A READER, Bill W., at VFR also writes:

  …. [T]he forced nature of the welfare state colors everything. This form of “charity,” rather than really helping people, creates dependence, undermines thrift and hard work, and destroys people spiritually, both by undermining what is good, and also by creating a sense of wounded, resentful expectation–the idea that the world owes them something. I’m a doctor. And having worked with Medicaid patients in emergency rooms before, I can tell you that they are far more demanding, suspicious, complaining and overall “entitled” than any other group. (more…)

AN ARTICLE in The New York Times about a survey of college freshmen makes this point:

Women’s sense of emotional well-being was more closely tied to how they felt the faculty treated them…. It wasn’t so much the level of contact as whether they felt they were being taken seriously by the professor. If not, it was more detrimental to women than to men.

The idea that a woman’s sense of well-being might be tied to how she treats others is not seriously considered.

(more…)

CORY writes:

In regard to your update on homeschooling, this is one of those issues that infuriates the mainstream left not only due to its countering of centralized top-down state indoctrination, but perhaps more so because it is a liberating and empowering movement that they cannot take credit for. The left sells itself as a democratizing force that all past progress can be attributed to. Yet upon closer inspection, we see that whenever a group pushes for progress without encasing itself in all the prevailing ideology of the leftist hive-mind, they are viewed with contempt regardless of virtue. (more…)

MR. SPEAKER, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

I would like to begin with an apology. My sincere regrets go to all Americans tonight for my disappointing performance over the past year. As you know, I do not believe in the language of divisiveness and therefore feel that it is only right that I personally assume responsibility for the anger and worry this country’s failing economy and recent government measures have caused.

First, I pledge to do everything I can in the year ahead to undo the recent health care legislation passed by Congress. In good conscience, I cannot continue to insist on something that is so contrary to the will of the people. (more…)

ANTI-FAMILY WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS continue to repeat the nonsense that women are paid less than men because of discrimination. Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, has gone so far as to say that marriage is bad for women and the government should not promote it. Instead, the government should “equalize” earnings and subsidize child care. Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, agrees that marriage often does not “produce good outcomes.” (more…)

INGRID writes:

I’m writing from southern Europe to ask the help of you and your readers. 

I spoke to a friend of mine the other day, who told me that she is pregnant, very depressed about it, and considering having an abortion. She already has two children, and she hadn’t wanted a third anytime soon. It seems that she and her husband are having some problems in their relationship and I think that they might be having some financial problems, as well.

(more…)

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT ruled on Monday that a company’s dismissal of the fiancé of a woman who had filed a sex discrimination suit was unlawful. The woman, Miriam Regalado, had filed a claim against her employer, North American Stainless, stating that it failed to promote her because she was a woman. The company later fired her fiancé. But the court ruled this was unfair retaliation against her.

Have I fallen down a rabbit hole? 

Why does the government control the hiring decisions of private employers? Why can’t a business hire or dismiss anyone it pleases? What’s wrong with denying promotion to someone because she is a woman given that most women rely on men for financial support and given that women are different from men? I thought the purpose of private enterprise was economic, not to remake the world into a female-dominated hellhole.

I guess I’m just a starry-eyed, nostalgic traditionalist who foolishly refuses to accept that things have changed.                         (more…)

  THIRTY years ago, there were approximately 20,000 children educated at home in this country. A recent study puts the number at two million, or four percent of all school-age children. This is a remarkable development. Colleges now routinely accept homeschoolers. The home schooling movement represents a successful challenge to the ideology and power of state-controlled schooling. All parents should welcome the growth of this movement whether they themselves home school or not. The homeschooling movement has led to parent-controlled ventures in education throughout the nation. Homeschooling is creating better schools. The goal for traditionalists is not to abolish all schools and bring about universal homeschooling, but to break up the monopoly of government education.

JAMES BOWLING MOZLEY, the nineteenth-century English theologian, wrote:

A Christian is bound by his very creed to suspect evil, and cannot release himself. His religion has brought evil to light in a way which it never was before; it has shown its depth, subtlety, ubiquity; and a revelation, full of mercy on one  hand, is terrible in its exposure of the world’s real state on the other. The Gospel fastens the sense of evil upon the mind; a Christian is enlightened, hardened, sharpened, as to evil; he sees it where others do not …. He owns the doctrine of original sin; that doctrine puts him necessarily on his guard against all appearances, sustains his apprehension under perplexity, and prepares him for recognizing anywhere what he knows to be everywhere.

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VISHAL MEHRA writes:

I would like to offer a perspective on the culture, nation and immigration topic regarding your comments on the Pope.

Traditionally most societies were multicultural, a hodge-podge of races, castes and nomads, castoffs, immigrants, trading colonies and whatnot. Europe was no exception in the main but perhaps England was (along with some other Northern lands). (more…)

  FROM The National Journal: A recent paper by researchers at the Asian Development Bank Institute concluded that the iPhone, one of the United States’ top innovations of the past decade, actually contributes nearly $2 billion to our trade deficit because it is almost entirely produced and assembled in Asia. The paper also raises a conundrum for lawmakers and business leaders alike: If Apple moved its assembly line to the United States and created domestic jobs but didn’t raise the cost of the iPhone, the company would still turn a 50 percent profit on every one it sold.

JAMES N. writes:

As you may know, a doctor, Kermit Gosnell, has been arrested in Philadelphia and charged with several counts of murder. He ran an abortuary which delivered viable infants and then killed them by severing their spinal cords. Some of the details are quite gory – apparently in at least one case one of his nurses played with a child and then killed it. (more…)