COMMENTERS in the British press in the past week have drawn disturbing parallels between looters in the recent riots and the bankers involved in the 2008 financial crisis, as well as members of parliament accused in the expenses scandal. Theodore Dalrymple at City Journal examines the warped comparison between looters and the bankers. He writes: Read More »

IN THEIR 2010 report,  Brad Wilcox and Elizabeth Marquardt of the National Marriage Project make an excellent case for why marriage has declined among the less educated. When marriage is redefined to mean, first and foremost, intimacy between adults, rather than an institution for the rearing of children, it is far less attainable for ordinary people. I would take it one step further and say when marriage is redefined to mean “soul mate” intimacy and radical equality, it is far less attainable.

They wrote: Read More »

NEWS ORGANIZATIONS are heavily reporting the latest findings by the National Marriage Project, which show once again the continued decline of marital relationships among the lower middle class, with working-class whites increasingly resembling inner-city blacks in their family structure.

Cohabitation has grown fourteen-fold among parents since the 1970s. A quarter of American women with multiple children have children with more than one man. Out-of-wedlock births are uncommon among college-educated women. (The Marriage Project does not mention here that this is partly due to the greater acceptance of abortion among the educated.) Cohabitation is common among the highly educated but usually occurs before marriage.

With the growth in cohabitation, the divorce rate has decreased by four percentage points among couples in the first ten years of marriage. Cohabiting couples are more than twice as likely to break up before their first child is twelve and children who live with cohabiting adults have worse outcomes and a much higher incidence of behavior problems.  Read More »

Rest in the Cool and Shady Wood, Edmund George Warren, 1861. Exhibited at the New Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1861.

BREAK OFF an elm bough three feet long, in full leaf, and lay it on the table before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf. It is ten to one if in the whole bough (provided you do not twist it about as you work) you find one form of leaf exactly like another; perhaps you will not even have one complete. Every leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by another, or shaded by another, or have something or other the matter with it; and though the whole bough will look graceful and symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why it does so, since there is not one line of it like another.

But if nature is so various when you have a bough on the table before you, what must she be when she retires from you, and gives you her whole mass and multitude? The leaves then at the extremities become fine as dust, a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky, a confusion which, you might as well hope to draw sea-sand particle by particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf.

                          —     John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. I, Pt. 2, Ch. 1.

THE NATION never tires of the smoldering bitterness of Gloria Steinem. A new documentary of the 77-year-old child-hating, man-despising, God-taunting socialist aired last night on HBO. I did not see it, but then who needs to see it? It’s all been said a million times before.

Since feminism has been institutionalized and now exerts coercive power over the lives of many millions, how does Steinem interpret this amazing success? She refuses to see it as success. The feminist revolution has only just begin. “The point is we go forward. We’re nowhere near where we need to be,” she said in the film.

But where is it that we need to be?

A world where no woman feels ashamed for turning her back on others. Somehow, in Gloria’s mind, the “system,” the “structure,” the “dominant group” can be changed in such a way that women are pleased with lives of selfishness and heartlessness.

The feminist revolution must continue precisely because femininity cannot be destroyed.

JANE writes:

I haven’t visited the topic of nursing for a long time and I’ve enjoyed your perspective on the issue. The experience of nursing lays close to my heart.

I’m aware of the long and sordid history of the artificial feeding of infants. Yes, there are, and were, malevolent forces behind this trend (step one towards getting women into the workforce) but ultimately it is each individual woman who chose to abandon the practice. At one time, many naively believed the experts who said formula is superior to human milk. We now know that to be false, and yet women still choose formula and bottles. Good and loving stay-at-home mothers choose formula. Why? Read More »

DARCIA NARVAEZ, an ethicist and psychologist, recently did an excellent, lucid series of posts for Psychology Today on the many benefits of human milk for babies and young children. Afterward, she was subject to a ruthless pummeling by female readers, who accused her of mental illness, of writing “garbage” and displaying gross insensitivity to fragile mothers. One would think Narvaez, in her defense of breastfeeding, had asked women to scale the Himalayas on behalf of their children. One reader wrote:

Opinions like these are better kept to yourself, as an expert in Ethics I wonder if you are aware of the ethical implications of sharing such biased opinions….

Another reader wrote:

I am very disappointed in Psychology Today. I think that it should produce the research to back up these claims if this piece is allowed to remain in it’s content. It is a journal intended to help people, and this article only hurts. It is judgmental, opinionated and one-sided. It does not take into account the damage that it can have on a vulnerable, depressed, anxious mother.

Read More »

TODAY IS the Feast of the Assumption. In this fifteenth century painting, once the center of an altarpiece, Matteo Giovanni depicted the Assumption of Mary. Angels ascend to heaven with the Virgin’s throne. Her girdle drops and is caught by St. Thomas, known as Doubting Thomas, the apostle who questioned that Christ stood before him after the Resurrection. Christ awaits her at the top of the panel with prophets and ancestors.

O, Glorious Queen, hear us.

Help us to desire celestial things. 

Mystical Rose, Morning Star, Gate of Heaven and Refuge of Sinners, may we meet you someday in Paradise!

GEORGE KENT, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, writes:

I was very pleased to see your recent piece, “The Welfare State and Mother’s Milk.” Very well done! I appreciate your very positive response to what I’ve said.

I’ve now put my 2006 critique of WIC into a broader context, viewing it as a failure of governmental regulation, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. I have a book on regulating infant formula now in production at Hale Publishing. I hope it will be out in a few months. I will be giving talks about it in Europe in the fall.

Read More »

Ed Miliband said Tariq Jahan, pictured above, is "the true face of Britain."

CAN YOU imagine a Chinese man pointing to a white entrepreneur from New York, and saying, “He is the true face of China?”

Can you imagine an Egyptian pointing to a French Jew, and saying, “He is the true face of Egypt?”

Can you imagine an Israeli pointing to an Arab and saying, “He is the true face of Israel?”

Can you imagine an Afghan pointing to a solider from Iowa and saying, “He is the true face of Afghanistan?”

Can you imagine a British politician pointing to a first-generation Muslim and saying, “He is the true face of Britain?”

All are implausible except the last. Only the white European denies that he has a rightful home. Read More »

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

This, from my favorite classical-music CD review site, is a vignette of the aftermath of the Tottenham riots: “Our reviewer Carla Rees, flute player and artistic director of rarescale, recently lost her home in the London riots. She was burned out losing all her flutes, music and possessions as well as her two cats. She has nothing left and is having to live in a hotel. The company Just Flutes & Jonathan Myall Music [is] lending her instruments and music and have launched an appeal on her behalf. MusicWeb will be making a donation and would urge you all to do the same.” Meanwhile most of the rioters will go on receiving their social welfare payments, so that they can buy drugs, purchase more tattoos, live in council flats, pay for their Blackberry subscriptions, and otherwise exist parasitically on the talent and productivity of others. Read More »

WHAT SOCIETIES in history have left children in the hands of homosexual men? The answer is none but ours, a society so remarkably callous to the young and vulnerable we might as well abandon infants on windy cliffs as the Romans did.

Most homosexual men are not murderers or dangerous, but homosexual men have a proportionately higher tendency than heterosexuals toward violent relationships. And men who are biologically unrelated to the children they care for are more violent toward them. Those are facts. A recent Canadian study found that homosexual relationships are twice as violent as heterosexual ones. Many other studies have confirmed this. All those who celebrate the adoption of children by homosexuals should be forced to attend the funerals of the children who will come between homosexual lovers, or at least to look on from afar and weep. Read More »

AN ONLINE petition by homosexual activists to convince PBS to marry Sesame Street’s famous characters Bert and Ernie (yes, folks this is no joke) has attracted so much attention that Sesame Street Workshop has issued a statement on the pair’s sexual orientation, declaring in a clever evasion that Bert and Ernie are not male at all. They have male voices, male names, male clothing and male mannerisms, but Bert and Ernie could just as well be Gladys and Ethel. And, even if they were Gladys and Ethel they would possess no capacity to love the opposite sex. According to SeattlePi.com, the statement says:

Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics, they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.

Before you dissolve into laughter, note what a victory this is for those who wish to acclimate children to perversity and confusion. Sesame Street has declared that Bert and Ernie are just puppets. In other words, the world of child play has no connection, no link whatsoever, to reality. When you see a male character he is not necessarily male.  That’s all in your mind. Sesame Street was not communicating to children after all, but just playing along with them. Ert and Bernie, I mean, Bert and Ernie, are nothing more than sacks of cloth. Imagination is all a pointless misinterpretation of the obvious. Read More »

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

For three weeks, the Left has been making propaganda hay out of Anders Breivik and his blood spree on Utøya. The Left accuses conservatives of having virtually deputized Breivik and of having therefore colluded in what they see as proxy violence on behalf of those who resist total socialization. The Left meanwhile employs actual proxies aplenty who make actual violence aplenty, much of it murderous. It is the direct implication – and it is hardly an implication only – of Richard Sennett’s screed that rioting savages in Greece, France, Britain, or North America are carrying out justice as the liberal establishment defines justice. Read More »

THE APPROVAL OF same-sex “marriage” by a tiny Washington State Indian tribe is the occasion for extravagant appreciation of Native Americans in today’s New York Times. We are told tribes “never excluded people” and homosexuals had higher spiritual status in tribal culture. (All of which, if it were true, would serve to suggest that socially-approved homosexuality is characteristic of primitive cultures.)

However, we are not given the relevant historical facts. These details skirt the main issue. Did Indians of the same-sex actually marry each other in wedding ceremonies and raise children together? Of course, they didn’t. Native Americans weren’t that degenerate. Read More »

RICHARD SENNETT, brandishing his credentials as professor of sociology at the London School of Economics (and thus as eminent psychologist of the lower classes), and his wife, Saskia Sassen, a professor at Columbia, offer their combined intercontinental expertise on the editorial pages of The New York Times today to warn that the Tea Party may provoke proletarian rioting in the United States comparable to that in England.

And that’s just fine with these academic gangsters. America’s elite is more than willing to provide the moral legitimacy to looters, window-smashers and hooded plunderers if taxpayers don’t fork over the money. 

They write: Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

To give some perspective on the family situation in Britain: in 2009, 46.2 percent of all children were born out-of-wedlock. Among native-born Britons, the illegitimacy ratio was 53.3 percent. For more on out-of-wedlock births in Britain see this previous post at The Thinking Housewife.

The recent riots in London have been in areas with large numbers of immigrants. Tottenham, where the riots started, is in the borough of Haringey which in turn is a part of London. In other words, London is a part of Britain, Haringey is a part of London, and Tottenham is a part of Haringey.

Below is a table showing what proportion of newborns in Britain, London, and Haringey in 2009 were born to native born Britons, to mothers from another European country, or to mothers from a non-European country.  Read More »

IN TARA’S HALLS
             —William Butler Yeats

A man I praise that once in Tara’s Halls
Said to the woman on his knees, ‘Lie still.
My hundredth year is at an end. I think
That something is about to happen, I think
That the adventure of old age begins.
To many women I have said, “Lie still,”
And given everything a woman needs,
A roof, good clothes, passion, love perhaps,
But never asked for love; should I ask that,
I shall be old indeed.’

Read More »