In 2022 I retired early after 26 years of pastoral ministry. The tiny Southern Baptist church we attended in Ithaca had a small choir led by a grad student. In seminary the medium-small church I served had a choir. And the church in Baton Rouge where I served for eighteen years had a choir in addition to a more contemporary ensemble.
The rather large Catholic church where my wife and I now attend has a choir.
There’s a large-ish independent Protestant church which restructured and let its music director go. Quite a few people – some of whom I know personally – left that church entirely to find a church which has a choir.
The rise of contemporary worship bands explains part of the trend. Because many churches do not have such bands. “Loss of institutional knowledge” indeed.
IMO, It’s a function of the implosion of most denominations. A number of vectors promote demographic implosion. The salient one is that those who are serious about doctrinal and moral teaching are screened out of formation programs if they present themselves. The people who make it through are those who wish to be den mothers on salary. People who have attended church all their lives will continue to do so, but they attract no one else. Bishops compare unfavorably to parish clergy and denominational apparatchiks are not distinguishable from randomly selected NGO administrators.
==
It might be helpful for pastors to prescribe distinct ministries for different segments of the congregation, but that means locking horns with contemporary girl culture.
==
IMO, many liturgical congregations might be better off with a small (women’s) choir chanting the ordinary in the loft while you have a (men’s) schola or a cantor in the sanctuary chanting the propers. This is seldom if ever done.
From the video:
“It requires time, consistency, and commitment, three things contemporary American culture increasingly cannot provide.”
“It” refers to church choir attendance, vibrancy, and excellence.
Well, yeah… And it ain’t just church choirs either.
Kinda a bit different, but in Eric Metaxes biography of Martin Luther he noted that the Roman Catholic Church of the time did not allow congregational singing ( the common people out in the pews.) Martin Luther pushed for congregational singing and eventually this back filtered back into the Roman Catholic church. Obviously the first century church had singing as it it referred to in Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19.
Something to point out to leftist – I thought Putin was in charge of Trump, according to the left ? Now they say Trump is led by Israel. Here he is taking out one of Russia’s historical drone suppliers that they used in Ukraine. And Israel and Russia have long been adversarial to each other. But then they also say that Trump only works for himself, when they are not accusing him of being a white fascist dictator trying to make America into a ” Christian Nationalist ” Fascist nation. So I would ask liberals- which is it ? It cannot be all of those things . Trump works for Russia? Trump works for Israel? Or Trump is a ” dictator” trying to set up a white supremacists “Christian Nationalist” Nation?
Patsy Cline killed in an airplane crash this day in 1963. She was 31 years of age.
One difficulty in the Catholic Church is the crevasse which separates the apparat from the pew sitters. Some years ago, living in the Diocese of Syracuse, I saw some survey research taken in the Diocese of Rochester next door on the musical preferences of the laity. About 24% preferred strictly traditional music, about 18% strictly modern music, 29% a mix, and 29% did not care or disliked music. In the Diocese of Syracuse, in a parish of the modal type, you’d have three Masses, two without any music and a third where 85% of the music was composed after 1965. I know of one parish for which traditional hymnody and plainchant was the mode. It was located in a village about 50 miles from Syracuse, 40 miles from Utica, and 55 miles from Binghamton.
I think it’s a function of loss of community. Anything that requires a group seems to be dying out. Volunteer seems to be a dirty word now. We are all individuals now with the loss that entails.
@jon baker:And Israel and Russia have long been adversarial to each other.
Not since the end of the Cold War. Russia and Israel get along just fine and work together on issues of common concern. Israel has a lot of Russian-speakers, almost 20%. Putin praises Israel and Netanyahu publicly from time to time. Israel has only imposed some limited sanctions on Russia over Ukraine after several years of US pressure. Russia recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Nations have interests, not friends, and some nations are governed by serious people who understand that. Israel is its own country with its own interests and its own relationships. They have every right to look after their own interests, like any other country has. They are not a 51st state or a protectorate.
In an interview with a Russian newspaper, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Thursday touted Israel’s defiance of Western pressure to sanction Moscow, while warning that Israel would not tolerate the use of Russian-supplied weapon defense systems on its jets in Syria.
Liberman told the Kommersant daily that Israel maintained a frank and open relationship with Moscow and was not looking to clash with Russia in Syria.
“We greatly appreciate our relations with Russia,” Liberman, a former foreign minister, said. “Even when our close partners put pressure on us, like in the case of sanctions against Russia, we do not join them.”
The defense minister offered the recent example of a decision by the US and other Western countries to expel dozens of Russian diplomats in response to an assassination attempt on a Russian double agent in Salisbury, England, earlier this year.
“Israel did not join that action,” he said.
Israel has carefully navigated its relations with Russia in a bid to secure its security interests in neighboring Syria. The government of Vladimir Putin has become a major player in regional affairs, having boots on the ground — and jets in the air — only a few miles from Israel’s borders in the war-wracked country. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met with Putin more often in recent years than with any other world leader, and has long painstakingly avoided offending Russia.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the phone Tuesday ahead of Victory in Europe Day, the two leaders said, in a call that covered “regional developments” and celebrated the role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
Netanyahu also thanked the Russian leader for his help in securing the release of Sasha Troufanov from captivity in Gaza in February, The Times of Israel has learned. He also provided Putin with an overview of Israel’s ongoing efforts to release the remaining hostages.
During the call, the two leaders “exchanged warm greetings on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II,” the Israeli readout of the call said….
Putin also asked Netanyahu to pass along his greetings to Israeli veterans in honor of the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Kremlin said.
The two leaders were also said to have discussed “various aspects of the situation in the Middle East,” as well as “current issues in bilateral relations.”
Russia has ties to all key players in the Middle East, including Israel, Iran and Lebanon, as well as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
It has leveraged its ties with the terror group on several occasions in order to secure the release of hostages with Russian citizenship who were abducted on October 7, 2023.
In November 2023, the Gazan terror group released hostages Elena Troufanov, Irena Tati, and Sapir Cohen as a gesture to Putin, and in February 2025, freed Troufanov’s son Sasha, as well.
They met last month with Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, where the Russian president credited his country’s “stable long-term relations with the Palestinian people” for securing their freedom.
The Kremlin has also been involved in efforts to secure the release of Maxim Herkin, an Israeli hostage from the Donbas area of Ukraine who has Russian relatives.
The call came ahead of VE day on Friday, when Putin will address a grand military parade in Moscow to mark what the country calls Victory Day over Nazi Germany.
Richard Cook: I think it’s a function of loss of community.
Although there are surely several factors at work what our friend wrote is at the core. I recently discovered Rudyard Lynch’s Youtube channel and this is a theme that runs throughout his diagnosis of modernity. Technology plays a central role but this trend has been at work since the rise of industrialization. Heck our last bastion of community – the nuclear family – is starting to dissolve.
Increasingly we are individuals who associate with others who share our interests.
I grew up in a very rural agricultural part of downstate Illinois. Small towns were the norm with large brick church buildings of most denominations present. I retired back there in 2005 The church I had grown up in was down to eight people from hundreds in the 1950’s. There was a full time female pastor who was paid by the national headquarters and was very Woke. Woke female pastors seemed to be the norm in others as well. This was a very MAGA area. When I moved to Texas several years later most of the big brick churches were empty and unused.
What had happened was an explosion of Bible Churches out on the edges ot towns. Low cost buildings with gravel parking lots which are full on Sunday. These new non denominational churches play a large role in the communities. Several in my area got together and bought an old hotel building and created a homeless shelter for example.
@Jon Baker
Some years ago I read a book titled “The Reformation,” probably the one by Diarmaid MacCulloch. The author wrote that Luther came up with a “secret weapon”: the congregational hymn.
When I was a kid, the local factory had a choir. The town itself had a choir — for those for whom church choir and the factory choir wasn’t enough.
Most of the Protestant churches had choirs. Even the Friends Meeting had a choir, but it didn’t perform at their services — it performed at the local nursing homes, and had a concert or two each year. The Catholic churches did not have choirs, not surprisingly, based on the Martin Luther “secret weapon.”
I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but still had to sing in school choir (since I wasn’t in band.)
Joseph Stalin died this day in 1953: it’s a pity he waited so long.
So Noem is out at DHS. She got beat up by Republican Senators at a recent hearing about an ad campaign. There’s obviously a lot more to this, but to my political propaganda eye, she looks too much like a fashion model to be DHS secretary. You need somebody who looks tough like Tom Homan. Or Margaret Thatcher.
This video hits me hard. I am singing in a small church choir. We have one tenor and one bass, both retirement age, and when they go we’ll be down to two parts, assuming our organist keeps going — and he’s showing some signs of forgetfulness. I find singing congregational hymns and especially the church liturgical chants infinitely superior to the praise bands. There’s a connection to the faith and experiences of many centuries before me which is not provided by a professional-level performance of the latest contemporary music on a stage. That’s a concert, not worship.
I’ve been singing nearly 30 years now in the church choir, but not before that. We have four to five of SATB, but young adults are rare indeed. I think my voice has gotten better, but maybe it’s just progressive hearing loss (working to long around drilling rigs). :0
I sing at my small Catholic church and at another Catholic parish in our small town, along with my husband. Right now we don’t have a choir; we did have one before COVID. It was small but faithful, consisting of about ten to twelve singers. We even had a funeral choir, with a different set of volunteers! However, after COVID restrictions were lifted, several changes had happened. Some of our older members became ill and died (cancer, not COVID). Meanwhile, our diocese started requiring clearances for all church volunteers: police record check, FBI fingerprinting, and online instruction about child safety. Some people are understandably reluctant to go through all of this. (Since I was a teacher before I retired, the clearances were not a problem for me. I had to do them for my job anyway.) As the choir disappeared, so did some of our cantors (the people who lead the singing when the choir isn’t there). Some passed away; some moved away. We are currently down to four or five cantors between two parishes, and they understandably aren’t enthusiastic about having to sing at two Masses each weekend, as they would have to do as choir members AND cantors.
At one time, some of my children, as teens and young adults, sang with the choir. Now all four of them have families of their own and do not live in our town anymore, though three of them still live fairly close by. Our town is a dying rust belt community.
In our area, though, there are some larger parishes with thriving choirs. Just a few miles down the road, for example, is a Catholic parish with about 25 active choir members, and my daughter’s former parish also has a choir. Size matters! Not everyone has the time and ability to be in a choir.
The subject of this video hits me right at home.
I started singing in the Baptist Church 3-year-old choir (and we did sing in public at Christmas!), up through high school (pretty much every HS choir member sang in his or her church choir). Sang in ad hoc choirs in college, because we did several musical theater productions every year (I managed to graduate anyway).
Joined the LDS Church in graduate school, immediately joined the choir.
Fifty years on, I have sung in or conducted a church choir except for the Covid years, which did everything imputed in the video. Not currently doing either, as our congregation is pretty small and thin on singers, but have done special musical numbers.
Yes, losing the young people who came up through the pipeline was devastating.
However, even when not in a coir, they have not completely lost the feel for the old hymns with their rich harmonies.
But our hymnal has started adding simple, modern songs.
NO ONE HERE seems to have noticed the single most timely and important analysis of the day by DataRepublican (small “r”), who has posted at American Mind (Claremont Institute organ, IIRC) a powerful thought-piece analyzing everything we worry about here.
To set the stage, consider that in an interview on News Nation, finds Bill O’Reilly alarmed and outraged at the Propaganda Media’s total lack of balance about the War in Iran, and spouting an Anti-American line indistinguishable from defending and endorsing the Mad Theocratic Terrorist Mass murderers of Tehran.
Now, instead of teasing her intro like Instapundit did on Thursday, let’s go straight to her close and summation. Everyone thus far interested can read the evidence used in her case in her column at the source below.
After following the far Leftist money trail of the anti-Trump, Anti-Iran War and Hate ICE activist movements, here’s where she arrives:
“This is why the establishment’s condemnation of the Iran strikes is so disproportionate to the event. They are not mourning Khamenei. They are recognizing, with alarm, what Trump is actually doing. The regime change Trump is attempting is not Iran’s. It is theirs.
“Every act that reasserts American sovereignty—on Iran, on trade, on immigration, on energy—is an act of regime change against the supranational order that has governed American life, foreign and domestic, for at least 70 years. The strikes on Khamenei’s compound are a demonstration that a sovereign nation, acting in its own interest, does not need institutional permission. The Trump Administration just showed that the veto that the multilateral order spent decades embedding into American foreign policy—through think tanks, through NGOs, through carefully managed BRICS adversaries—can simply be ignored.
“This is how the NGO-Administrative Complex dies. One sovereign act at a time.”
_____________
JUST RECONSIDER THIS STATEMENT BY ITSELF:
“Every act [by Trump] that reasserts American sovereignty—on Iran, on trade, on immigration, on energy—is an act of regime change against the [globalist] supranational order that has governed American life, foreign and domestic, for at least 70 years.“ [my additions.]
I ought to not be surprised at her analysis. It makes so much sense of a lot of Left and Far Left craziness today. But I am! She makes profound and epic good sense.
. Meanwhile, our diocese started requiring clearances for all church volunteers: police record check, FBI fingerprinting, and online instruction about child safety.
==
The smart money says a lawyer dreamed that one up, and it’s designed to diminish potential liability, not to improve ‘child safety’. You cannot design a flawless screening system, but you can exclude from formation programs men with indicia of sexual deviance and have a rule in each parish that men assigned to youth ministry be those who are married and have fathered children.
@ TJ Olson > “the single most timely and important analysis of the day by DataRepublican (small “r”),”
Thanks, very good post, and very likely correct.
A companion post is this from PowerLine, which embeds a video by an Israeli pundit, and it was worth listening to. He proposes that Trump’s real target is the increasing tie between Iran and China that was setting up a “second front” in the event of military action concerning Taiwan.
Their substance and conclusions are not the same, but they dovetail.
What I miss is congregational singing. We still have a choir, rather weak and tentative but functioning. The congregation technically stand for the hymns and join in, but it’s feeble. Hardly anyone can read music any more, or even thinks of taking a part other than the tune line. I’m afraid recorded music has rendered most people into a completely passive, silent audience.
The exception is the Shape Note gatherings that are still held all over the country. Those are fabulous.
So I asked Brave (browser) for Shape Note gatherings in WA or OR and it quickly found annual events in Portland and Seattle. Time to update my things worthwhile to do list, one likely to bring joy.
Hi there, blog. I direct a small church choir of, let’s say six people. The problems confronting typical Greek Orthodox choirs are often of a different nature than those with which American Protestant choirs have to grapple. But then again, a number of them are shared. So I appreciate those of you who have viewpoints on these things.
Om–I do hope you’ll try one. It’s not like anything else. The Anonymous Four do a wonderful job bringing out the pure tones of the four parts, but a real Shape Note gathering is something completely different. You can watch quite a number of them on YouTube. Try something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTPP_yTriGQ
Wendy K Laubach:
Thank you!
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This is fascinating. Thank you for sharing it.
In 2022 I retired early after 26 years of pastoral ministry. The tiny Southern Baptist church we attended in Ithaca had a small choir led by a grad student. In seminary the medium-small church I served had a choir. And the church in Baton Rouge where I served for eighteen years had a choir in addition to a more contemporary ensemble.
The rather large Catholic church where my wife and I now attend has a choir.
There’s a large-ish independent Protestant church which restructured and let its music director go. Quite a few people – some of whom I know personally – left that church entirely to find a church which has a choir.
The rise of contemporary worship bands explains part of the trend. Because many churches do not have such bands. “Loss of institutional knowledge” indeed.
IMO, It’s a function of the implosion of most denominations. A number of vectors promote demographic implosion. The salient one is that those who are serious about doctrinal and moral teaching are screened out of formation programs if they present themselves. The people who make it through are those who wish to be den mothers on salary. People who have attended church all their lives will continue to do so, but they attract no one else. Bishops compare unfavorably to parish clergy and denominational apparatchiks are not distinguishable from randomly selected NGO administrators.
==
It might be helpful for pastors to prescribe distinct ministries for different segments of the congregation, but that means locking horns with contemporary girl culture.
==
IMO, many liturgical congregations might be better off with a small (women’s) choir chanting the ordinary in the loft while you have a (men’s) schola or a cantor in the sanctuary chanting the propers. This is seldom if ever done.
From the video:
“It requires time, consistency, and commitment, three things contemporary American culture increasingly cannot provide.”
“It” refers to church choir attendance, vibrancy, and excellence.
Well, yeah… And it ain’t just church choirs either.
Kinda a bit different, but in Eric Metaxes biography of Martin Luther he noted that the Roman Catholic Church of the time did not allow congregational singing ( the common people out in the pews.) Martin Luther pushed for congregational singing and eventually this back filtered back into the Roman Catholic church. Obviously the first century church had singing as it it referred to in Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19.
Something to point out to leftist – I thought Putin was in charge of Trump, according to the left ? Now they say Trump is led by Israel. Here he is taking out one of Russia’s historical drone suppliers that they used in Ukraine. And Israel and Russia have long been adversarial to each other. But then they also say that Trump only works for himself, when they are not accusing him of being a white fascist dictator trying to make America into a ” Christian Nationalist ” Fascist nation. So I would ask liberals- which is it ? It cannot be all of those things . Trump works for Russia? Trump works for Israel? Or Trump is a ” dictator” trying to set up a white supremacists “Christian Nationalist” Nation?
Patsy Cline killed in an airplane crash this day in 1963. She was 31 years of age.
https://youtube.com/@patsyclineofficial
One difficulty in the Catholic Church is the crevasse which separates the apparat from the pew sitters. Some years ago, living in the Diocese of Syracuse, I saw some survey research taken in the Diocese of Rochester next door on the musical preferences of the laity. About 24% preferred strictly traditional music, about 18% strictly modern music, 29% a mix, and 29% did not care or disliked music. In the Diocese of Syracuse, in a parish of the modal type, you’d have three Masses, two without any music and a third where 85% of the music was composed after 1965. I know of one parish for which traditional hymnody and plainchant was the mode. It was located in a village about 50 miles from Syracuse, 40 miles from Utica, and 55 miles from Binghamton.
I think it’s a function of loss of community. Anything that requires a group seems to be dying out. Volunteer seems to be a dirty word now. We are all individuals now with the loss that entails.
@jon baker:And Israel and Russia have long been adversarial to each other.
Not since the end of the Cold War. Russia and Israel get along just fine and work together on issues of common concern. Israel has a lot of Russian-speakers, almost 20%. Putin praises Israel and Netanyahu publicly from time to time. Israel has only imposed some limited sanctions on Russia over Ukraine after several years of US pressure. Russia recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Nations have interests, not friends, and some nations are governed by serious people who understand that. Israel is its own country with its own interests and its own relationships. They have every right to look after their own interests, like any other country has. They are not a 51st state or a protectorate.
Random Times of Israel article from 2018, but you can find others, if you choose:
A 2025 article:
Richard Cook: I think it’s a function of loss of community.
Although there are surely several factors at work what our friend wrote is at the core. I recently discovered Rudyard Lynch’s Youtube channel and this is a theme that runs throughout his diagnosis of modernity. Technology plays a central role but this trend has been at work since the rise of industrialization. Heck our last bastion of community – the nuclear family – is starting to dissolve.
Increasingly we are individuals who associate with others who share our interests.
I grew up in a very rural agricultural part of downstate Illinois. Small towns were the norm with large brick church buildings of most denominations present. I retired back there in 2005 The church I had grown up in was down to eight people from hundreds in the 1950’s. There was a full time female pastor who was paid by the national headquarters and was very Woke. Woke female pastors seemed to be the norm in others as well. This was a very MAGA area. When I moved to Texas several years later most of the big brick churches were empty and unused.
What had happened was an explosion of Bible Churches out on the edges ot towns. Low cost buildings with gravel parking lots which are full on Sunday. These new non denominational churches play a large role in the communities. Several in my area got together and bought an old hotel building and created a homeless shelter for example.
@Jon Baker
Some years ago I read a book titled “The Reformation,” probably the one by Diarmaid MacCulloch. The author wrote that Luther came up with a “secret weapon”: the congregational hymn.
When I was a kid, the local factory had a choir. The town itself had a choir — for those for whom church choir and the factory choir wasn’t enough.
Most of the Protestant churches had choirs. Even the Friends Meeting had a choir, but it didn’t perform at their services — it performed at the local nursing homes, and had a concert or two each year. The Catholic churches did not have choirs, not surprisingly, based on the Martin Luther “secret weapon.”
I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but still had to sing in school choir (since I wasn’t in band.)
Joseph Stalin died this day in 1953: it’s a pity he waited so long.
So Noem is out at DHS. She got beat up by Republican Senators at a recent hearing about an ad campaign. There’s obviously a lot more to this, but to my political propaganda eye, she looks too much like a fashion model to be DHS secretary. You need somebody who looks tough like Tom Homan. Or Margaret Thatcher.
Here’s an odd one:
“US adversaries made nearly 30K visits to sensitive labs under Biden admin, bombshell data show”—
https://nypost.com/2026/03/05/us-news/us-adversaries-made-nearly-30000-visits-to-sensitive-labs-under-biden-admin-bombshell-data-show/
This video hits me hard. I am singing in a small church choir. We have one tenor and one bass, both retirement age, and when they go we’ll be down to two parts, assuming our organist keeps going — and he’s showing some signs of forgetfulness. I find singing congregational hymns and especially the church liturgical chants infinitely superior to the praise bands. There’s a connection to the faith and experiences of many centuries before me which is not provided by a professional-level performance of the latest contemporary music on a stage. That’s a concert, not worship.
I’ve been singing nearly 30 years now in the church choir, but not before that. We have four to five of SATB, but young adults are rare indeed. I think my voice has gotten better, but maybe it’s just progressive hearing loss (working to long around drilling rigs). :0
I sing at my small Catholic church and at another Catholic parish in our small town, along with my husband. Right now we don’t have a choir; we did have one before COVID. It was small but faithful, consisting of about ten to twelve singers. We even had a funeral choir, with a different set of volunteers! However, after COVID restrictions were lifted, several changes had happened. Some of our older members became ill and died (cancer, not COVID). Meanwhile, our diocese started requiring clearances for all church volunteers: police record check, FBI fingerprinting, and online instruction about child safety. Some people are understandably reluctant to go through all of this. (Since I was a teacher before I retired, the clearances were not a problem for me. I had to do them for my job anyway.) As the choir disappeared, so did some of our cantors (the people who lead the singing when the choir isn’t there). Some passed away; some moved away. We are currently down to four or five cantors between two parishes, and they understandably aren’t enthusiastic about having to sing at two Masses each weekend, as they would have to do as choir members AND cantors.
At one time, some of my children, as teens and young adults, sang with the choir. Now all four of them have families of their own and do not live in our town anymore, though three of them still live fairly close by. Our town is a dying rust belt community.
In our area, though, there are some larger parishes with thriving choirs. Just a few miles down the road, for example, is a Catholic parish with about 25 active choir members, and my daughter’s former parish also has a choir. Size matters! Not everyone has the time and ability to be in a choir.
The subject of this video hits me right at home.
I started singing in the Baptist Church 3-year-old choir (and we did sing in public at Christmas!), up through high school (pretty much every HS choir member sang in his or her church choir). Sang in ad hoc choirs in college, because we did several musical theater productions every year (I managed to graduate anyway).
Joined the LDS Church in graduate school, immediately joined the choir.
Fifty years on, I have sung in or conducted a church choir except for the Covid years, which did everything imputed in the video. Not currently doing either, as our congregation is pretty small and thin on singers, but have done special musical numbers.
Yes, losing the young people who came up through the pipeline was devastating.
However, even when not in a coir, they have not completely lost the feel for the old hymns with their rich harmonies.
But our hymnal has started adding simple, modern songs.
NO ONE HERE seems to have noticed the single most timely and important analysis of the day by DataRepublican (small “r”), who has posted at American Mind (Claremont Institute organ, IIRC) a powerful thought-piece analyzing everything we worry about here.
To set the stage, consider that in an interview on News Nation, finds Bill O’Reilly alarmed and outraged at the Propaganda Media’s total lack of balance about the War in Iran, and spouting an Anti-American line indistinguishable from defending and endorsing the Mad Theocratic Terrorist Mass murderers of Tehran.
Now, instead of teasing her intro like Instapundit did on Thursday, let’s go straight to her close and summation. Everyone thus far interested can read the evidence used in her case in her column at the source below.
After following the far Leftist money trail of the anti-Trump, Anti-Iran War and Hate ICE activist movements, here’s where she arrives:
“This is why the establishment’s condemnation of the Iran strikes is so disproportionate to the event. They are not mourning Khamenei. They are recognizing, with alarm, what Trump is actually doing. The regime change Trump is attempting is not Iran’s. It is theirs.
“Every act that reasserts American sovereignty—on Iran, on trade, on immigration, on energy—is an act of regime change against the supranational order that has governed American life, foreign and domestic, for at least 70 years. The strikes on Khamenei’s compound are a demonstration that a sovereign nation, acting in its own interest, does not need institutional permission. The Trump Administration just showed that the veto that the multilateral order spent decades embedding into American foreign policy—through think tanks, through NGOs, through carefully managed BRICS adversaries—can simply be ignored.
“This is how the NGO-Administrative Complex dies. One sovereign act at a time.”
_____________
JUST RECONSIDER THIS STATEMENT BY ITSELF:
“Every act [by Trump] that reasserts American sovereignty—on Iran, on trade, on immigration, on energy—is an act of regime change against the [globalist] supranational order that has governed American life, foreign and domestic, for at least 70 years.“ [my additions.]
I ought to not be surprised at her analysis. It makes so much sense of a lot of Left and Far Left craziness today. But I am! She makes profound and epic good sense.
Check the full article out and decide for yourself! https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-fall-of-the-ngo-administrative-complex/
. Meanwhile, our diocese started requiring clearances for all church volunteers: police record check, FBI fingerprinting, and online instruction about child safety.
==
The smart money says a lawyer dreamed that one up, and it’s designed to diminish potential liability, not to improve ‘child safety’. You cannot design a flawless screening system, but you can exclude from formation programs men with indicia of sexual deviance and have a rule in each parish that men assigned to youth ministry be those who are married and have fathered children.
@ TJ Olson > “the single most timely and important analysis of the day by DataRepublican (small “r”),”
Thanks, very good post, and very likely correct.
A companion post is this from PowerLine, which embeds a video by an Israeli pundit, and it was worth listening to. He proposes that Trump’s real target is the increasing tie between Iran and China that was setting up a “second front” in the event of military action concerning Taiwan.
Their substance and conclusions are not the same, but they dovetail.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/03/whose-war-is-it.php
What I miss is congregational singing. We still have a choir, rather weak and tentative but functioning. The congregation technically stand for the hymns and join in, but it’s feeble. Hardly anyone can read music any more, or even thinks of taking a part other than the tune line. I’m afraid recorded music has rendered most people into a completely passive, silent audience.
The exception is the Shape Note gatherings that are still held all over the country. Those are fabulous.
Wendy K Lauback:
Shape note singing, Anonymous Four, “American Angels” album:
Holy Manna
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JUtfpx-6cdQ&list=RDJUtfpx-6cdQ&start_radio=1&pp=ygUbYW1lcmljYW4gYW5nZWxzIGFub255bW91cyA0oAcB
Wendy K Lauback:
So I asked Brave (browser) for Shape Note gatherings in WA or OR and it quickly found annual events in Portland and Seattle. Time to update my things worthwhile to do list, one likely to bring joy.
https://fasola.org/singings/ This gives a state listing.
Hi there, blog. I direct a small church choir of, let’s say six people. The problems confronting typical Greek Orthodox choirs are often of a different nature than those with which American Protestant choirs have to grapple. But then again, a number of them are shared. So I appreciate those of you who have viewpoints on these things.
Om–I do hope you’ll try one. It’s not like anything else. The Anonymous Four do a wonderful job bringing out the pure tones of the four parts, but a real Shape Note gathering is something completely different. You can watch quite a number of them on YouTube. Try something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTPP_yTriGQ
Wendy K Laubach:
Thank you!