HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

In its race to canonize the late Nelson Mandela before he has even cooled to room temperature (“Nelson Mandela, South African Icon of Peaceful Resistance, Is Dead“), The New York Times shows itself once again to be the natural heir to the Soviet Communist Party’s Pravda.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum, perhaps. But to describe Nelson Mandela as an “Icon of Peaceful Resistance” is to ignore the first half of his life.

There was a reason Nelson Mandela was on Robben Island. Whatever the old Marxist may have been in his later years, in the full flush of his youth he was an active terrorist with plenty of blood, black as well as white, on his hands. Read More »

NATHAN writes:

One of the things Charles wrote in describing a social dilemma in connection with the impending imposition of a homosexual “couple” on his hitherto enjoyable group of oenophiles reminded me of an unpleasant experience I had in 2001. Twelve years later, discord about it lingers with my wife, who believes my sounding off permanently damaged social friendships and probably cost me job opportunities that might have our family in far better financial shape today than we are. She is probably right. The cost of saying what our masters do not want us to hear can be high, if not yet as high as in the Soviet Union. Highly educated Americans — if what elite universities in the United States (American universities no more) offer is “education” — are especially socially programmed, and most are entirely unaware of it.

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DEBORAH ACUFF writes:

IN ADDITION to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 and Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture, the distinguished Princeton University Orchestra, which only costs about $60,000 a year for musicians to join, will be performing the “Ballad for Trayvon Martin for Orchestra and Jazz Quintet” at its concert tonight. The ballad is the work of Jazz Professor Anthony Branker, who says Trayvon’s death was an act of racial violence. The two-faced professor contends that his composition, obviously born of racial militance, is all about healing. From The Star-Ledger:

According to Branker, the work is intended “to be a form of healing and something that could be seen as a composition of hope — one that speaks to all of us to continue to work together so that children of any race, ethnicity or religious affiliation never have to meet such a tragic end.”

Rather than write from a place of anger, Branker has worked to create a lyrical, peaceful and harmonically beautiful work that incorporates a fugue and Brazilian style. The goal, he said, is to pay tribute to Martin, as well as others who have been victims of racial violence.

Yes, I suppose it is a composition of hope: the hope that white guilt will never die. Surely, it implicitly embodies the hope that whites will not wake up one day and say, “Wait a minute. Where are the ballads for the victims of black brutality? What about the hundreds of people raped and murdered by blacks every year? What about those who died in total innocence, not while pummeling a stranger and not while pounding a man’s head against a concrete sidewalk?”

NEW STATISTICS show that two out of three sodomites infected with HIV continue to have “unprotected sex.” Thus many homosexuals continue to be exposed to a deadly disease by other homosexuals. As the blogger Mundabor writes:

It boggles the mind. It squarely makes of fags the enemy number one of fags, their own willed target for potentially deadly infections. Gaystapo as it breathes and sodomises.

What people still seem not to understand (because they don’t know jack of God, sin, or the devil) is how damaged the soul of an homosexual already is. … [U]nless we understand the gravity of this truly satanical perversion we wil not be able to understand its consequences. Only people firmly in the hand of the devil can be so astonishingly, diabolically self-centred as to put not even their own pleasure, but merely its maximum enjoyment at a premium over other people’s health and perhaps life.

The idea that homosexual culture will ever embrace “unprotected sex” is ludicrous. The culture is based, after all, upon uninhibited sexual indulgence. Don’t you love that bureaucratic phrase: “Unprotected sex?” Every act of anal intercourse is unprotected. Forgive my bluntness, but anal tissues were not designed to be roughed up. They are very different from vaginal tissues. They easily tear, exposing the body to bacteria and viruses. They are in close contact with dangerous bodily wastes. The anus was meant to be an exit way only, not an entryway. The anal passage is homophobic. And nothing can ever be done to change that. Millions of men have died prematurely and suffered all kinds of physical atrocities, including anal cancer, because of violations against this anatomical region. We supposedly live in a medically enlightened age and yet the rudiments of biology are denied every day in The New York Times. The liberal obsesses about secondhand smoke and then applauds the far more unhealthy acts of the sodomite.

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KARL D. writes:

I just came across this article which jibes quite well with your recent posts (here, here and here) on Asians and your reader’s suggestion that they are “model immigrants.” A Chinese woman in Long Island, New York wants to build an entire gated community (that would cost billions of dollars) specifically for  wealthy Chinese nationals in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York. As you can imagine, the citizens of this tiny community are not exactly thrilled.

FOR the second time, feminists in San Juan, Argentina taunt and attack Catholics protecting the cathedral from vandalism. LifesiteNews has the story.

The [topless] women, many of them topless, spray-painted the men’s crotches and faces and swastikas on their chests and foreheads, using markers to paint their faces with Hitler-like moustaches. They also performed obscene sexual acts in front of them and pushed their breasts onto their faces, all the while shouting “get your rosaries out of our ovaries.”

[…]

After unsuccessfully trying to get into the building, the women burned a human-sized effigy of Pope Francis. “If the pope were a woman, abortion would be legal,” they shouted.

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CHARLES writes:

I am a traditionalist and a fan of your blog.  I find it to to be full of thoughtful and perceptive comments written by learned and thoughtful people.

I am afraid that I will soon be forced to confront a very awkward and uncomfortable social problem of the type frequently discussed in your blog.  I thought that my quandary might be of interest  and that it might be helpful to solicit your views and those of your contributors on the underlying issue and my proposed response to it.

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JEWEL writes:

I wonder as I ponder the wretched state of music in the Church. Here is quite possibly one of the most obnoxious Advent songs ever. We sang it last Sunday in our Novus Ordo church. It was the processional hymn.

Listen and weep.

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IN response to the entry on Chinese women giving birth on American soil, a reader sent the following comment, which was previously published at View from the Right.

Anti-Global Expatriate writes:

Despite all the various historical antipathies between various Asian nations, all Asians feel more kinship with one another than with Westerners or other outsiders.

Yes, the Koreans may hate the Japanese, and the Chinese may hate the Japanese (this perception is actually deliberately exaggerated by the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese governments and business conglomerates in order to confuse the West in trade negotiations and so forth), and the Chinese may think they’re superior to all, but Asians will work together to take advantage of/frustrate the designs of Westerners and other outsiders. Read More »

VENI, REDEMPTOR GENTIUM is an Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose in the fourth century. Below is the 19th-century translation by James Neale, and it shows what great poetry this chant is with its keen perception of the high drama of the Incarnation.

O equal to the Father, Thou!
Gird on Thy fleshly mantle now;
The weakness of our mortal state
With deathless might invigorate.

Thy cradle here shall glitter bright,
And darkness breathe a newer light,
Where endless faith shall shine serene,
And twilight never intervene.

In the video above, a simple version of it is rendered beautifully by Giovanni Vianini.

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THIS is a view from within the Exhibition Hall of the main conservatory at Longwood Gardens, in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Those are green and red apples floating in water.

HERE is a fascinating discussion from VFR of June, 2012 in which an Indian commenter explains how he identifies with the British Raj. He is what Indians call a “Macaulayputra,” or Macaulay’s Child.

On a related matter, a reader says we should welcome those Chinese who wish to give birth on American soil so their children can live here as citizens, and I respond.

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A CATHOLIC priest explains one explicit heresy contained in Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium and states that this public defection from the faith means the papacy is vacant. The Rev. Paul Leonard Kramer wrote last week on his Facebook page:

I have been saying for years that when a “pope” will officially teach explicit and clear heresy flatly contradicting the infallibly defined dogma of the Catholic faith, then you will know that he is the false pope prophecied in many Church approved prophecies and Marian apparitions. St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alohonsus Liguori, St. Antoninus and Pope Innocent III all teach that when the pope demonstrates himself to be a manifest heretic, i.e. a plainly manifested public heretic, he ceases to be pope (or, if already was a public heretic he was invalidly elected) because he is not a Catholic — not a member of the Catholic Church. Read More »

THOUSANDS of Chinese women come to America every year as tourists in order to give birth on U.S. soil. According to Time:

The U.S. is one of the few nations where simply being born on its soil confers citizenship on a newborn. That policy has spawned a birth-tourism industry, in which pregnant foreigners flock to American hospitals to secure U.S. passports for their babies. Although the foreign couple can’t acquire U.S. nationality themselves, once their American-born offspring turn 21 they can theoretically sponsor their parents for future U.S. citizenship. Another perk: these American-born kids can take advantage of the U.S. education system, even paying lower in-state fees for public universities, depending on where they were delivered. (California is a popular birth-tourism destination because of its well-known university system.)

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MY husband and I recently stayed at a relative’s timeshare in New England. The mountain villa was in a town that has banned most franchises and chain stores, except for the supermarket, a couple of gas stations and a convenience store that is part of a regional chain. The town has a busy tourist economy, and it would presumably be highly attractive to chain stores. A woman who was visiting the local farmer’s market asked a vendor, “Is there a Dunkin’ Donuts around here?” The man said no, there was no Dunkin’ Donuts. “Oh,” she said, somewhat disappointed. “I do like their coffee.” Apparently, in the mind of this Philistine, it would be better for her to have her favorite coffee than for local entrepreneurs to run small businesses. She would rather see the ugly pink and orange Dunkin’ Donuts sign and smell the familiar aroma of cheap donuts with confetti than decipher the unfamiliar sign of a local coffee shop, of which there were several to choose from that had very good coffee.

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The Annunication, Meister der Braunschweig-Magdeburger Schule; circa 1275

IN ADVENT, “God knocks at the door of all men’s hearts,” Dom Prosper Guéranger wrote. Advent is the season of expectation. The world awaits. “Conditor alme siderum,” or “Creator of the Stars of Night,” is a plainchant from a seventh-century text used in Advent Vespers that captures some of that solemn anticipation. Listen to two excellent renditions of the chant here and here. I prefer the first. The English translation is below.

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