ALAN writes:

Apropos your recent discussion of “turning the clock back:” 

In a moral or cultural sense, people would not talk about “turning the clock back” if they had not abandoned the moral fiber and cultural standards that once made America a better and stronger nation than it is today. (more…)

FROM the website Tradition in Action comes this excerpt from Maria von Trapp’s autobiography The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, published in 1949. Von Trapp describes the Sundays of her childhood in rural Austria and the Sundays she experienced when the family emigrated to America: 

As I have spent most of my life in rural areas, it is Sunday in the country that I shall describe.

First of all, it begins on Saturday afternoon. In some parts of the country the church bell rings at three o’clock, in others at five o’clock, and the people call it “ringing in the Feierabend.” Just as some of the big feasts begin the night before – on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Easter Eve – so every Sunday throughout the year also starts on its eve. That gives Saturday night its hallowed character. When the church bell rings, the people cease working in the fields. They return with the horses and farm machinery, everything is stored away into the barns and sheds, and the barnyard is swept by the youngest farm-hand. Then everyone takes “the” bath and the men shave. (more…)

FATHER’S DAY should be somber and serious, almost a day of grief, in the Western world. Father hunger is everywhere. So many children are raised without intimate, daily contact with their fathers that many of them have a secret longing, and a fixation on fathers, that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. They dream of father. They idolize him. They wonder if they did not deserve him. A present father is human. An absent father is larger than life.

There are parents who never married. There are parents who divorced. Worst of all, there are those children who were deliberately deprived of any link with their natural fathers. Children conceived with anonymous sperm donors live in a fatherless hell, as described this week in Canada’s National Post: (more…)

DIANA writes:

I value your opinion, your objectivity and your sanity. So I pose the following sincere and simple question: Have we gone insane? (more…)

SEE the interesting comment by Sebastian C., who argues that it’s wrong to lump the transgression of former Gov. Mark Sanford, who had an affair with a woman he loved, with the soulless indiscretions of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer. It’s not that the former is right, but that the latter are much more disturbing. Sebastian writes:

Consider that Weiner must be the first man involved in a sex scandal that never involved sex! No touching, no caressing, no intimacy: just lust, vulgarity, profanity and pornography. Virtual sex for a virtual soul. This is what sex means to men like Weiner and Spitzer. In my view of the world, that is a much greater transgression, and shows a consciousness and soullessness that makes a man more unfit for leadership and respect than one who had a passionate, romantic affair with one adult woman. 

(more…)

KATHERYN GALLANT writes:

I thought you would like to read this article, “Why is Feminism So Afraid to Focus on its Flaws?,” by Deborah Orr in The Guardian. 

I consider myself a pro-life feminist and am a member of Feminists for Life of America. However, I realize that feminism is flawed (like all human endeavors) and cannot be the first priority in a Christian’s life. One comparison that I once read sums up my thoughts vis-a-vis feminism and Christianity: without feminism, I would not be able to walk, but without Christianity, I would not have a soul. (more…)

CHILLINGWORTH writes:

I have been interested to read your thoughts on women in the medical profession and some of the ensuing discussion.

Without wishing to take away from any of what you’ve said, there’s also a different lesson that jumps out at me from this discussion: I think the problems you describe are an excellent argument for getting the federal government out of the business of education. (more…)

LAWRENCE AUSTER writes:

Here again is Susan Burden’s letter to the Times which you quoted:

Female doctors continue to face several hurdles: unequal pay, sexist attitudes from colleagues and most devastatingly from patients, and a ruthless biological clock [emphasis added] that makes childbearing a high priority at a time when doctors are just starting their careers. It is the current system that is broken, and intelligent women should be free to make independent choices for their own well-being.

So, along with the standard oppressions of women that feminists complain about, “unequal pay, sexist attitudes,” there is also that “ruthless biological clock.” That women’s natural child bearing years are limited is not just a normal fact of life; it is something that is being cruelly imposed on women.  (more…)

HERE a commenter explains what radical egalitarianism and its obliteration of respect for natural distinctions has done to medical education and the medical profession in the United States.

James N., a physician, writes:

In the post on the medical profession, the reader “A” said, “Solution? Extremely high standards for admission [to medical school], including demonstrated competence in language, math, science, logic and physical and psychological vigor…”

OK, I agree.

Where are you going to find 18,000 22-year-olds like that, per year? (more…)

FOR MORE THAN 60 years, feminists have equated power with sex. Is it possible that all this has not made men pure and faithful?

Writing in The New York Times, Sara Lipton wonders whether policial figures such as Anthony Weiner, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer and Newt Gingrich are affected by the absence of a code of male honor and even by the culture’s loss of respect for men as providers and protectors. We take it for granted that powerful men are impulsive and reckless, but it was not always so. Lipton writes: (more…)

DIANA writes:

I thought that the letter in The New York Times from the part-time male househusband/doctor was remarkably free of logic and content. Anytime someone resorts to name calling (“sexism,” “patriarchy”) you can be sure that feelings, feelings, feelings are the argument. (more…)

AS I PREDICTED, a piece in this week’s New York Times on the moral and practical implications of the shift toward high numbers of women in medical practice has drawn some vehemently negative responses. Karen S. Sibert, an anesthesiologist, argued that it is immoral for women to become doctors if they are not willing to sacrifice enormous time with their families, as much time as male doctors of the past. Here is one response from a male reader in today’s letters to the editor:

While Dr. Karen S. Sibert’s point about the shortage of doctors entering primary care fields is valid, her proposal to address it by querying women on their future child-rearing plans smacks of patriarchy and sexism. Even if every medical school seat today were filled by a male student, at current rates of matriculation into primary care fields it would do little to mitigate the problem.

I chose to work as a part-time doctor early in my career to be supportive to my full-time physician wife. Being asked about my parenting intentions at any point in the process would have been chilling. (more…)

  THE rate of immigration to Britain is the highest in its history, ten times what it was in the 1980s. The vast majority of this immigration is from Asia and Africa. In an excellent piece in The Express, Leo McKinstry writes that the British government is too "enfeebled" to deport even foreign criminals: What we are witnessing is a grotesque form of assisted national suicide.

GREG J. writes:

I just read and enjoyed your post on manufacturing and the comments following. I was particularly intrigued by Art’s remark: “‘You can’t turn back the clock’ is an old cliché, but it has some truth to it. (more…)

JOHN PURDY writes:

Jesse Powell is spot on in his analysis, as usual, of how large numbers of women in the workforce do not enrich modern nations. However, I think he has overlooked one aspect of the problem. I will accept his assertion that the phenomenon of women in the workforce does not raise national income; this seems self-evident based on supply and demand for labour. What women in the workforce probably does do is increase income tax revenue. Consider a hypothetical case. (more…)

THE EXTREME knitting projects, mentioned here and here, are a radical departure from traditional knitting. Reader Karen I. writes of another form of the craft:

Kendra’s description of the Craft Mafia and their work is disturbing. 

Many women knit for charity, in the privacy of their homes or in small groups. They make things like prayer shawls. (more…)