Attn.: EditrixI will add further comments, should there be any. Thank you, Terry, for this!Our female German correspondent, The Editrix, has some intriguing insights about the female sex, and what causes women (as women) to do some of the things they do.
At VFR is posted an article concerning the actions of a Dutch female reporter putting herself in harm's way. Read the article -- titled: Wilders tells the Dutch elite what they are -- to understand what exactly I'm talking about.
Now, I'm not trying to make any sweeping generalizations, truly, but I've witnessed this kind of thing before in certain women who are (relatively) close to me. They engage themselves in certain self-flagellating, ceremonious, ritualistic behaviors, and in their particular cases I've generally identified it as a self-centered grasp for the sympathy due to victims as well as the applause and adulation due to someone so obviously self-less, warm, loving, non-judgmental, and so forth and so on. In other words, my sense in this particular case is that this woman seeks self-promotion and self-gratification, and she was willing to put everything (including her life) at risk to get it. What I find so irritating sometimes, is that people go along with it, legitimizing this kind of behavior, thus effectively creating a monster, er, a whole host of 'em.
But I want to hear (or read) Nora's point of view, as well as any other woman's perspective who would like to add her own thoughts or insights.
Goodness, Terry! That must have been telepathy. I just read the entry at VFR, went to the BJ, was so angry that I left a VERY rude comment there and then thought I might have a look at Webster's for some sanity. I am suffering once more from acute blog frustration syndrome (you wouldn't BELIEVE what is currently going on here), but I am angry enough now to give it a break. I'll provide the link as soon as I've finished the entry. Thanks for encouraging me.
Terry, I did it! It's very rude and full of expletives, quite unlike my usual oeuvre, but heartfelt nevertheless.
- chiu_chunling said...
In what possible sense was this woman raped? I mean...I'm reasonably sure that sexual intercourse did occur, but her face doesn't show the medical evidence that she said "no" to the Taliban.
I very sure that the Taliban comforted themselves about their being seduced by this woman by pretending that she was somehow "captured" and thus technically a legitimate object of rapine rather than a Western harlot who set out to create this entire situation, but is there any basis for this delusion?
Wilders is wrong on this one. This woman didn't emotionally surrender to her 'captors' as a way of denying her fear and helplessness (though that problem does afflict a good part of Dutch society). The real point of the story isn't whether her 'captors' respected her, but that she had boundless contempt for them.
"The noble savage even “invited her to a threesome,” i.e. to have sex with him and one of his three wives. “Ghazi was a very religious man. It is all so hypocritical. He was a complete fool,” she writes." He actually thought we had something, it was sooo amusing to toy with him like that. As if I would really give his benighted wives any pointers on how a real woman does these things. Teehee!Yes, I think Wilders overestimates the motives of a woman like that. Her dhimmitude is only a symptom for a larger problem. Women like that are suffering from the attention whore syndrome, which makes them going for a life and for experiences totally opposed to those of a woman in a traditional society. Something like that MAY end in dhimmitude (and it very often does), but, as the example of Oriana Fallaci, Patron Saint of the more hyperventilating faction of Islam-critique, shows, it does not necessarily end in dhimmitude. Basically, Wilders takes that woman too seriously or better: he takes her seriously where he shouldn't. Of course women like that are dangerous, but not so much because they tend to be dhimmis, but because they are undermining like no other group, the basis of our culture, the family.
Another aspect I'd like to discuss is what makes people compare women like Joanie de Rijke to Joan of Arc. I find it deeply shocking, but I have no answer to it.
A commenter at VFR said: "I assume this photo of her was taken before her exotic escapades. She may have a different deportment these days." Judging from the picture I put up at my above linked blog entry, she looks, if anything, more radiant, smug and, perversely, "happy".
I realize it is a nasty thing to say about a woman who has been, after all, raped, but maybe the experience to succumb to a man, even under unfortunate circumstances, was a new and, ultimately, positive one.
Feminism has given rape such an ambiguous meaning. If a woman regrets that she'd had sex with that guy the morning after she can go and get him for "date rape". So what do we expect will come out of that.Ooops... I overlooked that: "The real point of the story isn't whether her 'captors' respected her, but that she had boundless contempt for them."
Yes indeed!
Isn't that my "condescension" theory in a nutshell? The one for which you, Terry, if I remember correctly, got so little positive attention at BE?The answer to your question, Nora, is yes. I read the Joan of Arc comparison at VFR and almost fell over backwards in my chair. Seems like a dhimmi of a different kind.
My apologies to y'all. Our internet has been down since sometime yesterday. I'll have to get back to this later.- chiu_chunling said...
But this woman didn't even regret having been "raped", she's positively proud of it. And I have absolutely no reason to believe that she didn't plan on having that happen. At the very least it was a carefully considered (and prepared) contingency. She had the guy asking her to give his wife pointers in the bedroom, for #@(*'s sake!
LITERALLY!!!
MY HEAD A 'SPLODE
The comparison to Joan of Arc is relatively easy to understand, by comparison. Joan of Arc was a young virgin. Pretty much everything else about her fades to insignificance in the eyes of the kind of people disposed to view her as a kind of historical sex object. Thus these people are just making what they think is a tasteful allusion to the 'liberating' influence of these self-promoting whores by the comparison.
It's horribly insulting, of course, but the insult is just built into the way they view the world. It isn't something that simply defies all possible explanation, like the claim that this woman was somehow 'raped' under any possible construction of the term.
I am filled with the urge to shout obscenities at the entire world, just thinking about this. It isn't good for my personal well-being. There isn't a pit in hell deep enough...there just isn't. You'd think that God, with a little of His infinite power, could have made the pits of hell a bit deeper.
Oh, yes, infinite wisdom too. I get the point. My bad, deeper pits not the answer, yeah, yeah...sure, whatever. I do get it...sometimes. I don't necessarily comprehend any of it, but infinity is like that.CC, you said:
"But this woman didn't even regret having been "raped", she's positively proud of it. And I have absolutely no reason to believe that she didn't plan on having that happen. At the very least it was a carefully considered (and prepared) contingency. She had the guy asking her to give his wife pointers in the bedroom, for #@(*'s sake!
LITERALLY!!!
MY HEAD A 'SPLODE"
And:
"The comparison to Joan of Arc is relatively easy to understand, by comparison. Joan of Arc was a young virgin. Pretty much everything else about her fades to insignificance in the eyes of the kind of people disposed to view her as a kind of historical sex object. Thus these people are just making what they think is a tasteful allusion to the 'liberating' influence of these self-promoting whores by the comparison."
I agree on both accounts. Very astute observations!I agree too, Nora. Well said, Chiu.
Maybe this makes an interesting addition.
- chiu_chunling said...
"If those perpetrators hadn't been female they would have been labelled simply evil."
I think that quote really gets at the core of the matter. It isn't that there aren't courageous, sane, good women, it's that there is a cultural bias against admitting that women can be evil. This creates a demand for lengthy explications of the non-evilness of every woman involved in some outrageously heinous activity. Thus you have a media firestorm of apology for every wicked witch of the west, much of which goes so far as to set her up as a heroine, while the genuine heroism (usually of the quiet variety but not always) gets almost no coverage because it doesn't take any special 'insight' to see that these women are good. Besides which, it's rather an embarrassment to the apologist for evil to set it side by side with good.
That is, of course, the 'innocent' explanation, which assumes no extraordinary wrongdoing on the part of the apologists. It covers much historical apology for evil women and most of the acceptance of such apologies, but most modern apologists for evil are not so innocent.
The truth is that many 'immoral' women are really the victims of evil men, but not all are. Probably not even most. And even the real victims are not thereby heroines."It isn't that there aren't courageous, sane, good women, it's that there is a cultural bias against admitting that women can be evil."
Of course there are. I think (I may be wrong, though) that Marianism has lumbered our culture with an unintended and unexpected burden. While Islam states that all women are temptresses and evil, our Christian culture presumes the opposite. That functioned as long as women were willing to perform their duties in a traditional society, i.e. as long as they were busy and satisfied with their role as wives and mothers and supervised and reined-in by society. In our permissive age, women's natural proneness for the shallow and footle coupled with an intense desire for attention wreaks havoc on society, the more as the latter won't understand what is happening. It can't be the saintly women's, images of the Madonna all of them, fault or can it?
And I seriously believe that men are more often than not the victims of women and not vice versa. If you look at a broken down marriage where the husband has really behaved like the proverbial swine, you'll in all probability find a woman behind the scenes.
June 05, 2009
What Causes Women To Do The Things They Do
April 12, 2009
Is the Islamic Threat the West's Own Fault?
- chiu_chunling said...
I wouldn't hesitate to make the case that Obama is indeed a Muslim on the available evidence. He almost certainly "converted" to Islam early in his life and was raised in Islam (whether or not he was technically converted, and it's hard to make a plausible case that he wasn't). His only claim to not being a Muslim is his membership in a "Christian" church...which church is openly based on "Black Liberation Theology", a movement drawn almost entirely from Islamic Nation and socialist thought with the thinnest gloss possible of biblical terminology.
By the Koranic injunction against judging anyone to be an infidel so long as they give an Islamic greeting and revere the name of Allah, Obama definitely qualifies as a fellow Muslim.
Whereas by the common Christian test of expressing a definite faith in the unique redemptive power and divinity of Christ and His teachings, Obama totally fails to qualify as a Christian.
With all of that being said, it really wouldn't bother me that he's far more Muslim than Christian if he were just honest about it. I don't regard Islam as being any more false than Shinto...and frankly I think it would be kinda awesome to have a Shintoist for President of the United States.
Of course, Shintoism, because of its hyper-polytheism, is naturally tolerant of other religions, while Islam is rather less so. But the Presidency doesn't have a religious test, and it really shouldn't need one. As long as the guy means it when he swears to uphold the Constitution, I don't care if he privately would rather this or that be different.
But when he has so little personal honor that he feels the need to rely on bald-faced lies about his religious beliefs to get into power, and then aggressively oversteps every Constitutional limitation on his office in the active pursuit of abolishing the role of the Constitution as the foundation of American law...well I find it hard to believe that he's taking that oath of office very seriously.
Man...now I really wish there would have been a Shintoist running for President. That would have been so awesome.- Terry Morris said...
Well, I'm just trying to give the poor b*stard the benefit of the doubt. Lord knows he needs it about now, and things most assuredly will not get any better for him.
That Hussein is sympathetic towards Islam, and that he has ties to Islam has always been enough (though hardly the only factor) to disqalify him from the presidency as far as I'm concerned, and in spite of what Colin Powell believes to be authentic Americanism. And speaking of Colin Powell, why is it that every time I think of him lately I begin to be filled with righteous indignation?- chiu_chunling said...
I've always believed that totalitarianism, not Islam, was the real danger to liberty. Of course, Islam is clearly a totalitarian philosophy as much or more than a serious religion.
Clarification, by religion I mean a path towards God (or gods, in the case of Shintoism). Many people do use the teachings of Islam as a way towards the divine. But I sense that more use it as a justification for unlimited rule.
Of course, most Muslims use it for neither. Sadly, many people are too busy with "life" to examine it and, happily, many aren't really interested in devoting themselves to oppressing others beyond what's personally convenient.
But while Islam is clearly totalitarian, it isn't the philosophy that most endangers Western Civilization. Fascism, then Communism, both far more significant threats, have been cast on the dust-bin of history (only kooks dig them out and dust them off anymore). Islam would inevitably suffer the same fate if it weren't for the resurgence of Progressivism.
Progressivism is different from other totalitarian philosophies. See, the other philosophies were exclusionary and competed with each other, often fiercely. But Progressivism has always been friendly to every identifiably totalitarian philosophy. That is because those other philosophies viewed totalitarianism as a means to some end.
Progressives understand, whether implicitly or explicitly, that totalitarianism is the end. Communism, Fascism, and Islam all hate and fight each other and Progressivism, but Progressivism loves and fosters each of them in return.
Because Progressives understand the great secret of totalitarianism, revealed by the ancient question, who shall watch the watchmen? Once you get into power, the theory that justifies your power doesn't matter. Nobody is in a position to question, or even know, your actions. You can do whatever you want at that point.
It only costs you your soul.- The_Editrix said...
I agree with everything chiu_chunling said. Just let me relativize this detail:
"But when he has so little personal honor that he feels the need to rely on bald-faced lies about his religious beliefs to get into power, and then aggressively oversteps every Constitutional limitation on his office in the active pursuit of abolishing the role of the Constitution as the foundation of American law...well I find it hard to believe that he's taking that oath of office very seriously."
I don't think that "personal honour" is something a Muslim cares much about or even understands. Obama is clearly well-versed in taqqiya. The much-hailed Europe trip has frightened the living daylight out of me and I am not easily frightened. That man is clearly aiming to drive your country up against the wall to the fervent acclaim of the world. I hope I am wrong. - Call Me Mom said...
Terry & all,
I have reservations about questioning anyone's claim to Christianity. That said, I couldn't help noticing, however, that in the early days of his campaign, Mr. Obama's conversion to Christianity was couched solely in terms of it's advantage to him as a community organizer, in that it gave him access to the Christian networks of volunteers to help his cause(s).
Also, I'm sure that most Muslims would find my comment about converting them all to be more offensive than Anonymous' statement. Good! Perhaps it would cause some of them to think about their current faith and perhaps come to the conclusion that they must resolve the inherent logic flaws in their view that Jesus Christ was only a prophet.
Editrix, You said "I don't think that "personal honour" is something a Muslim cares much about or even understands."
Why do you think that? I'm just curious.- chiu_chunling said...
"Taqiya", the practice of denying that one is a Muslim when confronted with possible persecution, is one of the pragmatic tenants of Islam. The term is Arabic for "prudence".
That Islam teaches such doctrines, along with convenient betrayal of treaties and agreements with infidels, tends to create two standards of honor which are distinct and contradictory. It may become a Muslim's religious duty to do things that are abhorrent to ordinary personal honor. For instance, telling a bald-faced lie about one's beliefs to gain the trust of an infidel, then betraying that infidel to death. That makes having personal honor very difficult for Muslims who take Islam seriously as an ethical system.
America, by the way, is overwhelmingly non-Muslim...you can draw your own conclusions about what that implies even if it weren't for all the Muslims constantly chanting "Death to America" and calling us "the Great Satan".
I would be more concerned about that aspect of Islam if I sensed that Obama had any personal honor to sacrifice to his Islamic faith. But he clearly doesn't. To quote Darth Vader, "There is no conflict."
Judging from his statements, Obama is a Christian only in the sense that every Muslim is also a Christian. He believes that Jesus Christ was a good man who taught many moral truths. Such is an official tenant of Islam, found right in the Koran.- Terry Morris said...
All,
I've defended Hussein Obama against accusations of his being a covert Muslim. My only basis for defending him in this way has been his word. Since I believe in freedom of conscience, the fact that he was raised a Muslim during his formidable years does not mean to me that he is necessarily a Muslim anymore than my being raised a Oneness Pentecostal during my formidable years means I am one now. Yes, I am an apostate from that branch of the faith which seems to doom me eternally in the eyes of some. (Happily none of them think I should have my head cut off as a just reward for my apostasy. Perhaps that's because there's nothing in the book of Acts requiring such a return on my deeds? Hmm.)
But I have to say that taken as a whole Hussein Obama's actions speak louder than his words. The recent obeisance he paid to the king of Saudi Arabia (right in front of God and everybody!) is very troubling indeed. As I said in another post above, his intimate connections to Mohammed's religion have always been enough in and of themselves to disqualify him from the presidency in my view. Everything else aside, I could never have voted for him on that basis alone ... not for dog catcher, much less POTUS.
Irrespective of that, I'll not be defending Hussein Obama against these accusations again. If it walks like a duck and all that, it probably is one.- The_Editrix said...
"Editrix, You said "I don't think that "personal honour" is something a Muslim cares much about or even understands."
Why do you think that? I'm just curious."
Mom, isn't "personal honour" a thoroughly Western thing? Our personal honour is not the loudmouthed, cocky 'honour' Muslims are claiming. Islam, like any totalitarian world view, doesn't know the individual, just string puppets to further the cause of Islam. Can we compare our understanding of honour with one that asks for the killing of erring daughters and sisters?
Honour is the outward expression of what we call our conscience. It is defined as the moral sense of right and wrong. It was born at Mount Sinai with Moses as birth attendant. The Decalogue pretty much still covers everything we need to know about ethics and morality. Is this, our, personal honour comparable to the honour of killing for Allah?
Not to speak of Buddhism which snares mankind in reincarnations in a world of suffering or Hinduism where they are trapped in reincarnation due to ignorance and karma, whether one sees those belief systems as another expression of totalitarianism or some sort of perverted individualism with its concept of individualistic salvation.
As an aside: I believe that the modern attraction those alien belief systems hold for many Christians is a symptom not of a failure of Christianity but of the inconvenient burden of conscience with which we Westerners are, depending of one's personal view, lumbered or blessed.
Here is a statement by chiu_chunling with which I clearly disagree:
"But while Islam is clearly totalitarian, it isn't the philosophy that most endangers Western Civilization. Fascism, then Communism, both far more significant threats, have been cast on the dust-bin of history (only kooks dig them out and dust them off anymore). Islam would inevitably suffer the same fate if it weren't for the resurgence of Progressivism."
That is wishful thinking. Both, fascism and Communism, are ideologies based on Western concepts, one being a perverted idea of social justice, the other a similarly perverted concept of traditional national identity and values. Islam is something entirely different. Islam has conquered already a considerable part of the world, a part that never had any defense mechanisms. Peversely, as long as the Cold War lasted and Western (and Eastern) defense mechanisms were up, there was no room for too obvious Islamic expansionism. Now, where we are all supposed to get along with each other (but don't), Islam's hour has come. Don't you see what is happening in Turkey, the once stalwart of secular values? It has been re-conquered by Islam already. Islam was once stopped at the Gates of Vienna, at Tours and Poitiers, at Roncesvalles. Muslims have never forgotten that. Every spot where Muslims once trod is Muslim ground forever. What about the re-Islamisation of the once pretty well assimilated Turks in Germany? Yesterday, I listened to the discussion on the wireless about the re-introduction of religious instruction in Berlin schools. Although it wasn't about Islam at all, they had invited a Muslima (but not a Jew), a highly articulate young woman with a Turkish name and without any foreign accent, who dominated the entire discussion and the entire discussion became one about Islam with the representatives of the Christian denominations totally in the defensive. They are creeping in our heads now, so we will hardly notice or mind anymore once they have conquered us physically.
Sorry to rain on all the righteous conservatives', eager to point out the similarities between the current and the last president, parade: The partly helpless, partly opportunist, politically correct bull Bush talked about Islam has nothing, but NOTHING, to do with Obama's active promotion of it. If I say that every spot where Muslims once trod is Muslim ground forever that applies to Obama's mind and soul as well. - Terry Morris said...
I agree. Personal honor in the Western/American sense, and personal honor in the Arabic/Muslim sense are two different, even opposing concepts.
I'm mindful here of George Washington's admonitions (which I'm going to quote from memory since I'm too lazy to look it up right now):
"Where is the security for life, for liberty, for property when the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths, which are the objects of investigation in the courts of justice?"
That statement emanates from a Western worldview and applies particularly to those who possess a Western worldview. It does not apply to Muslims in the same sense that it applies to Westerners, and I suspect that George Washington was very aware of this.
This is also the reason that wherever we find Muslims in significant numbers they ultimately begin to make demands on the host society for the establishment of sharia courts where they can adhere to the dictates of Muslim style personal honor.- chiu_chunling said...
I feel to point out a fact about the origins of Islam which, whether you regard it as praise of Mohammed or not, is important to understanding the "Muslim problem."
The Arabs living in the area where Islam was initially founded had not achieved civilization before Mohammed. They were living in between patriarchal tribalism and barbarism. There was no ethical system in place that encouraged principles of fair dealing with strangers, meaning anyone that a man hadn't known pretty much from childhood.
Islam represented a giant leap in ethical development, taking the Arabs from the clan system to the ethical level capable of forming an empire within a single generation. All the other great moral teachers to whom we typically are encouraged to compare Mohammed built on an existing foundation of civilized ethical principles. His achievement is actually quite singular, possibly unparalleled.
That said, Islam hasn't come very far since. In point of fact, all the available historical evidence indicates some pretty severe backsliding. Between the inculcation of terrorist values in the youth and the long-standing divisions over authority and validity in Islam, many Muslims today are no better (from an ethical perspective) than their pre-Islamic forebears.
It is necessary to understand this because we sometimes are tempted to judge Muslims by civilized standards of ethical behavior, which is just not workable. Forget questions of fairness, aside from the tiny minority of Muslims raised in civilized society who later converted to Islam, Muslims just haven't been raised with any of the concepts we associate with civilization.
Watch any of these Islamic children's shows for a few minutes and you can see it in action. It's like episodes of Sesame Street written by cave-men. Or, more accurately, tribal desert nomads with almost no pre-existing ethical concepts.
As much as this horrifies the modern sensibility, it helps explain why Muslims are such piss-poor soldiers. Israel won every battle they fought with the Muslim nations before we started bribing them to ease up. It wasn't because the Israelis have some magical Jewish indestructibility (though they are pretty tough compared to a lot of other folks). It's because the individual Muslim soldier is, when push comes to shove, willing to sacrifice others for his own self-interest.
The reliance on suicide bombers is actually an example of this. The talent which makes the bombs is entirely separate from the poor fools brainwashed or blackmailed into carrying out the bombing. The Muslim nations inculcate in their population from the time that they are little children the idea that the most certain path to heaven is "martyrdom". They feed sexually repressed youth on fantasies of unlimited gratification if they'll accept one of these missions. And even at that, they can't get enough volunteers, so often they resort to taking families hostage in order to coerce someone into doing the job.
But the central point of using suicide bombers is that you know that your fighters will typically run away the moment things get scary, so you arrange for them to blow up before that happens.
This is why Islam has no hope of victory over civilization...except insofar as civilization falls to a more powerful and insidious enemy.
Progressives are not pre-civilization, but post-civilization. They have no ethics, not because they have never been taught them, but because they consciously disdain them as being personally disadvantageous. They understand our society, and have patiently worked for more than a century now to bring it under their control.
They plan to co-opt Islam just as they co-opted Fascism and Communism, simply seducing the leadership to abandon their nominal goals while deceiving their followers by abusing their unlimited power. The modern environmental movement is yet another victim of Progressives, who sell the rank and file on scientifically unsound models of climate as a means of justifying their totalitarian control.
Islam probably wouldn't even be a serious enemy of the West if it weren't for progressives selling them on the hierarchy that separates the suicide bombers from the leaders. The difference between the way in which the American advisers cultivated Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union and the way that Soviet advisers cultivated Arab resistance to America is very telling. The Americans taught Muslims to be better soldiers, the Soviets taught the leaders to make ever more callous use of their followers.
The Northern Alliance, former resistance fighters against the Soviets who had resisted Taliban rule for decades, were an alliance because they were formed of disparate ethnic minorities without a unifying ideology other than resistance to the Taliban. And yet, despite being outnumbered, out-gunned, and out-supplied for decades since the end of the proxy war against the Soviets, they held onto a significant patch of the country and were still there when the Americans returned.
They weren't happy about being abandoned before, but they didn't turn on us either, despite being Muslims. They still don't have the capability of fighting a Taliban supplied and sheltered by Pakistan (with the support of oil-rich Arab nations), but if we left today they'd pull back to what they could defend on their own and hold that without our help. It wouldn't make them happy, but they'd do it.
They are what Islam might be, if not for the hand of global progressives guiding Muslim nations for the last fifty or sixty years (ever since it became clear that the Middle East would be important).
And where do progressives come from? They used to be concentrated in Germany, before their influence completely destroyed that country twice. For the last half century they've been heavily concentrated in the United States, particularly in your educational and media institutions. There they use their influence to teach the world to hate America and America to hate itself.
Islam is an enemy of America, but not because of anything intrinsic to the Muslim faith. It is true that Islam does not provide the moral valuation of conscience which is implicit in Christian teachings, but Islamic nations and empires have practiced a degree of practical religious tolerance in the past. We need not, and should not, defeat Islam.
We must destroy progressivism.- The_Editrix said...
"Islam probably wouldn't even be a serious enemy of the West if it weren't for progressives selling them on the hierarchy that separates the suicide bombers from the leaders.
...
Islam is an enemy of America, but not because of anything intrinsic to the Muslim faith. It is true that Islam does not provide the moral valuation of conscience which is implicit in Christian teachings, but Islamic nations and empires have practiced a degree of practical religious tolerance in the past. We need not, and should not, defeat Islam."
That is a naive and potentially suicidal (and very American) misconception. It wasn't "progressives" who jammed the airliners into the WTC on 9/11 and it would have happened even if America'd have taken the toughest of stands against Islam. Maybe even earlier. Muslims hate the West for what it IS (progressives included) and they have been a threat to the West before "progressives" were invented (or America was discovered, for that). I mentioned Tours and Poitiers in a previous comment. 732, that was. Only 100 years after Muhammad's death and 765 years before the first Christian set foot on American mainland. And it took even longer for the first "progressives" to appear. And you SERIOUSLY believe that a few pissy "progressives" are responsible for the condition in which we find us in the West? That the power and the violence that made Islam conquer much of the then known world literally only years after its invention by the epileptic, child molesting thief Muhammad is NOT inherent to this totalitarian death cult, but the fault of "progressives"? What "progressives"? The only culture that was able to withstand Islam over the centuries was the West, based on the progressive teachings of a man from Nazareth.
And I am stunned that somebody who is obviously critical of Islam should fall for the tolerance myth. (One of those progressive inventions, by the way!) There is plenty of serious information around dispelling that myth. Have you ever taken the trouble to read the Koran or, if you can't read Arabic, a reliable translation? They are there. Everything Muslims do (but EVERYTHING!) is written in that book. Of the long list of literature, I recommend to read Andrew Bostom first because he seems to possess the most realistic point of view of all the many who have covered that topic.
John Derbyshire (who is, by the way and tellingly, not born American) wrote on September 13, 2001: "A common word for Europeans in the Arabic language is feringji, from "Frank," i.e. crusader. Arabs don't hate us because we support Israel. They hate us because we humiliated them, showed up the gross inferiority of their culture. To them, and similarly humiliated peoples, we are the other, detested and feared in a way we can barely understand. Things got really bad in the 19th century. When European society achieved industrial lift-off, Europeans were suddenly buzzing all over the world like a swarm of bees. They encountered these other cultures, that had been vegetating in a quiet conviction of their own superiority for centuries (or in the case of the Chinese, millennia). When these encounters occurred, the encountered culture collapsed in a cloud of dust. Some of them, like the Turks, managed to reconstitute themselves as more or less modern nations; others, like the Arabs and the Chinese, are still struggling with the trauma of that encounter. . .
The 1991 Gulf War showed how little has changed since those first encounters. Here were the armies of the West: swift, deadly, efficient, equipped and organized, under the command of elected civilians at the head of a robust and elaborate constitutional structure. And here were the Arabs: a shambling, ill-nourished, shoeless rabble, led by a mad gangster-despot. (That was their Arabs. There were also, of course, our Arabs — the Kuwaitis and Saudis, cowering in their plush-lined air-conditioned bunkers being waited on by their Filipino servants while we did their fighting for them.) Final body counts: the West, 134 dead, the Arabs, 20,000 or more. The superiority of one culture over another has not been so starkly demonstrated since a handful of British wooden ships, at the end of ten-thousand-mile lines of communications, brought the Celestial Empire to its knees 150 years earlier. The Chinese are still mad about that: They are still making angry, bitter movies about the Opium Wars. A hundred and 50 years from now, the Arabs will not have forgotten the Gulf War."
Derbyshire makes the mistake to equal Islam with other backward ideologies, but otherwise his analysis is sound, or at least it was when he wrote it. In the 7 1/2 years since John Derbyshire wrote that, Turkey has been already re-conquered by Islam. The fault of "progressives"?
No doubt, the current liberal political correctness weakens the defenses of the West, as does the stance of those on the right who think that the Muslims will at least free the world from the Jews. But did they cause the inherent violence of Islam? It's inbuilt zeal to conquer and rule the world? It's cruelty and ruthlessness?
For heaven's sake, if I have ever seen somebody barking up the wrong tree it is here and now. I visit Webster's because I admire America and her best ideals, which are so beautifully explained here, but sometimes your Americanocentric views makes me sick. I wish you'd have to live, like we have, 2500, and not (from the geographical center) 7500 miles from Mecca with Islam rubbed in our faces every day. I guess the frightening radical re-Islamization of the relatively well-adjusted Turks in Germany was the fault of "progressives" as well and not of the inherent power-hunger of Islam.
September 13, 2008
Devisive Topics
The original text from the respective blogs is formatted as blockquotes, additional remarks or paraphrasing by me is formatted as standard text.
September 24, 2008
Is feminism the root cause of America's (and the rest of the West's) problems?
Terry Morris said...Make sure that you don't skip the interesting side-issue about children conceived by rape and the excellent point Call Me Mom makes.
[...]
Is feminism the root cause of America's problems? I don't know. I do tend to believe that feminism and leftism, multiculturalism and all the other isms that are destroying America are all closely connected. Did feminism (the empowerment of women) kick it all off? Quite possibly.
Your theories are very interesting. Thanks again for the great comments.
-Terry
September 2, 2008 4:06 AM
Terry Morris said...
Nora's comment is so lengthy and wide ranging that I may have to address her points separately in separate posts. For the time being let me address this,
Nora writes:
(And don't you dare telling me that the husbands-to-be want anything like that as well!) Or the obscene prom-cult, or the even more obscene beauty pageant cult, where teenagers look like seasoned expensive hookers and little girls just grown out of their nappies like cheap hookers. Anybody who says that fathers want anything like that for their daughters needs his head examined.
I can't speak for other "husbands-to-be", but when I was one I definately didn't want all of that. Nor can I speak for other fathers, but again, I certainly don't want that for any of my daughters, nor does my wife.
But more than anyone who says that fathers want this for their daughters needing their heads examined, fathers who actually do want this for their daughters most definately need their heads examined. They probably oughta be institutionalized.
Everytime I see one of those commercials late at night advertising the "Girls gone wild" videos, or even think about them, I simply get sick to my stomach as I'm always reminded that these girls have dads and brothers and uncles and grandfathers, none of which, if he's halfway in his right mind, could ever approve of such.
September 2, 2008 4:33 AM
The_Editrix said...
Did feminism (the empowerment of women) kick it all off? Quite possibly.
Definitely!
Discussing feminism is akin to opening Pandora's Box.
September 2, 2008 5:04 AM
Terry Morris said...
Nora, I've said many many times that women can be the most ruthless people on the face of the earth. They can also be the most loving, caring people on the face of the earth. But your comments about women seeking to regain their ancient power over life seems to indicate that you believe with me that women have a ruthless base nature about them - a nature men have nothing on, incidentally - that, unless men exercise a restraining power over, will eventually be let loose in all its ugliness and fury.
I personally think it's more radical to say what I just said above about the ruthlessness of women, than it is to say that feminism is primarily responsible for our current levels of hedonism.
When I trace America's history back, I can't not notice that the ratification of the fourteenth amendment paved the road to woman's suffrage in America, and that America has been in a steadily increasing state of decline ever since.
But is it your opinion that feminism was responsible for the fourteenth amendment?...
September 2, 2008 6:23 AM
Call Me Mom said...
Well, don't I feel special now, as a woman who had no engagement ring, borrowed a blue dress from her mother in which to get married and got married at the local courthouse, followed by dinner with close family at a restaurant. I have to agree with the_editrix that the wedding culture is way out of hand in our nation.
However, getting back to the point of this post, I have always held that the only point at which a woman has a choice in whether or not to give birth, is when she chooses to engage in those activities whose natural result, given the Lord's blessing, is conception. (This opens up the whole rape/incest can of worms, but to my way of thinking, the lack of "choice" in those instances is not the baby's fault. He/She is just as much a victim of the rapist/incestuous party as the mother and perhaps more so. The mother, after giving birth, can choose to give the child up and put it all behind her, but the child can never forget that they are the product of a violent act.)
I am wondering how you view the latest announcement that Mrs. Palin's unmarried daughter is pregnant. Of course, this news was only released to quell the rumors that her youngest child is actually her daughters. This gets me thinking. The rumor was that the daughter of the VP candidate had a child out of wedlock and that affects the VP's credibility in character issues. So the solution is to release news that the VP's child is currently pregnant with a child out of wedlock. Mrs. Palin's baby couldn't have been the result of an out of wedlock pregnancy for her daughter because her daughter is currently pregnant out of wedlock. This makes Mrs. Palin look better than the rumor, how?
September 2, 2008 1:04 PM
The_Editrix said...
CMM, you say that, different from its mother, a child conceived through rape can never forget that it is "the product of a violent act". That is true. But only because there will always be some grown-up heartless moron who is unable to keep his (or her) trap shut.
September 2, 2008 1:46 PM
Call Me Mom said...
Editrix,
You are right in that.
However, I tend to believe that the truth is better in all circumstances than a lie. Which would be ultimately more harmful to such a child/person - to tell them the truth right off with the reassurance that God wanted them here so much He went to extraordinary lengths to get them born, or to cover it up and let "some grown-up heartless moron" use it against them later?
September 2, 2008 1:54 PM
The_Editrix said...
...you believe with me that women have a ruthless base nature about them...
I do indeed. I used to work semi-professionally with horses when I was younger, now with gundogs, and they are living with me in the house. Everybody who has closely watched animals will have lost any delusion about female frailty and submission. Different from human females, they just can't put on an act, act coquettish or coy. They are sheer and undiluted ruthlessness.
I personally think it's more radical to say what I just said above about the ruthlessness of women, than it is to say that feminism is primarily responsible for our current levels of hedonism.
It is indeed. I, personally, find the word "hedonism" much too weak for the current state of society anyway.
When I trace America's history back, I can't not notice that the ratification of the fourteenth amendment paved the road to woman's suffrage in America, and that America has been in a steadily increasing state of decline ever since.
But is it your opinion that feminism was responsible for the fourteenth amendment?...
Terry, I am not knowledgeable enough about American history to have an informed opinion here, so all I can do is to speculate. On one hand, women, with their mixture of ruthlessness and sentimentality have always been at the forefront of any "progressive" cause. Harriet Beecher Stowe and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" certainly boosted the abolitionist movement considerably.
On the other hand, I don't see how due process could be denied to the former slaves for any prolonged period of time after the decision was made not to deport them to Africa.
But, to quote Obama, the question is really above my pay grade.
It would be interesting to speculate whether woman's suffrage (helped by fourteenth amendment) INEVITABLY led to gender feminism of the destructive sort we are now suffering.
September 2, 2008 2:45 PM
The_Editrix said...
CMM, I do not have any children and I may be wrong. But I seriously think that a child should have already reached a certain level of maturity before it is told. But whatever, I like the concept of reassuring them "that God wanted them here so much He went to extraordinary lengths to get them born" very much indeed. If a child is mature enough to understand that, it is mature enough to be told about his origin.
September 2, 2008 2:57 PM
Call Me Mom said...
Editrix,
I concur with the required level of maturity. I am also in agreement with you about the ruthlessness of women.
September 2, 2008 3:20 PM
September 23, 2008
Are Some Conservative Targets More Important than Others?
It is impossible for Americans to do anything (and I do mean ANYthing) without some antiamerican knee-jerk reaction in the German media. Yes, we will never forgive them that they had the temerity to free us from ourselves, back in 1945. But this little bit of writing about Sarah Palin is particularly vile. Lawrence Auster posted my remarks in an entry from August 29, 2008:
I am not sure whether this is topical enough for the discussion at VfR. But I am so angry that I better share this before I'm bursting with suppressed rage.Now, more than three weeks later, I find that particular bit of writing even more mind-boggling. Why? I seem to have finally understood why the oh-so-tolerant liberal left gets particularly agitated and aggressive when it's about the right to murder one's unborn child, as proven by vile Mr. Pitzke. Again: why?
Spiegel Online, the website of the leading German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, lets one Marc Pitzke tear Palin to shreds to finish (see the last three paragraphs):But that [the image of the "I can do it all" working mother] is, of course, just one side of the lady [in this context, "lady" is meant to be a gross insult], who looks like a living image of the TV-comedian Tina Fey. Under closer scrutiny, Palin emerges as an arch-conservative, specifically in social matters.According to that logic from hell, cynicism is not to abort a child with Down syndrome (or just diagnosed with Down syndrome) because parents are too lazy and weak to cope with such a child, cynicism is not, either, to assume that Mrs. Palin had that child to further her political career, cynicism is to give birth to, to hold and to love such a child.
So she doesn't just oppose abortion. She is against abortion in cases of rape or incest. Or -- as it happened with her own son Trig, born in April -- in case of a handicap that was already diagnosed during the embryonic stage. Trig, so the results of early genetic tests showed, is suffering from Down syndrome. Palin gave birth to him nevertheless -- and hold him in his arms yesterday.
This was a first whiff of the cynicism with which the Republicans will stage-manage themselves next week for the voters. Who thought now after the success of Denver that the Democrats own the political showbiz will be surprised: At staging sentiments, the other side [i.e. the Republicans] have been always better.
Notabene that I do not approve of working mothers of small children and that Mrs. Palin and her other merits or the lack thereof are beyond my ken. This is just about an all-time low of antiamerican- and leftist journalism, not about this specific politician.
In an entry from August 16, "35 years of one-note 'conservatism'", Lawrence Auster asks the question "Why is it that the evangelicals fulminate about abortion ... but say nothing about homosexual marriage?" As this is a question that doesn't really concerns me beyond the fact that I am mightily relieved that evangelical Christians play no role in Germany, I only joined the discussion when an aspect crept in insinuating that, as abortion is legal for a long time now and would be very hard to undo, that that was that and the anti-abortion argument has thus become of secondary importance. So I answered the question:
What about: Because the horrors of abortion (i.e. a living, feeling human chopped into pieces, liquefied and vacuumed out or executed with a lethal injection while in the process of passing the birth canal) are rather more imminent and disgusting than two old queens holding hands?Lawrence Auster replied in turn:
And since when is the fact that something "is already legal and will be very hard to undo" a principled argument against an ethical abomination?
Nota bene: The above is NOT an endorsement of homosexual "marriage."
Nor were the reader's and my comments endorsements of abortion. The question did not concern whether abortion should be opposed, but why, 35 years after Roe v. Wade, there is still this entire "conservative" movement that essentially just focuses on ONE issue and ignores others?Which is only too true. However, abortion rights are not just ONE issue among other leftist issues and goals. A notable feminist mantra tells us that "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." True! So does the brain attached to the cradle-rocking hand, a brain that decides who is going to be allowed to live and who isn't and that makes "the right to choose" a tad more important a target than, say, homosexual "marriage" or at least so I think.
Wherever you look in the American conservative universe--whether we're talking about the neoconservatives, or the paleoconservatives, or the pro-life movement, or the anti-big government, pro-Constitutionalism movement, all of which once made good and useful contributions--they've either stopped making good and useful contributions or have become actively harmful. Why? In my view, it's because none of them had a view of the whole--a whole view of the liberalism that must be opposed, and a whole view of the good society which we need to restore.
In the comment section of Terry Morris' Webster's Blogspot, following an excellent entry headed "Sarah Palin, Down's Syndrome, and Traditionalism", I was given the opportunity to explain my point further:
Vanishing American said...To which the host replied:
Terry, thanks for your perspective on this.
I've been troubled in reading on many 'conservative' blogs that some think abortion is a reasonable, or in fact the preferable choice if a 'defective' child is expected to be born. I suppose we are seeing the results of the growing post-Christian influence in America. Many people who consider themselves conservative or libertarian don't share the basically Christian value system which shaped our traditional America.
[...]
The_Editrix said...
I do not think that those conservatives intend to do willingly and consciously away with the concept of sacredness of life. My theory is that we are dealing with a rather involved and dangerous psychological mechanism here. Dangerous, because people are not aware of it and thus never discuss, let alone tackle, it.It is, I think, wrong to assume that women want abortions because they are weak or in a predicament. It is because women had all through history the control over which child was going to live and which wasn't, a practice that got somewhat curbed by the advent of the rule of law. If they are demanding the "right to choose" now, they want their traditional power position back, not more, not less. I think that the conscious knowledge of this has been lost at some point in time, but it is still there, alive and kicking and, as I said, even more dangerous because we are not aware of it.
The German penal code of 1871 (which is basically still valid) excluded capital punishment for women who killed their newborn child within a limited period of time the details of which I have forgotten. I do not think that this was due to some early advanced knowledge of postpartum depression, I think it was a recognition of this fact.
Did you know that the figures for "crib death" cases grew when the figures for other causes of infant death declined? Did you know the gruesome estimations of unknown cases of infanticide that have been recorded as SIDS cases? You can hardly be blamed if you don't because it needs some in-depth research in the Internet before one comes across some substantial information because it is – you've guessed it – not all that frequent- or openly discussed.
Now America! The position to which American women have been elevated will never cease to amaze me. There is a wedding industry of stunning proportions, unknown, I dare say, anywhere in Europe. I do not know a single woman who decisively EXPECTED (!) a diamond ring delivered at betrothal. In America, couples cripple themselves financially by a budget, of which the wedding dress is very often the biggest item, so that She can have her grand entrance in white. (And don't you dare telling me that the husbands-to-be want anything like that as well!) Or the obscene prom-cult, or the even more obscene beauty pageant cult, where teenagers look like seasoned expensive hookers and little girls just grown out of their nappies like cheap hookers. Anybody who says that fathers want anything like that for their daughters needs his head examined.
And the women behind all this are the same who stridently demand "equal rights" including the right to legally kill their children, because they seriously think that they are disadvantaged because of their sex.
My other theory (which, of course, may be wrong) is that during the frontier and colonization past of early America women had an extraordinary importance and that somewhere along the path of history somebody has forgotten to remind them that those days are over. The only civilized country subject to the rule of law where somebody like Marybeth Tinning was able to kill several (how many? 8?) of her children and wasn't even suspected because – you know – women are always victims and never perpetrators or because they are naturally good and nurturing (Choose your reason, it's free!) is America.
Feminism has done more damage to Western society (and probably irrevocably harmed your country) than leftism, illegal immigration, libertinism or whatever together and the fact that not even dyed-in-the-wool conservatives dare to BASICALLY challenge feminism proves my point. Some "excrescences" – yes. Feminism as such? You must be joking.
Another theory of mine, one that tries to explain why feminism is exempt from any serious challenge, is, that feminism is, literally, closer to home for all of us than any other damaging ideology or "-ism". Even a conservative woman doesn't want to have HER OWN absolute freedom curbed and even a conservative man wants peace and quiet at home and will do anything but muster up the nerve to speak out against it. Not even against an abomination like abortion.
Well, let me say that I couldn't agree more with a lot of what you wrote. Is feminism the root cause of America's problems? I don't know. I do tend to believe that feminism and leftism, multiculturalism and all the other isms that are destroying America are all closely connected. Did feminism (the empowerment of women) kick it all off? Quite possibly.The rest of the discussion at "Webster's" deserves (and will get) a separate entry.
November 23, 2008
A great lesson in civics!
For the very first time since I've been voting I left a portion of my ballot blank, as did my wife, namely the presidential section. And to top it all off we took our eleven year old daughter with us who pointedly asked early this morning whether she might be allowed to go with us to learn more about the voting process in order to better prepare her for good citizenship once she comes of age. She and I read the ballot together, discussed the various candidates, reasoned through the state questions on the ballot and our decision for or against, etc. I let her "complete the line" (as is the method on Oklahoma ballots) for the candidate that we decided on in the individual races, as well as on the state questions. She filled out my entire ballot from start to finish. We rechecked the ballot once finished for any inadvertent mistakes. Once satisfied there were no mistakes, and that we were sure we wanted to leave the presidential section unmarked as originally intended, we fed the ballot through the machine for processing. Afterward we discussed voter fraud and how to prevent it, as well as the secret ballot.I wish all those knee-jerk America-haters here in Germany would read that. But then, would they understand it? Thank you Terry! Your children are very lucky.
A great lesson in civics!
February 02, 2009
Scumbags
I think my comment to this enty merits its own post here, because the behaviour of those people is part of a larger pattern of moral and ethical decay that is wrecking the underpinning of our Western culture. In a world, where a baby survives his own "late term abortion", is then left to die for ten hours after which he is still alive and the hospital staff finally unnerved enough by his crying to care for him, in a world where his biological parents then SUE the hospital on the grounds that they were not informed about the *risk* that their child might survive his abortion, in such a world I am, no, not all that amazed about the attitude of those people.
Information in German can be found at www.tim-lebt.de. Mind you, this happened in a country where they chain themselves to trees about to be cut town or where migrating toads are gently lead across a street so that nothing evil should befall them, and, different from America, where "late term abortion" doesn't even merit a public discussion because nobody gives a damn.
October 09, 2008
Are Family Values Negotiable?
Is parental supervision feasible nowadays? Can one jettison it and still think of one as a conservative?
Terry Morris said...So far, I have still to find a place outside the Auster/Morris orbit where Sarah Palin is discussed according to her merits (or the lack thereof) and not, in Pavlovian drooling, either as the Jeanne d'Arc of Conservatism or a right-wing extremist because she thinks that it is not alright for a woman to murder her unborn child. Information on that would be more than welcome.
Mom wrote:
"I am wondering how you view the latest announcement that Mrs. Palin's unmarried daughter is pregnant. [...] This makes Mrs. Palin look better than the rumor, how?"
Mom, I don't know, I didn't devise the strategy. You'd probably have to ask the McCain team about that one. But the way I view it, in a nutshell, is this:
Bristol Palin has been failed by her parents. Her Mom, the most important female in her life, chose a "career woman's" life over a life of motherhood. She (Mrs. Palin) could have chosen either/or, but she tried to have her cake and eat it too, something that rational people know is impossible. Her Dad, the most important male in her life, chose a supportive spouse's role over the role nature, reason and religion had secured to him.
Thus Bristol Palin has been failed by her parents. But more than being failed, she has been betrayed by them; they are using Bristol and her situation as proof of their "family values."
But as Laura W. wrote at VFR, "supervised children don't get pregnant."
Where, I ask, was Bristol's supervision?
September 2, 2008 10:51 PM
Vanishing American said...
I have to take somewhat of a dissenting view on the pregnancy thing.
First, contrary to what Laura W. says, supervised children DO get pregnant. It happens. When they are old enough for sexual activity and pregnancy, they are also at the age to be somewhat independent. Nobody, not even stay-at-home moms, can supervise their teen children 24/7.
Back in the 'Leave it to Beaver' era, when virtually all mothers were stay-at-home moms, girls did most assuredly get pregnant, even in the best of families, adolescent hormones and urges being what they are.
In those days, it was simply handled more discreetly. I don't question the fact that it happens far, far more often these days, but now it is not even a cause for embarrassment on the part of most teens or their parents. And many of the supposedly conservative parents nevertheless put their girls on the Pill so that there is no risk of pregnancy.
But even the best and most attentive parents find it hard to counteract the influence of popular culture, which is loaded with sexual messages and imagery. Even in our local Christian school, the teens still wallow in the x-rated pop culture of the day, regardless of how strict their parents may be at home. The sexual messages are everywhere, and even those who shelter their kids as much as they can find that their children are exposed second-hand to much of the worst influences. It's everywhere.
I sympathize with parents of teens today; it's harder than ever before to keep kids separated from the corrupt culture around us. I am glad I am past that stage of life and no longer have that battle to fight as a parent.
But those who blame the parents 100 percent are expecting the impossible; children in their teens can't be protected all the time, unless you shackle them to yourselves and never let them out of your sight.
-VA
September 4, 2008 10:45 PM
The_Editrix said...
VA, we are talking about humans, not about mechanical gadgets, so if somebody says that supervised teens don't get pregnant he is bound not to mean that NO teenager got pregnant and that supervision was 24/7. But it was, and that is the difference, the rare exception and nobody shrugged it off as "one of those things".
I don't think that it is simplistic to say that in times when we dared calling "nice girls" by that name, nice girls didn't become pregnant, even though the supervision wasn't (COULDN'T BE) 24/7. Then, it was understood that, at that age, a relationship with a boy or man intimate enough to get one pregnant was out of the question, contraceptives or not. One respected one's parents and -- yes -- one was afraid of the social consequences as well.
And as far as the hormones were concerned, we were expected to sweat it out and we did. Since when are "hormones" an excuse for anything? If for a pregnant teenager now, then what next? For a sex offender?
But it is elitist now to remind girls of the fact that they are "nice girls" and in a time where it is the accepted practice to follow the call of one's hormones they don't have something like a "reputation" to lose anymore either.
September 5, 2008 3:52 AM
Terry Morris said...
To be honest with you all I've been half waiting for someone to come along saying that Bristol and Levi began having sex with the permission of Bristol's parents (and an ecstatic approving response from Republicans.) Something that isn't uncommon today either.
I know quite a few women that became pregnant both as teens and out of wedlock. The common denominator in all of them was lack of parental supervision. In fact, in one case the parents allowed their daughter, on the weekends, to hang out up town, at night, unsupervised ... for thirty minutes at a time. She was required to check in at home every thirty minutes. In my view that isn't supervision; it's a recipe for disaster. I even warned that it was a recipe for disaster before the disaster ever occured. But it didn't change anything, obviously.
VA, isn't it part of a parent's responsibility as a parent to recognize and understand the fact of teenage hormones, and to put up road blocks to their children yielding to them? Further, aren't we supposed to understand that teens with hormones jumping are particularly adept at utilizing what unsupervised time we alot them to their own perceived advantage?...
September 5, 2008 8:07 AM
Terry Morris said...
I wrote in the original entry that I hope beyond hope that Sarah Palin never considered it her choice to abort her baby. This is interesting because the entry was written on Sept. 1.
On September 2 I received an email from Dr. Dobson's CitizenLink organization titled "Gov. Palin announces teen daughter's pregnancy; Dr. Dobson offers Prayer".
Here's an excerpt from that email in which the Palins are quoted on their daughter Bristol's pregnancy:
We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents, they said in a statement Monday. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.
If I take what is said by the Palins at face value, then apparently Sarah Palin does believe it is her choice whether to abort her baby or not. In fact she apparently not only believes that she - a 44 year old adult woman - has the right to make this choice, but that her 17 year old minor daughter Bristol (and all 17 year old minor children by extension) have the right to make the choice between life and death for their babies.
So, essentially, the hopes I expressed in the original entry have been dashed.
The least she could have done would have been to make a distinction between an adult woman's choice and a minor child's choice. But she probably looks at it like a lot of other people I know who say that if a boy is old enough to go to war, then he's old enough to purchase and consume liquor, and our laws should reflect that. In Bristol's case (and as I said before, all 17 year old minor girls by extension) Mrs. Palin's logic probably goes "if she's old enough to get pregnant she's old enough to decide to abort."
But maybe I'm just reading too much into her statement. And maybe I'm reading too much into Dr. Dobson's blind support for Palin.
September 7, 2008 5:49 AM
Terry Morris said...
And by the way, I don't know whether any of this stuff people are saying about Levi's (Bristol's boyfriend and the father of her child) MySpace is true, but if it is he sure as heck isn't someone I'd want any of my daughters marrying under any circumstances.
I happen to believe that marriage is not always the answer to righting the wrong of an illegitimate pregnancy. In point of fact it's probably rarely the answer, particularly in today's goofed up world. What mother or father in their right minds would wish upon their teenage daughter a marriage that has a very good chance of failing.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
But like I said, I don't know anything about Levi. Maybe he's a great kid and has all the stuff to be a great father and a great husband to Bristol. Could be.
September 7, 2008 6:07 AM
The_Editrix said...
"The least she could have done would have been to make a distinction between an adult woman's choice and a minor child's choice."
Terry, once one allows exceptions from sacredness of life one will find it difficult to support one's stance, factually and ethically. Why should a mature woman have more "right to choose" than a girl? I say (for argument's sake) that a girl has her whole life ahead of her whereas a mature woman lives (in the majority of cases) in more or less secure circumstances. Such an argument is in no way less supportable than yours.
Human life is sacred. Full stop. And any (ANY!) qualification will take to to very slippery grounds.
"But maybe I'm just reading too much into her statement. And maybe I'm reading too much into Dr. Dobson's blind support for Palin."
I don't think you do.
September 8, 2008 2:34 AM
Terry Morris said...
Nora, thank you. Please allow me to clarify my position...
I wasn't trying to say that an adult woman has more right to choose to kill her baby than a teenage minor. I realize that this is an untenable position to take. I was really just trying to make a point concerning Sarah's public statements on the matter, and the apparent content of her "family values".
The Palins released a statement to the press saying that they were proud of their daughter for deciding to have her baby. This implies that 17 year old Bristol Palin was afforded the choice in the matter, and that her parents recognize her right to make that choice (thank God she made the right one, eh?).
As the father of a sixteen year old daughter, I can tell you that I recognize and grant no such choice to my daughter. Not that she would make the wrong one, but it's not her choice to make, neither morally nor as a dependent child living under my roof. As her parent I have complete authority over her until she comes of age. So if there's any "choice" to be made, I'll make it for her ... if "choice" is even the right word here. And I'd never give her any impression that she has such a choice.
The point is that Sarah Palin, if her statement says anything about her view on the subject, seems to believe that a 17 year old minor pregnant child under her care and supervision has an independent choice in whether to have her baby or not. But as parents and guardians we should not even entertain the notion that they have such a choice in any case.
I think it says something about the depth of Palin family values that they put it in these terms without making some qualifications to their statements. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what they meant.
September 8, 2008 4:54 AM
The_Editrix said...
I understand better now. Thanks for clarifying that for me, Terry.
I am sure I don't "get" some details in their right context because I am not American and I don't want to make my criticism of Sarah Palin, who seems to be a nice woman, sound too personal and judgemental. But one thing she isn't: a conservative. I'd like to refer to the discussion at VfR. At one point Lawrence Auster said that Palin "represents something that has replaced conservatism" for which he hadn't yet a name. I replied that there is no name for it because what she is can't be defined as a political stance. All she is, is "unconventional". So she chose not to abort her child, so she has no hangups about shooting, and she happens to be still married to the same man. Is that enough to be be labelled "conservative"? What a toil is that "unconventional" marriage and family life for her husband?
Being conservative is, as I put it at VFR, not a patchwork of non-politically correct items, it is a lifetime concept, a worldview.
The discussion about the pornographic site somebody recently recommended at VFR shows that it is enough to spite just one politically correct issue (in this case feminism) to pass as a "conservative". More cases in point: Those "Islam critics" who happen to be Muslims and, somewhat naturally, tackle Islam first, but would like to abolish religion generally. Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji come to mind.
I may be wrong, but nothing I have read about Palin in the Internet resembles your family life, as you describe it here.
As I said, Palin seems to be a nice woman, she may be even an able VP, but to sell her as conservative is akin to false labelling.
As an aside: I am somewhat bound to like her out of sheer cussedness because the German media picture her as a cross between Torquemada and Dzenghis Khan.
September 8, 2008 6:05 AM
Terry Morris said...
Thanks again, Nora. I read your comments at VFR and thought them very interesting and insightful.
I agree with you that Sarah is not a conservative.
I wrote at VFR that there's a large "eccentric" community in Alaska and that there's an element among Alaskans that one might call "rugged individualism", and that this is sometimes mistaken as conservative. I think Sarah can be described as both of these, but not as a conservative.
Incidentally, have you read Wasilla resident Mrs. Kania's postings at VFR?
As a former resident of Alaska I know a little bit about the state and its people, though I claim no deep understanding of them as Mrs. Kania might have. Alaska is not a conservative state for starters, as I said in one posting at VFR. But beyond that, and in reply to some of Mrs. Kania's sincere statements about the Palins, particularly about their being "very normal people," which I translate to mean "they're just your average American family", I take respectful exception in a couple of emails to Auster on the subject. Hopefully he'll find them worthy of posting and you can read them there. If not I'll post them here at my site.
But I like your term "unconventional", Nora. I think it's a better term than my "eccentric" for describing what Sarah Palin is in part.
In Alaska the unconventional is more "normal" than it is here in the lower forty eight. As I wrote in part to Auster, it is not a novelty in Alaska to see a woman shoveling three feet of snow off of her roof while her husband stands safely on the ground giving her directions and orders. But I don't think it's normal either, anymore than I think it's normal to see a woman wade out waste deep into the frigid waters of the Russian River to catch salmon, but neither is it a novelty.
None of that, among other things, is conservative, it's unconventional as you said.
September 8, 2008 6:44 AM