TAXPAYERS pay hundreds of millions of dollars for infant formula for unmarried mothers who are healthy and capable of breastfeeding. These mothers often refuse to breastfeed because it is too much trouble. Why bother? The government provides formula gratis.

Here is an interesting look at this phenomenon by a dietitian who has worked with young, unmarried mothers. The most important issue here is not the money spent by taxpayers, but the cultural effects of that money, which is mindless, wasteful, destructive, anti-child, anti-social behaviors.  Let’s face it. Our government is at war with children.

Writing for the Weston A. Price Foundation, the dietitian recounts her experiences: Read More »

Mabel's Pensioners, James Hayllar

THE BRITISH PAINTER James Hayllar (1829-1920) depicted something you will rarely see on modern canvases: interaction between the old and young. In addition to the painting above, he created this scene of a girl with her grandfather.

Grandfather's Little Nurse, James Hayllar

HURRICANE BETSY writes:

Regarding Eric’s comment that the emperor is wearing clothes and your reply to him. 

Why draw a naked man? That would never have washed in the earlier part of the 20th century, when Edmund Dulac lived and worked. So he put some light-coloured long underwear on the emperor, and everyone, especially children, would have understood. 

All the old fairy tale books I’ve seen have a similar illustration to go with this story, with one exception – a wonderful drawing by Maxwell Armfield where we don’t see the emperor, only the shocked looks on the faces of the citizens. Read More »

BRUCE writes:

C.S. Lewis explained this in The Last Battle. It is the Calormene Emeth speaking:

Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him.

But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome.

But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. Read More »

IN THIS ENTRY, a father analyses the Disney version of “The Little Mermaid” and finds redeeming messages for his daughters. 

The Little Mermaid, Edmund Dulac

JESSE POWELL writes:

It is funny that in America today, one gets the impression that the golden era was the 1950s. Everything was perfect and then things all went to hell starting in the 60s.  If one wants a return to the 1950s that makes one a radical and a “cultural conservative.” However, when looking at social statistics, one finds that the 1950s was a period of holding down the fort. The decade only looks good compared to what came after; it looks quite bad compared to what came before. Social indicators show that family breakdown began its steady upward climb in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Here I want to give you a table detailing the increase in married women joining the labor force decade by decade from 1890 up to the current day (data for 1910 is excluded due to the unreliability of data from that year). All data is from government sources.  Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

William F. Price, founder of The Spearhead, posted an interesting article about his reasons for founding the men’s site. He titles the essay which is the heart of the post, “Men’s Liberation.” I’m not making this up; he chose the phrase “men’s liberation.” In the essay, he proclaims, “reality – the way things are – is our only true master. We owe no debt to anything or anyone else.”

He calls for “a spiritual awakening” among men. What is the nature of that awakening? 

He writes:

Women rebelled against their social obligations and limitations and threw them off. Men, too, can do the same.

ACCORDING TO female prison guards interviewed in The Seattle Times after last week’s murder of Jayme Biendl, women are perfectly capable of supervising violent male criminals. In fact, women have just the right people skills for the job. Said one female guard, “What do women excel at? Managing people and kids, which is what some of these (inmates) are. It’s just a bigger house, more kids.”

Guarding rapists and murderers living in a state of forced celibacy is the same type of work, essentially no different, as taking care of small children. Read More »

JAMES H. writes:

The older I get the more profoundly I feel the loss of our heritage.  Daily we are assaulted by a coarseness so odious that those whose sensibilities were formed at an earlier time are nearly overwhelmed by it all.  I’m a tyro at video but recently have been undertaking the task of assembling and digitizing our family videos.  The contrasts highlighted by these videos highlight what has been lost.  I’ve attached a video collage lifted from my grandfather’s 16mm and 8mm videos dating back to the 1920s.  It’s only 3 minutes and I attached a music score since the originals have no sound.  Hope you enjoy it!   Read More »

DAVID LEE MUNDY writes:

During our recent trip back to the states, we made a visit to Disney World. Of course my young daughters wanted to meet the princesses. Not all the princesses, mind you, since they’ve never seen “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “Mulan,” etc. We explained, to the consternation of our immediate family, that we don’t watch those movies because those girls are not modest and don’t obey their fathers.

The line to meet the princesses was surprisingly short. The longer line was for meeting the fairies. To one unfamiliar with the fairy phenomenon, it was shocking. Who would want to meet a fairy over a princess? But apparently that’s the way these days. Read More »

But the emperor isn't wearing any clothes! by Edmund Dulac.

Read More »

KENDRA writes:

Laura wrote in this entry,

“Government subsidies of single mothers are not humane or charitable or compassionate. They are evil. Subsidies for single mothers are a state-sanctioned form of child abuse.” 

I just wanted to add a few of my experiences to this conversation.  I am sorry this is so long, but the events are true.  I am a white mother of three and I live right on the edge of an underclass black neighborhood in Indianapolis, Indiana and have witnessed firsthand very troubling effects of welfare dependency and the behaviors of unwed women with children.  My neighborhood is one of the first suburbs in the city, many of the homes were built in the early 1900s by architects and wealthy families as a place to get away from city life.  The homes are huge and wonderful, but desegregation of the schools in the 1960s caused whites to move to new suburbs north.  Poorer blacks filled the vacuum created by this sudden flight, the homes fell into complete disrepair, and the businesses moved out.  Read More »

ALAN writes:

Apropos your post a “A Woman in a Man’s Job,” the murder of a woman “officer” in a state prison could not have happened in the 1950s because Americans were not stupid enough then to believe the ridiculous things they believe today. If they were alive, my father and uncles would marvel at the stupidity of people who think it fine and dandy for women to work as security guards, police officers, pilots, soldiers, sailors, bus drivers and train operators. 

Ideas have consequences, Professor Richard Weaver wrote in 1948. Unarmed women getting murdered because they agree to work as “officers” among hundreds of criminal brutes is one consequence of extremely bad ideas like feminism and egalitarianism.  Read More »

KATHLENE M. writes:

“Do women make for better news?” I would say no. When I see a glammed-up Dana Perino, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin, Diane Sawyer or even Nancy Pelosi talking or pontificating on television, I cannot pay attention because I’m too distracted by their appearances. Dana Perino is perfectly coiffed and exceptionally pretty. Ann Coulter’s long hair and long fake eyelashes hypnotize me. Michelle Malkin’s large glossy red lips overpower the screen. (Even my husband agrees on that one.) Sarah Palin is one of those “hotty” moms who dress as young as their teen kids. Diane Sawyer and Nancy Pelosi’s perfectly coiffed hair and flawless skin are preternatural. Diane Sawyer’s fake eyelashes add to the illusion. I imagine that men must get even more distracted by these women and cannot really hear what they’re saying.

Read More »

GOVERNMENT subsidies of single mothers are not humane or charitable or compassionate. They are evil. Subsidies for single mothers are a state-sanctioned form of child abuse. Gerry Garibaldi, a schoolteacher writing in The City Journal, describes the world of black pregnant teens and their fatherless boyfriends, a story that has been told so many times for so many years to so many people that chaos seems normal.

Read More »

IT’S IRONIC, but true, that one of the qualifications of the modern librarian is a distaste for books. They take up space, and space, the librarians complain, is limited. The books grow old, too. Their covers fray, the spines crack, the pages go dog-eared. Inattentive student workers stick them on the wrong shelves, where they can practically “disappear” for years. People borrow them and don’t return them….

Books are bulky and inconvenient – like rocks, and trees, and rivers, and life. It occurs to me that everything that can be said against the inconvenience of books can be said about the inconvenience of children.

                     — Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

Dana Perino of Fox News

LAWRENCE AUSTER writes:

Dana Perino is a typical TV talking head female: preciously pretty, with media skills, and with absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. The main message she conveys is, “I am so pretty and I know how to talk; and I am so very special because I’m pretty and know how to talk.”

Read More »