Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

Blockbuster Book Takes on Feminists

My nomination for the most understated, highly nuanced book title (ahem, I'm joking) published in December, 2005 would be Kate O’Beirne’s  Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports.  Actually, it’s a book I would like to read.  I suspect I would agree with most of what she writes.  One reviewer suggested it would make “a particularly useful book for parents to give to college age daughters so as to innoculate them against the feminist groupthink on American campuses.” An interview with  Kate O’Beirne conducted by National Review Online's Kathryn Lopez makes fascinating reading. A few quotes:

We live with the destructive feminist agenda because the fathers or husbands of so many of them, including Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and Jane Fonda, never failed to fail them. The views of these angry, abandoned women inform the modern women's movement. . .

Feminist fundamentalism holds that the battle of the sexes can't be won unless women make war on the tiniest enemies of their independence. How can we be the equal of men when our bodies betray us? These women aren't arguing that abortion must be available for the hard cases. They believe that women's fertility makes us inherently inferior to men, so there can be no restrictions at all on abortion. Lacking the public's support for their radical abortion agenda, they wrap their demands in a tissue of euphemisms and lies and fiercely fight to keep the issue in the courts insulated from public opinion. The majority of the public, including the majority of women, oppose the majority of abortions. . .

The moral intimidation feminists inflict on men means that other women have to take on the modern, destructive women's movement. In the pages of my book you will meet some of the smart, admirable women who take on the feminists. The feminist message is crippling to our daughters, but we mothers of sons in particular have to defend our offspring.

Quotes of the day

On censorship - "The secular left, which resists censorship in all its forms when it comes to sex, library books and assigned materials that teach the 'evils' of capitalism and 'evil America,' is happy to censor any belief that can be tagged 'religious.'    Cal Thomas

"On education -  "Too many parents who would never send their children to a church on Sunday that taught doctrines they believed to be wrong, have had no problem placing them in state schools five days a week where they are taught conflicting doctrines and ideas."    Cal Thomas

Trivia - The Year 1905

- From an e-mail someone sent me a few days ago regarding the Year 1905 - that's 1905, not 2005:

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. 
A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars. 
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.
More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
    1.  Pneumonia and influenza
    2.  Tuberculosis
    3.  Diarrhea
    4.  Heart disease
    5.  Stroke
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!
Only 6 per cent of all Americans had graduated from high school. 

I post this for general interest's sake, not to make any particular point.

Third World Romanticism

Phyllis Chesler descries the epithet “racist” thrown at anyone who dares to criticize Islamists. It serves as a convenient way to stifle debate about the Middle East and Islam. This article offers sobering examples of the serious distortions and one-sidedness of the debate.  Chesler, an early leader in the modern feminist movement, recounts her life as the wife of an Afghani Muslim living in Kabul here. That early experience made her immune to "third world romanticism" and aroused her concern about the failure of Western feminism to address the plight of women in the third world today.  Here, one can read a speech she gave before a Senate hearing on December 14, 2005 discussing "Islamic Gender Apartheid."  This is important material sadly neglected in the civilizational struggle now upon us.  It is easier for us to close our ears and our eyes to this tragedy. 

Canadian Health Care

If we think we have a problem here in the United States with health care, and that things are much better to our neighbor to the north, reading this article should disabuse us of that notion very quickly