Karen I. writes:

I thought you might find this interesting. I saw it on a website called Dollar Stretcher, which is a good site for a housewife to visit now and then. I was shocked to see this. It is important for housewives to have a credit history of their own in case of the death of their spouse, and other emergency situations. This new law could make establishing credit much harder for housewives. Our government seems intent on making things as difficult as possible for us. Read More »

THIS article on the staggering increase in divorce and illegitimacy in one county in Iowa indicates that feminism and the economic autonomy of women are major factors. The writers don’t come right out and say it but it’s clear: most of the divorces are filed by women.

The piece by Sabrina Tavernese and Robert Gebeloff only indirectly points to another factor: contemporary Christianity. Sioux County is overwhelmingly Christian, with about 80 percent of the residents belonging to a major denomination. Since 1980, the number of married people for every divorced person has declined by more than 60 percent, from 52 to 18.

The one Christian preacher quoted suggests he is uncomfortable with the idea of pointing fingers when it comes to divorce.

“There’s a perception here that you need to be perfect,” said the Rev. John Lee, a young pastor who has tried to encourage change in Sioux County by taking on taboo topics like divorce and mental illness in his sermons.

“Cars are washed, lawns are mowed in patterns and children are smiling,” Mr. Lee added. “When you admit weakness, you invite shame.”

The opposite is apparently true. There is a perception that you don’t need to be perfect at all, especially when it comes to marital vows made in a church.

Let’s face it. Feel-good Christianity hasn’t just stood by and watched the divorce rate soar. It has actively encouraged it. Christians now overwhelmingly accept the idea that the purpose of marriage is self-fulfillment and reciprocal love.

There is an enormous banner outside a local Evangelical church near my home that invites one and all in huge letters to “Fresh Start: a Divorce Recovery Seminar.” This redefinition of Christian marriage is one more example of something even more disturbing and profoundly telling: the closing of the Christian mind. Christians can no longer think their way out of a paper bag. Principle eludes them. They are truly Christians of the Heart-land, oblivious to the fact that God created their minds too. Their preachers and priests feed them sentimentalities, not truth, or ignore the whirlwind of marital disruption like babies sleeping through a storm.

The purpose of Christian marriage is not love and mutual understanding. It is to give life to and responsibly raise the next generation. Love and mutual understanding are entirely secondary. But the Christian of today is too much in awe of his or her heartbeats to perceive or think of anything higher.  

Read More »

Shirley Temple leaves the White House with her mother, 1938

THE March issue of Chronicles magazine includes “Going Down with the Good Ship Lollipop,” an excellent, first-rate piece by Jack Trotter on Shirley Temple, whose stardom the writer identifies as the beginning of popular culture’s explicit sexualization of children. Countering those who might protest that the tap-dancing little girl in embroidered frocks was nothing like today’s Britneys and Mileys, Trotter describes the dark, prurient side of her appeal.

“[M]illions of Americans embraced Shirley without so much as a murmur of disapproval,” he writes. In the piece, unavailable online, Trotter recalls the novelist Graham Greene’s observations of Miss Temple in his film reviews:   Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

I had an interesting experience walking home this evening. I was standing at a busy intersection patiently waiting for the crossing sign to turn green. I had hit the button signaling that I wanted to cross and was waiting. It was already dark and had been dark for about an hour. On the opposite side of the street a young woman, about 30 years old and well dressed, quite attractive, white, stepped into the street. When I first saw her do this I thought she was confused, that she didn’t know that the light was red; maybe she thought she saw a green light and just wasn’t very aware of her surroundings. Read More »

STEPHEN writes:

With regard to yesterday’s post on the “Meditations of Nicolas Goméz Dávila,” I would like to offer one small correction to what your correspondent (Peter S.) wrote, or at least prevent a potential misunderstanding on the part of your readers. Goméz Dávila wrote well over 3,000 aphorisms — the total is, I believe, somewhere around 14,000. Rather, I only translated approximately 3,000 of his aphorisms into English on Don Colacho’s Aphorisms.

Laura writes:

So you only translated 3,000 of his aphorisms? That’s all? 

Seriously, that is impressive. Congratulations and thank you for your effort. In celebration, I’d like to post a few of my favorite of Goméz Dávila’s aphorisms on love: Read More »

MICHAEL D. writes in response to this entry:

The last occasion when the United States attacked Libya was in 1986 in Operation El Dorado Canyon. This operation consisted of a series of air strikes by air force and navy strike aircraft where they struck regime targets in Tripoli and Benghazi. President Reagan announced the operation to the public while the planes were in the air – the strikes were in reprisal for a bomb attack by Libyan terrorists on a nightclub in Berlin that was packed with many U.S. servicemen and civilians at the time. Read More »

I REALIZE military commanders are under certain restrictions when coming up with code names for strategic operations, but still it is embarrassing to see an armed conflict assigned such a silly, euphemistic term in the news as “Operation Odyssey Dawn.” Even if military personnel refer to it as such, is it necessary for the public and journalists to accept the term? The rash mindlessness and indefinite purpose of this country’s attack on Libya, launched without Congressional approval, is sickeningly highlighted by the sentimental name. Ed O’Keefe in The Washington Post says the phrase sounds like “the title of a rock album, video game or — as some have suggested — the name of a pornographic movie star.” Read More »

PETER S. WRITES:

Today marks the completion of a multi-year informal translation project of the aphorisms of Don Colacho.  A profound reactionary intellectual, his observations, while no doubt acerbic to some tastes, are full of penetrating insight regarding the modern condition and the eclipse of the sacred.  Of the nearly three thousand aphorisms authored by him, I offer a few here by way of example: 

We do not invoke God as defendants, but as parched lands. 

Today the individual must gradually reconstruct inside himself the civilized universe that is disappearing around him. 

I do not belong to a world that is passing away; I prolong and transmit a truth that does not die. 

The Gospels and the Communist Manifesto are waning; the world’s future lies in the power of Coca-Cola and pornography.

TODAY is Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday. Celebrate by listening to this beautiful version of the Bach Concerto in F minor, with Claudio Dauelsberg on the piano.

Bach means “brook” in German. Beethoven said, “Not Brook, but Ocean should be his name.”  Bach is a vast and glorious sea that stretches to the horizon.

Read More »

KILROY M. writes:

This from NineMSN in Australia brought a smile to my face: “Casey’s father Colin said he was proud his son has finally stood up to the bullying, and the support Casey had received had already changed his son’s demeanour and self-esteem.”  Read More »

THE LATEST DISCUSSION on free trade has been particularly interesting. One reader in that entry made the point that capital raised in offshore industry is reinvested in our economy and leads to further innovation and new industries at home. In response, the reader R.S. writes:

And that productive capital can in future be invested in places that are not the United States, for exactly the same reasons that productive capital has been invested in existing industries, in places that are not the United States, and exactly the same reasons that productive capital is being invested in new industries, in places that are not the United States.

He also writes:

[N]o serious thinker believes that a large nation can maintain itself, defend itself, and prosper as a “service economy.” Shills, hacks, CNBC screechers, Timothy Geithner, professors at George Mason, and Economist leader-writers, yes, but not serious people. Read More »

A man grieves in front of the wreckage where his mother's body was buried by the waves.

SEE The New York Times’s remarkable slide show of the aftermath of the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.

LAST WEEK, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Samantha Powers, of the National Security Council; and Susan Rice, ambassador to the United Nations, were all influential in convincing President Obama to order up military plans for an attack on Libya. The New York Times describes their efforts to convince the president on the necessity for intervention. 

Suffragists and feminists often claimed that women would bring world peace if they could only get the reins of power. That’s because suffragists and feminists misunderstood how a powerful woman might react to a supposed “humanitarian crisis.” It’s not excessive aggression that drives women to unnecessary war, but excessive compassion.

IN THIS previous thread, Van Wijk writes:

It is no secret that the majority of American Jews are leftists; so are a great many whites. Since leftist Jews are in most cases racially and culturally white, and since they are too few and pacifistic to pose a physical threat, they can be lumped in with white leftists as a whole and dealt with in the same manner. The problem with the Jew-haters is that they tend to ignore or play down the danger posed by demonstrably violent peoples. Solve the problem of Jewish influence, they say, and all other problems will solve themselves. Every time I’ve asked a Jew-hater what to do about Mestizos or Muslims, the response has been that they can be dealt with “in a straightforward manner.” No one but the Jews are on the Jew-hater’s radar, and Jews are (naturally) responsible for most of the evil in the world. …. Since Jewish influence looms large in the mind of the Jew-hater and can never be resolved while there is a single Jew in the land, to engage them is to be drawn into what Mark Richardson calls an “intellectual cul-de-sac.” Read More »

R.S. WRITES:

One commenter in the previous discussion mentioned Toyota, I would like to hold that company up to the claim made by another reader that protectionism always leads to shoddy union practices and inferior products. Interested readers might like to review the history of that superlative manufacturer when evaluating theoretical objections to protectionism. Read More »