Trump Delivers Once Again and Ends AFFH

This is a major victory against the Left.  Stanley Kurtz:

I am pleased to report that President Trump and Secretary Carson have together put an end to the Obama-Biden administration’s wildly radical Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. President Trump has delivered on this issue in a way that will preserve American liberty in general, and the freedom and self-government of America’s suburbs in particular.

Perhaps you saw Kurtz on Life, Liberty, and Levin last night. An impressive guest on the best political show on TV. 

La Decadenza

Dr. Vito Caiati writes:

Relevant to your post “The ‘Catholic’ ‘Universities’ Have Become Jokes: Fordham,” I call your attention to an interview by Marco Tossati of Archbishop Viganò, defender of the faith, on the evil that permeates the Bergoglian regime and the much of the Church, the “three elements” of which the latter characterizes as “heresy, sodomy, and corruption –[which] are so recurrent that they are almost a trademark of the deep state and of the deep church.”

As the interview, The Pope and the Sodomites, makes clear, here, we are generally dealing not with what you term “the unwitting agents of the demonic” but rather with fully conscious ones, who are bringing one of the greatest institutions and religious traditions of our civilization to ruin.  The cycle of decay in the Church and in Western society at large is rapidly accelerating . The moral horrors and violence that we are now witnessing in society, culture, and politics, orchestrated by the Left,  were largely unimaginable only a few years ago. This is not going to end well. “Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle against the wickedness and snares of the devil….”

I too do not see how this can end well.  The Left is now drawing from a cesspool of nihilism that  is reasonably viewed as literally demonic. The Unholy Spirit of he who "always negates" presides over them. But I still maintain that most of the agents of destruction "know not what they do":  they are foolish, pampered youth, products of an affluent and permissive society, brought up with no moral training by materialistic parents . . . in short, useful idiots, or as I say,  useless idiots.

BLM is Playing by the Book. Alinsky’s Book

Michael Brown:

In his insightful, 2009 mini-book, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model, David Horowitz quoted an SDS radical who wrote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

As Horowitz explained, “In other words the cause — whether inner city blacks or women — is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution. That was the all-consuming focus of Alinsky and his radicals.”

When it comes to BLM, the purported issue, namely, that Black Lives Matter, is not the ultimate issue. Instead, a larger cultural revolution is the ultimate issue. (As many have noted, the founders of BLM are both Marxists and radical feminists, with two of the three women identifying as queer activists.)

And so, the mantra that “Black Lives Matter” specifically means blacks who are victims of white police brutality. Black lives in the womb do not matter. Blacks getting gunned down in gang violence do not matter. Black toddlers killed in random shootings do not matter. Not even blacks killed by black police officers matter — at least not nearly as much as blacks killed by white officers.

Those white officers, in turn, represent the larger system, which, we are told, is fundamentally racist. And it is that system that needs to be overthrown.

Thus, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

Read it all, comrades.

Grammar is Propadeutic to Logic

So if grammar is 'racist,' then so is logic.

What is the criterion whereby a subject or activity is deemed 'racist' by leftists?  It appears to be this:  Whatever blacks and other 'people of color' are poor at is 'racist.' 

And what is at the back of that criterion?  It appears to be the assumption that we are all inherently equal, both as individuals and as groups, in all respects, and not just in respect of political rights.  Now we all believe in equality of rights, such as the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; those among us with experience of life and good sense, however, know that there are all sorts of empirically measurable respects in which individuals and groups are not equal.  To take one of many examples, Asian students are superior to black students in point of knowledge of, and aptitude for, mathematics. 

Do I need to belabor this point among my astute readers? (Full disclosure: I am not now, and never have been Asian, and it is biologically impossible that I should ever become Asian.)

But if you foolishly believe that we are all inherently equal in every respect, with the same abilities and interests, then you may be tempted to embrace the following unsound argument:

A. We are all inherently equal in every respect. But:

B. This equality does not manifest itself as equality of outcome or result. Therefore:

C. There has to be a factor that prevents equality of outcome or result. And:

D. That factor is racism, both individual and 'systemic.'

This argument is multiply-flawed. But if you read this weblog, that very fact is evidence that you have the mental equipment to determine on your own where the flaws lie.  Why do I have to do all the work?

Thought, Prayer, Meditation

"Prayer is when night descends on thought." (Alain, as quoted by Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus.) Knowing Alain, he must have intended his aphorism as a denigration of prayer. I see it the other way around. We cannot think our way out of our predicament; thinking merely allows us to map the terrain and discover the impasses.  It is merely a means of "consolidating our perplexities." (E. Cioran). It is the failure of thinking that leads us to pray, and the limitations of prayer that lead us to meditate  and wait, like Weil, in silence.  (Curious it is that Simone Weil was a student of Alain.)

So I say: Prayer is when night descends on thought, and meditation is when night descends on (discursive) prayer.  But all three are needed for a complete human life. Each of us should aspire to be a thinker, a believer, and a mystic with triple citizenship in Athens, Jerusalem, and Benares.

Rodin Buddha statue Genuflection

The Ability to Write and to Comprehend a Good, Long Sentence . . .

. . . is one mark of an educated mind. You won't learn this in the English Department of Rutgers, however. Example:

If you value the life of the mind, the pursuit of truth, the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, high culture and its transmission, in short, the classical values of the university as set forth in such great works as John Henry Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University,  then you should withdraw all support from the culturally Marxist indoctrination centers that the vast majority of contemporary 'universities' have become.

A good stylist, I will add, varies the length of his sentences.   (And a good upholder of traditional values insists on his right to use standard English.)

The 'universities' of the present day are more an impediment to the development of an educated mind than  a help. You don't need them.  Do your bit to defund them.

Note the difference between 'good, long sentence' and 'good long sentence.'

The ‘Catholic’ ‘Universities’ Have Become Jokes: Fordham

I continue with the examples. Fordham, the other day:

Fordham University is persecuting a student for speech that shouldn’t even be all that controversial. Surely the Jesuits who run the school aren’t afraid of honest debate?

At issue are two Instagram posts last month from Austin Tong, age 21: one implicitly criticizing anti-police protests and another showing himself holding a rifle to memorialize the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Divest the 'universities.' Enough academentia.

Is ‘Looters’ Racist?

But of course!

Blacks are 'over-represented' among looters. It would be racist to hold blacks to civilized standards of behavior because such behavior is not 'who they are.' Therefore, any use of 'looters' is racist.

Is that the 'reasoning'? I'm just asking.  See here:

At the Los Angeles Times, for instance, an editor has said the word “looters,” which has been used many times in the paper, now has “a pejorative and racist connotation” and that anyone who is inclined to use the word should “talk to your immediate supervisor.” Translation: Best not use the word at all, if you want to stay employed. So what to call looters? Non-paying shoppers? That doesn’t quite tell the story: Ordinary shoplifters don’t usually bust up all the windows. How about self-appointed retail-justice-commandos? Revolutionary mass goods-redistribution agents?

'Liberals' can't think, but they are really good at associational slides. Their thinking is slurry and surreal and 'morphy' and muddled. One thing reminds them of another and morphs into it.   Their 'thinking' is feculent, a byproduct — of con-fusion.  An intercranial crapstorm. Foolish and flushable.

'Blacklist' is another word the Pee-Cee Brigade wants to ban.  But then what about 'white out' and 'red line' and 'brown nose' and 'Code Yellow'?

'Liberals' need re-education. We'll begin building the camps at the start of Trump's third term.  He will no doubt get a third term by simply refusing to leave. Ask Nancy Pelosi.