ONE WOULD think Barack Obama had rarely been in American schools, real American schools, by the misty-eyed romanticism he attaches to them. This fervor was on display again in his jobs speech last night. There is nothing, in Obama’s eyes, that a school fully staffed by the graduates of our brainless, monopolistic educational certification institutions can’t do to lift human potential.

Following the messianic quest for an optimally schooled populace through its torturous contradictions, Obama has proposed creating construction jobs by fixing 35,000 school buildings. He also insists we employ more teachers – now. This is his idea of getting America back to work. (more…)

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the ongoing discussion of free trade, and especially Kristor’s excellent comments on protectionism.

Let me try to translate what he is saying into my own very simplistic terms. Let’s say the government had intervened to save our textile industry years ago and had imposed tariffs on clothing imports from Asia. Instead of buying pants, coats and shirts made in Indonesia and Vietnam, we would be buying clothes made in America. (more…)

   SOME PEOPLE say that modern industrialization took men from the home, and that this in turn led to feminism. I don't deny that industrialization brought different demands, but men have for thousands of years left home in significant numbers. They left to fish, to hunt, to trap, to go whaling, to fight wars, to study, to mine, to pan for gold, to explore, and to sell goods. And women have always waited for them. It was only with modernity that large numbers of women lost the capacity for hopeful, watchful, ever vigilant waiting. It takes courage to wait.

A FEMALE READER writes:

Thank you for your site! Your thoughts have been very influential in my decision to quit my part- time job. I wanted to express my gratitude and share an article with you.

I came across this New York Times article about couples who decide to abort half of a pair of twins and I thought of the recent thread on your page, The Test Tube Family. Although the entire article is disturbing, on so many levels, I found this quote particularly horrifying : 

If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me — and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control. (more…)

“THE CHILD-FOCUSED DIVORCE” is the arresting title of an article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal that unabashedly promotes divorce. Illustrated with smiley family photos, a picture of a contented divorcée outside her home, and cartoon-like graphics of cuddly children, the piece by Elizabeth Bernstein is nauseatingly unsympathetic to the young while all the time appearing to champion their interests. Here is one more entry in the ideological contest to wreck as many homes as possible.

Child-focused divorce? Isn’t that like, say, “homeowner-focused burglary” or “teller-focused bank robbery?” In other words, there is no such thing as child-focused divorce in any meaningful sense of the term. That parents may mitigate the damage wrought by divorce does not make it child-focused. A divorce is only child-focused in the sense that all the damage is focused on the children.

Here is most of the article, with my comments in brackets: (more…)

THERE was an unusual moment in last night’s debate among Republican candidates in California. On the issue of immigration, the moderators from NBC and Politico ceded the floor to Jose Diaz-Balart of Telemundo, who stood directly in front of the candidates. The suggestion was that any of the candidate’s answers on immigration affected Latinos and Latinos only.

All of the candidates, except Romney, did poorly on the immigration issue, failing to reject amnesty directly.

The debate otherwise showed a party invigorated by its opposition to Obama. Despite the claim by some reporters that they “locked horns,” the exchanges between Perry and Romney were civil and engaging. The contest is between them. Any notion that Bachmann is up to the task of being president was dispelled for me by this debate. She appeared weak and somewhat robotic. Her reference to herself as a “mom” was dumb and Palinesque. She appears to be serious about this claim that she “raised” 23 foster children, taking it one step further on the national stage.

However, all of the eight candidates, including Bachmann, did a good job of explaining some of the basic premises of conservatism, especially why mandated health insurance and public entitlement programs are immoral. I liked Ron Paul’s answer at the end: (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes: 

The American Community Survey, conducted by the Census Bureau, has added some questions about marital events to its annual survey. The 2009 American Community Survey results have been released and a report-titled “Marital Events of Americans: 2009” has been issued. These findings confirm the widely-publicized reports of the National Marriage Project, which have shown a widening social gap, with divorce and illegitimacy rates much higher among the uneducated.

Before offering these newest findings of the American Community Survey, I would like to comment on the focus of the National Marriage Project, which has enormous influence in the national conversation over family decline. 

The Marriage Project consistently promotes the idea that if only everybody took up the values of the well-educated, or somehow learned the secrets of marriage success that the college educated know, everything would be fine and dandy. There are two problems with this orientation. 

First of all, the well-off are just that, the well-off. If everybody was educated then those at or near the top would simply be average. The fact that the more successful are more successful is true but not interesting. The fact that there is a distribution of level of success in people’s family life is again true but not surprising. (more…)

  A FAN writes: My housewife (of 50 years now) and I love paddling a canoe. That painting by Winslow Homer of a tandem canoe underway in serious water is something that has special meaning to us. Few things compare with the cooperation, teamwork, and occasional skill required to negotiate treacherous waters in those unique watercraft. Wilderness canoeing is a beautiful way to "recreate," to see God's handiwork up close, and to "iron out the wrinkles in your soul." The experience is a lot like life's journey. It helps you learn to trust and to depend on each other.  Another sport that somewhat compares to it would be tournament doubles tennis with your spouse as partner. Things can get serious there also! It will show you where your weaknesses are. You need to be well married to do either successfuly and if you have married "the wrong one?" Either of these two pastimes will probably be a good indicator.

A READER FROM ARIZONA writes:

Regarding your post on Satanic imagery on children’s clothing, Mexican culture has us beat by a long way on this “symbolism” beginning with the Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, which may have existed in Indigenous cultures. There are skulls and skeletons everywhere and it is not confined to that particular celebration. The obsession with skeletons permeates the culture. Across the line and in Mexican shops this side of the border the things are pervasive. Clothing, folk art and every type of object are covered with them. (more…)

  TO READERS who have enjoyed the previous posts on the ideas of architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros, I recommend this excerpt from his book, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction. He writes: In wanting to explain a cultural mystery — why the world renounced emotionally-nourishing buildings, and instead embraced buildings that literally make us ill — one comes up against severe obstacles. It is not that methods for producing humane buildings are unknown, nor that there is a lack of architects to build them; society has made a conscious decision to build what it does. Furthermore, enormous energy is spent in convincing people that our contemporary built surroundings are good, even though almost everyone feels otherwise. There is a basic disconnect between what we feel, and what we are told we ought to feel — or forced to accept. Answers to these questions lead us from architectural theory into social beliefs and systems. [cont.]

DIANA writes:

I’d like to draw attention to the journalistic license taken in this New York Times article about a sperm donor who has fathered more than 150 children. The whole thing is sickening. The principle is sickening. But also, the mealymouthed journalistic weasel-words. I quote:

“Cynthia Daily and her partner used a sperm donor to conceive a baby seven years ago, and they hoped that one day their son….”

The child is NOT “their” son. He is the product of a sperm and an egg. He is the son of the sperm donor and the mother. (more…)

 DANIEL H. writes:

Recently I was in Houston for business. I was told that I absolutely must visit the Rothko Chapel while there. “One of the great American artworks of the 20th Century,” I was informed. (That should have been my first clue not to go!) (more…)

  COOKING is a form of argument. "Look," the cook says, "at the splendor of the earth." We eat things of surpassing beauty. This fact is strange and wonderful. It is almost too strange to comprehend. A Darwinist would say we evolved to find things beautiful that are good for us to eat. That is, at best, a partial explanation. A painting of a bowl of peaches, such as this one by the 17th century botanical artist Giovanna Garzoni, doesn't make me hungry. It recalls this bond with the earth. We commune with the rain and sun. We taste the dew. We consume the sublime and make it part of ourselves. The homage we pay to the peach is unnecessary to survival.

IN THIS excellent 2009 piece, “The Cult of Ugliness in America,” Fr. Anthony J. Brankin correctly locates the real source of the hideousness of modern architecture and American life in general. The problem is spiritual. He writes:

[T]he cult of ugliness is so pervasive, so all around us, in every nook and cranny of our lives, that we stand the risk at every moment of missing it, of no longer being able to see it or even be repelled by it.

He laments the extreme ugliness, not just of strip malls and contemporary clothes, but of church architecture. He writes:

Look at some of our newest churches and cathedrals. Many of them are stunning and awesome — no, not for their homage to tradition and the Catholic sense of beauty. They are stunning and awesome in their utter inhumanity, their complete lack of scale, their thorough and total sterility, and their horrifying proportions. There is not an angle that could please nor an arch that could comfort. Not a piece of molding that could hold us in its shadow. Not even a little statue before which we could light a slender taper. Like the gaping mouth of the pagan, child-sacrificing furnaces of Moloch, some of our new churches will consume their people in holocausts of visual horror.  

It would be better to pray in catacombs than in these inhuman structures.

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