Today is a day taken to honor the fallen. I’ve served, my father has served, and both grandparents served their own countries before then. The history of Memorial day, and of Arlington cemetery, is of interest, but the question I have today is borne of some discussions with my family over this last weekend. Namely – related to nationalism. I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m nearly the lone Trump supporter, and one of three, maybe four, nominal conservatives toany degree in a crowd of feelgood…
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The Didact takes a look at one of the heresies that nearly tore apart the church and western civilization. One that bears more than a few similarities to today [http://didactsreach.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-distant-mirror-of-heresy.html]. It came to a very sobering end: > The Cathar Heresy ended with the massacre of thousands of followers of their pseudo-religion and the burning alive of over 200 Cathar prefects. It resulted in the establishment of the Inquisition, a deeply maligned and thoroug…
Vienna, Lepanto, Tours, all turning points against the encroachment of Islam that the descendants of Europe would do well to remember, and my friend the Didact has reminded us of Lepanto [http://didactsreach.blogspot.com/2017/02/lepanto-by-g-k-chesterton.html], in the poem by Chesterson. This battle was not merely pivotal, but is notable as well in that the Spanish author Cervantes participated, and was badly injured. Later, having further spent five years as a slave in Algiers, he wrote Don Qui…
Over at Quintus Curtius site, he delves into a bit of history behind a common phrase, [https://qcurtius.com/2016/12/24/the-chilling-origins-of-the-sardonic-laugh/] and we uncover something quite disturbing. He was going through Procopius’s History of the Wars, and came across the following regarding what we call a “sardonic laugh.” > This island of Sardinia was formerly called Sardo. In that place there grows a certain herb that, if men eat it, a fatal convulsion immediately comes over them a…
Background: Much of the below is cribbed from Infogalactic [https://infogalactic.com/info/Lost_Battalion_(World_War_I)]: On October 2 of 1918, near the end of WWI, American forces of the 77th division led by Major Charles White Whittlesey advanced into the Argonne forest as part of a planned offensive. They advanced, reaching their objective at Hill 198, a defensible position, but, the French forces expected on their left flank and the other American forces on their right were stalled, driven b…