“Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.”

                                                        — Senate Finance Committe Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) Read More »

Julia Lathrop

THE BEGINNINGS OF socialized medicine in America can be traced to the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921, which set up child welfare bureaus around the country. Messianic activism by wealthy spinsters and lesbians led to the bill’s passage against considerable opposition. Today’s liberals and proponents of Obamacare are heirs to this wave of genteel progressivism.

Such is the argument in this fascinating essay by economist Murray Rothbard. Readers of Henry James’ book The Bostonians will find the women he describes vividly familar, particularly Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in the Chicago slums, and Julia Lathrop, who set up the country’s first juvenile court and was later president of the National Conference of Social Work. The women, inspired in their activism by the English art critic and socialist John Ruskin, were believed to have been lovers at one point. Rothbard writes:

The most prominent of the Yankee progressive social workers, and emblematic of the entire movement, was Jane Addams (b. 1860). Her father, John H. Addams, was a pietist Quaker who settled in northern Illinois, constructed a sawmill, invested in railroads and banks, and became one of the wealthiest men in northern Illinois. John H. Addams was a lifelong Republican, who attended the founding meeting of the Republican Party at Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854, and served as a Republican State Senator for 16 years. Read More »

GO YE into the village that is over against you and immediately you shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them and bring them to Me; and if any man shall say anything to you, say ye that the Lord hath need of them; and forthwith he will let them go.     (Mat 21:2-3)

A READER WRITES:

I just had to write in as I really was appalled at the misinformation contained in the post from the ‘childless female manager.’

I am a 30-year-old male manager working at a large multi-national corporation and now have the joys of working with a large number of ‘working mothers.’ They are unequivocally a drain on productivity, time and resources.

Let me give you an example. One of the women who works for me had a child recently. This means she leaves work everyday at 4 p.m. and is unavailable for later meetings. She only works four days a week. In addition, she works from home at least one to two per week on top of this, especially if her child is sick. I’ve been on work conference calls with senior managers and had to shut them down because her child is crying in the background. I am lucky if I get a good 4-6 hours work from her on any given day, when she is in. Forget about ever working late – she is out the door at 4 p.m. on the dot each day. She disrupts the team, disrupts the office and more importantly, I cannot rely on her to get the job done. Meanwhile, she shows up in my team as a ‘full time resource’ – and my bosses wonder why I can’t the job done when I have such a big team.

However, the fact that she is failing in work is surely less important than the fact that she is failing at home. She is constantly tired, stressed and harried. How can anyone choose to live like this? In my experience of the workforce so far, childless women are fine to work with. Once the children are born it’s another story,

Businesses do things for profit. If it made sense to have these women in senior positions, business would have done it already. The fact is they only do it to appease so called ‘diversity’ regulations.

I fully support a discriminatory policy against working mothers – there is absolutely no way an organisation can have working mothers in critical positions given their dual responsibilities.

Laura writes:

The mass influx of women into the workforce has hurt business in many cases and it has hurt families. It has hurt women and it has hurt men. It has hurt the young and it has hurt the old. It has hurt individuals and it has hurt communities. Who is the winner here?

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THE AMISH are exempt from the new health care regulations. They also are not required to pay Social Security or Medicare taxes.

It is no surprise that most of America is now enslaved to government while the Amish are free. Look at the happy man and woman in this picture. This is patriarchy. No, not the buggy and bonnets, but the man and woman, secure in their separate identities and part of the march of generations. Look at the faces of these children. These people are alive. We, on the other hand, are in the process of a prolonged phase of cultural expiration.

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WELMAR writes at The Spearhead:

Both men and women do terrible things to each other. They betray, abandon, neglect and abuse. Honestly, I don’t think either sex beats the other when it comes to treating spouses like garbage. However, when men do something horrible, they are usually contrite. Often, they take the blame. In fact, in many cases men will take the blame even when they weren’t at fault.  Read More »

A PREVIOUS POST mentioned the case of  a former vice president at Goldman Sachs. The woman, who was fired during her second maternity leave, has sued her employer for sex discrimination. She claims she was penalized and relegated to “second-class status” at her workplace because she was a mother.

Maggie Fox writes:

I am a childless female manager at a company where success depends on the ability to serve clients well, attract new clients, and work a high number of billable hours. As an employer, my responses to your “Mommy Bomb” post and subsequent comments were as follows: 

1) In a business that depends on the quality of the workers, providing 12 weeks parental leave is a small price to pay to attract talent. That is why so many companies exceed the requirements of the law by providing longer leave periods and paying their workers during parental leave. Far from being a drain, my company’s generous leave provisions are a tool that helps us compete.  Read More »

MICHELLE OBAMA is campaigning for better dietary habits for America’s children, a seemingly virtuous and uncontroversial undertaking if there ever was one. But it is really one more instance of overweening paternalism. She recently lectured the Grocery Manufacturers Association:

“We need you not just to tweak around the edges, but to entirely rethink the products that you’re offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children. That starts with revamping, or ramping up, your efforts to reformulate your products, particularly those aimed at kids, so that they have less fat, salt, and sugar, and more of the nutrients that kids need.”

Food companies are businesses. They do not act with maternal solicitude toward their customers, but who knows? Maybe Obama can force them to churn out low-fat granola or enact a law that every child must eat Caesar salad for lunch or pay a fine. Mrs. Obama would better aim her words at the mothers of America. They are the ones who determine their children’s diets.

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Cutbacks in government spending on libraries and after-school programs are to blame for the flash mobs of black teenagers converging on the streets of Philadelphia in predominantly white business districts, according to the director of a major youth advocacy group,

Shelly Yanoff, of Public Citizens for Children and Youth, said spending reductions have led to this youthful restlessness, which includes the game of “Catch and Wreck” in which children as young as eleven target street people to pummel and rob. The word is spread through text messaging and mobs converge in Center City. In a mob last Sunday, teenagers chanted “black boys” and “burn the city,” according to the New York Times.

If more libraries were open and there hadn’t been dramatic cutbacks in youth violence prevention programs, these teenagers might be sitting quietly reading Mark Twain. The city’s black mayor disagrees.

According to the Times, a senior editor at Harpers is “credited” with introducing the idea of a flash mob.

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THERE ARE TWO institutions that almost every American encounters in his life. They are the hospital and the school, the doctor’s office and the classroom.

Our central government already holds the school captive. Whatever local autonomy still exists for communities and their school boards is just window dressing. Real autonomy has been swept away by monopolistic government control. It’s true we are not forced to send our children to government schools, but we are still forced to pay for them and we are denied the free market and funds in which to cultivate alternatives. We are also compelled to live in a society shaped by the ideology taught in our schools. It creeps into every facet of our world, an invasive weed in every garden. There is no more powerful influence on the minds and character of our neighbors.

That’s why the government takeover of American health care is so significant. Here is the other major industry we must all encounter in a very personal way. Here is the other place where we interact as citizens and express our shared values. There will be almost no escaping it. Even those who can buy their way out of government-controlled medicine will still be affected by its values. The most important objection to nationalized health care is irrelevant to our physical health. Whether we can get the same kind of care from doctors amd hospitals is an important issue, but not the most dire one. The most pressing objection concerns not body, but spirit. We must feed from the hand of the state. We must eat the same gruel and profess the same barren religion. That affects our souls. Perhaps people in other countries like it that way, but it makes us no longer Americans.

LAWRENCE AUSTER expresses what many of us know in an interview with Richard Spencer at AltRight Radio. Our national existence is at stake in the fight over Obamacare. “Everything we think of as American identity, all the things that animate the common spirit of Americans, is lost if Obamacare stands,” he states. There must be “absolute determination to overturn it.”

The other important affairs and issues are dwarfed by the magnitude of this event, an egregious violation of our founding principles. What really matters? In Auster’s words:

How can I care about Coulter in Canada, about Wilders, about Guantanamo, about non-discrimination, about Islam, when my foundation has been cut away and I’m standing in space? I must get my foundation back. Nothing else can matter. 

The identity, the core of oneself, individually and collectively, from which one looks at the world, and responds to the world, has been taken away. To keep reacting to and discussing various issues when my core has been taken away is to be acting in a void.

MOMMIES take generous maternity leaves. They return to work and receive part-time assignments or lightened schedules, imposing heavier burdens on other workers and creating frequent interruptions in the workplace. What do the mommies do in return? They sue their employers. Welcome to the wonderful world of feminist corporate welfare.

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THERE ARE distinct moments when the scales fall from our eyes. Since liberalism is in the air we breathe, it takes these epiphanies to see the light. For instance, I will never forget the moment when I went to my mailbox and found a certified letter from our local school district. When I opened the letter, which threatened to formally charge my husband and me with parental negligence for keeping our seriously ill son home from school, I was dispossessed of any lingering idealism toward our bullying educational leviathan.  Here is a fascinating look at one doctor’s awakening to the evil of government-controlled medicine.

NATIONALIZED MEDICINE,  just like nationalized compulsory schooling, is likely to be much more favorable to female workers than to male. In general, working for the government, which provides security and does not require initiative, is more attractive to women.

In fact, the new law adopted by Congress last weekend equates doctors, who are more likely to be men, with nurses, who are more likely to be women. As the blogger Dr.Rich notes: Read More »

James P. writes: 

The comments in “How Socialism Affects Character” are too passive in formulation. Socialism is not something that happens via some mysterious natural process, like a hurricane or an earthquake. Evil people are doing this to us. “Socialism,” as such, is not changing our character; leftist politicians are quite deliberately trying to change human nature, partly because this serves their political interests, and partly because their beliefs are profoundly misguided.

With respect to Clark Coleman’s comment, leftists want the government to take over health care precisely because this will kill the unique spirit of America, and cause the people to look to government for solutions, and foster the European mindset. For our leftist overlords, these character changes are a positive and intended feature, not an unintended side-effect. Read More »

CLARK COLEMAN WRITES AT VFR:

The philosophical argument that I have been waiting for someone to make (not just politicians, but conservative bloggers and radio hosts) is that a government takeover of health care will kill the unique spirit of America. Instead of freedom reigning in the hearts of Americans, they will look to government for solutions. Instead of controlling their own destinies, they will adopt the European mindset of thinking “the government needs to do something” about every problem. When you are an empowered, informed consumer of healthcare, ….  you have an independent spirit. You can change insurance companies or hospitals or doctors when you have a problem. When your only recourse is to write your congressman and seek his “constituent services” to deal with your bureaucratic impasse, you become a passive Euro-wimp. It affects your whole approach to life.

For the last 12 months, who has been saying that in public?

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LYDIA SHERMAN WRITES:

Speaking of fathers, have you noticed that our Founding Fathers are now referred to as “Founders“? Nancy Pelosi referred to them as the Founders today after the health care bill was pushed passed the consent of the governed. Everywhere you look, someone is calling them the “Founders.” This is a politically contrived term to leave out their male-ness. 

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NEW YORK is easily one of the worst cities for normal women who are not married by the age of 30, as Gavin McInnes cleverly argues. Sex and the City put a pretty face on an ugly situation, covering up desperation with female bravado and stylish shoes. The only compensations for the New York woman are the lucrative jobs and good restaurants in which to have lachrymose, wine-drenched meals with her fellow unmarried girlfriends.

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