WE TEND to think of modern divorce as a product of the Sexual Revolution.

But the post-Christian, philosophical foundations for the dissolubility of marriage were constructed well before the 1960s and 1970s. You might say it began with the Renaissance and its dawning conception of man as god. But it definitely was well on its way 250 years ago. By the time of what is inaccurately known as the Enlightenment, arguments for divorce were being articulated by leading intellectuals. Thomas Jefferson, echoing the principles of John Locke, defended divorce for mutual incompatibility. He filed a divorce suit before the Virginia legislature on behalf of his client Dr. James Blair in 1772, writing:

[I]t is cruel to continue by violence an union made at first by mutual love, but now dissolved by hatred … [t]o chain a man to misery til death. Liberty of divorce prevents and cures domestic quarrels … Preserves liberty of affection (which is natural right). [Quoted in Liberty, the God that Failed by Christopher Ferrara, p. 46]

Divorce may preserve “liberty of affection” for some, but it does not preserve political freedom or justice, two things Jefferson is most famous for desiring. The institution of divorce has brought about, in the words of the writer Stephen Baskerville in The New Politics of Sex, “the most intrusive and repressive government machinery ever erected in the English-speaking democracies.” With unilateral divorce, a parent, typically a father, can be hauled into court, stripped of his assets and children, and even sent to jail without having ever committed a crime.

Marriage, Mr. Jefferson, is the basis of political freedom.

Those who live in hatred should, at worst, separate, but not divorce. (more…)

“IN MODERN society, sexual relations with women are becoming the chief way many men assert their sexual identity. But in most of the world’s societies, sexual relations follow achievement of manhood or accompany it.”

— George Gilder, Men and Marriage

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THE FAMOUS French actress Catherine Deneuve, along with five other French women, has been the center of attention after issuing a letter decrying what they say are the excessive attacks on men for “sexual harassment:”

Rape is a crime. But trying to pick up someone, however persistently or clumsily, is not — nor is gallantry an attack of machismo.

The Harvey Weinstein scandal sparked a legitimate awakening about the sexual violence that women are subjected to, particularly in their professional lives, where some men abuse their power. This was necessary. But what was supposed to liberate voices has now been turned on its head: We are being told what is proper to say and what we must stay silent about — and the women who refuse to fall into line are considered traitors, accomplices!

They also say:

Incidents that can affect a woman’s body do not necessarily affect her dignity and must not, as difficult as they can be, necessarily make her a perpetual victim. Because we are not reducible to our bodies. Our inner freedom is inviolable. And this freedom that we cherish is not without risks and responsibilities.

This is well said, and the letter makes other good points. But it is fundamentally flawed in its arguments. It also defends, under its same principles, the lewd paintings of children made by the artist Balthus:

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  SEE the entire film here.

INTELLECTUALS are not always smart. Or not always wise. There are aspects of human existence to which they may be clueless.

Mary Beard, the well-known classics professor, has written a book titled Women and Power. She says the modern world, still affected by the misogynist attitudes of the ancient Greeks and Romans, attempts to silence women. It’s an interesting argument for a woman who receives gobs of publicity to make.

The abusive twitter trolls who attack her, she says, must be placed in context. As The National Post reports:

“Greek myths, early Roman history is configured around violence against women,” she said. “And I think we need to get in there, get our hands dirty, face it and see why and how it was.”

Here are a few responses from an email thread in my inbox: (more…)

THE growing number of female sports reporters is said to be a sign of women’s progress:

Over the past few years, women in the sports world have made progress toward equality in the workplace. But for every step taken forward, for those in the field, it can seem to be countered quickly with a reminder of the work still left to be done.

In April 2016, ESPN’s Around The Horn featured an all-female panel for the first time in the show’s history, consisting of Kate Fagan, Jemele Hill, Jackie MacMullan and Sarah Spain. The panel marked a historic moment that came just a week after the program’s 3,000th episode.

This isn’t progress. In fact, it is the opposite: a sign of regression.

Ideological poses aside, women like virility. Even more importantly, they depend on virility, even today. But men can’t thrive unless they have avenues for male bonding. Sports were the last holdout against destructive egalitarianism.

No woman has ever played professional football. The number of women who have ever wanted to play professional football is infinitesimally small. By what authority then does any woman belong in a job reporting from a football field when there are plenty of men who long for such jobs?

My husband calls female sports reporters “babecasters.” I apologize for his outrageous insensitivity, but a search on the Internet reveals that many men, unlike my husband, have prurient attitudes toward women sports journalists. If they like them at all, it is not because of their skill. Obviously the networks appeal to this prurience by choosing highly attractive women.

Last fall, Cam Newton, a Panthers quarterback, laughed when he was interviewed by a female sports journalist. He was honest and briefly commented on the oddity of a woman using football lingo. He was subsequently punished.

It’s sad that women are so insecure and miseducated in the wake of feminism that they think the point is that they are somehow inferior. Women rule the world by virtue of their dominance in the most important sphere of life: family and social relations. Why can’t they let men have something to themselves — some arena where they can believe that being a man is not the crime the modern world says it is? True femininity is the refusal to dominate men, the gracious and deferential approval of masculinity. Most of the traditional restrictions on women in male spheres were aimed at correcting the imbalance that nature creates: a void in male identity in the face of woman’s command over life itself. (more…)

  AND the star that they had seen at its rising went before them, until it came and stood over the place where the child was. They greatly rejoiced when they saw that the star stood still. Matthew 2:9

FROM George Gilder’s Men and Marriage:

Imaginative advocates of coeducation will tell you that the boys are learning to regard the girls as “human beings” rather than sexual objects. What in fact the boys are learning is that unless they are exceptionally “bright”  and obedient, they will be excelled in their studies by most of the girls. Unless you are imaginative, you will see that this is a further drag on their already faltering attention …. Clearly in a losing game in masculine terms, the boys react in two ways: They put on a show for the girls and dominate the class anyway, or they drop out. Enough of them eventually drop out, in fact, to disguise the otherwise decided statistical superiority of female performance in school. But they do not drop out soon enough to suit educators for whom aggressive boys are the leading problem in every high school.

Adolescent boys are radically different from adolescent girls. The boys, for example, are at the pinnacle of sexual desire and aggressiveness. In school, what they chiefly need is male discipline and challenge, ideally without girls present to distract them. Girls, on the other hand, are less aggressive and sexually compulsive at this age and are more willing to study without rigid policing and supervision. Thus a classroom that contains both boys and girls will hurt both. The boys will be excelled and demoralized by the girls; the girls will be distracted and demoralized by the boys. Both sexes will be damaged by the continuous disciplining that the rebellious and unsuccessful boys require.  (more…)

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SEE A casual discussion of Muslim terrorism with Kristor at The Orthosphere. There is much more to say on this subject. It's not meant to be exhaustive.

CARDINAL Henry Manning on “The Sin Unto Death” (1874):

ALL the actions of a man in a state of mortal sin are dead; they have no merit or power to prevail before God for his salvation. So long as he is separated from God, nothing he does has saving power. Just as a tree that has life bears living fruit, and a tree that is dead has nothing but fruit that is withered and dead likewise, so a soul that is planted in God, as we all are by baptism, strikes its root as the tree by the rivers of water, and increases continually in faith, hope, and charity, and in the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, which expand themselves like the leaves upon the branch, and the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost unfold themselves and ripen. On the other hand, a soul that is separated from God is like the tree that is cut asunder at the root, and as the severed tree withers from the topmost spray and every fruit upon it dies, so the soul in the state of mortal sin, of whatsoever kind, so long as it remains in that state, is separated from God, and can bear no fruit unto salvation. (more…)

ELIZABETH POWERS writes: I had visited your site on a different subject, but noticed your post on "Intellectual Revolutions." I recently read a book that might interest you in connection with that post. It is by Frances O’Gorman and is entitled Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History. He has some interesting observations about why people can’t be talked out of what they believe, as belief is a matter not of reason, but of emotion or faith or the like: it is sort of pre-cognitive, you might say. It’s insightful in connection with today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere. Minds cannot be changed by reasoned argument! Coming to intellectual change takes inner muscles. Best wishes for a healthy New Year. Your blog is very lovely.

"WHAT a coincidence that just when news leaks out of a coordinated US, Saudi, and Israeli plan to undermine the Iranian government we see the largest protests in Iran since 2009! We are told that thousands of people carefully coordinated protests in multiple cities throughout the country over a hike in the price of eggs and that there were absolutely no foreign fingerprints on the unrest. Do you believe it?" Tune in to Daniel McAdams and Ron Paul on the issue. Educate yourself about how Americans are conned into going to war.

  JAMES PERLOFF discusses World War II in this lengthy interview. A commenter at Youtube writes: My family were refugees from the Nazi's [sic] and Stalin. As a child I believed everything I was taught at school. My elders would gently correct me, but I would shout them down and say they were anti-semitic, even my Aunty Ruth (Jewish, holocaust survivor). Now I am finding all this new information and all my articles of faith fall away, I am left with the view of the war my elders tried to share with me. They are all dead now and I can't even apologise.

THE ISRAELI Defense Minister Avgidor Lieberman has recommended that 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi spend the rest of her life in jail. Her offense? Slapping heavily-armed Israeli soldiers. A prominent Israeli journalist has recommended that she be raped.

Read about the activist’s story here at the International Middle East Media Center:

On Monday, one day after her 21 year old cousin Nour was charged with assaulting an Israeli soldier, 16-year old Ahed was also charged with the same crime, along with ‘interfering with a soldier’s duties’ and stone throwing.

The charges came after Ahed, her cousin and her mother were seen on a video posted on the internet pushing a soldier off their property, just after 14-year old Mohammed Tamimi was shot point-blank in the face by a rubber-coated steel bullet, losing an eye and part of his face, and requiring surgery to remove part of his skull.

Jonathan Ofir writes:

I am going to talk about another slap that has hardly featured in any coverage of this case – a hard slap that was given to Ahed Tamimi by the ‘restrained’ soldier, just 5 seconds before her now-famous slap back to the soldier from Ahed. (more…)

THIS sermon by Bishop Donald Sandborn on the "Dignity of Motherhood" makes important points on that subject, but I was especially struck by what he says about marriages that go bad. How is that people who are so in love can come to hate each other? Starting at minute 3:00, he explains why this often happens. "Just as after a meal we are disgusted with the thought of eating more of what we passionately desired before the meal, so human beings who have worn out their appetites for each other actually become disgusted with each other."

  ANOTHER famous waltz -- this one by the French composer Emile Waldteufel (1837-1915) -- for New Year's Day.

  EVERY YEAR, the Vienna Philharmonic celebrates the New Year with a special concert featuring the waltzes of Johann Strauss II. Here is one of the standards, "The Blue Danube," from last year. The extremely popular waltz was composed in 1866 and the words were later added by the Vienna Men's Choral Association: Danube so blue, so bright and blue, through vale and field you flow so calm, our Vienna greets you, your silver stream through all the lands you merry the heart with your beautiful shores. Far from the Black Forest you hurry to the sea giving your blessing to everything. Eastward you flow, welcoming your brothers, A picture of peace for all time! Old castles looking down from high, greet you smiling from their steep and craggy hilltops, and the mountains' vistas mirror in your dancing waves. See my 2012 post on the Vienna Philharmonic, which was all-male longer than most orchestras. Happy New Year!