U.S.S.A.

The title of that Butthole Surfers song ─please forgive the nostalgia for my punk rock past─ comes to mind reading this article, Thomas Naylor: Secession Fever - Vermont Commons, the first three paragraphs of which follow:

Secession fever is spreading across America just as it did back in 1776 and 1861. More than forty states now have active political independence movements committed to the peaceful withdrawal of their respective states from the Union. As a result, the United States may never be the same. Indeed, in the not too distant future, it may cease to exist, just like its former nemesis, the U.S.S.R.

How can this be? Our government has lost its moral authority. It has become a cross between an oligarchy and an autocracy disguised as a democracy—just like the former Soviet Union. Our nation is no longer sustainable economically, politically, militarily, socially, culturally, or environmentally. Because of its size, it is ungovernable and, therefore, unfixable.

Not unlike every other empire throughout history, the American Empire is going down, and it is going down at a much faster rate than most Americans realize. Although the historical origins of America’s death spiral can be traced back several decades, it was President George W. Bush’s response to September 11, 2001 that has provided the impetus for our final demise. When we look back over time, it is the war on terrorism that will have proved to have been our death knell with all of its economic, legal, social, and geopolitical implications. Technofascism, the cheap oil endgame, unconditional support for Israel, full spectrum dominance, imperial overstretch, and unbridled American hubris are all part of the drill.

Right on! Sadly, many more might be inclined to support the Second Vermot Republic if it were not for inexcusable drivel like this: Muslim Rage Against the Vatican Not Misdirected and Papal Missile Scores a Direct Hit.

[link via the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel]

Pirahã

Mr. T. Chan of The New Beginning links today to this fascinating article: Brazil's Pirahã Tribe: Living without Numbers or Time. In addition to numbers, the language also lacks a past tense, colors, and subordinate clauses.

"[P]eople are only capable of constructing thoughts for which they possess actual words," says the article, summarizing The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. If it is true that Pirahã lacks subordinate clauses, it would be a setback for Chomsky and the Universal Grammar.

I remain a tad skeptical, remembering the Margaret Mead Hoax. [See also The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of her Samoan Research and Bursting a south-sea bubble.]

Mr. Chan has many more links in his original post about the linguist behind the three-decade long study: Daniel Everett.

"We're aren't in Kansas anymore."

An LA Times* article on the "small but growing number of U.S. farmers who are moving to this South American nation in the same way that European migrants headed west generations ago": Planting themselves in Brazil.

Agribusiness, it seems, is driving away American farmers just as surely as President Mugabe drove away White Zimbabwean farmers. Just as Mozambique gained from Zimbabwe's loss, so will fellow Lusophone Brazil.

This from the article almost has me packing my bags: "In Brazil, land ready to farm can be had for $750 an acre and virgin soil for $100 or less an acre."

The prospect of dancing Forró, Brazil's country music, also entices:

*Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

Bad Brains Videos

My one-year-old son, God bless him, recently destroyed my one and only Bad Brains cassette tape, leading me to find these early videos on-line, from 1979 to 1984:

O Happy Day!

Four years ago day ago, I was received into the Catholic Church on the feast of the saint whose name my parents providentially gave me as a middle name and future patron:


St Andrew the Apostle, the First-Called
This saint, brother of the first pope, is the patron of Eastern Christianity, and it is appropriate and providential that His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI should meet today. How's that for a name day present?

Here is some coverage:

Patriarch and Pope Have "Good Will" Encounter
Orthodox Patriarch's Welcome Address to Pope
Bartholomew I's Article: "That They May All Be One"
Pope's Address to Patriarch Bartholomew I

From Papacy and Vatican on Yahoo! News Photos come these images:

BREAKING NEWS

S. Korea to Withdraw Troops From Iraq

Bacevich in Commonweal

Commonweal is carrying Prof. Andrew J. Bacevich's latest offering, Twilight of the Republic?, the first three paragraphs of which follow:

In his 2005 inaugural address, President George W. Bush declared the promulgation of freedom to be "the mission that created our nation." Fulfilling what he described as America’s "great liberating tradition" now requires that the United States devote itself to "ending tyranny in our world."

Many Americans find such sentiments compelling. Yet to credit the United States with possessing a "liberating tradition" is like saying that Hollywood has a "tradition of artistic excellence." The movie business is just that-a business. Its purpose is to make money. If once in a while the studios produce a film of aesthetic value, that may be cause for celebration; but profit, not revealing truth and beauty, defines the purpose of the enterprise.

Something of the same can be said of the enterprise launched on July 4, 1776. The hard-headed lawyers, merchants, farmers, and slaveholding plantation owners gathered in Philadelphia that summer did not set out to create a church. They founded a republic. Their purpose was not to save mankind. It was to guarantee for people like themselves "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Mar Thoma

Pope no longer doubts Thomas reached India

Sheehan in Korea Redux

In Cindy Sheehan on Daechu-ri, Mr. Robert Koehler quotes from a letter one blogger says might "make a large part of the Korean expat blogosphere foam at the mouth and turn purple in a most unattractive way."

Not this blogger. I found myself agreeing with Mrs. Sheehan, for different reasons of course. She's right about this: "[T]he expansion of Camp Humphreys will only do what Georgie Bushie is becoming infamous for: making America and the world less safe and secure."

My comments on the post:

Mrs. Sheehan has reached the same conclusion that Pat Buchanan and other paleoconservatives reached years ago: The US should leave South Korea.

Our boys (and, shamefully, girls) over here are protecting no vital American interest and only serve as sitting ducks for the Dear Leader’s nukes. Bring them home!

President Ahmadinejad's Letter to You and Me

My fellow "Noble Americans" should give this a read: Text of Iran president’s letter to the U.S. Mr. Daniel Larison, in linking to the letter, notes that "the Iranians’ propaganda and PR skills are evidently light years ahead of the Karen Hughes-style goodwill tours and the hokey al-Shura TV channel that constitute our official efforts to 'get our message' across in the Islamic world."

Mr. Larison is right, although the Anti-Christian Libertine Union might sue The New Hilter™ Mr. Ahmadinejad for calling Americans "God-fearing and followers of Divine religions" and for suggesting that we "will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world."

[link via Eunomia]

Perverted Catholic Truths?

Mr. Jeff Culbreath is on to something with this post: THEOLOGY OF THE BODY: WEIRD, CREEPY, AND DANGEROUS.

Apostolic Churches

"The Young Fogey" provides a link to The great Catholic family in one handy, colourful chart. Interestingly, Islam (a.k.a. The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed) is presented for what it is, an offshoot from Christianity. Serge has called it "The Mormonism of the Eastern Church."

The Return of Dr. Frankenhwang

Facing up to three years in jail, Hwang Woo-Suk is trying to revive his personality cult: “Cloning pioneer” want to manipulate human cells again.

P'yŏngyang's Potemkin Church

Mr. Kang Jae Hyok, a defector, reports on his personal experience with thn North Korean capital's only Protestant church in A Church for Security Agents: Bongsu Church in Pyongyang:

I had lived in Pyongyang from 1996 to 1998. During that time, my cousin introduced me Mr. Hong, a forty two-year old official in the Foreign Ministry.

He was living in a quality apartment (in N. Korean standard) and I befriended with him for about a year. Mr. Hong, since he was born in Pyongyang and had resided abroad for a long period of time, did not know much about how people live outside the capital and asked me a lot of questions about local situation.

Hong was a graduate of North Korea’s most prestigious Mankyongdae Revolutionary Academy and studied French at KPA Security College. Since then, he had been assigned as a National Security Agency liaison officer to the Foreign Ministry.

When he married with a daughter of a senior army officer, Kim Jong Il gave him a wreath and a watch, which was a common gesture by Kim to tame party officials. Hong even served as a deputy chief of mission in DPRK Representative Office in Paris for six years.

In February 1997, Hong was appointed to the Bongsu Church. At that time, I thought the ‘Church’ was a type of state-run trade company, because Hong had been expressing his interest in working at trade department.

Hong spent much more ‘foreign currency certificate (exchanged with US dollar bills, can replace domestic currency in NK)’ compared to when he was working for the Foreign Ministry. He often bought me sushi in ‘foreign-currency-only restaurants.’ So I supposed the ‘Bongsu Church’ a huge trading company.

It was only when I defected from the North to Seoul that I figured out what kind of job Mr. Hong had held in Bongsu Church. He was dispatched to the ‘church’ because he was a trusted security agent.

In Seoul, I watched a number of South Korean Christians having service in the Bongsu Church while visiting Pyongyang. Whatever the southern Christian believers’ true intention of attending the chapel is, the fellow ‘Christians’ in Bongsu Church are, in reality, sent by the North Korean government authorities such as United Front Department of KWP and National Security Agency. It is not probable at all for the state-run Bongsu Church to have a true believer, whether of Christianity or any other kind of religion except for the Kim Il Sung/Kim Jong Il cult.

Click on the link to learn the history of the church.

Doug Bandow on North Korea

Sanctions on luxury goods might just do the trick, he says in Chinese Takeout:

First, China should strictly enforce the limited UN sanctions, particularly the ban on trade in luxury goods and weapons. Cutting off oil and food might bring Pyongyang to its knees, but that might spark the kind of violent national collapse that Beijing most fears. The humanitarian consequences could be equally serious. Moreover, the tactic might not work. Kim has proved willing to starve the North Korean masses, which have little ability to overthrow him. Change is only likely to come from action taken by the small circle of party elites and military commanders.

The model for regime change in North Korea is Romania, where communist elites took advantage of domestic unrest to oust Nicolae Ceausescu, rather than East Germany, where popular protests led to the downfall of party boss Erich Honecker. A palace coup might not deliver a reform-minded regime, but all that is needed is a deal-minded replacement for Kim, and Beijing’s involvement is likely to deliver a more tractable government.

Kim and his allies, like other authoritarian regimes, use access to Western goods for control. He is apparently fond of Hennessey cognac and other quality liquors and beer; his wine cellar reportedly boasts 10,000 bottles. He enjoys fine foods—his former chef mentions caviar, lobster, melons, shark-fin soup, and sushi, as well as McDonald’s hamburgers. Kim is also said to have given favorite family members and generals cars, camcorders, foreign-made suits, bidets, electronic games, fancy watches, gold pistols, jewelry, and foreign cash.

Restricting the nomenklatura’s access to these fine products would severely undermine Kim’s regime. Notes Aaron Friedberg of Princeton, "Kim rewards his underlings and ensures their loyalty by letting them share the loot. Kim’s extended family, the top echelons of the Communist Party, and the upper ranks of the military and security services all benefit from this arrangement."

Consumerism and Americanism

"Do Chinese Students Need An American Jesus?" asks Rev. Michael Spencer, a self-described "post-evangelical" minister.

When speaking of China, the author is often mistaken. For example, he shows his ignorance of the Cultural Revolution with this statement: "Mao may have been a poor communist, but he was a brilliant Confucian."

When speaking of the American Christianity his Chinese exchange students encounter on campus, though, he is dead on:

I doubt they will become Christians because they are seeing American Christianity, and it's far more American than Christian. They've helped me to see my own cultural religion, and it's been a disturbing revelation.

When they attend chapel, they frequently hear moralistic preaching. Their own Confucian and Maoist culture gives them morals and moralism, and produces a far more moral person than their typical American peer. They hear sermons on being a good person, staying off drugs, not having sex and staying in school. They were doing all this when they came here and will do it when they leave.

They see American Christians without a Bible most of the time. We have few spiritual disciplines and are hungry and thirsty for the things our culture values more than the gifts and callings of Christ. They hear us talk about Jesus, but the Jesus we talk about is not compelling enough to cause us to live truly sacrificial or revolutionary lives. I've noticed this with other Asians as well. When they hear us talking about our religion, they expect to see the same holiness and devotion they see in Buddhist monks, but in American Christians they simply see another American, with a slightly different set of consumer interests. Same American. Different t-shirt slogan. Our spirituality is clearly inferior.

Indeed. Rev. Spencer also takes on Contemporary Worship™:

My Chinese students are probably put off- or just bored silly- by most of what we call worship, because I doubt that it is anywhere near as focused and relevant as their own cultural parallels. Our worship songs are frequently romantic and self-serving. We have little genuineness and little mystery. We talk and talk and talk and talk, but have little to show for it in our lives.

[....]

But they have also seen American Christianity up close. They see it through the filter of their own cultural lenses and presuppositions, but I believe most of what is there to be seen is American culture and not the Kingdom of God that Jesus brought, lived and taught. We are American Christians, and we’re practicing an anemic, weak, flaccid form of Christianity that, for our Chinese students, makes Mao look like the superior savior and Chinese virtues as the superior way.

Rev. Spencer is correct, but as consumerism extends its global reach, its effects on Christianity can be seen in places like South Korea as well.

Coming Home

Master Sgt. Robert V. Layton, rest in peace: Korean War casualty gets proper burial.

The Holy Father in Turkey

Off the secular press's radar screen: Orthodoxy, not Islam, draws pope to Turkey

Ephesus: Pope to visit "Mary's House" in Turkey

The Mehmet Ali Agca connection: Would-be John Paul assassin asks to meet Pope to discuss religious and mystic issues...

The Pope John XIII connection: Who was the man the Turks call 'Pope Roncalli?' and The view of the visit from 'Pope Roncalli Street'

From True Believer to Cynic

Mr. Daniel Nichols of Caelum et Terra reports on meeting a young soldier from his parish recently returned from Iraq in About Face.

North Korean Eugenics

This is not an easy read: Babies killed by North Korean super race.

Paleolibertarian Round-up

Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com have between them several articles of note today.

From the former: Sanctions Useless, or Worse Than Useless? - by Ivan Eland; Bringing Bush to Court - by Elizabeth de la Vega and Tom Engelhardt; Congress to Ponder Conscription - by Ron Paul; and Is Putin Being Set Up - by Pat Buchanan.

From the latter: Declare Victory and Get Out by James Ostrowski and 'Our War Against Canada': Alex Cox and the Long March of American Militarism by Chris Floyd.

Scratch an Atheist, Find a Nazi

Über-Atheist Richard Dawkins suggest that Eugenics May Not Be Bad*:

I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?

It's high time for scientists to start sticking to science and start shutting up about society, which is far outside their area of expertise. Has Prof. Dawkins not thought where his proposal might lead?

One would think that after the astronomical death tolls amassed in the construction of Atheist dystopias by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others, we'd have learned the lesson of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky's grim 19th Century prophecy: "Without God, all things are permissible."

It might also be wise to examine the remarkable statement quoted by Prof. Richard A. Shweder in Atheists Agonistes**:

John Locke, who was almost everyone’s favorite political philosopher at the time of the founding of our nation, was a very tolerant man. In his 1689 “Letter Concerning Toleration,” he advocated a policy of live and let live for believers in many faiths, even heretics. But he drew the line at atheists. He wrote: “Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.”

While burning Atheists at the stake might not be the best approach***, we need to be ever-vigilant of the threat they pose to Liberty and Civilization, and we need to be ready to resist when they start constructing their gas chambers and gulags.

*Link via open book.

**Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

*** There are occasionally Atheists who somehow manage to be decent human beings, like Gore Vidal and Nat Hentoff.

The Latest from Chronicles

Mrs. Andrea Kirk Assaf, the daughter of the Sage of Mecosta, sends her latest "Letter From Rome" in Lebanon, Israel, and the Holy See.

Mr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan Administration official, notes that the president can declare "mission accomplished" in at least the domestic front of his war: Bush’s Defeated Foe: U.S. Civil Liberty.

Prof. Clyde Wilson's latest in his series is as entertaining as it is edifying: The Way We Are Now Ad Infinitum.

"Bye bye, U.S.A. Hello, C.S.A.?"

Mr. Erik Curren on the future prospects for Dixie in Peak oil - the South will rise again:

Indeed, might the South, with its small-town and agrarian values, be better off in an energy-starved world where we have to make more of our stuff and grow more of our food close to home than many places in the North that have always relied heavily on trade and manufacturing?

While the twin evils of suburban sprawl and factory farming are indeed huge threats to a sustainable future, they have not yet entirely snuffed out the traditional Southern way of life that, in many aspects, remains a model for a re-localized society elsewhere.

Many communities still retain vibrant local economies. My own town, Staunton, has seen a renaissance of its downtown, with numerous shops and restaurants in walking distance from hundreds of well-preserved Victorian homes and Mary Baldwin College. A seasonal farmer's market is increasingly popular as a source of local food from the Shenandoah Valley's many remaining family farmers.

The same can be said for Upstate New York, where James Howard Kunstler has chosen to ride out The Long Emergency. According to Mr. Curren's article, Mr. Kunstler takes a dim view the South's prospects. I do not share this view, for the same reasons pointed out in Mr. Curren's article.

[link via EnergyBulletin.net]

Communitarian Survivalism

Judging from comments on previous posts, the Survivalist theme seems to be somewhat popular. "El Cid" has some excellent thoughts to share in his latest lengthy and informative post on the subject, Pragmatic Survivalist, from which I excerpt:

[O]nly communities can ensure the survival of most people during bad times - let's face it 99.99% of the population is incapable of being true individual survivalist. There is danger to the prepared family in this community response however.  Suppose you are the only person around that prepared anything at all; suppose you have things that others want.  The community could get together and "vote" to redistribute your goods. Local communities could be good or bad depending upon the character of your neighbors.

[....]

As a paleoconservative my philosophy is that communities are the key to everything - including surviving any potential disaster scenario. The lowest form of government is the seat of power that is best suited to help and the most deserving of loyalty in such cases (loyalty after that to God and family). In the United States the local sheriff is the highest lawman in the county (no matter who else with a badge shows up).  If bad things happen we ought to be able to rely on ourselves first, then our neighbors and then our local government.  My brand of politics and my political philosophy are not divorced from this concept at all.

A very clear statement of The Principle of Subsidiarity if there ever was one. On a similar theme is this relevent snippet from the Transition Culture Interview with Richard Heinberg - Part One… Peak Oil:

So that survivalist “head for the hills” response is one you have little time for?

Personally I have little time for it, although of course the Lifeboats strategy doesn’t have to be one of simple personal survivalism, it can be undertaken in ways that are more communitarian in orientation.

It is always interesting when the Right, represented by the former quote, and Left, by the latter, see more or less eye to eye on certain points. [It is even more interesting that it is always the case that the Right has the clearer, fuller picture of the issues involved.] It must be admitted that in America's strange political climate words like "community" have largely been surrendered to the Left. Rather than attempt a "retaking" of these words, we should look to commonalities with those who now use them.

Neocon Treachery

This, from 'Neocons' abandon Iraq war at White House front door, is absolutely and unequivocally despicable:

The neoconservative version of history is that the Iraq war was good idea undone by Bush administration incompetence after Saddam Hussein fell. Influential adviser Kenneth Adelman, who famously predicted Iraq would be a "cakewalk," now says, "This didn't have to be managed this bad; it's just awful." Another prime mover behind the war, former assistant Defense secretary Richard Perle, told Vanity Fair: "The decisions did not get made that should have been. ... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."

The article sets the truth straight:

To blame administration bungling exclusively for the Iraq debacle, however, is to learn the wrong lesson. It's true that the occupation of Iraq was mismanaged from the outset. By failing to guard massive munitions stockpiles, the administration helped arm the insurgency. And by disbanding the Iraqi army, it gave the insurgency men to use those arms. But the mistakes began with the decision to go war itself, a naive and arrogant exercise in wishful thinking that the nation can't afford to repeat.

Absolutely right, that last point is.

Father Joseph Tu Tran

He is the subject of this story: Louisiana priest arrested after bizarre rampage. Here's what allegedly happened:

A Catholic priest got in trouble with the law this holiday weekend after an alleged drunken rampage in which police say he fired a rifle in the air, threatened a store clerk and kicked a deputy in the groin.

The Rev. Joseph Tu Tran, 51, from St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Pointe-aux-Chenes, was "highly intoxicated" when he went into a convenience store in Bourg on Thanksgiving night carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, authorities said.

There, he was accused of threatening a store clerk with a .270-caliber rifle, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry J. Larpenter said. No one was hurt in the incident.

[....]

Parishioners said Tu Tran was popular and that they wished him well.

"I am so shocked. I've never seen him with a weapon or drinking," parishioner Angela Dupre said, adding that Tu Tran worked hard to help area families recover from last year's hurricanes. "I wish him luck. ... I'll sure pray for him."

I'll pray for the good father, too, because that is precisely the kind of trouble I could see myself getting into.

US Out of Korea!

Mr. Anatol Lieven, with about the most intelligent thing I've read thus far about the North Korean nuke crisis, in North Korea Isn't Our Problem:

There is one region that the U.S. can and should bow out of now: Korea. North Korea’s bomb test is obviously a very serious problem for the U.S., given its heavy military presence in South Korea. However, we should ask why, more than 50 years after the Korean War and 15 years after the end of the Cold War, the United States still has about 37,500 troops on the Korean peninsula.

In the long run, North Korea’s nuclear weapons are an overwhelming problem only for its neighbors, and it should be their responsibility to sort this problem out. Of course, they may fail -- but then, the U.S. record in the region over the last decade has not exactly been one of success.

The U.S. is already reducing its troop levels on the Korean peninsula; it should accelerate the process and move rapidly toward ending its military presence. Moreover, it should negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea. This will remove Pyongyang’s motive to attack U.S. interests, ensure that China could never again attack U.S. forces in a ground war and allow the U.S. to concentrate instead on maintaining its overwhelming lead over China in naval and air power.

We must be very clear, however, that this withdrawal would also mean ceding to China the dominant role in containing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions -- along with Japan, South Korea and Russia -- and in managing the eventual collapse of the North Korean state and the appallingly difficult and expensive process of the reunification of the two Koreas.

Given how costly and difficult reunification has proved to be for the Germanys after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should be only too happy to throw this particular time bomb into China’s lap. It would grant Beijing international prestige and an extra share of regional influence in an area vital to its interests, while saving us great costs and dangers.

North Korea must be treated as a regional problem to be managed by a regional concert of powers, with China in the lead. The U.S. role in all this should be sympathetic -- and distant.

Bring our boys and our $3 billion per annum home!

[link via The Marmot's Hole]

Oremus

Pope: Pray for me during Turkey trip

The End of the Enlightenment

Writing for the NY Times*, Prof. Richard A. Shweder speculates as to what is behind the recent spate of "crusading atheism" in Atheists Agonistes :

[T]he popularity of the current counterattack on religion cloaks a renewed and intense anxiety within secular society that it is not the story of religion but rather the story of the Enlightenment that may be more illusory than real.

The Enlightenment story has its own version of Genesis, and the themes are well known: The world woke up from the slumber of the “dark ages,” finally got in touch with the truth and became good about 300 years ago in Northern and Western Europe.

As people opened their eyes, religion (equated with ignorance and superstition) gave way to science (equated with fact and reason). Parochialism and tribal allegiances gave way to ecumenism, cosmopolitanism and individualism. Top-down command systems gave way to the separation of church from state, of politics from science. The story provides a blueprint for how to remake and better the world in the image and interests of the West’s secular elites.

Unfortunately, as a theory of history, that story has had a predictive utility of approximately zero. At the turn of the millennium it was pretty hard not to notice that the 20th century was probably the worst one yet, and that the big causes of all the death and destruction had rather little to do with religion. Much to everyone’s surprise, that great dance on the Berlin Wall back in 1989 turned out not to be the apotheosis of the Enlightenment.

*Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

The New Oveseas Chinese

A fascinating report on the new Chinese immigrants arriving in "northern Burma, northern Laos, Cambodia[,] ... the Pacific islands, Australia, the United States, the Russian Far East, and Japan": In changing times, the new face of Chinese emigrants. Here is how they differ from previous generations:

[T]he new migrants are not like their predecessors, who spoke regional dialects and exhibited little nationalism, identifying mainly with the localities in China from which they came. The recent arrivals not only speak the national language but also tend to identify with China as a whole. According to Andrew Forbes, a Chiang Mai-based China expert who has spent more than 20 years studying China's relations with Southeast Asia: "The new-wave Chinese are very different from those who migrated in the past. They've grown up in a country, which is far more unified than before. There's now a different sense of being Chinese. The new migrants are patriotic and loyal to the motherland."

I first came cross these new Chinese immigrants in Phnom Penh, at a very modern Chinese-run. I was travelling with a Malaysian Chinese friend. We had just come from Vietnam where he had spoken Teochew with Vietnamese Chinese, but he found these Mandarin-speaking immigrants a bit strange.

Here a excerpt about a revealing incident between these old and new Chinese immigrants that occured in Cambodia:

[T]his sense of national pride is also a factor that has provoked tensions between recent migrants and older settlers, who fear that it could reignite latent animosity and reinforce longstanding suspicions towards ethnic Chinese communities in their adopted countries.

And there have been signs of such incipient hostility. For example, in May 1999, 300 Chinese amassed outside the U.S. embassy in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh to protest against the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which the Americans asserted was a mistake. A smaller gathering of ethnic Chinese Cambodians then held a counter-demonstration, heckling the protesters. "You're not our brothers," one of them yelled. "Your people killed my people during Pol Pot's time." Cambodia's Chinese suffered badly during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime, led by Pol Pot, who was backed by Beijing.

North Korean People Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands

Whether by protesting or by growing their own food or by buying and selling their own goods, the North Korean people are beginning to demand change, as reported in Mass Protest at Hoiryeong Nammoon Markets, Provisional Settlement:

Recently, the DailyNK has been reporting numerous video footages of conflicts in North Korea where security or military officers grab citizens by the collar and many others try to stop the fight. This indicates the big failure of the North Korean regime and military compared to the times of the food crisis and shows that the dependence of citizens to solve the issue of eating and living on their own has grown.

Korea's Neighbors

NPR offers a profoundly disturbing look at modern Japan: Retreating Youth Become Japan's 'Lost Generation'. Author Michael Zielenziger is interviewed about the hikikomori, the one million misfit males who essentially lock themselves away in their rooms rather than face social expectations. The author also address the "womb strike" of young women called parasaito who refuse to marry and have children. Similar subcultures exist here in South Korea, but to a lesser extent. Korea remains marginally healthier, in this blogger's opinion, due to the influence of religion, which is much stronger here than it is across the East Sea.

Turning across the West Sea, Mr. Marvin Chachere shares some profound insights from his teaching experience in the 1980s: First Person: What I Learned in China. Perhaps most insightful was this bit at the end, which holds true for Korea as well: "Chinese culture as I observed it, ignores sin, diminishes guilt but upholds punishment." Koreans, however, are a lot softer about punishment. The statement would hold true for Koreans if the word "punishment" were replaced by "shame."

Survivalism Redux

With Survivalism May Come Back, "El Cid" of League of the Scarlet Pimpernel writes an extensive and informative respone to a subject I posted yesterday, offering in addition to his insightful personal experience these four items to consider:

1. You must own the land/house you plan to use in bad times outright - no bank note!

2. Water - you must have access to it and be able to clean it.

3. You must have a skill that others need, have a massive storehouse or be able to produce everything you will ever need.  The best plan is to store a little of hard to get things, be able and ready to grow things (hobby garden during good times) and have a skill that is tradable.

4. You have to be able and ready to defend yourself.  (more on this below) The defending yourself part of surviving bad times is the lowest of concerns, it does not matter if you can defend yourself if you cannot first take care of yourself.  Most of the old survival stuff I read placed guns first - these are just tools to ensure all of your other hard work remains yours.

Click on the link to read the very detailed elaboration on point #4. The short answer: "If you have only one gun it should be a shotgun - a pump action Remington 870 12 gauge."

The first item in point #3, "a skill that others need," has been on my mind lately. James Howard Kunstler plans to start a local newspaper. I'll likely be a schoolteacher à la 19th Century. I know a little bit about a lot and have an interest in preserving civilization. Education is my game and I've made a determined effort to remain untouched by recent "advances" in the field.

A Call for Contrition Over Iraq

From Rosa Brooks: Iraq is broke beyond repair:

IN 1789, GEORGE Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation. After giving "sincere and humble thanks" for the many blessings our young country had enjoyed, he urged Americans to "unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions."

If Washington were alive to express those sentiments today, he'd be pilloried by Bill O'Reilly as a member of the "Blame America First Club." National transgressions? Who, us?

But, yes, even the U.S.A. screws up sometimes. The invasion of Iraq, for instance, will go down in history as a national transgression of epic proportions — and our original screw-up (an unjustified invasion based on cooked intelligence books) was compounded many times over by our failure to plan for the reconstruction of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

[....]

Before the war, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell told President Bush of the so-called Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it." But Iraq is not a decorative dinner plate. We broke it, but we can't fix it, and we can never own it. All we can do now is leave and apologize for the terrible damage we've done.

It's hard to imagine our current president asking anyone's forgiveness for our "national transgressions," but this Thanksgiving season would be a pretty good time for him to start.

Perhaps the number two buzzword from the Clinton impeachment following "salacious" was "contrition." We need to dust off that very Catholic word and apply it to the current administration, which had its sights on Iraq long before 9/11. The man at the helm, when briefed about Sunnis and Shi'ites, responded, "I thought Iraqis were Muslims."

Iraq, which had neither attacked us nor had the capabilty to do so, was invaded without any thought given to what might happen afterwards. This was criminal negligence, war criminal negligence. Contrition is required, but so is justice.

[link via Antiwar.com]

Eat Locally

South Korea's main Leftist newspaper reports that "[t]he drive to maintain a 'safe dinner table' via 'food sovereignty' has increasingly gotten tougher": Genetically-modified crops and mad cows: perils of globalization?

I see little problem with importing and exporting speciality items, such as French wines and Danish butter cookies, but when it comes to staples like grains, meat, and vegetables, it is best to eat locally.

Joseph Sobran Calls for Justice

From The Republican Future:

When the dust settles, the two parties will have to bury the hatchet and work together on the challenges facing our great country, such as whether President Bush should follow Iraq’s former president Saddam Hussein to the gallows. I’m not talking about lynching; I’m talking about the rule of law, due process, equal protection, and all that.

No man is above the law, and the Nuremberg trials established the principle that even heads of state may be held accountable for crimes against humanity, such as waging aggressive war. This goes far beyond impeachment, an idea the Democrats have already flirted with. We’re talking about the death penalty, for which George W. Bush, as governor of Texas, has already demonstrated his enthusiasm. (It goes with family values.)

I am opposed to capital punishment, and I’m not going to make an exception now, but the Nuremberg principle can be served without actually going through with a hanging. It will be enough if Bush is formally held responsible for his deeds and convicted. Then, perhaps, President Cheney, a man of mercy but not necessarily infinite mercy, could issue a pardon at the last minute, just before they kicked the chair out from under Bush’s feet, commuting the sentence to hard labor.

It might add to the drama, and the fun, if President Cheney would imitate Governor Bush in mocking Bush’s pleas for clemency by squealing, in a high falsetto, “Don’t kill me! Oh, please don’t kill me!” the way Bush did for that woman, what was her name, before her sentence was executed back in Texas. We don’t want blood, but a little exemplary justice would be mighty nice.

Today's Beati

"[They] made their family an authentic domestic Church, open to life, prayer, witness of the Gospel, the social apostolate, solidarity with the poor, and friendship":


Blessed Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Blessed Maria Corsini

Fighting Cyber-Simony

The WaPo* reports on the efforts by the International Crusade for Holy Relics to stop the online of sale first-class religious relics, i.e. the bone, flesh, hair, nails and fragments of other body parts of saints: The Bones of Saint Stephen, Now on eBay. Says founder Thomas Serafin, "We just want the same rules that apply to guns, Nazi items or the bones of American Indians."

*Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

The Missionaries of Charity in Chi-town

The order established by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta runs a home for unwed mothers in Chicago: Sanctuary for moms-to-be. Their house doesn't accept take any federal or church aid.

[link via open book]

Chalk Another One Up for the Mediævals

The Eternal City's Capitoline Wolf, it turns out, was not a product of Antiquity, but of the Age of Faith: Rome's She-Wolf Younger Than Its City [link via LewRockwell.com].


One of the most asinine notions in common circulation among the herd is the narrative─ anti-Catholic Black Legend really ─that between Antiquity and Modernity was a millenium of darkness, of cultural, intellectual, and technical backwardness.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as a visit to The Roving Medievalist on any day of the week attests. To name but one example, Florence's Duomo, built in the Greatest of Centuries, far surpasses in beauty and engineering anything produced by the Græco-Roman World.

These two edifying articles by Mathematician James Franklin demand to be read: MYTHS ABOUT THE MIDDLE AGES and The Renaissance Myth.

Today's Memorial

St. Andrew Dung-Lac and the Martyrs of Vietnam

Dear Abby the Homewrecker

I'm not sure why I clicked on this: ANGRY HUSBAND'S SETBACKS THROW FAMILY INTO TURMOIL.

"BEWILDERED ASIAN WIFE" complains of her husband's "negativity" after losing some money in the stock market: "I have gone for two counseling sessions on my own, which helped me to recognize that he's being verbally abusive."

Abigail Van Buren's advice: "[O]ffer your husband the option of counseling one more time, and if he refuses, ... consult an attorney about a legal separation."

That, sadly, has become the American way. Here in Korea, married couples might not even talk to each other, but they stick together for the kids, or at least they did up till recently.

A few years ago, an old friend was going through some serious marital troubles. He had cheated on his wife by requiting an unrequited love from high school.

I called him every day using free Internet-based international phone calls. I advised him to not leave his marriage. I told him his happiness or "self-actualization" didn't matter anymore, but that of his two young daughters most certainly did. This was before I became Catholic─ my friend was a cradle Catholic ─but I knew of many Korean couples who grow apart but remain together.

About a year later, my friend called again.

"Thanks," he said. "You were the only one who gave me the right advice. Everyone else told me to just get a divorce."

US Withdrawal from SK and PRC Overthrow of NK

This tantalizing rumor, from the article Seoul Has Been Ostracized From N.Korea Discussion, pretty much conforms to what I think might be best at this point for the Korean peninsula:

A rumor is making the rounds of a deal between the U.S. and China that Washington will withdraw its forces from South Korea and put an end to its alliance with Seoul, and that Beijing, in return, will guarantee a nuclear-free North Korea by overthrowing the Kim Jong-il regime and establishing a pro-Beijing regime.

[link via The Marmot's Hole and Lost Nomad]

Twenty-first Century Survivalism

From Head for the hills - the new survivalists by Mark Whittaker:

He has bought a property in New Zealand - which he says fares well in climate-change models - and once he gets his affairs in order he'll move there to learn about growing vegies and raising chooks. He wants to build a big shed to stock with all the important things that will become difficult to obtain, such as fencing wire and Band-Aids. But he worries that he's left it too late, and that the world might start getting ugly before he can learn how to make cheese and grow potatoes.

[....]

Sober and serious, McReady is part of a new wave of survivalists making plans for big trouble. Whereas once it was nuclear holocaust, big-government paranoia or religious rapture that motivated such people, now it is more likely to be climate change, energy shortages and economic collapse. This story is not about whether what they think is true, but more about the social phenomena of what they're doing about it. Most never discuss their beliefs with friends and colleagues because they're frightened of ridicule. But they are getting ready for a world morphed into "Argentina on a very bad day" or plunged into a never-ending depression, or famine, or, worst-case scenario, Mad Max IV and the die-off of billions of people.

Perhaps it's time to relearn some old skills. I styled myself a teenage survivalist back during the Chenenko-Andropov years. Say what you will about Global Warming, it's a far less bleak prospect than was Nuclear Winter. Growing food, however, requires more skills than does stocking up on freeze-dried food. The opium poppy seeds I once bought could come in handy, though.

The Republic of Korea entrusts its populace with no right to bear arms, something I consider essential for the future. For this reason more than any other, I am considering a move back to America, preferably before the end of commercial air travel as we know it. I'd be interested in hearing any suggestions for a post-peak firearm of choice for protection of family and property.

[link via The New Benginning and EnergyBulletin.net]

South Korea's Death Knell?

Ms. Theresa Kim Hwa-young reports that "70% of unmarried women believe their career is much more important than marriage" in Korean women prefer career to family. With a birthrate of 1.1, a full child below the replacement rate of 2.1, this spells demographic disaster.

North Korean News

Ms. Yang Jung A reports that the heir to the Kim Dynasty will be named as early as next month: Kim Jong Il’s Successor Nominal Militaristic Leader.

Mr. Kang Jae Hyok, a defector, reports that another famine may be on the way: NK Food Crisis, Adverse to the Kim Jong Il Regime?

Mr. David Adam cites expert opinions that rather than 549 lives, Typhoon Bilis claimed as many as 57,000: Death toll in North Korea typhoon questioned.

After 53 years, Pfc. Charles H. Long is finally being laid to rest: Korean War soldier's remains ID'd.

Maestro Ahn Eak-tae

"Poema Synfonico Mallorca" is the title of the 1951 Ahn Eak-tae composition reported on in this story: National Anthem Composer's New Works Revealed. His Aegukga (愛國歌) is truly a lovely piece of music.

Seeing that Maestro Ahn spent much of his career in Fascist Europe (Germany, Italy, and Spain), we can infer that he was not a Leftist like the other famous Korean 20th Century classical composer, convicted Communist spy Isang Yun.

Liquorium

That is the name of the new Korean museum dedicated to spirits East and West reported on in this story: Get the Story Behind Your Drink.

Climate Change in Korea

A team lead by Professor Lee Dong-gyu of Seoul National University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences has issued a study, some of the finding of whch are reported in A warmer earth may make the blossoms disappear:

Professor Lee forecast that such higher temperatures and lower precipitation would be notable in the Honam areas (South and North Jeolla province), especially in the Honam Plains, the largest granary in the nation, which will suffer a severe water shortage.

Global warming will affect all four seasons, the team found. The spring will begin five days earlier, and its period will be shortened by 11 days, while summer will begin 16 days earlier, with its period extended 24 days. Global warming is not expected to significantly affect the fall, but winter will start about 10 days later and be shortened by 15 days.

Click on the link to find out what may happen to Korea's beautiful cherry blossoms.

A New Man at the Vatican

Believe it or don't, the answer to this question appears to be affirmative: Kissinger to Serve As Papal Adviser?

[link via The Inn at the End of the World]

A Filipino's Impression of the Korean Church

Mr. Teodoro Bacani Jr., from Lessons from Seoul:

One of the highlights of our visit to Seoul was our appointment with Cardinal Stephen Kim, the former archbishop of Seoul, and a living icon for the Church in Korea. Cardinal Kim approved the establishment of the Filipino Pastoral Center and used to celebrate Mass for the Filipinos in Seoul. He told us that he loved to do this because the faith of the Filipinos was very lively, and he loved to hear the Filipino songs.

His Eminence gave us a few gems for thought. I asked him the reason for the fast development of South Korea. He answered, "The Koreans are an impatient people. They always want to do things in a hurry. There is a positive side to impatience. Then, too, our people are crazy for education. The parents would do anything to send their children to school—elementary, high school, college, and even abroad, if they can afford it." I asked him why North Korea was slow in progressing. His answer: There is no freedom and respect for human dignity. Power is in freedom and human dignity. You cannot develop a country with slaves. He expressed his admiration for our Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, whom he described as a very gentle person, and asked me to extend his greetings to him.

Our last stop was at the Shrine of the Korean Martyrs, who were martyred between 1846 to 1866. Among them was St. Andrew Kim Dae Gon, who stayed for some time in the Philippines—in Lolomboy, Bulacan, where there is now a parish in his honor. The Korean Church has thousands of martyrs, 103 of whom are canonized. This is certainly one of the reasons why the Korean Catholic Church has been the fastest growing Catholic local Church in Asia. The Korean Catholics now number about 4,700,000. They are not the majority in the country, but the Catholics are loyal to their Church and steadfast in their faith. Vocations to the priesthood and the religious life are abundant.

Squanto

Mr. Chuck Colson retells his story in "God's Instrument" The story of Squanto:

Squanto was bought by a well-meaning Spanish monk, who treated him well and taught him the Christian faith. Squanto eventually made his way to England and worked in the stables of a man named John Slaney. Slaney sympathized with Squanto’s desire to return home, and he promised to put the Indian on the first vessel bound for America.

It wasn't until 1618—ten years after Squanto was first kidnapped—that a ship was found. Finally, after a decade of exile and heartbreak, Squanto was on his way home.

But when he arrived in Massachusetts, more heartbreak awaited him. An epidemic had wiped out Squanto's entire village.

We can only imagine what must have gone through Squanto's mind: Why had God allowed him to return home, against all odds, only to find his loved ones dead?

A year later, the answer came. A shipload of English families arrived and settled on the very land once occupied by Squanto’s people. Squanto went to meet them, greeting the startled Pilgrims in English.

According to the diary of Pilgrim Governor William Bradford, Squanto "became a special instrument sent of God for [our] good . . . He showed [us] how to plant [our] corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities . . . and was also [our] pilot to bring [us] to unknown places for [our] profit, and never left [us] till he died."

When Squanto lay dying of a fever, Bradford wrote that their Indian friend "desir[ed] the Governor to pray for him, that he might go to the Englishmen’s God in heaven." Squanto bequeathed his possessions to the Pilgrims "as remembrances of his love."

The Neocon Fantasy World

Mr. William Pfaff describes it aptly in Bush has left reality behind:

American policy has been running on images rather than evidence of real nations and people doing things for real human motives. It has been populated by abstractions: Global terrorist conspiracies, rogue nations, fanatics who hate our freedoms, generations of terrorism and the global menace of al-Qaida.

The United States, where actual people live, has been turned into an abstraction: the sole superpower, which everyone in the world knows is a righteous nation. It is the Mars (in the neocon Robert Kagan's formulation) defending the fragile Venus that is Europe, which the Straussian realist (after Leo Strauss, the University of Chicago philosopher) is unflinchingly battling in a Hobbesian universe to protect Kantian Europeans, with their illusions of global parliaments and peace, from nameless horrors.

The United States is the tranquil Elephant (as another American academic, Michael Mandelbaum, has proposed), which by its very presence guards the smaller beasts of the savanna from carnivorous predators.

This is what it exists to do. It is the leading nation, the most moral, born with the redemptive mission to create what the Puritan preacher Jonathan Winthrop called the "City on the Hill," the democracy "of the people and by the people" that originated the modern world with our repudiation of monarchy and inherited privilege, establishing the greatest of republics, saving the Four Freedoms for the world by winning (alone!) both World War I and II, then the Cold War, and now confronting the ultimate test of the "long war" against Evil itself, incarnate as Terror.

The clearest evidence that Mr. Pfaff's headline is not hyperbole is this six-day-old story: Bush draws Vietnam lesson for Iraq: don't quit.

Gore for President!

Vidal, not Al. In the latest print issue of The American Conservative, Mr. Bill Kauffman writes of "The Populist Patriotism of Gore Vidal" in his review of Mr. Vidal's latest book, Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir.

The author discusses his book and "the events that shaped his life and his country, from war with Hitler to the 'waking nightmare' of Iraq": Gore Vidal: Living Through History.

The Mozarabic, Sarum, Ambrosian, and Other Rites

Father Jim Tucker has a collection of links to many Non-Tridentine Western Mass Orders, noting three reasons for familarity with them:

First, it demonstrates the legitimate variety of forms of worship that flourished in the Church until quite recently. Second, if one finds the "Tridentine" Roman Mass to be a very alien form of worship, one quickly sees that in the context of liturgical worship throughout the Western Church, the traditional Roman Mass is very much within the mainstream. Third, it makes the Eastern Liturgies seem much less exotic and strange, inasmuch as any of these old Western Rites is much closer in spirit to the Eastern Liturgies than to the Glory-and-Praise guitar Masses that are ubiquitous in the West at the present time.

As an Anglo, I am of course partial to The Sarum Rite. [See also The Sarum Missal and the Old Sarum Rite (Western Liturgy of St. Peter).]

The Latest Innocent Victim of the War on Drugs

Mrs. Kathryn Johnston, rest in peace: Woman, 92, dies in shootout with police.

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic on the Celtic Tiger

An exceprt from The Price of Modernity: A Letter From Dublin:

Yes, Ireland is just another postmodern country now, and that includes high-speed internet in my room (so you get these musings in real-time), as well as collapsing birth rates, dysfunctional families, rising crime, ubiquity of global mass-cultural uniformity. The number of unassimilable immigrants and “asylum seekers” is rising rapidly—their influx inevitably coupled with the imposition of ideological and legal mandates of “diversity,” multiculturalism and anti-discriminationism by the elite class. In the meantime, Irish culture is fast becoming a relic, either neutered à la “Riverdance” and relegated to heritage, or else condemned as retrograde.

German Benedictines Return Paintings to Korean Benedictines

St. Ottilien Archabbey, Germany has returned some paintings by famed painter Chong Son (1676-1759) to St. Maurus and Placidus' Abbey, Waegwan, South Korea. Here's the story, as reported in 21 Choson Paintings Return to Korea:

A collection of 21 pieces by Chung Son, one of the top painters of the Choson Kingdom (1392-1910), has been returned from Germany to Korea.

The Rev. Son Chi-hun, of the Order of St. Benedict Waegwan Abbey in Chilgok, North Kyongsang Province, told reporters in a press briefing in Seoul Wednesday that St. Ottilien Archabbey in Emming, southern Germany, gave the paintings back to its Korean branch in October last year.

The pieces are believed to have been taken to Germany in 1925 after Norbert Weber, a German monastery’s abbot, collected them during his travels around Korea.

He said the Korean abbey will make the collection public in 2009, which marks the 100th anniversary of the St. Ottilien Abbey’s work in Korea.

"The German abbey said the decision is in line with the Holy Catholic spirit, which its missionaries first transmitted to Koreans in 1909. Thus it regards the cultural assets as being possessed with the spirit of Korea," he said.

"The then German monastery’s abbot was the only Westerner to hold the artistry of Chung’s paintings in high regard and he let it be known to the Western world," the Rev. Son said.

The Rev. Son also said that the paintings were repatriated under two conditions: that the paintings should be protected in a decent facility and they should belong to the Korean abbey, not the Korean government.

[Click on the link to read more about the paintings.]

Pseudoscience Watch

Mr. Rod Dreher reports on a Faith/Science conference in a post entitled Scientism unbound, referring to "philosophical opinions that masquerade as scientific truths*". Here are some of the more nauseatingly ideological quotes from the usual suspects, men who claim objectivity:

Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.

[....]

I am utterly fed up with the respect that we — all of us, including the secular among us — are brainwashed into bestowing on religion.

There were, however, some real scientists at the table:

With a few notable exceptions... the viewpoints have run the gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat? ... I think that you... are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on the other side.

[....]

Science does not make it impossible to believe in God. We should recognize that fact and live with it and stop being so pompous about it.

I teach English at one of Asia's leading science and technology universities and am happy to report that such militant atheism is extremely rare. In fact, many students and professors, and the president himself, are committed Christians. Even among the non-religious, who make up the bulk of South Korea's population, such attitudes are not to be found.

I've read that militant Darwinism is really an Anglo-American phenomenon, that Francophone and even Communist Chinese scientists recognize that the jury is still out on Evolution, understanding it as the theory that it is. Perhaps this Anglo-American atheistic fundamentalism and militancy has its origins in Puritanism and Calvinism.

*Prof. Wolfgang Smith's definition, from The plague of scientistic belief

Cindy Sheehan in Korea

[image from Sheehan visits locals in protest of Camp Humphreys expansion]

She was invited by farmers to lend support against the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the expansion of Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, two issues on which I agree with her. FTA will hurt Korean farming and promote further industrialization of American agriculture, and it will wipe out what's left of the American textile industry. And the US should be leaving Korea to its own devices, not expanding it bases here. We could better use our $3 billion per annum commitment to pay off the debt Mr. Bush has accumulated.

[link via the Lost Nomad]

The So-Called "Rumsfeld Doctrine"

Citing a Stars and Stripes front-page report that "a key Army manual is being rewritten in a way that rejects the Rumsfeld doctrine and counsels against using it again," milblogger Johnny Anonymus of League of the Scarlet Pimpernel notes that it was not much of a doctrine at all in The Lessons of War:

United States troops were to simply sack Baghdad, then it would all be over. A Jeffersonian democracy would spring from the rubble overnight, shiny happy Iraqis would dance to Toby Keith's greatest hits while throwing rose petals at each other, and we'd all be one step closer to a "New American Century".

The Non-Election That Was

Mr. Paul Craig Roberts asks, "Are Democrats Turning a Blind Eye to Civil Liberty?"

Bastards

"[T]he fact that having a child out of wedlock is more acceptable nowadays and not necessarily the source of shame it once was" bodes ill for our society, the basic unit of which is, of course, the family, not the individual: 37 percent of U.S. births out of wedlock. America desperately needs to see a return of the Shotgun wedding.

Bloodthirsty Atheism

Mr. Dinesh D'Souza sets the historical record straight in Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history. Some excerpts:

It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.

[....]

The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."

Around Asia

The Peaceful Country Shrine: Catholics not to visit Yasukuni, Catholics bishops say

The Dear Leader: Kim Jong-il: world’s most professional blackmailer

The Baby Bust: TV soap operas to help boost SKorea's birthrate

Pierre Gemayel, Requiescat in Pace

The Phalangist leader has been murdered: Anti-Syrian front leader Pierre Gemayel killed in Lebanon; Lebanon on brink over assassination; Lebanon mourns scion of Gemayel clan.

Many Thanks for the Link

The Catholic Exchange Notebook has included this blogger in its nine-blog blogroll. It is truly an honor to be listed aside such heavy-weights as Catholic and Enjoying It, Open Book, The Dawn Patrol, Church of the Masses, The Daily Eudemon, The Curt Jester, Disputations, and Hallowed Ground.

A Townhall.com Twofer

Mr. Harry R. Jackson, Jr. gives us much cause for optimism in his piece about the "new black church" entitled Black Power: The New Conservative Stronghold.

There is little cause for hope, however, in Befuddled superpower, in which Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan notes that we've been "longer in this war in Mesopotamia than America fought in World War I or World War II against Germany" and yet are only now getting around to asking questions that should "have been asked, and answered with finality, by our war leaders before they marched us up to Baghdad."

A Canadian in Korea Defends Tradition

Hats off to Mr. Dave Zettel, who responds to an extremely annoying article by Mr. Nilesh Kumar Vallabhbhai Patel, 'Korean People Need to Wake Up’, with a very perceptive letter-to-the-editor titled Cultural Preservation. Here is the crux of his argument:

In a country as economically and technologically modern as South Korea, there is a real danger that indigenous culture will not survive. Korea, now more than ever conforming to the technological and liberal assumptions of the West, is becoming more open, and this is undoubtedly a good thing. Yet technological society is constantly changing, in a state of dynamism, and in such a state preserving one's traditions and heritage is a matter of some difficulty. In my view, the new generation of Koreans needs to be mindful of their own culture and traditions, and the good things found in them, if they do not want to become indistinguishable from Americans in everything except externals (language, dress, food, etc.).

For example, there is in traditional Korean culture a practice of reverence for one's elders. Bowing as a sign of respect, and even the different ways of speaking, testify to this. This practice is in turn rooted in the Confucian philosophy, which has so shaped the Korean people. Will the tradition of reverence continue? In my own country, Canada, it is impossible to speak of Canadian culture and traditions, except on a superficial level; the influence of the United States, particularly its secular liberal philosophy, is undeniable. Even our anti-Americanism is a pale imitation of American anti-Americanism.

If Koreans are to preserve something of what makes them distinctive, then they will need to foster a respect for the things of the past, and a love for what is good in Korean traditions. There is much that is beautiful in those traditions, and it is for Koreans, especially the younger generation, to rediscover that beauty and make the traditions their own, lest they be resigned to the realm of the antiquated in the face of the relentless, impersonal advance of technology.

[Especially perceptive is Mr. Zettel's assertion that Canadian "anti-Americanism is a pale imitation of American anti-Americanism."]

It is interesting that it is liberals, who speak of diversity and multiculturalism, who most want to remake Korea and the rest of the world in their own image.

Solar Cooking

Indian technology comes to Korea: Environmentalists Promote Solar Cooking in Seoul.

CIA Slaughter?

From LewRockwell.com comes this link: Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?

And from the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel comes this one: How 6 million People Were killed in CIA secret wars against third world countries.

A Composite of Korean Beauty

Korean "netizens" were asked to choose their most preferred face from among famous beauties, the results were compiled, and this composite was made:

[image 한국 미인들 얼굴 합성하면..이렇다!]

Гимн Советского Союза

Played for my class today to accompany the lesson posted about below:

The American, Korean, and French national anthems all have exquisitely beautiful melodies, but none tops the Soviet anthem in sheer bombast and majesty.

From Holy Mother Russia With Love

I used the prose poem below in my Freshman English class today.

WHEN ONE PERSON REACHES OUT WITH LOVE

In 1944, the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's mother took him from Siberia to Moscow. They were among those who witnessed a procession of twenty-thousand German war prisoners marching through the streets of Moscow:

The pavements swarmed with onlookers, cordoned off by soldiers and police. The crowd was mostly women -- Russian women with hands roughened by hard work, lips untouched by lipstick, and with thin hunched shoulders which had borne half of the burden of the war. Every one of them must have had a father or a husband, a brother or a son killed by the Germans. They gazed with hatred in the direction from which the column was to appear.

At last we saw it. The generals marched at the head, massive chins stuck out, lips folded disdainfully, their whole demeanor meant to show superiority over their plebian victors.

"'They smell of perfume, the bastards," someone in the crowd said with hatred. The women were clenching their fists. The soldiers and policemen had all they could do to hold them back.

All at once something happened to them. They saw German soldiers, thin, unshaven, wearing dirty blood-stained bandages, hobbling on crutches or leaning on the shoulders of their comrades; the soldiers walked with their heads down. The street became dead silent -- the only sound was the shuffling of boots and the thumping of crutches.

Then I saw an elderly women in broken-down boots push herself forward and touch a policeman's shoulder, saying, "Let me through." There must have been something about her that made him step aside. She went up to the column, took from inside her coat something wrapped in a colored handkerchief and unfolded it. It was a crust of black bread. She pushed it awkwardly into the pocket of a soldier, so exhausted that he was tottering on his feet. And now from every side women were running toward the soldiers, pushing into their hands bread, cigarettes, whatever they had. The soldiers were no longer enemies. They were people.

A Precocious Autobiography, Yevgeny Yevtushenko (From Gleanings from Orthodox Christian Authors and the Holy Fathers -- Love)

Œcumenical Allies

His Eminence Metropolitan Kirill with a statement that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago, quoted in Head of Russian Orthodox Church Says Roman Catholics Are Allies:

In the Vatican and not only in the Vatican but all over the world, Catholics understand that Orthodox (people) are their allies .... And Orthodox (people) are more and more coming to understand that Catholics are their allies in the face of hostile and non-religious secularism.

His Eminence also spoke on the fruits of secular liberalism:

When the declaration of human rights was made no-one in their worst nightmare could imagine a gay parade in Jerusalem .... Yes it is your own affair if you want to be a sinner or a villain ... But you cannot say society does not care who you are.

Automobile Anarchy

"Unsafe is safe" is not some Orwellian slogan, but the truth about "traffic psychology" as reported in European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs.

I linked to a similar story less than a fortnight ago in a post entitled Death to Traffic Lights! This bodes well for the future of liberty, individual responsibility, and the weakening of the Nanny State.

[link via Dappled Things]

William Pfaff on Globalization

From Broken promises:

Workers in the rich countries were promised that they would ultimately benefit from globalization. Under the new corporate norms of the globalization era, wealth and rewards were to "naturally" trickle down to everyone in a company.

Instead, workers find that their countries grow richer, as do corporations and executives, but ordinary working people grow poorer.

[....]

The new and very recent Anglo- American business orthodoxy dictates the pursuit of profit without regard for social cost or obligation. But as recently as the 1950s in the United States, the "stakeholder" corporate model was generally accepted in business schools and in practice. It holds that while the corporation exists to make profits, it is also responsible for providing secure jobs and just remuneration for its employees, and for advancing the economic interests of the nation and "the good of society."

It clearly is not an outmoded or demonstrably inefficient model, since it is currently widely accepted in Japan. It is, for example, the corporate model followed by the Toyota corporation, the most successful automobile manufacturer in the world. At this moment, the once globally dominant American automobile industry is nearing collapse (and attempting to jettison the last vestige of its own past acceptance of social responsibility, its contractual health- care obligations).

Having grown up in the post-apocalyptic presence of the ruins of the Bethlehem Steel Mill and the shell of a city left in the wake of its collapse, I am quite wary of Globalization, as I am sure most folks with any experience Living in the Rust Belt tend to be.

[link to article via TCRNews Musings]

Whoredom and Race Suicide

"A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women," begins Asia Times Online's "Spengler" in Jihadis and whores. He gives a grim account of the trafficking of Iranian women across the Gulf States and Europe. Like the Ukrainians and Moldovans before them, these Iranian whores leave behind a nation with a plummeting birth rate, a nation defeated without the firing of a single bullet. Spengler describes the "cultural despair... that persuades women to employ their bodies as an instrument of commerce, rather than as a way of achieving motherhood:"

Prostitution is a form of psychic suicide; writ large, it is a manifestation of the national death-wish, the hideous recognition that the world no longer requires Ukrainians or Moldovans.

The author notes the culpability of Islam and Islamism, noting that "Muslim clergy in effect become pimps, taking a fee for sanctioning several 'temporary marriages' per women per day" and that "[t]he same networks that move female flesh across borders also provide illegal passage for jihadis."

Spengler quotes himself from a year-old article descrbing the "the crisis of faith" that is behind population implosions wherever they occur:

The collapse of traditional society has brought about a collapse of birth rates across cultures. Cultures that fail to reproduce themselves by definition are failed cultures, for the simple reason that they will cease to exist before many generations have passed.

It is profoundly sad to see any culture reach the point of what folks in less politically correct times called Race suicide, especially a culture with as long and illustrious a history as that of Persia.

[If Spengler's thesis is correct, then modern Korea, too, is a defeated nation and a failed culture; she has the lowest birthrate in the world as she sells her women to the United States and other countries. Tragic, indeed. To survive, she must reject consumerism and the Culture of death and return to her Confucian roots or embrace Catholicism, or both.]

My Kind of Discrimination

An LA Times* on the blind's monopoly to legally give massages: Tension among South Korea's masseurs. From the article:

The law giving only the legally blind the right to become registered masseurs was introduced under Japanese occupation in 1913 and reaffirmed by South Korea 50 years later, a way for the state to give the visually impaired a chance to earn a living in a culture prone to ostracizing the disabled.

But that aim has now collided with South Korea's constitutional guarantees against discrimination. Masseurs who are not blind and want to offer sports therapy or give facial and foot massages have long complained that the law is biased.

And they have decided to fight.

This law enshrines a nobel and paternalistic Asian tradition. [I recall a conversation on a Kuala Lumpur bus with a blind Chinese masseur who picked up a wonderful Irish brogue at a missionary school.] I have no time whatsoever for these therapists and their demands for equality.

Here's more on the history of the law:

The original decision to bestow a special right on the blind was imposed by the Japanese, who had long reserved work such as massage and acupuncture for those without sight in their own country. Japan's first vocational school for the blind opened in 1878 in Kyoto, and the Japanese brought the practice with them as they occupied the Korean peninsula in the early 20th century.

[....]

Blind masseurs took a hit when the Japanese were chased from Korea in 1945 and the certificate system suspended under the American military government, which refused to recognize the medical benefits of massage, Yang says. But the blind's exclusive rights were restored in the 1963 constitution introduced under then-President Park Chung-hee.

*Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

Must-Read Articles

I've added a side-bar category of that title, compiling some of the best articles I've come across in three years of blogging and beyond, articles that have either changed my way of thinking or reinforced it. Below is the list with a brief explanatory note for each article.

An American Classical Liberalism
Mr. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. on what America could have been.

The American Lenin
Mr. L. Neil Smith's article might not be the most thorough debunking of the sixteenth president, but it has the best title.

Birkenstocked Burkeans
Mr. Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con ideal formulated back in 2002.

The Coming U.S. Retreat from Asia
Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan's suggestion for the North Korean crisis from 2003, truer now than it ever was.

Confucius Today
Mr. Jim Kalb on the Sage's compatibility with Western Conservative thought, especially the idea of "involuntary duties to particular persons."

Does Islam Need a Luther or a Pope?
Prof. Edward Feser's article is more about Catholicism and Protestantism than it is about Islam, and offers one the best apologetics for the Papacy.

End of the Binge
Mr. James Howard Kunstler first introduced me to "the end of affluence as we know it" with this article written for The American Conservative.

My America vs. the Empire
Mr. Bill Kauffman of Reactionary Radicals on why not to be ashamed to be an American.

The plague of scientistic belief
Prof. Wolfgang Smith on the "philosophical opinions that masquerade as scientific truths."

The Politics of Architecture
Prof. Peter Kreeft on the common affinities of radicals and traditionalists as opposed to liberals and conservatives.

Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address
The great Christian on why replacing dialectical materialism with crass materialism is no victory.

Ten Conservative Principles by Russell Kirk
The Sage of Mecosta offers his synthesis of what, more or less, we have professed and profess.

Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority
Study notes on the Frenchman's most startling and troublesome finding from his years in America.

Warren in Syria

Some evangelicals are not happy with the Purpose Driven Life's author's visit: Megachurch Pastor's Trip Draws Criticism. From the article:

Warren has been criticized by some evangelicals for holding talks with a nation long accused of abetting terrorism that is also one of Israel's fiercest foes.

Conservative Christians have been among the toughest advocates in the United States for a hard-line against Islamic extremism. And Israel is strongly supported by a vast evangelical network, including some American churches that believe biblical prophecy calls for Jewish sovereignty over the entire Holy Land.

The Crosstalk Radio Talk Show, part of a Christian radio network, called Warren a "mindless shill" for Syria and said he "owes an apology to Israel, to the American people and to the victims of Syrian-sponsored terror."

It is highly ironic that these Christians would get up in arms over a visit by one of their own to the very country that has taken in the vast majority of Iraqi Christians who have fled their homeland as a result of the chaos following Mr. Bush's War. Perhaps they just don't see Iraqi Catholics and Orthodox, many of whom still speak the same language that Our Lord spoke, as Christians.

The Crisis of Agriculture and Culture

Echoing Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky, Mr. Mike Callicrate of Kansas shares some words of warning and wisdom in Food killing you, says US Catholic rancher. Here are some excerpts:

"Your food is killing you, and your food system is killing your community and nation."

[....]

"Our food is killing us, literally," Mr Callicrate said in an interview after his address. "The industrial model of food production that has been forced upon us has given us food that is very unhealthy."

It's not just the food - loaded with chemicals and hormones, and produced in unhealthy ways - with which Mr Callicrate has problems.

"The model of the industry - the industrial model, the business model - is very, very abusive," he told The Leaven, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City. "It concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a very few, which has always been a serious threat to human societies throughout time, and is now unprecedented.

"That great concentration ... hurts our society. And another thing is that farmers are being driven from the land," he said.

"We are eliminating agriculture in this country in favour of imported food, so it threatens the survival of our country from an economic and social perspective."

The Koreas and the UN

Here is a first: Seoul to vote for UN resolution on human rights violations in North Korea. The article speculates that with South Korean Ban Ki-moon taking the helm at the United Nations, Seoul might be attempting to avoid embarrassment by changing its course. Let us remember that the "human rights" lawyer who acts as the South Korean president has not in five years found the situation in the north worthy of comment.

That said, it is unhelpful to focus the discussion on something as abstract and questionable as "human rights" rather than on something concrete like "tyranny." On this point, Mr. Bush was correct in his famous "outpost of tyranny" address. Rights are meaningless devoid of context. For example, Koreans are quite happy without the "right to bear arms" that Americans and Swiss enjoy and demand. It is up to Koreans themselves to determine what rights they may or may not have, and it is ultimately up to them to determine the fate of the northern part of their country.

An American(ist) Shrine

Today is the memorial of Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne. Less than a year ago, I chanced upon The Shrine of St. Philippine Duchesne on a drive through Missouri. Devotional feelings surged when I approached this imposing, if austere, 19th Century church:


Alas, it was next to impossible to maintain any religious sentiments after opening the door and walking into the "renovated" shrine, complete with AmChurch felt banners and modernistic stained-glass windows:


All I could muster were a few perfunctory prayers. Is that the purpose of modernistic church architecture, to deaden our religious feelings? I know I'm not the only one to smell brimstone. It is helpful to remember that today's saint's patronage includes "opposition of Church authorities" and also to remember the opposition, often from church authorities, to those of us resisting the desacralization of Sancta Mater Ecclesia as exemplified by the interior of that shrine. Let us invoke her intercession:


Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne
Pray For Us

Văn Miếu

Hanoi's Temple of Literature:


From the article, its history:

According to the book the Complete History of the Great Viet: "In the autumn of the year Canh Tuất, the second year of Thần Vũ (1070), in the 8th lunar month, during the reign of King Lý Thánh Tông, the Temple of Literature was built. The statues of Confucius, his four best disciples (Nhan Uyên, Tăng Sâm, Tử Tư and Mạnh Tử) and Chu Công were carved and 72 other statues of Confucian scholars were painted. Ceremonies were dedicated to them in each of the four seasons. The Crown Princess studied here".

The New Vietnam

Mr. Andrew Lam, in Journalists Miss the Real Vietnam at APEC Summit, paints a disturbing picture of a country close to my heart:

Materialism is the new ideology. These days everyone needs a cell phone, a motorcycle, and if they can afford it, a flat screen tv and a laptop. Many will do practically anything to own new toys.

When Vietnam emerged from the Cold War the forces of globalization quickly swept it up. The result is a country whose Confucian practices – modesty, frugality, respect - have been thrown out the window, especially in urban areas.

He goes on to describe the sexual revolution, with its 1.5 million abortions per annum, its AIDS crisis, and its trafficked girls and women. Mr. Lam also notes that "[w]hile foreign journalists love to cover the old Agent Orange story, the real environment disaster for the country is... the depletion of forests, pushing the ecosystem of Vietnam to the brink of extinction."

The Order of Diplomatic Service Merit Gwanghwa Medal

This comes as a bit of a surprise: Hyde Awarded South Korea's Highest Civilian Honor. It is surprising, and welcome, because Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) has been, to my knowledge, the only American politician to publicly address the surge of anti-Americanism in South Korea that began in 2002.

Here are two documents worth reading:

Letter to President Roh Moo Hyun

Remarks of The Honorable Henry J. Hyde Following Wreath Laying at Statue of General Douglas MacArthur, Incheon, Republic of Korea, August 11, 2006

Confucian Democracy

A true king uses virtue and benevolence, a hegemon uses force under the pretext of benevolence... Such a one has no need of the rule of a major state.

The above quote from Mencius opens New Book Opens Room for Discussion, Mr. Seo Dong-shin's review of Beyond Liberal Democracy, by Daniel A. Bell.

Prof. Bell suggests that "there are morally legitimate alternatives to Western-style liberal democracy in the East Asian region" and offers a vision of "a modern Confucian democracy: a legislature of two branches with a democratically elected lower house and a 'Confucian' upper house composed of representatives selected on the basis of competitive examinations."

The Canadian's proposal would be an improvement on South Korea's unicameral legislature, which often resembles a mosh-pit. We Americans should likewise wise up and Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.

On a similar theme is this must-read 1995 article by Mr. Jim Kalb: Confucius Today.

Re-Ruralization and the De-Industrialization of Agriculture

Author Richard Heinberg's lecture to the The E. F. Schumacher Society on what America needs to prevent famine in the coming post-petroleum era: Fifty Million Farmers.

Climate Change

I can't imagine the Left screaming "Theocracy!" over this: Evangelicals Press Bush, Congress on Environment. Of course, the most important thing is to uproot consumerism and the disposible culture it has produced.

The Intangible Costs of Mr. Bush's War

Mr. Stephen Lendman gives a thorough and balanced account of what the war has cost us in The Price of Imperial Arrogance. Living in South Korea, I am especially aware of these intangible costs:

-- the cost of our reduced capability to respond to national security threats in other parts of the world.

-- the cost of high and rising anti-American sentiment in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere - most everywhere.

-- the price paid for the sham notion that this country defends and supports human rights and democracy.

-- the cost of the sharp decline of America's "soft power" from the Bush administration having tarnished the country's credentials, reducing Washington's ability to influence or prevail on crucial issues like trade, global warming, the international criminal justice system and much more.

The CIA and LSD

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) tells the "tale of the uniformed guinea pigs who participated in America's Cold War mind control program" in The Manchurian Veterans.

The Exoneration of Korean Class B and C War Criminals

Koreanologist Michael Breen writes about "the outrageous reversal this week by a Korean government panel of the rulings by allied tribunals after World War II on Korean war criminals" in Truth Commission Should Be Truthful.

The author decribes an encounter with a friend of his father who had been a POW in WWII and described Koreans as "horrible people" after withnessing the sadism of camp guards of that nationality. The author goes on to say of the recently exonerated:

They were not tried as soldiers or POW camp guards who had done their jobs. They were tried for over-zealousness, for decisions and actions over and above the call of duty. They were the thugs, the brutes, the monsters, the most horrible of the "horrible people" my father’s friend knew. By what authority does the Truth Commission have to remove their individual responsibility with its class act defense of nationality? Such skewed morality led to the crimes against the lowest class _ "prisoners" _ in the first place. People who committed crimes against humanity are not innocent by virtue of being Korean any more than Japanese who brutalized Koreans are innocent by virtue of being Japanese.

While punishment is meted out even to the grandchildren of Korean collaborators who victimized fellow Koreans, Korean collaborators who committed crimes against humanity on the POWs of the very Allied countries that liberated their nation are exonerated.

This decision by the Leftist-Nationalist Roh Administration's "Truth Commission" is, if anything, as offensive as any visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. The next time some Korean politican blathers about Japanese historical amnesia forgive me if I puke.

[link via The Marmot's Hole]

Justice Served

Given the length of the sentence for this plea-bargainer, it won't come as a surprise if at least one death sentence is handed out on the other three conspirators: Soldier gets 90 years in Iraq rape case.

Death in Asia

China officially admits executed prisoners are the basis of organ trafficking and Four Deadly Epidemics Plague North Korea

Wendell Berry's Stoicism

Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky is profiled by Christianity Today's Ragan Sutterfield in Imagining a Different Way to Live. The article seems a good introduction to the man and his thought.

I found this bit near the end interesting:

Ralph Wood, Baylor University professor of theology and literature, also believes Christians should be cautious. Wood finds in Berry a "considerable kinship … with the Christian insistence that holy things will always come to us in communal and mediated form." Yet he finds Berry's vision of nature Stoic rather than Christian—"everything fulfills its function by its physis, the principle of growth intrinsic to it." According to Wood, Berry misses the "otherness of God" and settles for a deeply natural theology in which God's transcendence is absent.

But Woodiwiss says that Berry is not a theologian. He says we should ask, "What does he have to offer us in terms of imaginative possibilities that Christians can really buy into?"

It is certain that one could choose much worse schools than Stoicism. Mr. Woodiwiss is correct, and we should extend the question he asks far and wide.

TAC on NK

Washington should make clear its readiness to support whatever policy China, Japan, and South Korea come up with regarding the belligerent dictatorship in the North─including, if need be, living with it. That's not a perfect answer, but there is none better.

─ The American Conservative, November 6, 2006

The Return of the Habit

A sign of regeneration in the American Church: Today's Nun Has A Veil--And A Blog. Here's a delightful photo from the article:

Here in Korea, sisters never gave up the habit. Nuns here maintain their very powerful visual presence, and witness to the the Faith.

Animal Welfare, not Rights

An œcumenical Call to put animal welfare on the Christian agenda:

We are keen to put animals back onto the agenda of the Church with the aim of raising awareness of animal welfare issues within all the churches in respect of the suffering and abuse of animals in God's Kingdom. These are the published aims of both Christian societies working within the Anglican and Catholic Churches.

We hope that this will be the first of many such services in support of animals to be held across our region. We hope and pray that this will lead to a greater understanding of the suffering of animals.

Any mention of this issue is not complete without a reference to Matthew Scully, former Bush speechwriter and author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy.

Korean Snow

[image from National - Nov. 16, 2006]

Unwanted in Germany

How profoundly sad: Doctor ordered to pay for unwanted baby

"Compassionate Conservatism" is Tautology

Behavioral Economist Professor Arthur C. Brooks, "raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts[,]... has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income": Philanthropy Expert: Conservatives Are More Generous. In a nutshell:

The book's basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has spent time in both camps, as I have. I would also add that conservatives tend to be more open-minded, more tolerant of diversity, more non-comformist, more interesting, funnier, happier, and friendlier than are those who call themselves liberals.

Here are some of Prof. Brook's previous studies:

One noted that people who drink alcohol moderately are more successful and charitable than those who don't (like him). Another observed that liberals are having fewer babies than conservatives, which will reduce liberals' impact on politics over time because children generally mimic their parents.

Sino-Jamaican Confucianism, Catholicism, and Reggae

Ms. Hilary Robertson-Hickling, in Chiney Bump and Nubian Knots:

We here in Jamaica have a lot to learn from the Chinese who came here as indentured labourers and continue to come in new waves today. We observe their tightly-knit families, their frugality and their Confucian ethic. So whether they are in China, or San Francisco, that philosophy of hard work, the involvement of their children in the family enterprise and the lack of concern for what others think of what they eat and what they wear is evident.

[....]

Father Ho Lung, who was honoured by the University of the West Indies at last week's graduation, has spoken of the freedom which Jamaica gave him to be creative, and I think that the marriage of Jamaica and China has borne many interesting fruits.

Here are articles on the Catholic priest she mentions and the order he founded: Fr. Ho Lung: Ghetto Priest and MISSIONARIES OF THE POOR.

And what would the world of music have been without legendary Chinese-Jamaican producer Leslie Kong, whose surname suggests he was a descendant of Confucius, and the other Chinese reggae pioneers?

Confucian vs. Consumerist Attitudes Toward Debt and Savings

China can't credit the virtues of plastic by Mr. Kent Ewing begins thusly:

"If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone." So said Benjamin Franklin more than 200 years ago, but Americans have forgotten his wisdom.

"He who will not economize will have to agonize." So said Confucius 23 centuries before Franklin, but the Chinese remember.

Mr. Ewing notes that among Chinese, "only 2% make a habit of rolling over their bills" while there is a "56% frequent roll-over rate in the United States."

I got my first credit card as university student. I was a bit of a Luddite Leftist, and the idea of credit cards bugged me, but I was offered some free bottles of what we in WNY call "pop" for applying. Inexplicably, my baby boomer parents had taught me that it was good to rack up some debt, as paying it off would improve something called my "credit rating." I followed their advice and was soon $3000 in the hole. I payed it off eventually, but thought nothing of the -$15,000 I had accumulated in student loans. My parents advised me to pay the minumum each month, so I planned on being debt-free in a decade.

My Confucian Korean wife set me straight within the first year of our marriage. She hadn't been too keen on taking on a debt-ridden husband, and within eighteen months, my student loans were paid off and we were, and have remained, debt-free. We plan to buy our first house ─ we now live rent-free ─ cash down.

Mr. Ewing's article also notes that while "China's national savings rate, as estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), stands at an extraordinary 50%[,]... Americans spend more than they earn." My wife, God bless her, manages to save beyond even what the average Chinese does.

Confucius Sí, Dewey No

Mr. Yoshito Hayashi's article in its entirity:

Missing component in education

With Japanese education reform under debate, I would like to contribute my personal experience as a Japanese teacher of English at a foreign-language college in Japan for 18 years. Several years before I retired, our college admitted many Chinese students, and I had opportunities to teach English to both Chinese and Japanese young people.

So I think I caught a glimpse of Chinese education, especially as to politeness to elders. Every time I rearranged desks and chairs in the classroom, Chinese students invariably rushed to give me a helping hand as if to say, "How can I possibly look on when a teacher is doing this kind of manual labor."

This was not necessarily the case with Japanese students. Chinese students showed us teachers more respect than their Japanese counterparts. I think this illustrates one difference in education between Japan and China. The former changed its coat overnight after the war and adopted American-style democratic education, throwing away traditional Confucian education. The latter has retained it. I'm not sure which is better, but I can say that in no case and in no way has respect for elders been detrimental to society.

On what grounds has it been decided that American-style education is better than traditional Confucian education? Science can progress, as a matter of course; humanity, however, is immutable, transcending the passage of time. The bane of Japanese education today is apparent: the ignorance of our traditional values as expressed in Confucianism.

Korean students are like the Chinese students Mr. Hayashi describes. They erase the chalkboard for you. They carry any equipment you have. They are a pleasure to teach. I will never forget the deep bow I received from a bespectled Korean student named "Jenny" on my first day of teaching at the university level in January, 1996 in Buffalo, NY.

Bipartisanship for American Survival

Congressmen Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD) and Tom Udall (D-NM) have issued a press release: Congressional peak oil caucus responds to CERA study.

-184° F

"Whole Body Cryotherapy" is the latest alternative health fad, as Mr. Barney Calman reports in I was frozen to improve my health. It had its origin in Japan in 1978. At £300 for ten sessions, it ain't cheap.

[link via LewRockwell.com]

Dr. Frankenhwang's Latest Volte-face

Disgraced South Korean cloner and national embarassment Hwang Woo-Suk changes his story yet again: Scientist: I didn't cultivate stem cells.

When he was still a national hero, he said that as a high school student he would allow only four hours of sleep to interrupt his study, and when he did sleep, it was with his head on his desk using an open book as a pillow. Perhaps this inhuman regimen, if we can believe it, is what left him ethically challenged.

UPDATE: Here is yet another twist in this strange, strange trial: S.Korea scientist Hwang pressed on mammoth cloning.

Cell Phones and the Death of Civilization

Professor Clyde Wilson begins The Way We Are Now XI thusly:

Speaking of cell phones. I know I can fairly be called an aging curmudgeon, if not indeed a crustacean. But am I the only one who thinks there is something unhealthy and unnatural about half the population walking around and driving around with a phone stuck in their ear?

Back in the days when there were still some remnants of civilization left in North America I was taught to always be aware of my surroundings when in public. The world was not an entirely innocent place. 1) You just might have to avoid or deal with danger or offense to yourself or those in your care. Equally important, 2) you were obligated not carelessly to make unseemly intrusion upon or give unwanted offense to your fellow man—who, until proved otherwise, was worthy of your respect and good will. “Do unto others . . . ”

The cell phone talkers who bump into me without noticing, who nonchalantly block my exit from the airplane, who will swerve right into my car if I let them, insouciantly unaware of right of way and the well-being of others, have no manners, of course. But it is even worse than that, though lack of manners is equal to lack of civilization. They are existing in an artificial world. One day the real world might just rise up and bite them. I find it difficult to imagine such a population hard at work or sacrificing to defend their country. Or that they are descended from those who founded free government and prosperity in a wilderness.

Prof. Wilson's criticisms, and then some, could be leveled at South Korean society as well.

I own a cell phone, sadly, but only my wife and parents know the number. Even so, I usually keep it turned off. I refuse to give the number to anyone else, especially my employer. I bought the contraption when my wife was pregnant with our now twenty-month-old son.

With all the latest built-in obsolescence money can by, the thing is already malfunctioning after less than two years of almost non-use. All hail South Korean IT technology, envy of the world! Say what you will about American industry, we, along with the Europeans, still make the world's medical equipment, airplanes, satellites, and other things which are by definition built to last.

On my last "name day" my wife bought me a rosary cell phone attachment. I use this 13th Century communication technology far more than the 21st Century gadget to which it is attached.

Infanticide

When Doctors Want to Kill Handicapped Newborns is an interview with Neonatologist Carlo Bellieni about the request from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecology to euthanise disabled babies. Here is the good doctor's answer to the final question:

Q: Some British doctors have said that no one must be scandalized because a late abortion is similar to active euthanasia. What is your opinion in this respect?

Bellieni: I was not surprised by this news. I understand the horror but I do not understand the astonishment.

Whoever has studied anatomy and biology, whoever is an expert in human physiology, knows very well that there is no substantial difference between the fetus and the newborn, other than small modifications in the blood circle.

Therefore, one cannot understand why it's horrible to kill a newborn but not to kill a fetus. Unless one believes that the filling of the lungs with air has a "magic" effect, capable of transforming the DNA or the individual's conscience!

The photo of the small dead fetus within the murdered mother, published a few months ago by an Italian newspaper, made an impression not because a corpse could be seen -- sadly we have also seen recently on TV and in newspapers many dead children in war and no one has protested -- but because the reality was shown: that a fetus is nothing other than a child that has yet to enjoy the exterior air.

And, every mother knows that this is true, as any one knows whose job it is to look after the very small fetuses that have come forth prematurely from the maternal womb, called "premature children." Surgeons who operate on fetuses that are still in the womb, also know this.

I repeat: The tragedy is that it surprises us, whereas a cultural endeavor must be initiated, made up of research and serious writing, and not only of "reactions" to the latest "transgression," to the latest horror.

The real bioethical effort of today is not to affirm a vague feeling of mercy toward one's neighbor -- television programs are also full of tears -- but to look for the evidence, the reality; to affirm that an embryo is an embryo and not just a cell, that a fetus of a few hundred grams feels pain, that the DNA shows that every one's life begins at conception.

In short, it is like demonstrating that a flower is a flower and not a vase!

The Archdruid on Civil Society

In Rebuilding Civil Society, Archdruid John Michael Greer suggests that its destruction was brought about by "the petroleum-fueled prosperity of 20th century America [which] fostered a culture of entitlement in which most citizens believed that they deserved to get whatever they wanted without having to pay the full price for it."

He described scoiety before we surrendered our reliance on family and community to the State:

It’s often claimed by modern writers that these institutions of civil society thrived as they did because people didn’t have anything else to do with their time, but this says more about our own fantasies about the past than it does about historical reality. Most people a century ago worked longer hours than their descendants do today, and the popular media of their time was less technologically complex but no less widely distributed or eagerly sought than ours. The difference lay, rather, in prevailing attitudes. Alexis de Tocqueville famously described early 19th century America as a land of associations, where the needs of society were met, not by government programs or aristocratic largesse, but by voluntary organizations of common people. The civil society of pre-imperial America thrived because people recognized that the social and personal benefits they wanted could only be bought with the coin of their own time and money.

And after:

What happened, in effect, was that most Americans made the consumer economy their model for political participation. A consumer’s role in the economic process is limited to choosing among a selection of lavishly advertised and colorfully marketed products provided by industry. In the same way, most Americans embraced a political system in which all they had to do was choose among a selection of lavishly advertised and colorfully marketed candidates provided by the major parties. It’s not accidental that when people today complain about the low caliber of candidates offered for their vote, their tone and language aren’t noticeably different from those they use when they complain about the low quality of consumer products offered for their purchase. Absent in both cases, too, is any recognition that there might be an alternative to choosing among products somebody else made for them.

The rest of the article is well worth a read and is very encouraging, considering the author's audience is made up of folks with inclinations toward "alternative spirituality" and Leftist politics.

Miracles and Guitars

Our colleague Mr. Stephan Hand, of Traditional Catholic Reflections & Reports and TCRNews Musings, informs us that his son Jeremy Hand is now playing the guitar! A miracle, considering what Mr. Hand wrote just eight months ago:

Today my family and I were given heartbreaking news, that my son's cerebral cortex, which controls cognition / thinking, has been damaged beyond human hope due to having been deprived of oxygen "for apparently a long time" sometime between Sat 12:30 AM and 1 PM (an 11.5 hr window). This means, we were told, the "thinking part" of his brain is "gone forever," barring a miracle, and that within 48 hours we should make a decision to take him off artificial life support "and give him peace". We asked for a second opinion and received the same answer, breaking our hearts altogether.


[....]

Please pray that God's will is done, and for my family. The agony of watching a beloved son in what is being called an irreversible coma, is almost too much to bear. So we cling to the cross...

Deo gratia!

Speaking of guitars, Mr. Hand also links to two videos from my personal guitar hero: Phil Ochs - I aint marching anymore and Phil Ochs - Crucifixion.

The Future Christian Face of Asia

In a tutoring program I conduct, I just met a delightful student from China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. He had studied at Yanbian University of Science & Technology, a crypto-Christian school founded by Korean Protestants.

He asked if I was a Christian. I answered that I was a Catholic Christian. He told me that he was a "beginner," just having been baptized a week before in a small Protestant church in the neighborhood. We talked at length about language, food, customs, underpopuation of his region, and his goal to study in the United States. [The humanities might be a lost cause, but American universities dominate in the sciences, and 95% of the students in this tutoring program aim to study there.]

His ultimate goal is to go back to Yanbian and teach the next generation. If young men like this are the future leaders of this region, there will be little to fear from the upcoming Asian or Chinese Century.

Confucius and Han Fei

An excerpt from a report, entitled Law discussion closes Asia at Noon lecture for semester, on a recent lecture given at my alma mater by a Dr. Arabella Lyon, professor of English and self-described "pseudo-sinologist":

"In Confucian thinking, there is a clear discomfort with persuasion and argumentation," she said. "There is instead an emphasis on remonstration within a relationship of trust."

The Confucian method of remonstration is more respectful of others than the usage of persuasion, Lyon said.

"Within The Analects, there is...an open-ended possibility of change in keeping with the harmony of human relationships," she said.

Han Fei, living about 250 years after Confucius, was a legalist who wanted to protect the public good by creating a stable state with a common law, Lyon said.

"Rather than founding society in human relationship or noble status," she said, "(Han Fei) wants decisions made uniformly and fairly by the law."

According to Lyon, Han Fei was interested in speech acts, or actions directly brought about by words.

"Implicit in his writing are three ways of thinking about speech acts: legal or conventional speech acts, non-actions as generative acts, and rhetorical speech acts," Lyon said.

Han Fei's writings, Lyon said, could serve capable rulers with centralized power, but would be less useful for court ministers limited by lack of authority.

An Englishman in Korea

Travel writer Peter Lynch of Reading, England writes of his recent trip to Korea in Modern and spirited, yet spiritual, South Korea is many things. Here is how he begins:

What a novel experience to be in a country where you can leave your camera on a wall in a busy city center and no one grabs it, or accidentally leave your laptop overnight in a bar and its still there next day.

Or safely wander around unknown bars at 2:30 a.m., without the wit to learn the local language, but local people feel bad if they don't understand you!

Is this Shangri-La? Or the good old days granddad used to talk about? Nope, it's South Korea last week. Oh, I forgot about the lady parking attendants who bow and assist you with your parking needs instead of giving you a ticket.

His conclusion: "Maybe this deep sense of spirituality goes some way toward explaining why my camera and laptop were inexplicably safe when foolishly abandoned."

Confucian Ancestral Rite in Korea

[image from 박정희대통령 숭모제-잔을 올립니다]

The above image shows conservative Grand National Party representative Park Geun-hye, perhaps the next president of the Republic of Korea, performing the Confucian ancestral rite for her parents, ex-president Park Chung Hee and first lady Yuk Yeong-su, both of whom died at the hands of assassins, on the occasion of what would have been her father's 89th birthday. She if offering a cup of rice wine to her parents' souls.

Matteo Ricci, S.J., this blog's namesake, insisted in the 16th Century that the rite was not a form a ancestor worship. [My reading of Confucius tells me the same.] The Vatican disagreed, until the 20th Century. It is now allowed for Catholics. Indeed, Miss Park is a baptized, but not practicing, Catholic.

Icons from Sinai in LA

The LA Times* has an article on a recent exhibit in a local museum: Icons, earthly and ethereal. Sad as it is to see holy objects in a museum, and unhelpful as the article is, it does offer these two fine examples of St. Theodosia and St. John the Apostle, from the 13th and 12th Centuries respectively:

*Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

Saint Julius Nyerere

Not yet, but the late Tanzanian president, known as Mwalimu, or teacher ─ it's not often I get to use any of my two semesters of Kiswahili ─ has been placed on the road to canonization in the Catholic Church: Called to greatness. He was a daily communicant. Here's more: Beatification inquiry for Tanzania's Nyerere.

My English

Here's a little quiz that's short, simple, and accurate (at least it was for this Buffalonian):

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

[link via Dappled Things]

Pensée du jour

I find a heaven in the midst of saucepans and brooms.

─ Saint Stanislaus Kostka

World's Largest Congregation Gets New Pastor

The estimated 800,000 congregants ─ that's right, eight hundred thousand ─ of Seoul's Yoido Full Gospel Church welcome the second lead pastor in their 48-year history: Full Gospel Names New Pastor.

A Band of Girl Defectors

[image from Tallae Music Band Shows N. Korea’s Charming Aspects]

The Church of England and Preemies

Here is some clarification on a story linked to here two days ago: Church of England Does Not Support Infant Euthanasia. I still find the C of E statement troubling, for reasons that are spelled out in my comments to this post by "The Young Fogey": Does the Church of England support euthanasia?!

The Official Language of the Roman Rite

The Nigerian prelate chose the Rome of the West, a city dear to my heart, for his latest address: Cardinal Arinze encourages more Latin liturgies. It was in that fine city's St. Francis de Sales Oratory, administered by the Instititue of Christ the King, that I first heard the Traditional Latin Mass.

The Pope on North Korea

His Holiness meets His Excellency:

In this photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI welcomes the Japanese Ambassador to the Holy See Kagefumi Ueno as he is presented with his credentials, at the Vatican, Monday, Nov. 13, 2006. The Vatican is encouraging negotiations to obtain the 'denuclearization' of the Korean peninsula, Pope Benedict XVI said Monday. In a speech to the new Japanese ambassador to the Vatican, Benedict referred to the crisis over North Korea's nuclear program. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano,ho)

[photo and text from S.Korea balks at some sanctions on North]

Here are two more articles covering the meeting: Pope: Intensify rather than stop humanitarian aid for North Korea and Pope Benedict calls for a nuke free North Korea.

Le Christ jaune

Added to the bottom of my sidebar is one of my favorite paintings: Paul Gauguin, The Yellow Christ. I had the chance to view the painting, part of the permanent collection of my hometown's Albright-Knox Art Gallery, many times during my formative years, and Post Impressionism remains one of my favorite schools.

Mel's Latest Flick

In 1991, I traveled la ruta maya. I was in search of America, as in las Américas, but instead, or in addition, found Catholicism, although it took me eleven more years to realize it. I await Apocalypto (2006) even more eagerly than the director's previous effort.

Seeking Hispanic and Native American input might not win Mr. Gibson any respect from proponents of Nativism, but proponents of Traditionalist Conservatism, like myself, see it as natural and unproblematic: Selling 'Apocalypto'*. Following are some reactions.

Edward James Olmos: "I was totally caught off guard... It's arguably the best movie I've seen in years. I was blown away."

Don Martinez: "Just looking at brief parts of the film, I will tell you, it gave me goosebumps."

Ernie Gomez: "It's pretty graphic in terms of the killings... but you know that is part of our culture."

Dennis Rice: "First of all, this is a movie made with an all-indigenous cast, which is pretty unique in Hollywood... The movie is about the Mayan culture and anyone who has a connection to that, particularly Mexican Americans, hopefully it will be well-received by them."

*Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

My Kind of Mobocracy

When it's directed at Communist Chinese cut-throat Capitalism to avenge the death of a child, I'm all for it: Boy’s Death at China Hospital Spurs Riot Over Care and Fees*. "Some 2,000 people mobbed and ransacked a hospital.... after a 3-year-old boy died in the hospital, where he had been taken for emergency treatment after ingesting pesticides.... [E]ssential medical care had been denied the boy until his grandfather, who was taking care of him, could pay."

*Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

Two Decades After* Iran-Contra

"The Sandinistas are back, in a way Ronald Reagan would love," writes Álvaro Vargas Llosa for the NY Times** in ¡Viva el Capitalismo! The author, whose pedigreed surname is nothing to sniff at, suggests that Sr. Ortega and the "other Latin American socialists belong to the 'vegetarian left' rather than the 'carnivorous left'" and that "[a]s they fall over themselves pandering to the church, the business community and conservative voters, there’s little time left over for creating a New Man."

*President Reagan addressed the nation about the scandal twenty years ago today. Makes you feel old, doesn't it?

**Use BugMeNot.com to bypass registration.

Cardinal Arinze’s "Harangue"

The Nigerian prelate's exhortation to the Parisian Institut Supérieur de Liturgie is excerpted by by Sandro Magister in The Mass of Saint Pius V: The French Bishops Raise a Shout with the Pope:

The sacred liturgy is not something that has been invented...

Many of the abuses in the liturgical domain have arisen, not from ill will, but from ignorance...

We must distance ourselves from that coldness, that horizontalism that places man at the center of the liturgical action, and also from the openly egocentric showmanship that our Sunday assemblies are sometimes obliged to witness...

Unfortunately, many homilies seem like addresses marked by considerations of sociology, psychology, or – even worse – politics. Sometimes they are delivered by members of the lay faithful, who are not even authorized to deliver the homily, which is reserved for those who have received ordination...

For a priest to try to share with the lay faithful the role that he exercises in the liturgy by virtue of his being a priest, and which is strictly reserved to him, is evidence of false humility and of an inadmissible conception of democracy or fraternity...

If one weakens the role of the priest or fails to appreciate it, a local Catholic community can sink dangerously into the idea that it is possible to envision a community without a priest...

Yet Another Reason to Pull American Forces from South Korea

If the fact that our forces did not protect any vital American interest were not enough, "The Participatory Government" of President Roh Moo-hyun has given Americans another reason to rethink their $3 billion per annum commitment to the world's 11th largest economy: Seoul Opts Out of N.Korea Sanctions.

Our withdrawal need not be precipitated by a "you're either for us or agaisnt us" mentality, but rather from the fact if the country closest to the threat feels no need confront North Korean, then neither should we on its behalf. I suspect that the South Koreans would opt for a different course of action if they knew that Uncle Sam would not be there for them if things got rough, instead of trying to play both sides as they are now.

It's high time we found out just what South Korea, as well as Japan and China, would do with their region if left to their own devices. I can't help but think they might not let us leave, seeing that these three countries own most of the debt we have amassed in the last five years.

Scratch a Liberal, Find a Fascist

This blogger is usually not concerned with the pronouncements of pop "culture" figures, but these comments are part of a larger and dangerous trend one sees emerging in the West: Ban religion, says Elton John. Why? To make Mr. John and his kind feel better about themselves. Decades from now it will be remembered: First they came for Åke Green.

Just Following Orders

"A South Korean government panel yesterday cleared 83 nationals conscripted by the Japanese military during the World War II of war crimes," note Mr. Robert Koehler in Korean war criminals cleared. The Class B and Class C war criminals were “victims of Japanese imperialism” who “were saddled by the Japanese with responsibility for the abuse of Allied POWs.” Korean POW camp guards were infamous for their sadism. One commenter notes that this represents a new low for "the hypocrisy and victimization complex" of the South Korean government.

O Obama!

The Crunchy Con notes that "the fact that people are going ga-ga over him probably tells us more about us than it does about" Blessed Barack (D-Illinois).

The Fall of the West

Mr. Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Con, in a post entitled Empire Falls, links to an essay in which parallels are found between the contemporary West and the late Roman Empire, which "[a]ccording to Gibbon... fell through a combination of external overreach, internal corruption, religious transformation and barbarian invasion."

Mr. Dreher reminds us that "we have a duty to fall back into the kinds of communities and institutions that will help us withstand the dark ages to come with our faith and our morals intact." Indeed, we must do as the Irish monks did 1500 years ago.

Neoliberalism and Globalization

Here are two analyses from the ZENIT News Agency on the above.

"Neo-classical or neo-liberal economics upon which much free-market business practice is based differs rather radically from Catholic social thought," begins Professor Rodney Moss, in Christian Judgment on Neo-liberalism.

Capuchin Father Gary Devery addresses similar themes in Hedonistic Culture and the Global Market.

Omnium Horarum Homo

"A Man for all Seasons" was the label famously applied by Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536 to the subject of the book I began yesterday:

Seventy pages into the book, I find it hard to put down. It is much more than a biography, as its skilled author vividly brings Late Medieval England alive, dispelling modernist myths like the lack of childhood and of cleanliness. It is a profoundly sad read, though, not because we know of the glorious martyrdom that Saint Thomas More will face, but because with each page we draw closer to the end of Catholicke Englande.

Below are some assorted snippets.

Page 7 described the saint's baptism, and the organic society of the better age in which he lived:

[W]e will recognize the officers of the courts and of the Royal court, and then further still the circles representing the clerks and officials of the Catholic Church, all of them bound together in a complicated network of affiliations and connections, evincing a range of duties, favours, services and obligations which make up their 'affinity'.

From page 9, on true nobility:

Yet for Londoners such as More, true virtue sprang not from high birth but from honesty and piety.

On prescription, from page 46:

It is impossible to over-emphasise the authority which custom and tradition exercised upon More; he was, in that sense (as in others), one of the last great exemplars of the medieval imagination.

On his adversary, from page 67:

Martin Luther defied his father's wish that he should become a lawyer, and it could be said that Luther's quarrel with paternal authority was eventually heard all over Europe.

A Concise Guide to Dames

Single fellows might find the tips in this article helpful: How to Win a Girl: Sorting Myth From Reality. The article focuses on dating, which may not be as noble as courting, but is at least not barbaric like "hooking-up."

Eat Seasonally

Samia Mounts, nutritionist and assistant principal of the Seoul American Middle School, gives us some information about one of my favorire foods, including a mouth-watering recipe: Acorn squash for well-being during the winter.

A Paleoconservative Critique of the Pro-Life Movement

The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel brings to our attention an article by Dr. Dan Phillips entitled Understanding the Paleoconservative Perspective on Life.

The good doctor begins by noting that "the pro-life movement has the noblest intentions of any movement in politics" as "[t]hey are not in it for their own sake but for the sake of a voiceless other." But not only is the movement "employing an ineffective political strategy," notes Dr. Phillips, it is also wrong in "adopting the liberal rhetoric of rights and the individual."

The pro-life movement should rather focus on "the natural bonds and obligations of family" and the intuitive fact that "it is particularly wrong to kill your own child." This type of prescription is what made abortion not only repugnant but unthinkable for the better part of two millenia.

Society's Weakest

A case of medically induced dwarfism based on parental fear and inconvenience from New York: Should severely disabled kids be kept small?

As in 1930 when it became the first major Christian body to reject the sinfulness of contraception, the Church of England is again a pioneer: Some sick babies must be allowed to die, says Church.

UPDATE: Here is some clarification: Church of England Does Not Support Infant Euthanasia. I still find the C of E statement troubling, for reasons that are spelled out in my comments to this post by "The Young Fogey": Does the Church of England support euthanasia?!

Veterans' Day

Heather Stanfield: "Korean War Memorial"

St. Martin Renouncing the Sword

Simone Martini's 1321 fresco of that title seems fitting with tomorrow being both the Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours and Armistice Day:

Korea's Confucian Catholicism

From Priests need to exercise authority through service, seminar speakers say:

Father John Choi Ki-sub observed that Koreans now equate Confucianism with feudal authority, social stratification and inequality, and the Korean Church was established in 1784 by Confucian scholars. The priest of Seoul archdiocese pointed out, however, that originally in Confucianism authority is based on deok (virtue or moral excellence) that people follow from their hearts.

Korean War Era Iconostasis

Greek Soldiers Rebuilt Greek Orthodox Church in South Korea
[from The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library]

Death to Traffic Lights!

LewRockwell.com links to a report from Britain that one of Europe's leading road engineers is calling for them to be dismanted: Is this the end of the road for traffic lights? Hans Monderman in his own words:

We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt...

It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk.

We only want traffic lights where they are useful and I haven't found anywhere where they are useful yet.

Noting that they cause more accidents, stress, and pollution, the same conservative daily published this call last month: Rip them out.

Saigon, Vietnam offers evidence that traffic lights are indeed an unnecessary evil. The countless motorbikes flow through the streets like blood cells in an artery. When they come to an intersection, they slow down and pass through effortlessly. It seemed an impossible task for pedestrian to cross a street, since traffic never stopped. But soon I learned that one simply walks into the street, looks straight ahead, and trusts one's fellow human beings.

Ulsan, South Korea nine years ago seemed to offer quite contrary evidence. The city's "rotaries" (traffic circles or roundabouts) were infamous. The congestion and chaos were almost indescribable. Vehicles would end up hopelessly facing in any and all directions. This problem was solved by traffic lights.

Of course, the key factor is that Saigonese rely on motorbikes and xyclos, Ulsanites on automobiles. The moral of the story is that if we are to get rid of our traffic lights, we must cut down on the number of cars. If we are to be truly free, we must reduce consumption.

A Wake-up Call for the South Korea Left

That is what the North Korean nuclear test seems to have been, according to this lengthy article from South Korea's main Leftist organ: [Feature] Progressivism stops at the DMZ.

[South Korean Leftists have until very recently been almost silent about the deplorable situation in North Korea. Let us not be too harsh on them, as none of us have DMZ's running through our countries; don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his gomushin.]

Not surprisingly, it is green-minded folks who have been among the most consistent:

In this light, the movements of environmental groups that have been faithful to the principals of the anti-nuclear movement even after the nuclear test deserve our attention. Previously, environmental groups did not present a clear position in regards to the North’s request for nuclear power plants in exchange for the dismantling of their nuclear program. They felt suffocated amid the clash between their desire for peace on the Korean peninsula and their anti-nuclear principles. Yet the North Korean nuclear test served as an opportunity for them to reaffirm their anti-nuclear position. On October 11, the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement [sic] adopted a resolution stating that the North Korean nuclear test was a "provocative military action, threatening peace in Northeast Asia and on the Korean peninsula." One official of the group said that "sanctions toward North Korea are finely interwoven in the issue, and we worry that criticism of the North could be rebroadcast widely by the conservative media, but as anti-nuclear principals are a fundamental plank in our group’s platform, we have chosen to raise our voices in criticism of the nuclear test."

North Korean Shopkeepers Protest

The news is both encouraging and profoundly inspiring: Mass Protest Incident in Hoiryeong. They were protesting an unfair levy ─ remember 1775 ─ and a government decision to consolidate a small market into a larger one. These shopkeepers, their familes, and their neighbors simply want to be able buy and sell in their own community.

In other words, these brave people are clamoring for Distributivism, which says that "the means of production should... neither be hoarded by an oligarchy, nor controlled by the government" as well as for The Principle of Subsidiarity, which holds that "nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization."

Waste as a Moral Issue

British journalist John Humphreys looks back to his forebears and writes of the "greenest people" he ever knew and life before we became consumers in Wasting away.

[For those inclined to doubt that waste and consumerism are indeed moral issues, please remember that Gluttony "is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires."]

The three-page article demands to be read in its entirity, but I'll just excerpt this bit on eating locally:

What I’d really like to do is buy food produced locally, but it’s not easy. A friend who grows carrots (somewhat more successfully than I managed) would love to sell them to the supermarkets in his area but the supermarket managers are not allowed to accept them. The carrots must first go to a cold store, then a packing house, then the central distribution depot and only then to the supermarket. So that’s four journeys and hundreds of miles to deliver carrots that are not only rapidly losing their freshness but end up making a hefty contribution to global warming. How sensible is that? I don’t buy fruit and veg from supermarkets.

And while we’re on the subject, perhaps someone can explain to me why we imported 17,200 tonnes of chocolate-covered wafers last year and exported 17,600 tonnes.

[link via Energy Bulletin]

America and Islam

Unanimously ratified by the Senate and signed into law by President John Adams:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

─ Article 11 of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796, quoted in The Crusade That Wasn't--In 1796, America vowed friendship with Islam.

Sha-alu Shalom Yerushalayim

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: Jews, Muslims join to fight gay parade; Vatican urges Israel to ban Jerusalem gay parade; Israel billionaire tries to "buy" gay parade.

Modern Agribusiness

"Industrial Agriculture is Taking Us Down the Wrong Road," says Wisconsin dairy farmer James Goodman. Here is how he begins his essay:

Self reliance is not a bad thing. While Emerson's thoughts on "Self Reliance" were controversial enough to get him banned from Harvard University, it seems that most Americans have willingly ceded their own self reliance and therefore their right of choice into the hands of corporate America. They have given up choice in media, health care and even food.

[....]

When nearly 75% of the U.S. market spinach crop is grown in one valley in California and repeated bacterial contaminations ensue, we need to question our reliance on the corporate food system.

Just as mom and pop eateries give a better quality meal than fast food chains, so family farms give us better produce than agribusinesses.

[link via The New Beginning]

An Ex-Neocon in Seoul

Some excerpts from Fukuyama Gives U.S. Foreign Policy Talk at SNU follow.

On proliferation:

Furthermore, both North Korea and Iran calculated that if they could actually get a bomb, they would be safer from this kind of American intervention than they will be without a nuclear weapon. So, in fact, rather that deterring the proliferation, American foreign policy sped it up.

On the Sunshine Policy:

South Korea has been extremely complacent in thinking it can somehow guide North Korea towards a soft landing with regards to economic reform and unification.

Wolverines!

[Y]ou don't have to have a working knowledge of Iraqi history to have anticipated how Iraqis would respond to their country being occupied by a foreign army — you simply needed to have watched "Red Dawn" back in the 80s.

─ Tony Karon, in reminding us that It Wasn’t Only Rumsfeld’s War

[link via Antiwar.com]

Pop!

That is what the Korean bubble seems likely to do: Anger Rising As Housing Prices Soar. When a 100 sq. m. apartment increases $40K in "value" in the space of a week, something's not quite right. Would Georgism work for Korea, as it seems to do in Hong Kong and Taiwan?

The Day After

My students last night saw it the same way: World Sees Dems' Win as a Bush Rejection. Today, it feels a little bit easier being an American overseas.

The Democratic Victory

Patrick J. Buchanan suggests that it means, thank God, a Return of economic nationalism.