Interesting Links on European Culture

This post is a bit of a departure from my previous short essays. In this one, I will mainly share some great links to distinctly European traditions and history.

First, a wonderful little blog with the purpose of educating you about 18th century French cuisine. Great articles about foie gras. I have this feeling that you really haven’t lived until you’ve had fattened goose liver. I’ll let you know if my gut is correct, if I’m forturnate enough to have some.

Here is another blog where you can find many recipes, European gastronomic curiosities, and related historical facts. Where else can you find a recipe for whale goulash?

How about This Day in European History?

The incomplete, but worthwhile Encyclopaedia of the Celts. Poor Diarmuid, you’ve really got to watch out for those wild boars. As a companion to this link, visit Who Were the Celts?

I leave you, for now, with the World of the Ancient Britons and English Heritage.

Columbus Day and the SPLC’s Brand of Tolerance(.org)

While I haven’t really acknowledged Columbus day in any other way than by not checking my mailbox. The anti-white bias at the (as John Cripps calls it) Southern (sic) Poverty (sic) Law (sic) Center’s tolerance.org website deserves a mention.

Remember, this is all literature which they suggest teachers use in the classroom. Unfortunately, for many parents out there, many “teachers” probably do. Tolerance.org presents their materials as two points of view, but (as you might have surmised) only one view is really presented in tolerance.org’s materials.

In the name of tolerance, Columbus is compared to, you guessed it, Adolf Hitler. In a piece promoted as an excellent example of a student essay, a seventeen year old writes.

In some respects, Columbus can be compared to Hitler. Both encouraged racist, violent acts against groups they considered inferior. American Indian activist Russell Means has said, “Columbus makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent.” Certainly, Columbus’ ideas killed millions of more people then Hitler’s ever did.

From almost the moment Columbus landed in the New World, he and his men committed horrendous acts against the Native Americans, igniting the beginning of racism in the Americas. In A Short Account Of The Destruction Of the Indies, Bartolome de Las Casas describes the slaughter:

[The Spaniards] forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords… They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke… they grabbed suckling infants by the feet… and dashed them headlong against the rocks.

The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle…and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death.

The United States should abolish Columbus Day. It is a symbol of ignorance. It is a symbol of racism. And, it is a symbol of Native American genocide….To me, celebrating Columbus Day is like celebrating “Hitler Day.”

 

de Las Casas did report such things as a first hand observer of incidents in the West Indies, but they are sorely out of context in this essay, and I assert the primary documents do not support the author’s implication of Columbus as the culprit. In fact he is not mentioned at all by de Las Casas in this treatise, and these events, probably occurred (taking his word as true), sometime around 1512.

The words of the Admiral from his journal of the initial voyage are quite different.

 

As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk’s bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made, with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse’s tail, combed toward the forehead, except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind, and never cut. Some paint themselves with black, which makes them appear like those of the Canaries, neither black nor white; others with white, others with red, and others with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, and some the whole body; others only the eyes, and others the nose. Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks, though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed. I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies, and demanded by signs the of them; they answered me in the same way, that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves. I thought then, and still believe, that these were from the continent. It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our language. I saw no beasts in the island, nor any sort of animals except parrots.

 

This hardly sounds like a massacre. The folks at SPLC must really take these island natives for some real idiots if they go swimming out to the Santa Maria looking to trade items with the people who just chopped their friends in half.

 

They go on in other articles and materials to mock this man’s desire to impart the Gospel of Jesus Christ to these people, thereby following the Great Commission.

 

“How could he think he could force his language and religion upon these people?”

 

What were your children taught about Christopher Columbus today?

Beethoven and the Mulatto – Part 2

As an update and further refutation to claims such as this one by another poor hopeful, I include some portraits of Ludwig van Beethoven which are considered to have been painted from life.

             

These portraits represent a spectrum of age from young adulthood to late in life.  At no point do any of these portraits show any traits which are even remotely Negroid.  The hair is straight.  The nose is not broad and flat, as claimed.  There is no prognathism.  However, his hair is clearly black in his younger years in these paintings.  It is not a stretch to suggest that this characteristic may have accounted for the “Der Schwarzer” reports, a la Eric the Red (you don’t hear anyone claiming that he was a Cherokee).

As further evidence, here are photos of his death mask.  Note the angular nose and thin lips.  The overall facial structure is decidedly Northern European.

As my final entry, here is a photo of a lock of Beethoven’s hair.  There’s nothing sub-Saharan about that.

Beethoven and the Mulatto

There are scattered people who are trying to pass off the idea that Ludwig van Beethoven was a mulatto (actually this guy tries to say that Franz Josef Haydn was also African). Specifically they say that his mother was a Moor. The rumor stems from the fact that Beethoven was reportedly, occasionally referred to as “der Schwarzer”. While this does mean “the black” it hardly means “the Negro” or “the mulatto”.

We’ve all seen paintings of Beethoven and his family tree is fairly well documented. Her parents surnames were Keverich and Westorff, hardly names that evoke visions of Moorish folk. Even if there was some truth to this, the promoters of this fable are hoping to show that he is Negroid, but the Moors are a Northern African people of mixed ancestry (Berber and Arab). You can see how a typical Berber looks here. It’s easy to see that this would do nothing to support a Negroid Beethoven. Of course there is absolutely no evidence to support a Muslim (virtually all Moors are Muslim and were then also) ancestry either.

There is an interesting story concerning the interaction of Beethoven with a Mulatto though. There was a virtuoso violinist contemporary of Beethoven’s by the name of George Bridgetower whose mother was Polish and father was West Indian. His playing so impressed Beethoven that he dedicated a new violin sonata to Bridgetower and entitled it Sonata por uno mulaticco lunattico. “Wait,” you say, “I’ve never heard of that sonata.” Unfortunately, for Bridgetower, the dedication was short-lived. During drinks following a performance Bridgetower made a lurid remark about a lady, so infuriating Beethoven that he withdrew the dedication. Despite Bridgetower’s pleas, Beethoven steadfastly refused, and never interacted with Bridgetower again.

What is this sonata? It’s Violin Sonata No. 9, also known as the Kreutzer Sonata. The irony of the story is, while Bridgetower had reportedly played this piece flawlessly, when the arrangement was sent to Rudolphe Kreutzer, the virtuoso for whom it was named, he proclaimed the piece unplayable, and never performed it.

Asininity and “White Privilege”

The propaganda that the Southern Poverty Law Center promotes through its tolerance.org program is staggering. They offer endless materials to schools and “educators”, and they offer mountains of advice to clueless parents.

One columnist, Elizabeth Bauchner, writes, in her response to her 7-year-old son’s question “Mom, when you grow up, do you get to do whatever you want, or do other people tell you what to do?”

“That’s a very interesting question,” I told him. “In some ways, it depends a lot on where you’re born, how much money you have and what your skin color is.”

I went on to explain in age-appropriate terms that our country was actually founded by white colonists who enslaved Africans and either killed Native Americans or moved them onto reservations. White people have been opening doors of opportunity for other whites ever since, I told him.

Now I don’t know if she makes it a habit of answering her son with non-sequiturs, but what in the world do African slaves and American Indians have to do with his question? It’s clear that this poor child’s mother is suffering from a bad case of misplaced guilt, and has become a very efficient and infectious carrier. Of course, there is also some subtle chicanery going on here, also. White people may have owned African slaves, may have bought them, and may have sold them, but they did not “enslave” these people, they were already slaves. Some American Indians were killed, but this deserves more attention than just a passing statement, suggesting that White settlers sat around plinking at peacefully passing Indians or hunting them as sport. In reality there had been many peaceful interactions between the two races, but these peoples had differing agendas from each other as races often do, and it was simply a matter of time before hostilities arose.

Since she has a 7-year-old son, it’s pretty safe to assume that she didn’t come of age before the beginning of the “affirmative action” era which was set in motion in the 1960’s with President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, and taking further form in Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Orders 11246 and 11375. Preferential consideration of minorities in government hiring, increased to required preferential consideration in the hiring of companies with government contracts, to preferential consideration for college admissions and scholarships, etc. Where are the Whites “opening doors of opportunity for other whites ever since”?

She goes on to say:

Here in Ithaca, New York, where we live, we once were labeled the “Most Enlightened City in America” by Utne Reader. But racism is institutionalized here just like in any other city in the country, and outward bigotry exists, too. Out of the eight elementary schools in Ithaca, the school in the poorest neighborhood is largely comprised of African-American children, while the school in the richest neighborhood is comprised mainly of white children.

This lady just doesn’t get it, she’s been blinded to reality. This is not a symptom of “racism”. This is a matter of intelligence and achievement. Despite the fact that extra doors are opened for these people, the vast majority are unable to take advantage of it. Such doors were never opened for the Irish immigrants. These people opened the doors for themselves. For that matter, the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese have opened the doors for themselves, as well.

Later in the article she shows that she knows it’s really about traits present in the white race, but it becomes readily apparent that she is the queen of the non-sequitur.

My father’s ability to move to that neighborhood and start a new business, get a loan and grow his business through word of mouth all had a lot to do with his skin privilege. Sure, his abilities, his math and mapping skills (he was a land surveyor), and his dedication to working steady hours all played a role — a big role — as did the economy throughout the 1970s. But it’s mainly because of his skin color that he was able to move so easily throughout the wealthier side of society, make connections and network, and acquire the means to comfortably support his wife and three children.

It was my father’s skin color that enabled him to essentially do whatever he wanted….

Notice what she said. Her father was hard working, and was skilled at math and mapping, but this isn’t what made it possible for him start a successful business, and support a family to whom he was dedicated. No, the main reason is he was white. Remember that, when you don’t get into that elite college because some Black or Hispanic with an SAT score 200 points lower than yours and a lower grade point average gets admitted. Remember that, when someone with lesser qualifications, skills, work-ethic, and amiability is hired because the company is ensuring that they meet their quota. You have “White Privilege”, and you can do whatever you want!

Gutenberg and the Reformation – The First Information Age

By the early 1500’s, Europe had been prepared for the Protestant Reformation in ways that Johann Gutenberg could never have expected. Circa 1452, this Mainz patrician developed printer’s ink and an alloy for making individual letters to be used in a typeset, which could then be put into a printing press, and used over and over without wearing out. This allowed for the rapid creation of multiple copies of a document.

A providential note is the presence of alphabetic based written languages in Europe. Logographic forms, such as Japanese or Chinese, would have required thousands of different characters in the typeset, and a system of keeping these thousands organized. The alphabetic systems were much easier to produce and organize, and had the added benefit of the ubiquity of the Roman alphabet which allowed more than one language to be produced using the same typeset.

One of the first documents printed was the famous Gutenberg Bible of which approximately 200 were believed to have been made (somewhere around fifty survive today, the left flanking picture is from one of these). This was a Latin text, primarily the work of Jerome.

Much like new technology today, the first products of this printing press were expensive, but soon costs began to fall as the technology spread. It spread very quickly with probably more than 2500 cities having operating presses by 1500. By the early 1500’s printing had become fairly economical.

While the publishing of the Bible in many languages was very important, this was still a large book requiring a lot of labor and materials. As such, a Bible was still costly beyond the means of the majority of the people. As the Reformation grew, a more readily available resource was the variety of tracts, pamphlets, and sermons, or Flugschriften, produced by numerous reformers (Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli included). These allowed for the rapid dissemination of Reformation literature easily and inexpensively. (Ironically, some scholars believe that one of Gutenberg’s early jobs may have been printing Roman Catholic indulgences.)

These products of the first Information Age, beginning in a town in Germany, had an incredible impact on the course of human history, affecting the entire world, and breaking the stranglehold of the corrupt Roman Catholic Church. I hope and pray that as we continue into this second Information Age, God will send us a reformation exceeding even that of the 16th century.

Welcome to Western Civilization

Many of us (white and non-white) have been brainwashed by the propaganda emanating from the “public institutions of learning” in the United States. We were led to believe that white people have no cultural history, that we are simply “white-bread”, nothing more than blandness in the extreme, emanating out of an apparent vacuum, divorcing us even from American history. While, alternatively, children are forced to study the history of other cultures, and in some case actually required to act out aspects of these cultures and their religions (even learning bogus facts about a “holiday” created by a con man) to the rabidly enforced exclusion of the historic faith of Europe.

I watched more television than I should have during my college years, but one portion of a program I viewed has been stuck in my mind ever since I saw it, and I’ve never been able to shake it. Although I’m somewhat ashamed to admit to watching this show at all, it was from an early season of MTV’s The Real World. In this episode, an ivory skinned woman of obvious European descent breaks out in tears, and proceeds to whine and bemoan how the other women in the communal house, black and Asian as I remember it, were the recipients of such vibrant, glorious cultures, while she was just “plain.” The depth which this appeared to distress her has never left me.

Our children should never have to endure such a plight. Those of white European descent are the beneficiaries of a cultural and historical inheritance that has known no rival among the races of man. It still surrounds us every way we look, but so very much of it is belittled or taken for granted. The baton is now in our hands. Will we blindly follow the direction of the state, or will we pass this heritage on to those who deserve to know of their predecessors and the ways in which they lived, and how they worshipped the very living God and brought all aspects of life under His authority (artistic, political, etc.)?