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!   (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. (more…)

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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.  (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.  (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.

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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.

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  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

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.”

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JESSE POWELL writes:

In 1900 and before, the rates of divorce, illegitimacy, and working married women were all very low. Indeed, they all had similar levels in the distant past and they all have similar levels today. It is widely agreed that divorce and illegitimacy are indicators of family breakdown but what about married women working? Isn’t a married woman working a sign of “empowerment” and vital to her sense of identity and a necessary part of her contribution to society?

In 1900, certainly, people didn’t think so. A look at family-related indicators from the distant past suggests that this view was correct. Married women working should be seen as just as significant an indicator of family breakdown as illegitimacy and divorce; all three phenomenon were rare in the past and socially stigmatized. Similarly, today, all three phenomena are common and widespread.

 In 1900, the divorce rate was 8.1 percent (only 3.3 percent in 1870), the illegitimacy ratio was about 1 percent, and the proportion of married women working was 3.0 percent (I’m referring to white women here). In 2009, the divorce rate was 50 percent; the illegitimacy ratio was 29.0 percent, and the proportion of married women working was 61.3 percent. This represents about a twentyfold increase in all three measures over the course of 110 years (140 years on the measure of divorce). The annualized rates of growth in the quantity of the three measures are 2.5 percent for divorce, 3.5 percent for illegitimacy, and 3.7 percent for married women working. (more…)

THE ANTI-ABORTION group Live Action sent a man and a woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute into a New Jersey Planned Parenthood clinic. In a lengthy interview, the manager of the clinic advised them how to get abortions and testing for sexually transmitted diseases for prostitutes as young as 14 and 15. The manager also told them how to circumvent mandatory reporting laws aimed at preventing abuse of minors. The video of the interview can be seen here. Lila Rose, the student at UCLA who is president of Live Action, stated in a release, "This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Planned Parenthood intentionally breaks state and federal laws and covers up the abuse of the young girls it claims to serve. Time and time again, Planned Parenthood has sent young girls back into the arms of their abusers. They don’t deserve a dime of the hundreds of millions they receive in federal funding from taxpayers. Congress must cease funding and the Department of Justice should investigate this corrupt organization immediately.”

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

It came to my attention recently that the current reading assignment in my son’s tenth-grade English class involves Jay Asher’s so-called young adult novel Thirteen Reasons Why (2009).  Asher’s publishers have pushed his book skillfully and have succeeded in insinuating it in high school reading lists across the nation.  Commercially, Asher has scored a hit, with a captive audience of high school students. 

What to say about Thirteen Reasons Why?  The Amazon webpage devoted to Asher’s title cites the Booklist summary of the plot: “When Clay Jenson plays the cassette tapes he received in a mysterious package, he’s surprised to hear the voice of dead classmate Hannah Baker. He’s one of [thirteen] people who receive Hannah’s story, which details the circumstances that led to her suicide.  Clay spends the rest of the day and long into the night listening to Hannah’s voice and going to the locations she wants him to visit.  The text alternates, sometimes quickly, between Hannah’s voice (italicized) and Clay’s thoughts as he listens to her words, which illuminate betrayals and secrets that demonstrate the consequences of even small actions.”  Does it sound like a soap opera in prose?  It is that assuredly, but it is regrettably much worse than that.

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  TWO lesbian students were cheered as they walked into a Minnesota school assembly as a couple. They were permitted to partake in the "royalty court procession" after the Southern Poverty Law Center and a lesbian rights group threatened legal action if they were denied. A mother of one of the girls praised her daughter's courage.

A PETITE, 34-year-old blonde who worked as a corrections officer at a Washington State prison was murdered on Saturday while she was on guard alone in the chapel, according to The Seattle Times. The Monroe Correctional Complex houses 2,400 men. Jayme Biendl, who was named officer of the year at the prison in 2008, was 5 feet three inches tall and weighed 130 pounds. She was unarmed when she was strangled by a 200-pound rapist sentenced to life without parole. He had once doused a woman with gasoline and set her on fire.

Guards at the prison do not carry any weapons, not even pepper spray or batons. Scott Frakes, the prison superintendent, told the Seattle newspaper that women guards are seen as “equal and just as valuable” as men. (more…)

GEORGE WASHINGTON was famous for his finely-honed manners, which combined the polish of a European aristocrat with the democratic simplicity of a colonial farmer. Some of this  refinement was apparently inspired by “The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and in Conversation.” This set of 110 social maxims originated with sixteenth-century French Jesuits and was translated into English in 1640. Washington copied out the rules in his student exercise book when he was under 16.

“The Gestures of the Body must be Suited to the discourse you are upon.” That is rule #20, one that can lead to many hours of fruitful reflection.

Some of the rules, such as the prohibitions against drumming one’s fingers, humming and bedewing the faces of others with spittle, deal with small matters. Others concern iisues of the highest morality, such as #21, “Reproach none for the Infirmaties of Nature, nor Delight to Put them that have in mind thereof.”  Deference to others, even those equal or below in rank, is central to this ethical system. Rule #34: “It is good Manners to prefer them to whom we Speak before ourselves especially if they be above us with whom in no Sort we ought to begin.” (more…)