DEAR READER, I was out of town for a couple of days and unexpectedly could not access my blog account or reply to e-mails. I will be replying and posting comments I received while I was away.
THE NAVY announced today, after the expiration of a period for Congressional intervention, that it will allow women aboard submarines as of 2012. How long will it be before the first child is conceived on a military underwater vessel or before a female commander turns the forced togetherness of submarine life into a maritime version of Mommie Dearest?
According to the Seattle Times:
Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, who led the Navy’s task force on integrating women onto submarines, brushed aside questions from reporters about the potential for sexual misconduct or unexpected pregnancies among a coed crew.
“We’re going to look back on this four or five years from now, shrug our shoulders and say, ‘What was everybody worrying about?'” said Bruner, the top sub commander at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in coastal Georgia, where the announcement was made.
Does he mean the same way people are shrugging their shoulders now about women abandoning duty because of pregnancies, about thousands of charges of sexual harrassment by women soldiers against other soldiers, about the effect of women on troop cohesion, and about the military mothers who have had to leave their children behind?
The wives of sailors on subs have expressed their displeasure over this tight coed living. Why shouldn’t they? Our armed forces are part defense and part love-making. But Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a public statement, “We literally could not run the Navy without women today.” For thousands of years, countries defended themselves with men. Imagine. Everything has changed. Men literally could not do it.
KRISTOR WRITES:
This thread reminded me of an experience I had in Gambier, Ohio, where my eldest son went to Kenyon College. Gambier is out in the middle of nowhere, a tiny village at the top of a wooded hill surrounded by verdant and beautiful farms rolling away for many miles on every side. The town is so small that the tiny campus of Kenyon surrounds it. If you ever have a chance to visit the place, I highly recommend it; driving up into the hills is like driving into another and better world, more beautiful and merciful, and somehow true. We were back there a lot for parent weekends and that sort of thing, and I love the place. The campus is all Gothic; the town is traditional American Middle West. (more…)
JIM WETZEL WRITES:
That’s an interesting passage from Stevenson, and I had to read it all before my confusion cleared up. What he called “idleness” differs from what I think of by that term:
It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill.
BRITAIN’S ILLEGITIMACY RATE is expected to exceed 50 percent within the next five years. In some towns, two out of three births are out of wedlock, as reported in The Daily Mail.The overall figure for native-born whites exceeds 50 percent. In Knowsley, near Liverpool, 68 percent of births were out of wedlock in 2007. The figure in Knowsley is expected to reach 75 percent by 2014. So great is public alarm that a former Home Minister expressed her dismay. She called the high illegitimacy rate “tremendously worrying,” the sort of descriptive phrase one might apply to an excess of ivy in the rose beds.
For a glimpse into Britain’s post-marital culture, see the comments after the Daily Mail article, in which some readers acknowledge the role of government welfare in encouraging single motherhood. Others aggressively assert that marriage isn’t necessary for children and anybody who thinks so is a bigot. Marriage is something posh people do. Here are the first ten comments: (more…)
IN RESPONSE to my post on Josef Pieper and the “distracted society,” a reader sent this link to Robert Louis Stevenson’s much-loved essay on idleness. To Stevenson, ceaseless activity is not a sign of despair, but of “deficient vitality.” That seems close to the same thing. Stevenson’s words are a perfect description of Betty Friedan-esque feminists who fled their homes because they themselves didn’t have “two thoughts to rub together.” Their snuff boxes were empty.
Stevenson writes: (more…)
KRIS WRITES:
Jesse’s excellent response here has provided me with the motivation to finally put my personal thoughts and feelings into a reply. I believe my husband and I are prime examples of the destructive pattern he describes.
My husband grew up in a “Christian” home, in so much as the family attended church on a regular basis. His mother was involved in the music ministry, taught Sunday School; his father was a deacon, elder, and committee member. His parents were (are) well-respected in their church and community. Although his mother and father held mostly to traditional role models in the home, his father worked very long hours and spent very little time with his children. His mother did all of the child-rearing herself, which often left her tired, angry, and bitter. (more…)
A READER WRITES:
I’ve been going through much thinking about myself and my role in my marriage. I truly believe that I am meant to be the best housewife and homemaker for my family through being submissive, as it describes in the Bible. I already consider myself a bit controlling (not mean though), but unmasking my ultra-feminine self and doing everything to make my husband and home happy and memorable is what I feel is my life’s purpose. (more…)
TWO stories in this week’s news illustrate the vanity of the contemporary mother. Single mothers are preying on younger men in front of their daughters. And celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels says she will be opting for adoption (at the advanced age of 36) because of pregnancy’s effects on her figure. Adoption has become, in some cases, an elevated form of shopping.
Selfish, materialistic, consumed by image, and so sugary it makes your teeth hurt: that’s motherhood today.
Many women reject these low standards but that does not alter the fact of their constant glorification in our culture.
IN THIS PREVIOUS ENTRY, Jesse Powell and I discussed the differences in illegitimacy rates and family stability along class lines, looking at the widely held view that because the college-educated and affluent suffer relatively low rates of out-of-wedlock births, they are not seeing serious levels of family breakdown. We continue our discussion here. (more…)
IN THE ENTRY on the politically besieged homemaker, I and others dicussed the burden of volunteer activities many homemakers face.
Sarah S. writes:
Something that I would point out, too, is that all that volunteer work used to be done by the “church ladies,” women whose children were grown and who now had time to teach Sunday School, deliver meals to the sick, lead reading groups at the library, etc. But in our times, even women who stay home with their kids go back to work as soon as their children enter school and then spend their most energetic years making money. And then, when they retire, they move to Florida or Arizona to play golf or they pursue second careers, sometimes because they need to, but more often because they want to. (more…)
JOHN WRITES:
Thank you for your excellent piece on “The Distracted Society.” You did a great service by providing such an informative and enlightening synopsis of the thought of Josef Pieper.
I think the key is the line you quoted: “Worship is the fountainhead of leisure.” Those who have made our society into what it is today have a purpose to all the busyness that keeps us continually occupied. It is to make certain that we never have a chance to remember that we have a soul. “Leisure” and all it entails such as quiet, peace and rest are essential for interior recollection. For the same reason these things are frightening and painful to those who do not want to be reminded that they have a soul. The reality of our soul, its past history, its current state, its eternal destiny, these are things that cannot be contemplated while we are being bombarded with external stimuli. (more…)
A reader writes:
I teach at a state university, so I am exposed to hundreds of students each year, and each year, I note with dismay the number of young women who as a matter of course display themselves as cheap, easy sexual conquests. Although I try to serve as an example of femininity and modesty they can respect (and based on feedback I receive, I know at least some of them notice), it is very clear that this generation is saturated in the idea that “hooking up” is normal and acceptable. Case in point, please see the attached file–it is a flier that was posted everywhere in the building where I teach. I tore one off the wall, but I couldn’t tear them all off (and if I could, I would probably be reprimanded for violating someone’s free speech). Please note the number of tabs (with contact information) missing. Yet none of these young women recognize that although young men are happy to use them sexually, they still prefer less experienced girls for marriage. Of course, if they did recognize it they would howl about how unfair it is, as if their ideas about “fair” have anything to do with anything.
Laura writes:
Thank you, Mary Wollstonecraft! Thank you, Virginia Woolf! Women of today pursue higher learning passionately.
IN OCTOBER, I briefly wrote about the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca by Swiss director Luc Bondy, who succeeded in desecrating this lush tragedy with pornographic gestures and swipes at Christianity. If you recall, Bartlett Sher, director of another Met production, subsequently called the act of booing, which had been freely engaged in by fans at the Tosca opening, “a self-interested expression of ownership.” Bondy sniffed, “I didn’t know that Tosca was like the Bible in New York.”
For those interested in a more thorough examination of the production with similar criticisms, I recommend Daniel B. Gallagher’s piece in the Catholic magazine, New Oxford Review. (It costs $1.50 to read in its entirety.)
And, in today’s issue of The Brussels Journal, Thomas F. Bertonneau, a commenter at TH, examines recent productions of Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens, an epic based on Virgil’s Aeneid. Berlioz’ heroic themes are also transformed by postmodern nullity. Bertonneau looks at a production by conductor Sylvain Cambreling and scene-designer Herbert Wernicke in which the Trojan soldiers are dressed in what appear to be Nazi uniforms. Bertonneau writes: (more…)
SANDRA WRITES:
I have been following your blog from the very beginning and I like it very much. You come across as a very intelligent, well-educated person. There is a question I’d like to ask you, concerning your thoughts on traditional family as you are one of the few voices on the Internet defending housewives.
It seems that housewives nowadays are attacked both from left and right. Feminist attack on housewives is nothing new, of course, but during the recent years there emerged a new generation of bloggers who claim to be antifeminist, but attack the traditional homemaker quite viciously nonetheless.
Their arguments can be summed up as follows: (more…)
RECENT FERTILITY statistics show something that has been widely noted for years: Women with lower educational and income levels are much more likely to have children out of wedlock and to enter into a life of single motherhood. They are also much more likely to get divorced. Fifty years ago, college-educated women were slightly less likely to be married than their less educated counterparts, and the majority of women at all education levels exhibited the maturity to enter into and maintain marriages early in adulthood. The difference today in marriage rates among the classes is often known as the “Marriage Gap,” a subject which author Kay Hymowitz and others have explored. (more…)
James H. writes about the previous post on blue collar men:
It’s not the smoking, the Brylcreem, the vodka or whisky – it’s the attitude. It’s being comfortable in your skin. It’s understanding where center is. It’s being your own man and not giving a damn about political correctness, progress, sending the kids to the right schools, keeping up with the Joneses, going to the “best” restaurants, having the most expensive toys or making the most money. It’s all about getting the job done and living within one’s means. Marrying a good woman and staying married. It’s about finding enjoyment in the simplest things. It’s about being easily pleased. It’s about being grateful. It’s about raising good kids – not the smartest or best athletes, but good. It’s about finding as much to appreciate within 50 miles as most can find within 5,000 miles. It’s about accepting responsibility and towing the line. It’s about duty. It’s about treasuring tradition, ritual, custom and convention. It’s about family and friends. It’s about not pursuing happiness or perfection in oneself, others or society. It’s about doing the best you can.
THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU WRITES: Regarding the “Michael Jackson Cult," the religious impulse is constitutive of human nature and never goes away, but the same impulse has a context or it does not. In our contemporary situation, relentlessly secular and hostile to tradition, not least to religious tradition, the religious impulse simply has no context. It remains “unschooled.” The human tendency to seek transcendent reference, to orient itself hierarchically, therefore operates haphazardly. Anything conspicuous strikes the naïve or “neo-primitive” seeker as – let us say – the equivalent of transcendence. Because the grotesque is always conspicuous, grotesqueries become the focus of wayward religiosity. It is not only the late (and by me unlamented) Mr. Jackson, it is the entirety of entertainment culture, which combines the bizarrely reductive with exaggerated sexuality and narcissistic egomania. The essence of all primitive gods is being, expressed as power or as charisma – which attracts attention and provokes the desire to imitate the divine model. Entertainers, by monopolizing public attention, appear to embody being; so they become models, icons, idols, and foci of a primitive type of worship. The “Michael Jackson Cult” tell us that we have descended culturally into a new primitive phase. Primitive cultures endure many agonies – and we are likely to endure many agonies, until we achieve maturity again.