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How to signal you are a Random Layperson*: wear some f#@king history!


I’m with Mary. And Milo!



*How do you know that you are a Random Layperson? You read Fencing Bear!


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Chivalry Our Lord's-Style, ca. A.D. 33

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I saw a video on one of my friend's Facebook feeds the other night, one of those videos taken with a mobile phone that can now be uploaded to the world from anywhere in the world. It was one of a number of videos taken at the same time--you could see all the other people in the scene holding up their phones, too--so I don't know how many of them there are of this particular incident. The scene is a street and there are about a dozen or so men standing round, most of them with their faces covered by black ski masks. In the middle of the group, there is an older woman, dressed in a black gown with her hair covered also in black. She is carrying a red backpack. The men, according to the description of the video that my friend gave, are talking with her about how offensive they find it that she will not cover her face, too. All of the men are carrying guns. I cannot watch this video, it is too awful. Because my friend told me what happens. After talking with the woman for a few m
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Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

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1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a
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Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

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I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca
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Free Speech Fundamentals: Building a Platform

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Milo's platform It is without a doubt one of the sillier complaints that protestors at Milo's talks have regularly made when they are trying to shut him up for having conservative political opinions about freedom of speech. For example, at UC Davis, where the protestors effectively shut down Milo's event the night before with their violence , after which the next day one of them demanded of Milo as he was talking to the crowd gathered outside to hear him speak (see video at 4:01 ): "Where's my platform? Where is everyone else's platform?" Milo admonished him: "You had it last night, brother," but of course the young man was not satisfied. He thought that it was Milo's fault that nobody wanted to listen to him. Trigglypuff at UMass Amherst had the same complaint, if imperfectly expressed (see video at 1:26 ): "But this is free speech! If you're so concerned about free speech..."--meaning presumably hers, as she clearly wa
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God's Fools

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Like Jesus , Francis of Assisi did some pretty outrageous things. Everybody knows how he went and preached to the birds, but not everybody knows why he did it. It wasn't, as certain 1970s movies would have it, because he was a nature-loving hippie (although I do love Donavan's soundtrack, especially the theme song). It was because the human beings he was preaching to wouldn't listen. He had wanted to preach the word of God in Rome, but when he arrived there, the people scorned him because he was dressed poorly, so they thought him an idiot. He tried for several days to gain their attention, but could not overcome their hardness of heart. "I grieve deeply over your misfortune," he told them, "because you are not only spurning me as a servant of Christ, but you are also really despising Him in me, since I have been preaching to you the Gospel of the Redeemer of the world. And so I am now leaving Rome. And I call as witness of your desolation Him who is t
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