Happy Valentines Day from the TSA!

hat tip Craig Schmuckatelli

"Long live Valentine's Day!"

Did you know that Islamists hate Valentine's Day? Jamie Glazov writes at Front Page Magazine a round-up of how various Muslim countries ban Valentine's Day.

In the West, meanwhile, leftist feminists are not to be outdone by their Islamist allies in reviling — and trying to exterminate — Valentine’s Day. Throughout many Women’s Studies Programs on American campuses, for instance, you will find the demonization of this day, since, as the disciples of Andrea Dworkin angrily explain, the day is a manifestation of how capitalist and homophobic patriarchs brainwash and oppress women -- and push them into spheres of powerlessness.

As an individual who spent more than a decade in academia, I was privileged to witness this war against Valentine’s Day up close and personal. Feminist icons like Jane Fonda, meanwhile, help lead the assault on Valentine’s Day in society at large. As David Horowitz has documented, Fonda has led the campaign to transform this special day into “V-Day” (“Violence against Women Day”) — which is, when it all comes down to it, a day of hate, featuring a mass indictment of men.

So what exactly is transpiring here? What explains this hatred of Valentine’s Day by leftist feminists and Islamists? And how and why does it serve as the sacred bond that brings the Left and Islam together into its feast of hate?

The core issue at the foundation of this phenomenon is that Islam and the radical Left both revile the notion of private love, a non-tangible and divine entity that draws individuals to each other and, therefore, distracts them from submitting themselves to a secular deity.

The highest objective of both Islam and the radical Left is clear: to shatter the sacred intimacy that a man and a woman can share with one another, for such a bond is inaccessible to the order. History, therefore, demonstrates how Islam, like Communism, wages a ferocious war on any kind of private and unregulated love. In the case of Islam, the reality is epitomized in its monstrous structures of gender apartheid and the terror that keeps it in place. Indeed, female sexuality and freedom are demonized and, therefore, forced veiling, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, honor killings and other misogynist monstrosities become mandatory parts of the sadistic paradigm.

The puritanical nature of totalist systems (whether Fascist, Communist, or Islamist) is another manifestation of this phenomenon. In Stalinist Russia, sexual pleasure was portrayed as unsocialist and counter-revolutionary. More recent Communist societies have also waged war on sexuality — a war that Islam, as we know, wages with similar ferocity. These totalist structures cannot survive in environments filled with self-interested, pleasure-seeking individuals who prioritize devotion to other individual human beings over the collective and the state. Because the leftist believer viscerally hates the notion and reality of personal love and “the couple,” he champions the enforcement of totalitarian puritanism by the despotic regimes he worships.

...Yet as these novels demonstrate, no tyranny’s attempt to turn human beings into obedient robots can fully succeed. There is always someone who has doubts, who is uncomfortable, and who questions the secular deity — even though it would be safer for him to conform like everyone else. The desire that therefore overcomes the instinct for self-preservation is erotic passion. And that is why love presents such a threat to the totalitarian order: it dares to serve itself. It is a force more powerful than the all-pervading fear that a totalitarian order needs to impose in order to survive. Leftist and Muslim social engineers, therefore, in their twisted and human-hating imaginations, believe that the road toward earthly redemption (under a classless society or Sharia) stands a chance only if private love and affection is purged from the human condition.

It becomes completely understandable, therefore, why leftist believers were so inspired by the tyrannies in the Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist North Vietnam and many other countries. As sociologist Paul Hollander has documented in his classic Political Pilgrims, fellow travelers were especially enthralled with the desexualized dress that the Maoist regime imposed on its citizens. This at once satisfied the leftist’s desire for enforced sameness and the imperative of erasing attractions between private citizens. As I have demonstrated in United in Hate, the Maoists’ unisex clothing finds its parallel in fundamentalist Islam’s mandate for shapeless coverings to be worn by both males and females. The collective “uniform” symbolizes submission to a higher entity and frustrates individual expression, mutual physical attraction, and private connection and affection. And so, once again, the Western leftist remains not only uncritical, but completely supportive of — and enthralled in — this form of totalitarian puritanism.

Valentine’s Day is a “shameful day” for the Muslim world and for the radical Left. It is shameful because private love is considered obscene, since it threatens the highest of values: the need for a totalitarian order to attract the complete and undivided attention, allegiance and veneration of every citizen. Love serves as the most lethal threat to the tyrants seeking to build Sharia and a classless utopia on earth, and so these tyrants yearn for the annihilation of every ingredient in man that smacks of anything that it means to be human.

Read more here.

Love isn't blind. Love is the only way of really seeing.

Ann Voskamp's Valentines weekend post:

None of us ever know whom we marry. And falling in love never made anyone angels… it’s only made it clear how far we’ve fallen. Who we say ‘I do’ to — is not who we roll over to touch twenty years later. The challenge for the vows is to fall in love with the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

The vows are a vow to make the stranger you marry — come to intimately know love everyday.

This is the only way we become married to the right people.

Real Love truthfully sees the flaws — and still really loves fully.

Love isn’t blind — Love is the only way of really seeing. You have loved me real.

The moment you let love into your heart, your heart starts breaking. The only way to stop your heart from breaking is to stop your heart from loving. You always get to choose: either a hard heart or a broken heart. A broken heart is always the abundant heart — all those many beautiful pieces only evidence of an abundant life.

Read much more here.

Happy Valentine's Day

Guest post
by
Suzann Darnall

I am again going to step a bit outside the political arena and address a topic that is very close to my heart . . . pun intended. I love Valentine's Day! I have loved it since I was a little girl and we exchanged cards and candies in our classrooms. Of course, I grew to love it even more as I became a teenager with boyfriends so that V-Day involved flowers, stuffed animals, and dates. And, now, as a grown woman it sometimes even involves jewelry or other delightful gifts!

But, what I have always loved most about Valentine's Day, yes even more than the chocolate and the carnations, is that it is a celebration of love and romance. Something that I think we need to truly celebrate a lot more in a time when so much hate and anger seems to be trying to close in on our lives.

I enjoy celebrating V-Day as a family and as a couple. For instance, this year my husband and I will go out on a date this evening. Just the two of us. For a more personal celebration of our love for one another. We will take a few hours to cherish one another and enjoy each other's company. He has not yet told me what he has planned, but I know it will involve dinner and probably something fun. But, what's most important is renewing our relationship on a regular basis, which is not always easy in the hectic schedule we keep. I hope all married couples I know take a bit of time this weekend to do the same. It is a worthy endeavor!

Tomorrow evening we will celebrate as a family. Our youngest daughter and two of our grandchildren live with us. This is our first Valentine's Day living all together and we will be reprising an old tradition we held when our daughters were growing up. We will have a Red, White, & Pink Dinner!

The table will be set with red, white and pink linens (many of them given to me by my mother or handed down from my grandmothers). The centerpiece will be a V-Day themed Pinterest project I made last year during a crafting day with my oldest daughter and her friends. We will use my pink transfer ware dishes (given to me by my mother), pink depression glass serving pieces (mostly collected for me by my father), and my modern pink glassware. The menu will most likely consist of home-made pretzels shaped like hearts, sliced strawberries, spaghetti with red sauce, and red sparkling grape juice. For dessert there will be a pink frosted cake.

When I set the table I will place a gift at each place setting. We will open them before we start dinner. There will also be another tradition, a red heart shaped box of chocolates (updated to sugar-free) as a gift for the family to share over the weekend.

My daughters waited in great anticipation when they were young for us to have our Red, White, & Pink Dinner. My grandchildren, especially my granddaughter who wishes to help prepare for it, are excited. I have to admit I am more than a little bit excited, too!

I am excited because I think traditions are important. I think they help to weave strong threads into a family, which can lead to stronger threads within a community, and ultimately make the fabric of a nation stronger. I think traditions are being trampled out in much of America today. Many traditions are criticized as being "politically incorrect" in any one of a gazillion ways. I think it is just the hatred of many of the Progressives for things that are often founded on the rock-solid principles of God, family, and patriotism. I think they also bear a lot of dislike for things that are just plain ol' fun!

Anyway, my husband, my family, and I will be celebrating the archaic holiday with a great deal of love and joy. We will enjoy the old-fashioned traditions of a date night and of a family dinner. We will exchange gifts and express our love. We will have fun. And, we will thank our Maker for another opportunity to do so! I hope all y'all will, too!!!

© Suzann C. Darnall, FEBRUARY 2014