A Chesterton Advent Calendar, Part III

Explanation here.

17 December

Damn it, I sometimes think the only English thing left in England is cherry brandy. —The Quick One

18 December

When, in "[A] Christmas Carol," Scrooge refers to the surplus population, the Spirit tells him, very justly, not to speak till he knows what the surplus is and where it is. The implication is severe but sound. When a group of superciliously benevolent economists look down into the abyss for the surplus population, assuredly there is only one answer that should be given to them; and that is to say, "If there is a surplus, you are a surplus." And if anyone were ever cut off, they would be. —Charles Dickens

19 December

The writer writes these words before Christmas; some readers will read them after Christmas: an awful thought. For I always dimly and dumbly think of life after Christmas as of life after death. I hasten to add that I believe that both will occur. I also add that, as becomes any healthy man, I fear death, but do not fear Christmas—no, not even if it result in death. But I do unconsciously count them both as the end of something and all days beyond them as comparatively vague and visionary. Whenever the year is ending I feel that the world is ending, and I desire to make a good end. I think the best end ever made by mortal man—better than Nelson shot through his stars or Douglas hurling the heart of Bruce—was the death of Faber, who confessed and received all the sacraments of his Church, and on being told he had an hour to live, said: "Then I can hear the last number of 'Pickwick,'" and died hearing it. —Illustrated London News, 11 January, 1913

"Campion, the Seditious Jesuit"

"In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all our ancient bishops and kings, all that was once the glory of England -- the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter."

Thus spake St. Edmund Campion upon being sentenced to death as a traitor.

He was hanged, drawn, and quartered on this day in 1581.

Apropos of this, I can't help but call to mind a quip by Oscar Wilde (whose death — and, far more importantly, deathbed conversion to Catholicism — 110 years ago) was commemorated yesterday.

The Catholic Church, Wilde remarked, is "for saints and sinners alone — for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do."

St. Edmund Campion, ora pro nobis.

The Thing about Dark Humor

...is that for it to work, it has to be, you know, humorous. When it isn't, it's merely dark.

Like this (**Warning: graphic violence...don't watch this if kids are around**):



The 10:10 campaign has since pulled the video from its website

But what sort of groupthink went into the making of it in the first place such that no one realized the whole idea was absolutely barking mad?

Abuse of Power?

Note that this guy was not some Fred Phelps devotee going around saying "God hates fags" or something similarly doltish.

Rather, he was publicly proclaiming his belief that same-sex acts are sinful.

And for that, he was arrested.

Overpopulation Underpopulation Is the Problem

Population Research Institute has just released the second installment in its "Overpopulation Is a Myth" series— a slickly produced video that explains in easy-to-understand terms why underpopulation is the real looming demographic disaster:



I first saw this video last week, and about an hour later I received an e-mail from a journalist in the UK asking for a brief comment for a story he was writing about a young British woman who, based on a belief that having children would have damaging effects on the quality of life of people already living, had decided to be sterilized.

I commented on how how tragic it is that someone would decide to not have children based on a mistaken belief that the world is somehow overpopulated—and that, quite the contrary, the real danger in our world is underpopulation. I further pointed out that this is the looming demographic and economic threat that no one wants to talk about. If there are not enough babies being born today, who will support tomorrow's pensioners?

It's a shame that such frantic handwringing about overpopulation still persists in our day. How much more stuck in the Stuck-in-the-Sixties can you get? It's as if Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb had just hit bookstore shelves (and thus had not yet been proven completely wrong), and the writers of Star Trek were still hard at work producing birth control propaganda.

[Cross-posted at Pro-Life Action League and Generations for Life]

A Chesterton Advent Calendar, Part III

Explanation here.

17 December

Damn it, I sometimes think the only English thing left in England is cherry brandy. —The Quick One

"Campion, the Seditious Jesuit"

Today is the feast of one of my favorite saints, the great English Jesuit Edmund Campion, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered on this day in 1581 because he audaciously refused to renounce the Catholic faith—an act of defiance that, in Elizabethan England, not infrequently proved hazardous to one's life.

Apropos of this, I can't help but call to mind a quip by Oscar Wilde (whose death — and, far more importantly, deathbed conversion to Catholicism — 109 years ago) was commemorated yesterday.

The Catholic Church, Wilde remarked, is "for saints and sinners alone — for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do."

This Is *So* Not Surprising

The Bullwinkle Approach continues to yield extraordinarily predictable results.

The Internet: Providing Credulous People Ever More Opportunities to Waste Their Time

In the first scientific experiment to be conducted via the social messaging service, experts will investigate "remote viewing" - the psychic ability to identify distant locations.

Members of the public will be asked to "tweet" their impressions of a randomly chosen spot in the UK visited by one of the researchers.

Then they will vote for which of five photographs on a website shows where the visitor was standing.

The trial will be repeated with visually different locations four times.

HT: Mark Shea

Remember This the Next Time You See a New York Times Puff Piece on Abortion Providers

THREE women were sexually abused during abortions by an anaesthetist, a jury has heard.

[HT: JivinJ]

In Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-Two

On this side of the Atlantic, the year 1692 saw the beginning of the Salem witch trials.

On the other side of the Atlantic, on this day of that same year, the Massacre of Glencoe occurred.



Remember that the next time you hear someone talk about the so-called Glorious Revolution.

[HT: Sean Dailey at The Blue Boar]

A Chesterton Advent Calendar, Part II

Explanation in my last post.

17 December

Damn it, I sometimes think the only English thing left in England is cherry brandy. —The Quick One

Whither Goeth England?

Words associated with Christianity and British history taken out of children's dictionary

Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.

Would That I Had His Courage

"In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all our ancient bishops and kings, all that was once the glory of England -- the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter."

Thus spake St. Edmund Campion upon being sentenced to death as a traitor.

He was hanged, drawn, and quartered on this day in 1581.

St. Edmund Campion, ora pro nobis!

Guns Don't Kill People; Cartoon Guns on T-Shirts Kill People

Or so some security guard at Heathrow apparently thinks.

[HT: Mark Shea]

Show Me a Culture That Despises Virginitiy and I'll Show You a Culture That Despises Children *

A British pollster asks 3,500 people what they think are the worst blights on modern society, and the "dominant opinion" is that religion per se is a "social evil".

Meanwhile, the British uber-retailer Tesco is marketing padded bras to seven year olds.

To co-opt a line from an old Kinks song: There's no England now.

* HT for the meme: Mark Shea

It's Nice to Know We're on the Right Side in the Clash of Civilizations

From the New York Post earlier this week, we are treated to a story the likes of which we often hear about this time of year - one about uber-rich kids spending obscene amounts of Daddy's money on prom.

Out of Austria, we see this headline: "Activists Want Chimp Declared a Person".

Meanwhile, in the UK, the misanthropes at Optimum Population Trust are wringing their hands about the number of babies being born -- because, you know, babies cause global warming. The money quote:

The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.

And this, according to Mark Shea, is currently "the most popular commercial in Europe":

Related

Square Zero: Babies Are Eating the Planet!

Posts from my other blog, Generations for Life:

• The Myth That Just Won't Die



• 300 Million and Counting



• Talking about Overpopulation



• Hate Mail and a Really Disgusting Condom Ad