AMERICA is not one, but two nations. Lawrence Auster reflects on our uncertain future:

As for the health care bill, the fact is that we are at the beginning of a struggle that will go on for years, since conservatives can no more accept this supposed law than they could accept the imposition of a Soviet government in this country. Not that Obamacare is the same as a Soviet government, but that both are completely outside our historic society and Constitution.

NON-COMPLIANCE with the U.S. Census is so high, the Census Bureau will spend $340 million (hey, we can afford that!) to increase the mailback rate for the 2010 census. A major factor is growing concern about privacy and government intrusion. Nationalized medicine raises additional concerns about government misuse of census data. Instead of ad campaigns to restore confidence, the Citizens’ Council on Health Care recommends returning the census to its original purpose: 

Turning away from intrusive data collection, restoring the Census to its constitutional purpose of a simple head count,eliminating the American Community Survey, and repealing all penalties for non-compliance may help to restore American trust and compliance with the U.S. Census.

Steve McCann at the American Thinker sums up the health bill:

We know that this bill will be nearly impossible to fully repeal, but more importantly, it will pit the government against the individual, foment class warfare, create additional unemployment, shackle the economy, and exacerbate the national debt crisis, while ultimately rationing health care to the most vulnerable in society.

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IT IS POSSIBLE to feel a deeper bond today with our forebears, those who saw the natural ties with their mother country dissolve. Our government no longer represents us, no longer speaks for us, and is hostile to our interests. The Wall Street Journal calls the takeover of the American health industry “transformative.” It is indeed. It transforms disgust into full-blooded outrage and contempt. It transforms America into a land of continual civil unrest or of entrenched mediocrity.

Here at the American Thinker is the appropriate “Declaration of Dependency.” It says:

We hold these truths to be morally relative; that all men are not created equal, but we can make them equal by instituting laws to ensure social, racial, and economic equality

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THE FEDERAL takeover of health care, passed into law this weekend, is the almost inevitable outcome of government intrusion decades ago. Entitlement programs for the elderly and poor, along with the rise of the HMO, were destined to lead us here without a principled retreat from socialized medicine. Twila Brase, of the Citizens’ Council on Health Care, writes:

The proliferation of managed-care organizations (MCOs) in general, and HMOs in particular, resulted from the 1965 enactment of Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. Literally overnight, on July 1, 1966, millions of Americans lost all financial responsibility for their health-care decisions.  Read More »

THE NEW YORK TIMES wedding and engagement anouncements have for a long time trumpeted careerism in women and treated a nuptial as the merger of resumés. They make excruciatingly boring reading, detailing the bride’s career, the groom’s career, the fathers’ careers, the mothers’ careers, the stepfathers’ careers and the stepmothers’ careers.

A wedding announcement for today’s paper accidentally included comments in its Internet version from an editor who was miffed by the scanty work history of a housewife. What to do? The paper finally omitted the mother altogether. According to  Gawker:

The final edition leaves poor Mrs. Segal out entirely, because if one does not have an easily identifiable job, philanthropic hobby, or tony employer, one does not exist at all to the Vows page. 

To be fair to its feminist leanings, the paper should have listed Mrs. Segal as the inmate in a concentration camp or as a household slave.

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NATASSIA WRITES:

I came across this article at Fox News, and I found it to be interesting because I remember when I was trying to be “Super-Mom” (and giving myself an anxiety disorder in the process), I felt a twinge of incompetence when my husband was “too helpful” with the babies (a toddler and an infant.) When he loaded the dishwasher (even before we had children), I felt like I wasn’t doing my job, despite the fact that I was in school full-time (or working or both.) I tried to tell myself I was being stupid and unrealistic about my abilities (and I was), but that still didn’t stop the gut-feelings that I had. 

Talk about turning oneself into a neurotic.

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THE FEDERAL government has no constitutional authority to require answers to many of the personal questions it asks on census forms, including queries on race, physical disabilities, and income. In fact, it is only authorized to count people. That’s it.

Here is an excellent report by Jerry Day on the over-reach of our national statisticians, who are naturally  just asking out of curiosity.

 When Mother reads aloud, the past
 Seems real as every day;
 I hear the tramp of armies vast,
 I see the spears and lances cast,
 I join the thrilling fray;
 Brave knights and ladies fair and proud
 I meet when Mother reads aloud. 

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William B. writes:

I once blurted out one of Basil Ransom’s lines from The Bostonians when affforded a rare social opportunity: “I haven’t been to a party since Mississippi seceded!” 

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MARY WRITES:

I was fascinated by the census form I received in the mail this week. There are only four questions for each person in the household, two of which deal with race. The first is whether or not you are of Hispanic origin. If so, the form wants to know whether it’s Cuban, Mexican, Nicaraguan, Spanish, etc. or if they did not list your particular country of origin, to please fill in the blank. The second question more generally asks for your race. There are about twenty choices including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, African-American, African and Native American, these last two requesting that you please fill in the blank with your particular tribe. One of the check boxes is “White,” of course, but without any request for more specific information. So the same census takers who would want to know whether I were Cherokee or Shawnee don’t care whether I’m Polish or Italian. The disparity between the treatment of white people and everyone else is glaring. 

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THE MEN’S RIGHTS movement is tainted by self-interest and misogyny. Nevertheless, the restoration of Western society depends on men: their leadership, confidence, foresight, judgment, strength, intellect and dynamism.

Here is a statement to this effect by a man known as Elder George of Men’s Action to Rebuild Society, a New Age effort to reestablish patriarchy:

In order to change the lot of women and children and improve the condition of society in general men must regain their authority and exercise it. … They must realize that they created all the institutions that now have power over them. Institutions have no ethics, no love, and no reality. Ethics come from men who realize the purpose of human existence is the propagation and preservation of the species while on its spiritual journey. They must rise up and reassert themselves, and this is a good time to do it as a growing discontent has arisen against all the institutions that Western man has created. People have lost faith in government and all the bureaucracies that they have spawned. Read More »

Cindi writes:

You wrote this in a previous entry:

This is a relatively trivial point, but Paula’s reference to grown women as “moms” offends me. Children refer to their mothers as “moms;” other people should speak of them as mothers or women. To me, this cutesy, sentimental language is a way of shielding women from criticism. This pervasive Mommy-ness is not always as sweet and other-directed as it appears. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for being as offended as I am by this diminution of mothers and motherhood; this juvenilization of the very concept. No woman is any longer a mother, she – they are all – “moms,” pronounced “mawm.” I can’t stand it.

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SAGE McLAUGHLIN WRITES:

I should say that I find the idea of a “men’s movement” not merely quixotic but wrong. The basic premise is that there are political and social interests that are specifically male interests, which all men share in common and which must compete with women’s interests to prevent men being defrauded of their due. One of the reasons people used to argue that the universal franchise was an absurdity was that each vote rightly belonged to the entire household, and that a husband and wife could never have different, much less opposed, political interests. The post-Hobbesian (or rather post-Cartesian) view of human beings as atomistic cosmic exiles, each with his own unique interests that stand opposed to the interests of every other individual, has been very destructive. 

What is needed is a movement which places families at the heart of things, and there is something truly accommodationist about spending one’s energies establishing, say, the legal presumption of joint custody following a divorce. I’ve been watching men’s movements of various kinds with interest for quite some time, and I’ve never become active in them because I’ve always sensed that there is something basically evil about the notion that men ought to be construed as a distinct political grouping fighting over the tainted spoils of the family court system. Read More »

IMAGINE IF in addition to smallpox, inadequate supplies, and a numerically superior enemy, the American Revolutionary forces had to deal with hundreds of sexual assault cases filed by soldiers against other soldiers. Imagine Washington’s officers sifting through accounts of who touched whom. The Queen would be drinking tea in D.C. right now.

But that’s the situation our modern military finds itself in. In the past year alone, there have been more than 3,000 reported sexual assaults against service men and women, according to a newly-released Defense Department report. The majority of these reported assaults – 53 percent – are by service members against other service members. An assault by definition involves rape, sodomy, or the touching of private body parts. Read More »

IN A piece called “So who is on the side of men?,” Mark Richardson, an excellent Australian analyst of feminism, considers  the influence of Roissy, the blogger who offers advice on female conquest and is widely touted as an inspirational force for men. Richardson writes:

So is Roissy then someone who is better placed to lead a men’s movement? A movement of solidarity between men to overcome such adversity?

That would be no.

THE ISLE OF SARK in the English Channel was the world’s only surviving feudal state up until two years ago. During World War II, it was occupied by the Germans. Many residents chose to stay for what would be a bitter five-year ordeal. Sybil Hathaway was then the Dame of Sark, the island’s female hereditary ruler, and she handled the occupation with courage and fortitude. She is a model for all those who see their country or personal isle invaded.

A homeschooling mother at the Pleasant Times blog relects on the Dame’s life story.

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Adam and Eve, Titian

N.W. writes:

While reading the discussion following Brittany’s questions concerning the differences between the sexes, I was reminded of Richard Wilbur’s poem She. One aspect of the poem I always liked was Wilbur’s implicit observation that all things men hold dear they refer to as “she.” He writes of how she “in time took on / The look of every labor and its fruits,” an interesting observation; a husband labors to provide for his wife and family and his labors reflect his beloved. Wilbur is a master of his craft and his poems possess a resonant depth full of subtleties.

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