Good Quotes, Chapter 6

Insiders don't criticize insiders

DC: District of Criminals

“The poor will insult you. The ruder they are; the more dignified you must be.” “Remember, Our Lord hides behind those rags.” Blessed Rosalie Rendu

Many types of intermittent fasting regimens positively affect risk factors for poor breast cancer outcomes, such as glucoregulation, inflammation, obesity, and sleep. Two analyses have been published of nightly fasting duration and biomarkers of breast cancer risk in women using US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data. In the first analysis, among 2122 women without diabetes mellitus, longer nightly fasting was associated with significant improvements in biomarkers of glycemic control. In the second analysis, a longer duration of nightly fasting was associated with significantly lower C-reactive protein (CRP) concentrations in women who eat less than 30% of their total daily energy intake after 5 PM. Taken together, the rodent and human data support the hypothesis that a prolonged nightly fasting interval could reduce cancer risk and improve cancer outcomes.

“And so tyranny naturally rises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.
At first, at the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes everyone whom he meets — he to be called a tyrant, who is making promises in public and also in private liberating debtors, and distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to everyone... then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Has he not also another object, which is that they may be impoverished by the payment of taxes and thus compelled to devote themselves to their daily wants and therefore less likely to conspire against him?… Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery. --Plato, The Republic, VIII

“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, the he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.” (Plato, The Republic)

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” (General Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar, 1965.)

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.... This danger ought to be wisely guarded against.” (James Madison, Debates in the State Conventions, 3:87.)

“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents.” (James Madison, Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, 1:163. 1785.)

“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.... This being the end of government, that alone is not a just government which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.… That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.” (James Madison, The Complete Madison, p. 267.)

“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few....No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. In war too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honours, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.” (James Madison, Political Observations, April 20, 1795.)

“Another cause of revolution is difference of races which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a state is not the growth of a day, any more that it grows out of a multitude brought together by accident. Hence the reception of strangers in colonies, either at the time of their foundation or afterwards, has generally produced revolution.…” (Aristotle, Politics)

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?
“All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined...with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
“At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” (Abraham Lincoln, 1838.)

“The people — are the rightful masters of both congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.” (Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, p. 435. December 1859.)

“Academic associations are a means of conditioning or even policing academics. Although academics are great at talking about academic freedom, they are peculiarly susceptible to peer group pressures. And if an academic fails to get the word through his peer group, there is always the threat of not getting tenure. In other words, what is taught at University levels is passed through a sieve. The sieve is faculty conformity.” (Dr. Antony C. Sutton, 1983.)

“Consistency has never been the mark of stupidity. If the diplomats who have mishandled our relations with Russia were merely stupid, they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor.” (James Forrestal)

“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” (George Orwell)

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” (Henry David Thoreau)

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him in so far as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.” (President Theodore Roosevelt, 1918.)

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” (President Theodore Roosevelt, remark made at the Sorbonne in Paris The Strenuous Life, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. 13. April 30, 1910.)

“Every man, who parrots the cry of ‘stand by the President’ without adding the proviso ‘so far as he serves the Republic’ takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.” (President Theodore Roosevelt, Works, vol. 21, pp. 316,321.)

“It is the people, and not the judges, who are entitled to say what their constitution means, for the constitution is theirs, it belongs to them and not to their servants in office—any other theory is incompatible with the foundation principles of our government.” (President Theodore Roosevelt, 1912.)

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy” (Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966.)

“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.” (Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 324. 1966.)

“The Council on Foreign Relations is the American branch of a society which originated in England [and] believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established.” (Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, A History of the World in Our Time, p. 951. 1966.)

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.… We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.… In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” (Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928.)

“Goebbels… was using my book, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany.” (Edward Bernays)

“Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes the laws.” (Baron Mayer Amschel Rothschild)

“...it is a legitimate American national objective to see removed from all nations — including the United States — the right to use substantial military force to pursue their own interests. Since this residual right is the root of national sovereignty and the basis for the existence of an international arena of power, it is, therefore, an American interest to see an end to nationhood as it has been historically defined.” -- Walt Rostow (one of the chief engineers of the Vietnam fiasco was chairman of the State Department's policy planning council from 1991 until 1966 when he became the National Security Advisor. He has held membership in the CFR since 1955. He was rejected for employment in the Eisenhower administration three times because he could not pass security checks. The United States in the World Arena, 1960)

“Princes and nations shall vanish from the earth. the human race will then become one family, and the world will be he dwelling of rational men.” (Professor Johann Adam Weishaupt)

“The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment; let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation.” (Professor Johann Adam Weishaupt, Proofs of a Conspriacy, p. 112.)

“We must win the common people in every corner. This will be obtained chiefly by means of the schools, and by open hearty behaviour, show, condescension, popularity, and toleration of their prejudices which we shall at leisure root out and dispel.” (Professor Johann Adam Weishaupt, Proofs of a Conspriacy, p. 111. 1978.)

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” (President Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, 1913.)

“We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put in the wrong and makes the first bad move — overt move... The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” (Henry Stimson, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath, p. 275-76. October 16, 1941.)

“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.” (President John F. Kennedy, Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961.)

“By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some....There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” (John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919.)

“We shall have world government whether or not you like it — by conquest or consent.” (James P. Warburg, speaking to a Senate committee)

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” (George Washington)

When loaves are more valued than the Divine Power which multiplied them; when streams are more admired than the fountains that produced them, then mankind will accept any kind of a king that promises bread and plenty. --Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“There are others who like to see their neighbor criticized and their reputations ruined in order that they might have the feeling that they are not so evil in comparison. The vultures are always the first to smell the carrion.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Thoughts for Daily Living)

"Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

The Christian Doctrine of man is intrinsically bound up with the problem of property. There are three possible solutions of the problem of property. One is to put all the eggs into a few baskets, which is Capitalism; the other is to make an omelet out of them so that nobody owns, which is Communism; the other is to distribute the eggs in as many baskets as possible, which is the solution of the Catholic Church. -- Bishop Fulton Sheen - Introduction to "Christian Social Principles", 1941 - imprimatur, Cardinal Spellman

Dante: the sodomite made sterile what should be fertile, namely sex; while the usurer made fertile what should be sterile, namely money.

Modern Capitalism is state-sponsored usury.

No force on earth can keep up with compound interest, which is the heart of usury.

The truth is that what we call Capitalism ought to be called "Proletarianism". The point of it is not that some people have capital, but that most people only have wages because they do not have capital.

“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” -- Irving Fisher, October 21, 1929

“Participants in the speculative situation are programmed for sudden efforts at escape. Thus the rule, supported by the experience of centuries: the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang. There will be occasion to see the operation of this rule frequently repeated.” -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"...in order to be saved, to go to heaven, you need to repent. But you can’t repent if you don’t believe in sin to repent of, and you can’t believe in sin if you don’t believe in a real moral law, because sin means disobeying that. Moral relativism eliminates that law, thus sin, thus repentance, thus salvation". --Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism, Ignatius Press 1999, pg 20.

"ATHEISM is, I suppose, the supreme example of a simple faith. The man says there is no God; if he really says it in his heart, he is a certain sort of man so designated in Scripture. But, anyhow, when he has said it, he has said it; and there seems to be no more to be said. The conversation seems likely to languish. The truth is that the atmosphere of excitement, by which the atheist lived, was an atmosphere of thrilled and shuddering theism, and not of atheism at all; it was an atmosphere of defiance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord. After this first fuss about the merely aesthetic effect of blasphemy, the whole thing vanishes into its own void. If there were not God, there would be no atheists." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Where All Roads Lead."

“The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is Christ. Each has awaited new partners who will pick them up in a kind of second and adulterous union. Communism comes along and picks up the meaningless Cross; Western post-Christian civilization chooses the unscarred Christ.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Life of Christ)

"The next time Satan reminds you of your past, remind him of his future." ~St. Teresa of Avila

"THOSE who dislike definite religious systems often talk of people 'swallowing' doctrines, and there is a truth in the metaphor, though not as they commonly use it. There is no great harm in swallowing a thing if it feeds you. The great objection to swallowing a thing is that it generally chokes you. And that is exactly what happens to those eager idealists who merely accept words like 'truth' or 'life' or 'progress', as satisfying their spiritual hunger. The words do not so much nourish their spiritual bodies as stop their spiritual breath. Such ideal phrases really are what they say 'dogmas' are: a thing that stops the mind." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Daily News", Dec. 28, 1912.

“You cannot always depend on prayers to be answered the way you want them answered but you can always depend on God. The loving Father often denies us those things which in the end would prove harmful to us. Every boy wants a revolver at age four, and no father yet has ever granted that request. Why should we think God is less wise? Someday we will thank God not only for what He gave us, but also for that which He refused.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Wartime Prayer Book)

“If a man thinks he knows it all, then he thinks there is nothing left for him to know, not even what God might tell him. If the soul is filled to the brim with the ego, there is no place left for God. If a vessel is filled with water it cannot also be filled with oil. So it is with the soul.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Victory over Vice)

“The revelation of Fatima is a reminder that we live in a moral universe, that evil is self-defeating, that good is self-preserving; that the basic trouble of the world are not in politics or economics but in our hearts and our souls, and that spiritual regeneration is the condition of social amelioration.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen

"Only the Catholic Church can save a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his time." (G.K. Chesterton)

“Do not pray only in an emergency, the pleas of strangers are never as effective as the plea of friends. Do not think of God only in times of distress or danger. Heaven is not a firehouse, and God does not put out all the fires.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Wartime Prayer Book)

“Those who have God as their protection have an inner tower that is never depressed by adversity nor inflated by pride in moments of success and prosperity.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Prodigal World)

“If we followed the same rules for health that we do about religion, we would all be bedridden. It is not enough to talk about the necessity of health; we must do something practical about it – for example, eat, exercise and rest. So it is with religion. We must nourish ourselves with the truths of God, exercise our spiritual muscles in prayer, mortify ourselves of those things which are harmful to the soul, and be just as scrupulous in avoiding moral evil as we are in avoiding physical evil.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“Once we decide, in any matter, that passion takes precedence over Truth, and erotic impulse over honor, then how shall we prevent the stealing of anything, once it becomes 'vital' to someone else?” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Three to Get Married)

Christianity sees the body of a woman as a temple, a shrine, a holy place in which God acts. Today, competing ideologies shame woman into believing that her body is a dirty temptation (such as certain interpretations of Islam) or an instrument for empowerment (using the erotic as a tool). Both ideas oppose the Christian vision of woman. Christian modesty is not about shaming woman, but rather a summons to her to live as a child of God, as temple of His glory.
Enjoy the summer, but celebrate it with modesty. You are more than the sum total of body parts, you are a temple of God's glory. -- Fr. Paul Nicholson

"TO a lucid mind Imperialism and patriotism are opposite; patriotism means that boundaries are sacred, and Imperialism means that they are not." ~G.K. Chesterton: “Daily News,” May 14, 1910.

"...the Utopia of the extremists really has something of the intellectual integrity which belongs to extremes, even of madness." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Three Foes of the Family."

“Indifference means the denial of the distinction between the true and the false, right and wrong. Confusing charity and tolerance, it gives an equal hearing, for example, to speech which advocates the freedom to murder and to speech which advocates the freedom to live. Indifference is never a stable condition, but passes into polarization.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Missions and the World Crisis)

"If you must judge someone, judge yourself, for yours is the only heart you can really know. The only reason we judge others so harshly is that we know ourselves so little."

“The intellectual never loses that compassion for the multitude which characterized the Word Incarnate. The intelligentsia, on the contrary, live apart from tears and hunger, cancer and bereavements, poverty and ignorance. They lack the common touch. Only the cream of bookish learning and not the milk of human kindness flows through their veins.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Priest is Not His Own)

As many as 75 percent of all children in foster care, upon leaving the system, will have experienced sexual abuse.

Contrary to Bp. Lynch's claims, the Catholic Church only allows removal of extraordinary means to keep a patient alive. Basic food and water are not considered extraordinary means, and therefore to remove such sustenance from an otherwise healthy person — which Terri Schiavo was — is a grave evil that can never be justified.

"CHRISTENDOM might quite reasonably have been alarmed if it had not been attacked. But as a matter of history it had been attacked. The Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Moslem even if the Moslem had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter of history he was already an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the interior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded. They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris. They seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine, it was but a return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe." ~G.K. Chesterton: "The Meaning of The Crusade."

“Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense."

We mean something quite definite when we speak of a man being a little free with the ladies. What definite freedom is meant when the freedom of women is proposed? If it merely means the right to free opinions, the right to vote independently of fathers and husbands, what possible connection does it have with the freedom to fly to Australia or score bulls-eyes at Bisley? If it means, as we fear it does, freedom from responsibility of managing a home and a family, an equal right with men in business and social careers, at the expense of home and family, then such progress we can only call progressive deterioration.
And for men too, there is, according to a famous authoress, a hope of freedom. Men are beginning to revolt, we are told, against the old tribal custom of desiring fatherhood. The male is casting off the shackles of being a creator and a man. When all are sexless there will be equality. There will be no women and no men. There will be but a fraternity, free and equal. The only consoling thought is that it will endure but for one generation. ~G.K. Chesterton: GK's Weekly, July 26, 1930.

"THOSE thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it. There is a very real thing which may be called the love of humanity; in our time it exists almost entirely among what are called uneducated people; and it does not exist at all among the people who talk about it." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Tremendous Trifles," XXII.-The Orthodox Barber.

Now one of the best marks of the goodness of all inspirations in general, and particularly of extraordinary ones, is the peace and tranquillity of the heart that receives them: for though indeed the Holy Ghost is violent, yet his violence is gentle, sweet and peaceful. He comes as a mighty wind,393 and as a heavenly thunder, but he does not overthrow the Apostles, he troubles them not; the fear which they had in hearing the sound was of no continuance, but was immediately followed by a sweet assurance. That is why this fire sits upon each of them, taking and causing a sacred repose; and as our Saviour is called a peaceful or pacific Solomon, so is his spouse called Sulamitess, calm and daughter of peace: and the voice, that is, the inspiration, of the bridegroom does not in any sort disquiet or trouble her, but draws her so sweetly that he makes her soul deliciously melt and, as it were, flow out into him: My soul, says she, melted when my beloved spoke:394 and though she be warlike and martial, yet is she withal so peaceable, that amidst armies and battles she maintains the concord of an unequalled melody. What shalt thou see, saith she, in the Sulamitess but the choirs of armies?395 Her armies are choirs, that is, harmonies of singers; and her choirs are armies, because the weapons of the Church and of the devout soul, are only prayers, hymns, canticles and psalms.
Thus it is that those servants of God who had the highest and sublimest inspirations were the most mild and peaceable men in the world, as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob: Moses is styled the meekest of men; David is lauded for his mildness. On the contrary, the evil spirit is turbulent, rough, disturbing; and those who follow infernal suggestions, taking them to be heavenly inspirations, are as a rule easily known, because they are unquiet, headstrong, haughty, ready to undertake or meddle with all affairs, men who under the cloak of zeal turn everything upside down, censure every one, chide every one, find fault with everything; they are persons who will not be directed, will not give in to any one, will bear nothing, but gratify the passions of self-love under the name of jealousy for God's honour. --Saint Francis de Sales

“Never ask what did I do to deserve this? Because Jesus may say to you what did I do to deserve the Cross? If God the Father permitted His Divine Son to feel the agonies of Calvary, it must be that Crosses fit into the Divine Plan. If your cross is mental, change your behavior, confess your sins, and make peace with God. If your cross is physical, offer it up in union with Our Lord on the Cross for the conversion of souls. There is a price tag on every soul. Every soul costs something. Some souls are bought by prayers; others are bought through the kindness of alms; but most of them are bought the way Our Lord brought us, through pain and suffering.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (About Crosses)

"WHEN people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself." ~G.K. Chesterton

Feudal serfs and tenants, especially from the High Middle Ages until roughly 1925, actually enjoyed a much easier life than most modern laborers, for several reasons:

1. The vast majority of serfs were employed as farmers. This meant that one's workday was generally confined to the hours between sunup and sundown, with several hours in the middle of the day taken off. Additionally, in the winter when the harvest had been taken in, most farm labor beyond maintenance and feeding animals ceased. Since much of farming is an exercise in patience, there were also long stretches of time where very little work was required, followed by bursts of activity (planting/harvesting times etc.). Other laborers such as craftsmen, artisans, and accountants generally planned their work schedule around that of the farmers', and thus had a similar work schedule (or in some cases, a more relaxed one).
2. The average serf could expect to get roughly every other day off from work, due to lulls in the farming cycle, feast days, holidays, and fairs. This was in addition to Sundays.
3. While taxes were high, they also paid off more. The serf was in effect a shareholder in the estate, guaranteed his land, property, and goods, granted representation in legal affairs, and provided with law and order; it was, after all, in the lord's economic interest to care for his serfs.
4. Rather than being ruled from afar, serfs had ready access to their government--many, in fact, lived within walking distance of their lord's house! During the business day, commoners could petition their lord directly with concerns, suggestions, or grievances, and while the lord was under no obligation to agree to every demand he was expected to hear every case and reach a definite decision. If he did not, he would be seen as weak-willed or lazy, and risked being replaced.
   It is true, the feudal system wasn't perfect, and some lords treated their tenants poorly, but this was largely due to poor communication between King and lord (which also led to other corrupt behavior as well) and not the inherent nature of the system itself. Besides, feudalism still survives in a privatized form today--we just call it renting. Why do think we say landlord, and not, say, land manager? And today, just as back then, there are kind and judicious lords and there are scummy and exploitative ones.
   If the ontology of anti-feudalism is "the people in charge sometimes did bad things", then by extension all forms of economic structure and government are bad, and it is merely a question of which is the least so.

“WHAT embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but the absence of self-criticism. It is comparatively of little consequence that you occasionally break out and abuse other people, so long as you do not absolve yourself. The former is a natural collapse of human weakness; the latter is a blasphemous assumption of divine power.” ~G.K. Chesterton: ‘On Bright Old Things — and Other Things’

"As long as the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan continues under the guise of establishing a democratic government, the flow of heroin will continue unabated. One question we should ask is “who owns the planes and the ships that transport 90% percent of the world’s heroin from Afghanistan to the rest of the world in the first place? It sure isn’t the Taliban."

"The right to LIFE is the first human right. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless."

The gluttony of precision ("Iced grande decaf, two-shot, six pumps caramel, soy, extra whipped cream caramel macchiato")

"MAN is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head." ~G.K. Chesterton: Wine When it is Red."

"THE evil of vindictiveness is the same as that of every other sin; it is that in some extraordinary way it tends to destroy the soul, to blacken and eat up the whole nature [...] Yielding to a temptation is like yielding to a blackmailer; you pay to be free, and find yourself the more enslaved. The reality of sin arises, in fact, from the same truth which makes the reality of human poetry and joy. It arises from the fact that the smallest thing in this world has its own infinity [...]
"...That is the whole point of the position of sin in human psychology, and that is the whole point of the peril of revenge. Hatred is bad [...] because it narrows the soul to a sharp point. It is not merely that Jones desires the death of Brown [...] The evil is that the death of Brown becomes the whole life of Jones. The violent man, in short, tries to break out; but he only succeeds in breaking in. He breaks into smaller and smaller cells of his own subterranean heart till he is suffocated in the smallest, and dies like a rat in a hole." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Daily News", Aug. 8, 1908.

"In short, the theory that we must not be angry is the very charter of escape for all evil-doers who are strong enough to awaken anger."
~G.K. Chesterton: "Vengeance"

Gravity and Inertia are really Love and Strife.

St. John Chrysostom wrote, "It is not enough that the arrow has been extracted from the body; the wound which it inflicted must also be healed. So with regard to the soul, it is not enough that sin has been pardoned; the wound which it has left must also be healed by penance."

Often times the obsessed, scrupulous, self-appointed, nostalgia-hankering virtual guardians of faith or of liturgical practices are very disturbed, broken and angry individuals, who never found a platform or pulpit in real life and so resort to the Internet and become trolling pontiffs and holy executioners!

"Hitler was probably the 20th century's most famous Judaizer. The German master race was the Jewish chosen people turned upside down. Like Marxism, Nazism was also a perversion of Hegel. Hitler turned the German race into the mirror image of the Jews, who rejected Christ because of racial pride. In the Gospel of St. John, the Jews tell Christ that they are the seed of Abraham, but Christ rebukes them for their racism by telling them that God could create a people out of stones if he wanted too." ----- E. Michael Jones Ethnos Needs Logos

“IT is idle to talk against representative government or for it. All government is representative government until it begins to decay. Unfortunately (as is also evident) all government begins to decay the instant it begins to govern.” ~G.K. Chesterton: “A Miscellany of Men”.

“SINCE we are hindered by the devil from obeying with our thought and deed God’s will in all things, we pray and ask that God’s will may be done in us; and that it may be done in us we have need of God’s good will, that is, of His help and protection, since no one is strong in his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God.” ~St. Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200 – 258): “On the Lord’s Prayer,” 14.

“IT IS the mark of our whole modern history that the masses are kept quiet with a fight. They are kept quiet by the fight because it is a sham-fight; thus most of us know by this time that the Party System has been popular only in the sense that a football match is popular.” ~G.K. Chesterton: "A Short History of England"

Three powers of the human soul, which can be described as the intellect (perceptive, apprehensive, cognitive), the will (motive, appetitive, cognitive) and the passions or feelings (sensitive, emotive).

1. Intellect - apprehends a situation and determines that a particular end is appropriate (good) for the given circumstances.
2. Will - approves a simple volition for that end (or can reject, change the subject, etc.)
3. Intellect - determines that the end can be achieved, is within the power of the agent.
4. Will - Intention: to achieve the end through some means
5. Intellect - Counsel: determines various means to achieve the end.
6. Will - accepts these means (or can ask for more means)
7. Intellect - determines the best means for the given circumstances.
8. Will - Electio (choice): selects the means the intellect proposes as best.
9. Intellect - Command: says "Do the best means!"
10. Will - Use: exercises control over the body or mind as needed.

At every step the Will can interfere with or derail the plans of the Intellect.

"THERE is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert creates a kind of ecstasy out of the very emptiness of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the emptiness of its own theology. It affirms, with no little sublimity, something that is not merely the singleness but rather the solitude of God. There is the same extreme simplification in the solitary figure of the Prophet; and yet this isolation perpetually reacts into its own opposite. A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and yet this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets. Of these the mightiest in modern times were the man whose name was Ahmed, and whose more famous title was the Mahdi; and his more ferocious successor Abdullahi, who was generally known as the Khalifa. These great fanatics, or great creators of fanaticism, succeeded in making a militarism almost as famous and formidable as that of the Turkish Empire on whose frontiers it hovered, and in spreading a reign of terror such as can seldom be organised except by civilisation." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Lord Kitchener" (1917)

"Mercy is the fulfillment of Justice, not its abolition." St Thomas Aquinas

"You can either conform your desires to the truth, or you can conform the truth to your desires". E Michael Jones.

"If we've all been born into a world of mass deception, then this world of illusion has become our reality, it is our normal." Truthshock

James Perloff writes; ‘Truth is a Lonely Warrior’.

“Man becomes like that which he loves, and if he loves gold, he becomes like it – cold, and yellow. The more he acquires, the more he suffers at surrendering even the least of it.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Seven Capital Sins)

"He who wants to laugh with the devil cannot rejoice with Christ." ~St. Peter Chrysologus (c. 380 – c. 450), Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

Christianity did not bring a message of social revolution like that of the ill-fated Spartacus, whose struggle led to so much bloodshed. Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barabbas or Bar- Kochba. Jesus, who himself died on the Cross, brought something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within. Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi

“Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended.” ~G.K. Chesterton: "Eugenics and Other Evils."

"Beauty in a woman and strength in a man are two of the most evident spurs to love. Physical beauty and vitality increase vigor in each other, but it is to be noticed that beauty in a woman and strength in a man are given by God to serve the purposes of allurement. They come at that age of life when men and women are urged to marry one another. They are not permanent possessions. They are something like the frosting on a cake, or like the electric starter of an automobile motor. If love were based only on the fact that she is a model and he is a fullback on a football team, marriage would never endure. But just as the frosting on the cake leads to the cake itself, so too do these allurements pass on to greater treasures." Archbishop Fulton Sheen

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair." GK Chesterton

“It makes no difference what you believe; it’s how you act. It makes no difference whether you have any rules in football; it depends upon how you play. It makes no difference whether you believe triangles have three sides; it depends on how you draw: Can we not see if we believe wrongly, we will act wrongly?” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Wartime Prayer Book)

Pope Francis: "In Europe, America, Latin America, Africa, and in some countries of Asia, there are genuine forms of ideological colonization taking place. And one of these - I will call it clearly by its name – is [the ideology of] “gender”. Today children – children! – are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this terrible!"

"Christianity is not a philosophy, it is a relationship with a Person". Bishop Barron

"The Republic consists in the extermination of all who oppose it". Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Karl Rove: "...when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

"JOY, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Orthodoxy," Chap IX

What I see happening that scares me that as civilization turns away from religion as it is doing right now, science is being perverted into a substitute for religion. It’s not important that I understand what dark matter and dark energy are—all of these concepts—I don’t have to be able to prove them. I just have to be able to regurgitate them and sound like I’m intelligent. That bothers me a lot. Science is supposed to be a thing where if I challenge you, you could show it to me in the lab. Science is not about opinion. We can have different opinions on what the data means. That’s why reasonable people can disagree about the things we cover in the film. But the observations are there. They are real. But I can go and show you anytime I want that out of the source data the axis of evil is there. It’s real. What it means, we can discuss. But in science what we’re supposed to do is demonstrate.
I don’t have to believe you because you’re my teacher. If you’re a good teacher, you would tell me not to believe me. You would tell me go and do the scientific demonstration. I’m afraid we’re losing that. I’m afraid that there’s a real temptation in the to create a substitute for religion in the form of scientific view of reality. I’m all for the Big Bang, I’m all for anybody who can show me and demonstrate to me the persuasive elements that in fact do exist in the present cosmology. But the problem is this: if you’re going to rule out of court any challenge to a fundamental principle, you’re not doing science anymore. You’re doing metaphysics and religion. Science makes for very poor religion. That’s my concern. --Rick DeLano, producer of ‘The Principle’

"IN a word, the world does not explain itself, and cannot do so merely by continuing to expand itself. But anyhow it is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything." ~G.K. Chesterton: "St. Thomas Aquinas,"

"....Government (and especially representative Government) now actually exists to protect those very abuses which Government (and especially representative Government) was actually created to prevent [...] Parliaments, petitions, elections, juries, all the things that were ever rightly or wrongly called free institutions, all rest on the idea that we cannot put our trust in princes, because we cannot put it (without some balance of dispute and examination) in any child of man. But the Party System, as it is by this time, is quite the most cunning instrument for preventing such criticism ever devised by human ingenuity. It silences a criticism, it stops all self-purging, it turns back all repentance, and freezes all hopeful anger, far more than the most brutal methods of the oldest tyrannies...Common human annoyance could be counted on to kick common human nuisances. Our method is much subtler. We set up one man and call him Liberty; we set up another man and call him Loyalty. If the first man becomes a tyrant, all who love Liberty must help him to tyrannise. If the second man betrays his country, all who love Loyalty must help him to betray his country. All other systems have left reform doubtful; this is the only system that has nearly succeeded in making it impossible." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Illustrated London News", February 1, 1913.

"It is not easy to explain why God permits evil; but it is impossible for an atheist to explain the existence of goodness. How could a spiritless, soul-less, cross-less, Godless universe become the center of faith, purity, sacrifice, and martyrdom? How can decency be the decent thing, if there is no God? Since God is love, why should we be surprised that want of it should end in pain, hate, broken hearts, and war?" Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Wartime Prayer Book)

The Copernican Principle is similarly flexible: When conjuring habitable planets, it assumes ours is one among countless winners. Yet when conjuring a multiverse, it assumes that our universe is a lonely winner among countless flops. The choice seems to depend on which assumption is required as a defense against design. That feature, as we shall see, can once again transform speculation into orthodoxy. - Denyse O'Leary, Evolution News and Views

“The sun which warms the plant can under other conditions also wither it. The rain which nourishes the flower can under other conditions rot it. The same sun shines upon mud that shines upon wax. It hardens the mud but softens the wax. The difference is not in the sun, but in that upon which it shines. The Divine Life which shines upon a soul that loves Him, softens it into everlasting life; that same Divine Life which shines upon the slothful soul, neglectful of God, hardens it into everlasting death.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Seven Capital Sins)

Maturity usually remedies the weaknesses of adolescence with that kind of sagacity which is born of time and pain, but on those occasions when the circumstances of life are made too easy the passing of years merely serves to ripen the young fruit to rot. -- Pageant of Popes

“IT is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.” ~G.K. Chesterton: “The Resurrection of Rome.”

"SIMPLE secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion. The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and religion. There had never before been any such union of the priests and the philosophers." ~G.K. Chesterton: "The Everlasting Man."

“Celibacy is not the renouncing of a person outside us, but the concentration on the Person inside. Celibacy is not the renouncing of love, it is the resolution to love as Christ loves.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Those Mysterious Priests)

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
or lose heart when He rebukes you.
For the Lord disciplines the one He loves,
and He chastises everyone He receives as a son.”
Endure suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?
If you do not experience discipline like everyone else, then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.
Furthermore, we have all had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. Should we not much more submit to the Father of our spirits and live?
Our fathers disciplined us for a short time as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good, so that we may share in His holiness.
No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a peaceful harvest of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Therefore strengthen your limp hands and weak knees.
Make straight paths for your feet, so that the lame will not be debilitated, but rather healed. -- Hebrews 12

“We are living in perilous times when the hearts and souls of men are sorely tried. Never before has the future been so utterly unpredictable; we are not so much in a period of transition with belief in progress to push us on, rather we seem to be entering the realm of the unknown, joylessly, disillusioned, and without hope. The whole world seems to be in a state of spiritual widowhood, possessed of the harrowing devastation of one who set out on life’s course joyously in intimate comradeship with another, and then is bereft of that companion forever.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Prodigal World)

"Truly stopping your mad rush of activity to hear another person, to affirm their existence, is a powerful act of kindness that will not go unappreciated."

"Emancipation from Catholic rule brought the Elizabethan Police State to power. England was a country of professional informers, not unlike the Stasi Police State in East Germany, except Elizabeth offered her subjects capitalist incentives, conferring on them one-third of the goods of the person they denounced. Purified religion meant the growth of the monster state, Leviathan, which demanded undiluted allegiance, and repaid its subjects by reducing the majority to poverty unknown in medieval Europe. Small farmers were kicked off their lands so that magnates could make fortunes there raising sheep. The purgatory societies, the guilds, the monasteries, the hospitals, the entire achievement of the Church in providing social welfare in England, was dismantled and put to work increasing the wealth of insatiably greedy magnates. The poor were then punished by laws declaring them vagrants and debtors and by the emergence of a philosophy of greed that blamed the victims of the looting for their misery by attributing their poverty to character flaws." E Michael Jones

Seventeenth Century England showed that when Sola Scriptura was combined with the natural bent of human passion, revolution was the invariable outcome. Give an Englishman the bible and tell him he was now empowered to interpret the Scriptures according to his own lights, and, one way or another, social anarchy followed as night from day. -- E Michael Jones

1000: "...the thousand year reign of Christ on earth began with the Alaric's sacking of Rome in 410 and ended when the age of revolution began with the excommunication of John Huss." -- E Michael Jones

Revolution is a binary weapon, which is driven by appetite and the rationalization of appetite that thinkers can derive from Sola Scriptura and the ransacking of the Old Testament for proof texts.

Justification of divorce is a tall order for a Christian whose first principle was Sola Scriptura because, as anyone who has read the gospel knows, Christ specifically prohibited divorce. The project would have been impossible were it not for the Puritan tendency to Judaize, which emanated from the penumbra of Sola Scriptura. This worked in two ways.
First, Sola Scriptura relativized the priority of the New Testament over the Old. The New Testament was no longer the fulfillment of the Old nor was it the only lens through which the Old could be seen and interpreted properly. Sola Scriptura tended to democratize the books of the Bible, which, since there were many more books in the Old Testament than in the New, tended to lead to the Old Testament's priority over the New. Sola Scriptura thus led to Judaizing.
Secondly, Judaizing led to Talmudic exegesis, which is to say, a devaluation of the actual text in favor of the opinions of rabbis.
The relativization of Christ's prohibition of divorce could only proceed by placing Moses on the same level as Christ. This completely heretical notion, contradicted by the Gospel of St. John, was no hindrance to a devotee of Sola Scriptura, which, it appears, had become another word for appetite.
The attraction of judaizing was immediately apparent. Moses could be portrayed as permitting what Christ prohibited. Since Moses was the lawgiver for the nation of Israel, England's solons should follow his example and promote "expedient liberty". -- E Michael Jones

"It is better," St. Augustine wrote, summarizing the Catholic alternative to Simon Magus, "to love God and make use of money, than to love money and make use of God."

Puritans and Jews shared a desire to attain the spiritual goods promised in the Bible by secular means. Messianic politics was a form of magic; the attainment of wealth and power by spiritual means had always been the goal of Simon Magus and his followers. It appealed powerfully to people who, full of revulsion at the Cross of Christ and the ideal of suffering it embodied, were discovering the natural sciences.
The Puritan rejection of the medieval worldview of the Catholic Church is ultimately traceable to the Jewish rejection of the suffering Christ as an unworthy Messiah. "The chief priests," St. Matthew tells us, "with the scribes and elders mocked him in the same way. 'He saved others,' they said, 'he cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel; let him come down from the Cross now, and we will believe in him'." The Jewish/Puritan alliance was born in a rejection of the Cross and all it stood for, and the substitution of King David or Simon bar Kokhba or Shabbetai Zevi or Oliver Cromwell or Napoleon Bonaparte as an alternative to the suffering Christ. -- E Michael Jones

Puritans are so absorbed in the Old Testament that the New Testament has no importance to them.

The reliance on the Talmud created a culture of "hair-splitting judgment" among rabbis, says Graetz, as well as "a love of twisting, distorting, ingenious quibbling, and a foregone antipathy to what did not lie within their field of vision," which trickled down to the behavior of the vulgar, who "found pleasure and a sort of triumphant delight in deception and cheating.''

According to the Cabala, catastrophe and utopianism go hand in hand. This formed the basis of Freemasonry's motto: "Ordo ab Chao". To seek a worldly Kingdom of God (the "error of the Jews") is to seek revolution.

The Puritans could implement the revolution precisely because they were Judaizers, because revolution was at its root a Jewish idea. Based on Moses' deliverance of Israel, the revolutionary saw a small group of chosen "saints" leading a fallen world to liberation from political oppression. Revolution was a secularization of ideas taken from the Bible, and as history progressed the secularization of the concept progressed as well. But total secularization of the idea would have made the idea totally useless to the Puritan revolutionaries. Secularization in the 17th Century was synonymous with Judaizing. It meant effectively substituting the Old Testament for the New. The concept of revolution gained legitimacy precisely because of its Jewish roots. -- E Michael Jones

The Roundheads were not inspired by the example of the suffering Christ, nor were they inspired by the medieval saints who imitated Him. They needed the example of the warriors of Israel to inspire them in their bellicose campaigns against the Irish and the Scots, who could be subjugated or exterminated because the Puritans saw them as latter day Canaanites. Similarly, if the King were an unworthy leader, he deserved to die at the hands of the righteous, who now acted, as the Puritans thought the Jews had, on direct orders from God. Judaizing solved the problem of moral and political legitimacy. It allowed the Judaizer a free hand to ransack the Old Testament for models that would justify sexual appetite, as in the case of Milton and the Ranters, or regicide and libido dominandi in the case of Cromwell. -- E Michael Jones

The Christian Bible with its monkish figures, its exorcists, its praying brethren, and pietistic saints, supplied no models for warriors contending with a faithless king, a false aristocracy and unholy priests. Only the great heroes of the Old Testament, with fear of God in their hearts and the sword in their hands, at once religious and national champions, could serve as models for the Puritans: the Judges, freeing the oppressed people from the yoke of foreign domination; Saul, David, and Joab routing the foes of their country; and Jehu, making an end of an idolatrous and blasphemous house-these were favorite characters with Puritan warriors. --Graetz