I AM posting responses to the previous entry, “Don’t Join the Marines,” here.

David writes:

While I sympathize with your correspondents who advise against joining the Marines, I don’t agree with their advice. The military is continually being tinkered with by social engineers specifically because it remains one of the strong bastions of traditional values, under the surface, and we all benefit by its remaining so. Occasionally saluting the absurdities of political correctness is of course annoying and degrading, but official folly is nothing new in military culture either. Nor are useless buggers in command positions – metaphorical OR literal buggers. Indeed, by the late nineteenth century the British army effectively controlled the world’s largest empire despite a significant presence in the command structure of effete aristocrats whose uselessness or counterproductiveness sometimes approached that of the modern PC gelding or metrosexual. (more…)

IN a recent entry, a reader named KB disclosed that he is joining the Marine Corps in the hope of turning his life around. His comment provoked this impassioned response from Wheeler MacPherson, an ex-Marine.

MacPherson’s message: Don’t do it.

Brigadier General Loretta Reynolds, commander of Parris Island, where 20,000 Marines are trained annually, is, he says, “the bleak androgynous face” of a military institution in a state of irreversible decline. “Whatever nobility and glory that organization once had, it has squandered forever,” MacPherson writes. “Assimilating yourself to its culture will not save you. It will merely give you some fleeting bragging rights.”

Wheeler MacPherson writes to KB:

I sincerely hope that my words which follow do not offend you, because I do not offer them with any such intent.

I will confess that when I read your comment on Mrs. Wood’s blog, I assumed by your description of yourself as an “immigrant” that you are either British, Russian, or Canadian. That is to say, I assumed that you are white. Having learned that you are Indian tends to gut my original response, since most of my observations and concerns play directly to someone of heritage similar to mine.

For example, I was going to point out that the Marine Corps in which I served was a bastion of things Southern and masculine. R.E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson were studied and revered. We imitated the “rebel yell” in training exercises. (more…)

BUCK writes:

SAMSON writes:

Your recent post about Russia reminded me of the controversy over Uganda. Since the media is in the tank for the homosexual lobby, there has been nothing but criticism of Uganda’s repressive stance on same-sex relations. One subtext of a lot of this discussion has been racism: “Well, after all, what can you expect from those barbaric black Africans!” It was with great pleasure, then, that I read this position statement put forth by the National Association of Social Workers of Uganda: (more…)

DAN writes:

Not content to merely impose an abstract human rights regime on the rest of the world (most recently in Libya), Barack Obama is unwavering in his commitment to the spread of “glitter imperialism” (as traditionalist writer Mark Hackard dubbed the internationalization of the homosexual agenda). Raven Clabough writes at the New American:

The White House has announced that it will use foreign aid to promote global rights for gays and lesbians. (more…)

JAMES N. writes:

I am often reminded when reading your site of how, at the end of Tolkien’s The Return of the King, Frodo is thinking out loud about his memories of the Shire, and Sam remembers “Rosie Cotton dancing. She had ribbons in her hair. If ever I was to marry someone… it would have been her. It would have been her!”

Here, at what looks like the end of all things, after an enormous, draining quest and ultimate victory over the evil of Sauron, Sam’s thoughts are of a happy woman, dancing, “with ribbons in her hair.”

I don’t think most women know that about us (men). And if they were told, I don’t think most women would believe it.

But it’s the truth. To the ends of the earth, even to death, for that smiling woman who thought to put ribbons in her hair. For me. (more…)

JAMES P. writes:

This Daily Mail article states that running marathons permanently damages the heart.

Just look at this picture of female runner Paula Radcliffe — she looks like a medical specimen, her breasts have all but disappeared, and she’s grimacing in pain. What a fine role model for the young women of today!

Laura writes:

This is an extreme manifestation of the compulsive athleticism of Western women. It’s the Vitalist Woman’s fruitless, frenzied, feverish expenditure of energy. Energy for the sake of energy. Pointless and nihilistic and vain. The West slides into demographic oblivion while women exercise their fertile years away.

(more…)

CATHERINE RAMPELL of The New York Times reported yesterday that almost four million women left the labor force in November: (more…)

KB writes:

Thanks for recommending Robinson Crusoe, I’m reading it on my iPad tonight. I’d read an abridged version of Crusoe as a schoolboy and it remained one of my favorite adventure stories. Nonetheless, its message passed over my head. Today, reading what you wrote in reference to Crusoe reached into my heart. “He did not pity himself…or lose sight of how much his own stubbornness had misled him. He came to realize that his trials were his salvation.”

I am not a housewife, simply an unmarried 25-year-old, male immigrant, now an American citizen. For almost eight years, I’ve been on my version of Crusoe’s island, cut off from society and my family. (more…)

I sometimes make serious mistakes in wording in the course of producing this site. Here is one example. In this post about a female reader’s anti-feminist awakening, I spoke of Robinson Crusoe’s gratitude and humility. I said, “Crusoe fell to his knees and thanked God for his island.”

But this leaves the entirely wrong impression. It suggests that Crusoe was simply grateful that he was saved after his ship went down in a storm. That was not my point at all. Crusoe was obviously glad he was not killed, but more importantly he was grateful for being shipwrecked. On the second anniversary of the day he swam ashore, Crusoe writes in his journal: (more…)

RITA JANE writes:

My father (the one who raised me) was rendered sterile from a teenage illness, which happened to many young men in the fifties and sixties. After he and my mother married, they pursued artificial insemination. My brother and I are biological half-siblings, conceived from two different donors. I grew up in a home with a happily married and functional mother and father, which is something many, probably most, donor children do not have. I can not stress enough how much I love my parents, but there is still a palpable loss at not knowing half of my own biological history.

This has been brought to the forefront of my mind because I recently moved to a new city. In setting up care with my new doctors, there is always the inevitable form where I am asked to fill in my family medical history. I write what I have written dozens of times before–“Conceived with donor sperm. No medical history for father’s side of the family.” None. I’m 23 years old, married and my husband and I are looking to have children. Some day, I will have to explain this to them, so they too can have a little asterisk on their medical records. (more…)

JOHANNA writes in response to this post:

I am another woman in the same position as Mrs. M: misguided by feminism, burdened with student debt, and looking for a way to develop a healthy family. I am 27 now, but I feel that I have to put off marriage and children a little longer for both financial and emotional reasons. It wasn’t until this year, largely with the help of this site, that I could finally see the problems inherent in feminism. 

I have always been a very conscientious person, which is why I pursued a university degree as everyone told me to do. I didn’t know myself, and I didn’t know how the world worked. I trusted my parents and other authority figures to lead me down the right path. It was this same conscientiousness that wouldn’t allow me to accept an ambitious career, and I went through several years of confusion. I couldn’t access the contradictions between my thoughts and emotions before because I accepted that having a career and financial independence were basic requirements for a successful life. I was conditioned very deeply to believe that I should never be dependent on anyone else, and had to look after myself. My desire to be a responsible person and find security trumped everything else. This completely ruled out the idea of being dependent on a husband in order to support children physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

I just finished watching the 1981 movie, The Incredible Shrinking Woman starring Lily Tomlin. The movie is rich in metaphor, the overarching theme being the diminishing role of the housewife, who shrinks and disappears with the introduction of all the new conveniences and household products of the modern age. 

As the movie starts out, Pat Kramer (the character played by Tomlin who becomes “The Incredible Shrinking Woman”) lives an idyllic family life as mother to several noisy rambunctious children, who are busy playing with their toys. The busy day ends in a happy scene in which Pat tucks her children in bed. 

The husband, who is the bread winner, is an advertising executive. His job is to come up with names for new products and put together the commercials peddling all sorts of wonders to the modern housewife. The fakeness of the new products and the fakeness of the ads are emphasized. (more…)

MRS. M. writes:

Thank you so much for your site. It is proving to be a great source of courage for me as I plan my transition to homemaker in the future.

Robin commented on your last post: “It would take a radical leap of faith on the part of this mother to reverse this situation.”

This struck a chord with me, as I wish it was not such a radical leap of faith. Even on your own site, I find that the situation of women like me is not often addressed. I am yearning to be a homemaker, but we cannot afford it. (more…)

  FROM British Paintings.