Beating a defenseless woman

I’m sure Vox and The Atlantic can explain the mechanism that transmutes the beating a of a defenseless woman into salutary social reform. https://t.co/AtfhXlsqKS

— Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) May 31, 2020

Is our culture feeding women lies?

Suzanne Venker writes,

In the 1960s,” writes Ross Douthat in “Liberated and Unhappy,” “American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped.”

This phenomenon is a direct result of the lies women were fed about what constitutes a happy life. They were told, repeatedly, that in order for a woman to be truly happy and fulfilled, she should follow the male script by delaying marriage and making career the center of her life (and in the meantime, enjoy “free” sex.)

Feminists fed women these lies—indeed, still feed women these lies—for political gain. Because if women were to do what they really wanted, if they focused on marriage and relationships instead of on career, feminists can’t get what they want: power.

In other words, feminists want women to want what feminists want—and women tried. They really did. Now their lives are falling apart.

The only path forward is, as Brooks suggests, to dump the “individualist” worldview and to return to our relational roots. Women have the power to thwart their own unhappiness by shifting their priorities entirely. Put love and relationships first—focus like a laser beam on finding a man with whom to share your life—and fit everything else in around that.

The single greatest investment any of us make—women and men—has zero to do with money or career. The real secret to success is choosing the right person to marry. Who you marry, and how that marriage fares, will literally determine the entire direction of your life.

In light of this fact, you’d think parents, schools and society would teach young people how to get this part of their lives right. But they don’t. Young people—young women, in particular—are taught that not only should career should come first but that professional success will be fulfilling.

But money and status mean absolutely nothing if you go to bed alone at nigh, or if you bungle your relationships with your kids in the meantime.

Bottom line: Don’t fall for the culture’s lies. Instead, do the opposite of everything the culture tells you to do, and you’ll be well on your way to a happy life.

Read more here.

What happens when politics becomes culture

Daniel Greenfield writes in FrontPage Magazine,

...Cultural lefties are just as clueless about contradictions as deer are about cars. They don’t ponder why they once opposed gay marriage, but now support it. That’s just what the herd they’re part of did.
...
Politics is a process. Its product is a value system. That value system has taken the place that morality occupied among their traditionally religious ancestors, those Northeastern Protestants and German Jewish immigrants who built what they are wrecking. They may occasionally go to church or synagogue, but those brief visitations only reinforce their moral convictions about global warming, abortion, transgender bathrooms, immigration, gun control and the rest of the creed of the Church of the Left.

...MAGA hats, deliberately loud and unfashionable, infuriate them as the banner of an enemy tribe.

Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t just about hating Trump. It’s a visceral disgust with the sorts of people they imagine would vote for him. And a horror at the idea of sharing a state or country with them. Ideological leftism may occasionally punch up, but cultural leftism always punches down.

The Trump era has gifted us an infinity of media lectures on the “threat to democracy”. And the conclusion is always that democracy poses a threat to democracy. All this deep thinking, its assorted conspiracy theories about lurking Russian bots on Facebook, is a convoluted way of getting at the idea that the real problem with our political system is that people outside the lefty cultural bubble can vote.

You know, people who actually believe in G-d, who own guns, and like their independence. Americans.

Our political system is built to be shared with people we disagree with. As ugly as things get, the system is designed to bear the load. It’s why we have checks and balances, the electoral college, filibusters, and a complicated system of electing people who are different and will be sure to disagree with each other.

You know, diversity.

The Founding Fathers made sure we had real diversity in our government long before that became a buzzword for leftist conformists whose idea of diversity is three races, a hundred ethnicities, forty religions, sixty genders, and one political opinion.

...Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t just a reaction to President Trump. It’s a reaction to America.

Read more here.

The culture: the power of silence is the power of lies!

Culture: that mysterious intellectual atmosphere we don't even know we're breathing. Who won the culture war after Richar Nixon won 49 states and the District of Columbia in 1972? The hippies!

The Governor of Virginia puts forth a psychopathic idea about the government staying out of the way if a woman wants to kill her child! Andrew plays a radio appearance by the governor which was not covered by the three major networks or CNN and MSNBC. Fox did cover it on the Bret Baier show.

The only way you can maintain the fallacy that transwomen are women is if you silence people who disagree. The power of silence is the power of lies!

Howard Schultz doesn't believe he should be criticized for being successful. He grew up in the projects in Brooklyn, and now wants to run as an independent in 2020 for president of the United States! the Left wants to shut him up!

Andrew's guest is Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst. Immigration is down from previous decades, but it is overwhelmingly family units turning themselves into Border Patrol asking for asylum, which is a "mostly fictional facade." Immigrants are less likely to be involved in crime than native-born Americans, even though they committed a crime by illegally entering America.

It is very difficult to get into America legally, especially if you are a low-skilled worker who doesn't have any family living in America. Alex is in favor of legalizing the DACA kids. He is also in favor of making a "serious show of border security" (wall?). ThThe most important thing he advocates for is to expand the number of lower-skilled guest worker visas, which is what President Eisenhower did and it almost eliminated illegal immigration!

Our individual responsibility to build a new culture

As the feminist model falls apart by attacking masculinity and femininity we conservatives have to build a new culture of masculinity and femininity based on Christianity, which also must be held to account.

The big tech giants do not want to give up their power over the culture. They are acting like publishers but they are getting the privileges of a platform. They cannot be both! If you are a publisher, you are responsible for what people say and you can be sued. On platforms, people can say whatever they want supposedly.

So we have the Catholic Church scandal and the big tech scandal. Each one of us as individuals needs to do all we can to hold wrongdoers accountable.

Today is "g" day in Andrew's Leftese dictionary. G for gun. Guns are bad for Leftists because Leftists believe that your property and your conscience should belong to the state. They back up those beliefs with laws that are enforced by people with guns. If you refuse to give up your property and conscience to the state, these people with guns will come to your house to arrest you. If, on the other hand, you also have a gun an ugly situation may ensue. This is based on a true story that happened in 1776!

Because no one ever thought!

El Borak writes in Men of the West,

...We built a culture in which celebrity is our highest aspiration. From “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” to “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”, we have taught our kids that being rich, being famous, being glamorous is what’s important. When we cut ourselves loose from any virtue higher than others’ opinions of us, no one thought it would result in a generation of teens who eat Tide Pods for a few Youtube clicks. Because no one ever thought.

We built a culture that promotes confusion. We tore down all barriers related to morality, especially sexual morality. We started with serial monogamy and hookup culture and moved right into married gays and bent genders. Now after 12 years of sex education our kids don’t even know what sex they are. We purposely tore down every protective social wall that humanity spent the previous 5 millennia constructing. No one ever thought to ask why they were constructed in the first place. Because no one ever thought.

...So now we have raised a generation of angry, bitter, drug-addled, under-developed aspiring rappers who don’t know who they are and never learned how to deal with life’s most common setbacks. We cut them loose without support on an America that has lost its way, lost its finances, lost its vision, and lost its history. Then we are surprised at the results.

What did we think was going to happen if we did this? We didn’t think at all.

...If you’re truly serious, you can almost guarantee that while you cannot stop school shootings, at least they will not affect you and yours. And you will raise well-adjusted, decent human beings to boot.

First Step: Homeschool or die. I don’t want to hear why you can’t do it. In three decades as a homeschooling parent, I’ve heard your excuse. Either it’s important enough to you that you work through your roadblocks, or it’s not. Your choice.

Second step: turn off the damned TV. Our poisonous culture is delivered to our kids electronically, and it is parents who fund it. Hollywood has no money that regular Americans didn’t give it. It is a cesspool that is purposely corrupting your children, purposely destroying beauty and virtue and love. Everything you hold dear, it destroys. Cut it out of your life.

Get away from the city. That world is too big for kids. A high school of 3,000 students is a factory. It alienates kids. It harms them in ways that are impossible to measure and difficult to comprehend. Every school shooter you’ve heard of came out of public schools, most of them suburban. Instead find a nice small town where they can establish deep and long-lasting relationships, not only with people their age, but with older people. Find a place where they can know and be known, a place small enough that they matter. They can’t put down roots in concrete.

Build a culture of life in your home and community. Pray for and with your kids. Teach them to hunt and to garden, to train a dog and change a diaper. Teach them that decisions have eternal consequences. Teach them about the importance of sex, of marriage, of faithfulness. They will not be cool in the world’s eyes; neither will they be destroyed by the world’s coldness. Teach them that their happiness is not the highest virtue and they will be happier than any of their peers.

School shootings will not be solved because they are but a symptom of the real problem. They are the hacking cough of a man with lung cancer; cough drops, no matter how strong, will do no good. We are accelerating into a full-blown cultural meltdown. And we cannot turn it around without radical surgery, without monumental effort, without considerable sacrifice. In reality, we are probably going to ride it right through to hell, at full speed, with tens of millions of our fellow Americans cheering the whole way.

Can’t they see where this road leads? What are they thinking? They are not thinking at all.

Read more here.

Are you a foodie?

Tyler Cowen notices that once we listened to the Beatles, but now we eat beatles!

Music made us get up and dance, or occasionally throw a rock. Food, especially if combined with wine, encourages a state of satiety and repose. Most conversation about food is studiously nonpolitical and removed from controversial social issues. There is a layer of left-wing critique of food corporations, genetic modification and food-associated pollution, but its impact on broader American culture has been marginal. These days, it could be said that food is the opiate of the educated classes. Anecdotally, I observe that the contemporary preoccupation with a particular kind of food fanciness and diversity has penetrated black communities less, and those are also the groups where music might in some cases remain politically important.

I don't know about that last sentence; rap music is every bit as big among young whites as it is among young blacks!

I like to think music might win back its social and intellectual resonance, but in the meantime please pass me the green mango chili fish sauce.

Give me my cell phone. I want to listen to Peter, Paul and Mary.

Can we move beyond our cultural self-loathing?

Bookworm writes,

About one-fifth of all crime committed in Japan is done by the elderly. Most of it is petty theft and shoplifting.

As crime rates among the elderly rise, prisons have effectively turned into nursing homes. Guards are made to bathe the inmates and help them get dressed, and experts say living conditions are too good to keep recidivism rates down.

Normally, younger relatives would take care of the inmates once they’re released. But in some cases the costs (and loneliness) are simply too much to bear in a troubled economy, and seniors look to prison as the better alternative.

It’s not just that the Japanese have stopped having children. Lots of economically advanced nations cut back on making babies. The difference with Japan is that they’ve entirely stopped having sex. Japan is becoming a simulacrum of a country, rather than a real country. So far, Japan has resisting Europe’s decision to invite in Muslims from Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa in order to make up for a serious demographic slump. At some point, though, the Japanese are going to have to do something.

Americans are holding level, but just barely. Our demographic slump can easily be cured by allowing more legal immigration from Latin America. I would do so, though, only if we have moved beyond our cultural self-loathing. Immigration works when the immigrants assimilate in their new country. It does not work when they don’t. And it’s a bloody freaking disaster, as we see in Europe, when the immigrants insist that their new country assimilate to them.

Read more here.

Left behind

At the Wall Street Journal Brett Stephens laments that the Republican party has left him. On immigration he remembers a debate between George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan:

At a 1980 Republican primary debate in Houston, candidates George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan were asked whether the children of illegal immigrants should be allowed to attend public schools for free. Mr. Bush said they should. “We’re creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law,” he lamented.

Reagan agreed. Instead of “putting up a fence,” he asked, “why don’t we . . . make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here.” For good measure, Reagan suggested we should “open the border both ways.”

Where, in the populist fervor to build a wall with Mexico and deport millions of human beings, is that Republican Party today?

Trade: In one of his final radio addresses as president, Reagan warned “we should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends—weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag.”

Where, in the tide of Tea Party opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and all those other “disastrous trade deals” that Donald Trump never fails to mention, is that Republican Party today?

Foreign policy: In 1947 Harry Truman asked Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to support his efforts to shore up the governments in Greece and Turkey against Soviet aggression. Vandenberg agreed, marking his—and the GOP’s—turn from isolationism to internationalism.

Since then, six Republican presidents have never wavered in their view that a robust system of treaty alliances such as NATO are critical for defending the international liberal order, or that the U.S. should dissuade faraway allies such as South Korea and Saudi Arabia from seeking nuclear weapons, or that states such as Russia should be kept out of regions such as the Middle East.

Where, amid Mr. Trump’s routine denunciations of our allegedly freeloading allies, or Newt Gingrich’s public doubts about defending NATO member Estonia against Russian aggression, or the alt-right’s attacks on “globalism,” or Sean Hannity’s newfound championship of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, is that Republican Party today?

Culture, civility and character:

For decades, conservative publishers have issued a long succession of titles on the importance of personal character to the preservation of democratic institutions. Notable on the list is William J. Bennett’s “The Book of Virtues,” whose first chapter deals with the importance of self-discipline. The former secretary of education followed that one up with “The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals,” timed to the Lewinsky scandal.

Where, in the apparently limitless forgiveness GOP voters are willing to extend to Mr. Trump for his public affronts to “that face” Carly or that “nasty woman” Hillary Clinton, is that Republican Party today?

... I don’t see the point of belonging to a party on the increasingly dubious assumption that it’s slightly less bad than the opposition. If I can’t get my Grand Old Party back, I’d rather help build a new one.

Read more here.

Are we a dying culture?

Today Chateau Heartiste postulates a brief theory about three cultures.

Healthy culture: Alpha men, deferential women

Unhealthy culture: Entitled men, entitled women

Dying culture: Deferential men, entitled women

America is a dying culture. Trump is the last chance to meme more life back into America.

Which season are we in?