NICHOLAS PELL writes:
Note in this chart published in The Washington Post that the top five jobs in which men are paid more than women are jobs in which people are paid for performance. Two more on the list fall into the same category.
AS IF we needed further proof that the GOP is a dead party, 75 prominent Republicans, including four former governors and two members of Congress, have signed a Supreme Court brief in favor of homosexual marriage. The brief, filed in support of the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, which bans homosexual marriage, claims to represent family values.
There is no effective political opposition to leftist tyranny in this country.
A MALE READER writes:
It just dawned upon me a little while ago. Even though I have my advanced education and worked hard to get it, I have drifted aimlessly. This is something which has worried me no end because my brothers, friends and relatives (in Asia) always had goals and they set their sights upon those goals and achieved them. They have not stopped and they continue to prosper. One common thread runs through this: they are all married and have families. Consequently they are driven to prosper because of their love for their wives and children.
I have realized that after living in a feminized, emasculating culture where women have displaced men at every level of the workforce with laws in their favor giving them the ability to make money and in some cases big money, a man has become unnecessary for most women. I as a 44-year-old man realize that if there was a woman to love and a woman who would love and appreciate me for who I am, I would move mountains for her. But alas, at this point in my life, I am not motivated to move that mountain. I am thankful to have a modest job and live for myself.
Man is driven to build civilization not just for himself but for the love of women and his progeny.
MANY readers of this site have described their sense of isolation in a society that seems bereft of wisdom, decency and common sense. Whether it be a college student disgusted by her courses, a young man looking for a wife, a new mother who wants to remain home, a white man whose career has been derailed by affirmative action, an elderly bachelor in a once-thriving community now brutalized by black crime and vandalism, or a Marine in the feminized military, these readers share the feeling that they do not belong. They reject the lunacy and decadence around them.
So many feel this way, and share a common understanding of what is missing and what is needed to reverse this decline, that it makes no sense for them to remain as scattered isolates. They should join together and seek others to join them. They should collectively respond to the evil around them.
To this end, a new organization, the American Traditionalist Society is now in the serious planning stages. The purpose of the American Traditionalist Society would be to spread proper —that is, traditionalist — conservatism. As Alan Roebuck, who proposed the idea and who has written a manifesto, puts it, “Traditionalism restores the life-giving ties between a man and his people, their past, and his God.” Traditionalism restores wisdom and common sense. Whereas contemporary thinking is fundamentally unwise outside of the procedures of the natural sciences and technology, traditionalism seeks to fill this void and strives for justice, truth, beauty, and the proper ordering of society.
Traditionalism is not just about bringing back the good things that have been lost. It is not backward-looking, although it admires the best in the past. According to Lawrence Auster, “The past, ‘tradition,’ is but one dimension of traditionalism. Traditionalism is, first, an orientation toward the transcendent structure of the universe–the natural, social, and spiritual orders that make us possible. Each society orders itself uniquely according to those orders. So traditionalism is not just the past tradition, it’s our active relationship and tension with the order of the world, but always grasped and done uniquely and newly in each time and society according to the particularities of that society.”
So far, the American Traditionalist Society is just an idea and has no organizational structure, funds or staff. But in the weeks ahead, a fuller statement of its founding principles in the lengthy manifesto will be posted here, as well as at The Orthosphere and View from the Right. The first step is to define the intellectual parameters of such a group. In the meantime, here is a formal introduction.
THE AMERICAN TRADITIONALIST SOCIETY: OUR RAISON D’ÊTRE
Since roughly the 1960s, America has pursued a determined course of self-destruction in the name of liberalism. Our nation is now in a state of undeniable crisis. The federal government, close to insolvency, openly defies the Constitution and asserts its increasingly unaccountable and tyrannical power over the states and over the life of every individual. Our borders have been effectively erased, our language weakened, and our cultural foundations overturned. Our major institutions have been undermined from within. The media and popular culture have marginalized decency and virtue and made filth, transgression, and every kind of nastiness the new norm—a norm unquestioned by anyone in the mainstream culture, including conservatives. Our leaders pontificate that we must be tolerant above all else, and so many draw the natural conclusion that life is absurd. With the official-in-all-but-name denial of the God of the Bible and of any transcendent truth, many young men and women have become demoralized, leading lives that are amoral, selfish, and dissipated.
AT Crisis Magazine, Dale Ahlquist writes:
In Heretics, Chesterton almost makes a prophecy of the misuse of the word “gay.” He writes of “the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion.” (more…)
At her interesting new blog Reclaiming Beauty, Kidist Paulos Asrat writes, here and here, about The Cloisters in New York City and its inspiring collection of medieval art.
LEAH writes:
My husband and I have just found out that I am pregnant again. It’s my third pregnancy; the other two ended in miscarriage. My husband has just taken a job with a 50 percent pay cut and no benefits because it allows him time to build his own business. I’m 24 years old, we’re newlyweds in a new city, and I’m very scared, albeit happy. I am worried about how we’ll manage. Please pray for me, the baby, the understanding of our family and friends, that I will be able to quit work and stay home, and the success of my husband’s business venture. Thank you.
I AM sorry I have not been able to post recent comments and respond to e-mails. Due to the dire illness of a friend, I have been caught up in the medical matrix. I am catching up on my mail now.
WHEELER MACPERSON writes:
The women with whom I work are all a-buzz over the recent suicide of country singer Mindy McReady. Aside from their predictable and tasteless jokes at the dead woman’s expense (“I guess ten thousand angels really weren’t watching over her after all!”), the most notable thing these television addicts have been discussing is the fact that Miss McReady apparently shot her dog before taking her own life. “OMG! Can you imagine? Why would she hurt that poor dog?”
AT The Orthosphere, Kristor writes:
The basic problem of putting women into combat is that, because they are far weaker than men along every dimension of athletic performance, it will result in mortality disproportionate to their numbers. The ratio of rates of casualty to rates of combat participation will be much worse for women than for men. Women in combat units will likewise suffer disproportionate rates of all the other hazards of military life: wounds, disease, injuries, and so forth.
It is for this same reason that we don’t allow athletic competition between men and women: the women would lose badly, every single time, and so would suffer grievously (not to mention wasting everyone’s time) in a quest for success over male competitors that the brute facts of biology render hopeless in principle, and ab initio. (more…)
WRITING at The Remnant, Chris Ferrara theorizes that Pope Benedict XVI resigned his throne because he no longer had the strength to fight the Church's enemies from within. Ferrara writes: [T]he Pope has abdicated because he perceives that he is simply unable to mitigate any further the ecclesial chaos John Paul “the Great” left behind after the vast crowds had dispersed and their rowdy cheers of “Santo Subito” had faded away. I believe—or at least I want to believe—that Benedict sees as the only hope for an ecclesial restoration the elevation of a younger, fitter conservative to the Throne of Peter. I also believe that Benedict has concluded that if he were to remain in office for several years to come, something disastrous would happen that a more vigorous successor, if elected now, might be able to avert—about which more in a moment.
UNFORTUNATELY, due to unusual circumstances, I have not had the time to follow developments in France regarding “Taubira’s Law,” which would legalize homosexual “marriage” and adoption. Tiberge at Galliawatch has been providing regular updates following the passage of the law in the National Assembly. She wrote on Saturday:
Taubira’s Law, having passed in the National Assembly, is now being debated in the Senate. It is easy to forget that the law is still not entirely a fait accompli. More steps are needed, and there is the Ethics Council that will examine the issue as a result of a massive response to a petition that is still being signed by opponents of the law. And another Manif pour Tous demonstration is set for March 24.
I said before that the recent Manif Pour Tous demonstration in Paris doomed homosexual “marriage” and adoption in France. I still believe that this prediction will prove true even if the law passes. There is no turning back, in my opinion, from the mass resistance that has emerged in France. Opponents of homosexual marriage, including Frigide Barjot, have succeeded in broadcasting the message that homosexual unions will detrimentally affect the lives of children. There is a competing script to the claims of radical equality. The resistance is likely to grow and to become highly offended if marriage laws are changed despite it.
Why have the French shown superior understanding of this issue? I believe the answer lies in their vestigial consciousness of everyday civility, an awareness that has survived the onslaughts of modernity. Think of a traditional French meal. It is not just delicious; it is civilized. Now think of a French table with two women, playing the role of husband and wife, and their faux family seated around it. Such a thing seems much more possible in America.
REVISITING a subject discussed here in 2010, an anonymous reader from San Francisco writes:
I live in a city that has many persons who beg money from passersby. Here are some of my thoughts on Christ’s words, often used to justify street charity, “Give to them that ask of you.”
When Jesus walked the earth, those in beggary were farmers who had lost their lands, orphans, widows and the disabled. And there was no system of public assistance. Most of the persons in beggary shared the cultural and religious values of those more fortunate. They did not yet have envy-based ideologies or the notion that prosperity is tantamount to thievery. (more…)
IF the actress Helen Mirren’s mother had possessed the same revulsion toward motherhood that Mirren herself possesses, the actress would not have existed — or she would have had a hellish childhood. In a recent interview with Vogue, in which she comments on her childlessness, Mirren displays the standard infantile stupidity of actresses today, judging from the above account of the interview in The Telegraph. Notice the photographs that accompany the Vogue piece. They are chilling. It’s not her childlessness itself that explains the iciness we see here. A childless woman can still be warm and feminine. It’s her hatred.
SAVE, an organization campaigning for serious reform of the Violence Against Women Act and its feminist domestic violence industry, provides examples of the threats, lies and smears VAWA advocates have used.