MITT ROMNEY came across as a likeable and earnest man during his acceptance speech at the Republican convention last night, so likeable and earnest that at times I felt uncomfortably close to seeing him burst into tears, especially when he uttered that magic word “mom,” which came within a few moments of his opening.

Expending little time or passion on the immense changes enacted by Obama, on explaining for instance why Obamacare is such a catastrophe, Romney’s speech was overwhelmingly dominated by one message: the promise of jobs and prosperity.

But Romney’s commitment to equality and masculine achievement for women — he quoted to thunderous applause his mother as saying, ‘Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?,’” — is at odds with his pledge of prosperity and jobs for all who seek them. (more…)

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LAST MONTH, feminist activists attached woolen hair to the armpits of female statues in London, as shown in this photo from UK Feminista. These daring activists were taking an important stand, don’t you know? Their point was that women have been forced for many years to remove their body hair.  According to Chloe Marshall, of UK Feminista:

A few tentative steps away from the adorned statues, and the campaigners are soon reaping the rewards of their efforts. Members of the public stroll by and almost always stop to take a second look, and some take leaflets whilst others discuss hair removal. Either way, the message is being communicated loud and clear, and attracts a sizeable crowd at the London Pride sculpture on the South Bank.

Hair removal is one more sad and sorry tale of woe. (more…)

FRED OWENS writes:

The headline in the Los Angeles Times last week read: “Neil Armstrong, first person to walk on the moon, dies at 82.”

First “person?” The man lands on the moon and you have to correct his grammar when he dies? Person is a terrible word, corporations are persons, but I am not a “person.” (more…)

ONE THING I like about the feminist Hanna Rosin is that she admits, as many people do not, that sexual liberation and economic equality for women are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have the second without the first.

Conservatives who think that women can give up promiscuity, and at the same time equal men in achievement, are more deluded than the feminist Rosin. (more…)

THE great 18th century British portraitist Thomas Gainsborough had a way of capturing both the innocence and gravity of childhood. His portraits of children call to mind Constable’s words about Gainsborough, “”On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them.”  In the above portrait of his daughters, one reaching for a butterfly though a butterfly cannot be grasped without crushing it, the girls’ faces convey goodness, inner simplicity and fragile hope, precisely the qualities that make us cherish children and remind us of an openness to life and heightened consciousness that we ourselves lack.

As Sister Wendy Beckett points out in her Story of Painting, Gainsborough’s daughters both were psychologically fragile and eventually led difficult lives, making this picture all the more poignant. Another portrait of them (below) suggests their complexity and difficulties.

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GREG J. writes:

I have been reading the Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis. These are as rewarding as any of the books Lewis published in his lifetime, and have the additional interest that always accrues from the experience of reading through a great man’s private correspondence with friends and loved ones. In a letter to his brother, Feb. 11, 1940, Lewis described hearing a lecture at Oxford University from one of his fellow Inklings, Charles Williams, on the subject of John Milton’s Comus. Lewis describes Williams’ treatment of the doctrine of virginity in Milton, and concludes that he was witnessing an all-too-rare instance of a university doing its actual job: edifying its students. (more…)

JANE S. writes:

Recently, a reader called Jen said The Thinking Housewife is a “joke,” because it doesn’t have an open comments feature. The reason for this, according to Jen, is because Laura Wood is too cowardly to allow transparent open discussion on her site.

A few days ago, quite by accident, I googled “The Thinking Housewife,” on a library computer and discovered a number of blogs that appear to be dedicated to taking content from TTH and dissecting it in snarky ways. One of them is called  Manboobz, just to give you an idea of the caliber of intellect we’re dealing with. The blog posts at these sites all have tags like “misogyny,” “reactionary bulls**t,” and “religious bigot.” As with all liberal thought, they are defined by what they’re opposed to. (more…)

THE New York Times makes the case today for why Ryan was a good choice. The editorial titled “Paul Ryan’s Social Extremism” is excerpted below.

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IN THE entry on the controversial remarks of Congressman Todd Akin, a reader says Akin, who is now trailing Claire McCaskill, should have dropped out of the race.

Clark Coleman writes:

Akin projects a certain stereotype that many voters detest, and some of them are in the GOP, such as myself: the politician who thinks that his moral beliefs are qualification enough for office, and he does not have to do the hard work of thinking through the details of all those issues that are not moral issues, nor even of learning to articulate his views on the moral issues that are seemingly most important to him. (more…)

CYNDI writes:

I recall the discussions you had (here, here and here) on the repulsive turn that weddings and wedding photography have taken over the past few years with trash-the-dress shoots.

Well, the worst has happened. A bride in Quebec was dragged to her death while being photographed in a river.

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WRITING in The New York Times, a professor of biology at Boise State University says that the world could survive just fine without men as long as enough sperm was frozen to keep the species alive. Greg Hampikian looks around him — at a physical and intellectual infrastructure erected almost entirely by men —  and says it all comes down to gestation and breastfeeding. He himself is unnecessary (even though he was a stay-at-home dad for an entire year.)

Women aren’t just becoming men’s equals. It’s increasingly clear that “mankind” itself is a gross misnomer: an uninterrupted, intimate and essential maternal connection defines our species.

A society that indulges idiocy of this magnitude is soon to be conquered by a society that doesn’t.

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IN A REMARKABLE instance of government persecution, the owners of a Vermont Inn have agreed to pay $30,000 and curtail their business activities significantly in an out-of-court settlement of a suit by a lesbian couple and the Vermont Human Rights Commission. The lesbian couple had been falsely told by an inn employee that the resort would not host a same-sex “wedding reception.”

What is stunning about this case is that Jim and Mary O’Reilly, owners of the Wildflower Inn in Lyndonville, did everything possible to reconcile their religious beliefs with the passage of civil unions and same-sex “marriage” in Vermont. They had agreed in 2005 before the Orwellian state Human Rights Commission to host same-sex receptions and the commission gave them permission (yes, they needed permission) to express to customers their belief that same-sex “marriage” was wrong before any such events were finalized. The commission had investigated the couple because they had voiced their objections to same-sex “marriage” in an honest and friendly manner to two lesbians who were potential customers without turning them away. These women, who are not the same women involved in the recently settled suit, filed a complaint with the commission.

The O’Reillys, who are Catholic and have eight children, never refused to host a lesbian “wedding.” It is being widely reported in the press today that they did. These reports are inaccurate.

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THE stunning, widely lamented tenfold rise in cases of autism since the 1980s is due in substantial part to delayed fatherhood, a new medical study has concluded, adding to the already significant body of evidence that sexual liberation is ruinous to human health and welfare.

The birthrate of men over the age of 40 has increased by 30 percent since 1980. Benedict Carey reports in The New York Times:

Older men are more likely than young ones to father a child who develops autism or schizophrenia, because of random mutations that become more numerous with advancing paternal age, scientists reported on Wednesday, in the first study to quantify the effect as it builds each year. The age of mothers had no bearing on the risk for these disorders, the study found. (more…)