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God Driving the Devil Out? NY Times Writer Predicts a Religious Revival

By Selwyn Duke

“This is the end of marriage, capitalism and God. Finally!” a 2016 Salon title jubilantly proclaimed. Religion has been in decline in the West, too. But “This Christmas Seems Different” (yes, it’s still Christmastime), says a writer — at The New York Times, no less. That writer, man of faith Ross Douthat, senses a religious revival, though one of an unusual flavor.

Douthat opens his recent article discussing a March trip his family took to Italy, during which they visited a community of Benedictine monks. Interestingly and apropos here, he mentions what I did in my last piece: How Italy, whose Roman Empire once spread Christianity throughout much of Europe, now doesn’t even abide by the biblical injunction “Be fruitful and multiply.” That its cratering fertility rate means Italians are disappearing could seem a sort of cosmic justice, too. After all, statistics show that the world’s religious people are its fecund ones; secularists extinguish their bloodlines via childlessness. So is the message, deviate from God and you disappear?

A religious resurgence being nigh certainly is counterintuitive for many Westerners. For they may take it as a given that modernity and its “science” obviate and refute religion. (“Follow the science” to faithlessness?) Moreover, while secularists aren’t big on having their own kids, they’re rather adept at converting other people’s to secularism. Yet there’s more to the story.

Population Collapse: Is (Western) Human Extinction Near?

By Selwyn Duke

Dating back to the Middle Ages, the town of Semestene in Sardinia, Italy, has quite a history — one that could come to an end within a decade. With a population that has dwindled rapidly in recent years, 54 of its 126 residents are aged 65 or over. The town has just four children under 10 years old remaining. And its last birth, a 2023 report held, was eight years earlier.

Welcome to Ghost Town Italy.

Sound like exaggeration? Well, consider that the U.S. has approximately 3,800 ghost towns, with New Mexico having about 400 alone. Italy is about the size of that state.

And it has at least 6,000 ghost towns.

“At least,” that is, because that estimate was made in 2015 — and informed that another 15,000 localities were “on the brink.”

One could in fact wonder if this is the emptiest a European nation’s towns have been since the medieval black plague wiped out one-quarter to one-half of the continent’s population. The problem now is another plague, too.

The plague of low fertility.

Why worry about this? I mean, with pasta and pizza and the like having spread throughout the world, we needn’t worry about losing our favorite buonissima(!) Italian fare. What’s more, there are in excess of eight billion people on the planet. So shouldn’t we cheer this bambini bust? Perhaps not.

Merry Christmas!

I wish you and yours a very merry and blessed Christmas.

God bless,

Selwyn Duke

Gov. Abbott Erects Signs in Mexico: “How Much Did You Pay to Have Your Daughter Raped?”

By Selwyn Duke

In 2005, the Mexican government distributed comic-book-style manuals instructing migrants on how to enter and remain in the U.S. illegally. Now, a generation later, new messages are being sent to would-be illegal aliens.

“How much did you pay to have your daughter raped? Many girls are raped by the coyotes you hire,” is one.

“Your wife and daughter will pay for their trip with their bodies,” reads another. “Coyotes lie. “Don’t put your family at risk.”

“Many girls who try to migrate to Texas are kidnapped,” yet another message warns. “For the sake of your family, stop.”

And, no, the above don’t come with trigger warnings.

A New Year’s Resolution That Could Spark Revolution

By Selwyn Duke

It’s that season again, that time for New Year’s resolutions, when we put our minds to perhaps giving up junk food or engaging in regular exercise. Yet while this is all well and good, even better is to add to it the aim of purging the spiritual junk food of sin from one’s life and exercising virtue. And while the virtues are many, one that perhaps warrants some special attention is honesty.

British anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley once stated that “veracity is the heart of morality.” It makes sense, too. Just as we can’t understand what is proper tennis instruction or medical care if we imbibe lies relating to the endeavor’s principles, how can we know what is proper morality if we’re subject to lies relating to it?

WOW: Disney Nixes “Transgender” Storyline; LGBTQ Lobby Is Livid

                                                                                  Anthony Quintano/Wikimedia Commons

By Selwyn Duke

Did Hell just freeze over? Some may thus wonder with news that Disney, aka Woke Entertainment Central, has just eliminated a “transgender” storyline from a new animated series.

The sexual devolutionaries (“LGBTQ+” lobby) are howling, too, accustomed as they are to Disney doing their bidding. The move is still only a baby step, however. The MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) character will still appear on the program, Pixar’s Win or Lose. But dialogue relating to its psychological delusion has been removed by the creators.

Ex-CBS Reporter: We Colluded With Dems in Faking Negative Impact of Gov’t Shutdowns

By Selwyn Duke

It could be Exhibit A for why people don’t trust government and the legacy media. Only, well, there are so many damning exhibits to choose from. The story?

We’ve heard much about “collusion,” such as the Trump/Russia-collusion hoax. But here’s a story of real collusion, from the people who gave us that hoax:

Years ago, CBS couldn’t find real-life negative impacts of a government “shutdown” that was taking place and which the Democrats were blaming on the Republicans. The solution?

Be party to the Democrats’ faking of a negative impact.

This bombshell was revealed, too, by a reporter who was with CBS at the time: Sharyl Attkisson.

Deportation: Do We “Please Migrants” — or Muster Up the Guts to Save America?

By Selwyn Duke

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder,” said historian Arnold Toynbee. Slow suicide is tragic, too. It may be obvious that a man hooked on drugs or alcohol is headed toward destruction. Yet he still may be unable to kick his addictions. And so it is with civilizations and their addictions to bad ideas and tendencies. Examples are immigrationism and bleeding-heart, misguided compassion — both of which threaten the U.S.’s existence.

Commentator Pat Buchanan, after noting that it was hard-nosed men who founded and forged our nation, once asked if we today possess the intestinal fortitude to preserve their creation. The answer may be no, too, if Americans can’t demonstrate the virtue necessary for a certain civilization-preserving act: mass deportations.

Note also the congruence to this prescription. Mass deportation corresponds to mass migration, the latter of which has been orchestrated, calculatingly and illegally, by our immigrationist pseudo-elites.

Study: Democrat Men Cheat on Their Wives More — and Many Are OK With It

By Selwyn Duke

Ex-president Bill Clinton, who in 1998 said in response to questions about infidelity, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” (even though he did), apparently isn’t alone among Democrats in having the morals of an alley cat. That’s what a new study shows, anyway.

The recently released research, from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), found that “Republican husbands, especially religious ones, are less likely to cheat on their wives than Democratic husbands,” the organization writes.

This isn’t the first time the IFS has discovered a Dem-Rep infidelity divide. In 2022, the organization studied women and found the same phenomenon. In 2017, it revealed such a gap between Democrats and Republicans in general. And related to this, the IFS discovered in 2015 that conservative counties have more stable families than Democratic counties do.

Of course, is this surprising? Would people who tout “situational values” and shades of gray have much regard for marriage vows?

“Toxic” (Read: Heroic) Masculinity Saves Women’s Lives

By Selwyn Duke

“There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper,” pointed out feminist professor and cultural critic Camille Paglia, demonstrating a grasp of sex differences. Men do get plenty of “credit” for their Jack the Rippers, too. And their Mozarts (and heroes)? Not so much.