“… Sound historians know that most tyrannies
have been possible because men moved too late.
It is often necessary to resist a tyranny
before it exists.”
~ G.K. Chesterton ~
Via
Cutting (one) Of The Sewer-Pipes
~ ITEM: Why TV is EVIL – simulated reality and brainwashing by repetition
~ ITEM: THE WRITER OF OUR STORY– Divine Providence in The Lord of the Rings, by David Mills
~ ITEM: From the Archives: Godly Hobbits
~ ITEM: Orc (Middle-earth)
~ EVERY FEW MONTHS, they call.. the cable-people. We have interwebs & telephone, but not TV-cable. The cable-people seem very puzzled by this– but I’m not interested in opening the home to 24-7-364 advertising, re-runs, and the sewage which passes for pop culture.
Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message”– that is, before the shows or ads or flickering images, the TV itself forms us, shapes us, creates a passivity and receptivity and uncritical attitude towards mass-media.
The boob-tube is hypno-sewage. The idiot-box kills yer brain, large amounts of time, steals from book-readage, family-time, daydreaming-time, the outdoors.. life.
The internet is addictively bad, too– but as a blogger, I’m “Talking Back” to the machine, to the mass-media mass-marketing of politics, events, fake crap, spin-messages, lies and laughable nonsense.
A Gift From God
Indeed, I’d say that for all the problems with the web (it reflects human sin & virtue, glory and depravity), that the internet itself is a providential heaven-sent gift, a last gasp of freedom and free speech and an opportunity and duty to speak up, speak out, speak with one another out from under the umbrella of state-control, state supervision and the old-stream media one-message fits all system.
I’m not sure how long the freedom of the internet will be permitted in the West– already social networking companies like Book Of Face are censoring, hiding, and shutting down groups they don’t approve of, or issue-based FaceBook pages which the U.S. regime wants controlled (i.e. gun-control, IRS, PRISM, DOMA, Trayvon, Benghazi, Jihad, etc.).
Now Or Never
While the free peoples of the West may speak out, do so, before it’s too late– the orcs are already here, inside and outside our societies: Tolkein called “orcs” all those who want to create an in human “perfect” TechUtopia of wheels and cogs and circuits and group-think and destruction– all in the name of a dark Sauronic kingdom of control, perfection, fear.
Warning– reality is sometimes unpleasant, depressing, and stark: along with your awakening and fighting, I really think you need faith, and hope, and love. After all, the point of the Lord of The Rings is the point we’ve forgotten, or cast aside, for fear of fanaticism– that God’s Kingdom has come; that his providential hand is over all (Frodo was “meant” to find the Ring); that the true victory over sin, death, and hell has been won in Christ; that even the smallest ones can rule the destiny of many, and change the world (the hobbits), and confound the high powers of darkness.
Hobbit on! ~
Via
The Price Is Right!
~ ITEM: Food for Thought
~ ITEM: The Open Library
Writes G.C. McLoughlin over at Mere Comments:
OPEN LIBRARY: Thanks, in part, to the folks at Open Library, I have a virtually endless supply of Summer (And Fall, and Winter, and Spring) reading material for my e-book. Yes, I know nothing can surpass the sensation of the creamy and comforting page with its lingering scent of vanilla and milk—when I die, I wish to be pressed, like a rose, between two pages of St. John’s Gospel—but there’s good to be found in almost everything—even e-books. (E-books, for those who don’t know, are Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and Apple’s I-Pad. You can also read e-book files on your desktop PC, about which more below.)
Tricksy, False
~ ITEM: Frodo Baggins, Now with Digital Botox
~ ITEM: Christopher Tolkien gave his first ever press interview with Le Monde, shedding light on his father’s vision and sharing his own deep dismay with Hobbit director Peter Jackson
~ ITEM: 7 Little-Known Lord of the Rings Facts
~ TOLKIEN HEIR & co-writer son Christopher Tolkien is much displeased (as JRR Tolkien himself would have been) as he has every right to be. On The One Ring fan-blog he’s dismissed as a fuddy-duddy perfectionist jerk… I’d rather say he’s probably a lot like his father, who when the horrid Novus Ordo was used for the first time in his parish, loudly spoke the Latin responses.
Too many modern people consider fantasy and literature as projecting their wonderful elves all over everything; that fantasy is about amorality, anti-Christianity, and Leftist paradise/ disaster/ sex & violence mongering, without connecting things too much to The Real, or The Great Story of the Bible, and The Great Conversation of Western Civilization. You know, everything is just a mirror in which to find our amazing selves, our narrow views, and to ignore what Tolkien or his characters thought and represent and say. How boring and how selfish.
But Enough About You
C.S. Lewis once wrote that Christian preacher & fantasy author George MacDonald baptized his imagination– filled his inner mind’s eye and heart with Christian light, via fiction and inspired story-telling: good writing by a Christian, but not directly about Christianity.
Tolkien baptized my imagination; his proto-evangelion, “a profoundly Catholic novel” said he, shone with a greater light than itself; his wisdom and unapologetically Christian mindset is why the novels are great, even the Hobbit, and why Peter Lucas.. er, Jackson, needs to leave well enough alone. Jackson’s the brilliant mind, of course, who says that LOTR saga is mainly about “friendship”.
Finally, In Conclusion
Two last thoughts: (a) I’m very much wishing that Guillermo del Toro had stuck with the project. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: A Peter Jackson Production by Peter Jackson is very much verging into George Lucas Prequel & Jar Jar Binks territory, and Hobbit 2.0 & 3.0 are very likely to just be more and more awfuller. I fear to even wonder– will Smaug fart? Will Gandalf giggle at juvenile dwarf-jokes? Will we see endless revisitings and piratings of his own scenes, ideas, words, and special-effects from the LOTR trilogy? Will they keep on digitally re-colouring and smoothing everything and everybody?
Sigh. Expectations are low. ~
Random Binky Linkies
The Cute! It Bu-u-u-urns!
~ FAITH & FACTS– King David’s suburban palace unearthed; Take a virtual tour of the Temple Mount … (wnd, biblicalarchaeology.org)
Smeagol Sings Mad World
~ LET’S GIVE RICHARD III the last great Gothic tomb in Britain … (telegraph)
Honest Trailers – X-Men Origins: Wolverine
~ IF YOU`VE GONE to the movies recently, you may have felt a strangely familiar feeling: You’ve seen this movie before. Not this exact movie, but some of these exact story beats … (theothermccain.com)
Kara : a PS3 new technology
Making-Of
~ DIDN`T KNOW What I Was Missing – How I Became Duck Dynasty’s #1 Fan … (theulstermanreport)
~ GOD SMITES 79 Percent Fewer Men Than He Did in the ‘60s … (slate.com)
~ GLEE SINGER Cory Monteith and the misery of modern celebrity, By Damian Thompson … (blogs.telegraph)
GreenEcoClimatology
~ CHARLES ADLER: Global warming scare is dying … (sunnewsnetwork)
~ FAKING IT– Once again, people described as “leading scientists” turn out to be economists, UN officials, and those with links to activist organizations … (SDA)
~ IN THE GLOBAL-warming scam, this happens all the time: A chicken-little will deliver some snotty monologue about “I’ve learned it is futile to discuss it with…” blah, blah, blah. With big smiles on their faces and with their eyes closed“ … (peekinthewell.net)
~ KING COAL gets a chill as the World Bank tackles global warming … (blogs.telegraph)
~ BUMMER: Satellite Records Still Not Following UN IPCC Prognostication … (rightwingnews.com)
~ DELINGPOLE– Another day, another wind farm scandal: “the National Grid has been secretly forking out millions on diesel-generated power in order to stop the lights going out.. For all those occasions when the wind isn’t blowing” … (telegraph, dailymail)
~ ECO-RADICALS– Once embracing the ‘green revolution’, Elizabeth Nickson experienced the chokehold environmentalists have on us while trying to sell her land. She joins Anthony Furey to explain the outrageous actions of eco-facists … (sunnewsnetwork)
~ BRITAIN– “Our lights will stay on – but it will cost us a fortune: The Government is preparing for energy shortages, but this will mean further hikes in our bills”; and “What is happening, in other words, is that we are being set up for massive price increases. This is damage limitation prior to the event” … (telegraph, eureferendum)
~ INDIA threatens Wind farms with fines … (SDA)
Why The Global Warming Agenda Is Wrong
Mark Steyn
~ CITY DOWN! The Downfall of Detroit — It took only six decades of “progressive” policies to bring a great city to its knees; Detroit: Where Liberalism Goes to Die; and Detroit Rock-Bottom City; Motown’s Greatest Hit Job … (Various)
~ THE MIGHTY Mark Steyn on Terrorist as Celebrity, and “Immigration” Reform … (hughhewitt.com)
~ STEYN ON Honor Killing … (nationalreview)
~ OBJECTION, Your Honor! … (nationalreview)
~ STEYN’S SONG of the Week– Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? … (steynonline)
Ezra Levant
~ INNOCENCE: Charges against Levin are horrific enough, but how much darker is it that he had a hand in drafting graphic sex lessons for kids?; Sex-ed expert charged with sex crimes against kids … (ezralevant.com)
~ SAINT DAVID SUZUKI slams immigration – Levant and Kenney respond; CBC star’s comments tantamount to looking every new Canadian in the eye and saying, ‘you’re disgusting’ … (blogs.canoe.ca, Ez)
~ TAREK FATAH and Ezra Levant investigate Justin Trudeau’s pandering to groups who support Sharia law and have radical Islamist affiliations … (ezralevant.com)
~ CYBERBULLY bill is a disaster.. a regurge of Section 13 soft-law; Ezra has a warning for those who want to legislate away bullying: it will only create big government bullies … (ezralevant.com)
~ EZRA LEVANT and Greg Renouf discuss the violent, racist idiots of Occupy Toronto … (eyecrazy.blog)
~ THE MEDIA PARTY made a big deal about the Conservative’s “enemy list,” all parties have them but as it turns the most vicious enemy list belongs to the Media Party … (ezralevant.com)
~ ONTARIO WYNNE Liberals beg neighbours for money– Ezra examines Kathleen Wynne’s latest attempt to fix her own problems by grabbing cash from prosperous provinces … (Ez)
~ BEN SHAPIRO joins Ezra to discuss Jenny McCarthy’s ridiculous claim that kids should not be vaccinated … (ezralevant.com)
FreeSpeechers
~ THE SHAIDLE OF EVIL– Talk Radio Watch: Weekly recap of conservative talk radio highlights; Yesterday’s “extreme, racist” opinions are tomorrow’s mainstream news; Yippie-Kay-25th-Birthday, ‘Die Hard’; David Solway: ‘The Snob Factor among Conservatives’; President of National Assoc. of Scholars: Mitch Daniels was right about Howard Zinn; ‘In a healthy society, Sharpton might be on parole now…’; The Weather Underground mentality is now just received liberal wisdom; ‘Everything I Learned in College Was a Lie’; ‘I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empirically wrong’ as Noam Chomsky; And this ‘woman’ differs from a ‘transsexual’ how exactly?; ‘Something tells me an astronaut’s parents never have to inform people that their child is ‘gifted’…’; So basically everyone can go screw themselves; My husband broke the story of Justin Trudeau’s visit with Muslim extremists, by the way … (fivefeetoffury.com)
~ EDUMACATORS as a co-parent? Nonsense! The story of Ben Levin underscores why we need to keep curriculum as simple as possible … (sunnewsnetwork)
Petty Tyrant Harriet Harman
~ A WORLD OF PETTY TYRANTS… “what underlies Ms Harman’s proposal is a belief that the state should have the right to overhaul and reword the constitutions of private associations. Stop and think about what that would mean. It would represent the end of freedom of association in Britain, the end of people’s age-old right to mix in private with whomever they choose” … (blogs.telegraph)
~ WHY MOVIES SUCK– Save the Movie! — The 2005 screenwriting book that’s taken over Hollywood— and made every movie feel the same … (slate.com)
~ HOUNDED GERMAN Homeschooling Family Will Take Their Fight to the Supreme Court … (theblaze.com)
~ CHRISTIAN Evangelist Arrested in London Says He Preached on All Sexual Immorality, Not Just Homosexuality; Student Who Disagrees With Homosexuality Wins Free Speech Lawsuit Against Teacher … (christianpost)
~ BLAZING CATFURZE– Unexplained Fire at Femen HQ in Paris; Scratch an anti-fascist and you’ll find a fascist every time; 11-Year-Old Yemeni Girl Nada Al-Ahdal Flees Home to Avoid Forced Marriage; Instant Death Penalty… Now that’s a campaign poster; WWF Partners With Country Where Rape Victims Are Jailed; Heather Mallick Doesn’t Mention Her Lady Parts Even Once; Nouvelle Rioting By Muslims In France; Is this America?; Thank God it’s Ramadan… 12 killed and wounded; Here Come Evil Zionist Carrots?; Cyberbully bill is a disaster; Losing it in Toulouse; Maybe men and women are different; ABC News Seattle Soils Itself, Goes Rogue; Ontario Human Rights Commission 2012 Sunshine List, Rankings and Analysis; Racist White Supremacist Mother & Daughter rushing child to hospital attack peaceful #justicefortrayvon supporter … (blazingcatfur)
~ PRIVACY: Bill requiring warrants for email searches nears Senate vote … (instapundit)
~ MELANIE PHILLIPS– Pandering Boris’s discriminatory cable-car; The baseless hatred of the EU towards Israel; Hope on the death pathway, but a hole at Britain’s heart; Denial is a river in Londonistan … (melaniephillips.com)
~ JUICY ECUMENISM– A Foreign Policy Lesson from Congressman Gohmert; By Their Fruits: Liberal United Methodist Leader Charged with Sexual Immorality; Federal Judge Grants Crucial Exemption For Hobby Lobby; A Strange But Lasting Marriage; The Westboro Baptist Muzzle; Facepalm Friday – Camp Crossdress … (juicyecumenism.com)
~ PROPAGANDIST– “Progressive” lynch mobs vs. American justice; Affirmative Action, Aquatic Apartheid, and Absurd Accommodating Acts; Smackdown on Cohen’s Smear; Poetic justice for the latest alleged jihadists captured in Canada?; Roger Cohen’s Smear Attack on South African Jews; Fourteen School Girls Killed by Terrorists in Pakistan … (propagandistmag.com)
~ KEEPING EUROCRATS EMPLOYED– “Should the EU have a €622 million aid budget for Mozambique?” … (eureferendum.com)
~ ERATOSTHENES– Pick of the Week; Nick Searcy Apologizes for Chris Matthews; No, You NEVER STARTED Arguing; Most little girls don’t want to play with dump trucks; There are two economic systems fighting each other for supremacy right now; This is fail. Self-induced fail. Mass-produced. That makes it a real problem; You become whoever you watch … (peekinthewell.net)
~ MOOSE & SQUIRREL– The PM wannabe mouthpiece speaks; Platitude for the politically correct and mindnumbingly stupid … (mooseandsquirrel.ca)
~ GHASTLY ROSEN COHEN– Nothing to be concerned about here; Don’t wear the gangster uniform; Entirely Random Observations About Etiquette and Dead Jew Haters; A few million bucks for an ambassadorship seems like a really great deal; The government has urged police to respect Muslims; Mark Steyn responds to Detroit’s exquisite, Democrat sensitivities about their one-party, bloated, union-led and ruined city; I was the affirmative action poster child, and had a white Mom; The past decade also has seen an alarming degree of mission creep for U.S. SWAT teams … (endofyourarm.com)
~ GATES OF VIENNA– News Feed 7/20/2013; Erdogan’s Dilemma & the ongoing uprising; A Night Out for the Youths of Trappes; Fear and Loathing in the City of Westminster; Swedish Firm Fires Raped Norwegian in Dubai; Why Is Obama Trying to Start a Race War?; Eric Holder Meets the Sundance Kid; Are You Demanding a Return to Communist Albania?; Repugnant and Dangerous; From the Standpoint of Eternity … (gatesofvienna.net)
~ PANDERING JUSTIN TRUDEAU– Pro-life youth call out hypocrisy of pro-abortion Trudeau endorsing John Paul II Day … (lifesite)
~ MERCATOR NET– The French establishment has been rattled by the vigour and intelligence of opposition to the new law on same-sex marriage; A book that builds character; Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai has become a symbol of resistance to Taliban terror; Malala’s dreams are up against a rough terrain; It is shameful to use children as front-line troops in political campaigns; Remember Pearl Harbor? The NSA certainly does; What happened in Eastern Europe post-World War II, and why the Communist system was bound to fail … (mercatornet.com)
~ HORRID HILARY WHITE– Christians are the most persecuted group in the world, expert says … (lifesitenews.com)
~ DIRTY EVIL JOOOOZ– “What is most striking about modern-day Israel-bashers is their conviction that Israel is not only a state that sometimes fights wars, like, say, America and Britain does, but more importantly is a state which corrupts global politics” … (blogs.telegraph)
~ COLUMN: Lilley – Turning off the bulb ban … (blogs.canoe.ca)
~ LIFESITE– Pro-life congressman: The steps of the U.S. Capitol are ‘stained with the blood of our own children’; Phil. Medical Examiner: No third party will be given Gosnell victims’ bodies, will be cremated; ‘Heads should roll’: Pro-life leaders react to U.S. Bishops agency’s funding of abortion giant PSI; Women most likely to be sterilized also most likely to regret procedure, study finds; Is the Italian family about to be replaced by The Messianic State?; Therapists: Ask Chris Christie to veto reparative therapy ban; Baby declared dead ‘comes back to life’ after being placed on chapel altar … (lifesitenews.com)
~ ALEX SCHADENBERG, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Euthanasia Holocaust, Not About Nazis … (alexschadenberg.blog)
~ HAIRY COOTIFIED MARK SHEA– America accelerates its transmogrification into a surveillance state ruled by unelected and unaccountable tyrants; Do a Vital Work of Mercy for a Poor Family with a New Baby Whose Mom has Breast Cancer; If you have a couple of hours and love Tolkien; Seattle: Epicenter of Leftist Pieties and Hypocrisy … (patheos.com)
~ BRITAIN GOES MAD– Gay Marriage Officially Legal in Britain as Queen Gives Royal Approval to New Same-Sex Marriage Law … (christianpost, telegraph)
~ CRAZY PLANET– Nick Cage knows what you think of him; UNESCO’s Grotesque Embrace of Che Guevara; GM is so afraid of Tesla it has assembled a special team to keep an eye on the electric car company; Like trying to get the turkeys to vote for Thanksgiving; How to determine if someone is a moron: a) they take Alice Walker seriously; Glorifying the worst: Upcoming Rolling Stone covers; Paul Krugman’s Nasty and Inane Attack on ‘Libertarian Populism’ … (eyecrazy.blog)
~ HILARY WHITE OF EVIL– Is the Italian family about to be replaced by The Messianic State?; and Withstanding Christian Civilisational Collapse Disorder … (lifesite)
~ MERE COMMENTS– From the Archives: Growing Up Baptist among Catholics; A Plague of Insomnia Leads to Amnesia; Mere Links 07.19.13; From the Archives: Return to Beauty; The Mill of God’s Justice Grinds Slowly, But Exceedingly Fine; On Oscar Wilde & Orson Scott Card … (merecomments)
~ STAND YOUR GROUND– Eco-Zealots and Fred Phelps Sect – So Much Alike; 40 Days For Life Webcast – July 16, 2013; Lac-Megantic Mother Saved By Unborn Child … (forlifeandfamily.blog)
~ THE IMAGINATIVE CONSERVATIVE– Story Telling & Judgment: Cultivating the Imagination; Philipp von Boeselager: Remembering the Plot Against Hitler; The Novels of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis; Edmund Burke and the American Nation; The Young Man’s Guide to Building a House; Rehabilitating the Liberal Arts; The Christian Response by Hans Urs von Balthasar; Ainulindale: Music of Creation in Tolkien; Five More Movies That Every Conservative Should See; Saving Liberal Education from the “Humanities” … (theimaginativeconservative.org)
~ THE DUMB-HEAD MCJ– This is where blue governance has brought Detroit in the end; “I’ll bet it would be cool to live alone again.”; African-American man screws up the narrative; I can remember when Amazon.com only sold books; I didn’t really want to comment on the George Zimmerman controversy; If the darkness doesn’t claim this kid too early, you’re going to hear a lot from her down the road; The moral depravity of abortion enthusiasm; Some of you seem to have badly hurt the feelings of particularly clueless hipster douchebag Ben Sherman; The US Justice Department spent tax dollars to organize demonstrations against an American citizen; From your fingers to God’s ear, Ben; Responding to this question regarding the recent homosexual marriage rulings … (themcj.com)
~ SOCONVIVIUM– Introducing our children to the abortion issue; The importance of accessing abortion stats; Blogger takes Ontario government to court over suppression of abortion information; A Toronto Indy post on a pro-life website?; Defending feminism (that is, the right kind of feminism) … (theinterim.com)
~ ACLU USES DOMA RULING TO WIN IN FEDERAL COURT– 1st victory in new strategy to take same-sex marriage battle to states; and More fallout from DOMA decision: House Legal Advisory withdraws from lawsuit protecting marriage … (wnd, lifesite)
~ THE ONTARIO Human Rights Commission is finally tackling an issue I’ve been warning about for years: employers’ bogus demand that job applicants have “Canadian job experience” … (wernerpatels.com)
~ THE FIRST FREEDOM– Eight Iranian Christians received heavy jail sentences on Tuesday (July 16) after being found guilty of “action against the national security”; Christians Flee Villages in Egypt’s North Sinai after Terrifying Murders … (morningstarnews.org)
~ SOBERING THOUGHTS– I find the the buy local mentality to be a particularly pernicious form of bigotry; The IRS scandal has legs; Is Pierre Poilievre the Pete Campbell of Canadian politics?; George Zimmerman’s favourable/unfavourable ratings better than Al Sharpton’s; “This day an eerie silence fell on American journalism’s attic.”; Al Sharpton is the Herpes of race hucksterism the civil rights movement; If Obama had a city … (ST)
Pat Condell: A word to left-wing students
~ WINTERY KNIGGIT– J. Warner Wallace: the difference between murder and killing in the Bible; Is the root cause of crime poverty or fatherlessness?; Rasmussen poll finds that men are more pro-life than women; Miriam Grossman: a brief history of sex education; Which of the moral rules in the Old Testament are still binding on Christians?; New report exposes NHS socialized medicine as an unmitigated disaster; DOJ won’t prosecute government officials for flagrant lawbreaking unauthorized access of tax records; How brief was the period in which the Cambrian phyla suddenly appeared?; Greg Koukl: six things you have to believe to be a Christian; Panama seizes shipment of missile guidance equipment from Cuba bound for North Korea; Bro-Choice: understanding the motivations of the pro-choice man-child; Teen heroes rescue abducted child in Lancaster, Pennsylvania … (winteryknight)
~ ADVOCACY FOR Gay Marriage Should Lead to More Freedom, Not More Government Control– Requests for tolerance must not become demands for approval… (reason.com)
~ NUISANCE-WATCH: Why Do We Kill the Handicapped? Out of Selfishness, Not Compassion … (lifenews.com)
~ ‘GAY’ LAWS SET STAGE FOR PEDOPHILIA ‘RIGHTS’– Psychologist claims ‘minor-attracted persons’ normal as heterosexuals … (wnd)
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