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…)

IN VIRGIL’S epic poem The Aeneid, the hero Aeneas leaves the smoking ruins of Troy with his aged father on his back and his young son by his hand. His destiny is to found a second home for his remnant people in Italy and to give birth to a new civilization. Not long after the Trojan armada embarks, Aeneas’ father, Anchises, dies and is buried in Sicily. A year later, after a sojourn in Carthage, Aeneas returns to the shores of Sicily and there observes the anniversary of his father’s death.

Ever conscious of his place in the chain of generations, bidden to undertake a dangerous and daunting task, Aeneas finds beauty and meaning in his duty toward the dead.

He is not a mere warrior or adventurer. As he stoops to his father’s grave, he pledges to remember forever. The Trojans have lost everything. They have only their will to survive and their few ships. Even so, a new world will be founded on the old, intermingled with the past as spring earth with the dust of the dead.

Here is the scene from Book V of the Robert Fagles translation:

When, in the following Dawn, bright day had put the stars
to flight, Aeneas called his companions together,
from the whole shore, and spoke from a high mound:
“Noble Trojans, people of the high lineage of the gods,
the year’s cycle is complete to the very month
when we laid the bones, all that was left of my divine father,
in the earth, and dedicated the sad altars. And now
the day is here (that the gods willed) if I am not wrong,
which I will always hold as bitter, always honoured. (more…)

HOW IS IT possible that we live in a world where some women, infertile after years of career advancement, arrange to have surrogates provide babies for them while other women, even married women who already have homes and husbands, abort their children?

One reason we live in such a world is that women are not told the most basic facts of fertility. They are routinely lied to about the consequences of delaying childbirth. What college teaches women that with every passing year after their mid-twenties, their fertility declines significantly? What college really impresses this information on the minds of the young?

The information that many thousands of infertile couples are eager for unwanted children is also withheld. The hopes of the infertile should be widely recognized and they are not. Supporters of abortion never state the obvious: that nine months of pregnancy is not a great hardship. It is painful to give up a baby for adoption, but not life-ruining. As a reader wrote in this entry, these simple facts “cut through all the intellectual meanderings that we are subjected to when faced with abortion.”

Our world is infused with hostility toward motherhood and life. No amount of focused childrearing nor the very real love mothers have for their children can hide this fact. 

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A READER, Bill W., at VFR also writes:

  …. [T]he forced nature of the welfare state colors everything. This form of “charity,” rather than really helping people, creates dependence, undermines thrift and hard work, and destroys people spiritually, both by undermining what is good, and also by creating a sense of wounded, resentful expectation–the idea that the world owes them something. I’m a doctor. And having worked with Medicaid patients in emergency rooms before, I can tell you that they are far more demanding, suspicious, complaining and overall “entitled” than any other group. (more…)

AN ARTICLE in The New York Times about a survey of college freshmen makes this point:

Women’s sense of emotional well-being was more closely tied to how they felt the faculty treated them…. It wasn’t so much the level of contact as whether they felt they were being taken seriously by the professor. If not, it was more detrimental to women than to men.

The idea that a woman’s sense of well-being might be tied to how she treats others is not seriously considered.

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CORY writes:

In regard to your update on homeschooling, this is one of those issues that infuriates the mainstream left not only due to its countering of centralized top-down state indoctrination, but perhaps more so because it is a liberating and empowering movement that they cannot take credit for. The left sells itself as a democratizing force that all past progress can be attributed to. Yet upon closer inspection, we see that whenever a group pushes for progress without encasing itself in all the prevailing ideology of the leftist hive-mind, they are viewed with contempt regardless of virtue. (more…)

MR. SPEAKER, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

I would like to begin with an apology. My sincere regrets go to all Americans tonight for my disappointing performance over the past year. As you know, I do not believe in the language of divisiveness and therefore feel that it is only right that I personally assume responsibility for the anger and worry this country’s failing economy and recent government measures have caused.

First, I pledge to do everything I can in the year ahead to undo the recent health care legislation passed by Congress. In good conscience, I cannot continue to insist on something that is so contrary to the will of the people. (more…)

ANTI-FAMILY WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS continue to repeat the nonsense that women are paid less than men because of discrimination. Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, has gone so far as to say that marriage is bad for women and the government should not promote it. Instead, the government should “equalize” earnings and subsidize child care. Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, agrees that marriage often does not “produce good outcomes.” (more…)

INGRID writes:

I’m writing from southern Europe to ask the help of you and your readers. 

I spoke to a friend of mine the other day, who told me that she is pregnant, very depressed about it, and considering having an abortion. She already has two children, and she hadn’t wanted a third anytime soon. It seems that she and her husband are having some problems in their relationship and I think that they might be having some financial problems, as well.

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THE U.S. SUPREME COURT ruled on Monday that a company’s dismissal of the fiancé of a woman who had filed a sex discrimination suit was unlawful. The woman, Miriam Regalado, had filed a claim against her employer, North American Stainless, stating that it failed to promote her because she was a woman. The company later fired her fiancé. But the court ruled this was unfair retaliation against her.

Have I fallen down a rabbit hole? 

Why does the government control the hiring decisions of private employers? Why can’t a business hire or dismiss anyone it pleases? What’s wrong with denying promotion to someone because she is a woman given that most women rely on men for financial support and given that women are different from men? I thought the purpose of private enterprise was economic, not to remake the world into a female-dominated hellhole.

I guess I’m just a starry-eyed, nostalgic traditionalist who foolishly refuses to accept that things have changed.                         (more…)