Lack of Ethics

The court remains the only federal court not covered by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. The court and the country would be better off if the justices were responsible to the code. Even without a duty to the code, each justice has a duty to its principles. Each has a duty to promote the judiciary’s impartiality. That means avoiding any activity that could raise reasonable doubts about his or her ability to decide cases fairly.


See here

Willard Cleon Skoussen and Radical Constitutionalism

Jeffrey Rosen, en su articulo en el NYT de ayer sobre "Radical Constitutionalism" menciona a un viejo conocido, ya fallecido, el Dr. Willard Cleon Skoussen como el ideologo del "Tea Party". See here

Contending Modernities

On November 18-19, dozens of scholars, religious leaders, business people, and intellectuals will gather in New York for the public launch of a new, multi-year project called “Contending Modernities: Catholic, Muslim, Secular.”

Based on the premise that Catholic, Muslim, and secular modernities each bring distinctive resources to the task of illuminating and resolving an array of characteristically modern problems, the project will examine the dynamic co-existence and competition of these “multiple modernities”—as well as the conflicts and contentions among them—with the aim of opening “new paths for constructive engagement between and among religion and secular people and institutions.”

See here

Schuon. On his Philosophy.

Elections in the US

El muerto K

Representó lo peor de la Argentina, el resentimiento, la soberbia, la prepotencia, los negocios turbios con empresarios turbios, el enriquecimiento ilícito,los ataques permanentes a las tradiciones y a la religion de los argentinos, la destrucción sistematica de las instituciones, la venganza, los golpes bajos, la alianza con los peores elementos de la sociedad ...me alegra que este capitulo se haya cerrado, pero no hay que bajar los brazos y recordar la frase de Brecht.

...

Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again. Bertold Brecht

...
De otros medios:

"La Argentina padeció a lo largo del siglo XX, y sobre todo a partir de
1930, año del golpe fascista –en sentido estricto– del general Uriburu,
gobiernos que pueden contarse entre los peores de Occidente para
sorpresa de propios y extraños, que nunca entendieron –entendimos– cómo
aquello era posible en un país culto, con la tasa de analfabetismo más
baja del mundo y con una librería en cada esquina de las grandes
ciudades. Pero de todos los que padeció, excepción hecha del período de
las juntas militares, el de este hombre que acaba de morir lleno de oro
y odio fue el peor.

Ni merece un análisis sociológico más allá de la estructura del poder. Se resume en delincuencia sindical y policial, reivindicación de un terrorismo en el cual ni siquiera había tenido el valor de militar, podredumbre ideológica, financiera y moral, y un autoritarismo que hizo perder sentido a la palabra democracia.

Chávez se explica por su rostro de animal vengativo –es un tiranuelo de los que profetizó Bolívar, "de todos los colores y razas"–. Kirchner, descendiente de croatas, era simplemente un hombre feo y desesperadamente codicioso –su viuda y presidente rinde idéntico tributo a la codicia– en el que costaba imaginar las raíces del odio, pero rebosaba de él, un odio generalizado a su país y sus paisanos."
--- Horacio Vázquez-Rial

The UN

Excelent posting by our blog-friend the Monarchist quoting Gerald Warner at the Telegraph:

Gerald Warner, where art thou?

I've no idea where The Much Honoured the Laird of Craigenmaddie has gotten to these past few weeks, but I miss him dearly. No one, it seems, is better equipped at encapsulating the ills of our time than he:


"The EU and the UN are working to establish a monocultural world government. Its malign culture is one of population control, secularism, relativist morality, materialism, self-conscious modernity, equality of all under the benign rule of the totally unequal governing elite. It promotes the New Man: cellophane-wrapped, emasculated by health and safety, dedicated to extending his meaningless and despiritualised existence by medical improvements, inhabiting cities rendered anonymous by globalised architecture and the ubiquity of international corporations.

The intolerable antithesis of that Utopian future is any society that values tradition, that clings to custom, that engages in virile activities such as hunting or bullfighting, that serves God rather than Mammon. The free spirit who owns a gun, cherishes wildernesses not yet tamed into heavily sign-posted heritage parks, practises Christianity in the manner of his forefathers, respects animals as part of creation but would never equate their status with human beings – such men are a hostile spectre haunting the social engineers charting our global future. They must be eliminated, and useful idiots in politically correct parliamentary assemblies are the instruments of that purge."

Fútbol y Política

"Football (il calcio) has constantly mirrored the political circumstances of Italy and has been regarded as a legitimate arena for activism by political actors across the spectrum: Mussolini’s PNF (Partito Nazionale Fascista), liberals, pro-catholic, and right and left organizations have all valued the game as a tool for their proselytizing (Agnew, 2006, Foot, 2006 Ginsborg, 2001; Martin, 2004, Porro, 1992). Political careers run synonymously with positions within football clubs."

Alberto Testa, Words and actions: Italian ultras and neo-fascism, Social Identities Vol. 14, No. 4, July 2008, 473-490. London: Routledge

Anthony Gimigliano (A. James Gregor)

Conoció a Julius Evola personalmente y es el especialista norteamericano mas prolífico en Italian Studies. Enseña en UC Berkeley desde 1967. Su tesis doctoral (Ph.D Columbia) fue sobre Gentile,

Giovanni Gentile : philosopher of fascism, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001

Books
A survey of Marxism: problems in philosophy and the theory of history, New York : Random House, 1965
"Contemporary Radical Ideologies: Totalitarian thought in the twentieth century", New York: Random House, 1969
The ideology of fascism : the rationale of totalitarianism, New York: Free Press, 1969
An Introduction to Metapolitics: A Brief Inquiry into the Conceptual Language of Political Science. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1971. 415p.
The Fascist persuasion in radical politics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974
Interpretations of Fascism, Transaction Publishers and Morristown, N. J.: General Learning Press, 1974
Young Mussolini and the intellectual origins of Fascism. , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. 271p.
Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. 427p.
Ideology and development: Sun Yat-sen and the economic history of Taiwan, with Maria Hsia Chang and Andrew B. Zimmerman, China research monographs, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, no. 23, 1981
The China connection: U.S. policy and the People's Republic of China, 1986
Arming the dragon: U.S. security ties with the People's Republic of China, 1987
In the shadow of giants: the major powers and the security of Southeast Asia, 1989
Marxism, China, & Development: Reflections on Theory and Reality, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publisher, 1995
Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1999. 208p.
The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. 256p.
Giovanni Gentile : philosopher of fascism, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001
A Place in the Sun: Marxism and Fascism in China's Long Revolution, Westview Press, 2000
Origins and Doctrine of Fascism: Giovanni Gentile, Transaction Publishers, 2nd ed. 2004
The Search for Neofascism, Cambridge University Press, 2006
Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought, Princeton University Press, new ed. 2006
Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, Stanford University Press, 2008

Phurpa Sadhana

Beyond Capitalism & Marxism

All this is proof of the true pathology of our civilization. The economic factor exercises a hypnosis and a tyranny over modern man. And, as often occurs in hypnosis, what the mind focuses on eventually becomes real. Modern man is making possible what every normal and complete civilization has always regarded as an aberration or as a bad joke—namely, that the economy and the social problem in terms of the economy are his destiny.

Thus, in order to posit a new principle, what is needed is not to oppose one economic formula with another, but instead to radically change attitudes, to reject without compromise the materialistic premises from which the economic factor has been perceived as absolute.

What must be questioned is not the value of this or that economic system, but the value of the economy itself. Thus, despite the fact that the antithesis between capitalism and Marxism dominates the background of recent times, it must be regarded as a pseudo-antithesis. In free-market economies, as well as in Marxist societies, the myth of production and its corollaries (e.g., standardization, monopolies, cartels, technocracy) are subject to the "hegemony" of the economy, becoming the primary factor on which the material conditions of existence are based. Both systems regard as "backward" or as "underdeveloped" those civilizations that do not amount to "civilizations based on labor and production"—namely, those civilizations that, luckily for themselves, have not yet been caught up in the feverish industrial exploitation of every natural resource, the social and productive enslavement of all human possibilities, and the exaltation of technical and industrial standards; in other words, those civilizations that still enjoy a certain space and a relative freedom. Thus, the true antithesis is not between capitalism and Marxism, but between a system in which the economy rules supreme (no matter in what form) and a system in which the economy is subordinated to extra-economic factors, within a wider and more complete order, such as to bestow a deep meaning upon human life and foster the development of its highest possibilities. This is the premise for a true restorative reaction, beyond "Left" and "Right," beyond capitalism's abuses and Marxist subversion. The necessary conditions are an inner detoxification, a becoming "normal" again ("normal" in the higher meaning of the term), and a renewed capability to differentiate between base and noble interests. No intervention from the outside can help; any external action at best might accompany this process.

In order to resolve the problem, it is necessary, first of all, to reject the "neutral" interpretation of the economic phenomenon proper to a deviated sociology. The very economic life has a body and soul of its own, and inner moral factors have always determined its meaning and spirit. Such spirit, as Sombart has clearly shown, should be distinguished from the various forms of production, distribution, and organization of economic goods; it may vary depending on individual instances and it bestows a very different scope and meaning on the economic factor. The pure homo oeconomicus is a fiction or the by-product of an evidently degenerated specialization. Thus, in every normal civilization a purely economic man—that is, the one who sees the economy not as an order of means but rather as an order of ends to which he dedicates his main activities—was always rightly regarded as a man of lower social extraction: lower in a spiritual sense, and furthermore in a social or political one. In essence, it is necessary to return to normalcy, to restore the natural dependency of the economic factor on inner, moral factors and to act upon them.

Once this is acknowledged, it will be easy to recognize the inner causes in the actual world (which have the economy as their common denominator) that preclude any solution that does not translate into a steeper fall to a lower level. I have previously suggested that the uprising of the masses has mainly been caused by the fact that every social difference has been reduced to those that exist between mere economic classes and by the fact that under the aegis of antitraditional liberalism, property and wealth, once free from any bond or higher value, have become the only criteria of social differences. However, beyond the strict limitations that were established within the overall hierarchical system prior to the ascent of the economy, the superiority and the right of a class as a merely economic class may rightly be contested in the name of elementary human values. And it was precisely here that the subversive ideology introduced itself, by making an anomalous and degenerative situation into an absolute one and acting as if nothing else had previously existed or could exist outside economic classes, or besides external and unfair social conditions that are determined by wealth alone. However, all this is false, since such conditions could develop only within a truncated society: only in such a society may the concepts of "capitalist" and "proletarian" be defined. These terms lack any foundation in a normal civilization, because in such a civilization the counterpart constituted by extra-economic values portrays the corresponding human types as something radically different from what today is categorized as "capitalist" or "proletarian." Even in the domain of the economy, a normal civilization provides specific justification for certain differences in condition, dignity, and function.

Moreover, in the contemporary chaos it is also necessary to acknowledge what is caused by an ideological infection. It is not entirely correct to say that Marxism arose and took hold because there was a real social question that needed to be addressed (at best this may have been the case during the early stages of the industrial revolution); the opposite is true—to wit, that for the most part the social question gains precedence in today's world only as a result of the presence of Marxism. The social question artificially arises through the concerted effort of agitators, those who are engaged in "rekindling class consciousness." Lenin did not assign to the Communist Party only the task of supporting "workers' movements" where they arose spontaneously, but rather the task of creating and organizing them everywhere and by every means. Marxism gives rise to the proletarian and class mentality where it previously did not exist, stirring excitement and creating resentment and dissatisfaction in those societies where the individuals still lived in the station allotted to them by life. In those societies an individual contained his need and aspirations within natural limits; he did not yearn to become different from what he was, and thus he was innocent of that Entfremdung ("alienation") decried by Marxism. Incidentally, we should recall that Marxism proposes to overcome this alienation through something worse—namely, the "integration (or, we should say, disintegration) of the person into a collective entity (i.e., the 'people,' or 'the party')."

I am not espousing an "obscurantism" for the benefit of the "ruling classes"; as I have stated previously, I dispute the superiority and the rights of a merely economic class living in a materialistic fashion. Nevertheless, we need to side against the idea or myth of so-called social progress, which is another of the many pathological fixations of the economic era in general, and not the legacy of leftist movements alone. To this effect, the eschatological views of Marxism do not differ very much from the "Western" views of prosperity: both Weltanschauungen [worldviews] essentially coincide, as do their practical applications. In both Marxism and free-market economies we find the same materialistic, antipolitical, and social view detaching the social order and people from any higher order and higher goal, positing what is "useful" as the only purpose (understood in a physical, vegetative, and earthly sense); by turning the "useful" into a criterion of progress, the values proper to every traditional structure are inverted. In fact, we should not forget that the law, meaning, and sufficient reason for these structures have always consisted in references for man to something beyond himself and beyond the economy, wealth, or material poverty, all these things having only a secondary importance. Thus, it can legitimately be claimed that the so-called improvement of social conditions should be regarded not as good but as evil, when its price consists of the enslavement of the single individual to the productive mechanism and to the social conglomerate; or in the degradation of the State to the "State based on work," and the degradation of society to "consumer society"; or in the elimination of every qualitative hierarchy; or in the atrophy of every spiritual sensibility and every "heroic" attitude. Hegel wrote, "Happiness is not to be found in the history of the world [in the sense of material comfort and social prosperity]; even the few happy periods found here and there are like white pages." But even at an individual level, the qualities that matter the most in a man and make him who he is often arise in harsh circumstances and even in conditions of indigence and injustice, since they represent a challenge to him, testing his spirit; what a sad contrast it is when the human animal is granted a maximum of comfort, an equal share in a mindless and "bovine" happiness, an easy and comfortable life filled with gadgets, radio and TV programs, planes, Hollywood, sports arenas, and popular culture at the level of Reader's Digest.

Again, spiritual values and the higher degrees of human perfection have nothing to do with either the presence or the absence of socioeconomic prosperity. The notion that indigence is always a source of abjection and vice—and that "advanced" social conditions represent its opposite—is the fairy tale told by materialistic ideologies, which contradict themselves when they uphold the other myth, according to which the "good guys" are on the side of the people and the oppressed workers and all the "bad guys" are to be found on the side of the wealthy classes, which are corrupt and exploitative. Both of these are fairy tales. In reality, true values bear no necessary relation to better or worse socioeconomic conditions; only when these values are put at the forefront is it possible to approximate an order of effective justice, even on the material plane. Among these values are: being oneself; the style of an active impersonality; love of discipline; and a generally heroic attitude toward life. Against all forms of resentment and social competition, every person should acknowledge and love his station in life, which best corresponds to his own nature, thus acknowledging the limits within which he can develop his potential; and should give an organic sense to his life and achieve its perfection, since an artisan who perfectly fulfills his function is certainly superior to a king who does not live up to his dignity. Only when such considerations have weight will this or that reform carried out on the socioeconomic plane be conceived and implemented without any negative consequence, according to true justice, without mistaking the essential for the accessory. Unless an ideological detoxification and a rectification of attitudes are carried out, every reform will be only superficial and fail to tackle the deeper roots of the crisis of contemporary society, to the advantage of subversive forces.
[...]

JULIUS EVOLA
Tyranny of the Economy
& Pseudo-Antithesis between Capitalism & Marxism
(from "Men Among the Ruins")

Business and Democracy

From Corporate Governance guru, Bob Monks:

"The business community has acquired such an enormous amount of power with respect to the political system that the political system seems to be simply a vehicle through which the business community expresses its power. So the energy of reform does not find expression in the political system, it finds frustration."

Libertad, igualdad y heroína

Esta semana la policia de Croacia descubrio un enorme baul en un puesto aduanero en la frontera con Serbia. Un hombre de nacionalidad noruega ingresaba al pais transportando 88,6 kilogramos de heroina almacenada en su vehiculo junto a mas de mil cajas de cigarrillos.
...
El intento norteamericano de ocupar Afghanistan e imponer su idelogia de sociedad abierta para transformar a los Tajiks, Pushtun y Hazara en una sociedad secularizada, amantes del hip-hop y la democracia ha sido un fracaso estrepitoso. Al igual que el marxismo-leninismo una generacion atras, el proyecto liberal-universalista esta estallando a pedazos contra el Kush hindu. Solo quedan huellas de un sendero de muerte y desesperacion, entre cantidades masivas de heroina - destructora del espiritu.

---

The American attempt to occupy Afghanistan and impose upon it the ideology of the Open Society- to gradually transform Tajiks, Pushtuns, and Hazara into secularized, hip-hop dancing democracy enthusiasts- has been a prideful temptation of fate. Like Marxism-Leninism a generation earlier, the liberal universalist project is shattering on the crags of the Hindu Kush. What’s left is a trail of death and despair, complemented by massive quantities of soul-killing heroin.

Liberty, Equality, Heroin
Mark Hackard
(*) Mark Hackard has a a BA in Russian from Georgetown University and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University.

See here

Dugin

Sobre la postmodernidad:

See here

Death to the World

Seraphim Rose

Este mundo no es el mundo de Dios sino la ilusión de los hombres; este mundo es una expresión que engloba aquello que llamamos las pasiones.

===

The world is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world. But when we wish to distinguish them by their special names, we call them the passions. The passions are the following: love of riches, desire for possessions, bodily pleasure from which comes sexual passion, love of honour which gives rise to envy, lust for power, arrogance and pride of position, the craving to adorn oneself with luxurious clothes and vain ornaments, the itch for human glory which is a source of rancour and resentment, and physical fear. Where these passions cease to be active, there the world is dead; for though living in the flesh, they did not live for the flesh. See for which of these passions you are alive. Then you will know how far you are alive to the world, and how far you are dead to it

‑ St. Isaac the Syrian

Paying Tribute to Mary in West Sayville, New York

El domingo ultimo durante la fiesta de la Asunción

Vease el slide show aquí

The first casualty of Cristina Kirchner's new law

The worst tragedy that can happen to a man: to go straightforward from a nightmare to the eternal dream, to encounter eternity after celebrating such undignified event. To enter into eternity as a disembodied spirit, exposed and without hope of a new, immortal body and destined to a hell.

See here

Seminar: Introduction to Traditionalism

An online course is offered through a website from Greece.

Perhaps not one of the best texts to teach an introduction to traditionalism...talking about Mark Sedgwick's book. The "further readings" recomendations are more in line.

===

Texts: Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Further readings will include various primary sources including (but not limited to) Guenon, Evola, Schuon, Eliade, Coomaraswamy, Smith, Michell, de Benoist, recent examples of Radical Traditionalism including the Tyr journal.

See here

Los combates del Abbé de Nantes

Le fascisme est une réaction de salut contre la démocratie parlementaire et contre le péril bolchevique
-- Abbé Georges de Nantes, CRC au XXe siècle, N°105 Mai 1976

Un recordatorio del Abbé(en ingles) fallecido el 15 de febrero de este año.

"Combats, certainly – though he never sought them for their own sake. His dream was the founding of a missionary order of monks according to the rule of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, intended to work in North Africa. From three monks, the founder and two of his former students, the canonically established order expanded to include a sizeable group of monks and one of sisters, and a convent and monastery of sisters and brothers in Canada."

ABBÉ GEORGES DE NANTES: A PERSONAL TRIBUTE
See here

San Maximiliano Kolbe

What in the world wants to take away our humanity and turn us into animals?
Advertising treats us like animals who cannot control our appetites.
Pornography treats us like animals who cannot control our desires.
Everytime we give into our basest desires and instincts we are no more than an animal.

But we are made in the image and likeness of God!
We have a dignity that no one can take from us.
...
Nothing could keep Maximilian from loving.
Not hatred, not beatings, not even death by starvation!

Each one of us should not be afraid to step out of the assembly line of life and declare that we are not consumers, we are not animals, we are not social security numbers.
we are human beings made in the image and likeness of God

And that love and nothing else is the reason for our existence and the motivation of all we do!

Homily given on the Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, August 14, 2010
by Fr. Patrick Greenough, OFM Conv.
See here

Fenomenologia de la fealdad

The Phenomenology of Ugly

See here

The Passion Revisited

Amazing!...I'm confused.

"Thank God, Rabbi Lichten went on to tell us in his lectures in Rome in 1973, things were changing for the better. He credited the Second Vatican Council (which he attended as an official observer), which taught in its document Nostra Aetate that it was downright wrong to blame the Jews collectively for the crime of killing the Son of God. He happily pointed to the revision of the Good Friday liturgy, and—to the point—to "the brave action" of the Archbishop of Munich (whose pastoral jurisdiction includes Oberammergau), Cardinal Julius Doepfner, who had refused to approve the 1970 Play until it had reformed the script to bring it in line with the council's teaching."

See here

Thank you President Uribe

In Remembrance of Oliveira Salazar

Señor de la mesura a quien no ciega
el aplauso mundano del gentío.



ANTÓNIO DE OLIVEIRA SALAZAR
1970 - July, 27 - 2010

See here

Blaquier

Dr. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, the founder of the TFP, had a name for capitalists with communist sympathies. He called them "Sapos".

Herethe interview published by "La Nacion"

Power

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

-- Aung San Suu Kyi

Sunday's Meditation

Men become like unto that by which they are intoxicated.
-- Gautama Buddha

Why seek to know the world, if knowing it means being possessed by it.

Kali Yuga

"Qué día triste. Qué dolor leer estampada en el título del diario la noticia irreversible de la confusión canonizada y de la mentira hecha ley.
...
No protestemos por "el mundo", ni nos contagiemos de sus métodos propagandísticos para ganar la pulseada. Reconozcamos nuestras omisiones y nuestras incoherencias, pidamos perdón y convirtámonos al Evangelio, que sin éxito, sin brillo y sin fuerza humana (esto enseña la sabiduría de la cruz) cambia el corazón de las personas."

What a sad day! What a pain to read the headlines of the newspapers this morning with all the confusion and lies about the gay "marriage" - since last night the law of the land.

We should not complain about "the world" or follow its ways in order to win a match. We should recognize our mistakes and our own weaknesses, ask for forgiveness and convert to the way of the Gospel which without success, shine or human effort (this is the wisdom of the Cross) has changed the human heart.


See here


"It is the attitude of a man who can choose the hardest road, fight even when he knows that the battle is materially lost and live up to the words of the ancient saga, ‘Loyalty is stronger than fire!’ Through him the traditional idea is asserted, that it is the sense of honor or of shame – not halfway measures drawn from small minded moralities – that creates a substantial, existential difference among beings, almost as great as between one race and another race. … If anything positive can be accomplished today or tomorrow, it will not come from the clever tricks of agitators and politicians, but from the natural prestige of men both of yesterday but also, and even more, from the new generation, whose recognition of how much they can accomplish validates what they believe."

Julius Evola, Orientamenti

From the unforgettable Hugo Wast

Hugo Wast, The Amazing Father Brochero, the Apostolic Model for Catholic Ministry.

"Hay que decir la verdad. Brochero fue exclusivamente un apóstol, un ardiente evangelizador de los pobres, que hubiera mandado al diablo sus instrumentos de apostolado, sus caminos, sus ferrocarriles, sus escuelas, y hasta la célebre mula malacara en que anduvo miles de leguas por abruptas serranías y desiertos impresionantes, en cuanto hubiera advertido que eso no servía a su único propósito: ganar almas para Dios."

Seehere

El buen combate

The longer the trial to which God subjects you, the greater the goodness in comforting you during the time of the trial and in the exaltation after the combat

Father Pio of Pietrelcina.

Argentina's Crony Capitalism

As if were personal property, President Kirchner gave Argentina's public companies and utilities to his friends.

See here

The Trial of Jesus

Professor J.H.H. Weiler, a renowned scholar (NYU School of Law, is lucky to have him!!), taught last semester a seminar at NYU "The Trial of Jesus His reflexions of the seminar were published in "First Things" (June-July 2010 issue)and were delivered at the Erasmus Lecture on March 7, 2010 at Hunter College (see
here)

Bellow some interesting observations of Professor Weiler:

For the last four years, I have been conducting, at New York University's School of Law, a seminar on the trial of Jesus. The Wall Street Journal inveighed against it as educational inanity: if not exactly corrupting the youth, then at least leading them astray and squandering their tuition dollars. Happily, the seminar has been oversubscribed since inception. Christians and Jews enroll in roughly their proportions at the law school, with the seminar split more or less evenly among the religiously committed, those committed to being nonreligious, and the generally uncommitted. For Jewish students, with few exceptions, the seminar marks the first time they have actually read the gospels; their knowledge of the trial's narrative derives from hearsay and Hollywood. They are surprised to discover how much of our general cultural idiom derives from the New Testament, and they are surprised, too--and somewhat troubled, in complex ways--by their unmediated encounter with the highly sympathetic Jesus narrative, just as they are shocked by the fierce anti-Jewishness of John. The newness of that encounter makes it hard for them to comprehend the equanimity with which the others in the seminar relate to it. They feel discomforted by the underlying cultural "you did it" sentiment.

For Catholic students, the seminar often marks the first time they have read the gospels systematically. They are mostly uninterested in the normative issues of who is responsible for the judicial death of Jesus, and they are genuinely surprised at how it dominates the rich trial literature. Nostra Aetate seems to have sunk in.

Protestants typically arrive with real command of the text, but they, in their turn, are surprised by the critical tradition that is so pervasive in scholarly analysis of the trial. Something like the mirror image of their Jewish classmates, they tend to hold a clear view of Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus, although they feel guilty for holding that view.

===
Bellow Professor Weiler'd defense of the Crucifix before the European Court of Human Rights


See here

Sodomonio

Con prevención les pregunto
Que ustedes no se me ofendan
¿Este pueblo amodorrado
Merece que lo defiendan?
-- Leonardo Castellani, S.J

With caution let me ask the following question
meaning no ofense to anyone
Why do iddle people
deserve to be defended?
-- Leonardo Castellani, S.J

Even if God doesn't exist, and Christianity of whatever sort is a sham, we're still faced with the question of how to live with sexual responsibility and integrity in a commercialized, consumerist, individualized culture that believes in no authority but the desiring individual will.

---Damon Linker

El hediondo guiso de la confusión es el manjar de los igualitaristas. En nombre de la igualdad, estamos a punto de equiparar ¡por ley! lo natural con lo antinatural, lo sano con lo insano, lo verdadero con lo falso.

Hace exactamente 75 años, un porteño de mirada aguda. Enrique Santos Discépolo, escribió el tango "Cambalache", que tiene en sí todo el sentido común necesario para que dejemos de vivir "revolcaos en un merengue y en un mismo lodo todos manoseaos"...
Lo interesante es que Discépolo plantea la confusión justamente con el léxico de la "igualdad"...

"Todo es igual"... La coherencia del igualitarismo es irreprochable: desparecen, con el "escalafón", todas las jerarquías, y con los "aplazaos", todos los juicios de valor, de modo que "nada es mejor"... Sólo queda una verdad ("¡es lo mismo!"), traducida a la voluntad en un inmenso bostezo metafísico: "¡Da lo mismo!". Pero ocurre con nuestra naturaleza, nacida para vivir en el orden y la armonía de lo diverso, lo mismo que con las pobrecitas plantas de Varsailles: esta confusión nos hace violencia:
¡Qué falta de respeto, qué atropello a la razón!


--Del blog amigo de Cristian Dodds ver aqui


"In a civilization where equality is the standard, where differences are not linked, where promiscuity is rampant, where the ancient idea of "being true to oneself" means nothing anymore - in such a splintered and materialistic society, it is clear that this phenomenon of regression and homosexuality should be particularly welcomed, and therefore it is in no way a surprise to see the alarming increase in homosexuality and the "third sex" in the latest "democratic" period, or an increase in sex changes to an extent unparallelled in other eras."

Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: Metaphysics of Sex, Inner Traditions International, 1991
See here




"Los grandes parlanchines son normalmente pícaros. También ignorantes. Confunden el ruido con las nueces. Padecen el estigma del egoísmo. Y el egoísmo político busca, a base de palabras, hacer mucho ruido y, a río revuelto ganancia de votos...A borbotones salían de la boca de los políticos arrogancias y sinrazones. Y, lo que es peor, la imposición en la sociedad de los caprichos interesados y enfermizos de algunos políticos que buscan desde el poder solucionar su problema, insoluble por estar ínsito en su propia naturaleza. Los refranes siempre contienen aleccionadores axiomas. Este es uno de ellos, «los sabios construyen y los tontos embrollan».
...
Sodomonio. Se trata de una relación, realidad y personalidad humana, que tomó nombre de la ciudad de Sodoma, por sus costumbres y relaciones generalizadas, socio sexuales, denominadas sodomía, materializadas entre individuos del mismo sexo, hombres con hombres, hoy conocidos como gais, y mujeres con mujeres. Sodomía conforme al diccionario significa relaciones de carácter social, sentimental y sexual desviadas, antinaturales y ecológicamente incorrectas. Munus- función, práctica calificada corrupta e incorrecta para la misma naturaleza. Y sobre todo para toda inteligencia sana y no obcecada.

Bonifacio Difernan, O.S.A, Matrimonio versus sodomonio
See here

Two recent books about Peronism

Juan Bautista Yofre, El Escarmiento. La ofensiva de Perón contra Cámpora y los montoneros. 1973 - 1974, Planeta, 2010. 440 pp.

Jose Pablo Feinmann, Peronismo. Filosofía política de una persistencia argentina. Cámpora y los Montoneros. Sudamericana, 2010. 770 pp.

A good book about peronism is always a reason to celebrate, and Juan Baustista Yofre's book is a cause for celebration. In spite of the fact that Peronism, the political movement created by Juan Domingo Perón, has largely determined the political and historical process in Argentina the second half of the twentieth century, it has not been a matter of scholarly debate. It could be said that Peronism has been much more matter of opinion than an object of systematic study.

Jorge Asis, an argentine writer and former diplomat, offers a lucid analysis on two books recently published on peronism.

One of the books was written by an investigative reporter, Juan Bautista Yofre, and the other, by José Pablo Feinmann, a jewish philosopher living in Argentina.

The period covered by Yofre is from the return of Peron on June 1973 until his death on July 1, 1974. Feinmann book is more comprehensive covering the period from 1943 to 1972.

According to Asis, "El Escarmiento" ("The Chastisement")was based on hard facts while the other, Feinmann's book is more a freestyle interpretation by a former peronist follower.

While Feinmann prefers the first Peron - alluding to Peron's first term- a much more authoritarian and uncompromising figure, Yofre likes the last Peron, a mature stateman who could understand the gravity of the marxist infiltration in his party and took the neccesary steps to get rid of it. For Feinmann this depuration of marxists elements ammounts to a dirty work.

Yofre has documented extensively the training of Montoneros and other armed groups in Cuba in that period. This marxist infiltration in a national movement is commonly referred as "entrismo" (to infiltrate).

Asis considers that Feinmann has committed some exagerations in his appreciations such as considering Heidegger, the German philosopher, a "proto-peronist". Feinmann, has become disillusioned with peronism and joined the FPV, the political party founded by the Kirchners. He writes a monthly column in the pro-government newspaper, Pagina 12 with apologies to the Kirchners which are under heavy criticism for charges of corruption.

Yofre's book is important not only for his extensive research, but in the contribution it makes to our understanding of both Peronism and democracy in Argentina. He shed some light on Father Mujica's murder in Buenos Aires at the hand of the Montoneros. He also refers to former Minister of Foreign Relations Jorge Taiana's incarceration as occurring during the peronist period (Peron's wife term) not during the military period. At that time Taiana was charged with setting a bomb in a coffee shop in Buenos Aires and killing a waiter. The bomb was directed to navy officers who were sitting at the coffee shop but they left the place before the explotion took place.

See here Asis' article in Spanish.

Maestra Ciruela - (aka Miss Know-it-all)

About the G-20 Summit in Canada last week:

The first lady is not interested in the exchange of ideas or experiences, she went to the summit to lecture her peers, she is incapable of learning from others.


See here

Robert Byrd, former klunsman dies

As Jim Goad points out:

"I’ve often heard the terms “Republican” and “Klansman” used as if they were synonymous. But who actually birthed the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, the Red Shirts, and the countless other white-supremacist organizations who terrorized, torched, and lynched blacks during and after Reconstruction?"

See here

Purificación

Hindúes celebrando la "Aarti" u oraciones vespertinas ayer en Allahabad

Mark Lilla

Ofrece un análisis del surgimiento del "Partido del Té" y dice que los yankis estan cansados de:

"being told what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seatbelts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink…the list is long."

Ver aqui

Don Ernesto Laclau, un politicólogo criollo, nos dice en "On Populist Reason" que desdeñar tales movimientos es rechazar "lo politico" y afirmar que " the management of the community is the concern of an administrative power whose source of legitimacy is a proper knowledge of what a 'good community is."

Argentina tiene un nuevo Canciller

Si bien tengo decidido no ocuparme de temas temporales y de personajes irrelevantes -- creo que este sitio web ayuda a entender las decisiones que pueda tomar esa minúscula persona designado la semana pasada Canciller en Argentina - un espacio que seguramente como piensan muchos compatriotas - le queda enorme para quien fuera un periodista mediocre.

A todo ello se suma su falta de experiencia en temas internacionales y su condición de ex-ciudadano norteamericano (ciudadanía a la que renunciara al ser designado consul).

Aconsejamos el libro "El Mundo Clasico" donde el Profesor Kornel Zoltan Mehesz trata "El Juramento Romano", algo que hoy por hoy parece no tener demasiada importancia. Los juramentos de lealtad, para este oportunista nada significan.

Dice el Dr. Mehesz:

"Consideraban los romanos que la flaqueza humana crece en proporción directa con la viveza , por ello prestaron mucha atención a la formulación de los textos del juramento; quisieron pues impedir que su cumplimiento —por medio de hábil y sutil interpretación— fuera fácilmente eludido.

Dice Tácito, que el Senado, hizo jurar a los Magistrados que no recibieron, ni recibirán prebendas, ni otra clase de premios. Agrega todavía, que algunos de los magistrados que no tenían la conciencia muy limpia, se confundieron mucho, y mudaron con hábil sutileza las palabras del juramento para escapar de las consecuencias de un perjurio, y al mismo tiempo no ligarse para el futuro."
...
Cuando cartagineses y romanos hicieron un tratado de paz, lo confirmaron por medio de un juramento. Los primeros juraron por los Dioses Patrios y los romanos, a su vez, por una piedra, según antigua costumbre. Dice Polibio Megapolitano, que el que firmaba el tratado, después de haber jurado sobre la Fe Pública tomaba una piedra en la mano y decía: «¡Si juro verdad, que me suceda bien, pero si pensase u obrase de otro modo, excepto todos los demás en sus Patrias leyes, templos y sepulcros, yo solo sea exterminado, como ahora lo es esta piedra!», acto seguido arrojaba la piedra .

Mehesz, Kornel Zoltan, "El Mundo Clasico", Ed. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste, Corrientes, 1972.

Otro buen libro para entender este tema es Kevin McDonald's "The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements"

Semblanzas de Guenón

I quote Dr. Lings:

"He had a remarkable presence; it was striking to see the respect with which he was treated. As he entered the mosque you could hear people on all sides saying, 'Allâhumma salli 'alâ Sayyidnâ Muhammad,' that is, 'May God rain blessings on the Prophet Muhammad', which is a way of expressing great reverence for someone. He had a luminous presence and his very beautiful eyes, one of his most striking features, retained their lustre into early old age."

"Rene Guenon" by Martin Lings see
here

Saruman (without the rethoric) and the Orcs (piqueteros)

Initially the head of the Istari, Saruman is portrayed as a character who succumbs to the unrestrained desire for power.

Humiliated, stripped of power, and cast out of his order, he remains unrepentant to the end, treacherously murdered by his servant Grıma Wormtongue. Saruman is one of the few tragically unredeemed characters in the whole Middle-earth corpus, and unlike
others— for example, Turin Turambar, Boromir son of Denethor II— Tolkien does not mitigate his moral corruption, nor does he ameliorate his tragic demise by giving him— even after his downfall— any significant virtues or traces of fallen nobility.

As a traitor to the cause of freedom and goodness in Middle-earth, Saruman provides a strategic link between Sauron’s opponents— including Gandalf, Elrond, and The ´ oden— and Sauron himself, with whom Saruman has communicated by means of the palantır.

Gandalf recognizes the source of Saruman’s policies and uses Saruman as an unwitting double agent to discern Sauron’s secret plans.

His tower fortress at Orthanc in Isengard is strategic in its proximity to Rohan, and— by capturing Merry and Pippin— the Orcs (piqueteros) under his command are important in the narrative’s bifurcation and forward movement in the second volume of the trilogy.

In his account in ‘‘The Council of Elrond,’’ Gandalf says Saruman ‘‘has long studied the arts of the Enemy himself’’

Gandalf offers him a chance to repent, leave Orthanc, and forsake his ruinous path; like Milton’s Satan, Saruman is shown in a brief moment of doubt, ‘‘loathing to stay and dreading to leave its refuge’’ (TT, III, x, 187– 188). Saruman rejects the offer and, like Satan, is conquered by pride and hatred. His removal from Orthanc and his banishment from the order of Istari, pronounced by Gandalf, are presented as the result of his own free choice. Gandalf ’s final assessment is that Saruman is ‘‘a fool . . . yet pitiable’’ (TT, III, x, 188).

Under the Orkish name ‘‘Sharkey,’’ ‘‘old man,’’ he appears considerably reduced in stature finally as an exiled vagabond in the Shire, a self-pitying character filled with malice, retaining only traces of his earlier verbal powers.

He is shown pity by Frodo, who does not allow his execution but banishes him forever from the Shire.

He is murdered moments later by the servile character Wormtongue— his last follower— recalling the murder of the exiled usurper Sigeberht in annal 755 of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

In a scene suggestive of the departure of his soul and its utter annihilation, upon his death a grey mist rises above his body, faces the undying West, but then is dissipated by a cold western wind and dissolves to nothing.

Professor Orlando Fedeli dead

Professor Orlando Fedeli, President of Montfort Cultural Association, died in Sao Paulo this week. He recently finished writing an amazing book called "No país das maravilhas: a Gnose burlesca da TFP e dos Arautos do Evangelho." published in the Montfort website. Fedeli was an extraordinary writer with a solid knowledge of the Catholic doctrine.

I never met Professor Fedeli but I've met Dr. Plinio Correa de Oliveira - one of the subjects of his book. Dr. Plinio impressed me as brilliant mind but also endowed with a rich imagination full of romance (perhaps a brazilian character treat). According to Fedeli many of Correa de Oliveira's personal accounts were inventions. He also called Correa de Oliveira a "thomist-romantic-tropicalist" to stress the point of the heterodox thomism and catholicism of the TFP founder. He critized the cult of personality within the TFP towards Dr. Plinio and his mother spreaded by his personal valet Joao Scognamiglio Cla Dias now head of "Arautos of the Gospel", the brazilian catholic movement which followed the defunct TFP.

The book can be read here

Foucauldian?

No tengo tiempo de analizar ahora el video "Alejandro de "Lady Gaga" pero todos los temas de Foucault estan allí.

...the disruptions of normative sexuality, discourses of war, domination, nationalism, discipline and punishment, transgressive sexuality, gender expression/identity, etc...


La enorme confusión, todo un signo de los tiempos.

Interview to Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr

In the preface to “The Heart of Islam,” you say you wrote all your works to preserve tradition. What does tradition mean to you and why is its preservation so important?
The English word tradition is used in different ways, including customs, habits and historical transmission, but for me tradition means a reality of sacred origin which is given to humanity through revelation. Through preservation and application of that teaching, of that sacred instruction, our civilization was created. The same is true for the Western civilization. The Christian civilization was created by the coming of Christ. That is the beginning of the Christian tradition, and then it created the Western civilization with many forms of sacred Christian architecture, theology, ethics and forms of social structure.


...
How did the West come to this point?
In a sense, if we speak in Islamic terms, the leaders of the society in the West decided to sacrifice the akhira to the dunya completely [Nasr is referring to Quran 2:86, which reads: “These are the people who buy the life of this world (ad-dunya) at the price of the Hereafter (al-akhira).”] The great German poet Goethe in “Faust” speaks about this. Faust sells his soul to the devil in order to get power and technology. So everything is sacrificed for material ends and earthly human welfare. But we also have spiritual needs.

...

Can we update Western democracy into a new system where our spiritual needs are also provided for?
First of all, democracy is a method; it is not a value system. It is a method of government, and it is a question of having more people participate.

...

Democracy is also not ideal in the West. Money is much more powerful than the individual. We see this in the US. You cannot even participate in a nomination for a party unless you’re a millionaire to begin with.

...

See herethe complete interview.

Argentina's existentialist game

One thing is crystal clear: in Argentina, football has temporarily displaced reality. It's like a breather in the history of a country otherwise so embroiled in conflict and in-fighting, like the eye of a hurricane. This is particularly clear in the run up to the football World Championships.

A few years ago, during the 2002 Championships, I saw an Argentinian advertisement on Spanish television which showed this perfectly, with that – seemingly unavoidable – aesthetic blend of heroic song and tears (In Argentinian football, crying is a very male activity). In the advertisement, a World Cup final is taking place between Brazil (joy) and Argentina (sadness). The score is still 0:0 (a state of uncertainty) when Argentina gets a penalty kick (the miracle). Time seems to freeze in front of the TV set (the possibility of the final blunder). At this moment there is a power cut (the crisis), and only an old man (wisdom) on the street with a transistor radio pressed to his ear – by the way, I could never understand how people could listen to football matches on the radio, abstractly deciphering a figurative game – hears the result and croaks "gol", after which young people (the future) stream onto the balconies, unfurling flags. The cry ("Argentina", "Argentina") spreads from mouth to mouth, swelling to a song intoned by a million throats.

The message is clear: only football can wrench Argentina from its present darkness, this country that once exported beef and now exports football meat. Needless to say, Argentina did not win the World Cup in 2002. But it was world champion in 1978 and 1986, and very nearly again in 1990, so hopes are high for 2006. One thing's for sure: if Argentina does win, it will be to revel in the tragic possibility of losing again in 2010.

It's a commonplace that every country has the government, and the football team, it deserves. The Argentinian team – representing an almost pathologically psychoanalytical country – will once again fluctuate between depression and nervous breakdown. It's an unpredictable team, at times weary with gloom, at times foaming over with ebullience, exposed at every moment to the blustering elements and doomed to existential catastrophes.

The team selection represents all Argentinians, with their extreme historical cycles, their ups and downs, their triumphs and turpitudes. More than that: it embodies the Pavlovian desires of Argentinians to yell doggedly "Argentina! Argentina!" (the call of salvation alluded to in our national anthem) without really knowing if it is love or horror that makes them so hopelessly devoted to football and their country. In short: everything is possible with this team.

Rodrigo Fresán

Argentina's Bicentennial

What Bicentennial? Are we talking about national independence? We (Trans. note: the argentinians) have been independent very few times in our history. Those times are counted with the fingers of one hand. At some point our nation was independent during the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas; the Anglo-French blockade in 1848; with President Julio Argentino Roca and his highly controversial "Conquest of the Desert"; with Roque Saenz Peña, the only argentinian President wounded in combat; for a brief period during the government of Hipolito Irigoyen and, during the first government of Juan Domingo Perón. In other words, we've reached some platitudes in our history with few unfinished projects of national independence, but never a real and permanent one.

From Buela, Alberto "Bicentennial a Politically Correct Idea" see here

The Real Kirchner's Argentina

Argentina is in the grip of a classic wage-price spiral, with unions holding the country to ransom and inflation at 30%, members of the opposition and critics are routinely described as anti-patriotic coup-plotting "golpistas", corruption is rife as huge public projects and concessions are handed to cronies with no real competetive tendering and a complete absence of anti-monopoly legislation to keep them in check, the kirchner's estimated personal swiss-held wealth is now in the tens of millions and of extremely dubious provenance, the Malvinas are invoked just as they were by Galtieri to induce patriotic sentimen while the nation's wealth is robbed, sold and pawned in what the Economist has described as "a serial asset-grab" in order to fill the coffers of what Cristina has described with Orwellian cynicism as the "bicentennial fund", which will be used as her campaign fund, as the poor are bribed with hand-puts and freebies (including free laptops no less!) into voting the Kirchner's back into power at the elections next year.


* The picture depicts a massive metal replica of Argentina's Constitution – in flames

Dr. Martin Lings

On Shakespeare and the English Language:

Seyyed Hossein Nasr once asked Dr. Lings why he continued to be so much concerned with Shakespeare.

Dr. Nasr recalled,

“He (Lings) said that since the English language was now becoming
global, the time of Shakespeare had arrived and that it was most important to preserve this language at its peak and in expressions impregnated with the deepest wisdom and traditional teachings. In this way the spread of English would not contribute simply to the impoverishment of various cultures.”

On Frithjof Schuon:

“I knew when I was in his (Schuon’s) presence that I was in the presence of a true saint and also the spiritual master that I was seeking. When I say ‘true saint,’ I don’t mean just a saintly man but a true saint of the first magnitude, such as one cannot expect to meet in the twentieth century…. I knew this with a certainty.”

Padre Abraham a Sancta Clara

The Prodigal Son

Of what country the prodigal son was is not precisely known, but I believe he was an Irishman. What his name was, is not generally understood; but I believe it was Malefacius. From what place he took his title (seeing he was a nobleman) has not yet been discovered; but I believe it was Maidsberg or Womenham. What was the device in his coat of arms, no one has described; but I believe it was a sow's stomach in a field verd.

This chap travelled with well-larded purse through various countries and provinces, and returned no better, but rather worse. So it often happens still, that many a noble youth has his travels changed to travails.

Not seldom, also, he goes forth a good German, and returns a bad Herman. What honour or credit is it to the noble river Danube that it travels through different lands, through Suabia, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, and at last unites with a sow ! The pious Jacob saw, in his journey, a ladder to heaven; but, alas! many of our quality find, in their journeys, a ladder into hell. If, now-a-days, a man travel not, he is called a Jack-in-the-corner, and one who has set up his rest behind the stove. But tell me, dear half-Germans, (for whole Germans ye have long ceased to be,) Is it not true 1 Ye send your sons out that they may learn strange vices at great cost in strangerlands, when, with far less expense, they might be acquiring His Pulfit Drolleries virtues at home. They return with no more point to them than they went out, except that they bring home some new fashion of point. They return no more gallant, unless it be that gallant comes from the French galant. They return more splendidly clad, but good habits were better than to be finely habited. New-fashioned hats, newfashioned periwigs, new-fashioned collars, new-fashioned coats, new-fashioned breeches, new-fashioned hose, newfashioned shoes, new-fashioned ribbons, new-fashioned buttons—also new-fashioned consciences creep into our beloved Germany through your travels. Your fool's frocks change too with every moon; and soon the tailors will have to establish a university, and take doctor's degrees, and afterwards bear the title of right reverend doctors of fashion.

If I had all the new fashions of coats for four-and-twenty years, I would almost make a curtain before the sun with them, so that men should go about with lanterns in the day-time. At least, I would undertake to hide all Turkey •with them, so that the Constantinopolitans should think their Mohammed was playing blind-the-cat with them. An old witch, at the request of king Saul, called the prophet Samuel from the dead, that he might know the result of his arms. It will soon come to pass, that people will want to call from the dead the identical tailor and master who made the beautiful Esther's garment, when she was so well-pleasing in the eyes of Ahasuerus

... So the prodigal son learned but little good in foreign lands. His doing was wooing; his thinking was drinking; his Latin was Prqfidat, his Italian Brindisi, his Bohemian Sasdravi, his German Gesegnets Gott. In one word, he was a goodly fellow always mellow, a vagrant, a bacchant.

Por un 2010 sin Cristina y sin Nestor

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