Smoky Mountains Sunrise

Monday, July 14, 2014

When a Young Pat Buchanan Met Nixon: "You're Not as Conservative as Bill Buckley, Are You?"


By Patrick J. Buchanan


Book Excerpt from The Greatest Comeback  via Rare.Us

A conservative since I can remember, I had been a backer of Barry Goldwater from the day Richard Nixon conceded in 1960. Arriving at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat from Columbia Journalism School in June 1962, I had maneuvered myself onto the editorial page by August. The Globe-Democrat had backed Goldwater for the nomination, but when he went down to defeat, I wrote a 2,000-word essay: “What Is the Future for Conservatism?”

Friday, July 11, 2014

Europe is Dying, Says France's Leading Demographer, and Britain Would Be Better Off with the Anglosphere


By Daniel Hannan

One of this blog's constant themes is that Britain is shackled to a corpse: the EU is the only trade bloc on the planet that is not growing economically.

It's important to understand that this decline is not a temporary blip. Although the euro crisis has accelerated Europe's slide, the underlying problem is demographic. Put simply, fewer and fewer youngsters are supporting more and more retirees. Europe's working age population peaked in 2012 at 308 million, and will fall to 265 million by 2060. The ratio of pensioners to workers will, according to The Economist, rise from 28 per cent to 58 per cent – and even these statistics assume the arrival of a million immigrants every year.

However, as Emmanuel Todd explains (in English) in the clip above, these figures gloss over the variations within the EU. Britain and Scandinavia enjoy better demographic prospects than do most Continental countries. Todd says that he sympathises with the British dilemma: after all, there will soon be more people in the Anglosphere than in the EU. He doesn't exactly use the phrase "enchaînés à un cadavre", but you get his point.

Emmanuel Todd, incidentally, has a pretty good claim to being France's leading anthropologist. Among other things, he has developed the idea that Anglosphere exceptionalism – our peculiar emphasis on liberty and property, our elevation of the individual over the collective – has its roots in different family structures. The family, he avers, is understood in much narrower terms in English-speaking societies (plus Normandy, Scandinavia and the Netherlands). To us, it means parents, children and siblings. Elsewhere, families are considered more than the sum of their individuals, and have a measure of collective personality in law as well as in custom.

In their seminal book America 3.0, James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus draw heavily on Todd's researches to explain why free-market capitalism developed in places where families are nuclear and limited. But that's another story. For now, take a couple of minutes to listen to Todd's eminently reasonable analysis. And then try to tell me that we should stay in the EU.


Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Lord Patten Named President of New Vatican Media Team

Lord Patten organised the UK Papal Visit of 2010

Seven months after hiring a consulting firm to study the Vatican’s communications structures, the Vatican has set up an 11-member committee to suggest ways to increase collaboration and cut costs and has appointed British Lord Patten of Barnes as its president.

Chris Patten, former chairman of the BBC Trust and former chancellor of the University of Oxford, will serve as president of the commission. The 70-year-old British public servant is a Catholic and was co-ordinator of Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the United Kingdom in 2010.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy and a member of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals, announced the formation of the committee at a news conference on July 9.

Read more at the Catholic Herald >>


Monday, July 7, 2014

God and Dick Scaife

By Paul G. Kengor

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The American Spectator.

I was saddened to wake up the morning of July 4 and learn that Richard Mellon Scaife, Pittsburgh billionaire, conservative philanthropist extraordinaire, and spearhead of Hillary Clinton’s ominous “vast right-wing conspiracy,” died at age 82. How appropriate that this patriot bid goodbye on July 4. It’s fitting, too, that his death comes within a year of the deaths of his two principal lieutenants at his foundation, Dan McMichael and Dick Larry. Together, these three men established numerous conservative programs, institutions, and even individuals. They made a huge impact.

I got to know Dick Scaife pretty well. About three or four years ago, he read my book Dupes. It’s a lengthy account of how the communist movement has long hoodwinked and exploited American leftists—many of whom Dick Scaife had battled and loathed. Scaife loved it. It was the last full book that he read. I learned that he was recommending the book to his friends. Soon enough, I learned he wanted to meet with me.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Ordinariate Turns Out in Force for Walsingham Pilgrimage

From the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham



More than four hundred people - the vast majority of them members of the Ordinariate - joined the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham's fourth annual pilgrimage to Walsingham on Saturday 28 June. The pilgrims also included a group from the Melkite Catholic Church - one of the eastern churches which is in full communion with the Holy See. The pilgrimage was led by the Ordinary, Monsignor Keith Newton. Mgr John Broadhurst, Assistant to the Ordinary, preached.

Beijing is Persecuting the Church Because It Fears China Will One Day be Christian

One day the superpower will be Christian, and Communism just a distant memory

Worshippers at a Catholic church in Taiyuan, China (CNS)

We are very lucky, here in the United Kingdom: it’s been years since any cleric has been sent to jail for the crime of being a cleric. The Anglicans had some ritual martyrs in the nineteenth century who fell foul of the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, but these must have been the last men to have been imprisoned for a specifically religious offence in British history. The last Catholic martyr to be executed in England was St Oliver Plunket who suffered in 1681, during the Titus Oates disturbances, though anti-Catholic legislation remained on the statute books until the twentieth century, and only really disappeared with the Catholic Relief Act of 1926.

Read more at Catholic Herald >>



Friday, July 4, 2014

Happy Independence Day!

Today's national celebration is a poignant reminder of the need to restore America's Constitution and the freedoms it was written to protect.  May we rededicate ourselves to restoring all that is good in an America under the sovereignty of "We the People".