THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION is a manifesto calling upon Christians to unite in fighting the culture war. Signed by prominent Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians last November, it advocates organized action and rebellion against abortion, the erosion of marriage and the decline of religious liberty. Alan Roebuck has a provocative piece at The Intellectual Conservative in which he urges this kind of cultural activism by Christians of all denominations, whom he contends are by and large guilty of passivity.

Mr. Roebuck writes:

Is evangelism necessary for cultural renewal? Certainly. Is it sufficient? Not a chance. And the belief that it is — widespread within Protestantism — is weakening conservatism, as it discourages many protestant conservatives from challenging the Left’s control of American culture. Belief in the sufficiency of Christian evangelism must be opposed.

I will not argue here for the necessity of Christian evangelism for the cultural renewal at which conservative activism aims. Most conservatives understand that we need Christianity for America to flourish. My main point is one most leaders of conservative Protestantism don’t seem to acknowledge: In order to renew American society it is not enough that many people have saving faith in Jesus Christ. Nor does it suffice for them to have correct views of God, man and society that result from a proper Christian catechism. And it isn’t enough even that they vote for the more conservative candidates and ballot propositions. No, cultural renewal requires organization and action for the specific purpose of cultural renewal. And this won’t happen spontaneously. (more…)

IN THE previous post, I wrote:

I was in a restaurant the other day and there was a little sign on the table that listed all the medical ill effects of dehydration. It said that if your water intake drops slightly, you are likely to become confused and unable to function mentally. The water industry has done a great job of convincing people that constant water consumption makes you smarter, thinner and more energetic.

 Lawrence Auster writes:

Think of it — every moment of our lives, we’re that close to a breakdown in our mental functioning! Only constant vigilance and nonstop water drinking can protect us.

But then what happened to the liberal idea that the universe is safe and nothing bad can happen to us? Oh, I’ve got it. The universe is safe when it comes to crime and predation, because man is naturally good, especially nonwhite men, and therefore every time a white woman is raped or murdered, no matter how reckless her own behavior or how crime infested the neighborhood where she went jogging alone, it comes as a “shock.” So the human universe is naturally safe. But the civilized universe is dangerous, because it doesn’t naturally provide us with a constant supply of fluids and therefore we must be attentive to that need every moment of our lives, or else suffer a mental breakdown.  (more…)

A COMMENTER at VFR has a hilarious take on the four women awarded “Sailor of the Year”Awards by the namby-pamby U.S. Navy and on the decadent practice of grown adults carrying water bottles with them everywhere, just like babies with their ba-bas. This country is run by adults who are not yet weaned. Do these sailors carry pacifiers and blankies too?

Patrick H. writes:

Three of the women have water bottles right by their feet, ready to give them their “constant supply of fluids,” no doubt. Probably the fourth woman has a bottle next to her but not visible. Remarkable, really, whether or not the bottles were put there for them or they put them there themselves. These women appear to have had the staggering demand placed on them of sitting in some chairs and then standing up for a while. In the open air! With the sun beating down on them with staggering stunning solar power! And perhaps they were even asked to speak … and we know how utterly dehydrating that activity is. But none of this matters. It could have been a cloudy day, no speech required, no standing, no sitting, nothing. None of it matters. The bottles would have been there anyway. The supply of fluids must be constant. Constant.

It does raise odd Freudian questions about suckling at the maternal teat, doesn’t it? (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

Paul Elam, the editor-in-chief of Men’s News Daily, the largest news-oriented site of the men’s rights movement, has proclaimed, “Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”

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HEADY G. writes:

So, I have been reading your blog like crazy lately. It’s distractingly good. I am a male in my mid-twenties and it’s amazing how much of your blog’s truth I see in my everyday life. 

I live in L.A., such a hip, liberal, and “forward thinking” city it is. I hear and see people aching for a lot of these principles and values your visitors share. I was with my actor friends one night, men and women. The men discussed how much they wanted a woman who valued her traditional femininity and the girl discussed her longing for a strong man. It sounded like grandparents in the Midwest as opposed to twenty- and thirty-somethings in Hollywood. And what I mainly noticed is that they wanted a return to tradition, family, and a sense of rightness. But they didn’t even see it. It was a longing they couldn’t put into words. It was a call of nature God gave to us all. Our call to be men and women in harmony. (more…)

READER N. writes:

You may find this article in First Things interesting. It is a discussion of the current movie The Kids Are Alright in which children of a pair of lesbians locate the man who is their “father” via semen donation. (more…)

IN THIS previous entry, Fitzgerald argues that men suffer in subtle and little-recognized ways from women who are criticial or demanding. Male fortitude is not simply self-generated. His point is similar to one I have made before: that gentleness is one of the most important forces for the good.

A recent New York Times article makes a similar argument. Men are more sensitive than is commonly believed. Gee, they even seem to need love. Could it be that men are human beings after all? Unmarried men, a major study has concluded, are more affected by unhappy romantic relationships than women:

According to the report by Robin W. Simon, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University, and Anne E. Barrett, a sociologist at Florida State University, “It appears that young men benefit more than women from support, and that they are more harmed than women by strain in ongoing romantic relationships.”

For women, whether they’re in a relationship at all — no matter how awful — is what counts.

This is startling and troubling news. It violates one of the core concepts of feminism: that men have everything, and way too much of it. This isn’t the only unsettling insight here. The authors of the study were peeved at evidence that, despite the strides of feminism, young women still want boyfriends:

“It’s a little bit pathetic,” Ms. Simon allowed. “Even though there’s been so much social change in this area, women’s self-worth is still so much tied up with having a boyfriend. It’s unfortunate.”

 Truly pathetic. Why can’t women care less about love and more about money and power?

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  KILROY M. writes: I thought you might find this amusing cover illustration of Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard of interest. It's pretty blunt about the ideological tendency of each candidate.  

FITZGERALD writes:

I highly recommend this article.  It is harsh, but the points it makes are essentially valid. The Roman Catholic Church has capitulated since Vatican II to the concept of equality in marriage. This represents a surrender to the forces out to destroy the family, a sop to the progressives and their agitators. 

Tradition teaches us that men are appointed the leaders for their families and society. (more…)

  THE PREMIER purveyor of propaganda, The New York Times, has these enlightening words on the subject in an article on the Shirley Sherrod affair: [I]t is an open question whether conservative media outlets risk damage to their credibility when obscure or misleading stories are blown out of proportion and when what amounts to political opposition research is presented as news. Jane Hall, a communication professor at American University and a former contributor to Fox News, said partisan media outlets “look for something that will get an audience and that will whip up people in some kind of frenzy, warranted or not.” Ms. Hall said what Ms. Sherrod had endured was “classic propaganda.” 

JOHN writes:

Christian men who are struggling against sexual sin should try real live old-fashioned corporal mortification. Intentionally and prayerfully do something really painful, offer the suffering to Jesus in union with His suffering on the cross and ask Him to use the pain to burn away all the self-inflicted corruption and wash the soul clean. The sin was against one’s own body (1 Cor 6:18), the atonement should be too. Sexual sin throws away self-control for physical pleasure; voluntary, self-inflicted physical pain for the purpose of penance restores self-control, purifies the body and strengthens the mind.

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JAMES P. writes:

Did you see this New York Times article on the “progress” of the sexual revolution in Russia? What amused me was the article’s overall perspective, which is that the sexual revolution indeed represented “progress” – rather than a slide into degeneracy – and that the Russians are to be pitied for their reactionary ignorance:

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THE ILLUSTRATOR Daniel Mitsui has a fascinating piece (see July 14th entry) on recent trends in Legos, the plastic building toys popular among boys. Lego stopped basing its miniature figures on characters and narratives  from medieval history and legend, choosing branded fantasies instead. Mitsui writes:

I began to lose interest in these toys around the time of the first troubling developments. The weird and thankfully short-lived Wolfpack Renegades theme was a harbinger of worse to come; this was the first introduction of characters with no basis in medieval history or literature. Dragon Masters followed, with a wizard named Majisto. (more…)