STEVE KOGAN writes:

Commenting on the general clamor among “thousands of little groups” in Germany in the 1920s, each one hawking its own “set notion of life,” the novelist Robert Musil foresaw a time in the near future when “a genuine paranoiac” would no longer “be able to resist competing with the amateurs.” I have recalled this exquisite prediction many times since I read it years ago. On May 1, it came to mind again.

After a day in which the Occupy movement marked the old socialist-communist “workers’ holiday” of May Day with the usual Occupy slogans of class warfare and scattered outbreaks of lawless behavior, Geert Wilders’s interview that night by Sean Hannity was a sobering reminder of the discipline with which militant Islam exploits the decaying authority of our institutions and channels its ancient drive against the unbeliever, a word that confronts us throughout the Koran. Read More »

Emily Post

AT Tradition in Action, Marian Horvat examines the life and influence of Emily Post, the famous etiquette writer.  Mrs. Post, she says, went through a gradual transformation over the course of her life and ultimately embraced many of the abuses she once condemned. Ms. Horvat writes:

Emily Post’s central commandment was to always put others at their ease. More than relying on rules, she held that kindness and consideration for others covered all evils. This is true in the matter of a broken glass or a spilled drink, but good manners must also be governed by absolute morals. At times, one must choose to do or say what is right and correct over what is kind or accommodating. Such morals are missing in Emily Post’s Etiquette. Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

Here’s a shocking statistic from the Economist magazine. From the article, “China’s Achille’s Heel“:

 “Over the past 30 years, China’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—has fallen from 2.6, well above the rate needed to hold a population steady, to 1.56, well below that rate (see table).

 But for now it [the one-child policy] is firmly in place, and very low fertility rates still prevail, especially in the richest parts of the country. Shanghai reported fertility of just 0.6 in 2010—probably the lowest level anywhere in the world.”

 Did you catch that? The Total Fertility Rate in Shanghai, China was 0.6 in 2010; less than one-third the replacement rate! Shanghai is the richest city in China with per capita income close to the standards of the rich Western countries. It is the most densely populated city in the country and the largest city by population in the world; it had 23 million people in 2010. This is about the same population as the country of Taiwan. Shanghai as a city has a population a little smaller than Texas (Texas has 26 million people). For every woman in Shanghai who has two children during her lifetime there are two other women who never have children at all. It is hard to imagine what that kind of insanity is like.

Read More »

THE OBAMA administration’s womanly ideal is a female eunuch who has one child (just like women in China!!!) after years of student debt and lots of carcinogenic contraceptives provided free by Uncle Obama. She has no husband, but that’s okay. She starts her own business and volunteers in a community garden.

Dana Loesch at Breitbart.com has the full story.

Read More »

IN A letter to the editor at The New Oxford Review, the Rev. Kenneth Baker writes:

Radical informality is an assault on form. Form in our culture has taken a big hit since the 17th century. Jay Richards, in his book God and Evolution, points out that Des­cartes identified quantity with essence and thereby eliminated form. We know from Aristotle that there are four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. Since Descartes, science has discarded formal and final causality; for modern science, the only real causes are material and efficient. One result is that, if there is no form to make a thing be what it is, then each thing is just an accumulation of atoms and molecules that can be arranged in any way. According to this thinking, there is no formal difference between a dog and a cat. And if there is no formal or final cause, then nothing really makes any sense — and you can do or dress as you will.

Read More »

A NEW CDC study shows that sexual activity among teenage girls continues to decline from its high in the mid-1990’s. It also shows an increase in the use of the Pill among teenagers. According to the Associated Press:

More teen girls now use the best kinds of birth control, a new government study says.

About 60 percent of teen girls who have sex use the most effective kinds of contraception, including the pill and patch. Read More »

HETEROSEPARATIST.COM features a video made by Tradition, Family and Property of its volunteers who, while picketing against the redefinition of marriage, were threatened, pepper-sprayed, punched, cursed, assaulted with beer bottles and spat upon. Their literature was stolen and burned.

As you’ll notice, all of the attackers are white, mostly between the ages of 18 and 30. As a commenter below remarks, “Their hate-contorted faces are terrible to behold.”

Read More »

THE Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the largest organization of American nuns, was recently censured by the Vatican for its feminist, leftwing ideology. LCWR will be holding its annual national assembly this August. The theme is, “Mystery Unfolding: Leading in the Evolutionary Now.”

Judging from the event logo, above, the “evolutionary now” is a global, multiracial, panreligious era of One World Bliss. Notice the facelessness of the twirling nuns, so typical of Catholic symbolism since Vatican II. The faceless, depersonalized world – without loyalty to home or people – is key to the Catholic Progressivist’s belief in this-world salvation and his revolt against his historic faith.

Read More »

ANN DOUGLAS, columnist for the Toronto Star and author of books on baby care and motherhood, recently interviewed a sex education expert who advised broadening teen education to include lessons on what sexual moaning sounds like, how to tell if a drunk girl really consents, and the sexist stereotypes in pornography. Douglas was interested and approving of Cory Silverberg’s ideas.

“Teenagers need to know what pleasure looks and sounds like — pleasurable moaning, asking for more — in order to be sure that a partner is providing enthusiastic consent to sex,” said Silverberg.

Douglas wrote that “to be relevant to today’s generation of kids, sex ed needs to cover a lot more ground” than in the past.

Read More »

Mothers of large families receive the Medal of the French Family

TIBERGE of Galliawatch writes:

Elizabeth Badinter, like Simone Veil, has consistently closed her eyes to the reality of the destruction of the French family and the slow steady takeover of the country by Islam. Both women, being Jewish, have aroused no small amount of resentment among traditional Catholics. Robert Badinter, her husband, was responsible for the ban on capital punishment.

Badinter claims that fertility of  French women is just fine, denying statistical evidence to the contrary. Tiberge has posted twice, here and here, on the Medal of the French Family, which goes to mothers of more than five children. Muslim women have dominated the awards in recent years.

Read More »

Girl by the Fireside, Frank Holl

FROM British Paintings.

SHEFALI writes:

I hope this mail finds you in good health. I have been devouring your writing uninterrupted but have run into a snag. Many of your older, fine posts don’t show up in the labels they should. Or even on search engines when the keywords are typed. Read More »

MARIANNE writes:

I don’t know if you care to address this question, but here it is: what about those of us who are married, but do not have any children, and will not be having any children in the future (not by choice)? What is our role as women, and as wives? Should we be employed full-time in your view? The question is not a trick or trap for you, but something I wonder about.

Read More »

MARY writes:

I find it odd that a woman like Elizabeth Badinter, who hails from a country as proud of their traditions of food and wine and meal-taking as the French are, would have a problem with breastfeeding. Breastfeeding and social meal-taking are some of the lovely, natural goods of life that rejuvenate and sustain us. Should wine be sold in six-packs? Shall we eat most of our meals in the car, on the run to the next big meeting? Read More »

IN HER book, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, Elizabeth Badinter is guilty of outright distortion on a number of issues. Foremost among these is the issue of the French fertility rate. Badinter makes much of the fact that the fertility of French women is higher than that of other European women (even though it is still below replacement level.) She dismisses the statistical significance of immigrant fertility. Read More »

The Third Class Carriage, Honore Daumier

THE outrage of breastfeeding, in the mind of a feminist, is that it is something men can never do. It is inescapably feminine, an activity that resists the 50/50 division of child-rearing that is so much a feminist fantasy. In her book, Elizabeth Badinter, the French intellectual, insists it is wrong to hold up breastfeeding as an ideal. She writes:

A few advocates of breast-feeding do recognize that mothers might feel trapped by political correctness and they challenge the movement’s sentimental image of motherhood with its erasure of all the other aspects of breast-feeding: the loss of freedom and the despotism of an insatiable child. They recognize that a baby might be a source of happiness, but also a devastating tornado. On-demand breast-feeding can leave women feeling like “a walking meal” or a “giant pacifier” or a milk-producing “ecosystem,” of having lost their status as individuals with their own will and desires. But these cries do not appear in the pro-breastfeeding literature, which claims that what is good for some is good for all.

There is a good reason such statements don’t appear in the breast-feeding literature. They smack of selfish complaining. Whether one enjoys breastfeeding or not, whether one agrees to do it or not, public whining about despotic children is something mothers — I mean, real mothers — resist, in the same way real soldiers resist complaining about helping a wounded friend.

Read More »

ELIZABETH BADINTER, the French feminist in the news, seems to have stepped from the pages of a contemporary fairy tale, so perfectly does she combine almost all the major elements of modern-day power and influence. She is a lecturer in philosophy at an elite academic institution (she smokes, so she must be a French philosopher) and is married to a prominent socialist politician. She is the major stockholder of one of the largest communications companies in the world, which was founded by her father. She’s never been a movie star, but she is so well-placed in government, business, academia, and the media, was it possible she would not be heard?

Badinter, 66, has authored a number of books on feminism. Like so many women who have achieved great success in recent decades, she is, despite her undeniable and impressive intelligence, walking proof of the intellectual inferiority of women. How many male philosophers end up writing about the male sex, championing its cause and tabulating its accomplishments in comparison to women? How many male philosophers become famous on such thin and narrow works? There is great irony in the fact that feminists should themselves prove what they have so often denied. But then mediocrity is the inevitable fruit of egalitarianism. Read More »

THE French feminist and best-selling author Elizabeth Badinter has been the subject of wall-to-wall coverage in the mainstream press in recent weeks on the occasion of the North American edition of her book, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, which was a bestseller in France two years ago.

It is no surprise that Badinter should receive such notice. Aside from the feminist message of her book, she is a woman with towering connections in the communications industry.

Badinter, 66, is a Jewish professor of philosophy at the elite École Polytechnique in Paris. Her deceased father was Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, founder of the company Publicis Groupe, one of the top four multinational advertising and communications companies in the world. She is the major stockholder in Publicis and chairperson of its Supervisory Board. She is one of the wealthiest people in France, with a fortune valued at more than 750 million euros.

Badinter is the wife of Robert Badinter, the former French Minister of Justice under the socialist government of François Mitterand who was influential in eliminating capital punishment. The couple has three sons and lives near Luxembourg Gardens.

I will offer my thoughts on Badinter’s book later today. Stay tuned.