DANIEL S. writes:

Brett McKay of The Art of Manliness website has written several worthwhile columns exploring the history of the idea and importance of manly honor, a concept much lacking among the majorty of postmodern males in the West. He starts:

Across cultures and time, honor and manliness have been inextricably tied together. In many cases, they were synonymous. Honor lost was manhood lost. Because honor was such a central aspect of a man’s masculine identity, men would go to great lengths to win honor and prevent its loss.

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WHATEVER ONE thinks of the face of the Duchess of Cambridge, whether one finds it as mesmerizingly insipid as I do or beautiful, this official portrait of her by Paul Emsley is an abomination. Yes, it is a painting, one which erases entirely the glorious tradition of British portraiture. Joseph McKenzie at Taki’s Mag captures it:

Instead of a portrait, Emsley has produced an overblown mug shot. All mug shots are unflattering because they have nothing to do with the human soul’s depths. Kate Middleton is more than the sum of her facial attributes glacially rendered by an uninspired technician’s cold hand.

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ACCORDING TO CBS BALTIMORE:

[T]wo 6-year-old boys were suspended while playing cops and robbers during recess and using their fingers to make an imaginary gun.

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JOE A. writes:

I just got off the phone with Senator Bob Casey’s Philadelphia office. I spoke with some twentysomething girl (they used to be “women” at that age). I asked her a series of Socratic questions. Here is a paraphrase of our conversation, which was not recorded:

Ring, ring, ring …

“Hello. Bob Casey’s office can I help you?”

I want to talk about gun control.

“Okay, you can talk to me.”

Great. So Bob Casey wants us to ban “assault weapons,” whatever that means.

“Yes.”

So we’re to turn over our guns?

“Yes.”

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ONE WOULD think that a Supreme Court justice might have a consuming interest in, well, the law. According to Damon W. Root at Reason.com, Sonia Sotomayor’s new memoir My Beloved World contains “no discussion of Sotomayor’s many years as a federal judge and no mention of any sort of legal philosophy that might be guiding her approach to the law.” It does talk about her “struggles” with diabetes, her brilliant school career and her wedding night.

Sotomayor is the sort of intellectual lightweight that rises to the top today. Before the advent of feminist preferences, bright women found ways to succeed. With the reign of feminist preferences, not-so-bright women find ways to succeed.

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IF Western society today is politically and morally corrupt, how do we live in it and yet not be of it? How do we resist it and not become engulfed by it? In a recent post at The Orthosphere, Alan Roebuck explains with characteristic clarity and insight how to resist and oppose liberalism without having to move to the backwoods and live in seclusion. The most important tasks are to acknowledge with brutal honesty the destructiveness of modern liberalism, to separate oneself inwardly from it and to support anti-liberal principles. Mr. Roebuck writes:

The origin and continuing source of the power to resist is your mind. This may seem obvious, but man has a tendency to jump too soon into the practical realm, and to let the practical define how he thinks. If you find that no significant practical and outward resistance is possible right now, you may be in danger of becoming demoralized. Therefore you must be equipped to understand and reject liberalism regardless of your environment. The necessary source and prerequisite of all of practical resistance are your mind and spirit.

And here is an extremely important point: “You must be anti-liberal, not just non-liberal.” He continues:

It is not enough to be non-liberal in the sense that you do not consciously think liberal thoughts or behave like a liberal. You must actively resist liberalism, or else you will either passively endorse it or actively embrace it. You must be anti-liberal, not just non-liberal.

You must be prepared to retain your spirits even when forced by external circumstances to make a show of going along with liberalism. Totalitarian regimes know that they can generally break the spirits of their opponents by forcing them make a public show of supporting the regime. But just as the Christian life begins with, and is always based upon, repentance and faith in Christ rather than outward actions, so the traditionalist resistor must first and always cultivate his internal opposition to the liberal order, an opposition based on his knowledge of the true, the good and the beautiful.

And if you are forced to make a show of going along with liberalism, see it as what it is: A show. Inwardly, you know liberalism is wrong, and you will not change your convictions to match your external behavior. Your behavior is just a pragmatic accommodation to transient circumstances. You do what you must to survive, and you choose when to fight and when not to, but you don’t give the Liberal Establishment what it wants most from you: your approval. [cont.]

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DANIEL S. writes:

The men’s issues writer Jack Donovan has written at AltRight about the issue of manliness and children based on the entry at your site by Wheeler MacPherson. He writes:

I don’t spend much time around kids, but I have seen this out and about. There are tons of “emo dads” in NW Portland who talk to their children this way — the way that lonely old women talk to lapdogs.

Like the man [MacPherson] who wrote the comment, I can’t remember my grandfathers ever speaking to me that way. They weren’t cruel or abusive. They took me places and taught me things.  They supported me even though I was an oddball. But they never spoke to me in baby talk. They were men. They were authoritative. And, to this day, years after lingering illnesses and deaths, they both maintain a certain command presence in my memory. (more…)

THE blogger Tiberge at Galliawatch reports that France 2 News, a major French television network, did not broadcast its news program on Sunday, the night of “La Manif Pour Tous,” or “The Rally for Everyone,” a demonstration against homosexual marriage rights believed to have drawn as many as one million supporters. It is unclear why the news program was not aired. Was it a deliberate attempt to suppress the remarkable news of the rally? If so, it is a shocking instance of the manipulative power of the press.

One aspect of the rally worth noting was the banners that various regional contingents carried with them, a typically French display of affiliation and local identity. What’s so important about these proud displays of communal identity is that they symbolize something that the resistance to homosexual marriage is defending: not just marriage, but human connection and tradition. Tiberge writes:

Below the department of le Vaucluse proudly marches. Like the Olympic Games where every nation parades, on Sunday every department and region, every special association and organization, carried its banners. Unlike the Olympics, however, this was inherently Christian, religious, patriotic, traditionalist and moral.

In his book Equality by Default: An Essay on Modernity as Confinement, the French writer Philippe Bénéton describes the principle of radical equality — which he calls “equality by default” — that is the animating idea of contemporary life. Equality by default is a pulverizing force. It flattens and levels. It creates a gray, lifeless homogeneity where natural distinctions once prevailed and preserved individuality. Equality by default is different from substantial equality, which consists of a primary and fundamental supernatural equality of human beings, because it “excludes all vital inequality.” It renders human beings autonomous and indifferent to each other. In the end, radical equality weakens love and loyalty. It’s the very foundation of the heartless anonymity that is so characteristic of the modern world. Bénéton writes:

Default man is liberated from every norm and every model: he no longer forms part of an order that transcends him. He enjoys a sovereign independence. He is a stranger in the universe.

Homosexual “marriage” is an idea founded on equality by default. It is an enemy of the very traditions these proud banners represent. Tradition cannot survive without the basic unit of society: Maman, Papa et enfants.

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MARY writes:

The most recent discussion about “neutered men” brings to mind a casual conversation I took part in a few years back at a sporting event. A group of mothers was chatting on the sidelines and the discussion wandered to the topic of family pets. A woman was telling the story of how they came to own their dog when one of the mothers asked if they had gotten the dog neutered. The woman replied, “Oh, yes,” and then added archly, “All of the males in my house are neutered,” at which point everyone but me cracked up appreciatively.

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DANIEL S. writes:

Mark Steyn has provided a rather dismal view of both American conservatism and America itself:

Not to be too pedantic, but for there to be a “future of conservatism in America” there first has to be a future in America. And that’s a more open question than my more optimistic comrades like to admit. (more…)

TIBERGE at Galliawatch reports that close to one million people marched in protest against homosexual marriage rights in Paris yesterday. The numbers are not certain, but there is good reason to believe this estimate. The streets were clogged with people bearing signs and wearing shirts with symbols of the traditional family. Here we have an unprecedented declaration of mass resistance to homosexual rights. This means not only that there is a very good chance homosexual “marriage” and adoption rights will never become a reality in France, but that the principle of equality that governs so much of political discourse and everyday life has received a serious blow — a blow that may cause many people to rethink or question its basic premises. Vive la France!

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WE OFTEN hear about how unfair it is that there are not more women chief executives or cabinet members or physicists. Just last week, this photo in the New York Times of Obama advisors brought a thinly-veiled scolding from the newspaper. Too many men, especially white men. The mere fact of many men, and few or no women, is treated as proof of discrimination. No further evidence is needed.

But if a preponderance of men is proof of discrimination, then shouldn’t we be concerned that there are so few women in prison? There are more than two million men in jail and about 200,000 women, according to these figures. Also, white men appear to be especially underrepresented. As of 2010, the incarceration rate for white men was 678 per 100,000. The incarceration rate for black men was 4,347 per 100,000.

I realize feminists would say these figures are only proof of white male hegemony. But if male power is what feminists suggest it is – a constant, unrelenting conspiracy in the minds of men, a conspiracy so ever-present that when a president whose political fortunes rest on approval by women chooses his cabinet he favors men because he has a residual male superiority complex — then wouldn’t men do a better job of keeping themselves out of jail?

The truth is, feminists are duplicitous when it comes to the full reality of female underrepresentation. While men occupy the  most powerful public positions in society, they also predominantly occupy the least powerful positions. Feminists are not really clamoring for a co-ed world. They want the best of masculinity, not the worst.

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  I WISH to remind you of the massed intercessory prayer for Lawrence Auster, of View from the Right, scheduled for 5 p.m. today.

WHEELER MacPherson writes:

The small town at the base of our mountain counts among its charms a genuine country restaurant. Once a month or so, my wife and I treat ourselves to an early-morning outing at the breakfast buffet there. The fresh, family-prepared food offered there is worlds removed from the pallid microwaved sausage links and scrappy bacon ends and frozen biscuits and congealed gravy and out-of-season fruit one finds at a Shoney’s or a Denny’s. I am comfortable in saying that it’s obscene to think of the chain restaurants as worthy of comparison to such a good country kitchen.

This morning we made our trek down to the restaurant and found a booth and said our hellos to some of the Saturday morning regulars, including a little garden troll of a man who always orders a large plate of sliced tomatoes, which he eats buried in fresh sausage gravy and which he manages to keep from slopping onto the immaculate white snap-button shirt he always wears. We got our coffee and fetched our plates and loaded up with the food of the mountain South.

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IN THE entry about Bill Clinton and his award for Father of the Year, Lawrence Auster explains exactly why this award is so appalling. Clinton’s behavior as president stunted his only child’s formation. Mr. Auster writes:

William Clinton performed heinous acts which, when they became public, his young daughter, in order to maintain her relationship with her father, had to accept those acts and turn off her mind and her moral sense and turn herself into a zombie. He did this to his daughter, and now he’s awarded as an Ideal Father.

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IN THE controversy over public acceptance of homosexuality, there is no comparable figure in America to Frigide Barjot, the 50-year-old French comedian and celebrity who is the organizer of the main rally against homosexual “marriage” on Sunday, a protest demonstration which has been called “La Manif Pour Tous,” or the rally for all, a play on the homosexual demand for “Marriage for All.”

The blonde Barjot, whose real name is Virginie Tellene, favors hot pink sweaters and tight jeans. She is known for her  comedy acts in nightclubs and appearances with a satire collective called Jalons. According to France 24:

Jalons’ debut “happening” was a protest against the cold during the freezing winter of 1984 at the aptly-named Paris metro station Glacière [meaning “freezer”], ironically blaming the French head of state for the weather conditions with the slogan: “Ice is a killer; Mitterrand its accomplice”.

Barjot is an imposing interviewee on the subject of homosexual “marriage,” as can be seen here. The mother of two sons, she is strongly opposed to marriage and adoption rights for homosexuals. She argues that every child has a mother and father and that both man and woman are the basis of the child’s psychological world. According to The New York Times:

“To make a child, you need a man and a woman,” Ms. Barjot said. For a gay couple to become the legal parents of a child “is totally contrary to reality,” she said.

She is quite happy for gay couples to have official status and legal protections. “The problem is not homosexuality, but human filiation,” she argues — a child’s need to have legal affiliation and access to its biological parents.

Barjot describes herself as a born-again Catholic and is the author of  Confessions d’une Catho Branchée, or Confessions of a Trendy Catholic. However, as Tiberge writes at Galliawatch, she has run up against the Catholic organization Civitas, which is also holding its own rally Sunday, because of statements she has made equating Catholic teaching on homosexuality with hatred of homosexuals. She also believes the subject of homosexual rights must be discussed in all schools to prevent “homophobia.”

Barjot is not the only one to try to walk this fine line between complete acceptance of public homosexuality and disapproval of homosexual marriage rights. Some homosexuals in France have publicly declared their opposition to marriage rights. They include a man who goes by the name of Jean-Marc, a mayor of a French village. The American Thinker, in a piece about French homosexuals who oppose marriage rights, quotes Jean-Marc:

One must favor what is best for the child. Nobody can deny, I believe, that it’s best for a child to have a mother and a father who love each other as best they can.

President François Hollande promised last year to ensure passage of a homosexual “marriage” bill sometime this year. The bill will go before Parliament this month.

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