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What the Greatest Catholic Thinker Says about the Latest Catholic Pope

By Selwyn Duke

With the election of Pope Francis, there are the usual complaints about how the Catholic Church has got to get with the times. The Huffington Post ran the headline, “Pope Francis Against [sic] Gay Marriage, Gay Adoption,” which is much like thinking it newsworthy to write, “New Pope Believes in the Divinity of Jesus.” Mother Jones laments the “missed opportunity to bring the papacy closer to where the people are.” And Forbes’ John Baldoni  dishes the baloney, writing of “a Catholic Church that is resistant to change but one that must certainly adapt (and rather radically) if it is going to continue to attract well-intentioned men and women who adhere to its faith but also are willing to devote themselves to its perpetuation” (hat tip: Drew Belsky). Yet this misses the point that it is creatures who must adapt to their ecosystem, and the Church is the moral ecosystem. Our modernistic culture is simply a pretender to that throne.

Beppe Grillo, Just the Wacko We Don’t Know

By Selwyn Duke

When I see the hand-wringing over the rise of Italian politician Beppe Grillo, I can’t help but think of a man complaining about cigarette smoke while his own derriere is on fire. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Grillo is a wacko, for sure. I can’t even take issue with the claim that he’s a wicked wacko. But I also know this: one thing he isn’t is a wacko without company.

As to the hand-wringing, I’m specifically referring to the recent articles co-authored by writer James Lewis. Now, let me preface my remarks by saying that, based on what I know of Mr. Lewis, I’ve no reason to have anything but the utmost respect for him. Yet his last title, “Dangerous Times: Is Italy teetering?” evokes a certain immediate response from me:

Why wouldn’t it be?

All of the West is teetering.

We Might be Muslim Today if….

By Selwyn Duke

The year is 632 A.D., and Muslim hordes have set their sights on the Mideast and North Africa — the old Christian world. And the Caliphate, as the Islamic realm is called, will not be denied. Syria and Iraq fall in 636. Palestine is next in 638. And Byzantine Egypt and North Africa, not even Arab lands, are conquered by 642 and 709, respectively. Then, just two years later, the Muslims cross the Strait of Gibraltar and enter Iberia (now Spain and Portugal). The invasion of Europe has begun.

And the new continent seems no impediment to Islam. After vanquishing much of Visigothic Iberia by 718, the Muslims cross the Pyrenees Mountains into Gaul (now France) and move northward. Now it is 732, and they are approaching Tours, a mere 126 miles from Paris. The Western world — what’s left of Christendom — could very well be on its way to extinction.

Hugo Chavez: Sic Semper Tyrannis

By Selwyn Duke

At a former workplace many years ago, I learned that a certain fellow was cheating the business out of rental fees. So I confronted him, but he showed no contrition. Instead he replied, “I deserve it [the extra proceeds].” In case you haven’t guessed, he was a devout leftist.

This story is brought to mind by the revelation that the late Hugo Chavez had amassed $2 billion during his tenure as president of Venezuela. Yes, that’s one of those nine-zeros figures. Now, unfortunately for Mr. Heat and Sulfur, the Big Theft technique doesn’t quite work like the Big Lie technique: if you steal a sum big enough, people don’t start to believe you earned it. But why would this man — a champion of the poor, critic of capitalism, and beneficent bestower of charity — steal so much for himself?

Of course, given that ol’ Hugo should rightfully have ended up at the looped at of a rope, perhaps we can’t blame him for having wanted to create an exile-facilitating safety net. As to his justification, however, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts it was akin to that of my former colleague. His “feeling” likely was, “I do so much for the poor, I’ve fed so many people, and I’ve given away so much oil that I deserve it.”

Read the rest here.

Raping the Language

By Selwyn Duke

Although the creation of the film Idiocracy evidences how we’re already halfway to an idiocracy — the work reflects decadent modern culture — it’s a good comedic warning about where we’re headed. For those too unsophisticated to imbibe such Hollywood fare, know that the movie presents a dystopian future America dumbed-down to a preposterous degree. One thing portrayed in the film is the degradation of language, with, for instance, a doctor character starting an interrogative with “why come” instead of “how come.” And it is a perfect example of art imitating life.

Many today will rape the English language, taking pleasure in mangling and tangling it, confusing corruption with creativity. What follows are examples of such, starting with the relatively innocuous and concluding with the more dangerous.

While journalists are supposed to be word men (those were the days, huh?), they often lead the charge toward idiocracy. It’s not just the news piece I read a few years back penned in pidgin English — obviously by someone to whom English isn’t his first language — but those who try to be “cute.” For example, Golf Channel’s Tim Rosaforte recently mentioned something that had been revealed and began his sentence with, “The big reveal is....” But unless he was about to apprise the audience of a large window jamb’s existence, “reveal” is a verb, not a noun. The word you’re looking for, Tim, old boy, is “revelation.” Likewise, let’s dispense with the new and budding practice of writing things such as “The tells are there,” which seems to have originated in the poker world. For unless we're talking about a raised mound at a Middle Eastern archeological site, “tell” is a verb, not a noun. If one wants to “tell” someone about a thing serving as a clue, the relevant term is “indication.”

Read the rest here.

The Great Gun Debate: Duke Strikes Back

By Selwyn Duke

It’s easy to fall into the trap that ensnares liberals, that of thinking we can legislate ourselves to utopia. This occurs to me when pondering Mr. Brett Joshpe’s response to my last debate piece. In his response he very graciously states that my article contains many reasonable points, yet he also claims it has a deficiency: “[I]t never actually proposes measures — whether specific new regulations or repeal of specific existing ones — that would improve the current system,” he writes.

Now, I did address remedial measures in an earlier piece, ones that would reduce the chances of school shootings without any Second Amendment infringement. I’d also suggest having armed guards — or trained, armed teachers — on school premises; if we do this to safeguard jewelry stores, pawn shops, and armored cars, it’s the least we can do for our children. In the same vein, we must eliminate the suicidal and quite moronic “Gun Free Zone” signs at schools, which are nothing but an invitation to criminals. Yet all this misses the point. For Mr. Joshpe is correct: I didn’t propose specific remedial measures in my debate piece. There is, however, an even larger point.

I didn’t have to.

Unmasking the Grim Reaper’s Foot Soldiers

By Selwyn Duke

One day back in high school, a very interesting English teacher asked our class a moral question: if you could press a button and get a million dollars, but a little old man — with no family, friends, or ties of any kind — in the backwoods of China would die, would you push that button?

Approximately a third of the class raised their hands in the affirmative.

This story always comes to mind when I ponder the abortion question. The old line of the pro-abortion lobby was that they wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare,” implying it’s some sort of necessary evil. Their reasoning always was, “Well, we don’t know when human life begins, so whether or not to end a pregnancy should be the woman’s choice.” Of course, this position was never morally or philosophically sound. After all, if what lies within the womb is just an “unviable tissue mass,” why worry about abortion being “rare”? Oh, yes, the pro-aborts aren’t sure about the intrauterine being’s status. All right, then what they’re essentially saying is that they’ll err on the side of recklessness. It may be murder, you know — so we’ll just do it a little bit.