Looking at my trusty copy of Father Lasance’s New Roman Missal (which, name notwithstanding, is a missal for the traditional Latin Mass), I noticed that in the Catholic Church’s traditional calendar, today is the feast of Our Lady of Ransom. Here is what the Missal has to say:

SEPT 24. Our Lady of Ransom: The Order of Our Lady of Ransom was founded in the Thirteenth Century by St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond of Pennafort, aided by King James of Aragon. The object of the Order was to redeem Christians held in slavery by the Mohammedans. Pope Gregory IX instituted the feast of Our Lady of Ransom and afterwards it was extended by Pope Innocent XII to the Universal Church .

Soeren Kern, writing from Spain for The Brussels Journal, reports that Our Lady of Ransom ( Virgen de la Merced to Spaniards) is Barcelona ’s patron saint. Accordingly, her feast will be celebrated in Barcelona , and on a large scale. Kern says “some 600 cultural events have been scheduled from September 19 to September 28.” But he also notes that, in keeping with Socialist Spain’s unenviable position in the vanguard of today’s anti-Christian Europe , “not a single one of them will make any explicit reference to the religious origin of the event.”

Indeed, times have changed. Far from being the Catholic Spaniards who, in a Reconquista taking almost 800 years, won their country back from the Moorish invaders who had despoiled and inflicted Islam on it, today’s Spaniards (Catalans, here) are doing everything they can to grovel to the Mohammedans they have so unwisely allowed to enter Spain again. Kern reports that not only have celebrations of Islam been inserted into this Christian feast that once celebrated liberation from Islamic slavery, Spanish officials are warned not to practice their Christian faith, if so inclined, but to be sure to affirm Islam:

“Fast-forward some eight centuries to September 2008. Multiculturalism has (temporarily) replaced Islam as the dominant religion in Spain . And multiculturalism’s core doctrine of political correctness says it is now forbidden to honor the memory of faithful Roman Catholics who languished under Muslim captivity.

Instead, the Islamic community of Barcelona has been officially invited to hold its very own festivities as part of the La Mercè festival for the first time ever. Nits de Ramadà (Nights of Ramadan) aims to allow Muslims to party with friends and family during the evening hours when Muslims stop fasting for Ramadan. Nits de Ramadà is open to non-Muslims, provided they dress properly, do not have more than four wives, and do not smuggle alcoholic beverages into the fairgrounds.

At the same time, an anti-clerical group called Lliga per la Laïcitat (Secularism League), which receives a 30.000 euro subsidy to “advise” the regional Catalan government on the separation of church and state, has sent a letter to every municipal councilor in Barcelona warning them not to participate “in the religious celebration that takes place during the festival.” The “religious celebration” refers not to Nits de Ramadà, but rather to a Catholic mass that is scheduled for September 24.

The letter says that justifying attendance of the mass “on the basis of an institutional commitment or a tradition contradicts the imperative necessity to understand that individual religious conscience – which in this case it is – should never take priority in determining the decisions arising from the office an elected representative is temporarily exercising.”

Just in case that was not sufficiently clear, the letter closes by saying: “Democratically elected representatives must exercise their civic role separate from their membership of one or other belief system. In the most friendly and respectful manner possible, we must remind you that you are also representatives of the City of Barcelona .”

In the post-modern linguistics of Spanish Socialism, the letter is saying that any elected official in Barcelona should think twice about his or her job security before attending the Catholic mass that is being held in memory of the city’s patron saint. By contrast, attending Nits de Ramada is not only encouraged, but essential to career enhancement.”

Kern also reports that among Spaniards this suicidal dhimmitude and hypocritical double-standard is not confined to Barcelona or Catalans:

“If the gatekeepers of Spanish multiculturalism do not see any irony in the Islam versus Catholicism debate in Barcelona , then neither does Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero see any irony in his recent trip to Turkey .

Zapatero, addressing some 2.500 guests at a Ramadan fast-breaking iftar meal in Istanbul on September 15, declared that Spain is a country “proud of the influence of Islam in its history.” He went on to say: “We want to pay respect to all religions; we want to be tolerant of all faiths and ideologies. We will demolish all walls that are barriers to understanding each other.”

Just moments earlier, Zapatero’s host, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist prime minister of Turkey , said: “We expect members of other civilizations to declare Islamophobia a crime against humanity.” This is the same Erdogan who once said of Islam: “Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.”

And so on it goes in today’s Europe, where, shorn of any attachment to their traditional faith and civilization, the politicians entrusted with the peace and security of the old continent are Europe ’s gravediggers. However dangerous the Moslem invaders, with their incessant demands and sectarian violence, are, they are not nearly as dangerous as enemies within such as Zapatero, ever eager to accommodate them at their own people’s expense. What St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond of Pennafort, to say nothing of James I of Aragon , would think of traitors like Zapatero and the dhimmis of the Lliga per la Laïcitat is not hard to imagine.

Our Lady of Ransom, pray for us!

Here’s an article from the Brown U. Daily Herald on the role of Brownies, namely the President and an education prof, in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, of which Obama was chairman of the board. It’s a classic example of John O’Sullivan’s law that any non-profit organization that isn’t explicitly conservative always ends up being run for leftists ends. Arch-Republican Walter Annenberg puts up a half billion bucks, $100,000,000 of which went to Chicago, to fix the public schools. For advice, he turns to two people at Brown, the leftiest of the Ivy Leagues. They direct his money to a proposal co-authored by unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, husband of Charles Manson fan Bernardine Dohrn. In turn, Barack Obama gets hired as chairman of the board of the organization dreamed up by Ayers to hand out money to leftist organizations in Chicago like ACORN. The $100 million of Annenberg’s money doesn’t do much for the test scores of Chicago public school students, but it does wonders for building Team Obama among his base, leftist activists and civil servants.

As I’ve been saying for a long time, the easy way to get rich quick is to debauch credit standards, take the money and run, then let somebody else pay to clean up the mess. It’s an inevitable temptation. That’s why the government, which winds up on the hook for bailing out the crash, is supposed to regulate lending, to take the punchbowl away just when the party gets interesting.

Unfortunately, the sacred word “diversity” provided an excuse for everybody who is anybody to keep all four trotters in the trough.

Here’s George W. Bush’s speech from six years ago to the White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership. The precise programs he was advocating aren’t terribly important, they’re fairly minor, but the tone of his speech is important. It puts the Presidential Seal of Approval on the orgy of dubious lending (Downpayments? We don’t need no steenking downpayments!), in the name of increasing minority homeownership.

This is the bipartisan consensus epitomized.

By the way, this isn’t some eloquent oration Michael Gerson wrote and Bush just read stolidly off the teleprompter. As you can see from the garbled syntax, this is Bush winging it, straight from his heart. He really believes all this stuff.

President George W. Bush addresses the White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership at The George Washington University Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002

THE PRESIDENT: …. I appreciate your attendance to this very important conference. You see, we want everybody in America to own their own home. That’s what we want. This is — an ownership society is a compassionate society.

More and more people own their homes in America today. Two-thirds of all Americans own their homes, yet we have a problem here in America because few than half of the Hispanics and half the African Americans own the home. That’s a homeownership gap. It’s a — it’s a gap that we’ve got to work together to close for the good of our country, for the sake of a more hopeful future.

We’ve got to work to knock down the barriers that have created a homeownership gap.

I set an ambitious goal. It’s one that I believe we can achieve. It’s a clear goal, that by the end of this decade we’ll increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families. (Applause.) … And it’s going to require a strong commitment from those of you involved in the housing industry. …

(more…)

Back when I lived in New York, I remember seeing the national debt clock in Times Square, with its constantly flipping numbers — and the vague feeling of helplessness they created.

I was reminded of it today. Court had me sitting in an administrative law judge’s office for the entire morning. The “pro-se“, or do-it-yourself, litigant had burned up another morning a few months back by declaring, at the end of the proceedings, that she wanted an interpreter for her particular Middle Eastern language.

So, we were back again today. The interpreter was there, on the taxpayer dime. Only this time, toward the beginning of the proceedings, the litigant declared that she wanted a lawyer. The judge wasn’t pleased, but allowed for another hearing. The judge asked why lawyer-hiring couldn’t have been attended to earlier, and litigant explained that she had been in her particular Middle Eastern country for most of the time.

So, two whole mornings of wasted time, all paid for by American consumers and taxpayers. This litigant’s citizenship status wasn’t clear, but even as a full citizen, she’s imposed on the rest of us a cost because of her inability to understand English (and demonstrated that she’s not exactly fully committed to living in the United States).

My experience won’t make the news. But things like this happen every day, all day, in many places across America. Maybe what we need, to drive home the point, is a clock that measures all these costs.

The shamrock open-borders hucksters in Ireland and the US were cheered up by McCain’s total reversion to Sen. McKennedy McAmnesty, following his promise on Univision a few days earlier to work for immigration lawbreaker forgiveness starting “the first day.” The Senator reiterated his enthusiasm for open borders before an Irish-American audience — probably to assure non-Mexicans that he doesn’t discriminate.

Following is a report from the press in Ireland about McCain’s recent pander-fest event.

IRELAND became the focus of the US election campaign yesterday when John McCain addressed the Irish American Presidential Forum in the northeastern Pennsylvania town of Scranton and Barack Obama rolled out some of the biggest names in Irish-American politics to rubbish his opponent’s credentials on Irish issues.

Mr McCain said he would continue to appoint a special envoy for Northern Ireland and promised thousands of undocumented Irish immigrants in the US that he would introduce measures to enable them to remain in the country legally.

“There are 50,000 Irish men and women who are in this country illegally at this time, who are hardworking people who want to become citizens,” he said.
[Green card in play as McCain pledges to aid Irish illegals, Irish Times, Dublin, Sept 23, 2008]

Hey, what happened to McCain’s promise to American sovereignty voters that he had gotten the message about borders and immigration enforcement? We do vote in great numbers.

Below, a briefo clip of the McAmnesty agenda which clearly indicates the man’s passion for endless unregulated immigration, not sovereignty.

Ann Corcoran’s estimable Refugee Resettlement Watch (listed on the left-margin blogroll) is the place to go for the blow-by-blow on Somali Muslims and Sudanese Christians and their fun doings around the meatpacking plants in Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE.

I just want to quote Ann’s summing-up paragraph …

I wish I could find one of those do-gooder speeches at this moment—you know the speeches where we are lectured about how diversity enriches our lives and our communities, and anyone who doesn’t know that is a racist xenophobic hatemonger. The do-gooders must think that America has some magical power—one step on American soil and a meatpacking job is like a magic wand that will erase centuries of African hatred.

… and then point you to her entry, Violence increases in Grand Island between Somali and Sudanese refugees [September 23, 2008]  for all the juicy details.

California has the largest percentage of foreign-language speakers. What a surprise.

The Bay Area, with its large number of immigrants, has about the same proportion of limited English speakers as the state overall, the census figures show. For some experts, that is cause for concern. For others, it is a source of regional strength.

“It’s very disturbing when 1 in 5 people is not communicating in the common language,” said Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

“Culturally, it creates a sort of tribalism. This country doesn’t have a predominant race or religion; it just has values. That’s a very thin bond. We have shared values and a shared Constitution; we also have to have a shared culture and language.”

When immigrants congregate in enclaves, they have a harder time learning English and becoming fully American, said Hanson, author of the book “Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.”

“It’s time to go back to the melting pot, control the borders and let assimilation, integration and intermarriage work,” he said.[43% in state speak other than English at home, By Tyche Hendricks, San Francisco Chronicle, September 23, 2008 ]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but America was a predominantly Protestant country with a European-descended population until very recently; explosive immigration has changed that demographic.

As recently as 1970, two-thirds of Americans were Protestants and now the proportion has shrunk to about half, while the Catholic church has promoted extreme levels of immigration, because most of the newcomers are Catholic — and Spanish speaking. The Catholic church needs new members because so many of its American parishioners have left.

Language diversity is really the point of the spear tearing society apart. If I am around a couple of gangsterish Spanish-speakers, I don’t know whether they are discussing where to go for pizza or whether they should try to rob and kill me.

Martin Kelly writes from Scotland:

You’re dead right to describe the bailout as a coup - in fact, it’s worse than that; to all intents and purposes it’s a management buyout of the American financial and political systems.

And done with Other People’s Money!

I’ve been blogging about this since last Tuesday (to anyone who’s willing to listen) - there is absolutely no normative difference between the proposed operation of Paulson’s bailout and Gaetano Salvemini’s description of Mussolini’s economic theory as being that ‘profit is private and personal, loss is public and social’.