ASHER writes:

There is a sophisticated line of reasoning I’ve been exploring for a few years involving the notions of legitimacy and demarcation of authority, both moral and legal. Moral authority is inextricable from cultural interpretation and imposition and different cultures impose different moral schemes. Legal authority interacts with moral authority and they continuously interact to shape and conform to each other for the the long-term. Moral claims are only legitimately asserted where the claimants have standing to assert authority, which only exists where all parties co-exist within the same moral universe. 

The problem with the Manhattan Declaration (discussed here last week)  is that it is attempting to impose where it no longer has any moral authority, and this is because the West has decisively split into two distinct moral universes, the leftist and the Christian. The Left seceded from the Western Christian moral universe many, many decades ago. Alan Roebuck call your office. (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

Paul Elam has now gone public in his call for jury nullification in rape trials. He has written a new article titled “On Jury Nullification and Rape” and posted it as the headline at the Men’s News Daily site. (more…)

GAIL AGGEN writes:

I read Lillibeth’s post about the Victorians, and their dreadful habit of dying all the time, last night. I got several good laughs out of that.

My nineteenth century grandmother was as big around as a barrel, always wore a full corset, and could outwork anybody in about a third of the time, with the power and determination of a Panzer tank. (more…)

  I RECOMMEND a few of the ongoing discussions here from this week. This entry includes insights from male and female commenters on how men can deal with feminists in their personal lives and how to handle women in general and remain in charge. This discussion about the men's movement is long, heated and interesting. Two entries, here and here, consider Christianity and the culture war.

LYDIA SHERMAN writes:

Our daughter has finally got fed up with the expensive museum plaques which claim that boys were not allowed to cook and girls were not allowed to shoot before the 20th century enlightenment. We went to one historical museum where a plaque said, and I quote, 

Women’s clothes in particular were so restrictive it limited their activities and in many cases tightly laced corsets created internal and breathing problems for them. No wonder they took to the streets to demand the right to vote and to wear more practical clothing than what the Victorian-era societal norms dictated at the time!  (more…)

LAURA GRACE ROBINS, at her site Full of Grace, Seasoned with Salt, writes:

To be noble the man must be manly. To be noble the woman must be womanly. Independently of the virtues required equally of both sexes, such as truth, uprightness, candor, fidelity, honor, we look in man for somewhat more of wisdom, of vigor, of courage, from natural endowment, combined with enlarged action and experience. In woman we look more especially for greater purity, modesty, patience, grace, sweetness, tenderness, refinement, as the consequences of a finer organization, in a protected and sheltered position. That state of society will always be the most rational, the soundest, the happiest, where each sex conscientiously discharges its own duties, without intruding on those of the other.”

(more…)

THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION is a manifesto calling upon Christians to unite in fighting the culture war. Signed by prominent Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians last November, it advocates organized action and rebellion against abortion, the erosion of marriage and the decline of religious liberty. Alan Roebuck has a provocative piece at The Intellectual Conservative in which he urges this kind of cultural activism by Christians of all denominations, whom he contends are by and large guilty of passivity.

Mr. Roebuck writes:

Is evangelism necessary for cultural renewal? Certainly. Is it sufficient? Not a chance. And the belief that it is — widespread within Protestantism — is weakening conservatism, as it discourages many protestant conservatives from challenging the Left’s control of American culture. Belief in the sufficiency of Christian evangelism must be opposed.

I will not argue here for the necessity of Christian evangelism for the cultural renewal at which conservative activism aims. Most conservatives understand that we need Christianity for America to flourish. My main point is one most leaders of conservative Protestantism don’t seem to acknowledge: In order to renew American society it is not enough that many people have saving faith in Jesus Christ. Nor does it suffice for them to have correct views of God, man and society that result from a proper Christian catechism. And it isn’t enough even that they vote for the more conservative candidates and ballot propositions. No, cultural renewal requires organization and action for the specific purpose of cultural renewal. And this won’t happen spontaneously. (more…)

IN THE previous post, I wrote:

I was in a restaurant the other day and there was a little sign on the table that listed all the medical ill effects of dehydration. It said that if your water intake drops slightly, you are likely to become confused and unable to function mentally. The water industry has done a great job of convincing people that constant water consumption makes you smarter, thinner and more energetic.

 Lawrence Auster writes:

Think of it — every moment of our lives, we’re that close to a breakdown in our mental functioning! Only constant vigilance and nonstop water drinking can protect us.

But then what happened to the liberal idea that the universe is safe and nothing bad can happen to us? Oh, I’ve got it. The universe is safe when it comes to crime and predation, because man is naturally good, especially nonwhite men, and therefore every time a white woman is raped or murdered, no matter how reckless her own behavior or how crime infested the neighborhood where she went jogging alone, it comes as a “shock.” So the human universe is naturally safe. But the civilized universe is dangerous, because it doesn’t naturally provide us with a constant supply of fluids and therefore we must be attentive to that need every moment of our lives, or else suffer a mental breakdown.  (more…)

A COMMENTER at VFR has a hilarious take on the four women awarded “Sailor of the Year”Awards by the namby-pamby U.S. Navy and on the decadent practice of grown adults carrying water bottles with them everywhere, just like babies with their ba-bas. This country is run by adults who are not yet weaned. Do these sailors carry pacifiers and blankies too?

Patrick H. writes:

Three of the women have water bottles right by their feet, ready to give them their “constant supply of fluids,” no doubt. Probably the fourth woman has a bottle next to her but not visible. Remarkable, really, whether or not the bottles were put there for them or they put them there themselves. These women appear to have had the staggering demand placed on them of sitting in some chairs and then standing up for a while. In the open air! With the sun beating down on them with staggering stunning solar power! And perhaps they were even asked to speak … and we know how utterly dehydrating that activity is. But none of this matters. It could have been a cloudy day, no speech required, no standing, no sitting, nothing. None of it matters. The bottles would have been there anyway. The supply of fluids must be constant. Constant.

It does raise odd Freudian questions about suckling at the maternal teat, doesn’t it? (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

Paul Elam, the editor-in-chief of Men’s News Daily, the largest news-oriented site of the men’s rights movement, has proclaimed, “Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”

(more…)

HEADY G. writes:

So, I have been reading your blog like crazy lately. It’s distractingly good. I am a male in my mid-twenties and it’s amazing how much of your blog’s truth I see in my everyday life. 

I live in L.A., such a hip, liberal, and “forward thinking” city it is. I hear and see people aching for a lot of these principles and values your visitors share. I was with my actor friends one night, men and women. The men discussed how much they wanted a woman who valued her traditional femininity and the girl discussed her longing for a strong man. It sounded like grandparents in the Midwest as opposed to twenty- and thirty-somethings in Hollywood. And what I mainly noticed is that they wanted a return to tradition, family, and a sense of rightness. But they didn’t even see it. It was a longing they couldn’t put into words. It was a call of nature God gave to us all. Our call to be men and women in harmony. (more…)

READER N. writes:

You may find this article in First Things interesting. It is a discussion of the current movie The Kids Are Alright in which children of a pair of lesbians locate the man who is their “father” via semen donation. (more…)

IN THIS previous entry, Fitzgerald argues that men suffer in subtle and little-recognized ways from women who are criticial or demanding. Male fortitude is not simply self-generated. His point is similar to one I have made before: that gentleness is one of the most important forces for the good.

A recent New York Times article makes a similar argument. Men are more sensitive than is commonly believed. Gee, they even seem to need love. Could it be that men are human beings after all? Unmarried men, a major study has concluded, are more affected by unhappy romantic relationships than women:

According to the report by Robin W. Simon, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University, and Anne E. Barrett, a sociologist at Florida State University, “It appears that young men benefit more than women from support, and that they are more harmed than women by strain in ongoing romantic relationships.”

For women, whether they’re in a relationship at all — no matter how awful — is what counts.

This is startling and troubling news. It violates one of the core concepts of feminism: that men have everything, and way too much of it. This isn’t the only unsettling insight here. The authors of the study were peeved at evidence that, despite the strides of feminism, young women still want boyfriends:

“It’s a little bit pathetic,” Ms. Simon allowed. “Even though there’s been so much social change in this area, women’s self-worth is still so much tied up with having a boyfriend. It’s unfortunate.”

 Truly pathetic. Why can’t women care less about love and more about money and power?

(more…)

  KILROY M. writes: I thought you might find this amusing cover illustration of Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard of interest. It's pretty blunt about the ideological tendency of each candidate.  

FITZGERALD writes:

I highly recommend this article.  It is harsh, but the points it makes are essentially valid. The Roman Catholic Church has capitulated since Vatican II to the concept of equality in marriage. This represents a surrender to the forces out to destroy the family, a sop to the progressives and their agitators. 

Tradition teaches us that men are appointed the leaders for their families and society. (more…)

  THE PREMIER purveyor of propaganda, The New York Times, has these enlightening words on the subject in an article on the Shirley Sherrod affair: [I]t is an open question whether conservative media outlets risk damage to their credibility when obscure or misleading stories are blown out of proportion and when what amounts to political opposition research is presented as news. Jane Hall, a communication professor at American University and a former contributor to Fox News, said partisan media outlets “look for something that will get an audience and that will whip up people in some kind of frenzy, warranted or not.” Ms. Hall said what Ms. Sherrod had endured was “classic propaganda.” 

JOHN writes:

Christian men who are struggling against sexual sin should try real live old-fashioned corporal mortification. Intentionally and prayerfully do something really painful, offer the suffering to Jesus in union with His suffering on the cross and ask Him to use the pain to burn away all the self-inflicted corruption and wash the soul clean. The sin was against one’s own body (1 Cor 6:18), the atonement should be too. Sexual sin throws away self-control for physical pleasure; voluntary, self-inflicted physical pain for the purpose of penance restores self-control, purifies the body and strengthens the mind.

(more…)