I’m not a big fan of George Will. He possesses too much of the condescending “inside the beltway elitism” attitude that I find disgusting. However he does, on occasion, knock one out of the park with his commentary. Such is the case with a recent piece in Newsweek. Here’s a few choice quotes:

Mike Stivic, a.k.a. Meathead, the liberal graduate student in All in the Family, reflected society’s belief in the cultural superiority of youth, but he was a leading indicator of something else: He lived in his father-in-law Archie Bunker’s home. What are today’s “basement boys” doing down there? Perhaps watching Friends and Seinfeld reruns about a culture of extended youth utterly unlike the world of young adults in previous generations.

And . . .

Although Cross, an aging academic boomer, was a student leftist, he believes that 1960s radicalism became “a retreat into childish tantrums” symptomatic “of how permissive parents infantilized the boomer generation.” And the boomers’ children? Consider the television commercials for the restaurant chain called Dave & Buster’s, which seems to be, ironically, a Chuck E. Cheese’s for adults—a place for young adults, especially men, to drink beer and play electronic games and exemplify youth not as a stage of life but as a perpetual refuge from adulthood.

As I sometimes try to drive home this point to other young men with whom I’m attempting to mentor, I’ll ask them to try this:

“Picture, in your mind, your ideal representation of the manly hero – a George Washington, a Robert E. Lee, a George Patton, a Douglas MacArthur – and then try to picture them sitting in front of the TV in baggy shorts, an earring, a wine cooler watching Friends and reacting to something by saying Dude! What’s wrong with that picture? Now, ask yourself: How do you want to be thought of?”

Not all readers will understand my point. I hope most of you over 40 will.

You can read the rest of Will’s piece here.

Harvard’s political theory guru Harvey Mansfield wrote the book (literally) on manliness. Here’s a bit of what he had to say in an interview with the Harvard Magazine a few years back:

“There are two aspects of manliness,” Mansfield says. “The first is confidence in what one does, self-assurance. Second, since he is confident in his ability to run his own life, the manly man is independent. This can either make him contemptuous of dependent people, or protective of those who depend on him, like his family. The protectiveness can become political: he gets involved with others and then decides to command or rule them.”

Manliness, says Mansfield, is “an ineradicable quality in males. Its social expression changes–Achilles, the Christian knight, the cowboy, the U.S. Marine–but there has to be a place for it in society. If there isn’t, then manly men will be frustrated and will find some illegal or dangerous outlet: extreme sports, gang wars, violence in movies. Manliness involves taking responsibility for others, as in protectiveness. If no responsible manliness is permitted, it can easily pass into irresponsible manliness–deadbeat fathers, for example.”

Mansfield is also, by the way, the author of a great brief introduction to political philosophy from ISI, The Student’s Guide to Political Theory.

Edit to fix the tense.  Thanks for the heads-up.

Well this manages to pretty neatly encapsulate everything that is wrong with our culture.

“I’m doing this to de-mystify abortion,” she says. “I’m doing this so other women know, ‘Hey, it’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.’ It’s just not that bad.”

These are the words of Angie Jackson, a blogger and mother of a 4-year-old son. Her IUD birth control failed; she is four weeks pregnant and writing about her abortion on YouTube, her personal blog, and on Twitter under the hashtag #livetweetingabortion.

Last Thursday, Jackson visited a Planned Parenthood where her doctor gave her the first dose of RU-486, the abortion pill. (Note: The abortion pill is not the same as the morning-after pill.) She had to take four more pills — swallowing two and letting two others dissolve in her mouth—on Friday and Saturday.

She hasn’t taken to her various media platforms to show the graphic parts of her abortion. Instead, Jackson is chronicling how her abortion feels physically and emotionally — as she puts it on YouTube, “It’s just not that bad.” It’s almost like guerilla sex ed.

An optimistic part of me thinks that the woman’s callous disregard for human life and the way that she is acting in the public square will actually hurt her cause.  Instead of de-mystifying abortion, she offers an extreme example of self-absorption and selfishness.

Well, that’s what I tell myself to keep from weeping.

By the way, I find the comments of the person blogging about this to be hysterical.

I think it’s brave of her to share something that will make her a bulls-eye for anti-choice activists.

Oh yes, what a brave woman.  She will have to endure the slings and arrows of hundreds of furious blog comments (like this one) that she most likely will never read.  It certainly takes a brave individual to swallow a few pills in order to “do away with a problem” rather than take responsibility for one’s actions.  She’s a real warrior that one.

Foot-in-mouth disease strikes again.

Matthews forgets Obama is black.

We are in a post-racial society blah blah blah.  Have they tried being a non-protected minority?  Protected minorities = African Americans, Hispanics (or is the term Latino, I can’t get it straight), Native American.  Non protected minorities = everything else.   What if you’re Asian and are generally penalized for being “smart”? What if you’re white South African but everyone assumes you’re American “white”?  < < insert post-racial society rant > >  Post-racial – yeah right.

Note 1: I do not mean this offensively towards anyone, white, black or purple.

Note 2: This is not just aimed at Matthews and his idiotic remarks about a president whose race doesn’t matter to me. Generally discussing race in America gets my dander up.

Today is the March for Life, an event I hope to attend at least some of later in the day.  It is also the 37th anniversary of one of the most atrocious Supreme Court decisions ever handed down by our Overlords in black, and Red State has a terrific editorial today that is a definite must read on the topic.

It is heartening that we have made some small strides through the years.  Opposition to abortion has increased, and we’re seeing some signs that the youth of today are embracing the culture of life.  But we still have far to go, as evidenced by the actions of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council.

The Montgomery County Council is considering a regulation that would require pro-life pregnancy resource centers to tell new clients that the information they provide is not intended to be medical advice and to turn to other providers before “proceeding on a course of action regarding [her] pregnancy.” The regulation would impose a fine of up to $750 per day for not doing so.

The bill singles out pregnancy resource centers only because of their pro-life mission. If approved, the Montgomery County regulation would impose government-compelled speech on a non-profit organization that does not receive public funding simply because the organization declines to provide or refer for abortion. The regulation does not apply to “family planning” clinics, which the County government funds, or to abortion clinics.

Maryland, which as a colony was a haven for Catholics, is now the state with the fourth highest abortion rate in the country, and had been one of the few states where the rate is increasing.

There is a critical need for offering alternatives to abortion. While the abortion rate declined 9 percent nationally between 2000 and 2005, the abortion rate in Maryland rose 8 percent in the same period. Our state’s abortion rate is now 38 percent higher than the national rate, with more than one-in-four Maryland pregnancies ending in abortion. There were 37,590 abortions performed here in 2005 – about 103 per day.  To even consider targeting centers that help women choose life is unconscionable in light of these tragic statistics, which represent an even more tragic reality.

Though there is growing opposition to this movement, the Montgomery City Council has not a single Republican member.  My wife has written to our Council member, but I fear our pleas will fall on deaf ears.  If you are in or around the Montgomery County area, please write your local representatives to fight this ideologically motivated attack on pregnancy resource centers.  There is more information on how to get involved here.

“Education, after all, is typically described as a core, and possibly the core, state responsibility . . . Homeschooling is now such an entrenched practice, recriminalization is not a viable option in any event.” ~ Robin L. West, Georgetown University Law Center

Not a “viable option?” Well at least I can rest peacefully tonight knowing that jack-booted thugs won’t be knocking my daughter’s door down any time soon to arrest her for teaching “the state’s children.” (My daughter would want to know where the state was when she was going through those labor pains to deliver “their” children. By the way Professor, the youngest one has something stinky in her diaper – could you lend a hand here?) Professor West thinks that more government regulation of homeschooling is a good idea:

As the political philosopher and homeschool critic Robert Reich has persuasively argued, curricular review would give the state a way to ensure that the academic content is such as to protect the children’s interest in both acquiring the necessary skills for active, autonomous, and responsible citizenship in adulthood, and in being exposed to diverse and more liberal ways.

Well, gee whiz, that approach certainly has worked wonders in the public schools, hasn’t it? Diverse and more liberal – that’s what this is really all about. Professor West doesn’t like the fact that “the state” is losing the opportunity to indoctrinate OUR children.  Maybe she’s bucking for Secretary of Education in the Obama administration. More here.

This just in…..

Las Vegas cocktail waitress and lingerie model Jamie Jungers – among the women who allegedly had a fling with Tiger Woods – doesn’t feel like she owes an apology to the golfer’s wife, Elin.

“No, I don’t,” Jungers, 26, says on “The Secret Life of Tiger Woods,” a Dateline NBC special airing Friday. “I feel like that’s his– that’s his business. Everybody makes mistakes. This wasn’t something that I did yesterday or a month ago or a year ago. This was years ago. I was younger. And I’m not saying that what I did then was right. But– I’m certainly not gonna say that it was wrong. I believe everything happens for a reason. And– no, I– I don’t– I don’t believe that I owe her apology– an apology. I mean, I– I’m sorry for everything that’s going down. And what may happen to … their kids’ future, you know? But no, I don’t– I don’t believe I owe her an apology. No.”

Every two years, the unwashed LSU faithful crawl out of their brackish swamp and travel to Oxford, MS, bent on defiling our cosmopolitan soil like so many socially-perverse locusts. But we welcome you, that even one of your young might leave with the indelible mark of civility.

As to the game: beware of the man who has singlehandedly redeemed the name “Dexter.” Be sure and wave as he runs past you, because it’s all you can do.

Update: Dexter McCluster also passes.

Arkansas 2 is part of what I call the Jacksonian belt, the swath of counties from southwestern Pennsylvania along the Appalachian chain and extending to Oklahoma and Texas which were largely settled by the Scots-Irish immigrants that streamed into America in the dozen years before the Revolution and their descendants. Their great hero, and the son of Scots-Irish immigrants himself, was Andrew Jackson, the victor of Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans, who set about removing Indians from much of this territory and was the founder of the Democratic party. In 2008 voters in the Jacksonian belt voted heavily against Barack Obama in both the Democratic primaries and the general election, as you can see on these national maps and by clicking on individual states to see the county-by-county returns. This map showing the counties which cast a higher percentage of votes for John McCain in 2008 than for George W. Bush in 2004 is essentially a map of the Jacksonian belt.

If Vic Snyder is in trouble, it’s a good bet that many other Democrats from the Jacksonian belt are too.

Very interesting. My Scots-Irish ancestors are smiling from heaven. More here.

Read Charles Johnson’s essay, “Another Stone Wall: The Claremont Colleges commemorate a gay-rights milestone but forget the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Reading and seeing almost everyone tiptoeing around the fact that the Ft. Hood shooter was acting out his Muslim beliefs made me think: what if the shooter was a devout Southern Baptist who had vocally opposed the war based on his understanding of the Bible and shouted “in the name of Jesus Christ” before opening fire? Would the MSM and our President be so reserved about attaching significant to those facts?

I highly doubt it.

That would be Rush Limbaugh of course, thwarting his lifelong dream to affiliate somehow not just with professional sports [once upon a time he lackeyed for MLB's Kansas City Royals], but with his true love, the NFL.

For those who came in late, Limbaugh was prepared to pony up some portion of his hard-earned fortune [$20+ million a year] to become a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams.

“Minority.” Therein lies the rub.

Limbaugh hasn’t been gentle on the Black Establishment, especially the corrupt demagogues Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, nor has he been gentle on their fealty to the Democratic Party.

Limbaugh’s a Republican, afterall.

Neither has Limbaugh been particularly kind to the pathologies that are sometimes excused as “African-American culture,” or charitably, the fallout from slavery and Jim Crow. Crime, gangs, broken families, education, employment, whatnot.

Race is America’s Third Rail—to touch on its implications and enduring problems in any meaningful way is social suicide, and that includes African Americans like Bill Cosby, who endured Jim Crow personally in his journey as one of Black America’s first transracial—post-racial—social pioneers.

Cosby, like Jackie Robinson, pierced the ceiling of racial prejudice by overwhelming merit. Cosby was charming, could absorb the flak without firing back, and he was funny. Robinson was charming, could absorb the flak without firing back, and could play the hell out of the game of baseball.

Limbaugh’s funny and charming, and very good at what he does too. See, this isn’t about race, it’s about partisanship. It’s about political power.

The Democratic Party cannot gain or stay in power without retaining 80-90% of the African American vote. That’s just a statistical fact.

Therefore, race-baiting—in this case branding the other “side” as racist—isn’t only convenient, it’s entirely necessary for the Democratic Party and their clients like Jackson and Sharpton and Waters and Lee and the NAACP and MSNBC in these, the early days of the 21st Century.

Just as it was in the 1960s, and has been ever since.

Y’see, after his baseball career was over, Jackie Robinson tried to become a journalist. In 1960, he interviewed both John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. According to US government archives

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/jackie-robinson/nixon-draft.html

Robinson viewed Nixon’s civil rights record as more promising than Kennedy’s, especially after meeting with both candidates.

But the fix was in. The political power game, in favor of the Democratic Party. And so

Robinson was pressured into taking an unpaid leave of absence and ending his triweekly column with the liberal New York Post when he publicly endorsed Nixon.

It’s not about race and never was. It’s certainly not about Limbaugh.

Even Jackie Robinson himself had no chance against the machine, and he was no Rush Limbaugh. It’s not about race and never was. It’s about power, pure and naked.

I know I would be if I spun this wildly.

[Deal] Hudson argues that the public option will end up extending federal funding for abortion. He says that the courts will step in even if Congress doesn’t mandate abortion coverage in any such plan. Mind you, the courts have not stepped in to over-rule the Hyde Amendment lo these many years. The federal health insurance coverage that members of Congress enjoy does not include abortion coverage. Federal Medicaid funds do not support abortion. So, why would the federal option, which would be modeled after the insurance that members of Congress get, necessarily end up mandating abortion coverage? Hudson does not say. (more…)

Fried chicken, sweet tea, pecan pie, patriotism – Southern to the core. No body-piercing and no head-banging. And you can actually understand what they’re singing! (Sorry Joel, but I felt compelled to offer an alternative.) The Zac Brown Band

According to MSNBC, the gay community is divided on Obama, as he has given them nothing but promises so far.  Earlier this week there were rumblings about The Powers That Be ending the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy for gays in the military.  At this very moment (I think), people are marching on the Mall in DC in support of gay rights.

I’m curious to know other peoples’ opinions.  I have yet to make my own, for a number of different reasons.  Is the gay community doing the same thing feminism did, where “equal rights” really meant “the same as”?  In more urban/progressive places, are there really levels of discrimination that merit a march on the Mall (the ultimate form of protest)?  Someone once voiced the opinion that feminism was a way for ugly women to feel important about themselves and get laid.  Is all this gay activism a chance for, in a similar manner, legalized licentiousness? That same (gay) person opined that the only people who would benefit from gay marriage is divorce lawyers. Does the right to marriage (complete with white dress and cake topped with cheesy plastic figurines) constitute as a civil right?

Thoughts?

The greatest and perhaps only sin to persons of the left is hypocrisy. Holding minimal or no standards atall is preferable to falling short of them.

By his own lights and moral system, David Letterman didn’t commit adultery, since he didn’t marry the mother of his child until very recently, although they all lived together as man, wife and child.

An arrangement that in the olden days was called a “family.”

He rigged the game, and wrote his own rules, and has kept to them as far as we know. People do that. It’s called “rationalizing.”

Of course, he had fun on national TV with those who accepted the rules most people play by when they fell short, people being what they are.

Flawed. Fallen, even. But that is not hypocrisy, that’s being human.

I certainly can’t judge David Letterman: he didn’t break the rules because he wrote his own.

But it’s been considered ungentlemanly for ages to diddle the help. Perhaps it’s the feminist in me, but sex should be between equals. Perhaps love should be involved, even.

I realize I’m out on a limb here in this day & age. So be it.

Minter is also the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting Here’s a little gem from a review of The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide at Human Events:

Driven by his belief that “the U.S. has lost its code of honor…enumerated by the Founding Fathers” and his own harrowing personal experiences, Miniter has composed the book every father who loves honor and heartland-American-values will wish they’d written for their son. And everyone who reads this book will agree that it’s no exaggeration to describe it as Boy Scouts meet Marine Sniper, and Marine Snipers meet Frank Sinatra.

Read the rest of the review here.

(By the way, I’m back. I know you’ve all missed me.)

In some respects, the election of Obama to the Presidency showed the culture wars are over. Craig Deeds who is running for Governor in Virginia would like you to think he is just like Obama. So, should it come as any surprise that down fifteen points and two days prior to the critical end of the second quarter/beginning of the third quarter fundraising cycle, the Democrats in Virginia and the Washington Post tag-team to resurrect the culture wars to fire up their base? The controversy is a decades old thesis written by the Republican candidate for governor. From today’s op-ed on Bob McDonnell: (more…)

Virginia Democrat Senator Jim Webb has had an amazing change of heart since defeating Republican George Allen in 2006. Webb—a former Republican—ran as a “moderate” (snicker) Democrat and defeated once Presidential hopeful Allen by less than 9000 votes out of 2.4 million cast.

In Webb’s excellent history of the Scots-Irish in America, Born Fighting, Webb—himself a proud Scots-Irish—writes the following:

“. . . a feeling that the culture so dramatically symbolized by the Southern redneck was the greatest inhibitor of the plans of the activist Left and the cultural Marxists for a new kind of society altogether.” (Page 295.)

“In the age of political correctness and ultraethnic sensitivities, it has become delicate, to say the least, to celebrate many of this culture’s hard-won accomplishments when teaching American history in today’s public schools.” (Page 17.)

“The Scottish people did not care much for the larger crowd and they especially did not care much for elites.” (Page 42.)

“America’s elites have had very little contact with this culture.” (Page 18.)

“. . . they ignore them at their peril.” (Page 19.)

Despite these condemnations of “elites” and “political correctness”, Webb apparently has no problem enthusiastically supporting the elitist and politically correct agenda of the Obama administration. He has also apparently surrendered his manhood to the will of Queen Pelosi in the House and Grandma Reid in the Senate. Case in point: Despite Webb’s strong lip-service support for the 2^nd amendment, he voted with the rest of the Democrat elites to confirm Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; ignoring the wise Latino woman’s hostility toward gun rights. I have to assume that the price for Webb obtaining more political power within the Democrat Party was his willingness to sing soprano in a voice similar to that of Harry Reid’s. (Doesn’t Reid’s voice remind you of a grandmother battling menopause?)

Sotomayor’s speeches, along with many of her decisions, would certainly lead an objective observer to conclude that she is what Webb would describe as someone with “ultraethnic sensitivities” and a member of “the activist Left and the cultural Marxists”—a group which he clearly targets for derision and contempt in his book. What’s happened to Senator Webb?

Now comes Webb’s tucking tail and running off to East-Asia (at taxpayer’s expense) during the August recess. Is this courageous, highly-decorated Vietnam War veteran afraid to face his constituents because of the boiling anger over Obama’s health care “reform” or, has he become an elitist who just doesn’t want to have much “contact with this culture?” Hey Senator, as you’ve pointed out, many of your constituents don’t care much for elites. You ignore us at your (political) peril.

Senator Webb, call your office. There are some great inhibitors that would like to talk to you.

Whenever freedom is lost, wherever tyranny is found, there are three accompanying factors: religious oppression, economic depression, and a culture of death.

Orwell’s 1984 provides a vivid example of this principle. Religion in Oceania has been wholly abolished, the people live in government-induced squalor, and the state routinely comes between children and their parents, and is working on preventing marriage altogether.

But there are ample historical examples as well. (more…)

A friend of mine (and future Priest) just emailed me this story:

Suspended Fresno priest turned gay activist Father Geoffrey Farrow has called for Catholic priests to retaliate against the Knights of Columbus for their support of Proposition 8.

Farrow was removed as pastor from the St. Paul Newman Center at Cal State Fresno in October 2008 for his outspoken defiance of church teaching over Proposition 8 and the issue of homosexuality.

In a post on his personal blog dated June 4, 2009 “Boycott the Knights of Columbus,” Farrow wrote:

“Many priests have E-mailed me and expressed their rage and anger over the hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy in supporting anti-marriage equality legislation…One of the organizations, which the bishops have effectively employed to do their dirty work, has been the Knights of Columbus.”

Farrow then asked “So, what can priests do to fight the anti-gay agenda of the bishops and the K of C?” His first suggestion:

“Borrow the full amount against your Knights of Columbus life insurance policy immediately. Take the check and invest the funds with an LGBT friendly fund. Do not pay back the loan.”

The blog post is here.  Shockingly comment moderation is on.  Can’t imagine why that would be.  It is amusing to read the comments from the sycophants who have absolutely no clue as to what the Knights of Columbus do.

This petty call for vengeance is shameful and disgusting to be sure, but I also imagine that the Supreme Council is not exactly sweating too much.  Still, it’s always a tragedy when someone who has taken a vow before God spits in the Lord’s face.

(Cross-posted at CrankyCon)

There have been many gushing reviews of Matthew Crawford’s new book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (see, e.g., here or here), a book that I’m sure I’ll enjoy, given how much I liked the author’s original New Atlantis article when it came out in 2006.

And yet . . . my own grandfather was a farmer, and he most certainly didn’t have the same attitude towards manual labor vs. office work. In fact, he always used to tell me, “Get an education so that you can work indoors.” And Tom Smith has some good points in his post titled “Manual work as sucking very much.”

Perhaps everyone is prone to the “grass is greener” phenomenon? Those who spend a lifetime sweating in the sun look with envy on people who get to work sitting down in the cool, while those who work in cubicles look with envy on people who actually get to make or do something that seems more tangible and real.

Alternatively, perhaps there is widespread misallocation of human capital. By accident of birth or circumstances, there are many people who end up in blue-collar jobs who would have been much happier in an office job; and conversely there are many people who, by accident of birth or circumstances, find themselves slaving away in an investment bank or consulting firm, but who would have been much happier as a landscaper or plumber.

Well, in a stunning 6-1 majority, the California Supreme Court has decided to uphold the will of the people and not hang the democratic majority by the noose of technicality. So, what’s next? (more…)

(Posted last week on What’s Wrong With the World)

Professor Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago has, again, misrepresented my point of view on Christian academic institutions that forbid their faculty and students to engage in extra-marital acts of intimacy including homosexual ones. I do not attribute this to malicious intent on Professor Leiter’s part. But rather, I think it is a consequence of a general lack of serious and respectful study and reflection on the philosophical beliefs that undergird theological traditions with which he disagrees.
(more…)

The Boy Scouts are being sued again, and the Ninth Circuit has invited everybody to play:

The City of San Diego leases portions of Balboa Park and Fiesta Island to the San Diego Boy Scouts, which use the land to operate a camp and aquatic center. The Boy Scouts use the leased areas for their own events but otherwise keep them open to the general public — and have spent millions of dollars to improve and maintain facilities on the properties, eliminating the need for taxpayer funding. While the Boy Scouts’ membership policies exclude homosexuals and agnostics, the Scouts have not erected any religious symbols and do not discriminate in any way in administering the leased parklands. (more…)

Former Laetare Medalist Judge John T. Noonan will deliver a speech in the spirit of the award.

Why him?

“In thinking about who could bring a compelling voice, a passion for dialogue, great intellectual stature, and a deep commitment to Catholic values to the speaking role of the Laetare Medalist – especially in these unusual circumstances – it quickly became clear that an ideal choice is Judge Noonan,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of Notre Dame. “This commencement ceremony, more than anything else, is a celebration of our students and their families. Judge Noonan will join with President Obama and other speakers in that celebration, sending them from our campus and into the world with sound advice and affirmation.

They should’ve given it to Martin Sheen this year.

George Will is either a crank who really needs to take some time off to gain some perspective, or a perceptive social critic offering up a keen insight into the subtle things destroying our culture.  Frankly, both thoughts crossed my mind as I read his op-ed today. (more…)