pedro, it's unreasonable for you to expect David Frum to apply the standard he does to Israel to any other country. For Frum, Israel can do no wrong, just as he, Frum, can do no wrong.
Peter Brimelow makes a very powerful case that the New York State Attorney General is misusing her office to silence political opponents. Such actions are a mortal threat to the
American political system.
NY State Attorney General's lawfare against us: Peter Brimelow gives the details What are we accused of? Nothing! Peter: "We are merely being 'investigated'—at deliberately destructive expense. In other words, we are being battered to death by subpoena."
Three people who taught me a lot: my Grandpa Piatak, my Grandma Piatak (baptized Stefania Kowalczyk), and her sister, my Aunt Mary (baptized Marianna Bronislawa Kowalczyk).
During the Cuban missile crisis, JFK was aware of the need to avoid the types of actions that made August 1914 so fateful for Western civilization. Is Joe Biden aware of the same imperative?
Tucker Carlson recently highlighted one European nation that isn't having mass pro-Hamas demonstrations, and why. My Christmas piece for 2022 for VDARE touches on the same general issues, though without any reference to Hamas, etc.
Viktor Orban is not a threat to democracy. Indeed, he seems to be a skilled practitioner of it.
The threat to democracy is in Brussels, where people who have not been elected to anything seem to spend much of their time trying to undo what voters have done.
@bradleydevlin
@emeriticus
@amconmag
NATO expansion is not simply an expression of American hubris. No one is forced to join NATO, nor is anyone forced to remain. Countries like Estonia wanted to be in NATO because they know what Russian rule is like. No one at AmCon seems to know.
@ScottMcConnell9
Bill Kristol proves that being wrong about virtually everything is no impediment to success inside the Beltway.
Conversely, Pat Buchanan proves that being right about virtually everything counts for very little in that same wretched precinct.
Alas, for America.
@JamesMartinSJ
@SecretaryPete
Were Thomas More and John Fisher "unrealistic" in failing to recognize that Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII's wife? Was John the Baptist unrealistic in refusing to accept Herodias?
"Joe Biden's inaugural was the most confusing, contradictory and incoherent ever delivered from the steps of the Capitol, reflective of the mind of its author and the state of the Union he now leads."
Patrick J. Buchanan
Lots of Catholics grumble about the American bishops. But, so far, most American bishops are protecting the Latin Mass communities in their dioceses from Pope Francis, who wants to eliminate the Latin Mass the same way the Romans eliminated Carthage.
@ctrlamb
@GibsonWrites
A father who says he wants to welcome "everyone" and listen to what "everyone " has to say, but who regularly berates one of his own children, never listens to that child, and refuses even to meet with that child, would be a lousy father.
The day program for my special needs brother has been closed for two years because 90% of the clients cannot wear a mask. This program was a vital social outlet for those attending. The ‘cost’ of a politicized virus cannot be measured only in $$$—the human toll is incalculable.
The most memorable Olympic games of my life were held in Lake Placid. The event lost a lot of its charm when it could no longer be held in such modest venues.
@WeirdEducator
"Backward-looking" in Russia, good. "Backward-looking" in the West, bad.
"Backward looking" among American reactionaries, really, really bad.