AT HIS blog, Bruce Charlton ponders the relatively low fertility of intelligent women from an evolutionary perspective. If maximizing reproductive success is a driver of human behavior, why do many women pursue childlessness or near-childlessness?

The second of his two answers, in which he discusses the social orientation of women, seems closer to the truth. However, I would rephrase it this way. Women are not loners, for obvious biological reasons. Women prepare for child-rearing by forming communities. In modern life, community revolves around institutions. In contrast, the actual physical community – the neighborhood or town – is a non-hierarchical place into which the more intelligent woman cannot find a place or a natural role. She spends years working to find a stable network in an institutional society. This paradoxically leaves little time for actual investment in child-rearing. Evolutionary behavior is for her non-evolutionary.

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DAN MULHERN, the wife, I mean, husband of Jennifer Granholm, the former Democratic governor of Michigan, has written an inspiring letter to his 13-year-old son in Newsweek, telling him that if he’s lucky he may be a housewife someday. Mulhern tells his son:

When I launched my leadership consulting business, I enjoyed “eating what I killed,” as the macho maxim puts it. But the choices Mom and I made to put her public service in front of my career, and for me to lead at home, left me vulnerable and caused me to rethink what it means to “be a man.” It has not been a tragic end to my manhood, but a wondrous beginning. It’ll get even better for you…

… As a modern man, you’ll learn way more than if you were large and in charge. It used to be a man’s world (and, in some measure, it still is). If you lead like Mom, you’ll know how to persevere. You need not fear strong women, or dismiss gentle men. And if you so choose, you’ll be a great stay-at-home or lead parent, giving and receiving incredible lessons and profound joy. Either way, it’s a great time to be a man.

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SPENCER WARREN writes:

Please let me note I disagree 100 percent with negative opinions expressed here about Kate Middleton herself and her gown. I thought she was just beautiful. Her naturalness and dignity as she waved to crowds in a situation she had never before encountered were very appealing – both in the landau and on the balcony. Also her spontaneity.  (more…)

TWO WEEKS ago, the Hungarian Parliament passed a constitution that is a direct rebuke to the values of the European Union and to the country’s Communist past. The constitution affirms Hungary’s Christian roots and defines marriage as between a man and a woman. It also sets a debt limit and speaks of respect for the unborn, though apparently Hungary’s liberal abortion laws will remain in place unless the parliament specifically overturns them. The Constitution states:   

We, the members of the Hungary Nation, assert our responsibility to say the following for all Hungary at the beginning of the millennium: 

We are proud of the fact that our King Stephen, the Saintly Patron of the Hungarian State for a thousand years had built a secure foundation and placed our Fatherland in the line of Christian Europe. (more…)

  [Sex and violence is] the stuff that people are talking about on the streets...to get attention, you have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you're one of them. You're a person from the street and speak of your experiences. Then at the end you can tell them God has helped me out like this and it might transfer over instead of just come straight out and just speak straight out of religion.                                                                --- Joseph Bruce of the hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse Insane Clown Posse is respectfully reviewed by David Itzkoff in today's New York Times. Itzkoff writes of the group's concert in New York:  The group performed some of their best-loved tracks from their 1990s-era breakthrough, like "I Stab People" and the pro-cannibalism ode "Dead Body Man."

SAGE McLAUGHLIN writes:

Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with the world? I just cannot jump for joy and light cigars and drink champagne and chant “USA” the way the rest of the country seems to be doing over the death of bin Laden. (more…)

AT VDARE.COM, Steve Sailer writes:

The point of thinking about the past is not to decide whether or not we’d rather live there. Since we don’t actually have time machines, we aren’t confronted with an all or nothing choice between living in the past and living in the present. Uninventing advances in coffee-making machines or lawnmowers isn’t on the table. The point is to understand the past to help us make decisions in the present to make the future better.

Exactly. The purpose of thinking about the past is not to reject the present, but to live more fully in it and to prepare for the future. (more…)

  Saraband for Dead Lovers is an excellent 1948 movie about the doomed royal marriage between King George I of England and Sophia Dorothea of Celle, who was imprisoned by her husband for 30 years in a castle in Germany on charges of infidelity, charges which have never been conclusively proven. Joan Greenwood stars as Sophia Dorothea and she is exquisitely beautiful and moving in the role, portraying the woman who would never sit on the throne of England with her husband as the innocent victim of schemers and cruelty by her husband. There are three outstanding female perfomances in this movie. In addition to Greenwood, Francoise Rosay plays the imperious Duchess Sophia, the mother of George, originally George Louis of Hanover. Flora Robson is the plotting and vain Countess Platen, the former lover of  Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck, played by Stewart Granger. The costumes and the scenes of seventeenth century Hanover help to make this an exceptional product of London's famous Ealing Studios. Directed by Michael Relph, it was the Ealing Studios' first film in technicolor and for some inexplicable reason it was a box office flop. In real life, Sophia Dorothea was forced to marry her cousin George Louis in 1682 after his mother, the Duchess Sophia, plotted to arrange the match for financial reasons.  The marriage was arranged on the very day Sophia's engagement to another man was to be announced. Prince George Louis of Hanover (Peter Bull in the film) was disliked by even his own mother, who said he was "the most pigheaded, stubborn boy who ever lived."  George Louis later…

GRACE KELLY’S wedding dress and the dresses of her attendants were modest, elegant and feminine, as opposed to the dresses of Kate Middleton and her maid of honor, as is discussed in the previous entry.

In 1954, Pope Pius XII spoke to the International Congress of Master Tailors and Designers. He said:

Instead of elevating and ennobling the human person, the modern fashions are tending to degrade and debase it. Even if you are not responsible for these deplorable manifestations, you cannot remain indifferent to them. Far from going along with the already too strong inclination toward immodesty, always be careful to respect the norms of decency and good taste, of a sanely understood and perfectly upright elegance. [emphasis added]

In brief, instead of following the materialist current which is leading so many people astray today, deliberately put yourselves at the service of spiritual ends. It is not possible to partition human life, to fix certain spheres of it in which morality has no word to say. Clothes express in too evident a fashion the tendencies and tastes of a person to escape from certain very clear rules that surpass and must govern the simple aesthetic point of view.

Today, clothes designers sell bridal wear that does not “respect the norms of decency and good taste.” Almost all wedding dresses feature bare shoulders or low cut necklines, as if it is possible to look virginal if the dress is simply white.

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LAWRENCE AUSTER writes:

Here are some thoughts on the Wedding. I’ve tried to put some sequence into my ideas, but for the most part this is a miscellany.

First, it is simply not realistic in our time to expect an heir to the throne of Great Britain to find a woman to marry who is suitable in all other ways and is a virgin to boot. There are very few virgins today in Britain, let alone young women of the appropriate background for a royal marriage who are virgins.  (more…)

SUZANNE writes:

Kate Middleton is just another nail in the downfall of the British monarchy and the death of Britain. She is not a virgin (for which she is praised), will not obey her husband, is not refined and ladylike as she seems plus she has cohabitated with Prince Williams seven to eight years before this marriage. Many journalists and tabloids are ecstatic at how “modern” they are and how the Royal house embraces progress and liberation. (more…)

  WHEN they were wed yesterday, Kate Middleton rejected the traditional wedding vow and did not promise to obey her husband. At VFR last week, I wrote: How can a man be king when he can't even secure the obedience of his wife? Wifely obedience comes directly from the New Testament, was an ideal in Western society for thousands of years, and is grounded in human nature.  See the remainder of my comments in that entry and the discussion that follows.

  WILL the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge be anything but glorified party-ers now that the wedding is over? Adam Lovejoy writes: The problem with Prince William is that he thinks that because he has lost his mother, Princess Diana, he has some God given right to do whatever he pleases – as if the tragic death of his mothers [sic] is some excuse for him to make a fool of himself and ignore his duty as the second in line to the throne. He gets involved with an unsuitable woman, lives with her openly outside marriage for seven years and then falls for her cheap act of ‘Oh, William, they’ll never allow you to marry me’ act, while the horny brigade applauds him for being thoroughly modern.

  IN THE the 1931 movie "Bad Girl," a husband reacts to his wife's suggestion that she get a job so they can have an apartment of their own. He explodes in anger (go to minute 09:09). "My idea of a husband is a guy that looks after a wife and takes care of her... If I can't do that, I won't be a husband." Also, here's research that shows that a wife's employment has negative effects on men, more so than on women. According to the abstract: "Husbands of working wives felt less adequate as family breadwinners than did husbands of housewives, and this appeared to account for their lower levels of job and life satisfaction. Findings suggest that the occupational domain is particularly important to understanding the negative relations between wives' employment and husbands' job and life satisfaction."

  A ROYAL WEDDING is an entirely different affair in the age of the Internet, with even relatively intimate moments, such as when the bride is adjusting her gown in the car, brought to the entire world. If you are one of the small handful of people on the planet who has not watched snippets of the wedding, you can view them on the Royal Channel here.  Kate Middleton was an elegant bride with beautiful warmth though the appearance of virginal purity is theater and nothing more. The Telegraph shows a selection of gowns of the past if you would like some perspective on her dress. The ceremony itself was reverent and restrained, with the traditional reminder that the first purpose of marriage is "the increase of mankind." The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, made no appeals for social justice in his sermon. He focused on the Christian meaning of marriage, with a bit of twenty-first century psychologizing thrown in for good measure. He said: As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive, we need mutual forgiveness, to thrive. The bishop's statement that "every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation"…

  THE TORNADOES that touched down in the Southeast on Wednesday and Thursday were among the deadliest in U.S. history. The winds are believed to have exceeded 300 miles an hour. Among those killed was Tom Lee, a father of 13 children in Alabama. A tornado hit a community of Christian homeschooling families. The home of Kelly Crawford, of Generation Cedar, was destroyed while 25 children and several adults huddled in the basement.