ALAN writes:

If American parents had any sense, they would laugh at the pretentious nonsense “education experts” routinely write and speak. The purpose of school jargon is not to convey information but to create illusions, to make simple, ordinary things appear mysterious, complicated, and expensive. In 1976, Edwin Newman wrote: “In the field of education, the competition in producing nonsense is intense.” His words are as relevant today as ever.

Recently I happened by chance to see a 12-page booklet entitled “Effective Public School Governance,” a “White Paper” published in 2007 by the “Education Funders of St. Louis,” a group of do-gooders who apparently have more money than they can possibly put to good use. They “engaged a team of education experts” to “study urban school governance.” Read More »

Chain Pier, Brighton; John Constable, 1827

STEVE KOGAN writes:

Among the pleasures I experienced in reading the recent post “Gainsborough’s Children” and seeing the portraits was the quote from John Constable on Gainsborough’s works: “On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them.” Although this moving comment was new to me, I could tell from what I had read in his letters, lectures, and documented conversations that it was just like Constable to speak this way, and I would like to share my thoughts that were prompted by his words.

Unlike Gainsborough, a painter of exquisitely delicate landscapes who made his mark as one of the great portraitists of his time, Constable was almost exclusively a landscape painter whose works leave a lasting impression of dramatically cloud-filled skies and the sheer substance of trees, water, fields, and hills. Read More »

SHEILA C. writes:

This video is a perfect summary of a modern church service, what Vox Dei (at Vox Popoli blog) calls “churchianity.” I thought you would really appreciate it.

DAVID writes:

In response to your entry on Romney’s egalitarian vision of prosperity, I’ve noted for sometime the absence of men i.e. “Men of the West,” in Islam’s ongoing war on Europe and Christendom.

Why, why, why are men absent? Mostly it is women – Melanie Phillips, Marine LePen, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Pamela Geller, Ann Barnhardt, the late Oriana Fallaci, and a few others. As for men, it is just Geert Wilders.

Why have men abandoned the field, the greatest civilization that men created, and gone walkabout, as if they don’t care for their creation? Read More »

PLEASE consider donating toward this site’s continued existence. I realize not everyone can give, and I also thank those who have given before, but if you are able to help this site remain active, your contributions will be most appreciated. You can make a donation here.

THE FEMINIST writer Shulamith Firestone, a feminist luminary of the 1970s who argued that pregnancy and childbearing were “barbaric” and entailed female oppression, died in Manhattan on Tuesday. In an obituary in The New York Times, Margalit Fox discreetly reports that Firestone was clinically insane.

In addition to her famous 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, which I read as a college student and in which she advocates artificial reproduction and state-supported childcare, Firestone wrote Airless Spaces, a quasi-fictitious memoir of her experience as a schizophrenic. Fox writes:

In “Airless Spaces,” Ms. Firestone writes of life after hospitalization, on psychiatric medication. Read More »

A READER named Laura sends this story about a woman who thinks she’s a man, has had hormonal therapy to make her look like a man and calls herself by a man’s name. Nevertheless, this woman wants to be a breastfeeding counselor for La Leche League in Canada. Read More »

MITT ROMNEY came across as a likeable and earnest man during his acceptance speech at the Republican convention last night, so likeable and earnest that at times I felt uncomfortably close to seeing him burst into tears, especially when he uttered that magic word “mom,” which came within a few moments of his opening.

Expending little time or passion on the immense changes enacted by Obama, on explaining for instance why Obamacare is such a catastrophe, Romney’s speech was overwhelmingly dominated by one message: the promise of jobs and prosperity.

But Romney’s commitment to equality and masculine achievement for women — he quoted to thunderous applause his mother as saying, ‘Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?,’” — is at odds with his pledge of prosperity and jobs for all who seek them. Read More »

PLEASE consider donating toward this site’s continued existence. I realize not everyone can give, and I also thank those who have given before, but if you are able to help this site remain active, your contributions will be most appreciated. You can make a donation here.

LAST MONTH, feminist activists attached woolen hair to the armpits of female statues in London, as shown in this photo from UK Feminista. These daring activists were taking an important stand, don’t you know? Their point was that women have been forced for many years to remove their body hair.  According to Chloe Marshall, of UK Feminista:

A few tentative steps away from the adorned statues, and the campaigners are soon reaping the rewards of their efforts. Members of the public stroll by and almost always stop to take a second look, and some take leaflets whilst others discuss hair removal. Either way, the message is being communicated loud and clear, and attracts a sizeable crowd at the London Pride sculpture on the South Bank.

Hair removal is one more sad and sorry tale of woe. Read More »

SUZANNE writes:

My husband and I are happy to be expecting our fourth child in seven years of marriage. Unfortunately, I rather dread telling most of my family members. We are Protestant, and the idea of “openness to life” has not been embraced for at least three generations, as far as I call tell. I wonder if you or any of your readers have clever answers to the questions I am sure to receive such as, “Oh no! What are you going to do?,” “You’re not having anymore after this, are you?!” and the ever popular, “You DO know how that happens, right?” Read More »

FRED OWENS writes:

The headline in the Los Angeles Times last week read: “Neil Armstrong, first person to walk on the moon, dies at 82.”

First “person?” The man lands on the moon and you have to correct his grammar when he dies? Person is a terrible word, corporations are persons, but I am not a “person.” Read More »

ONE THING I like about the feminist Hanna Rosin is that she admits, as many people do not, that sexual liberation and economic equality for women are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have the second without the first.

Conservatives who think that women can give up promiscuity, and at the same time equal men in achievement, are more deluded than the feminist Rosin. Read More »

THE out-sized ego of the American woman, which is like a bobbing inflatable on the political landscape, received major injections of hot air last night at the Republican Convention in Tampa. Ann Romney is beautiful and bright. But her speech — before the bank of hypnotizing, Orwellian screens onstage — was so much sugary pablum. Mrs. Romney’s answer to the hostility so many liberal women feel toward her is to tell them how heroic they are. Imagine a man taking the convention floor and saying, “We love you, men!” or telling the assembled that the hard-working men (in contrast to women) are the “best of America.” All that was needed was a chorus of men to burst into Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “There Is Nothing Like a Dame.”

When women were denied the vote, they could reside on a higher plane, far from the oily ministrations of politicians. Now, at every convention, we must hear about the first date of the presidential candidate and his wife. We must see them kiss and be told by both how wonderful women are. The governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, and Luce Vela, the wife of the governor of Puerto Rico, also appeared last night and I couldn’t help but feel, given their outfits and grooming, that I was watching a political version of the Miss America contest.

Mrs. Romney stated the following: Read More »

The Painter's Daughters

THE great 18th century British portraitist Thomas Gainsborough had a way of capturing both the innocence and gravity of childhood. His portraits of children call to mind Constable’s words about Gainsborough, “”On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them.”  In the above portrait of his daughters, one reaching for a butterfly though a butterfly cannot be grasped without crushing it, the girls’ faces convey goodness, inner simplicity and fragile hope, precisely the qualities that make us cherish children and remind us of an openness to life and heightened consciousness that we ourselves lack.

As Sister Wendy Beckett points out in her Story of Painting, Gainsborough’s daughters both were psychologically fragile and eventually led difficult lives, making this picture all the more poignant. Another portrait of them (below) suggests their complexity and difficulties.

Artist's Daughters with a Cat, 1759-61

Read More »

GREG J. writes:

I have been reading the Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis. These are as rewarding as any of the books Lewis published in his lifetime, and have the additional interest that always accrues from the experience of reading through a great man’s private correspondence with friends and loved ones. In a letter to his brother, Feb. 11, 1940, Lewis described hearing a lecture at Oxford University from one of his fellow Inklings, Charles Williams, on the subject of John Milton’s Comus. Lewis describes Williams’ treatment of the doctrine of virginity in Milton, and concludes that he was witnessing an all-too-rare instance of a university doing its actual job: edifying its students. Read More »

JANE S. writes:

Recently, a reader called Jen said The Thinking Housewife is a “joke,” because it doesn’t have an open comments feature. The reason for this, according to Jen, is because Laura Wood is too cowardly to allow transparent open discussion on her site.

A few days ago, quite by accident, I googled “The Thinking Housewife,” on a library computer and discovered a number of blogs that appear to be dedicated to taking content from TTH and dissecting it in snarky ways. One of them is called  Manboobz, just to give you an idea of the caliber of intellect we’re dealing with. The blog posts at these sites all have tags like “misogyny,” “reactionary bulls**t,” and “religious bigot.” As with all liberal thought, they are defined by what they’re opposed to. Read More »

THE New York Times makes the case today for why Ryan was a good choice. The editorial titled “Paul Ryan’s Social Extremism” is excerpted below.

Read More »