Tielman Susato’s Myns Liefkens Bruyn Ooghen & Loyset Compère’s Le Grant Désir D’aymer M’y Tient Performed by Cappella Pratensis and Sollazzo Ensemble

Ancient Morality Better Than Modern

“Burials show that children with Down Syndrome and Edwards Syndrome were recognized as members of their communities,” EurekaAlert! Science News Alerts reports — Ancient genomes reveal Down Syndrome in past societies — on this Nature Communications research — Cases of trisomy 21 and trisomy 18 among historic and prehistoric individuals discovered from ancient DNA.

Healthline reports that “nearly 100 percent of women in Iceland who receive a positive test for Down syndrome choose to terminate the pregnancy,” “[i]n Denmark, 98 percent of pregnancies with a Down syndrome diagnosis are terminated,” [i]n France, it’s 77 percent, and in the United States it’s 67 percent” — Abortion and Down Syndrome.

Working Through the MacIntyrean Œvre

I feel privileged to be reading the great Alasdair MacIntyre, who just celebrated his CXV^th birthday, while he is still with us. Having finished After Virtue, I immediately opened Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Together over 700 pages, they make the case against the so-called Enlightenment and the case for tradition-based inquiry, namely Thomistic Aristotelianism. Next up are Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition and Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues.

Bogeymen to Infuse Bogeymanism in Bogeyman Admin

Politico wants you scared — Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration — as the Salon shills jump on the bandwagon — Donald Trump may not believe in God, but he still plans to turn America into a Christian theocracy.

End Our Foreign Entanglement in the Holy Land

“Forty years of Western peacemaking have seen nothing but deteriorating conditions in the Holy Land,” Peter Hitchens at The American Conservative observes — The U.S. Should Get Out of the Israel-Palestine Game.

Dietrich Buxtehude’s Herzlich Lieb Hab Ich Dich O Herr, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christ Lag in Todesbanden, Dietrich Buxtehude’s Benedicam Dominum in Omni Tempore, Nikolaus Bruhns’s De Profundis Clamavi, Dietrich Buxtehude’s Nimm von Uns, Herr, Du Treuer & Johann Christoph Bach’s Es Erhub Sich ein Streit Performed by Maïlys de Villoutreys, Lucile Richardot, Renaud Bres, Manuel Walser & L’Ensemble Pygmalion, Directed by Raphaël Pichon

Guillaume de Machaut’s Kyrie from La Messe de Nostre-Dame Sung by Ecstatic Ensemble

Guillaume de Machaut’s Je Vivroie Liement, Dame Ne Regardez Pas & De Petit Peu Performed by Ensemble Parlamento

The Church, the Age of Faith, and Woman

“Contrary to popular belief, the decline of women’s rights in history has always corresponded to a retreat of the Church within Western societies, especially from the Renaissance onwards, for the Church has been the most zealous advocate of women in history,” Solène Tadié at National Catholic Register writes — Why Feminists Should Celebrate the Middle Ages (and the Catholic Church).

Citing at length a scholar who “masterfully demonstrates that women reached their zenith in feudal times (between the 10th and 13th centuries)” and “that the cause of women was inseparable from the defense of the Middle Ages,” she writes:

While the women’s liberation movements that ensued in the 19th and 20th centuries are not illegitimate according to the historian, she already noted 40 years ago the “suicidal tendency” of many of them. According to her, they encouraged women to “deny themselves, to be satisfied with copying their partner’s behavior, seeking to reproduce it as a kind of ideal, perfect model, denying themselves any originality from the outset.”

“Why don’t we women invent our own solutions, as other women did in their time? Don’t we have anything original to offer the world, for example, in the face of today’s serious shortcomings?” she wrote. She goes on to conclude that “we can only assert ourselves by creating” and that “it is difference that is creative.” These were prophetic words indeed, a few decades before the emergence of ideological movements whose vocation is the pure and simple negation of the essence of beings.

Gynocracy and Transgenderism

“Less observable but even more crucial to the emergence of the transgender phenomenon has been the role of female social dominance, which has grown in strength in the West over the course of decades,” Carl F. Horowitz at Chronicles Magazine observes — Trans Lunacy: The Feminine Touch.

Noting the “mothering instinct to ensure everyone in a group setting feels equally valued rather than ‘left out,'” the author concludes, “Managed inclusivity and nurturing can be a laudable model for running a family or a classroom. But it is a disastrous model for running a country.”