Might want to think about those cathedrals, universities, hospitals, castles, palaces, etc., built in Christendom, and stop getting your understanding of Christianity from Protestants and atheists.

Yes, Jesus is everyone’s Christ, whether they know it or not.

You got in a car with a female Asian driver? Madcap!

Poor women. We’ve got it so bad. Remember: “Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.” — Hillary Clinton gave, in 1998, at a conference on domestic violence in El Salvador

For the record, I’m a female reader. An outlier, I know. But still…

The actual headline should read, “Eddie Izzard Struggles to Find Romance as an Oldster.” Waited too long, Eddie — this is what happens to women who put their careers first, you know.

I don’t know Izzard’s work, but if he is actually funny, then that proves prima facie that he isn’t really a woman.

Does the library in your town not have any books not written after 1900?

This is what really happened: after the forced conversions, a lot of the former Jews continued to do fabulously well and rose to high positions in Spanish society. This created a lot of envy on the part of the old Christian families.

The idea of the expulsion/conversion proclamation was to get RID of the Jews, not to have them insinuate themselves even deeper into Spanish society. Those who had planned the expulsions figured that the Jews would mostly leave rather than convert but the opposite turned out to be true, especially for the most successful Spanish Jews. Now that they were fellow Christians, they had the ear of the king even more than when they were Jewish. Now there were no circles in Spain from which they were excluded, not even the Church – the sky was the limit! The conversions had gone a little TOO well. Imagine how alt.righters would feel if Rahm Emmanuel was not only still Obama’s right hand man but now he was the Bishop of Chicago too! The taint is in the blood – is Rahm REALLY one of us now, just because he splashed some water on himself? They had outsmarted themselves by pretending that conversion was just a religious matter and not racial.

So siccing the Inquisition on the conversos was Plan B – yes the Jews converted but did they REALLY convert?

The old “weak loyalty” canard was just that, a canard. The conversos were not some 5th column in post-1492 Spain. “The martial sounds of the Moslem hosts made pleasant music in their ears.” This sounds ridiculously false – since when do Jews welcome the sound of military trumpets? The situation of the Jews (and Christians) in Moslem Spain was a lot less perfect than it has been made out. As dhimmis they were supposed to be in an inferior position and there were a lot of things that dhimmis are not allowed to do. Muslims were just as eager to get dhimmis to convert to THEIR true religion as the Christians were.

Because of usury, their aiding the Muslim invasions of Spain, and anti-Christianism, Spain was concerned about their Jewish population (and ended up kicking them out of the country in 1492, all followed by a Golden Age for the place). But the Spanish Inquisition had nothing to do with Jews in se. If a Jew had converted to Christianity (or, as many did, just claimed to be a convert), he could be tried before the Inquisition, but if he hadn’t, he was off-limits to it.

That’s my understanding, Reg Caesar. The Church conducted the tribunal, and the State did the punishing. The Spanish Inquisition became so known for the fairness with which it operated that some people would actually commit blasphemy so that they’d be tried by the Inquisition rather than by other courts of the day. By modern liberal standards, it was all horrible and wretched (of course), but Spain had to do something about the problem of false converts from Judaism teaching heresy from pulpits and cooperating with Muslims to take over the country. From pages 207-8 of the first volume of Henry Coppee’s “History of the Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors” says about the Jews of Spain,

What rendered them dangerous to the Gothic Christians gave them new value in the eyes of the Arab-Moors, who were making ready to invade the Peninsula. These disaffected and confederate Jews formed a band of intelligent and useful auxiliaries in the scheme of the Moslem conquest. The martial sounds of the Moslem hosts made pleasant music in their ears. National allegiance had they none… …[A]nd thus the readers of later Spanish history will find that, in troublous times, they often, like soldiers of fortune, changed sides, and not unfrequently held the balance of power through the influence of their unity and wealth.

The Spanish Inquisition had no authority over Jews qua Jews. If a Jew converted to Christianity he could be tried, but no Jewish person who practiced his own religion could. That’s a lie — one we hear all the damn time. And I’m sick of it.

While I’m here: the Spanish Inquisition lasted ~350 years and had an execution rate similar to that of modern day Texas, with a total of between 3,000 and 5,000 people having received the death sentence over the three and a half centuries it lasted — a rate of 8.57 to 14.2 per year. This BBC documentary at Youtube puts the lie to a lot of nonsense told about the dreaded Inquisition: https://youtu.be/qhlAqklH0do

I did read the column — but am extremely annoyed, too, by the number and type of ads at Taki. It’s become like “Daily Mail” — a RAM-sucking website with too many moving parts, one that’s crashed my computer more than once. And I can say that I have *not* clicked on links to Taki before because of this problem. Hope they do something about it.

I’m sure that the powers that be are really concerned about classified documents that are actually unclassified and that have been in Trump’s possession for a few years now. This is all about creating a scandal before mid-terms, trying to find anything at all to keep Trump from running, and trying to distract everyone from the Biden administration’s failures.

It’s also a scary-as-Hell big move in the further weaponizing of the FBI against us. The Left’s capture of the FBI, CIA, IRS with its tens of thousands of new and armed agents, the military — this can’t stand. I think we’re in big heap trouble with all this.

I’m sorry about your dog, Jack. It’s hard as Hell to lose a pet, and yours sounds like she was extra-special. If you’re Catholic, this page might give you some solace: Catholics and the Animal World.

Re. Pete Rose: when I was a little kid, I met him and asked if it hurt when he did those belly slides into bases. He said “Nah, I wouldn’t do it if it hurt.” And that was my big brush with baseball fame.

1,400 gunshot wounds in one city. Think about what that costs. From a 1997 article “Costs of gunshot and cut/stab wounds in the United States, with some Canadian comparisons“:

Across medically treated cases, costs average U.S. $154,000 per gunshot survivor and U.S. $12,000 per cut/stab survivor.

— and that’s at 1997 prices. Anyone do the math on this? What does this violence cost us each year?

I will say this about female authors: they write men much better than male authors write women.

If so, they probably start with a female character, and then add reason and accountability.

Rohrer was accused of wearing a bulletproof vest and insensitivity after firing Pastor Nelson Rabell-Gonzalez of a predominantly Latino congregation

Did Rohrer wear the bulletproof vest over or under the insensitivity? What sort of a tie did he pair it with? And why is it wrong to wear a bulletproof vest? Does that have to wait ’til after Labor Day?

(But if you’re gay and don’t do that kind of thing, I have no problem with you at all. It’s been around for centuries-the Romans evidently had it, and there are descriptions of gay emperors in China.)

You can say that about rape and murder, too. Just because something’s existed on the fringe forever doesn’t make it good or OK.

Homosexuality should not have been taken out of the DSM; it should be treated as the abnormality it is, coupled with lots of understanding and compassion — the same way schizophrenia or clinical depression are treated. But the inclination is one thing; the acts are another. And legally changing the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples was nothing but devastating.

Insist that your pronouns are I/Me/My/Mine. That way, when they’re talking about you, it sounds as if they’re talking about themselves — and they sound retarded in the process. They want to say “he is a far right-wing nutjob,” but are forced to say “I is a far right wing nutjob.” They want to say about you “he gave his vote to Trump,” but are forced to say “I gave my vote to Trump.” Etc.

More like “does this man inspire his kids to emulate him — and does he educate his kids, or does he leave it to schoolteachers and universities?” Most married females are on the conservative side.

I hate “based in.” It’s absurd. More and more, I hear ordinary people use this expression to tell others where they live, and it irritates the piss out of me.

The funny thing is that there’s nothing at all “based” about these people. They’ve never met a blue pill they didn’t get hooked on.

When I was little, I thought Joyce Carol Oates wrote a book about giant ants: Them! I couldn’t figure out why a writer who’d write about big ants was considered such an impressive literary figure.

Steve *is* cute, tho.

Dennis Dale:
I watched part of a Sex and the City episode years ago and I realized the slut character (who gave a random dude a blow job) is a transposed gay cruiser. It all seems rather deliberate.

Sex and the City did a number on sex and marriage and all that sort of thing. The big gay “wedding” between Anthony and Standford includes these lines:

Carrie Bradshaw, the Best Woman: “FYI, Anthony’s out there telling everyone he’s allowed to cheat.”

Stanford: “I know. He hates the traditions, so he pushes against them.”

Carrie Bradshaw: “So he’s allowed to cheat?”

Stanford: “Yes, but only in the 45 states where we’re not legally married.”

Then Liza Minelli shows up to marry the couple. One of her lines, said after the audience laughs: “Quiet now! Weddings are serious. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

Such a mockery of marriage. Clip of all that from “Sex and the City 2” (2010): https://youtu.be/4g8w4ikcR5g

There’s very strong evidence that smoking protects *against* Covid. Seriously. Studies here:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.20118877v2
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/med-2021-0273/html
https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/4/e27091/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1179173X20988674
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.15276
https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2020/04/20/13993003.01116-2020
https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/4/e27091/

It’s got to be exhausting being so, you know, “woke” all the time.

In your experience, is this level of consideration regarding Catholic Virtues something that is taken seriously by the laity?

Depends on the Catholic — how well he’s catechized, his personal holiness, etc. Speaking generally, Catholics who consider themselves “traditionalists” take the old school view of virtue extremely seriously. You can find these sorts of Catholics at the traditional Latin Mass on Sundays. See FishEaters.com for more information about traditional Catholicism.

If a woman is “someone who identifies as a woman,” then, with simple replacement, what you end up with is “a woman is someone who identifies as someone who identifies as a woman, which is someone who identifies as someone who identifies as a woman, which is someone who identifies as someone who…” It’s tautological nonsense.

Here’s one example: ‘Worst Cooks in America’ winner charged with killing daughter tweeted about kids’ white privilege.

My guess is that you used to be ugly, and now you’re not.

Re. the insects in Florida: My sister moved down there, and when I went to visit her, she hadn’t warned me about the palmetto bugs. “The roaches down here are 3 times bigger — and they FLY?!” Shudder!

I’m not sure how much anyone has ever been harmed by an absence of metaphysics.

Believing that there is order to the universe is sort of a prerequisite to discovering that order. Things like thinking that everything is just illusion, or that God is whimsical and can contradict Himself, etc., isn’t conducive to science or the tech that comes from it.

You don’t need steam engines when you have slaves or untouchables to pump the water out of the mines, which is why in Europe it was not discovered until the enlightenment, and why the Romans didn’t invent the horse collar.

What “slaves or untouchables” in Europe before the “Englightenment” are you referring to?

Black people also have a problem when it comes to resisting arrest. From the study “Why Do They Resist? Exploring the Dynamics of Police-Citizen Violence“:

Black offenders accounted for only 22.3% of the overall arrests, but had the highest rate of resisting arrest. While Black offenders account for only 8.0% of the entire population in the city, in the instances where they were contacted and arrested by officers, two out of every three resisted (67.4%). Black offenders were the least likely to comply, making up only 14.5% of the total arrests within the compliance category…White offenders were the exact opposite of Black offenders. 62.7% of those offenders identified as White complied, compared to only 37.3% who resisted.

That other Whites, especially women and left leaning people, hate your guts?

I’m white, I’m a woman, I love Steve Sailer, and I think the comment section here is among the most interesting on the internet. For the record and all…

Why are you here if you hate the place so much?

From the other side:

I’ve proposed “European and European-Derived” people — “EEDS” — for the cause of labeling white people in a new way that might sneak past the censors for a while.

As a Catholic, what came to my mind is that we could genuflect at the word “bl_ck” and strike our breast when pronouncing the word ” white.” Three strikes along with “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” would likely go down well with the woke clerisy types.

Money’s better spent on clothes than space exploration:

When it comes to IQ, you can put in a dropped ceiling, but you can’t raise the roof.

Pete D’Dabrosca has started a White House petition to remove “The Colossus of Rhodes” from the Statue of Liberty: https://twitter.com/pdabrosca/status/1221976796087955458.

Petition here: Remove “The New Colossus” poem from the Statue of Liberty.

I always say that white people are “People of All Colors” (POAC) given the nature of light and how white is made of all the colors put together. Try it out and see what sorts of reactions you get.

Everything you wrote is untrue. As to the date of Christmas: https://t.co/Fo7G2G4Pfq

Two articles about the “gay” frogs:

https://www.newsweek.com/female-frogs-estrogen-hermaphrodites-suburban-waste-369553

https://www.livescience.com/10957-pesticide-turns-male-frogs-females.html

As far as I can tell, the Daily Mail is one of the few that mentioned William Mendoza — the same guy — beating up some autistic Native American kid, to the point of breaking his arm, back in 2016: Obama policy adviser ‘called autistic Native American man a “weetard” for wearing a Redskins sweater, spat in his face and then beat him so badly he needed THREE surgeries

I think it’s more a “Russell Conjugation” type matter. Sometimes the way one puts things makes all the difference in the world, especially when progs rely on pithy soundbytes instead of actual thought. If, by using ultra-careful language, the same point can be gotten across without triggering one of their automatic thoughts and automatic attacks, you can can save yourself some pain and leave them not knowing how to respond.

Except when the Moors were raiding Europe and stealing us as slaves, by the hundreds of thousands, for a few hundred years?

Given that white is a color that consists of all the colors of the spectrum, I think white people should call themselves “People Of All Color.”

Chyeah. Tell that to the white people in South Africa.

Dr. Jordan Peterson plays around with the idea that feminists actually unconsciously long for domination by men, hence their welcoming of Muslim immigration and their not protesting what goes on in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia:

Looks like Ms Wu got it all wrong. “Oliver Höner, a research scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife and the co-founder of the Spotted Hyena Project, a research project based in Tanzania”, responds to her feminist hyena article.

Absolutely. I’m a 55-year old female, likely a lot older than she is, and got none of that growing up. Reading something like that is as aggravating as hearing Catholics my age kvetch about how awful their Catholic schools were. None of my cohorts got their knuckles rapped by a nun or got inculcated with “Catholic guilt” over being sexual human beings, but to hear some folks go on, one’d never know it.

Another page on the topics of lectio divina and typology: http://www.fisheaters.com/lectiodivina.html

Neither Jesus nor any of his apostles ever reference Esther, either directly of indirectly – the only Old Testament book of which this can be said.

Not so, and going by that standard of proof as to what belongs in the Bible, we’d have to throw out Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Obadiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah, too.

The (Catholic/Orthodox) Church determined the canon (not the other way around, as some Protestants strangely seem to think. Nor did it happen by miracle, as in the apparent belief that a leather-bound, gilt-edged Bible, complete with Cyrus Scofield’s footnotes, fell out of the sky and onto the lap of — of all people — King James); that’s good enough for me.

Totally off-topic; I beg Mr. Sailer’s indulgence:

Calling all Catholics: “Marcantonio Colonna” is the pen name of the author of “The Dictator Pope,” a book that reveals unpleasant truths about Pope Francis. Francis is seeking out this man’s true identity. Faithful Catholics are now all claiming: #IAmMarcantonioColonna

Book link: https://tinyurl.com/yaogaadk

Please help all this trend on Twitter. Use the hashtag. Send a message to Pope Francis.

Hashtag page: https://tinyurl.com/y9rwm7jj

FishEaters’s memes: https://tinyurl.com/y7cu42jt

The problem is that the Irish, Italians, Germans, English, etc., are being attacked as whites. No one speaks of “cigendered, heterosexual Italian men,” but of “cisgendered, heterosexual white men.” Europeans are being trapped into playing a game not of their choosing, but when they play to win, they’re accused of being racists. It’s a no-win game — but there no way not to play given the first line I wrote.

That second Trump-Clinton debate was great television. I laughed my ass off, and if I were prone to fist-pumping (which I’m not), I’d have done it. I think it’s hilarious that Hillary talks about how “creepy” she found Trump during that debate, and how her “skin crawled.” Chyeah! As if Hillary “We Came, We Saw, He Died” Clinton felt that instead of pure rage for a single second. And if she had felt that, is someone who’s creeped out by someone standing “too close” to her personal space the type of person we want having to deal with North Korea? LOL

Without Buchanan running his America First third-party campaign in the 2000 election, there wouldn’t have been an Iraq War!

This is an absurd hypothetical. Of course there would have been an Iraq War, 9/11 or no, Bush or Gore.
For the same reason that there will be an Iran War in our near future: Netanyahu & co. desire it and will have it.

Podhoretz left out the word “virulent.” I thought it was sorta like a grammatical law that “virulent” has to go before “anti-semite.” And if the guy looks like a “straight out of central casting” anti-semite, well, whose fault is that? It’s not Italians or Poles who determine who gets what parts in movies. And then he calls Steve “racist?” Let’s talk about racism, eh?

Anyway, something for Podhoretz to read that’ll re-inform him as to why we invaded Iraq — the same reasons why we’ll undoubtedly go mess with Iran and create another new tidal wave of immigrants who’ll pour into Europe and not Israel: Chapter 8 of Mearsheimer & Walt’s book.

For evidence that Judaism was a proselytizing religion, see the writings of Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Seneca, Tacitus, Josephus, Epictetus, Dio Cassius, and the New Testament (ex., Matthew 23:15). More evidence of Jewish proselytism are the existence of the Ethiopian Jews, the conversion of the Khazar kingdom, the forced conversions of the Idumeans conquered by the Jewish Maccabean Kings and of slaves owned by Jews, and rabbinical writings that indicate Marcus Aurelius and Nero were converts to Judaism. Other prominent converts include: Poppaea, the second wife of Nero; Aquila of Pontus; Consul Flavius Clemens, nephew of Roman Emperor Vespasian and his wife, Domitilla, the cousin of Titus; King Monobaz of Abiabene, his wife, Helena; and King Dhu Nuwas of Yemen. In the Roman Empire, proselytism was such a huge phenomenon, that Septimius Severus issued an edict forbidding conversion of Gentiles to Judaism.

According to the Talmud, Nero himself — the great slayer of Christians, a man who used tarred Christians as torches for his garden parties — converted to post-Temple Judaism. Gittin 56a reads: “He [God] sent against them [Israel] Nero the Caesar. As Nero was coming he shot an arrow towards the east, and it fell in Jerusalem. He then shot one towards the west, and it again fell in Jerusalem. He shot toward all four points of the compass, and each time it fell in Jerusalem. He said to a certain boy, ‘Repeat to me the last verse of Scripture that you have learned.’ He said, ‘ I will wreak My vengeance on Edom through My people Israel.’ Nero said, ‘The Kadosh Barukh Hu [the Holy One] desires to lay waste His Temple and to lay the blame on me. So he ran away and converted to Judaism, and Rabbi Meir was descended from him.’”

Catholics, too, didn’t and don’t think that Saints have supernatural powers. It’s the prayers of the Saints that are efficacious; they don’t have any inherent super-powers or anything.

My response to this insanity here, FWIW: https://www.fisheaters.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=79757&pid=1352775#pid1352775.

“…In Spartan society, women could own estates, travel freely without male escort, and even initiate divorce. These rights were far from the historical norm. Indeed, one may see many parallels between women’s rights in Ancient Sparta and those found in the modern developed world…”

Aside from bit about divorce, those things were true, too, in medieval Europe (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Middle_Ages). The rise of Protestantism, with its rejection of Mary, female Saints, the monastic route away from housewifery, etc., brought a big drop in the status of women.

Women have a greater capacity than men at self-delusion, hysteria, and group-think, as most people have found throughout the centuries. It is notable that the accusers in the Salem Witch Trials were all young girls.

While I agree with your first sentence (speaking generally), to the second I have to say that it was a male judge and male jurors who convicted and sentenced the accused. As an aside, I saw an interesting documentary that made a good case for the idea that all that Salem business was due to ergot poisoning. I think this is the documentary I saw:

Anti-feminist Phyllis Schalfly, however, is a WASP.

Mrs. Schlafly was Catholic.

There are atheist alt-righters who makes claims that Christianity is the same as Judaism, call themselves a European”, and insist the Christians of the alt-right who got over the “ick” factor controlled opposition.

Yeah, and I find it frustratingly fascinating. How the Hell do they explain the Jewish animus against Christians and Christianity? Haven’t they looked at History at all? Read any Jewish writings?

I get your point, but disagree that there’s “no such thing as ‘European’”. “European” is a low resolution sort of adjective, but it’s still a thing. To my mind, if we’re attacked as “Europeans” or “white people,” we have to respond as such, but I agree with you that those terms don’t mean much outside of Leftist identity politicking, a game it seems we’re forced to either play or lose.

It’s especially funny that they included “bishop” and “2,500 years ago” in the same thought.

Especially since the Bishop in question — St. Cyril — didn’t order Hypatia’s death in the first place. People love to make up crap about anything Catholic.

How does one abuse something that has no legitimate or beneficial use?

Heroin does have “legitimate” and beneficial use, and is used medically in the UK under the name diamorphine. It’s what pain patients sometimes turn to in the U.S. when their doctors passively allow the DEA to practice medicine, and in fear for their medical licenses, cut those patients off from legal pain relief.

I think you forgot about the New Testament.

Like the border fence his son defends for his and dad’s own tribe’s armed forces.Where is that again?

Yeah, that border — the one U.S. taxpayers paid for.

“Brothers in Christ” is not an absurdity when understood in the traditional Catholic way — a way that doesn’t involve shoving disparate people together on earth, devaluing piety, “leap-frogging loyalites,” etc.

See this papal encyclical about the “dirt poor Jews of Eastern Europe”: A Quo Primum.

Excerpt from http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-pt-2-more-historical.html :

Quick association test! The unification of Italy – good or bad? I’ll bet you said “good.” Well, here’s a little story.

A couple of years ago Mrs. Moldbug and I spent three weeks in Italy. For the first week we split a villa in Cilento with some friends, which was lovely if a little buggy, and involved inhaling enormous quantities of Limoncello. Next we thought we’d take our backpacks and bop around on the train a little. Our first stop: Naples.

I’m afraid it’s not for nothing that northern Italians say “Garibaldi didn’t unite Italy, he divided Africa.” Obviously, this is a racist statement and I can’t condone it. But even the Lonely Planet warns travellers that “you might think you’re in Cairo or Tangier.” I have never been to Cairo or Tangier, but if they are anything like Naples, God help them.

The 3000-year-old city of Naples is a reeking, garbage-ridden sewer. This year there was an actual garbage strike, but the problem is perennial – there was a giant, seemingly permanent mound of it right across the street from our LP-recommended albergo. At all times, almost everyone on the street appears to be a criminal, especially at night. The streets are ruinous, unlit, and patrolled by thieves on mopeds. We saw one pull up in front of an old lady carrying a bag of groceries, openly inspect her goods for anything worth stealing, then scoot away. Apparently they have a reputation for ripping earrings out of womens’ ears.

From Naples you can take the Trans-Vesuviano to Pompeii. This train has a wonderful name, but its main purpose appears to be to transport criminals from the Stalinist banlieues in which they live, to the city in which in which they steal. Signs in every language known to humanity warn the tourist that pickpockets are everywhere. The trains are stripped to the metal and covered with graffiti, which is not in Latin. As the train stopped at one station, we saw a couple of carabinieri carrying a body-bag away from the platform.

The night after this we wandered the historic district of Naples, simply looking for one open-air cafe in which to sit and chat. Eventually we found one. We were pretty much the only people there. It was Saturday night. We moved on and discovered one clean thing in Naples – the new, EU-funded subway. Tried a couple of stops. Everything was the same.

Finally, I remembered a snarky little use of the word “bourgeois” in the Planet and marched Mrs. Moldbug over to the funicula, which goes up the hill to the Vomero, a sort of internal suburb. Quelle difference! You go three hundred feet up a cliff, and you have gone from Cairo to Milan. We immediately found a wine-bar with an English-speaking hostess and enjoyed several lovely glasses.

Suddenly we realized that it was late, and we didn’t know when the subway stopped running, to get us back to our albergo, near the Stazione Centrale. So we asked. And no one knew. Not the waitress, not anyone in the bar. These hip young people had no idea of the subway hours in their own city. I believe the waitress actually said something like, “why do you want to go there?”

We hurried, and I think we got the last train. The next day, Mrs. Moldbug, who is far more tasteful than I and who would never repeat that nasty line about Garibaldi, expressed the desire to “just hop on the Eurostar and stay on it until we get to Stockholm.” In fact we ended up in Perugia, which is, of course, lovely.

So: Naples. Obviously, Naples being this way, I assumed that Naples had always been this way. There was that old line, “see Naples and die,” but presumably it referred to a knife in the ribs. That poor bastard on the Trans-Vesuviano had seen Naples, and died. Was it worth it?

So I was surprised to discover a different version of reality, from British historian Desmond Seward’s Naples: A Travellers’ Companion:

‘In size and number of inhabitants she ranks as the third city of Europe, and from her situation and superb show may justly be considered the Queen of the Mediterranean,’ wrote John Chetwode Eustace in 1813. Until 1860 Naples was the political and administrative centre of the Kingdom of The Two Sicilies, the most beautiful kingdom in the world. Consisting of Southern Italy and Sicily, it had a land mass equal to that of Portugal and was the richest state in Europe… For five generations – from 1734 till 1860 – it was ruled by a branch of the French and Spanish royal family of Bourbon who filled the city with monuments to their reign…

The ‘Borboni’ as their subjects called them, were complete Neapolitans, wholly assimilated, who spoke and thought in Neapolitan dialect (indeed the entire court spoke Neapolitan)… Until 1860, glittering Court balls and regal gala nights at the San Carlo which staggered foreigners by their opulence and splendour were a feature of Neapolitan life… In 1839 that ferocious Whig Lord Macaulay was staying in the city and wrote, ‘I must say that the accounts I which I have heard of Naples are very incorrect. There is far less beggary than in Rome, and far more industry… At present, my impressions are very favourable to Naples. It is the only place in Italy that has seemed to me to have the same sort of vitality which you find in all the great English ports and cities. Rome and Pisa are dead and gone; Florence is not dead, but sleepeth; while Naples overflows with life.”

The Borboni’s memory have been systematically blackened by partisans of the regime which supplanted them, and by admirers of the Risorgimento. They have had a particularly bad press in the Anglo-Saxon world. Nineteenth-century English liberals loathed them for their absolutism, their clericalism and loyalty to the Papacy, and their opposition to the fashionable cause of Italian unity. Politicians from Lord William Bentinck to Lord Palmerston and Gladstone, writers such as Browning and George Eliot, united in detesting the ‘tyrants’; Gladstone convinced himself that their regime was ‘the negation of God.’ Such critics, as prejudiced as they were ill informed, ignored the dynasty’s economic achievement, the kingdom’s remarkable prosperity compared with other Italian states, the inhabitants’ relative contentment, and the fact that only a mere handful of Southern Italians were opposed to their government. Till the end, The Two Sicilies was remarkable for the majority of its subjects’ respect for, and knowledge of, its laws – so deep that even today probably most Italian judges, and especially successful advocates, still come from the south. Yet even now there is a mass of blind prejudice among historians. All too many guidebooks dismiss the Borboni as corrupt despots who misruled and neglected their capital. An entire curtain of slander conceals the old, pre-1860 Naples; with the passage of time calumny has been supplemented by ignorance, and it is easy to forget that history is always written by the victors. However Sir Harold Acton in his two splendid studies of the Borboni has to some extent redressed the balance, and his interpretation of past events is winning over increasing support – especially in Naples itself.

Undoubtedly the old monarchy had serious failings. Though economically and industrially creative, it was also absolutist and isolationist, disastrously out of touch with pan-Italian aspirations… Beyond question there was political repression under the Bourbons – the dynasty was fighting for its survival – but it has been magnified out of all proportion. On the whole prison conditions were probably no worse than in contemporary England, which still had its hulks; what really upset Gladstone was seeing his social equals being treated in the same way as working-class convicts, since opposition to the regime was restricted to a few liberal romantics among the aristocracy and bourgeoisie…

The Risorgimento was a disaster for Naples and for the south in general. Before 1860 the Mezzogiorno was the richest part of Italy outside the Austrian Empire; after it quickly became the poorest. The facts speak for themselves. In 1859 money circulating in The Two Sicilies amounted to more than that circulating in all other independent Italian states, while the Bank of Naples’s gold reserve was 443 million gold lire, twice the combined reserves of the rest of Italy. This gold was immediately confiscated by Piedmont – whose own reserve had been a mere 27 million – and transferred to Turin. Neapolitan excise duties, levied to keep out the north’s inferior goods and providing four-fifths of the city’s revenue, were abolished. And then the northerners imposed crushing new taxes. Far from being liberators, the Piedmontese administrators who came in the wake of the Risorgimento behaved like Yankees in the post-bellum Southern States; they ruled The Two Sicilies as an occupied country, systematically demolishing its institutions and industries. Ferdinand’s new dockyard was dismantled to stop Naples competing with Genoa (it is now being restored by industrial archeologists). Vilification of the Borboni became part of the school curriculum. Shortly after the Two Sicilies’ enforced incorporation into the new Kingdom of Italy, the Duke of Maddaloni protested in the ‘national’ Parliament: ‘This is invasion, not annexation, not union. We are being plundered like an occupied territory.’ For years after the ‘liberation,’ Neapolitans were governed by northern padroni and carpet-baggers. And today the Italians of the north can be as stupidly prejudiced about Naples as any Anglo-Saxon, affecting a superiority which verges on racism – ‘Africa begins South of Rome’ – and lamenting the presence in the North of so many workers from the Mezzogiorno. (The ill-feeling is reciprocated, the Neapolitan translation of SPQR being Sono porci, questi Romani.) Throughout the 1860s 150,000 troops were needed to hold down the south.

Note the pattern. What made Italian unification happen? Why did Ferdinand of Naples, with his 443 million gold lire, just roll over for Charles Albert of Piedmont, with his mere 27? Two reasons: Lord Palmerston and Napoleon III. Where did exiles such as Mazzini and Garibaldi find their backers? Not in Pompeii, that’s for sure.

The unification of Italy was an event in the 19th century’s great struggle between liberalism and reaction. The international liberal movement of the 20th century, in which a figure such as Carl Schurz could go from German revolutionary in 1848 to Civil War general in 1861, was the clear precursor of today’s “international community.” And once again, we see it playing the same predatory role: conquering and destroying in the name of liberation and independence.

Christians don’t believe in “sky fairies”; they believe in God — you know, the Uncaused Cause, the Prime Mover, the Creator, and so on. Unless you can think of how the universe came from nothing that became something and then exploded and then was able to produce life, I’ll stick with the God story.

– Catholic (and at times protestant, too) unsolved theological problem what to do with the biblical imperative “be fruitful and multiply”

For Catholics, there is nothing unsolved about this. “Be fruitful and multiply” is not an imperative; it’s a blessing. At the same time, sex is to be kept inside marriage and not be accompanied with any artificial contraception.

And, by the way, you all (British, etc.) were shitting in pitchers by your bedsides around that time and for a while to come, so the comparison of pooping habits isn’t so flattering to your lot.

Ouch, you really got us there; before Europeans re-invented the thousands-of-years-old Roman (European) plumbing, we didn’t have that sort of plumbing.

I think someone left the screen door open; it’s awfully gnatty in here.

Dude, Steve’s not your dancing monkey. And besides, he’s not a huge Trump-person from what I’ve seen.

If you want to get a big mouthful of what the Google Powers That Be do to play around with race and political correctness, check out the Google image returns for “white man with white woman” (no quotes). Surreal, man.

Cultural Marxism is just Marxism minus class warfare plus identity politics — i.e., the struggle isn’t between classes, but between identity groups.

I see changing stations in men’s rooms not as a matter of women demanding that men do their “fair share,” but of easing men’s ability to go out alone with their kids and deal with them adequately. A man goes out to McD’s with his 1-year old, and the kid needs a diaper change, where’s that supposed to happen? Not in the restaurant, I hope. There should be changing stations in men’s rooms, definitely.

You’ll also learn from such accounts that women discussing menstruation or their female body parts is very triggering to transwomen, and as good allies, there has been a very strong push to end their discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yALNSd0iME

It was a matter of prophecy and there were types of it in the Old Testament all along. Christ and Mary poetically mirror Adam and Eve, for ex., in being born without original sin. Look at the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament and parallel it with Mary (see this page for more about that: http://www.fisheaters.com/mary.html.

Jealousy is a green-eyed beast. It’s not for nothing that envy was considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins by Catholic theologians of the Dark and Medieval Ages.

Sorry to sound naggy, but this is a pet peeve of mine, and one that actually has serious consequences: a lot of writers refer to Catholic phenomena as being in the past. This is wrong. The “seven deadlies” are still Catholic teaching, and are still just as deadly as ever.

Seriously, watch for this phenomenon. You’ll see it a lot, esp. when the Middle Ages are discussed (e.g., “it was once believed that the bread became the actual Body of Christ”). It’s so aggravating.

And as to the so-called “Dark Ages,” for the cause, see the video at the bottom of this page: http://www.fisheaters.com/crusades.html, and note that Christians, esp. the Benedictines, were doing all sorts of stuff to preserve and hand down culture in those times.

The once useful** Biblical Imperative – Be fruitful and multiply! – needs a correction**.

Catholics don’t see “be fruitful and multiply” as an imperative; they see it as a blessing.

“But I only read Sailer for the golf course architecture” is the 21st century version of reading Playboy for the articles.

Well, actually the peanut was invented by God. You know, Morgan Freeman.

God is black, and that’s why all inventors are black.

He gave his chosen people the media to teach us these things. You need to watch more movies and to pay more attention to Google doodles.

About the destruction of those white ethnic neighborhoods, see Dr. E. Michael Jones’s “The Slaughter of Cities.”

Book: The Slaughter of Cities

Video Interview with Jones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTrBXSwwsdI&feature=youtu.be

God love ya for using the word “comedienne.” Even though the bitches weren’t funny.

The bit about contrast makes sense. And I had no idea that “effeminate” could be a verb, too. Interesting!

Gosh, haven’t heard that in years! I have a sister named Amy, and, growing up, we had sister-friends named Renee and Valerie. We each had our own song 🙂

But re. the 48 years: as Sir Mick Jagger said, “what a drag is it getting o-0ld.” And how.

I’m a She-Tracy. And I insist on being referred to as that if my name ever ends up in the fishwraps (God forbid LOL). And I want “Baroness” thrown in for good measure.

I’m Catholic, so my thinking is shaped by traditional Western thinking — e.g., Aquinas on the question, “Whether effeminacy is opposed to perseverance?”. Fortitude and perseverance are virtues, and all of the virtues should be sought by all people, no matter their sex. The word in Scripture that typically gets translated to “effeminate” is “mollis” in the Douay (as in, I’m guessing, “mollify”), and it means soft, lacking in fortitude, given to “delicacy” (and also the passive role in homosexual sex). In this sense of the word, it’d not be good for a woman to be “effeminate.”

We already have the word “feminine,” so defining “effeminate” as “feminine” seems kinda redundant (not that we can’t — and don’t — have more than one word for a single thing or concept, but using “effeminate” and “feminine” to mean the same thing doesn’t really add anything to the language, really, at least not that I can think of. They sound too similar for it to have any literary value). But I grant that the way you’re using the word is how it’s typically used these days. I just find it, um, “problematic” (LOL don’t hate!) because it equates the feminine with something bad. We’re not going to get women to be more feminine if “feminine” — seen as a synonym for “effeminate” — is seen as an insult.

As to etymology, “virtue” has the root of “vir,” meaning manliness, but I’m guessing you’d want your Mom to be “virtuous,” KWIM?