A READER writes:

I saw a new movie this week, Deliver Us from Evil, that has me writing to you for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

Regarding the film’s quality, it is simply of its era: lots of 21st century, post-MTV visuals, audio, and violence. I won’t even be critical. This is multiplex filmmaking, plain and simple. And to be fair, there were some effectively creepy moments (e.g. a zookeeper possessed by Satan, captured on video, calmly, authoritatively bringing a lion under his charge).

But I’m not writing to tell you about the film’s aesthetics. It was the characterizations that struck me, for the worst of reasons.  First, we have two “buddy” cops—but this isn’t Adam-12 or Starsky and Hutch.  These officers are never in uniform (save for a brief training flashback) but never is it really established that they are “undercover” (unless I missed it).  And this is where it’s worth writing to you:  They look and talk exactly like, well, the very type of thugs I would expect them to chase.

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  LAST WEEK, five friends of the writer Lawrence Auster, who died in March of last year, gathered at his graveside at Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Springfield, Pennsylvania to mark the placing of a new tombstone at the site. We all continue to miss him, but it was a happy occasion to be there together and remember the man who so inspired us and truly was the greatest of friends. Afterward, we went to a restaurant nearby and talked about Mr. Auster's work and life. We agreed that we would all visit his grave together once a year. Thank you to the readers of View from the Right and to Auster family members who contributed to this beautiful monument made of Vermont granite. I wish to thank especially a reader from New Orleans who contributed $1,000.

AMERICAN plutocrats, in league with pharmaceutical interests, have been in the business of controlling the fertility of the lower orders for many decades now. The Rockefeller Foundation began to seriously work in this vein in the 1940s with its Population Council, at a time when the fecundity of Catholic families became a serious political concern and threat to the powers-that-be. Now Bill Gates is forging into new territory. According to Lifesitenews:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the development of a contraceptive microchip that can be remotely controlled to release hormones that can act as abortifacients into a woman’s body for up to 16 years. Both the chip’s potential to take a life and the potential privacy concerns have drawn criticism.

The chip, which measures 20 x 20 x 7 millimeters, can be implanted under the skin of a woman’s buttocks, upper arm, or abdomen in 30 minutes. The device contains a 16-year reservoir of the drug levonorgestrel, releasing 30 micrograms a day – but the dosage can be altered by remote control, as well. (more…)

ROGER writes:

I tried looking up this word which appears on your site, but could not find a definition for it. What does it mean?

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BUCK writes:

It appears that science is now “good enough” to make the claim that children of same-sex “parents” are, in some ways, happier and healthier than children parented by their gender-role trapped biological mums and dads.

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  JEWEL writes: Here is  a beautiful essay by Anthony Esolen about friendship --- normal friendship between men, and how the culture of sodomy has basically ruined it for everyone: "A Requiem for Friendship"

ANN BARNHARDT has some incisive lines on this subject:

Should wives be subject to their husbands, as St. Paul exhorts? You’re damn right they should. All day, every day. The fact that this question even has to be asked is, by itself, evidence of how far gone our culture is. I truly believe that most people in Western Civilization go through their entire lives without ever actually experiencing love. They experience lust, and they experience various forms of attachment, but most people never actually love. To love IS TO SUBMIT. To love is to make oneself SUBJECT TO ANOTHER. To love is to freely choose to put another above yourself, to literally live for another. Within the context of marriage this dynamic of total self-gift obviously meant to flow in BOTH DIRECTIONS (as the love between God the Father and God the Son, and between Christ and the Church) and is equally expected of men vis-a-vis their wives.

The reason St. Paul went out of his way to specifically admonish wives to remember to submit to their husbands is because women have the greater tendency to slip into self-absorbed nagging shrewishness and take for granted the fruits of their husbands’ labors because those labors are usually done away from the home, and are thus invisible to the wife. A man married to a woman on a reality show about shrewish, materialistic wives (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) just committed suicide because he was run into massive debt by his wife’s ostentatious and utterly avaricious lifestyle demands, and was also having his character assassinated on national television BY HIS WIFE. This woman didn’t love her husband or submit herself to him, she rode him, never sparing the whip, until she literally killed him. This is the opposite of love. This is evil. It isn’t a victory for the so-called liberation of womankind. It is a scathing indictment of our demonically perverted feminist culture.

Well said — with characteristic Barnhardtian directness and capitalized words. However, the Theology of Body concept of “total self-gift” is problematic. It is, in fact, a feminist concept in which submission isn’t really submission because husband and wife are ONE. In reality, marriage is not fusion or self-obliteration. Man and wife remain separate beings.

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VINCENT writes:

Well, congratulations.

You have inspired me to write the first hatemail of my life. As far as they go, this one is going to be quite mild.

The article that you wrote two years ago about deceased astronaut Sally Ride (which has come to my attention through the site Fundies say the Darndest Things) is petty. It could have been pettier. It could have been stupider. It could have been eviler.

But it still was petty, stupid, and yes, evil, and your core argument is fundamentally flawed.

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BEN J. writes:

I was delighted to read Thomas F. Bertonneau’s comments on the growing popularity of tattoos and scarification.

He writes: “People who cultivate the soul by cultivating the virtues – and who do so by engaging actively in civilized institutions – gain identity and differentiate themselves non-invidiously through the fostering of their God-given gifts and the application of knowledge and skills.” I had to look up “invidious,” but I believe Dr. Bertonneau is on to something very important. Calculated to cause offence, envy, that is perhaps the best explanation I have seen. I think this carries over to many aspects of modern culture, I see it in not just tattoos but also branding of consumer products.

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DON VINCENZO writes:

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

In the spirit of the day, here is a link to a performance of the third movement, The Fourth of July, from the New England Holidays Symphony by American composer Charles Ives (1874 – 1954), composed whenever Ives could take a break from the insurance business between 1897 and 1913.  Ives was a New Englander, born in Danbury, Connecticut, whose father had been a military bandmaster during the Civil War.  The music of Ives remains difficult for many people.  My approach to it is to regard it, quite as the composer intended it to be, as a record of experience.  In the case of The Fourth of July, Ives gives us in sound what a boy would have heard during the twenty-four hours of the Independence Day celebration.  Bands are playing in different parts of the city park and their melodies and rhythms overlap.  Choirs sing patriotic and commemorative hymns.  Finally, the boys get hold of matches and manage to set off the fireworks display prematurely, but to good effect nevertheless.

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  KEITH writes: As many of your readers know, last Sunday, June 29th, the mainstream media decided the hot topic over the weekend was the success of all the "gay pride" parades and events put on to celebrate and honor the seemingly "oppressed" of our dear nation.  And while I'm truly touched at the 'nobleness' of my entire country to honor those brave souls and, um, 'heroes', who endure such discrimination and hard, hard, oppression, I'm here to inform you that while the rest of the nation 'celebrated' these events, there was a group of young ladies who thought it was better to celebrate and honor something, or somebody, else. Seventy young girls from the American Heritage Girls organization came from as far as Hawaii and Alaska to meet at Arlington National Cemetery to pay honor to our real fallen heroes, and lay a ceremonial wreath at The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier. After the ceremony, they then were given special permission to perform in the Memorial Amphitheater.  The seventy-girl choir, who individually studied their parts for two weeks via Internet, and then met for only three hours of rehearsals beforehand, sang  "The Star Spangled Banner" and "America." Many blessings and Happy 4th of July!!!

  THERE is a pizza recipe for every occasion. This one features a tube of refrigerated pizza crust; two slices of processed American cheese; four sticks of string cheese, cut in half lengthwise; and one jar of pizza sauce. A delightful variation on a delightful theme.

HURRICANE BETSY writes:

If anyone in your household should accidentally ingest spoiled food, here’s the cure!  Guaranteed by me to work instantaneously!

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THIS July Fourth promotional photo for Microsoft Outlook is a vivid example of corporate globalism and its agenda to erase borders and eradicate national identity. Not that there should be no Asians celebrating July Fourth or that there should be no Japanese or Vietnamese or Chinese citizens of America. But the incessant promotion of multiculturalism by the corporate world, of which this is but one small example, is obnoxious. Imagine the Japanese publicly celebrating their national holiday with photos of white people from, say, Kansas carrying Japanese flags. You can’t imagine it. That’s because the Japanese recognize that they are not just a political entity or a commercial entity but a people with a shared history and extended kinship. And the world does not accuse them of exclusiveness because of this. There really is no such thing as a multiracial nation in the sense that modern multiculturalism would have it. Why does America allow the corporate world to insist that there is? They do because liberty is our founding ethic. Freedom is intoxicating. Freedom calls out to every American, indeed every citizen of the world. It’s a torch held high, drawing all to its magnificent light.

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