Yesterday I, and over 100,000 others, popped down to our nation’s capital for the annual March for Life held on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Despite the cold and passing rain, it was an event much enjoyed. I had never been to the March before, nor have I ever been to any sort of demonstration or rally of any kind for any cause. I recall, however, sitting in Canmore one day talking with the young Miss Clare Dempsey who worried over what the grandchildren of our generation might say when they look back remembering abortion and ask “What did you do to fight it?” Though it was comparitively little, waking up at 5:00 in the morning and sitting through a five-hour bus ride was a small price to pay in order to take part in the annual recollection of the devastating moment for the lives of the unborn and their mothers and fathers and family, and for our entire nation. (more…)

A recent Gilbert magazine featured G.K. himself interpolated into the popular Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams. The text is quite small so I shall reproduce it below: (more…)

As the reader may well be aware, the last remaining six of Scotland’s historic Army regiments, one of which is so old that it is knicknamed ‘Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard’, are to be merged into a new ‘super-regiment’ of six battallions, to be called the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Furthermore, the Royals Scots and the Kings Own Scottish Borderers are to be merged into a single battallion. In attempt to calm the fury which this announcement unleashed, government ministers promised that the six regiments would retain their historic identities and legacies as they transform into battallions of the new super-regiment by retaining their cap badges.

However, government ministers lie. A few weeks ago the new cap badge of the Royal Regiment of Scotland was unveiled, and all batallions will be required to wear it. It is simple and aesthetically pleasing, but none of these qualities really matter. It will be remembered not for its beauty but for the outrageous betrayal of tradition and common sense which will, I dare say, tar the Royal Regiment of Scotland for a very long time. There are, of course, last ditch efforts by politicians of all stripes and sizes to save the regiments, an important part of both Scotland’s history and present, but there is not much hope. What Downing Street says goes, irrespective of centuries of tradition, common sense, a public outcry, and the will of the people. Strange as it may seem, after these changes Canada will have more Scottish regiments than Scotland.

Meanwhile, Ian Hamilton ruefully mourns the lack of pomp at the recent opening of the Scottish parliament in the Sunday Times.

September 14 is the twenty-third anniversary of the assasination of the Catholic general and politician Bachir Gemayel by Syrian agents, only nine days before he was to be inaugurated as President of Lebanon. Gemayel was the son of Pierre Gemayel, the founder of the Lebanese Kataeb (Phalange) which Bachir eventually led himself, and was also instrumental in unifying the Christian militias of the country into the Lebanese Forces, which joined with the conventional Lebanese Armed Forces in their 100-day attempt to expel the Syrians from Lebanon in 1978.

A massive bomb exploded in the Kataeb headquarters on September 14, 1982, killing the President-elect and twenty-four other souls. The assasination only further escalated the violence of the Civil War, a conflict which was taken to regretable extremes by all the parties invovled. (more…)

An interesting essay entitled ‘Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State‘ written by one Hans-Hermann Hoppe of the classical liberal Ludwig von Mises Institute.

“Live 8 Hype Recalls Triumph of Live Aid” sounds forth the headline of a recent Associated Press article. Read the article, if you dare. It is exhibitive of the decline (or is it death?) of modern journalism. It is completely lacking in any inquisitive or challenging spirit and one would not be terribly foolish to mistake it for a press release of Live 8’s public relations department.

Now, arguably Live Aid may have been a triumph in the sense of it being a highly-sucessful rock concert, but as a humanitarian endeavour it was far from anything approaching a ‘triumph’. Much of the money raised, after all, merely lined the pockets of Ethiopia’s evil dictator Mengistu who, it should be recalled, pretty much started the famine in the first place. (A starving populace is much easier to control). Yet the only negative thing the article has to say is mentioning the few fumblings of the hastily-organised 1985 shindigs. The writer – ‘journalist’ if flattery is your wont – merely adopts a commonly-accepted myth and accepts it unreservedly as fact. Journalism? Balderdash!

I. Conservatism is an anti-ideological ideology. It is as uncomfortable being labelled an ideology, though it is, as secular humanism is uncomfortable being labelled a religion, though it is. Many have tried to precisely extrapolate the tenets of conservatism, most noticeably Russell Kirk in the last century, but I believe this to be a somewhat fruitless enterprise. To me, conservatism seems to be the prudent attempt to balance continuity with change, erring on the cautious side of the wisdom of our elders and ancestors rather than the fashions of our day. After all, tradition, according to Chesterton, is the democracy of the dead.

Conservatism – when I say conservatism I mean of course the real pragmatic traditional Christian social ideal, my conservatism, not neo- or corporate or libertarian or whatnot – gives voices to all the epochs of civilization and progresses along a merry path of continuity. Continuity is a keystone of conservatism. Falkland said “when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” I’d be inclined to agree. The modern way of thought – ‘liberalism’, progressivism, socialism, what have you – insists on a break with the past: a chasm between what has always been and what they would have us be. It is revolution, instead of evolution. As science has shown us, evolution is how God has made Man what he is; revolution is how Satan perverts us from what we should be. Where there has been a breach between ourselves and the past, we must fill it. Not retreat to the other side of the gap, but fill it. Restore, inspire, and create; don’t retreat.

II. In a conservative world, the Church inspires John to give to Jack. This is virtuous. In a modernist world, the State takes from John, gives half to bureaucrats, and some to Jack. This is ridiculous.

III. America, by some curious fate, stands today as the paragon of conservatism. Many find this out of step with the founding of the United States, and I believe them mistaken in so finding. When we look at the British political tradition, we can see that in many ways the American Revolution, imprudent as it may have been, fits in perfectly with English political evolution: from Runnymede, to William and Mary, then Lexington and Concord, and finally Philadelphia 1789.

Ah, but perhaps I have fallen into the danger of constructing meta-narratives. The British political tradition also has its contradictions. The freedom of the Church was considered so utterly central and important that it was the first tenet of the Magna Carta, but was then so blatantly trampelled upon by Henry VIII and his succesors (excepting Mary I). Would the great Westminster system of government – which still today governs Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and of course India, the largest democracy the world has ever seen – have been possible had not the rupture between England and the rest of Christendom occurred? I believe so, others may disagree; arguments can be made either way. At the end of the day, the what-if game is not one to which we should devote much time.

The editorial statement on Terri Schiavo released by the New Pantagruel effectively sums up the right attitude towards this most important case.

Here in St Andrews, there is an elderly lady named Mrs. Stevens who goes to Mass every day. During conversations after Mass one day with younger students, she said “It’s your generation that are going to have to be heroic.” Her generation did their part, and we are ready to take up that mantle, but in a sense it is the generation in between, the generation now in power, that has failed.

Where is the willingness to stand up to the courts and their ridiculous decrees? Is it not obvious that the State cannot justly starve to death a woman who, though brain-damaged, still laughs, smiles, and cries? Has Governor Bush really done everything he can to save her life? I suspect not (and those who have been lukewarm in her defense will pay the price).

Governor Bush: Damn the courts and damn the lawyers, send in the Florida National Guard and save that woman’s life!

The Telegraph today reports that James Mawdsley, the human rights activist thrice chucked into Burmese prisons for his pro-democracy campaigns, will be standing in the next general election as the Conservative candidate for Hyndburn.

Mawdlsey, a good Catholic and a friend of Jon Burke and Peter Cox, was only just married last month, spending his honeymoon in Rome where he and his wife Elizabeth were blessed by the Holy Father.

Best of luck to him, and I very much hope he wins. This moribnd parliament needs more ardent defenders of the right to life and civil liberties.

Rocco Buttiglione has announced plans to found a movement to campaign for Christian values in the European public sphere. For my friends on the home side of the pond who haven’t been keeping up with the Buttiglione controversy, here’s the gist: (more…)

Those fretting about our recent divisive election in the United States should turn for a moment to the Republic of Transnistria. President Igor Nikolayevich Smirnov has so united the people of his unrecognised independent republic that he was elected with 103.6% of the vote in the northern region. Andrewcusack.com: your leading source for Transnistrian news.

Transnistria on Wikipedia.

Gerald Warner in this week’s Scotland on Sunday: priceless.

Some choice bits:

And in response to Mrs. Kerry’s “shove it”:

The whole thing has a feel of – in the parlance of our generation – “Ohhhh snap! He went there”. Monoculus floreat!

Read the whole thing, if you dare.

A long morning. A few people filtered into the flat from 1:00am. Kat, Jocie, C., Dave Watt, Rob and Maria. After having some celebratory champagne with future American immigrant D. P. at around 7:00, I finally got to bed around 8:00am and slept until 11:30am. Half past midday now and I need some breakfast/lunch.

Electoral college of beverages consumed: A California’s worth of tea, a New Hampshire of whiskey, and probably about a New York of beer. And an Alaska of bubbly.

Condi versus Hillary in ’08, anyone? God forbid.

The Guardian has an interesting article on Tom Wolfe, the habitual man in the cream suit, and his thoughts on the election, the boring uniformity of the liberal elite, and other assorted topics. Wolfe is an old-school liberal, bit of a dandy, and another Bush supporter. Touches upon the theme of “if Bush wins, I’m leaving” as well.

An excerpt:

Read the entire article.

An article in last week’s issue of the New Yorker displays that periodical’s current malaise. David Denby discusses Thomas Aikenhead, a student at the University of Edinburgh who was hung for publicly rejecting essential Christian dogmas in 1697. Denby goes through a few of Aikenhead’s proclamations and then comes up with this startling, nay, just plain idiotic, remark:

While I would be the first to condemn some of the Englightenment ideas underlying the American Revolution, Mr. Denby could not possibly make this statement unless he has little or no knowledge of the Declaration of Independence. The whole goshdarned point of the Declaration is that moral laws are not the work of governments but instead they are “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

One wonders what Denby would make if he ever decided to give a gander to the founding document of the regime under which he lives and writes, and found the assertion that God endows Mankind with “inherent and inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” One might argue Denby’s ignorance is due to a general proclivity to relegate knowledge of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution to middle school.

Today in my ‘Monarchy, Church, and State’ seminar, I remarked that a few U.S. states had their own established churches well into the 1800’s. Dr. Bradley made the quite innocent mistake of remarking that this was interesting since it’s in contrast to the Constitution which “has such a clear seperation between Church and State.”

Now, Dr. Bradley is easily forgiven for not having much knowledge of the Constitution of a country not his own. But Americans ought to know that Seperation of Church and State is nowhere mentioned in the United States Constitution. One can argue about whether or not there ought to be seperation between the two – there are cogent arguments for both sides – but the fact remains that the concept is completely and wholly absent from our Constitution.

What the First Amendment does do, among other things, is prevent the Federal Government (and only the Federal Government) from making laws which 1) establish a religion or 2) prevent the free exercise of religion. We must remember that establishment is a technical term. It means an arrangement similar to that of the Church of England and Church of Scotland here in the United Kingdom. And not being allowed to make laws preventing the free excersise of religion is pretty clear enough.

Elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution, it says that those powers neither granted to the Federal Government nor denied to the States by the Constitution are reserved respectively to the States. Thus, individual states are free to have established churches or religions, as Massachusetts and Connecticut did after the ratification of the Constitution. And if, tommorrow, the state legislature of Vermont with the approval of the Governor decided to establish the Congregational Church as the official religion of Vermont, the Supreme Court of the United States couldn’t legally do a damned thing about.

Of course, though the Supreme Court of the U.S. couldn’t legally do a damned thing about it, it still could do something illegally. Namely, it could hear an appeal and decide that Vermont’s establishment of Congregationalism was unconstitutional. Of course, as anyone who can read the U.S. Constituion ought to be able to deduce, they would be completely incorrect in stating this. Thus their ruling would be completely null and void, and Vermont could carry on its merry little way. In reality, however, Vermont would probably heed the illegitimate ruling.

Therein lies the problem. A court makes rulings which the Constitution states it has no right to make, and the parties involved obey such rulings. Hopefully sometime within the next decade, this conflict will come to the fore, and some state (probably Southern) will attempt to set things right. I’m not saying any state should establish a church (arguably, the establishment of religion is inappropriate in the United States). But nonetheless, I don’t see why we have a Constitution if we don’t plan on running the government according to it. Of course, all the Democratic Party and a third of the GOP would disagree with me.

Yet another reason, perhaps one of the best reasons, to vote for President Bush in Novemeber is that with Bush there’s at least a chance that constitutionalist judges will be appointed to the Supreme Court. Sadly, Senator Kerry and the Democratic Party are so enamored with abortion which – right or wrong – also has no defense in the U.S. Constitution, that there is zero chance of Kerry appointing constitutionalist judges. Abortion law is most certainly reserved to the States, despite the Court of the 1970’s inventing a “Right to Privacy” which it believed encompassed the “right” to commit prenatal infanticide. No one who supports the current Constitution of the United States can really support Senator Kerry.

Didn’t they all say this at the time of the last election?

¡No Pasaran! has a post on Chile’s would-be dictator, Salvador Allende (seen above, helmeted, in the last photo taken of him alive). Many left-wing urban intellectuals both in the Americas and Europe fawn over Allende as the heroic democratically-elected savior of the proletariat who was cruelly overthrown by the reactionary military just moments before a Socialist paradise would have been achieved. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Belgian politicians are seeking to introduce euthanasia for children. It brought to mind this passage from St. Paul:

This is a battle in a war that probably won’t end any time soon.

“Chuck Schumer has a problem with people who have deeply held religious views, so he’s repeatedly blocked traditional Catholics from serving as federal judges.”

Just watched this television advert for Dr. O’Grady, and it hits the spot!

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