was asking my husband if he cared about the baby shower theme and he was like what is that? do you mean like space or like mafia themed? and now he wont let go of the mafia idea. he says the invitations would say "welcome a new member of the family" and we could do italian food
The cultural consciousness would improve if we stopped saying "pregnant" and went back to saying "with child". We need to retrain the collective subconscious through discourse that it is actually a child, your child, not a clinical condition.
Once children became things we can create, select, freeze, discard, rent wombs for, pay for, screen for, customize, we really should not be shocked when people begin speaking of them like they are just products, because that is what products are, they are judged by their quality, they are measured by how useful they are, they are accepted or rejected based on whether they meet the desires of the buyer.
This is what normalizing abortion, IVF and surrogacy has done for us. Evils beyond our wildest imaginations.
"We must expect, therefore, that the poor defenseless patients are, sooner or later, going to be killed. Why? Not because they have committed any offense justifying their death, not because, for example, they have attacked a nurse or attendant, who would be entitled in legitimate self-defense to meet violence with violence...
No: these unfortunate patients are to die, not for some such reason as this but because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become “unworthy to live,” because they are classed as “unproductive members of the national community."
The judgment is that they can no longer produce any goods: they are like an old piece of machinery which no longer works, like an old horse which has become incurably lame, like a cow which no longer gives any milk. What happens to an old piece of machinery? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What happens to a lame horse, an unproductive cow?
I will not pursue the comparison to the end – so fearful is its appropriateness and its illuminating power.
But we are not here concerned with pieces of machinery; we are not dealing with horses and cows, whose sole function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for mankind. They may be broken up; they may be slaughtered when they no longer perform this function.
No: We are concerned with men and women, our fellow creatures, our brothers and sisters! Poor human beings, ill human beings, they are unproductive, if you will. But does that mean that they have lost the right to live? Have you, have I, the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive?
If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm!
If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process!
If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill “unproductive” fellow-men – even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenseless mentally ill patients – then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war.
The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive...
Then no man will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of “unproductive” persons, who in their judgment have become “unworthy to live”. And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice.
Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice.
Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man's conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished!"
~Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Count von Galen, Sunday, August 3, 1941, in Münster Cathedral
I've been dealing with a great deal of anxiety lately; it's summer, I am off contract, and all of my attempts at finding grants/jobs have fallen through so far.
However, as my wife keeps reminding me, God wouldn't want me to worry.
I know that He will provide so long as I continue to trust in His plan and work with Him.
Many of you have been so kind with your encouragement and your prayers. Thank you!
So I return, as always, to Scripture:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."
Matthew 6:25-34
Milton Friedman's greatest regret.
The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.
Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.
Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.
This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.
Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.
30,000 hours of footage, equivalent to 3 years and 7 months, were filmed to capture the blooming of 77 types of flowers, and the result is spectacular.
USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.
I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.
Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.
In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.
This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.
The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.
So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.
The owner asked if everything was okay.
"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."
He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"
I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.
I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.
So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.
And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.
Reborn.
A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.
Pray for the Church as we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ…the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is our greatest strength.