Kruschev's Charge of American Gullibility to the Inroads of Socialism

How did such gullibility grow? My grandparents and those of their generation were not so gullible. Especially of godlessness. They were not gullible about where that would land you.

Mennonite Choir in Harvard Square

Mennonite choir in Harvard Square. It was amazing how the passersby looked on and remarked as you would at eccentrics in an asylum. The irony that these good modest folk were the sane ones.  It was the half naked asylum inmates that could've learned from them a little about wholesome sanity.

The Rifleman: The Sheridan Story

The best episode of the best western ever to hit the screen. The acting and writing and story are to my mind classic, simply classic. Robert Frost said once that the good reader of a poem doesn't have to wait a certain length of time but knows immediately when a poem is a classic. And here in this episode is a poem, a classic poem of what it means to bind up the nation's wounds. Would such story not be as extinct as it appears to be in our culture today.

The Jane Fonda Megaphone

The media is one huge Jane Fonda megaphone. Never ceases to amaze me how many listen and mark down in their minds Hanoi Jane's ever repeating mantra as truth. The current border clash will of course be spun by this megaphone to make Trump and the border agents as the bullies; yes, bullies against women and children (forgetting of course to leave out the ninety and nine percent of the caravan population: the young metamorphically armed males) who have (it will be asserted) a constitutional right (ironically by those who don't believe in the Constitution) to stake a claim beyond the border. It is history repeating a good heresy again: make an invasion look like an immigration. Make bad guys into the good and the good into the bad. Edit out the metamorphic projectiles and accent the tear gas. The Hanoi Jane media network knows how to convey it. After all I remember now how it was the Viet Cong that were the virtuous ones.

Live Real Playing

Great night of homemade music: guitars, fiddles, banjo, ukulele, autoharp, harmonica, mandolin, and voices. What an amazing thing it is that song can bring such delight. Oh yes, you can have the perfect stuff on a CD or a App but to engage in the live real playing and making music is something I hope our society doesn't forget in its ubiquitous error free electronics.

Acosta Accosting at the White House Press Conference

Why isn't Acosta charged with accosting? He doesn't ask questions. He accosts. If he went on a moment more with the President I think the President would've spanked him, something he no doubt never received growing up. His name does fit him well.

The Robbery of Our Republic

Plain and simple. Not complicated. So simple a Hans Christian Andersen child could point it out. Florida and Arizona are all about undocumented dead and living democrats voting. And certainly there must be a rare radical republican that senses something amiss in these 'recounts'. A rare radical republican that rises to the occasion to stop this robbery of our republic. A rare radical republican that will reveal this manufacture of votes. A rare radical republican that will finally shut down all this talk about Russia influencing elections. No, the rare radical republican will point to places that are much much closer than is the mythical Moscow

The Rascally Recount

If we don't trust the original count what makes anyone trust the recount? I myself don't trust this kind of arithmetic. Especially from those who push the new math of 2 plus 2 equaling 5.

The Mountain's Manifesto

Today at St Mary's Men's group we went through the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, the Christian's Manifesto as St Augustine put it, and the Jewel in the Crown of Holy Scripture as another had referred to it. I remember it as a boy just learning to read, pouring over the wonderful red letters (in the old Authorized Version marking the actual words of Jesus) where both sides of both columns of print were red and how such words enchanted my eyes, so much so that I've never gotten over that first love. The imagination is hardly able to conjure up how such words must have sounded, the terrible timber that proclaimed from the pulpit of that mountain.

Mr. President, You Remind Me Of...

t just struck me why I like President Donald J. Trump so much. In the last press conference especially he reminded me in his standing up so man-straight and man-tall against the paper tiger media bullies of a John Wayne facing the desperadoes. Does anyone see it as well? Maybe even a cross between the Duke and Ronnie Reagan.

Mid Term Elections and St Paul's Admonition

It was a gut-kick hearing from one of the daily communicant's that Elizabeth Warren kept her senate seat in last night's election. I then went into the church and as I sat there for the epistle reading from St Paul I remembered one of the things the Apostle said:  "Rejoice alway, and yet again I say, Rejoice".  I began to reflect on this admonition of joy. How courageous it was, especially considering it all in the context of the reign of Nero. Must we as well have such Pauline courage for our own political and social times that seem on like trajectory as decadent Roman Empire.  Oh, yes, there was the good news of the senate to be sure, but this seemed not adequate enough consolation as I mused about all the contrived crimes and investigations that will be the daily delight under a democratic House. Yet I heard again and a little more forcefully as the liturgy progressed: "Rejoice alway, and again I say rejoice!" And this was followed up with something I've always liked from Robert Browning: "God is in His heaven and all is right with the world." Thus as I was strengthened by the Great Consoler I wish to pass this little reflection on to you, my friends. I'm reminded too what Isaiah says: "the Nations are to Him as a drop in the bucket"---and this includes the ME TOO movement, the caravan, the Russian collusion hoax, the social engineering, the calumnious accusations and bearing false witness, the educating the old virtues into the new vices and the old vices into the new virtues. But let us take a note from Calvin here. Though I think much of his theology mistaken and inordinate, yet his pen ran with true ink when he emphasized the sovereignty of God. Yes, indeed. And this truth must be the ballast and rejoicing of our souls. May it be so.

The Splinter and the Beam and my Elderly Friend

As my friends on the Left have acquired a taste for the Bible---certain phrases seem quite useful to voice one's virtue. Yard signs of "Love Thy Neighbor", "No Place for Hate" (not a verbatim phrase in Scripture but certainly a quality of heaven), "Judge Not", and also the Pope's "Who Am I to Judge?" --- such phrases righteously admonish. If the yard signs are not enough we are doubly educated by internet, films, the magisterial morning panels as The View should we have the misfortune to have a residue of racism to dare vote for a man who would wish to have something as archaic and intolerant as borders. Of course we are told by the secular biblical scholars that borders aren't biblical, and Jesus would never build a wall.
Thus I had to reach to the bookshelf and take down and dust off this Book I needed more familiarity with. After all so many were quoting from it.

As I began reading it wasn't long when I came across: "Remove the beam out of thine own eye and then thou shalt be able to remove the splinter out of thy brother's eye."

As I pondered this passage that hadn't yet made it into a yard sign, I began to wonder at its implications for today. But there was a catalyst that excited my mind on this particular text: an elderly lady at Mass this morning. While talking to her and mentioning how I was thankful for our President, her holy face and lovely lucid eyes looked surprised. Her look wasn't quite askance but it was in that direction. And so I wasn't surprised at her question: "But isn't he very immoral?" In this elderly saint's delicate voice this judgmental word seemed foreign. How did she come to think something so contrary to her nature? My elderly friend would not have suggested even that the mobster Whitey Bulger was an immoral soul. And yet?

I had to wonder for a moment as I looked at her questioning face. She is certainly an innocent soul, my elderly friend, and I wonder at how she could so firmly believe that we had here in our President a quality of spiritual lostness that she would not have put upon Judas himself even while he held the thirty pieces in his hand or deposited the kiss upon his Friend's cheek.

I had only said that I thought we were fortunate in this age of anarchy to have such a man as President Trump at the helm. Again this elderly friend is a saint (you just know when you meet one) and has all the feminine loveliness and beauty so much of womanhood traded in for the poisoned porridge of the feminist movement. Anyhow my elderly friend followed up the questioning look with, "But what about all the things he has said?"

I knew then how our unbiased media underscored for her and so many others the choice crude remarks, the repetition, the molding of the mind with soundbites. All this while what the man has done especially in undermining the abortion industry, pushing to defund Planned Parenthood, his Court Picks, his programs to help the black youth in conjunction with Evangelical inner city pastors, his work to keep Religious Liberty alive, and other things get overshadowed by a crudity or brashness that is part of his NYC businessman's personality.

But it didn't surprise me, this response: No. I could understand the power of the six o'clock news, the monolith of mind-molding narrative that comes to us day by day, hour by hour. I could understand the susceptibility of the innocent as doves. I could understand the subtlety of the sophisticated calumny of the Never Trump narrative. I could understand that she would have the president's crude comments against his opponents in Caps, and not even be aware of the smarmy smears that are the steady graffiti vandalizing the White House. Thus with this impetus of my dear friend's consternation and puzzlement at my inexplicable praise of such an immoral man I come upon the passage in the Bible regarding the beam and the splinter and how the Left seems all too ready to elucidate the splinter, to highlight it, to italicize it, to repeat it, to feature it until it is indelible gospel written upon the collective mind of the citizenry, and my elderly friend.

As I thought of the Left's newfound love of righteousness I wondered that they readily pointed out the splinter, but seemed to neglect the beam, the beam of the freedom to break the baby in the womb, the beam of normalizing whatever is against natural law, the beam of celebrating what they seem to find so abhorrent in a few perverted priests, the schizophrenia of pushing for all kinds of sexual license while at the same time being the accusing Puritan Mr. Dimmesdale in the ME TOO movement; the beam of educating the innocence out of children; the beam of making vice virtue and virtue vice. So perhaps in the Left's newfound Love for the Word there would be some more lawn signs that could cover the splinter beam dichotomy? Perhaps some admonition to instruct us all be better and more compliant citizens of this city of man and also for the City of God; and that our tolerance and compassion and neighbor-love would mark our lawn signs to include such neighbors as Bret Kavanaugh and our President. Yes, I would hope they someday can make it into the Left's category of neighbor.