A Shepherd Resting in a Wooded Landscape, Sidney Richard Percy 1870

SEE more Victorian and Edwardian British paintings here.

IN 1893, on her death bed, Elizabeth Mardewel, an education reformer who was pioneer of the kindergarten in California, uttered these words: “I believe in the power of the kindergarten to reform the world.”

As recounted in Rousas John Rushdoony’s The Messianic Character of American Education, Mardewel also said, kindergarten would “regenerate the human race.”

In truth, the history of early childhood education in America is the history of waning maternal attachment and the declining family. Kindergarten did reform the human race. But not for the better.

BRUCE writes:

It suddenly dawned on me this morning that with the ongoing feminization of the police and military, a watershed has been crossed, a step that demonstrates the profound unreality of modern life. 

How could women ever have gotten themselves to the point where the idea of having large numbers of women working as police and soldiers and sailors and pilots (i.e. the ‘need’ for enhanced career opportunities for women) would take precedence over their own safety and the safety of their children? That is a really remarkable level of unreality – and one which I fear will elicit a terrible price if or when equal opportunity, mixed-sex police forces and combat units (with female/feminized commanders) come up against all-male gangs and armies. Read More »

THE BLOGGER Dennis Mangan joins the ranks of small-minded men’s rights ideologues attempting to burn me at the stake. Mangan writes about my comment that men have nothing to fear in marriage other than the loss of their honor. He comes to the conclusion that conservative women cannot possibly empathize with the plight of men.

Mr. Mangan conveniently ignores the fact that this particular statement by me occurred in the context of a discussion about comments at another website from men who said no women can be trusted and that “99 percent” of women are nothing more than materialistic whores when it comes to marriage.

In addition to failing to mention that participants in the particular discussion in question called women many nasty, unprintable names and celebrated soulless sexual conquest, Mr. Mangan also forgets to take note of the many, many things I have written against female-initiated divorce. If I am not mistaken, I have written more prolifically on the subject than Mr. Mangan. His omission of this small detail suggests some deeper motivation for wishing to excommunicate me from the ranks of anti-feminists. Could it have anything to do with my being a woman? Could it have anything to do with my frequent writings on the devastating loss of the male provider or my refusal to say that the divorce rate justifies anti-marriage campaigns by men or obliviousness and indifference to the soaring rate of illegitimacy?

The lists of my posts on the scourge of unilateral divorce by women is very long. Some (not all) can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Men’s rights ideologues like Mr. Mangan gleefully search for heretics and smack their lips when they think they have discovered that a conservative woman who denounces women for divorce and yet who also points to the responsibilities of men in marriage and society is really an impostor and secretly out to subjugate men. Why do men’s rights advocates so fervently wish to prove that no woman can be trusted? Why must they burn me on their pile of pathetic rhetorical twigs? So they can bask in their One True Faith and not contemplate the complexities. So they can indulge a sense of victimization and self-love.

I repeat. I have written about female-initiated divorce at least as forcefully as Mr. Mangan has. Not only have I written about it, but I have gone so far as to call for a return to presumptive paternal custody. I agree with Whiskey, the blogger quoted by Mr. Mangan, that women must criticize other women for damaging the lives of decent men. I have made this point many times. For all I know, Mr. Whiskey got this point from me. No one has more adamantly insisted on it than I have. Oh! But all that was just an act. I am really a feminist in disguise! Burn me at the stake! I don’t deserve to speak and stand up for marriage! You’re good to go, men.

Arguing with a men’s rights fanatic is like being interrogated by the KGB. The very hairs on your head may be used as evidence against you. At any moment you might be proven an imperialist dog. Even if you have lived the life of hard-working peasant, you can still be an enemy of the people.

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AS more and more women left their traditional roles in the early decades of the twentieth century, Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical Casti Connubii of December 31, 1930, vehemently spoke out against this immensely significant cultural shift. He called the emancipation of women from the home a “crime.”

Now many decades later, at a time when the majority of married women are employed, it is rare for members of the Catholic clergy to speak in strong terms about the spiritual devastation caused by absentee mothering. 

Pope Pius XI wrote:

The same false teachers who try to dim the luster of conjugal faith and purity do not scruple to do away with the honorable and trusting obedience which the woman owes to the man. Many of them even go further and assert that such a subjection of one party to the other is unworthy of human dignity, that the rights of husband and wife are equal; wherefore, they boldly proclaim the emancipation of women has been or ought to be effected. This emancipation in their ideas must be threefold, in the ruling of the domestic society, in the administration of family affairs and in the rearing of the children. Read More »

A. GUY MALIGNED, at his blog What Women Never Hear, continues to offer his love philosophy to women looking for husbands and to those who are already married. Marriage and courtship, he writes, founder where there is ignorance of fundamental sex differences. In one of his “Boot Camp for Girls” entries, Guy writes:

Feminine beats plain femaleness. Mystery beats full disclosure. Modesty beats masculine morality. Monogamy beats sexual freedom. All of it makes males back off from their naturally dominant personas, which helps fulfill female hopes and dreams. 

Guy also offers good advice for men. Read More »

TRAVEL THROUGHOUT America, into small towns, or big suburbs or dense cities, and you will find the phenomenon of single motherhood. One of the most obvious developments of recent years is the lower middle-class white girl who comes from an intact or relatively intact family and who ends up as a single mother. She finds herself in this situation because she is anti-abortion and yet not anti-fornication. There is no pressure on her to marry and yet there is the good and healthy moral incentive to refuse abortion.

She may be cheered by friends and religious organizations for her decision to have a child. And, refusing abortion is the right thing to do. However, it is easy to confuse this heroic decision as something that makes single motherhood right and good. Unless both abortion and unwed pregnancy are stigmatized, social conservatism becomes an unwitting promoter of single motherhood.

Abortion rates have fallen in recent years while single motherhood has increased precipitously. Here is a 2008 piece by Selwyn Duke on the relation between anti-abortion sentiment and the growth of single motherhood. The answer is not for anti-abortion efforts to become less zealous.  Both abortion and single motherhood were shameful fifty years ago and the incidence of both was much lower.

WILL the French journalist Éric Zemmour be silenced? It is hard to imagine a man as outspoken as Zemmour, who was convicted of defamation in French court last week for publicly stating that most drug dealers in France are Arabs and blacks, not speaking his mind. At his trial, Zemmour said: 

“I am not a provocateur. I say what I believe and what I see. Sometimes the reality is unbearable and brutal. This is about freedom of expression. When you describe reality, you are treated as a criminal.”

The blog Galliawatch is a good source for background and ongoing news about the celebrated and despised journalist. The author Tiberge wrote this longer piece on Zemmour last year and a recent post on the trial. Zemmour was fined 5,752 euros. Further fines were deferred and will be automatically collected if he comes up for more charges.

A recent profile in The New York Times described Zemmour as a “hopeless intellectual.” In his critiques of multiculturalism and mass immigration, Zemmour complains that France is being “Americanized.” He is an outspoken critic of feminism too. In his book, Le Premier Sexe, the journalist accused feminism of undermining virility, authority and social order.  

Zemmour is a reactionary in the best sense of the word, a critic of the grinding loss of meaning imposed on the individual by the wearing away of national identity and traditional roles. Read More »

ALAN writes:

Regarding the tolerant feminist who called you  an “ignorant housewife from the Ozzie and Harriet era,” your response was perfect.  But you should also feel honored (I certainly would) to be criticized in company with Ozzie and Harriet.   

Because of decades of radical-leftist propaganda, many of your readers might not know the truth about Ozzie and Harriet.  So permit me to share it. 

Ozzie and Harriet Nelson were talented entertainers who provided music and clean, wholesome entertainment to Americans for more than three decades.   Harriet was a talented singer and actress.  Ozzie was a talented musician, writer, actor, and director. Their radio and television programs were well-written, finely-crafted comedy entertainment suitable for the whole family.  Their programs honored and respected the American family, never belittled or derided it.  

Respect for parents and elders, courtesy, good manners, good grooming, proper dress, good sportsmanship, self-restraint, and gentle humor are some of the values that Ozzie chose to depict consistently in those programs over nearly a quarter-century.   The Nelson family did not shout or speak in jive talk or smart-aleck manner.  They spoke English clearly, in complete sentences, and in civil tones of conversation.   Their characters were disciplined and principled.  Each of them in turn became a target of gentle, self-effacing humor.  Never did Ozzie resort to cheap tricks, sarcasm or insults between characters, or off-color language or humor.   Read More »

BRETT STEVENS, at the website Amerika, argues that the loss of chastity as a social ideal is part of a larger denigration of hierarchy. As such, it is connected to economic decline of the middle class. He writes:

Do we want each sexual act to have meaning, or should we remove context? Do we want a nation of equally impoverished middle classes, or a hierarchy? These questions are eternal because they are mathematical, not human, in origin.

Robinson Crusoe, N.C. Wyeth

“As I imagin’d, so it was, there appear’d before me a little opening of the Land, and I found a strong Current of the Tide set into it, so I guided my Raft as well as I could to keep in the Middle of the Stream: But here I had like to have suffer’d a second Shipwreck, which, if I had, I think verily would have broke my Heart, for knowing nothing of the Coast, my Raft run a-ground at one End of it upon a Shoal, and not being a-ground at the other End, it wanted but a little that all my Cargo had slip’d off towards that End that was a-float, and so fall’n into the Water: Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

A survey was conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1938 asking Americans if they supported married women working when their husbands were capable of supporting them. A resounding 78 percent said, “No.”

This shows that even after 50 years of married women increasingly joining the workforce and after heavy industrialization of America, public sentiment was still strongly opposed to married women working if they weren’t forced to by economic necessity. The number one reason respondents gave for their negative answers was: women would take jobs away from men and families would suffer as a result.

An article about the survey appeared in The New York Times on December 25, 1938. Here is an excerpt from the piece: Read More »

THERE IS a lengthy highbrow discussion at the men’s website, The Spearhead, in response to the post here in which I said that a wife can never deprive a man of his honor and character. I have not read the whole Spearhead entry, but I have glanced at it. To give you an idea of the tenor of the discussion, or at least of some of the participants, one reader writes of me:

She is worthless, untouchable filth. She should have been aborted with a chainsaw.

Hawaiian Libertarian, who moderates the discussion and who has not deleted threatening comments such as this, falsely states that I do not accept comments here. I accept the comments of anyone who writes to me, provided they are civil and to the point, as is clearly stated on my home page at the bottom of every entry. He also falsely states that I am a reader of The Spearhead. I am not, though readers do occasionally send me links from there. Read More »

KAREN I. writes:

I am sending a picture of Cassie Herkelman, the girl who won the Iowa state wrestling match by forfeit. From what I read, another girl wrestled a boy in the same tournament and lost the first match after being pinned in 52 seconds. I also read that Joel Northrup, who refused on principle to wrestle a girl, can still participate in other matches in the tournament despite forfeiting the match with Herkelman. 

Northrup can hold his head high, knowing he did the right thing. I wonder if Herkelman is equally proud of her “achievement.”

Read More »

THOUGH HE was required to fill out a lengthy questionnaire about his sexual history, his health, and his personal habits, and to read warnings against donating blood if he was a homosexual or drug user, my husband was asked the following question in an oral interview when he went to give blood to the American Red Cross today:

Are you a biological male? Read More »

HERE IS a news story that will make your day. This really happened in America.

An Iowa high school wrestling champ bowed out of a state competition today because he refused to wrestle with a girl. Joel Northrup, who is homeschooled, forfeited the match with Cassie Herkelman. He stated:

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan (Black, the tournament’s other female entrant) and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times. As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most of the high school sports in Iowa.

Read More »

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes in response to this entry on the future of the bookstore:

Books are not indestructible, but short of tossing them into a furnace or dropping them into an industrial shredder they are difficult to annihilate. Not so the electronic file. A single electromagnetic burst over the North American continent could erase every unprotected electronic file on every personal computer in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It need not be from an enemy attack either – the sun can generate powerful magnetic bursts. A civilization that considers the book obsolete and plans to base its literacy on text-files stored on Kindle-type devices is tempting the nemesis of a blue screen and nothing to read and no possibility of reconstituting the tradition.  Read More »

SEE Lawrence Auster’s commentary on the Lara Logan story. He writes:

[L]iberals want it both ways. They present Logan to the world as superwoman, but when she was assaulted they suddenly treated her as a helpless vulnerable female whose tribulations must be hidden from the world.