Christian movie makers are tired of sitting on the sidelines while the popular culture destroys the family. Why can’t they get in on the action too?
See Cane Caldo’s expert takedown of the latest “Christian” assault on married fathers. If you have been jonesing for a fix of Christian endorsed familial subversion ever since Courageous left the box office, you won’t want to miss Mom’s Night Out:
The snippet that really drives home the beautiful alliance of the bikers and the wives…
Did I forget to mention those wives are also smoking hot when they’re not being kept down by the idiot bastards to whom they’re married?
…is when they show the massive and tattoo’d leader[1] of the bikers sitting with the wife in the little black dress at the police station. Bikers–as everybody knows–aren’t only in it with your wife for the excitement. They’re in it for the long haul of fretful nights, too. One imagines those bikers could be in all kinds of things for wives.
There’s your Family-Friendly Film warriors at work; bringing us an “ethically sound”, clean and relatively painless lethal injection of fatherhood that frees up wives to have real adventures, sexy bikers, great clothes, the joy of kids…everything.
Thanks for the link!
Our movies really hate married fathers. “Taken” is acceptable as a movie premise because Liam Neeson’s father character is divorced. “Homeland” is also fine because Jason Statham’s character doesn’t have a wife in the way while he sexily protects his daughter. For every “True Lies”, there are thousands of movies, TV shows, and commercials that scream out the message that married fathers are unsexy idiots standing in the way of good times.
Of course fathers need a wake up call. But I don’t think that women or mainstream entertainmen will like what happens.
My pleasure Cane. You saved me the trouble of having to dig through the latest anti family Christian film and explain why it is so treacherous. I am in your debt.
This is true. It is funny that you mention Homeland because my wife and I recently watched it. When she put it in the DVD player she mentioned that the character of Stratham’s wife and mother of the daughter is dead. It was a form of reassurance, something I immediately understood. This won’t be another movie where the father is either a bumbling idiot or has to re-prove himself to his disinterested ex. Living wives or exes create too much confusion about who is the boss for Hollywood to ignore. The only way the writers can ignore this would be challenge to the headship throne is to kill them off (so the man can be heroic).
By the way, for those reading the comments here I encourage you to click the link over to Cane’s full post, and be sure to see the trailer with the scenes he describes.
Roughly speaking, anything that empowers women, anything that gives women more of a voice and more choices, is wrong. Sadly. That being said, it is good that this film accurately portrays what women want to see, since it’s all out there in the open now.
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Taken is overall enjoyable to watch, but even here there is the undertone of him having to prove himself regarding the ex wife. It has been some time since I watched it, but I do recall that she has found a new and wealthy man to replace him with, and I don’t recall a new younger woman on his arm.
This is more subtle in the first movie though than in the sequel. By then his ex isn’t haaappy in her second marriage, and the movie moves much closer to the endless courtship fantasy trope.
I follow Pastor Dennis Rainey on Twitter. This is what he tweeted several days ago:
Of course he loved it. No surprise there.
For a man to be a King, the Queen must die.
I have not seen Courageous, Fireproof, or Moms Night Out, and after what I’ve read in the manosphere about them I’m not sure I could sit through them. It’s amazing how much praise they get from so many Christians I know.
On another note, I watched Warrior last night with my girlfriend. It’s one of my favorites and really shows what it takes to be a good father/husband. In one scene the main character, Brendan Conlen, tells his wife he is entering a UFC tournament. She gives some snippy line about how it’s great they made the decision together and he responds with, I’m doing this & and I’d like your support, period. Good example if how to handle a Sh** test, and just a great example of a man that was selfless but was still a man and held frame. (Although not being a Christian).
Dalrock,
For movies I loved Taken and just recently, loved Heaven is for Real. Strong father figures played in both of those movies.
For TV? Not much out there that interests me outside of college/pro football and college hoops. I must say I enjoy watching “The Middle” specifically for the strength and stability played by Neil Flynn’s character Mike Heck. His virtuous, principled attitude towards his children while still being a good husband to his neurotic wife Frankie (Patricia Heaton) is a refreshing change for a sitcom. Moreover, Patricia Heaton insisted with the producers of ABC that if she were to star in another sitcom, it would have to be the UN-Everyone-Loves-Raymond because she wasn’t a more Patriarchal husband, not the bumbling buffoon/idiot she had earlier with Ray Romano.
To a much lesser extent, I also enjoy “Suburgatory.” It takes place in some fictitious suburb of New York City. The single dad character played by Jeremy Sisto (George Altman) although not entirely Christian and not entirely Father-knows-best, he is a very good, stable, dependable dad. You meet his ex-wife in one episode and you see how she abandons (yet again) their daughter Tessa (Jane Levy), the show’s protagonist. George Altman is right there standing by his daughter when this happens. Moreover, he has a bit of a love interest in the local gold-digger Cheryl Hines (Dallas) who is the divorced mom of George Altman’s daughter’s biggest high school Frenemy, Dalia. Dalia very much loves “Daddy Altman” (for some reason, never fully explained) and wished very much that her mommy wouldn’t just use him for sex and throw him away the way she did. There is even 2 or 3 sequential episodes eluding to this fact, Dalia is a daughter that needs (dare I say, CRAVES) fatherly headship. And George Altman has that in spades. And Dalia is very envious of her Frenemy, Tessa, who will always have “Daddy Altman’s” fatherly headship. And making it even more interesting, Tessa’s best friend Allie Grant just got married (while just a Senior in high school) to her high school sweetheart. And the show focuses on the problems early but how the two of them overcome them. I do sincerely hope ABC renews this program for another season.
For a man to be a King, the Queen must die.
I had a similar thought, as this is the narrative movies largely portray.
And to think, I was considering spending good money to see this movie. I think the people at Family LIfe, FOTF, etc. get so excited at the prospect of any “Christian” themed mainstream film that they neglect to view it critically.
They focus on the big three: Fornication, homosexuality, nudity. If it meets those criteria without being overtly anti-family (according tot their definition), they rubber stamp it.
Ooops. That should have been the Big Four: I forgot about profanity.
I would recommend the movie “Ink”. It’s an independent fantasy movie and very well done. There is some language in it, but the overarching theme is an excellent good vs. evil through the actions of a widower and his daughter.
@Dalrock
I also really enjoyed Taken, but I am acclimated to subsisting on what scraps I can gather. And like the only film to positively portray resistance to Islamism (“From Paris with Love”), I note it was one of Luc Besson’s French-made movies; those rebels.
What Elspeth says. You take the modern movie, which replaces plot and character development with profanity, nudity, violence, and sexuality, take out the profanity, nudity, violence, and sexuality, and you have most modern “Christian” movies. Yay.
And people wonder why I don’t watch much made in the past 30 years. Duh.
BB,
Unfortunately that is true.
Its very rare indeed where a movie has true plot and character development. That doesn’t sell anymore and Hollywood is all about sales. The target market is young males (age 16 to 21) who are most often too young to drink, old enough to drive, and too old to sit at home and watch cartoons. They crave CGI, violence, sex, and special effects, not plot or character development. And since they are the plurality of the people paying for it, they are the market. So that is what the rest of us are stuck with.
Bott Radio Network (Christian talk radio) has been pushing this movie lately. I could tell just from the sound bites on the radio that this was yet ANOTHER “dads are idiots” movie. Not interested.
Now that I actually watched the trailer at Cane’s blog, I’m revolted.
I think that Evangelical / Churchian culture are so insulated that just the prospect of having a “movie made for us” and thinking a secular culture is showing them some legitimacy supersedes any critical thought about what messages the movie might actually be promoting.
The thrill of seeing themselves on the big screen is the point of making these movies, the message is secondary.
Saw the trailer…if it’s like Fireproof the mom in the black dress probably makes a pass at the biker.
In the trailer the only thing that had any value were the words “Shawshank Redemption”.
And Rollo gets the Quote Of The Day here.
Rollo,
I think this is why 20/20 refuses to air the Paul Elam segment on the manosphere. All we have are those one or two youtube snippets where you see a very angry looking woman interviewing Paul (itching for a fight she would not get, expecting a rambling and unhinged man) and a very level headed Paul is calmly and lucidly explaining that (over the last 100 years) through three different waves of feminism, the roles and expectations of men (from society) has not changed all that much. And that that is the end. I’m of the opinion that he was forthright and lucid enough such that they couldn’t “edit” any instability or irrationality into the interview which is what I’m guessing 20/20 expected of Paul because they think nothing of the MRM.
Showing that segment on 20/20 lends some legitimacy to our argument. The media will NOT allow that to happen (they cannot let that happen.) We are the enemy. We need to lose. We MUST lose. There is simply no other way. To allow people any chance to think critically about the points being made here is a non-starters. So because they couldn’t paint Paul Elam with an evil brush, they chose not to paint him AT ALL.
Same is true for movies where the man is seen as stable, reasonable, and Patriarchal. That is a non-starter because we have EVOLVED past this in modern society and those who control the levels of critical thought (the media, Hollywood, government, anyone not on our side) if they can’t beat us in the world of logic and reason, then they will simply refuse to play the game (or air the 20/20 segment with Paul Elam… or make a worthy Patriarchal movie doting on the manosphere.)
It’s impossible to describe why the Churchian movie market is so wrong to anyone with a rooting interest in it.
Sean,
A lot of people just don’t get Christianity. This is especially the case with Churchianity.
This is why I love Ann Coulter so much (pundit that she is.) I love her because she so clearly and lucidly describes what is wrong with the world and where it went wrong and why no one is willing to step up and change it. Her satire makes it all the more interesting. And she does it with a pure Christian perspective.
Here is Ann on why Breaking Bad was the most Christian centered show on television.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ann-coulter/2013/10/02/ann-coulter-column-breaking-bad-christian-parable
No Churchianity person would ever get that, ever. They would read the first couple of paragraphs and want to gouge their eyes out of their skulls before continuing. But Ann gets it. And she speaks for us.
I have viewed the Trailer thrice, and this is what I saw:
1. Americans live in large houses and drive nice cars
2. Wherever you go in Urban America it looks the same
3. Violence is the solution (Biker head-butts Baby-sitter)
4. Women cannot organise a Piss-up in a Brewery
5. There is a happy ending
Despite its financial success last weekend, casting Mothers as Romantic leads is never going to take off, and the only dramatic way you can get away with it, is to present husbands as useless (but not quite bad enough to divorce – because for a woman to look good she must meet her secret Millionaire Handyman post-divorce and not on Mom’s night).
Would Dad’s Night Out look like this: A bunch of guys go out, end up in a strip joint, go home in the early hours, to Mom pushing up the Zzzzs. No need for Moms in that movie at all, so as with The Hunger Games, women need men even if all they do is belittle them.
Opus,
Dad’s night out is the three Hangover movies.
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Cane’s write up is so well-done, I almost think I want to go see this (laughably ridiculous) feature.
Personally, I think we ought to all quit going to movies, for the most part. The culture industry is the contemporary “opium of the people”, after all. There’s very little meaning in anything they produce these days. It’s all just overly erotic commercial product placements… an insult to a man’s intelligence.
I had no idea this movie was supposed to be a Christian movie.
Apparently no one in that production/writing/directing crew ever read Phil 4:8
Boxer, that’s my solution. The only TV I watch is reruns of Top Gear UK, the occasional Fast and Loud, and a football game once in a while. Movies lately have been only the Marvel Universe ones.
Plenty of us are old enough to remember the 1980s when “good” Christians didn’t go see certain movies, play certain games, dress in like certain rock stars, and say certain words, and because of it, you could kinda tell a difference betwixt the Christians and their secular counterparts. Now? Not so much. It’s basically if you didn’t have the abortion, then it’s all good.
medium was a great show: http://www.hulu.com/medium
Obviously America is awash with movies and doubtless to suit every taste. I am hopelessly behind – 1818 in fact and so I have been re-reading Purse and Persuasion by Miss Austen. There is a scene where our heroine Anne is trying to attend to a sick child when some other child climbs on her back, as I am told small children are prone to do. There are two men in the room, her would be suitor Mr Hayter [Hater, Geddit?] a lowly curate whom she detests for being a lowly curate and Captain Wentworth a naval officer who she had spurned years before and long before he became rich – now she is awaiting a date with the wall. The curate tells the boy to get off his aunt’s back but to no avail when suddenly and without a word Capt. Wentworth physically removes the said small child from Anne’s back. Alpha or what! Naval Captain One – Curate, a big fat zero.
These days of course removing a small child thus would be too risky and so in the 2007 movie of the book that scene is out and replaced by the following: Anne – one of a large group out walking in the Hampshire country-side (brownie points for great scenery) – twists her ankle whilst crossing a stream. A small trap, passing by, driven by Capt. Wentworth’s brother-in-law stops and Anne is offered a lift. Naturally she declines and makes light of her injury. Before she knows what has happened Capt. Wentworth has lifted Anne into the air and placed her on the seat at the back of the trap. Thereafter he promptly links arms with a young woman some ten years younger than Anne and saunter’s off. Super Alpha or what!
Why, by the end of the book, Anne – who everyone says is losing her looks, although she can play the Pianoforte and is neither loud nor nags – will succeed in prizing Capt. Wentworth away from the two young chicks who are after him must remain one of EngLit’s great mystery. I once worked in Miss Austen’s Uncle’s house, and very nice it is too.
That is how to write a Romantic Movie with a final scene taking place in a Country Church. The End. Wash and repeat.
http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/woman-arrested-for-calling-911-over-pizza/2jgxlqmv
—
What happened?
It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilisation.
It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed.
–Sir Kenneth Clark, Civilisation
Marcus that bit with the 9-1-1 call is terrible, but unsurprising.
Great series, made just before political correctness would have made it impossible. If you had a typical education, like I did, and know too little about the history of Western civilization and even less about great art and architecture, watch it. Netflix has it.
I love the look of shock on the face of the
husbandschlub when he sees his wife in the black dress before she goes out on the town without him; as if it were the most normal thing in the world for a wife to wear something sexy forany random Alphaanyone but him when she presents herself to the outside world.Cuckolding isn’t just of seculars anymore.
Reminds me of this:
http://tinyurl.com/m29rn96
Rollo, and if you make any — any — objection to your wife going out without you dressed to kill, you’re an insecure, controlling freak who doesn’t trust her and is probably one fit of anger away from beating her up.
This is what Dad’s Night Out looks like – compare and contrast:
It seems like every time I see a movie where a strong father is introduced, invariably, we get the
“ding dong” scene where the ex-wife (and often the more professional, white-collar, rich and awesome new husband/boyfriend) is reminding the dad to make sure he makes the kids dinner. Usually there’s a female teen that helps put dad in his place. The mother usually looks like Dana Delaney or Jessica Lange, etc.
AND If the mother ISN’T seen within the first 5 minutes of our introduction to the dad, she’s clearly dead (tragically) or has been swept away by aliens or something. It’s never just a dad who is reasonably divorced, or (gasp) a single father.
The last true father’s rights movie, sad to say, was a 30 years ago, and remains the standard: Kramer vs. Kramer.
My wife and I noticed Paul Blart, Mall Cop, was actually very father friendly, as was, oddly enough, that Area 9 or whatever it was, with the aliens in South Africa, a few years ago. They got the father/son relationship (and importance) narrative out there….via the aliens of course. Not real human beings.
As a ‘sidebar’ to the OP (and since I know Dalrock is interested in data, so didn’t want to derail the discussion on Cane Caldo’s blog), the national study center “Kids Count” has released an updated national USA “Data Book” on “State Trends In Child Well-Being” (in PDF format): http://datacenter.kidscount.org/files/2013kidscountdatabook.pdf
Individual states, such as Utah, Texas and others, are also releasing updated reports as well. I saw this mentioned in a local newspaper today:
.
Sad relevance to the OP: while movies and media continue to knock down fathers, in “real life” fathers are more valuable than ever. The media and State may never be able to fully compensate for a destroyed family — but that doesn’t seem to prevent them from trying.
Enrique,
That is the opening scene from Tom Cruise’s/Stephen Speilberg’s 2005 movie War of the Worlds. Ray Ferrier (Cruise) works as a longshoreman in New Jersey and you see him operating a crane to unload a containership piled high with containers of Chinese crap imported into this country. He finishes his 12 hour union-man-day and drives home recklessly in his mint condition 1970s bad boy car to meet his now pregnant ex-wife who is dropping off their two kids (one a very young Dakota Fanning, and his son who is about 15.) You also meet his ex-wife’s strapping new handsome, educated, young, and apparently high earning new husband Dan, who finally got to sire his seed into Cruise’s ex-wife’s womb. She gets out of Dan’s tricked out super-awesome SUV, walks around Cruise’s house in Jersey to make sure it is “fit” for her children to be left there for the weekend (examines his empty refrigerator, makes fun of the engine block sitting in the kitchen), and talks down to her former husband to remind him that his son has a report that is do and further reminds him (shames him really) that it is his responsibility to take care of the kids. Cruise’s town quickly becomes assaulted by the Martian invaders and he grabs a mini-van and high tails it up the Taconic Parkway to Westchester New York where he and his two children find refuge in his ex-wife’s new gorgeous McMansion (assumedly bought and paid for by her new improved husband Dan.)
That was the opening scene.
I don’t watch media like movies or tv per se, but I have a question. For all the dearth of portrayals of normal competent family men doing normal competent family things, are there any portrayals of a nice normal mother doing nice normal wife things, ever, at all, in any way? There was a couple of mentions of single fathers being adequately normal, i.e. provided the wife wasn’t there to beat up on him, but are there any portrayals of a normal mother being consistently nice to her husband?
I’d never noticed that before, but you’re right. When I think of the good father characters I’ve seen in TV shows, especially good father/son interactions, the mothers are gone. Captain Sisko and Jake in Star Trek DS9 – mom died in a flashback in the pilot. Farscape: Jack (dad) is great in his episodes, but mom died of cancer when John (son) was young, so she’s only in some flashbacks and dreams. Even Andy Griffith: dead mom.
If Mom’s still around, Dad is bound to be at least a little goofy and in need of guidance, if not a complete moron, whether you’re talking about newer shows like Home Improvement or older ones like Bewitched.
@Cail Corishev
Yes, it’s an excellent series. I watch it every so often just as a reminder of sorts (along with reading Sir John Glubb’s work). I really like the style of presentation, too, as compared to many modern documentaries (which seemingly have to entertain people with 30-second attention spans).
—
There’s another interesting quote from the series worth mentioning:
Are there any portrayals in mass media of normal mothers being also loving wives? Any?
Are there any portrayals in mass media of normal mothers being also loving wives?
There was one that we watched a while back, several years ago, but it’s been sometime in the past 10 years. It was called 7th Heaven No, it wasn’t perfect, but the wife was a loving wife who respected the male lead as the pastor he was, as her husband and as their 7 kids’ father.
I don’t think I’d seen one for years before that one nor have I seen one since. Of course, we don’t watch much television anymore. Still, I don’t think there’s one to speak of.
There are plenty of films from the 1900s to early 1950s of such portrayals. The same can be said for fathers over that time period.
Lord Clark of Civilisation was such a poseur: his grandparents were in trade, so he was, despite appearances, Nouveau Riche’. For a Scot his accent was entirely fake.
“Lord Clark of Civilisation”
Hahaha!
Regardless, he is then one of the more respectable nouveau riche (though, I don’t know if he meets the strictest requirements of nouveau riche).
—
Anyhow, on the topic of civilization, a horrid example of its absence:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/05/15/Pregnant-Woman-to-Be-Executed-for-Leaving-Islam-After-Giving-Birth-State-Dept-Idle
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/sudanese-woman-sentenced-death-apostasy-23729074
@Elspeth:
I think the people at Family LIfe, FOTF, etc. get so excited at the prospect of any “Christian” themed mainstream film that they neglect to view it critically.
THIS, amplified.
They focus on the big three: Fornication, homosexuality, nudity. If it meets those criteria without being overtly anti-family (according tot their definition), they rubber stamp it.
I’m waiting for an official “Churchian Seal of Approval” for books, movies, music albums, etc., to make its debut. As a matter of fact, I’m surprised FotF or Family Life hasn’t already come up with one.
@DrTorch:
I had no idea this movie was supposed to be a Christian movie.
Apparently no one in that production/writing/directing crew ever read Phil 4:8
I can’t think of a single quality “Christian” (or more accurately, “Christian-themed”) movie that I’ve seen in my adult lifetime (Heaven is For Real might qualify as one, although since I haven’t yet seen it, I can’t make a judgment call on it). Churchian-themed movies, OTOH, are a different matter altogether.
No, I doubt that the production crew of Moms’ Night Out has ever read Philippians 4:8, or very much of the rest of the Bible either. How else to explain films like this one, Courageous, and FIreproof being labeled “Christian?” Given that churchianity has polluted everything else it has ever touched, it would seem only logical that it would seep into Hollywood to masquerade as actual Christianity while doing just as much damage as Hollywood’s secular powers.
Kirk Cameron’s baby sister? She was on Dancing with the Stars. The media made a big deal out of her submitting to her husband in a patriarchal sense.
@Elspeth, thanks for the info. I may try to rent 7th Heaven to watch with my wife.
7th Heaven was great. Sadly, when Jessica Biel started getting involved in nudity for magazines at age 18 or 19 (or however old she was) that kind of jeopardized the credibility of the show. The producers even sued the magazine that did the photo shoot, I think it was “Gear” magazine…
…and I think the show went off the air a couple seasons after that.
@Marcus D
We tend to mock Clark – and not just because his son Alan was an uber cad and Alpha Male and favourite of Iron Lady Thatcher – but his famous series (which I confess to having enjoyed at the time) now looks terribly pretentious. ‘Look at this building/painting/statue, what could be more wonderful than that, and now look at these ghastly people with their ill-fitting clothes and ghastly accents, what could be more awful’ is more or less how it seemed to go.
Clark read Art History at University (i.e. can’t paint); my close-friend (close because he sat in the desk next to mine) from school did likewise and he was just the same and likewise went on to lick up to European Aristocracy as he waffled on about the delicate use of light and shade. They are a type.
I also agree with Rollo that they get lathered up that there even exists an ostensibly Christian movie. The crowds that rush to the theaters are no better. This behavior shows up when businesses run ads with the fish symbol too. merchandizing the Christians must be the most simple demographic to sell.
“For a man to be a King, the Queen must die.”
William and Mary did pretty well.
“I think that Evangelical / Churchian culture are so insulated that just the prospect of having a “movie made for us” and thinking a secular culture is showing them some legitimacy supersedes any critical thought about what messages the movie might actually be promoting.”
True, but the culture is so fractured it’s not just churchians. See blacks with Obama, for instance.
The Descendants is a good red-pill flick.
On a slightly different topic Dalrock:
Having a coffee in a local cafe before going home from work yesterday. Two teenage Asian high – school age girls are sitting next to me and I overhear parts of their conversation. Their uniforms are from a local Christian school. They talk at length about God. So far, so good.
Then the conversation switches to boys…
Girl 1: “I’ve “given my body” to my boyfriend”.
Girl 2: “Well, you’ve really given your bodies to each other”
Girl 1: “The Bible says not to.”
Girl 2: “Well, it actually says you can but shouldn’t.”
Unfortunately Dalrock, what you (and the Manosphere) say about The Hamster is only too real.
“If you had a typical education, like I did, and know too little about the history of Western civilization and even less about great art and architecture, watch it. Netflix has it.”
Will Durant’s Story of Civilization series is also readable, lively, and comprehensive. Paul Johnson’s works add a usefully skeptical edge to Durant’s wry but sunny classical liberalism.
Churchill’s History of the English-speaking Peoples is still the tops.
I’m actually surprised more Churchies didn’t lose their shit over Heaven is for Real, or God’s not Dead. Apparently feminine primary sex issues sells more to the female Christian demographic.
I used to listen to Family Life today, and Focus on the family, here locally on the Christian radio station in DC, while driving to/from work.
It hit me a few years ago, as well-meaning as these guys think they are, they continually prop up this notion of women as saints, and reduce “headship” to the father making decisions about where the family will vacation.
Which reminds me, I completely shut “Dr.” Bill Bennett out of my universe when unexpectedly, one morning on his (now gone?) radio show, he broke from politics and started boot licking single motherhood, women, moms, you name it. I thought he had been possessed or something, because it was such an unusual insertion of a topic from a guy and on a show I only knew, as a libertarian, to be right-leaning. He went on and on, including every cliché, (even the, “most men leave women” and “all these deadbeats” ones that have no basis in fact).
It was a vomitus al-mangina attack on fathers, many of whom are working stiffs like myself who were on the way to work (paying 30 percent of their income in Child Support).
ANYTIME, I hear a guy talk about how other men need to “step up” and all this, they are removed from my audio-visual or literary man-file. Mark Driscoll is another one.
@Rollo
“Heaven is for Real” is bogus. Everyone knows it. “God’s not Dead” is a polemic; not art. Polemics only appeal to a very small group of people.
Men don’t buy as many books, magazines, music, TV shows, or movie tickets. They pay for more of them, but they don’t buy them. Feminine anything sells more to females in any group. It’s not peculiar to Christians.
are women really that stupid?
A general thought hits me: What is the likelihood of a “Christian” movie ever having a strong father figure if nothing else in society, whatever the source has one?
I would still hold those at FotF and FLToday accountable for not pushing for such with their bully pulpits, but I wonder if that isn’t as much of a factor as any blue pill-ness in the church world.
With respect to Taken, it’s worth adding that it promotes the ludicrous myth that young, empowered, independent American female tourists in France face the considerable risk of getting kidnapped by sleazy, evil Albanian gangs that are supported by corrupt high-ranking police officers. The reality, of course, is that the majority of foreigner prostitutes in Western Europe are young women from impoverished Eastern European regions, and they either doing it all willingly or they get lured to Western Europe with ludicrous fake job offers. And, of course, there are in fact many Western European female college students who work part-time as prostitutes in order to finance the lifestyle they think they are entitled to.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the Bible is, unfortunately, sufficiently ambiguous about the true nature of men and women to be used as ideological justification for misandry and gynocentrism. Churchianity is just one result. It’s time to admit that any religion is a huge source of potential danger to men.
Hoellenhnd2 is somewhat correct in accusing it of being a feminist myth. Most Muslim (Caucasian) male kidnappers don’t kidnap young, liberated Americanized women because they see that it would be futile and lead to huge trouble. Instead it’s either non-Westernized young women from other Middle Eastern countries, from Eastern Europe and sometimes from Central Asia, South Asia or even Southeast Asia. It’s more acceptable and more practical too, since prostitution is normal in both Asia and Eastern Europe, so taking a few prostitutes off their hands won’t bother them.
I don’t agree with hoellehund2’s anti-religious bias though (due to non-agreement with atheism).
This behavior shows up when businesses run ads with the fish symbol too. merchandizing the Christians must be the most simple demographic to sell.
I’ve been meaning for a while to write at length on this on one of my other blogs. I have no idea what criteria the publishers of “Christian” business directories use, if any, to screen for the contents of their publications, but I can attest that the few times I’ve availed myself of such businesses have been dismal experiences.
I don’t have an anti-religious bias. I think Tertullian, St. Paul and St. Augustine were great guys, for example. But organized Christianity is mostly crap.
@hoellenhund2
Not at all. Churchianity exists despite the clarity of the Bible. This is why their arguments are so trivially easy to defeat. The problem is, they have placed their feminism above the Bible. I’ve given a truckload of examples in this blog, too many to try to list here, but for just one example consider the CBMW invention of a sin of servility for wives. This is flat out BS. I challenge you, them, or anyone else to find biblical backing for it. It simply doesn’t exist. But it doesn’t need to exist, because the Bible is something to be overcome in their teaching, not something to follow.
patriarchal landmine asks rhetorically if the first act of a woman was to be deceived by a snake.
Talking of Miss Austen, coincidentally I was testing a shonky projector I got off the ‘bay last night and stuck a random DVD in the PC. It just happened to be Russell Crowe giving it large in “Master & Commander”. Damn, it was so good I ended up watching the whole glorious rollickin’ 2 hours. Not a wife, or a lady in need of a husband (and his good fortune) in the whole thing. There were some prayers though.
On the backs, and the numberless corpses of men like Lucky Jack and his jolly jack tars did Ms Austen’s oh so sensitive and delicate Floating World pivot. A lesson for us all, I fear.
@Tam
The twenty or so book series is fantastic. Truly recommended. The film was excellent, but the books even better…guaranteed
The title of the movie is fishy. Shouldn’t it be called “Wives Night Out”? It’s even more subversive than I thought. After all, most of them are married and they aren’t unwed mothers with illegitimate children getting welfare from state/federal government entities. So, why the lack of emphasis on marriage in the title?
innocentbystanderboston: I didn’t realize I was THAT close to an actual movie. Guess that’s a testament to how generically anti-father they all are. Hollywood seems to only have a few actual script paradigms in a sense, and nearly every movie that’s going to be greenlit had better fall in the zone of one of those areas I suppose.
TV is even worse, even more “stock” than movies. They keep making the same, now female oriented, cop dramas, and lawyer shows.
If I see one more pilot for a 1990ish NYPD Blue knock-off, reframed for the 2010s, with some semi-hot MILF, who by way of the introductory trailer, kicks ass on the streets (awesome MMA), beats up men, tells lawyers (and judges!) what she “really thinks”, has cute/clever rejoinders to retarded suspects in their holding cell, puts her either sexist partner or misunderstanding Beta Male Mangina in his place, and privately sucks cock on the side…all with wind blowing in her hair as they close the trailer for the show…while she poses bad-ass-ed-ly…
…well, I’d have to trash the current script I’ve been working on…
Enrique, you forgot the difficult relationship with teenage, rebellious daughter from broken marriage!
Other than that, I’ve had the green light from four studios. When can you have the scripts finished by? With a few judicious name changes+ different cities + blond/brunette and redhead, I reckon we can sell the same basic script to each
I haven’t seen the film yet, but despite the dubious trailer I’m inclined to think that it’s not Fireproof/Courageous levels of bad, for two reasons.
1. It’s hated by the right people. I’ve seen several feminist reviews which positively loathe the film for its putative message of women belonging in the home. This doesn’t mean it’ll be a good movie from the perspective of us here, but sometimes you can tell a lot about something by who hates it.
2. Patricia Heaton, after starring in the excellent (as a dire warning) Everybody Loves Raymond, is now starring in The Middle, which is one of the very few shows on TV with a competent dad who exhibits real leadership. I have no idea if she thinks about or even knows there is a Christian non-Churchian perspective on gender roles, but her work on TV is on the whole a pretty good advertisement for men being men.
It might be a terrible movie in terms of its message. But I wouldn’t pass judgment without seeing it. It might be a pleasant surprise, by the (admittedly low) standards of its genre.
To continue from the Chastity Ball link I posted a week or so ago, something like it, but “approved by liberals” (thus, okay): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/ben-nunery-dad-daughter-wedding-photos_n_4466529.html
Spawny Get: Yep, you’re right. The way to show the woman doesn’t have a QUITE so perfect life, is to give her a bitchy daughter, who actually just serves as a doppelganging foil for the narrative of the show…so we get lots of cute “sorry sweetie, nice try with the slutty outfight…change our clothes back…I was a teenage girl once too” (says the mother going out with her married cop buddy). The shows are so over the top. Mom’s so knowledgeable and wise.
Here, take a look. I’ve been in L/E for over 20 years, and I’ve only seen about 10 women who look like these women:
http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/against-the-wall/photos/female-cops-detectives-tv-gallery#id=16
That’s a top 16. The new trend is to take Couger Housewives and give them a badge or medical or law license…then you have a show. For a couple seasons.
@Matt
What is the purpose of a movie trailer? Why did they choose to release that trailer? Is it acceptable to entice men to an alter-call with a bikini carwash? How much more important is eternal life in Jesus Christ than a stupid movie?
By all means: Go see it. There are so few ways to boost your pew-cred…
Sp[eaking abpout movies, has anyone seen this?
Both the Bible and also Qur’an are hardcore men’s literature, when read without the lens of the culture industry getting in the way. The secret is to read it with “new eyes” and not let any of your feminist conditioning get in the way (we all have some).
I saw it. As an atheist, and a guy who taught philosophy a few times, I found it sorta interesting. The Kevin Sorbo character, I think, was based loosely on rabid atheist kooks like PZ Myers and Greg Laden (look him up). These people, who have tenure, feel themselves thus empowered to make as many enemies among their students as possible.
For the record, though, I don’t believe even these loonies would be allowed to go so far as to fail their students for disagreeing with them. Exaggerated, but an unlucky student might get close to this if he falls into the wrong idiot’s classroom.
In any event, I thought the film was quite well done, and respectful to all sides. I’d recommend it. It is *not* a philosophical film, but it does illustrate some of the nonsense that goes on in academia (asskissing, egomania and self-importance run rampant there, at levels which put the Mormon church to shame).
Best, Boxer
Spike: God’s not dead, but it sure looks like the lead male character’s razor budget is six feet under, and has been for years.
He could raise 3 litters of rats simulataneously in that hairpile.
No eating soup and getting anything but the liquid inside his mouth, either. 😉
This’ll end well:
Practical ways that a wife should be submissive to her husband
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=883475
Dramatic works can be elusive: the writer let’s his characters speak, but what you read into their remarks and actions is up to you; which – Boxer will please note – was why my coruscating A’ level essays on Jane Austen were marked down so much – being anything other than devoted to and in awe of the Blessed Jane was regarded as Heretical by my blue-pill teachers.
By way of example, a couple of days ago I completed my viewing of the Movie of Edna O’Brien’s novel filmed as The Girl with Green Eyes. The setting is 1960s Dublin and a country girl falls for a middle-aged married man (albeit separated from his wife) and moves in with him; her Uncle, and cousins then invade the man’s house with a view to removing the young woman: the village priest points out that adultery is worse than murder. One can see from reviews of the film how this scene is now viewed with horror by the liberated people of today – autonomy for adults is the watchword. At the end of the movie, however, she leaves the man (she ceases to be haaaapy) and moves with her girl friend to London. Her last line – a voice over – is that she now attends evening classes and is meeting many interesting young men. All Man-o-sphere types will easily see that the woman is now well on her way to a regular place on the Carousel. Perhaps her relatives in Ireland – though obviously fighting a losing battle – were not so stupid after all. What one sees in fiction is up to the reader, and no two readings will necessarily evoke the same response.
They’re so predictable, aren’t they? None of them even touch on the question of “practical ways”; they just go on the attack against submission itself. One person rolls out “mutual submission,” parsing the passage in the usual obfuscating way; another says she should admit as long as his “requests” correspond with “right reason” (and who makes that judgment?); another tries to limit it to spiritual matters like family prayer; another uses the ad hominem of suggesting that the original poster might agree with some badthink extremists (without saying what’s so bad about those people); another says the wife should urge her husband to be the public decision-making face for the family while she guides him privately. A few see no need to pay lip service to the passage at all, stating outright that they see no reason for submission in marriage.
I’d accuse them of rebuilding the mound, but their mound is so large and well-fortified that they never allow a grain of sand to erode from it in the first place.
The interesting thing Cale Corbishev is that when a young woman is into a guy and wants to marry him she will be extremely submissive to the man – bringing out the man’s protective instincts – which is why men perceive their adoring girlfriends as incapable of duplicity, dishonesty or deceitful. The Bible thus merely says that that state should continue beyond the date of the wedding. What man would choose to marry a woman who was strong empowered and independent ™? – like a horse she would need to be broken-in first. Women should make up their mind what it is they want; Pump and Dump Single-dom plus Cat; or Marriage plus children.
@Cail Corishev
and who makes that judgment?
I imagine CAF posters would self-elect for that role.
—
I’ve yet to [truly] understand why the Ephesians passage is never analysed in relation to other similar passages (with the “Churchian” interpretation of Ephesians being in contrast to the interpretations of the other similar passages).
—
@Opus
The interesting thing Cale Corbishev is that when a young woman is into a guy and wants to marry him she will be extremely submissive to the man – bringing out the man’s protective instincts – which is why men perceive their adoring girlfriends as incapable of duplicity, dishonesty or deceitful. The Bible thus merely says that that state should continue beyond the date of the wedding.
This is a very good point. What I think might be a factor is that women (it seems) don’t [always] recognize their own subconscious behavior (for one minor example: clothing choices have been shown to vary across menstrual cycle).
“Churchianity exists despite the clarity of the Bible.”
Yet Churchians always find Bible verses to justify their BS, don’t they? Why are those verses there? Just asking. Maybe the Church should have been more careful when canonization, I don’t know.
@ hoellenhund2
“Yet Churchians always find Bible verses to justify their BS, don’t they?”
No they take what is written out of context. Example the Bible clearly states in Psalms 14: 1 “There is no God”. It is a fact. However the whole verse states “To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” See big difference. That is why some try and use deconstructionism to make the Bible say what they want it to say and not read it within context of what is being said.
“Why are those verses there?”
Are text volumes not made out of verses to be read as a whole?
“Just asking.”
Me to
Enrique,
Yeah. Let’s get real. Great looking women can get more money, more easily than being a LEO. Most people take the easy route. Even the ones that do go into the profession will be wafted towards being in publicity in MOP-facing roles (as opposed to being active on the street).
Being great looking as a woman usually requires weighing in at what? 90-110 lbs? Going to have to be waving around a gun a lot more than a 6’4″ man to get respect. H-LOTS (Homicide-Life on the streets) covered this in an early episode (IRC) One of the male detectives (Meldrick?) very nearly got shot because his female partner didn’t have the muscle to step in and back him up physically. (Great Show)
Re Cougars with a badge…Body of Proof leaps to mind. Loved Dana Delaney (some decades ago), but 62 heels at crime scenes…really? The early series of UK’s Silent Witness had an emotional unstable daft bint medical examiner, I stopped watching very quickly. Getting female viewers seems to require endless off topic drama, exactly what turns off men. And they wonder why boys head for video games…
Sp[eaking abpout movies, has anyone seen this?
I have seen in my country and I have liked it. The main flaw is that the character of the professor is a a caricature. He should have been more subtle in his dismissal of Christianity (more underhanded contempt and less open hostility) and have some positive aspects. There is not a person who is 100% evil, the same way there is not a person who is 100% good. Even Hitler and Stalin had some positive aspects in their private life.
However, it was a good film. As a (Catholic) Christian, it was refreshing watching the faith reflected in a film, after lots and lots of liberal and nihilistic propaganda. Topics like the problem of evil, the doubt, the conflict between God and the world were well depicted…
Gods Not Dead is not bad. Sure it has caricatures. Its a B movie. The inclusion of the Duck Dynasty guy was a mistake. As is the admonition to text everyone in your contacts saying Gods Not Dead…….silly.
But the discourse is pretty good. The take down of Hawking and Dawson is not bad. The depiction of the GF who wants the lead male to drop his case……for her…….is a refreshingly honest portrayal, if also a caricature, of female manipulation.
And topics like the typical entitled dominant American girlfriend, of course, LOL…
@hoellenhund2
In my observation they rarely have Bible verses to justify the BS. In the cases where they do, they are relying on rationalizations varying from extremely weak to flat out absurd. Ephesians 5:21-33 is the most common area of rationalization. Starting on the least absurd side, feminists will take Eph 5:21 and thrust it into the context which Eph 5:22 creates. Prior to Eph 5:22, the instruction is general, and not specific to marriage:
5:22 then changes the topic to marriage and gives specific instruction to husbands and wives:
Feminists claim that 5:21 is actually the verse which changes the context from general instruction to specific instruction to husbands and wives. This is not just weak from a plain reading of the verses themselves, but this one misplaced verse would then through its vagueness undo what are repeated and very clear instructions which show that wives are to submit to their husbands. Assuming mutual submission in marriage would mean Eph 5:21 was placed there to nullify the clear instructions which immediately follow (Eph 5-22:24), as well as other very clear verses in the NT (1 Pet 3:1&5, Col 3:18, 1 Tim 2:11, & Tit 2:5). The OT doesn’t help feminists either, and starting with Gen 3:16 the idea of headship is very clear.
The next least-absurd rationalization also centers around Eph 5. The argument here is that the word “head” didn’t mean “leader” in Greek at the time Paul wrote the Epistle*. However, they don’t offer a meaning in Koine Greek which makes any sense in context; the most common suggestion is “head of a river”. So at best they are claiming that 5:23 is unintelligible (because they chose to make it so). But even if we stipulate that 5:23 is unintelligible, the passage still leaves us with clear instruction for wives to submit to their husbands:
If you are a feminist, that is an incredible amount of rationalization for a whole lot of nothing! Yet they focus on this, because it is the best they have.
These are as I said the least ridiculous examples I’ve come across. On the flat out absurd side, is Sheila Gregoire explaining in her book that recognizing a husband’s headship means giving him lists of chores (see excerpts here). Another would be Sheila rationalizing the instruction not to deny sex as meaning that wives should only give their husbands as much sex as the wife feels is good for the husband (she compares it to doling out snacks to children). She also claims that when the Bible says that each spouse’s body belongs to the other sexually, this means that wives are permitted to deny sex by telling their husbands:
Another example would be the ridiculous rationalization I shared here of this verse:
See here for a sober analysis of the passage.
I’ll give honorable mention to Dr Wallace and his exegeses of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. He is trying to answer the question of whether women are commanded to cover their heads in church. In my opinion unlike the vast majority of NT instruction on men and women this passage leaves room for interpretation. What makes Dr. Wallace noteworthy is he first explains that the most rational reading of the passage is the one feminists hate. Then he goes on to rationalize it away because following the Bible would be “humiliating” to modern feminist Christian women.
I won’t try to do an exhaustive listing and refutation of the rest because it would only take up space and it would look like a straw man. However, if you have specific examples you have seen which you would like me to address, please list them.
*This overlooks the fact that “head” in Hebrew very clearly means leader. For example, in Judges 11 the people plead with Jephthah to lead them in battle. Jephthah responds: “If you take me back home to fight against the people of Ammon, and the Lord delivers them to me, shall I be your head?” The OT is littered with examples like this. Since it is widely accepted that the Apostle Paul spoke/read Hebrew, his using the word head in Greek as it was used in the OT seems likely (to me), and it fits with any sane reading of the passage.
Thanks, now I see the issue much clearer. It’s amusing to see how far Churchians are willing to go in warping Biblical messages in order to further their agenda.
Biblical Study is new to me: so I thought I’d have a look at Ephesians V – I have my great grand parents KJV dated 1873 for my text – and I would have said that verse 22 is the beginning of a new topic and that it is simply perverse to read it backwards into verse 21 which seems to end the previous section and which otherwise simply makes verse 22 somewhat incoherent. Certainly, were I being asked to consider this Chapter in a legal setting that would be my view, and I would have thought any other view would be dismissed pretty sharpish.
In one of the first classes I ever taught, I got a final paper from a student which proposed small gray space aliens as the ultimate creators of humanity, and the earth as a laboratory for their biological experiments.
Naturally, I thought that the content was pure balderdash, but the paper was so meticulously done, well-written and precisely argued that I at first assumed he was having a bit of a laugh at my expense. In a very delicate and respectful conversation a couple of days later he suggested that he was sincere. (I still think he was fucking with me, and it was pretty funny to read it.) He got an A on the paper and in the class. Had I tried to fail him as a lesson in groupthink, the associate dean would have changed his grade back to a 3.5+ and I’d have been out on my ass. If you lecture at the university level, your job is not to enforce uniformity. It’s merely to judge whether the student has read the course material and come to his own conclusion in a moderately rational way. If he has, you’re tasked with grading his work on its merits.
If your kids are students and are being hassled by their instructors, the best thing that I can suggest is that they stand up and politely assert themselves. University is (or it ought to be) a petri dish of different ideas, and I think that too often the kids are too eager to be spoonfed opinions by people who live in the academic echo chamber themselves, when they ought to be doing what the protagonist in the film did. In that regard I enjoyed the film. Sure, the reviews are bad and the actors are largely amateurs, but there was a decent and relevant message in there.
@Dalrock
That is a link to Gmail.
[D: Good catch. Fixed.]
To add to what Dalrock was saying, for those who don’t know: St. Paul and the other writers of scripture didn’t put chapter and verse numbers in their letters. They just wrote the letters. The numbering of verses for the sake of convenience was done later, when the Church assembled the books into the bible, and then (for non-Catholic bibles) sometimes altered again by later translators. I don’t know whether the Greek and Hebrew of the time even had punctuation and breaks between sentences and paragraphs (Latin didn’t).
So if someone tells you that the “paragraph” in Ephesians 5 begins with verse 21 so it must apply to verse 22, that just means the publisher of his bible chose to break the paragraph there — probably because he too had been taught wrongly about the context, or he was intentionally trying to soften verse 22. But if you ignore the verse numbering and whatever paragraph breaks happen to be in your copy, and just look at the content, it’s obvious that 21 goes with 18-20 as one thought (sentence) and 22 starts a new thought with a different focus. The participle “being subject to” (subjecti) is in sequence with the previous participles: understanding, speaking, singing and making melody, giving thanks, and being subject.
It’s funny: every Catholic bible I have breaks the paragraph between 20 and 21, even though every one ends 20 with a comma or a colon while 21 ends with a period. So they know that 21 is a continuation of the sentence in 18-20, but for some reason they split it off and stick it with 22. Makes no sense, unless you’re pushing mutual submission, I guess.
Dalrock says:
May 18, 2014 at 11:13 am
Excellent analysis. Thank you.
“Makes no sense, unless you’re pushing mutual submission, I guess.”
The theory is that mutual submission is better than none at all. Turns out the theory was wrong.
On the topic of translators changing the meaning without changing the specific translation, my Bible has two contradicting explanations for Debra’s rebuke of Barak for him refusing to go to battle unless she comes with him (Judges 4:9). Debra tells Barak that because of him insisting that she join him there will be no glory for him in the battle. Instead, in a fitting punishment to the crime God delivers the head of the commanding army to a woman (but not Debrah):
The footnote calls it for what it is, a rebuke due to his lack of faith. But on the same page there is a separate sidebar which is used to make the Bible more feminist friendly. The feminist sidebar explains that the passage is teaching men that they need to be like Barak, not to avoid his sin:
Dalrock,
That is horrid, but not surprising. Blech.
hoellenhund2,
Men justify many things with lots of excuses, inside and outside of Christianity. Are you as hard on other areas as you are on Christians? I would guess not, or you would see that this is not a Christian problem but a human one.
Those feminist apologists spin lies like a spider spins a web.
The hamster was strong in that one.
Brad I have never seen hoellenhund2 turn a blind eye to anything feminist. Considering that most non-Christians are told lies about Christianity all the time (often by churchians), it was unlikely that he would know the debt of depravity that has been reached in the twisting of the teachings of Christian living. Granted he can be a bit harsh at times, but he has seemed fairly consistent to me.
In the exegeses that Dalrock linked to, Gilbert Bilezikian and his book “Beyond Sex Roles” is criticized (and rightly so) for the mockery it makes of the actual teachings in the Bible on the roles of men and women.
I purchased that book some years ago at Willow Creek Church because I was trying to get to the bottom of the contradictions I kept running into in the teachings of popular Church leaders and the Bible. I noticed that at the Willow Creek book store there were no opposing views to the egalitarian model.
Later I found out that Willow Creek had a policy of removing from leadership anyone who opposed the egalitarian model, as well as opposing views from their bookstore.
It was obvious that Mr. Bilezikian was not using scripture in proper context to make his arguments, and that he was basing his view on current trends, assumptions and feelings, I threw Mr. Bilezikian’s book in the trash after reading it and realizing that even as a ‘know your enemy’ possession, it was useless.
should be: I was trying to get to the bottom of the contradictions I kept running into between the teachings of popular Church leaders and the Bible.
Looking for something else on the Net, I came across an article – 8 women one should not marry – by J. Lee Brady at what turns out to be Charisma Magazine – which seems to be a Christian Magazine where he says that marriage involves mutual submission pursuant to Ephesians Ch V verse 21. No mention of verse 22.
This phrase makes absolutely no sense. At best, it conjures up images of two people who are sitting around on a Friday night repeating: “no, you choose what we’re going to do…” ad nauseum.
In any team, someone has to be in charge.
JDG,
Bilezikian was a prof at Wheaton College. 20-25 years ago Wheaton had a penchant for cracking down on students who pushed back against things that didn’t square w/ the Bible.
There have been a lot of students from there to take leadership roles in churches.
DrTorch I didn’t know, but I’m not surprised. It’s so sad that the majority of Christian universities have strayed so far from the faith. Most of these universities are populating the podiums in Western countries. It is a very sad state of affairs.
“This phrase makes absolutely no sense.” .
Ah. The basis of many a horrible old “comedy” sketch from “black&white times” (the lads like to goad me on my relative antiquity). Like this ..
“After you, old man”
“No, after you, I insist”
“No no, after you, my dear old thing ..”
etc., as the various stout parties mill about interminably in the doorway.
Apparently spirituous liquors were about ten percent stronger (a.b.v.) in those days. Explains a lot.
Must get me some of those newfangled “macros” to handle this confounded tagging business, what …
@JDG
I did a short post on Willow Creek awhile back. They have done a lot of damage.
I stumbled across this podcast today. Slightly off topic but related in a mom’s night out sort of way IMHO. Very sad.
It is J. Lee Grady, fyi.
> 8 women one should not marry
Read the comments. I would never recommend marrying an addict, for example, but a woman replying was offended because she struggled with that and felt ruled out. That is the tough thing with reality, it does make life hard for those who are messed up.
I would run now from a lot of things I would have tolerated earlier in life.
BTW, the Charisma site appears to be vulnerable to the heartbleed bug. Not a good move on their part.
I feel like when dads aren’t idiots, they’re the Flandersy betas a la Adventures in Odessy. There need to be more Atticus Finch types portrayed.
Oh hullo? Mine host has most graciously (yet again) disguised my error.
Tags him allsame fixyfixy.
Thank’ee kindly, landlord.
Women, how do you judge your own modesty? (*sigh*…)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=883573
Movie recommendation: 3 Days to Kill, a recent Kevin Costner movie. Similar in some ways to Taken — secret agent dad dealing with daughter and ex-wife and bad guys all at the same time. But no new guy for the ex-wife, who instead is portrayed as having held out for dad’s return. Connie Nielsen is the ex-wife, so she’d be worth returning for.
As far as the Churchian Seal of Approval from FotF, it already exists at pluggedin.com — FotF movie reviews. Invariably, if it’s “clean,” it gets multiple stars (actually, electrical outlet icons), regardless of actual artistic quality or philosophical/theological merit, and vice versa.
I expect to catch Hades for this, but there are three nonChristian movies that I believe have some value in them re marriage/family, if you can get past the coarseness.
Those would be:
“The Family Man” with Nicholas Cage and Tea Leoni;
“Secretary” with David (?) Spader and Maggie Gyllenhall;
and “Idiocracy” (last one ONLY for convincing 3-digit IQ types to have children; it’s rather a foul movie, despite its clear value for this purpose [I’ve bought it as a gift before]).
I have sympathy for women and their clothing: for over fifty years James Bond has worn a D.J. [what I believe Americans call a Tuxedo]; when he visits M he is wearing a business suit, and when on the continent of Europe a light-weight suit. He never has to worry whether he is being provocative or for that matter overdressed. He says little and only ventures his last name. In offices, women (who never stopped rabbiting) tend either to dress inappropriately or to wear clothing that makes them look like F to M transvestites (eighties padded-shoulders come to mind – who can watch a movie like Die Hard now with padded-shouldered corporate-cubicle bitch needing to be saved by her blue-collar separated cop husband Bruce Willis without laughing). The English invention in the 19th Century of dark business clothing replacing the more flamboyant or colourful costumes of the 18th Century marked men out from women as serious players. No woman can achieve this without either de-sexing herself or looking ridiculous.
Iron Lady Thatcher with her fake accent wore blue dresses. This (and the fake accent) marked her out as lower middle-class. Had Upper-Middle champagne-socialist Shirley Williams been P.M. (rather than one of the Gang of Four) we would have had Tweeds and if I may say so, a better modulated English accent.
Mine, by the way, if you are buying a round, is shaken but not stirred.
I am not entirely sure that Secretary should be seen as a movie supporting Biblical marriage. Gyllenhall plays a cutter and Spader a man with sadistic onanistic tendencies. But hey, this is Hollywood so they forget their problems and live happily ever after. THE END
Not that I am personally offended by Spader’s manner of dealing with poor Typists, indeed …. 🙂
@Dalrock,
In your discussion of Ephesians 5, you mention that the feminist argument connects 5:21 to 5:22, and makes the “mutual submission” concept (which should be obviously nonsense to anyone who looks at the concept without previous bias) central to the following discussion. I actually think they have a good point regarding the connection of 5:21 to the following verses, but it destroys their argument about “mutual submission”. Because if 5:21 is indeed connected to the following verses, then we have the following:
5:21: Paul says Christians should “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”.
5:22-24: One example of submission to a fellow Christian in authority — wives, submit to your husbands.
5:25-33: How the person in authority should act — husbands, love your wives.
6:1-3: Another example of submission to a fellow Christian in authority — children, obey your parents.
6:4: How the person in authority should act — fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.
6:5-8: Another example of submission to a fellow Christian in authority — slaves, obey your earthly masters.
6:9: How the person in authority should act — masters, “do the same” to them (not obedience, clearly — I believe this refers to treating them as fellow Christians who bear God’s image) and stop your threatening.
So the feminist argument that 5:21 is connected to the following verses is basically saying “wives and husbands are one example of how Christians should submit to each other in Christ”… but they conveniently leave out the other two examples that immediately follow. I would submit that if 5:21 does connect to the following verses (and I think it does), then it is followed by three examples of how that should look: wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters (which in today’s world would apply to employees and employers). In none of these three is it a relationship of equal authority or “mutual submission”; rather, in all three there is a common pattern. “Subordinate person, obey the one in authority over you. Person in authority, treat your subordinate well and do what’s best for them.”
@DrTorch –
I attended Wheaton about 15 years ago, and while I was there this did not seem to be the case. At least, I can’t say I noticed it personally (I’ll grant I could have missed what was going on). Do you have any examples of such crackdowns you can cite?
Opus says:
May 19, 2014 at 4:05 am
“I am not entirely sure that Secretary should be seen as a movie supporting Biblical marriage.
Not that I am personally offended by Spader’s manner of dealing with poor Typists, indeed …. 🙂 “
Check out the B- movie “Inhuman Resources” sometime. A convicted serial killer with a past history as a manager and a major grudge kidnaps 6 people and chains them to desks in an abandoned office building. He’s the ultimate “boss from h*ll”, much worse than the ones in “Office Space”, even beyond the bosses in the “Dilbert” comic strip. If you ever played Dungeons and Dragons, you’ll understand when I describe him as Lawful Evil. Interesting end to the movie, too. Some moderately bloody killing, mainly just some pain and humiliation. (One 10-seconds of bare topless chick early on in the movie WRT nudity.)
@Luke
Sounds interesting, but a little strong for me (much as I find Titus Andronicus a little much – poor Lavinia attempting to get the message down as best she can). I think I prefer that scene on an ominous thundery Saturday when Tippi Hedron as Marnie come into a deserted office to do some extra typing for Sean Connery – beautifully done by Mr Hitchcock and Mr Hermann.
Luke
I like the list The secretary is very interesting to see with redpill eyes.
The best part of idiocracy is the opening 20 minutes or so when it lays out the ground work and premise of the story. It is a comedy for sure but you can watch it being played out in reality. I guess that is why it works.
I need to see the family man.
@Robin
I don’t think you and Dalrock disagree.
[D: Agreed.]
Unfortunately the Catholic Catechism stresses the mutual submission and leaves out the wives being submissive to their husbands part. Even though intelligent people understand that the catechism is only a summary of the doctrine of the Church, many are arguing that the Catechism is the rule and therefore the scripture is irrelevant. The fact that the Church would stress that part in the Catechism and leave out the part about wives submitted is curious to me, it is just on a long list of things that are causing me to doubt the CC and lean towards orthodoxy.
@Michael Neal, is there anything about submission in the matrimony part of Catechism?
Opus,
The most important part of that movie was at the very beginning, where the exiting secretary correctly identifies Gyllenhall’s character as a submissive. But she does it in almost a demeaning way, like a “put down” against Leah (Gyllenhall). There was so much that was communicated in the disgusting look and two words she used to shame Leah….
…basically (exiting secretary to entering secretary) #1) don’t you know young lady that we have feminism now, that you don’t have to do this anymore, demean yourself in this way to get money and resources from men? #2) if you accommodate him (your new boss) in this way (giving in to his patriarchal desires) you do damage to feminism by taking away its power which harms the rest of your gender and #3) I have absolutely no respect for you because you respect him.
The movie was pure red pill, a total testimony to the patriarchy. Think about it, Gyllenhall was miserable and the way she got past her misery was to cut herself. She had no idea what she needed to make herself STOP feeling miserable so she cut herself (physical pain masks the emotional pain.) Along comes Mr. Grey (James Spader.) He tells her, does not ask he tells her (headship) that she will never cut herself again (and she stops.) Then she is happy. He tells her to “bend over” the table and he spanks her when she misbehaves or when she “shit tests” him. That is him correcting her feral behavior. This behavior becomes routine in their office (him constantly correcting, her allowing him to correct her.) That makes her VERY happy. This is almost erotic for her. She realizes what makes her happy and she tries to get her beta male boyfriend to spank her in the same way (even putting the hairbrush in his hand and asking him to swat her on the behind) but he just doesn’t get it. Because of that, she can’t love him, she is already in love with E. Edward Grey. The ultimate “shit test” on her part was the worm on the piece of paper with the red circle drawn around it. Mr. Grey does the ultimate form or correction. He commands Leah to bend over the table, to hike up her skirt, pull down her pantyhose, and expose her vagina and anus to him from behind in a total and complete submissive stance. Grey then proceeds to masturbate all over Leah (he does not sex her, simply cums all over her back) and sends her back to work. This correction, this ultimate form of complete and total domination is so erotic to Leah that she has to go to the ladies room and masturbate herself. She is in complete bliss, total happiness, no other man can make her that happy. She is horrified when he fires her. She is instantly denied her corrector, and she seeks out whatever form of correction she can find in the classifieds, finds none, and crawls back to Mr Grey begging him to take her back saying that she will submit to whatever treatment he feels is appropriate. He tells her to sit at the desk, not to move. She doesn’t, even pisses herself sitting there so long. Satisfied in Leah, patriarch Mr Grey takes his “property” (Mr. Grey’s property = Leah) home and bathes her and cleans her up, takes care of her. Now she is happy again…
…I remember discussing this movie with two feminists I was sitting next to on the plane. They both saw the movie, and both loved it. I asked them why they loved it and they couldn’t quite explain it. I asked them if they loved the parts where “he hit her” (the spanking) and you could hear a pin drop on the plane. They gave me this look as if they were caught in a total and complete PARADOX (trying to reconcile their love of the movie with their hatred of men hitting women as that is the very bottom type of behavior in the feminist imperative) and I could see that they were without words. It made me feel very good to see two women swallowing red pills and beginning to understand that feminism runs contrary to the nature of women, even if they had to see it played out in a movie. Hopefully they started to turn from the dark side of the force.
#23 on Amazon’s Top 100:
http://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books/ref=pd_dp_ts_b_1#2
Been on the top 100 for 877 days.
Wow IBB, just wow
well done. The film has just gone back on my to (re)watch list
@Rollo
Well, then they must believe it! There’s no duplicity or escapism involved. Everyone only ever does and supports what they actually believe, right? And since the Bible is such a bestseller that they do not include it on the list so we can actually have a contest for everything else, I guess we can conclude that everyone is a believing Christian doing their best to follow Christ, and the principles of the church…
Well, to be fair there are an awful lot of Disney’s ‘Frozen’ children’s books in the top 100 too.
@Spawny Get
Haha!
That’s right, and “50 Shades of Grey” is the Christian marriage book of the century. I mean, the only thing that’s missing are actual marriages, but that’s a minor quibble. And the only additions are lust, perversion, fornication, etc. These things are vestigial, when you really think about them. They don’t change the nature of a relationship.
I’m glad there was an included appeal for the goodness of “The Secretary” on the basis of what feminists love. That is hilarious.
The Tom Leykis podcast linked above brings up several issues I have mentioned in the past. First, let me summarize the video. Fiend calls in to tell them around 4 years ago, (bored), she separated from her husband for one month, just long enough to get knocked up by a blue haired blond man. She and her husband are dark. She admitted it is on her mind, all day every day, that eventually it will be discovered that blond child is not her husband’s.
I believe she said at one point that he told her if it is not his kid, he does not want to know. If I heard wrong, feel free to correct me.
Most MRA’s today think they are really on the ball, but actually they are at best just very strong newbies on men’s issues and Marriage 2.0. I do not claim to have all the answers; after 40+ years I am still seeking knowledge, and will until my last breathe, but I have learned a few things over the years that most of you have apparently not yet considered. You will in the future, if you open up your minds.
The predominant view on MRA blogs and boards is rather obsolete, and has not yet really grasped the true significance of the changes. I call it a mixture of Bull Ape (i.e. Neanderthal) and White Knight, by men who believe they are totally enlightened MRA’s.
1. Maternal custody is not the worst thing that can happen to a child. It is by far the worst thing that happens to most children.
2. The word “cuckold” is a totally obsolete Neanderthalic word in an era of Marriage 2.0. When the average first time bride has had 11 lovers before the wedding, all non-celibate men are cuckolds, therefore no non-celibate man is a cuckold. Grasp reality and delete the word from your vocabulary.
3. Some men will do anything to protect their kids. Run into a raging forest fire; tackle a 3900 pound Holstein bull; jump into an insane surf; even pretend to ignore a child who is not their own to protect their own four kids from maternal custody in the hands of a vile, low-life, scum bucket like that woman. Some of you would not; we understand that. And, you need not apologize for your feelings, just as fathers who overlook a wife’s adultery in order to protect them from maternal custody need not apologize for that decision. Just don’t whine when your kids are all messed up by maternal custody because of your decision.
4. [b]That husband in the Leykis podcast knows very well that kid is not his.[/b] I know this because of the comment that he said he doesn’t want to know. He has 4 other kids to protect from that fiend, IF HE CAN. She says she thinks all day, every day, worried when the truth will come out. I assure you he is more worried about the truth coming out than she is. He cares for his kids. She cares for nothing but herself. I don’t think he will succeed. She is too messed up and she will eventually pull the trigger. But, a Real Man[tm] at least goes down swinging.
5. If he does succeed, and those kids grow up okay, he will never regret over-looking her adultery. As I said, she is not important, except that she can destroy the family any time she wants. If a man could have an adulterous wife decapitated and get sole custody, many would, but we cannot. That is reality. Stop with the insults and deal with reality.
6. If you don’t like the reality in my comments, don’t have sex with any woman in the Anglosphere, (or have a vasectomy) and better yet GTHO.
Outstanding IBB
I’d be interested in knowing where the CCC promotes mutual submission. I couldn’t find anything; it appears to avoid the topic of wifely submission entirely (while touching on the later parts of Ephesians 5 like submission to political authority). I may have missed it, though.
In any case, we’re fortunate that the CCC doesn’t claim to cover everything we believe, or to be dogma in itself, and it cannot override scripture or previously settled doctrines. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, for instance, quotes 1 Peter 3 (which goes further than Ephesians by stating that wifely submission applies even with a pagan husband) in support of wifely submission, and even says that a wife should not leave home without her husband’s permission. It says she should obey her husband with “the greatest alacrity of mind.” (It does qualify that with, “in all things not inconsistent with Christian piety,” which might seem like weasel words, but note that it doesn’t give her the option of NOT obeying in inconsistent cases; it only limits the requirement of “the greatest alacrity of mind.”) (Part 2, chapter 8, question 27).
St. Thomas Aquinas lectured on the husband’s headship, and said, “The female needs the male, not merely for the sake of generation, as in the case of other animals, but also for the sake of government, since the male is both more perfect in reasoning and stronger in his powers.” St. Augustine said, “What can be worse than a house where the woman has the mastery over the man?” Many doctors and other leaders of the Church have pointed out that Jesus, even though he is God, was subject to his parents, and that both Jesus and Mary (whom we consider sinless) were subject to Joseph as the head of the family. The Church has always drawn the parallel between the relationship of husband and wife and the relationship of Christ (the Bridegroom) to His Church, and we certainly don’t believe in “mutual submission” there.
So we have plenty of long-standing Tradition to go along with Scripture on this matter; it really doesn’t matter what dancing around the topic the CCC may do.
Thanks guys for the accolades. I just call ’em as I see ’em.
I expected the feminists to tell me something, give me some red meat as to why they loved the movie but it was clear, it was indeed painful for them to put into words why they loved it. Obviously they felt that Leah was empowered (and she was) by submitting to Mr. Grey. That is very empowering for a woman (a submissive can always be a submissive, but a dominant without a submissive is just a man.) But to use those words… the feminist imperative simply does not permit that kind of language. So they were stuck there just smiling at me and wanting to gouge their own eyes out running frantically on that hamster while to try and justify something (anything) and failing.
Eh, wasn’t the character who dismissed Gyllenhall’s character as submissive the ex-wife of the Spader character? I haven’t seen the film in around ten years or so, and I could be misremembering, but I thought that the secretary who is leaving in the beginning is carrying a box and has the severance check, in the envelope, in her mouth as she is leaving while the Gyllenhall character is arriving for her interview. It’s a foreshadowing of what will happen later when the Spader character fires her as well. But the character who dismisses the secretary as submissive is Spader’s character’s ex-wife, and it happens a bit further into the movie. If I’m remembering right, she’s there to pester the Spader character about the divorce settlement, and he, dominant as he is, is hiding in a closet in his office. How manly.
I’m not sure it changes the basic thrust of your point, IBB, but it’s a different spin – not so much from one secretary to another but rather from ex-wife to future wife.
Great… this has turned into a race to the bottom between the so called blue and red pill movies.
@JDG: related in a mom’s night out
Definitely need to get a DNA test whenever a kid enters the picture. I’m always flabbergasted that men actually put up with this. It is *very* common at least in my experience over the years. To my knowledge I have several children. Of course, I figure any man that puts up with this crap deserves to be taken advantage of. But that is just my opinion… Any woman that claimed a child was mine, that wanted me to take care of him – the DNA test would be performed ASAP. Men that allow this – deserve everything that happens to them…
Nova,
Oh you may be right. But I think the point she was making (whoever she was to Mr. Grey) was that she had NO respect for Leah because she correctly identified (in Leah) what she hates about women who do nothing but a disservice to the Feminist Imperative. She gives up on Leah the moment she sees her. And her parting shot at Leah is to denigrate her as she walks out of the office.
Yes, the point is similar, but even more on point for the topic of this blog, because it’s coming from ex-wife to future wife. Ex-wife being the obvious ball-busting feminist bitch, and future wife being the submissive. Of course there’s more going on there as well, but I think it makes the point more, well, pointed, because it involves the relationship aspect.
One gets the impression that the ex-wife knows that one reason her marriage broke-up is because she was too bossy/pushy/dominant for Mr. Grey, and she sees in Leah the kind of thing he likes – and she despises that. But it’s also almost like she knows there’s a relationship going on there, or one that is soon to occur (not sure about the timeframe, haven’t seen it in years). Perhaps Grey had relationships with his other former secretaries – that’s hinted at in the beginning, I think. Perhaps one of them cratered his marriage, and she’s aware that he likes submissives (and not women like her)? It’s at least suggested, in that Grey has his own personal crisis about his fetish, which would make sense if it was one of the things that led to his divorce. But in any case, yes, clearly the ex-wife has nothing but disdain for a submissive woman – it just seems like there may be more going on there, and also something personal, behind the venom.
@Cane
Luke’s comment “and “Idiocracy” (last one ONLY for convincing 3-digit IQ types to have children; it’s rather a foul movie, despite its clear value for this purpose [I’ve bought it as a gift before]).” also had me laughing.
Idiocracy as a motivator for good people to have more kids…such a sweet idea (and amusing).
There are many very serious conversations to be had, but I see no reason not to use humour to spark them off.
Cail Corishev says:
May 19, 2014 at 12:41 pm
JPII referred to mutual submission in Theology of the Body. I’m no biblical (or Roman Catholic dogma/doctrine scholar), but the older pronouncements (e.g., Casti Connubi) seem to speak a little more clearly to the idea wifely submission, hence the ‘husband-head, wife heart’ analogy in the example.
Regarding the recent linked post by MarcusD on CAF, the OP essentially distills down the practical application of submission in real life; an impasse related to a difficult decision with non-trivial repercussions resulting from the various alternatives. Who, if either, of the spouses is called to submit to the authority of the other? The modernists at CAF can not seem to reconcile themselves to the idea that it is the wife who is called to yield. Marriage is not and can not be a democracy.
I wonder whether IBB will also be espousing the Red Pill qualities of the forthcoming movie 50 Shades of Gray, which seems to be filed-off (the surnames of the male character are identical) from Secretary.
I suppose there is no point trying to argue against IBB’s Masochist+Sadist=Happiness thesis. Deleuze wrote an essay about Venus in Furs wherein he argues that a Sadist and Masochist would not be a blissful match for each other.
I once had a girlfriend of the masochistic type (and her mother had once been sectioned for the regulation twenty-eight days – so perhaps mental illness runs in families) – “Opus I want to sacrifice my very being to you” – she breathlessly wrote. Never again; I am just lucky she did not make any false allegation – at least against myself. Seriously troubled in ways that it is better not to go into on a blog like this. IBB would be more than welcome to her if he feels up to it – Christian duty and all that.
Women may fantasize about being dominated by young handsome wealthy men: the reality is different.
Ha, ha! The Secretary “patriarchal”?!
All I know was it was the worst first date movie ever, topping Richard Prior’s Live! stand-up movie (f-bombs every fourth or fifth word), the previous record holder.
It was weird freaky but not in a David Lynch kind of way. I knew it had to be based on something written by a woman when it hit the happy ending; romantic adventure ranging up to twisted kinky fem-porn is all women novelists crank out.
Like they say, there are some things you can’t un-see.
This was a thesis that he revisited a couple of times, at least. It appeared in both *Differénce et Répétition* and in the intro to Capitalism & Schizophrenia (the first D&G book). I remember this with a touch of lucidity only because his cynicism was a red-pill moment. After reading, I realized that most human relationships devolved into a dom/sub standard with sufficient time.
Another red-pill moment was in Adorno’s *Minima Moralia* wherein he examined the loathsome behavior to which divorcing couples often stoop, which would be completely beyond the pale in any other circumstance.
Funny how the truths espoused on the Dalrock blog are hinted at, so regularly, by great thinkers, in the Great Books For Men…
Regards, Boxer
Opus
Do you know how much fun it would be to play with chick like that? I would have dressing up in all kind off different outfits and everything else. “here put this on” I would have her out painting fences and doing yard work. “get out there and make that money daddy” “Am I going to have to come in there and spank that ass?” If she was a young woman I would tell here to get a degree in nursing and get a job in the field (if she was a wife) “hand me that check”
Opus,
Well our experiences may indeed be different but what I have found (in the world of reality, your word) is that women who fantasize about being dominated, are most fantasized by the men who are #1) the most confident in their domination and #2) care the least if their domination is rebuffed.
I’ve not read it, but color me unsurprised. Thing is, as an intellectual exercise, you can talk about how a leader actually “subjects” himself to his followers by leading them well, with the whole “servant leader” idea and all that. You could say that a husband serves his wife in a sense by leading her in the right direction. You could even say that a wife who follows the words of 1 Peter 3 by obeying her pagan husband in all things and letting her attitude convert him is “leading” him to God, in a sense. In a sense. But that’s wordplay for the purpose of making a point; it doesn’t change the day-to-day issues of who decides whether your 12-year-old daughter can get her ears pierced or when supper is supposed to be on the table.
I think some people who do understand the traditional roles (possibly including JPII) try to present this issue in terms of mutual submission in hopes that women will buy it that way. They’re saying, “I know they don’t like this wording, but if I can just convince them that following their husbands’ leadership is actually ‘mutual’ somehow, their marriages will prosper and they’ll be happy being ‘subject to’ without even knowing it.” It’s an attempt to trick them for their own good, basically, and I think that’s the angle some tradcons take with it. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s likely to work very often, because words do have meaning, and “mutual” can’t just be shrugged off the first time a wife really, really doesn’t want to do something her husband says to do.
If a woman taking her marriage vows doesn’t fully accept that at some point she’s going to have to bite her tongue and do something she hates the idea of, something she thinks is stupid or wrong (I’m not talking sinful stuff here, just something she thinks is a bad idea), then she’s not likely to react well when that happens. And it’s almost sure to happen. It’s hard enough for the woman who DID accept that; but soft-pedaling it to brides as “mutual submission” doesn’t prepare them for the reality at all.
@Spawny Get
Just to make sure it’s clear: My comments about “The Secretary” and “50 Shades of Grey” as informative movies for Christian marriage was meant as farce. The foolish attempt to suss some deep meaning about how feminists really dig Spader’s enthusiasm for submissive women, or how most women really crave a dominant man in marriage is terrible to begin with. They weren’t married. End of story. The whole dynamic is different.
Most girlfriends are sweet, deferential, and submissive before marriage. That’s how dupes get rolled in Marriage Park. Some time not long after the wedding, they decide that being submissive is to get a husband, but being independent is how to keep one after marriage. We hear sermon after essay from well-meaning people about how “women love to be pursued” and so husbands should always being pursuing their wives. That’s because they take unhappy women at their word, but those women have pursuit on the brain because they refuse to submit.
Said another way: What can be pursued is only what is running away.
One thing that Dalrock and I have disagreed on in the past is that women crave leadership. Women crave leadership in the way that we might say children crave broccoli…which is to say not at all, yet it remains that they are so much more satisfied by clean vegetables than chocolate. In their unspeaking parts they desperately need broccoli, but they crave sweets. Constantly pursuing a wife is like feeding her chocolate whenever she wants.
While a lot of Game authors prescribe poison and call it Ipecac, what’s actually needed is just good clean food. People don’t like to hear that, though. They want the tech; they want sorcery.
@Cail
Great comment.
@Cane Caldo re: “Constantly pursuing a wife is like feeding her chocolate whenever she wants.”
Thanks for the exacting analogy.
“Most girlfriends are sweet, deferential, and submissive before marriage.”
Yes, and they did not get that way from being pursued but rather to encourage pursuit. The *reason* why so many married women, after a while of being married, make themselves sour, nagging, and obstinate is *because* they do not want to be pursued any more.
being ‘subject to’ without even knowing it.
Can one be subject and not know it? Serious question. I don’t think it’s possible but clearly someone MUST think it so. And if so, what does this look like?
@Cane Caldo
Empath mentioned this the other day as well. I don’t know if we really are in disagreement here or are disagreeing on terms. What I’m not claiming is that wives will make it easy to their husband to lead. The vast majority of wives will challenge their husband for the position of leader, and of course husbands are taught to cede this if they love their wives. What I’m saying is that especially after a number of years in the driver’s seat, nearly all wives can viscerally feel that something is missing, and a surprisingly large number will agree that what they are thirsting for is a leading husband if you explain it to them.
@Anonymous age 72
I usually agree with what you write, but this is one subject where I can not. The name of the crime should not be forgotten just because women are whoring it up on a regular basis and men are foolishly marrying them. I don’t know what I would do if I found myself in a spot like that. Like you, I would want to do what is best for the kids, but I’m not sure you and I would agree on what that is either.
@Just Saying
Like the Clint Eastwwod character in “The Unforgiven” said, “We all have it coming kid.” I believe that we will all reap what we sow, and we have all done things bad for which we deserve punishment. Still, I can’t under stand why a man will have kids with a woman knowing that she has slept around. It’s gross to even think about.
For the most part, I don’t recommend any man marrying in the USA anymore. I don’t understand at all why I keep reading about ‘red pill’ guys trying figure out how to find a wife in this country (or any Western country). The women here are mostly crazy and misandrous.
@Elspeth, “Can one be subject and not know it?”
Yes, literally, as in, the women are really ignorant. Really really ignorant, like a cow being subject to the farmer but not knowing it.
I’m pretty sure what Cail meant is that when a woman does submission even halfway then the marriage improves a lot as a result (which kinda tells you my estimation of the usual amount of submission women do). But I think what you mean is: “Can a woman act like she is subject to her husband without knowing that’s how she’s acting?” and again the answer is yes, although her motivation may be different than improving her submission to her husband, e.g. she might say or feel “I’m doing this just because! Not because you say so!”
@Cane
My amusement came from encouraging the scene described by IBB. The women gasping like goldfish trying to come up with a response. The same with the Idiocracy as a teaching moment.
IBB also brought to mind that many years ago I had a recording of Secretary that I hadn’t yet watched. I knew what it was about in rough terms, it wasn’t high on my list to watch…but one day I thought I’d get around to it. I got back from work one Friday night and my mate told me he’d leant it to his 70 year old mother…because ‘Secretary’…sounds innocent enough, right? I think that he’s still in the will.
Good question. My answer would be “sort of,” or “up to a point.” But I think I get your point: if it’s never a conscious decision, you’re not really doing it yet.
As others have pointed out, when a woman is head-over-heels for a man in the heady early stages of a relationship, she will gladly follow his lead on almost anything, even contradicting earlier promises she made to herself. I’ve seen a girlfriend cuddle up against her boyfriend’s knees while he watches TV and ask if she can do anything for him. I’ve seen a woman insist that she’d never change her last name because that’s a form of slavery and blah blah patriarchy — and then she volunteered to change it when she met the right guy. These women look submissive, but it’s only because their tingles make them want to do whatever the guy says.
And 50% of marriages do stay together, even in today’s anti-marriage, female imperative-soaked atmosphere. Most of those marriages are not structured on strictly traditional marital roles, but they’re getting enough things right to stick it out.
So I think at least some of the “mutual submission” folks are hoping to extend the honeymoon period by tricking the women into being submissive by telling them it goes both ways, and getting the husbands to compromise enough to satisfy them. They think if they can just get the couple married and get the wife into the kitchen with an apron on while she’s still tingling good and hard, she’ll discover that she enjoys that role so much that she won’t rebel against it. At the same time, her husband will respond by being a good leader, and they’ll live happily ever after.
Problem is, if it worked that easily, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Maybe you can get away with that as long as everything goes right. As long as the husband is dominant and attractive and makes great decisions and life goes well, she probably will be “subject to” without complaint and without really thinking about it, at least for some number of years. But when something goes wrong — he makes a decision she disagrees with, or he has an injury and a bout of depression, or one of the in-laws interferes with things — then you find out if she’s really “subject to” or was just on cruise control.
“Can a woman act like she is subject to her husband without knowing that’s how she’s acting?” and again the answer is yes
I’m questioning whether that is submission at all. She’s either 1) doing what she wants to do anyway and wouldn’t other wise or 2) is doing what she needs to to get what she wants from him (ask me how I know THAT).
Women are after all, not cows….. (pause for the inevitable jokes). Subjection must be a conscious state for humans, since we are sentient. It’s this awareness and rejection of the subjection that sparks rebellion in the first place Doing what you are told is not the same thing as being an aware and willing subject. Or is it?
Encouraging, envisaging damn autocorrect
@Elspeth, great questions, uncomfortable answers.
“It’s this awareness and rejection of the subjection that sparks rebellion in the first place Doing what you are told is not the same thing as being an aware and willing subject. Or is it?”
It is the unawareness that you truly ought to do what you are told that sparks rebellion. Rejection of authority is the same as being an unwilling subject is the same as refusing to do what you are told.
@Dalrock
Sorry, I should have been clearer that we formerly disagreed.
Yes, I agree.
I would add that a lot of women reflexively tack on that while they recognize how great it would be to let their husband lead (i.e., to obey their husbands), they just don’t have that luxury because (surprise, surprise) they have a bad, unsexy, idiot husband. They will happily assent to eat broccoli like they should if only their broccoli tastes like chocolate! It takes long discipline or serious trauma to make one appreciate good clean food after a lifetime of sweets.
Again, I consider a woman acting “as if” she’s obeying her husband (by obeying him …) the same as her obeying him. I truly don’t care if she has mental reservations or whatever; in fact, I’d spin it even more positively: if she still does what he says just to “act” like she’s obeying even when she has grave reservations but, then she’s acting like she sees great value in obeying. Right?
I consider a woman acting “as if” she’s obeying her husband (by obeying him …) the same as her obeying him. I truly don’t care if she has mental reservations or whatever; in fact, I’d spin it even more positively: if she still does what he says just to “act” like she’s obeying even when she has grave reservations but, then she’s acting like she sees great value in obeying. Right?
Yes, I agree. I just thought it strange the idea that Cail suggested was being attempted by JPII. That submission could be made more palatable if you wrap it in the idea of “mutual submission”.
And yes, submission when you disagree is in fact one the evidences to the husband and (to the wife) that she is truly submissive
JF12, I’d agree. She doesn’t have to like it — in a fallen world, she’s pretty much guaranteed not always to like it — but if she honors and obeys, she’s doing her part.
Elspeth was talking about the other end of the spectrum: what about the woman who seems submissive only because everything her husband has wanted so far has matched her own desires? That may count too — she’s not being DISobedient, after all — but it’s not likely to last when their desires diverge. It’d be fair to call that obedience, but probably not submission.
@jf12
Word.
@Elspeth
You’re overthinking this. It’s not a bug, but a feature that both parties benefit from doing good. I hope to heaven that it makes my wife feel good to fix my dinner, and it’s going to make me feel good to eat it and tell her I liked it!
Sometimes our disdain for good is so monstrous that we invent nonsense to make sure we don’t accidentally start preferring goodness. You hear it around acts of charity a lot: “Oh, that liberal fool just feeds the homeless to make herself feel good!” So what? Good for them both.
Pride–trying to show our superiority–is another matter.
Elspeth,
When I was living with fiancée #2, I told her (did not ask, told) that we were going on vacation to Florida the third week of March. In the two years she and I lived together, we did this twice. She “submitted” to me. The second time she posted for her vacation, a co-worker of hers gave her grief saying “….you are going to Florida AGAIN???” Her response was simple: “That is the week my boyfriend owns…” I owned a timeshare. But we went. It was never a question of going where she wanted to go, we went where I wanted to go and she was perfectly happy with that. Never a complaint (probably because she didn’t pay anything other that one plane ticket on the first trip.) Second time we drove down. Again, I did not ask. I just told her we were driving (because I got a new car and I wanted to use it.) She submitted. There were many other things she submitted to but you get the point. She did what she was told but was aware and a willing subject (your words.)
I said that now to lead into this second point, if I had married her (and she had “threatpoint” over me) I would have HAD to ask. Just living with me without a marriage contract, she had no “threatpoint.” It was my way or the highway (and since I owned the home we lived in, not her, she would have had to leave if she didn’t like my rules.) Married, and our entire relationship (the balance of it on who is to submit to whom) changes, because she now has legal leverage of a third party (the “state”) to step-in and make her “whole” at my expense should our living situation not be a happy one. Prior to marriage, if she wasn’t happy she could leave. She didn’t (until I told her to leave because I wasn’t happy with her.) Up until that point, submitting to me was obviously a happy enough situation that she was not willing to walk away…
This is the conflict so many men find themselves in, when they want their wives to submit. We have the “state” and the “state” gives our wives no-fault-divorce and unilateral divorce which means our wives have the legal leverage of “threatpoint.” If they don’t want to submit anymore, there is basically nothing a man can do to make sure that happens. And I’m firm believer that women submitting to husbands are happier women but men have no one to turn to, to empower this behavior in anyway (certainly not the “state.”)
Well, I’m spitballing here a bit, but I don’t think I’m too far off the mark. I think that by calling it “mutual submission,” they’re trying to tell women with a wink and a nod that it’s not really submission at all. A woman getting married knows that she has a certain amount of power to get her way with her man. She expects that she’ll be able to sway him with sex, food, or tears when she really needs to, so if they can start out at 50/50, she won’t have to worry about ever really having to submit to anything she doesn’t want to. They’ll make most decisions “mutually,” and when they disagree she’ll throw him a few she doesn’t care much about and claim privilege on the ones she does.
So I think when tradcons preach mutual submission to women, the women hear “I get to be in charge when it counts, as long as I’m not a feminist harridan the rest of the time.” And most of the people preaching it know that and are okay with it, because they think as long as couples are getting most of the script right — going to church regularly, trying to be nice to each other, being committed to marriage — husband and wife will tend to fall naturally into their proper roles and the marriage will just work.
Which completely ignores human nature and the sins of Adam and Eve. But the other side of it is that they assume that if you preach the truth of marital roles, every woman on earth will run screaming from the room and there will never be another marriage and the human race will die out. So even if they acknowledge that their bait-and-switch method isn’t the ideal, it looks a lot better to them than honestly preaching the Truth.
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@Cail re: “what about the woman who seems submissive only because everything her husband has wanted so far has matched her own desires?”
It’s because he’s such a great leader, and all.
As a traditional conservative, you have identified the greatest FEAR traditional conservatives have but you got it backwards. It is not that traditional conservatives believe that preaching the truth means every woman runs screaming from the room and no more marriages. It is instead that traditional conservatives FEAR that single men will be smart enough to know what leverage they lose in getting submission AFTER they say “I do” for fear that every single bachelor will run screaming from the room and there will never be another marriage and the human race will die out.
Elspeth,
I get the impression that the soon-to-be-sainted JPII said what he said about mutual submission not necessarily because he believed in mutual submission. Instead, I would argue that he said it to try and get feminist women to marry AT ALL. I think he was trying to deal with the conflicts that occurred in his day and age and wanted to do all that he possibly could to make feminist women (who he believed might be the majority) to want to marry while at the same time, trying not to make marriage look all that bad to men who wanted submissive wives. He was trying to play both sides because marriage was paramount and had to be saved at all costs.
Where I disagree with the concept of trying to motivate women into marriage is that the church needn’t offer women this carrot. It was always unnecessary. I think we have found (with 60 years of first wave feminism, 30 years of second wave feminism, and now another 30 years of third wave feminism) that even the most ardent feminists want to get married. They want the resources. They want a man out earning resources and they want all the legal protections that the “state” offers women with regards to marriage. They want the stability of marriage even if they don’t always want the penis that it comes with. Marriage was always (and still is, maybe even more so) a great deal for women. It is not so much a great deal for men, but it is only over the last 20 or 30 years that men have started to gradually come to this realization. And our society suffers for it because we refuse to change the rules to make things more accommodating for men. Women wishing that men would “man up” is not going to change that.
It may help to keep in mind that JPII was a very good looking young priest to whom, even more than most priests, was constantly barraged by women wanting to confess sexual sins and the failings of their husbands. I think he was primarily motivated by those women when he wrote “Love and Responsibility” urging that husbands should cease asking their wives for sex unless the wives wanted them to ask.
I suspect this is the case for a number of celebrities: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/05/19/pamela-anderson-opens-about-childhood-sexual-abuse/
Just Saying says:
May 19, 2014 at 1:13 pm
@JDG: related in a mom’s night out
“Definitely need to get a DNA test whenever a kid enters the picture. I’m always flabbergasted that men actually put up with this. It is *very* common at least in my experience over the years. To my knowledge I have several children. Of course, I figure any man that puts up with this crap deserves to be taken advantage of. But that is just my opinion… Any woman that claimed a child was mine, that wanted me to take care of him – the DNA test would be performed ASAP. Men that allow this – deserve everything that happens to them…”
Absolutely agreeing with this.
From the defunct website http://www.nomarriage.com, via the magic of the Internet Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050122025236/http://nomarriage.com/paternity_test.shtml
20% of men who think they are fathers are not.
Random DNA checks prove that 20% of men who think they are father are not.
This statistic is truly shocking.
There’s a whole evolutionary game theory worked out to explain this.
Simply put, a woman wants to bind a man into a monogamous relationship so he provides food and resources for her and her children, while she maximizes the genetic diversity of her children by having them with several different men.
DNA test at childbirth should be required to determine the actual paternity.
Discussion from pregnancy message board:
It took me 2 years to get pg, we finally said screw it, stopped trying, and went to Mexico. Whammo, a vacation and margi’s did the trick.
Your son looks kind-of Mexican, right?
shhhh- don’t tell my husband
From the Guardian, 1998-07-14: “More than 25 years ago the consultant obstetrician E E Phillipp reported to a symposium on embryo transfer that blood tests on between 200 and 300 women in a town in the south-east of England revealed that 30 per cent of their children could not have been fathered by the men whose blood groups had also been sampled”.
From the Dallas Morning News 1999-10-31: “DNA Diagnostics Center … an industry leader, says 30 percent of the men it tests prove to be misidentified. Similar numbers come from the Texas attorney general’s office, which enforces child support: About a quarter of the men who disputed paternity in the last year turned out to be right. In Florida, the proportion was one-third”.
From the Sunday Times 2000-01-23: “David Hartshorne, spokesman for Cellmark, said that in about one case in seven, the presumed father turns out to be the wrong man”.
From the Santa Barbara News-Press 2000-02-27: “For the population as a whole, “The generic number used by us is 10 percent,” said Dr. Bradley Popovich, vice president of the American College of Medical Genetics. [15 to 25 % has been determined from blood tests of parents and offspring in Canada and the US.]”
From The Age 2000-03-26: “About 3000 paternity tests are carried out a year in Australia. In about 20 per cent of cases the purported father is found to be unrelated to the child. This figure is estimated to be 10 per cent in the general community”.
From The REPORT Newsmagazine 2000-04-24: “The rate of wrongful paternity in “stable monogamous marriages,” according to the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, ranges from one in 10 with the first child to one in four with the fourth”.
From the Independent 2000-05-12: “… biologists Robin Baker and Mark Bellis … review of paternity studies also suggested frequent infidelity, with extra-pair paternity running between 1.4 per cent and 30 per cent in different communities”.
From The Globe and Mail 2000-05-20: “Anecdotal evidence suggests these numbers bear out in Canada as well…. Maxxam Analytics in Guelph, Ont., performs approximately two paternity tests a day. And according to Dr. Wayne Murray, head of the human DNA department, one out of four men who come in pointing a finger at their spouse is not the biological father of the child in question”.
From the Sunday Times 2000-06-11: “More than 250,000 tests a year are now conducted in America, and about 15,000 in Britain…. roughly 30% of men taking the tests discover that they are not the fathers of the children they regarded as their own. In the wider community, social scientists say up to 1 in 20 children are not the offspring of the man who believes himself to be their father”.
From the Observer 2000-09-03: “One study followed couples waiting for NHS fertility treatment, where the men were ‘azoospermic’, meaning they produced no sperm and were totally infertile. The researchers found that 25 per cent of the women became pregnant before fertility treatment started”.
From the American Association of Blood Banks – 2001-02-26: “The overall exclusion rate for 1999 was 28.2% for accredited labs. Exclusion rates for non-accredited US and foreign labs were slightly less at 22.7% and 20.6% respectively”.
Order noMarriage.com manual to make sure you will not be a part of this 20% statistic. And please get a DNA test every time you have a child (or you think you have a child).
JF12, along those lines, I think the main reason that tradcons assume that preaching marital submission can lead naturally to traditional roles and happy marriages is that they start from the assumption that women are better than men — more spiritual, more moral, more devoted to marriage, etc. If that’s true, then it only makes sense to focus your efforts on improving men: get the man to be a good husband, and the woman will naturally fall into being a good wife, because that’s just her nature once the man stops screwing things up. The wife will naturally cede authority to the husband who has earned it.
So they use mutual submission as bait to get the woman into the marriage, having no fear that she will run with it and dominate her husband — unless he’s a loser who needs it, of course. So it can’t fail: she submits to a good husband, or leads a bad one into becoming good enough to submit to.
Not too sure about those NPE stats.
At least here in Blighty, most men who like me who have taken a test due to genealogical interests check out with their surname in a quite remarkable manner, down to the hundred-plus STR level. It’s vanishingly rare, I’d say, being got on the wrong side of the blanket. Has turfed up a couple of mid-Victorian or earlier shenanigans in my own participating surname group of well over a hundred, that’s about it, so I assume it’s safe to extend the figures to cover the several thousands of us currently extant, and the same applies to the other blokes in their names.
Think about it. Pre-Pill and rubber johnnies (essentially and practically, pre-WWII over here) any working-class married woman was either pregnant, or about to be rendered so for the eleventeenth time as soon as their bodies were capable. Old Backdoor Johnny couldn’t get a look-in.
And they kept at it till they either died in childbed/of TB/cholera, or had the good fortune to survive and pass the menopause, having lost nearly every tooth in their head (which is why they all look so thin in old photos, the voluminious clothing, corsets and stays hiding a multitude of other physical infelicities more familiar to us moderns, from Walmart and elsewhere.
Posh women were of course scrutinized day & night by hordes of nosy servants and envious relatives, like some pasha’s seraglio.
I think the main reason that tradcons assume that preaching marital submission can lead naturally to traditional roles and happy marriages is that they start from the assumption that women are better than men — more spiritual, more moral, more devoted to marriage, etc.
I think you may be referring to features of evangelical life. There are troublesome aspects of Catholic discourse, but you do not really have that encoded into explicit teachings or assumed all that much.
.. which isn’t to say they weren’t at it like knives as soon as hubby out the door and safely back doon t’pit etc., if some of the toe-curling anecdotes aged and dementing rellies have laid on me are even halfway true.
But none of the manifold and apparently ubiquitous ‘practices’ were in any way likely to result in offspring, due to there already being a legitimate lodger in residence and growing within the relevant fair lady.
Art Deco, you’re right, that’s not part of explicit teaching, and you won’t hear it from real traditionalists. I think it’s very much assumed by the average Catholic priest or layperson today, though. For instance, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen or heard in Catholic forums some variation of, “A woman would never leave a marriage without an excellent reason.” Modern Catholics aren’t immune from the idea that women are basically smart and good and holy when not being dragged down by men.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/19/canada-expanding-rarely-used-program-that-lets-mothers-live-with-children-in-minimum-security-prisons/
@Luke
What effect does selectivity have on those statistics?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/07/09/how-our-menstruation-fearing-culture-keep-periods-invisible.html
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
MarcusD says:
May 19, 2014 at 7:36 pm
“@Luke
What effect does selectivity have on those statistics?”
Many of them are from tissue banks/organ banks, so are ONLY selected for a child/parent needing a kidney/skin/whatever, and the other considering providing it. Thus, those are not at all the same where a guy’s short-term bed buddy kills the rabbit, and he quite reasonably wonders if it’s from the broker guy she slept with the Saturday night before they met.
“Well, I’m spitballing here a bit, but I don’t think I’m too far off the mark. I think that by calling it “mutual submission,” they’re trying to tell women with a wink and a nod that it’s not really submission at all”
No that is not a spitball it is absolutely correct. It stems from “servant leadership” which is a modern heresy that borders on a sort of Donatism. That is, if the husband can’t submit enough he’s sinning (or else otherwise is) and therefore is not worthy of his ministry. The Church properly answers that her ministers are ministers by the Will of God and their personal state of damnation or efficacy doesn’t apply.
The Church just hasn’t been too keen on applying this to husbands. Which of course is silly because they are ministers of their House by the Grace of God.
@Martian Bachelor
The opposite is true; the original short story Secretary was based on was written by a woman, but it did not have a happy ending. The happy ending was added by the male writer.
Here’s my very tongue in cheek take on it:
http://hipsterracist.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/dont-get-married-hire-a-secretary/
@Luke
Which ones are from tissue/organ banks?
Also, are there newer sources with citations (e.g. with article titles, authors, etc) on this topic that deal with less skewed samples?
If there’s to be mutual submission between husband and wife,there should also be mutual submission between priest and parishioner.
Lay that one on your heretic priest,and tell him to kiss your ass.
He had best do it to avoid being a hypocrite.
Article on the Frankfurt School:
‘Microclimates of Totalitarianism’
http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/04/27/microclimates-of-totalitarianism/?singlepage=true
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A very interesting article by Dalrymple linked from the above article: http://www.libertylawsite.org/2014/04/25/herbert-marcuses-revenge/
they think as long as couples are getting most of the script right — going to church regularly, trying to be nice to each other, being committed to marriage —
and kneeling holding hands bedside as she prays to God and he prays to/for her
and reading age appropriate devotionals to the family
and reading the bible out loud to each other
and wearing a robe and sandals and doing bible cut out dolls
and setting all the programmed buttons on the radio to Christian radio
And putting a fish on their cars
and …….well….
(for a complete list see “Spiritual Leader” tab on mega-ministry church dot com)
Like the Dalrymple article (I think I have said that a lot of times)
“Courageous, Fireproof, or Moms Night Out… It’s amazing how much praise they get from so many Christians I know.”~Stryker
@Stryker Real “Christians” would see through all that, right? … Explained here: http://wp.me/P3P5mL-rR
Does Catholic submissive promote women to be weak and passive?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=883677
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A lot more of those kinds of threads recently.
Could someone post a link or two to Dalrock (and/or other similar bloggers, e.g. SSM)?
The women here are mostly crazy and misandrous.
How did you manage to omit “hopelessly promiscuous?”
The presumed cuck-index is beginning to get my goat a bit.
Look, in civilized populations it’s about 1 or 2 percent. The other studies are either mistaken or have an agenda (driven, I suspect, by feminists and their enablers, preparing the ground for all that “it takes a village” crap. Fine, sod off back to your village then. And get your hand out of my pocket.).
From a 2005 John Moore’s U (Liverpool) study :- “For studies based on populations chosen for reasons other than disputed paternity (table 1) median PD (paternal discrepancy) is 3.7% (IQR = 2.0%–9.6%). While this is not a measure of population prevalence it does suggest the widely used (but unsubstantiated) figure of 10% PD may be an overestimate for most populations”
(Remember, this figure of 3.7% includes all the recent vibrant enrichers from the ends of the earth who flock to our cities because they admire our culture and institutions so much. Or something).
And from a 2006 Current Anthropology paper (Uni of OK) :- “A survey of 67 studies reporting nonpaternity suggests that for men with high paternity confidence (i.e. dad has no reason to suspect) rates of nonpaternity are (excluding studies of unknown methodology) typically 1.9%, less than the typical rates of 10% or higher cited by many researchers.”
I would like to believe that Tam the Bam is correct, yet I know two married men who are well aware that one of their many children was fathered by some Latino waiter or as the case may be, (come to think of it both women made the probability of an amorous encounter with me a distinct possibility – but I passed) and there is another case where no one (perhaps not even the mother) has any confidence in the paternity being the husband or in his case ex-husband’s. My own father used to allege that I was in fact the offspring of an entitled hereditary Peer, a travelling companion of my mother’s. It has never bothered; everyone calls me Lord ^*&^&^ of (*&^*&%. in any case. Coincidence or what?
As I write I can hear the sound of the Pipes – doubtless driven out of Porridge-land by the vibrant visitors so beloved of Tam the Bam. It’s driving me crazy.
Re: “Populations chosen”. Draw the bullseye around where the arrow landed.
Cail Corishev says:
May 19, 2014 at 3:57 pm
You touch on something here that relates to one of the reasons that one is apt to find so strong a voice for mutual submission on CAF. Commenters there on the topic of marriage tend to derive from folks with pretty solid marriages or divorced women. So you have representation from the half of the population (the 50% who don’t divorce) for whom submission is probably not that big of a deal (the successful marriages, many of which I suspect, had a smoother transition from honeymoon to day-to-day living) and from the sector that probably was never much willing to submit regardless.
The ‘happy’ group just can’t understand what the big deal is and the divorcees see the problem as submission proper (calling it abuse in the most extreme examples). You are absolutely right that what we have now is most assuredly not working, but when a large percentage of the population isn’t feeling any direct pain from it, it’s hard to see the problem.
Marriage can be hard – indeed, very difficult depending upon one’s life circumstances. No one is done a favor by sugarcoating the reality that there will be disagreements, including ones like the examples you gave, that won’t just be talked away. So what you end up with are more than a fair number of marriages plagued by unhappiness because of a false premise.
There you go, jf12 :-
This is what the studies declare. The previous high estimates were contaminated by selectivity. In short, DNA tests taken on grounds of suspicion show that as high as one in three may be illegitimate, and it was on these tests that the initial estimates were made and the bullseye painted around.
The subsequent spread of, among other things, hobby genetic genealogy has shown that outside this small group of concerned persons, the rate is much, much lower, with differences being class-based in the main.
Here’s some heavy hitters, Turi King and Mark Jobling, explaining their method (2009).
“Here, we demonstrate through an analysis of 1,678 Y-chromosomal haplotypes within 40 British surnames a remarkably high degree of coancestry that generally increases as surnames become rarer.”
For running simulations they assumed NPT (yet another delicate circumlocution for bastardy lol) of 2% after investigating aforesaid 1678 individual surname/haplotype correlations to establish the rate. They seem to have been quite surprised at how low the calculated rates turned out to be
“This approach yields the following rates: Attenborough 1.29–3.39%; Haythornthwaite 2.07–4.54%; Herrick 1.00–2.47%; Stribling 1.00–2.87%; and Swindlehurst 1.04–2.76%. However, it should be noted that if, in fact, these surnames had multiple founders, but only one founding lineage had survived to yield a sampled descent cluster (see Discussion), then the true nonpaternity rates would be lower than our estimates.”
@Tam, I agree that the rates are different for sub-populations. So what are the rates for the entire population? And more importantly, why is there such deliberate fuzziness of such numbers?
Hurting, yes, there are a lot of guys whose marriages are fine, or seem fine, even though they supplicate to their wives on a regular basis. Those guys will happily preach to younger men that the secret to marriage is compromise and the great wisdom of “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” (I think that’s in Proverbs.)
Right up until the time they get the divorce papers.
mutual submission = wife is in charge
> “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
I used to think that had merit, now it just seems like an excuse for mama to be quite rebellious and demand everything go her own way.
@BradA, it’s merely an empirical observation: “When Mama is unhappy, she goes out of her way to ensure everyone else is unhappy too.”
> ““Can a woman act like she is subject to her husband without knowing that’s how she’s acting?” and again the answer is yes”
The core reason for action is important because it influences so many other things. I would agree that someone who consistently acts submissive is being submissive, but only acting that way rather than being that way is very dangerous, as it allows for a switch to the opposite behavior when the external pressures shift, as they have in our society.
This is part of the reason why dread game can work at times. It counterbalances the pressure to do otherwise, though I don’t think it is a good way to buil things for the long run.
Our attitudes do matter. I believe the Scripture is quite clear on that. We may start with a bad one, but the core will ultimately come out and that is the danger here. I would rather a wife be submissive than not, but I would much rather it be because of core conviction rather than mere expediency. The latter is much too likely to change for the worse.
@HR
That makes sense. Feminist fairy tales never have a happy ending, and the one in the movie did seem tacked on, like they left a lot out, now that you mention it. Thx.
@ jf12:- Well, the John Moore’s paper reckoned 3.7% and the Okie one 1.9%, but they both are hampered by not being primary studies, but rather a survey of surveys etc.
This table from the first paper is more informative, listing country, rate, and importantly, reason for investigation
http://jech.bmj.com/content/59/9/749/T1.expansion.html
What strikes me is the consistency of the rates, across nation and reason for test.
The more accurate the test (i.e. DNA), the lower the rate, and there’s some big numbers thing which I don’t understand going on which seems to reduce the incidence in larger samples. The blood ones seem pretty hopeless, even more futile than polling magazine readers and students (foot of table) it seems lol.
So what should be done to encourage the husband in making decisions? I make 99% of the decisions even though I’ve asked, sometimes begged him to make them. I understand indifference when we go out to eat but I’m talking big things. I know I screwed up in the past with him letting me lead but the more I want him to lead the more I think he fights it. I’ve thought about just saying I’m not going to answer but that alone is rebellion.
[D: Welcome Edith. This might help.]
Re: what we can call Edith’s dilemma. I’m not picking on her, merely exploiting her example. The details do not matter. Understand that first: the details do not matter, at all.
We all agree on the broad picture, that is what matters. The wife says she thinks her husband is not a good enough leader for her. The husband says his wife thinks her husband is not a good enough leader for her. This is the problem, and it is solved by the wife thinking her husband is a good enough leader. NOT by him stepping up.
@Edith
I would suggest saying “I trust my husband to decide that” instead of refusing to answer. The other (harder) part is to follow through and not second guess him. At some point one of his decisions is going to be wrong and/or you are going to disagree with his choice. How you respond when that happens will show him how serious (or not) you are in having him lead.
Edit: Another post I would recommend is this one by Cane Caldo.
How did you manage to omit “hopelessly promiscuous?”
lol
I laugh but I like to think that there is always hope even for the hopeless. Still a society should never make marrying such people the norm.
I tried to cover a lot of ground with “crazy”. Perhaps I should have extrapolated with “self-serving, emotionally unstable, emotionally driven, domineering, deceitful, never satisfied, unfaithful and blatantly promiscuous.”
I also should have added “The laws of the land enable and encourage women to destroy a man, his children, and herself. Why are so many guys who should know better searching for trustworthy, faithful, submissive companions in a culture that produces mostly misandrous, self centered, psychopathic females that will have the option to nuke their families while funneling more money into government sponsored family nuking?”
If you are looking for a woman to marry I recommend two things.
1) Shop in a culture that respects men. Even then choose prayerfully and carefully with the wisdom of many wise councilors.
2) If at all possible keep the US government (at all levels) out of it.
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I’m sorry but I don’t have time for this. Having self castrated, ( real men don’t need balls) I’m busy ‘stepping up’ ™. If only polygamy were legal….. rather than being manly save a ho, I could be manly save a brothel.
Why oh why oh why don’t Other People make the decisions I want them to make? Poltroons!
Whaddyamean “there’s no decision to make, and that’s final”? That’s not a valid decision, because it’s not what I want!
I’m checking out the stepping up blog thing whatever the hell it is. Anyway, I have a greater respect and admiration for any of you folks, Dalrock and SSM especially, who can and have actually gone through some of this…….. Homo programming ? eunuch training ?
I guess in their version of what would Jesus do, the only answer I can come up with is:
Cut his balls and dink off and encourage everyone to ‘step up’ to some more better satanism.
re: “The other (harder) part is to follow through and not second guess him.”
There’s only one reason a woman makes that to be the harder part, and it’s not because the man needs second-guessing.
mutual submission = wife is in charge
It really is that simple.
@Tam – the cuck rate of 10% was a rule of thumb that was used by doctors before modern genetic testing became available. Modern studies do indicate a lower figure, usually 2% or 3%. It would be interesting to know whether the 10% rule was valid in the days before reliable contraception.
“I refuse to choose the restaurant because I would prefer to stay home an eat a meal that you feed to me bite by bite, you lazy wench.” is a perfectly leadery answer, btw.
Doubt it, James K, as crowded extended-family homes and wider neighborhoods, lack of transport and mass media/communication meant there was a lot of surveillance and gossip and almost no opportunities, and has been mentioned, “barefoot, constantly preggers and in the kitchen” was the general lot in life.
Even when I were a lad, a lone man walking the streets in daytime might very well be pulled up by the constabulary and asked his business, i. e. why ain’t you at work, ..sir?
Which is why commercial travellers, windowcleaners and milkmen got their Benny-Hill-type reputation.
But not binmen or totters. Strange that, eh? Not.
I’d hazard it was a lot less frequent than it has become since that Decade of Daily Mail Infamy, the 1960s. Larkin’s 1963, to be precise.
The other (harder) part is to follow through and not second guess him. At some point one of his decisions is going to be wrong and/or you are going to disagree with his choice. How you respond when that happens will show him how serious (or not) you are in having him lead.
Perfectly summed up, Dalrock. You are aware, I’m sure, that this sage biblical advice to a wife in the western world is the equivalent of a root canal: it’s uncomfortable for the recipient, if not downright agonizing, but it has to be done in order to keep bigger and more serious problems from arising. Unfortunately, the normal reaction is to put it off for as long as possible, or simply avoid doing it all together.
I hope Edith is the exception to the rule and takes your advice to heart and acts on it.
JDG,
Okay so basically, live with her (maybe even have children with her) but never get the blood test or the marriage license. Never buy property together. Your house is yours only (as is the mortgage and all the utilities) and she and your children live in it. Because you own everything and she can’t get it from you in court, she will be forced to submit???? Basically, your “marriage” would not be sanctioned by the government (be it state or federal.) I assume you would also encourage living in a state that does not have “common law” marriages (ie: common law = you live in sin together for long enough time, after a certain number of years the state government says you are married and she has the legal power to divorce you for cash and prizes.) That is the ONLY WAY to keep the US government (at all levels) out of it.
Well…
I suppose from a Biblical standpoint, this shacking-up is more Adam and Eve than anything else (there was NO GOVERNMENT to sanction their marriage, no written contract, no license, no nothing) so you could make an argument that (assuming you are faithful only to each other) that this would not be SIN. Of course God Almighty will decide that ultimately…
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/23/single.men.parenting/index.html?_s=PM:HEALTH
Try that and save yourself some trouble
@ innocentbystanderboston
Marriage is a contract.
God already set out the terms of the marriage contract and the contracting parties.
Or are you perhaps claiming that the government should get involved as a 4th party to the contract because it has a better grasp on it than the Father?
” … also encourage living in a state that does not have “common law” marriages (ie: common law = you live in sin together for long enough time, after a certain number of years the state government says you are married”
There’s the rub. One way of skirting round this is to make like the proles, and rent exclusively
(a recipe for a miserable hobo-like peripatetic existence of cripplingly expensive 6-month (max.) ASTs in cold grimy shitholes, completely at some bell-end amateur landlord’s mercy, in UK, I’m afraid).
Doubt you’d find many women keen to take that one up. Because true love only has eyes for
the assets portable and non-portableone’s soul-mate, eh?@jf12
This wasn’t my point. This is about changing habits as well as going against the grain of the culture. It will take some getting used to for both of them. Every leader makes decisions which turn out to be the wrong call in retrospect. My point was that this will be the moment of truth.
Apparently in paternity dispute cases where the woman knows about modern testing and is willing to take the chance she might beat it anyway, especially the couple is from the “wrong” class, and he believes she may have cheated, the rate at which she reports the wrong father is an enormous fraction, over 30%. Keep that in mind: these are dispute cases in which the woman actually thinks there’s a good chance that the man she named really is the father.
But even the couple is from the “right” class, and he has absolutely no reason to suspect her in any way, and she believes she’s covered her tracks well enough to be tested, the rate at which she reports the wrong father is a few percent. Low single digit percentages i.e. an order of magnitude less.
Since the total population is presumably some weighted percentage of the classes, and if unwilling women were involuntarily tested, I think the total could be 10% easily.
Cicero,
That is an outstanding narrative. And we both know whoever frames the question, wins the debate. You just did an outstanding job to design an argument you can’t lose and under those terms I agree with you. Just one question…
…a young man wants to live with your daughter under the terms I listed above (no marriage contract sanctioned by the state, no community property, just live together and have sex only with each other) and wants to bring lots of kids into this world under those terms (and “the state” would term those love children as illegitimate.) Cicero, would you be okay with the marriage contract that this young man is proposing for your little girl and all the bastard children (your grand-children) that he would be siring? And if not (if this is a non-starter for you) then why is it different for your daughter? Why would you insist “the state” sanction the marriage with legal contract?
jf12 says:
May 20, 2014 at 10:22 am
Co-signing the idea that it’s mostly about the frame of mind of the wife (except in extreme circumstances) and less about getting the husband to do better. Who defines what is ‘better’?
A marriage can exist and even perform pretty well even if the man is not hte best leader (again, except in extreme examples). Submission/followership is necessary for leadership to succeed, and no amount of leadership will overcome a woman determined to rebel.
Elspeth says:
May 19, 2014 at 4:27 pm
I get your point, but technically there is no submission per se when going along with something with which one agrees.
@ innocentbystanderboston
No… you are the one that framed the narrative I only asked a question on it.
And as always you just show your ignorance by spouting things you don’t even understand and making up strawman arguments to try and cover your ineptitude.
You see the problem is you have no idea what a contract is in the first place. That is why you can’t even answer the question I posted because when it comes to contracts you don’t even know that you don’t even know.
But I will give you a little hint.
God’s Law = Covenant
Covenant = contract
Contract = law
Now if you really want to put that pride of yours in check to actually try and see the big picture then you might want to have long hard think about what that means. Because the understanding of what I just told you gives a whole new meaning to “red pill”.
If not then please…carry on regardless. Because I find your ignorance is quite droll.
I get your point, but technically there is no submission per se when going along with something with which one agrees.
Yes, I know.
“The next least-absurd rationalization also centers around Eph 5. The argument here is that the word “head” didn’t mean “leader” in Greek at the time Paul wrote the Epistle*. However, they don’t offer a meaning in Koine Greek which makes any sense in context; the most common suggestion is “head of a river”. ”
I don’t think it would be to hard to make the interpretation of it as “source from which flows”. Head, head of a river, not a huge leap. Just as God is the source from who everything flows, the husband is to be the source from which guidance in the family flows.
Or are you perhaps claiming that the government should get involved as a 4th party to the contract because it has a better grasp on it than the Father?
One of the core beliefs of the tradcons that manifests itself in the open frequently, in word and deed, is that the State is the real god of their world and that the word of the God of Abraham is subordinate in all ways to the political fiat of (“conservative”) temporal power. IBB makes that belief crystal clear through his statement.
One more about nonpaternity rates. It is illuminating to compare actual numbers. The number of adoptions within the US last year was 119,000 (foreign adoptions accounted for about 17,000 more). The number of live births was 4,060,000. So the relevant number of adoptions was 2.9% of the relevant number of births, which is the same as the “good” nonpaternity rate. Do you know any adopted kids of “good” families? Then you know the same number of children of “good” families with misattributed paternity.
The number of abortions in the US was over 1,200,000 but a more precise figure is elusive. Hence, the relevant ratio of abortions to births is about the same as the “bad” nonpaternity rate. Any guesses as to paternity rates for aborted babies?
> “I refuse to choose the restaurant because I would prefer to stay home an eat a meal that you feed to me bite by bite, you lazy wench.” is a perfectly leadery answer, btw.
That is repulsive for me. I don’t want my wife treating me like a child in any way, including my eating!
Cicero,
I agreed with you on your argument regarding the marriage contract according to God the Father. I just followed up with a question of my own (the traditional conservative question) which you refused to answer. Those are the fact.
You still haven’t answered it my question. You are a coward Cicero.
feeriker,
This question is for you (well anyone really.)
Are you okay with a man living with and f-cking your daughter and siring children with her without a state/government sanctioned marriage contract and without community property?
That is the only question that matters.
“That is repulsive for me.”
I wouldn’t know, for me.
IBB the state has nothing to do with it or else there would be such a thing as “gay marriage” which is an oxymoron. A man and a woman that marry in a church before God and witnesses or that marry in another country before God and witnesses in still married and therefore not making bastard children.
There was a time in this country when the government was not involved in the marriage process. It didn’t start until certain politicians decided they wanted to prevent blacks from marrying whites. For many centuries through out the western world people were considered married (even by the Catholic Church) if they said they were.
In Europe it didn’t start until the 16th century. In America it started in the mid 19th century.
Why oh why oh why don’t Other People make the decisions I want them to make? Poltroons!
Tam the Bam if this was for me I apologize for whining in your presence. If it wasn’t I apologize for confusing things even more than they already are.
‘Most expensive divorce in history’: Russian oligarch ordered to pay more than $4.5 billion to ex-wife
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/20/most-expensive-divorce-in-history-russian-oligarch-ordered-to-pay-more-than-4-5-billion-to-ex-wife/
—
Guess who initiated the divorce?
> “I refuse to choose the restaurant because I would prefer to stay home an eat a meal that you feed to me bite by bite, you lazy wench.” is a perfectly leadery answer, btw.
That is repulsive for me. I don’t want my wife treating me like a child in any way, including my eating!
For the record, I don’t feed my husband although we have been known to offer each other samples off each others plates in restaurants. But this concept intrigues me because I’ve encountered it before and been asked about it by more than one female relative who has stayed with us while visiting from out of town.
I don’t buy my husband’s clothes. He picks them and buys them himself from the store, but after that it’s on me. Every morning I pick out what he’s going to wear that morning, head to toe, iron it, and lay it on the bed. If he has something else in mind he plans to wear that day he lets me know ahead of time and I iron that.
It doesn’t bother me at all, but I have been questioned as to why I do that “as if he is a child”. My kids pick out their own clothes incidentally. I have answered in myriad ways, but I do wonder about the assertion, that if one man’s wife does for him what another man would rather do for himself, that she is treating him “like a child.”
Honestly, how many wives feed a man his food outside of some sort of erotic context? I’d wager they are very, very few in number. How many women serve their husbands in many ways at all?
Let’s be careful not to discourage women serving their men.
JDG,
Doesn’t matter JDG. There are some very important reasons for government sanctioned marriage. I’ll leave it to Ann to explain it since very few people here get it…
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-06-15.html
Please guys, if you want the manosphere to be taken seriously, do NOT disregard any of the below points just because they are inconvenient or because they are not in the Bible.
I could say that about ANY church wedding if didn’t want to be married anymore. What are you going to do about it if I marry your daughter, have kids, and walk away to marry someone else without that government marriage?
These are the reasons why “government” (the 4th party) got into the business of marriage, something that is a contract between a man and a woman and God. The government did that NOT to remove God from the equation but because the result of marriages are children. That is why marriage is so sacred. And the government wants to make sure that children come first, not him, not her, the children. And Government has actual power to do things here in the mortal world to make sure that it happens provided the marriage is actually aware of the marriage.
CarpeOro says:
May 20, 2014 at 1:42 pm
I don’t think it would be to hard to make the interpretation of it as “source from which flows”. Head, head of a river, not a huge leap. Just as God is the source from who everything flows, the husband is to be the source from which guidance in the family flows.
A survey was made of 2,336 instances of κεφαλή in 36 authors from the eighth century
B.C. to the fourth century A.D. In each case listed, all the extant writings of an author
were searched and every instance of κεφαλή was examined and tabulated with the exception
of fragmentary texts and a few other minor works that were unavailable.
The great majority of instances of κεφαλή refer to an actual physical
head of a man or animal. The other uses are all metaphorical in some sense or other.
It is significant to note that the sense “ruler” or “person of superior authority or rank” occurs 49 times, which is 16.2 percent of the instances in which κεφαλή is used in a metaphorical sense. Of those, 12 are from the New Testament, 13 from the Septuagint, 5 from other Greek translations of the Old Testament, 2 from Herodotus, 1 from Plato, 1 from the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 7 from Plutarch, 5 from Philo, 1 from the Apostolic Fathers, 1 from the Greek Anthology, and 1 from Libanius. That makes it very difficult to accept anyone’s claim that head in Greek could not mean “ruler” or “authority over.”
It should also be noted that out of those 2,336 instances the word κεφαλή meant “source” exactly zero times.
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/tj/kephale_grudem.pdf [pp 48 – 53]
Good find JDG. It is striking how badly reasoned the feminist arguments on the Bible are.
@ JDG Oh my dear fellow, absolutely not. I do apologize for any confusion I may have caused.
I was just trying to recast the poor lady’s complaint about her “ineffectual” husband in the way it came across to me. Without pointing that out (too many words, yes, I am a lazy hound, couldn’t be bothered). I am deeply suspicious of people who demand to be led in the direction of their own choosing. “I vos only obeyink Orders” lies at the end of that little primrose path, I fear.
Complete with a tag Fail. How predictable.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/these-fathers-need-a-wake-up-call/#comment-123184
IBB,
As a Christian libertarian I gladly accept your challenge:
If state governments stop registering marriages, how do you know if you’re divorced? (It is not the state’s business to know.) Who gets to adopt? (The people that possess the criteria of the adoption agencies. The state may insert itself in cases of abuse and neglect just like it does now.) How are child support and child custody issues determined if the government doesn’t recognize marriage? (Default paternal custody established by DNA testing, which ought to be the norm anyway. The father may sue the woman for child support if he wishes – no more litigious than what we have now, and better outcomes to boot.) Who has legal authority to issue “do not resuscitate” orders to doctors? (Of course, under Obamacare we won’t be resuscitating anyone, so that one’s solved.) (Whoever I designate.)
Who inherits in the absence of a will? (Whoever I designate as my next-of-kin, or whoever can establish entitlement – just like we have now.) Who is entitled to a person’s Social Security and Medicare benefits? (Why do you want to perpetuate socialist Ponzi schemes?) And where would liberals get their phony statistics about most marriages ending in divorce? (Obviously not intended as a serious question.)
If one spouse decides he doesn’t want to be married anymore, couldn’t he just say there never was a marriage because the Wiccan priest wasn’t official? (Not sure how this is any worse than what we have now: ever heard of unilateral no-fault divorce? It’s all the rage.)
I could say that about ANY church wedding if didn’t want to be married anymore. What are you going to do about it if I marry your daughter, have kids, and walk away to marry someone else without that government marriage? (Probably crack open a cold one, tell her she was a nit-wit for marrying you, and encourage her to sue you in civil court for whatever civil damages she suffered: which is what civilized people do when one party breaks a contract.)
Under Paul’s plan, siblings could marry one another, perhaps intentionally, but also perhaps unaware that they were fraternal twins separated at birth. That actually happened in Britain a few years ago after an affianced couple took the government-mandated blood test for marriage and discovered there was a reason they were so uncannily alike. (My wife and I never took a blood test. It turns out that she has ancestors with my surname who lived in the same general location as some of my ancestors in the 1800’s, so I guess it’s possible we could be 7th cousins or something. So what? “Marriage license” does not equal “blood test” in many jurisdictions.)
There are reasons we have laws governing important institutions, such as marriage. As in landscaping, it’s never a good idea to remove a wall until you know why it was put there. (We know why it was put there – and it was a bad idea even at the time.)
Marriage is a legal construct with legal consequences, particularly regarding rights and duties to children. (As if. The legal obligations within marriage are one-way: from the man to the woman, via the state if necessary.) Libertarians might as well spearhead a movement to eliminate stop signs. (And if Ann Coulter is going to pick on libertarians, perhaps she should explain why she endorsed Ron Paul for 2012 after the 2008 election: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPygNYXXQGk) A world without government stop signs would be safer than a world without governmentally-recognized marriage. (Nobody is arguing for the banning of stop signs.)
These are the reasons why “government” (the 4th party) got into the business of marriage, something that is a contract between a man and a woman and God. The government did that NOT to remove God from the equation but because the result of marriages are children. (If that were true then government would put the welfare of children before the whims of their mothers – let me know when that happens.) That is why marriage is so sacred. And the government wants to make sure that children come first, not him, not her, the children. (Demonstrably false – a government that wanted to do that would not have divorce and custody laws like we have.) And Government has actual power to do things here in the mortal world to make sure that it happens provided the marriage is actually aware of the marriage. (Then why does it use that power to actively destroy families and children?)
IBB okay I’ll play for a little while.
do NOT disregard any of the below points just because they are inconvenient or because they are not in the Bible.
Really?
You speak as if the government is actually holding people accountable to their wedding vows. People (mostly female) are immorally leaving their spouses not only with government approval, but with government assistance. Why do you disregard that little fact?
If state governments stop registering marriages, how do you know if you’re divorced?
If you are a husband you could hand your wife a certificate of divorce. If you are a wife your husband could hand you a certificate of divorce. This could be used to prove that you where no longer married for legal purposes. Yeah I know you feminists would not like this at all, but there it is. But for all intents and purposes and in terms of accountability how is it any different than what we have today?
Who gets to adopt? How are child support and child custody issues determined if the government doesn’t recognize marriage? Who has legal authority to issue “do not resuscitate” orders to doctors? (Of course, under Obamacare we won’t be resuscitating anyone, so that one’s solved.)
How about we get the government out of those things too? If you want to adopt you work it out with a church or an adoption organization. Why does the government need to be involved at all?
If you don’t want to be resuscitated, let your family members and friends know so they can tell the doctors at the hospital. There are other ways to do things.
Who inherits in the absence of a will?
This can be determined with out the government as well.
Who is entitled to a person’s Social Security and Medicare benefits? And where would liberals get their phony statistics about most marriages ending in divorce?
How about we get rid of these too? If not then let it default to whomever has been previously signed up as the spouse in the myriad of paper work involved with those benefits.
If one spouse decides he doesn’t want to be married anymore, couldn’t he just say there never was a marriage because the Wiccan priest wasn’t official?
He might have a point if he was married by a wiccan. If he is lying God will know and the witnesses who were at his wedding will know.
There are other and better ways to hold people accountable for things then this Christian hating, one size fits all, over reaching, divorce encouraging, baby daddy government that is currently trying to convince people that two people of the same sex can be in a state of matrimony.
I think you should go down to your local family court and sit in the pews for about an hour.
You’re not only wrong, but the opposite is true. Your precious government doesn’t “put the children first”. It holds them hostage, like a kidnapper, to see that it can extract the maximum amount of time and energy from parents that it can.
We’ll said Lyn87. I was hoping to see your input on this.
Boxer spot on.
Lyn87 and JDG,
I’m not asking you two to play along here or to come up with arguments as to why Ann Coulter is wrong. It doesn’t make any difference if you seem to think the points Ann was making (in favor of government sanctioned marriage) are valid or not or whether or not it is a good idea to get the government OUT of these things (things maybe we shouldn’t have like social security Ponzi schemes.) All of your arguments might be valid.
But it doesn’t matter. Government got involved (for the very reasons she stipulated) and they aren’t going away no matter how much you or I or any of us might think it would be good if they went away…. they got involved primarily because marriage is the primary way we determine who supports our children.
And it is that ultimately why Ann Coulter (and I and perhaps all of you) are so adamantly against the entire concept of two men being able to marry: two men cannot procreate. Same is true for two women. And (as any traditional conservative such as myself will tell you) marriage is for the children.
Guys I’ll grant you this: government has lost its way. It lost it because it lost God. I firmly believe that. The more government does that would make sense to the individual secular humanist (as opposed to the Christian with a family) the more damaging government is for society. Are we not surprised that our whole nation is going to Hell in a hand basket? The government (be it local, state, or federal) turned its back on God and rejected His commandments, His authority, His guidance and we replaced with our own rules (answerable ONLY to the will of the majority of people) without even beginning to understand why it is so important to obey the will of God. He is our bedrock, our stability, our morality, all of it, and when Christ came here to fulfill God’s message, we were truly saved. Government destroys all this. It didn’t have to be this way. But it is.
Thanks, LDG. I haven’t been doing much of anything besides working grueling hours for quite some time now, so my involvement in other things has been sparse. That, plus the fact that I’m in the home stretch for my black belt, has made Lyn87 a dull boy. More long hours to come, sad to say, but by the middle of July things should have settled down quite a bit, unless my boss gets another bee in his bonnet, that is.
I decided to take the time to deconstruct IBB’s post, though. As a libertarian it is trivially-easy to tie statists in knots – it’s almost as easy as tying atheists in knots.
IBB,
I’m glad to see you’re back on this side of the fence, but I have to ask why you were so vociferously on the other side just two short hours ago. You made a number of statements about how government involvement was a good thing – not a necessary evil – but a positive good.
What JDG, Boxer, and I are saying is that government involvement is the religious sacrament of marriage can only be bad in the long run. There simply is no up-side when Caesar takes up that role. Arbiter of contracts? Absolutely – that’s even Biblical. But prophet, priest, and king? That job is already taken.
I would argue that the only thing that matters in the big scheme of things is whether the people are moral or not. An unjust people will not suffer just laws, and a just people have little need for government beyond a few well-defined areas of authority. In neither case is marriage improved – quite the contrary, in fact.
Lyn87,
It is not so much that I am on one side or the other per se. It is instead that I can understand your side while at the same time I can understand the need for government to step in (as you will see below.)
Yes sir, this is the reason why government sanctions marriage, people aren’t moral. Immoral people marry and breed. And God can’t stop that. Man is forced to correct immoral man.
It would be one thing if you married my daughter in a church and said to God that you would love her and be her lawfully wedded husband (God’s law, not man’s law.) But too many men and women lack those morals. Without government sanctioning it, the kids gets financially screwed when one or both parents act immorally. So the government got involved. And (unfortunately, with no-fault and unilateral divorce and even more immoral people) this has led down the road to evil.
That is right. Unfortunately, too many people nowadays are entirely unjust. And it was the manosphere that opened my eyes to that.
But its coming around Lyn87. I want to show you something. Here is a article on the “Traditional Conservative” site, national review online on the “rape culture” at college campuses. It was penned by J Delgado. There was so much “red pill” in her writing, I swear to God its as if I was reading something Sunshine Mary had said about “rape culture.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378310/crying-rape-j-delgado
Its very refreshing to see that perhaps the manosphere is going mainstream and people are starting to think.
Lyn87 says:
May 20, 2014 at 4:25 pm
Well done. Very well done.
I would add only the specific points that children from broken/nonexistent families are better off the vast majority of the time with their father (so should go with him post-weaning as a rule if there is no marriage), and that policies on abortion (need a Roe v. Wade for men), legal child abandonment, and cuckoldry/false paternity (need routine forced payback of money women received fraudulently) all need vast overhauling as well.
Agreed.
JDG and Lyn87, thank you both for beating me to the trigger in responding to IBB’s oft-regurgitated, utterly moronic assertion (with which he was gracious enough to prove my point in my last post) that the State plays an indispensible role in marriage. While his assertion was unworthy of a dignified response, yours did quite nicely in exposing (for the benefit of the uninformed) his heretical nonsense for what it is.
Freeriker,
I’m fairly certain that IBB is two people – I assume a husband-and-wife team that uses the same nom de plume. I’ve just seen him (them?) flip-flop on a dime so many times, that it seems unlikely that it’s a single person. IBB is not a troll – a troll would not take care to write with such precision, and the posts come across as (often deluded but) sincere, and a single person could scarcely hold such clearly contradictory views in the same head and not be a raving lunatic, which the IBB’s are not.
We all have cognitive dissonance – all of us. Occasionally I run across something I wrote a while ago and sense that I believe something different now. But that only happens when I’m writing under different circumstances and stressing one aspect of the subject over another. It’s still cognitive dissonance and I try to reconcile it because I don’t like the idea of contradictory ideas floating around in my head, but I don’t shift back and forth and back again on a dime like the IBB’s do. That’s indicative of either genuine, serious mental instability… or two writers using the same screen-name: and the IBB’s don’t come across as barking mad.
I have a friend (sort of) who displays an absolutely enormous amount of cognitive dissonance (he’s an ultra-liberal atheist… big surprise, right?), but unlike the IBB’s, he cannot have an intelligent discussion about anything substantive. He dissolves into incoherence at the drop of a hat, and will make two diametrically opposed assertions back-to-back without batting an eye, then deny the contradiction when you read back his exact words 10 seconds later. The IBB’s are not like that: they may be incoherent if one assumes they are one person, but neither person (persona?) dissolves into a linguistic pile of mush. I suppose it is possible that IBB is just one person with an unusually large amount of cognitive dissonance, but I’m guessing that IBB is a they rather than a he.
Or maybe he’s a GBFM knock-off – sporting two personalities. But at least when GBFM steps “out of character” you know it’s him and not his idiotic and incoherent alter-ego.
@ innocentbystanderboston
*Sigh*
Yes you agreed with my proposal that God has already set out the terms and parties but you didn’t answer the question if government should be a 4th party to the contract. That is the problem with those who rely on the government. They stop using their own mental faculties and want the nanny to spoon feed them answers because she know best.
All you are doing is projecting your own cowardice.
This is [slightly] off topic, but you must watch this video:
@Lyn87
Yes, I too believe that IBB is two people (my guess is a closet red-pill husband with residual blue-pill white knight tendencies and his ball-busting tradcon feminist wife [hence the Ann Coulter fixation]). Given the jarring cognitive dissonance in “their” conflicting viewpoints, coupled with the obvious fact that two people sharing the same alias can’t possibly be ignorant of each other’s diametrically opposite positions, I have to believe that IBB is a carefully crafted, elaborate, and amusing ruse (“hey, honey, let’s play some headgames with these Christian manospherians!”).
OT, but only slightly, and likely of some interest. Looks like the slut/player marriage may be a viable model for that group: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/20/living/stronger-marriage-with-affairs-redbook-relate/
@Novaseeker, compare
“When I told him how I felt, he broke off his side situation.”
vs
“I felt I was punishing myself for my husband’s behavior during my pregnancy. I liked my co-worker, but I know I pushed us into romantic territory fast because I wanted to feel desired. My husband and I had some huge fights during that time”
He’s only allowed to have affairs when she feels like it, but she “has to” have affairs (and blame him!) even when she doesn’t feel like it.
Regarding marriage and the state…
Even in the case of a moral (or more moral) people, there is no compelling reason whatsoever for the state to be involved in marriage. The civil sanctioning of marriage does nothing to improve its sacramental nature, even in the best of circumstances.
To Boxer’s point, the state’s involvement in marriage at present is not just inconsequential; it actively seeks to destroy the sacramental. It can not and therefore will not be ‘fixed’.
@Hurting
The state’s distortion of marriage is an attempt to “fix” marriage exactly the way pretty much every conservative religious group thinks marriage needs to be “fixed”. They are deeply troubled by traditional marriage roles and believe the only way to remedy the problem is to forever hold the threat of wife initiated divorce over the husband’s head. This is of course the same way feminists think marriage needs to be fixed. From this perspective it isn’t surprising that the state has gutted marriage; nearly everyone sees this as a good thing even if they make a show of wringing their hands about divorce. It isn’t an act of calculated malice; these folks really think they are improving marriage.
re: “these folks really think they are improving marriage.”
In much the same way, the spread of a virulent superbug strengthens the immune systems of the people who don’t die from it. Hence, it follows as a matter of public health policy that …
“Even in the case of a moral (or more moral) people, there is no compelling reason whatsoever for the state to be involved in marriage. The civil sanctioning of marriage does nothing to improve its sacramental nature, even in the best of circumstances.”
A bit of a history lesson here. In the West, this all started when the State got involved in mediating and regulating the end of marriages. This was in part by necessity because of the immorality of some people, or a few moral people falling into whatever sins they routinely fall into. Marriages ended and SOMEONE had to handle the primary problem — finding and implementing orderly conclusions to marriages during times of contention, feelings and emotions running hot, dashed hopes, and destroyed lives. The Church’s influence had waned; the State could enforce its decisions with the power of taking away money and liberty. The main thing was to make sure no one starved or got killed.
Well, in order to end marriages it became necessary to figure out when marriages began and whether people were legally married such that the rights and obligations really were there. So we started defining what marriage is. Then, we had to regulate peoples’ conduct within marriage. Men are more powerful and can do a lot more damage, so we constructed “marital rape”. The argument was that women cannot be required to have sex with their husbands, so we have to regulate how they have sex in marriage; and besides if she doesn’t want to have sex with him it’s all HIS fault. Then, we had to have no fault marriage because well, sometimes, a woman just doesn’t want to be married anymore. So we have to regulate how to end marriages when one of the parties just doesn’t want to do it anymore.
Art Deco, you’re right, that’s not part of explicit teaching, and you won’t hear it from real traditionalists. I think it’s very much assumed by the average Catholic priest or layperson today, though. For instance, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen or heard in Catholic forums some variation of, “A woman would never leave a marriage without an excellent reason.” Modern Catholics aren’t immune from the idea that women are basically smart and good and holy when not being dragged down by men.
The dame who used to post here under the handle “T” actually did say that.
It would not surprise me if you did see that in some NCR forum, or wherever. You would not in Catholic fora I frequent, but that does not exhaust what’s out there. The thing is, everyday parish Catholicism tends to have some stylistic difference with mainline protestantism, but it is not much different when you get down to brass tacks. What you refer to is an extension of the evaporation of a distinctly Catholic take or sensibility in contemporary suburban Catholicism.
You’ve all been referring to heresies encoded within a distinctly evangelical discourse and idiom. That’s not the problem in Catholic parishes (in my experience). There, you have two problems:
1. Characteristics of the liturgy seem to have been designed to appeal to a very distinct demographic segment. It just bullies everything out of existence. There’s a broad constituency for traditional worship music in Upstate New York. In my experience, maybe one Latin-rite parish in six has any appreciable traditional music, and only in the oddest circumstances do you hear plain chant or polyphony. The intramural politics of parish councils and their interaction with pastors and administrators leads 85% of the time to the same result: one Mass for people hostile or indifferent to music (per survey research 29% of the total) and one who want only modern worship music (per survey research, 18% of the total). Modern Catholic worship music sounds like leftovers from the score of last year’s Hallmark special; it appeals to the sort of people who fancy greeting cards without jokes (i.e. female and sentimental).
2. A certain share of clergy are (by all appearances) superannuated mama’s boys. I heard one sermon from a fill-in sent out by the Bishop of Syracuse where he told us he’d known three people “who had really lived out their vocation”. One was a chronically ill woman who sat in bed sick all the time suffering; one was some other woman who did local volunteer work and such, spending masses of time baking pies and such; the third was the quondam vocations director for the Diocese of Syracuse. Can you see yourself in any of these roles? Do you fancy that this fellow never encountered ordinary men ‘truly living out their vocation’? Of course he did; it’s just that his frame of mind is such that he never recognizes it.
These are subtler problems than your talking about with evangelical mass entertainment products. Also, if ecclesiastical structures legitimate divorce, they do so on the QT, with the esoteric language favored by canon shysters.
There was a time in this country when the government was not involved in the marriage process.
Um, no. Marriage was understood as a civil compact in Calvinist societies, including Puritan Massachusetts.
It comes down to this: the tradcon fears that somewhere, sometime, a man will discard his loving wife of many years and leave her begging for food on the street, while he marries his hot young secretary and moves her into the house his ex-wife lovingly decorated, and they will have hot sex on the couch she picked out and laugh together about how pathetic she is now.
Whatever laws, regulations, confiscations, and restrictions on freedom are necessary to prevent that from happening to even one woman, anywhere, ever, the tradcon will “regretfully” insist we must have, even while claiming he’s for smaller, less intrusive government.
If Mom’s still around, Dad is bound to be at least a little goofy and in need of guidance, if not a complete moron, whether you’re talking about newer shows like Home Improvement or older ones like Bewitched.
Gore Vidal made a good living as a screenwriter in the 1950s. You figure maybe television writers are drawn in large measure from a certain small demographic notable for bad daddy problems?
@Cail Corishev
This can’t be it, or they would be pushing for a repeal of no fault divorce instead of trying to convince everyone that divorce isn’t really a problem. What they are afraid of is the worthless husband won’t live up to the high standard set by his closer-to-God naturally-good wife and thereby make her unhaaaaapy.
Art Deco, I don’t think we disagree much. (I too participate in Catholic fora and attend a traditional parish where these heresies are rejected, but we’re very much the minority.) I don’t get into the subtler details of the Catholic problem here because Dalrock and most of the participants aren’t Catholic, so I doubt they’d be interested and it would take a lot of background to make sense of it.
You’re right that these things play out with a different flavor in modern Catholic parishes. There’s still a good chance that you’ll hear a “single moms are heroes” sermon on Mother’s Day and a “man up” sermon on Father’s Day, though. (I’ve even heard the “Mary was a homeless single mom” sermon from a priest.) While many Protestant churches served the female imperative by switching to female pastors, we kept male (but as you say, too often effeminate and ineffectual) priests and bishops but staffed the offices and committees with women (liberal nuns at first, now mostly laywomen).
So it’s different from the evangelical Protestant situation, but the same in a lot of ways, which is unsurprising since that was kind of the goal of Vatican II (but there I’m digressing into things I shouldn’t). Catholic parishes have been more resistant to modernity and the female imperative in some ways, but led the charge for it in others.
Dalrock, good point. I guess I should say that they tell themselves that they’re trying to protect women from the scenario I describe, when the reality is what you describe. After all, they can’t go around admitting that we need a bunch of laws to punish men for allowing their wives to get bored.
If you suggested to a tradcon that we should get rid of no-fault divorce to prevent men from abandoning their wives as I described, I suspect that his hamster would lock up for a moment, trying to run both directions. But then he would say that, no, such a woman actually needs no-fault divorce because otherwise she could be forced to stay married to such an evil man, and that’s obviously unacceptable. So what we really need is more laws to make the divorce easier and more profitable for her.
Cail,
That is “fault” based divorce (his fault, abandonment and then infidelity.) We’ve pretty much always had that divorce law available to women even if the divorce was extremely hard to get.
Not this traditional conservative. We never needed it.
An even better tell for the Tradcon (or anyone) is to propose eliminating or greatly reducing child support. This will get you a much more visceral reaction.
Dalrock, absolutely. If you start with the assumption that most (or all) divorce is forced on the woman in one way or another by the dastardly actions of the man, then the rest follows logically: the divorce becomes a good (or at least necessary) thing, so the woman and children can get away from the bad man; and the legal focus is on compensating them for the damage he’s done.
If someone looks horrified when you suggest ending no-fault divorce and cutting child support, you’re talking to someone who thinks women are essentially blameless. He may say otherwise when called on it and admit that yes, sometimes, women do bad things. But if you point out that 70% of divorces are filed by women, he’ll say most were forced into it by bad husbands. If you could prove to him that 99% of divorces are caused by the wife through no fault of the husband, he would still say that we need to keep the divorce/child-support system just as strong and punishing as it is to protect that other 1% of innocent women from being abandoned or trapped in bad marriages.
The harm being done to men in the process won’t even enter his mind; taking damage to protect women is what men are for.
An even better tell for the Tradcon (or anyone) is to propose eliminating or greatly reducing child support. This will get you a much more visceral reaction.
Indeed, because, as you have rightly pointed out many times, this is the key. If c/s were dramatically reduced so as not to be a quasi-alimony calculation based on a percentage of income without regard to cost, the incentive to divorce, even under no-fault rules, would be dramatically less – and that’s even if mother custody as the overwhelming presumption were effectively retained. It would make divorce rather financially unattractive to the spouse retaining the child(ren), which would discourage more marginal divorces, even no fault ones. Of course, the shrieking would be loud about “how this does nothing but hurt the children” (when in fact c/s is paid to mom not to children (even after children are 18) and mom is under no requirement to spend c/s on kids, and never has to account for how she spends it at all) and “it will just empower abusers to trap their wives in a cycle of abuse” (which accounts for a very small percentage of no fault divorces, and therefore is a case of the tail wagging the dog).
Ultimately I think people viscerally support c/s because it’s seen as making the man pay for the sex/pregnancy outcome. The woman pays by going through pregnancy and labor, and (it is presumed) doing much of the childcare. The man pays with his wallet. That’s how it’s viscerally looked at, I think, and is seen as a kind of “rough justice” by most people. Getting rid of c/s viscerally feels like letting men off the hook – even if the woman cheated and kicked out her husband, he should still be on the hook in terms of “paying” for the kids. I don’t think we will ever get past that, in terms of getting rid of c/s. What could be more achievable would be remodeling c/s so that it isn’t a flat percentage of income (which is basically like an alimony calculation and which operates like a second tax on income) but is instead calculated based on some reasonable estimation of the actual cost. The main obstacles to that kind of reform, I think are (1) people who think it should be like alimony, since alimony has been greatly curtailed or eliminated in a lot of places, but won’t come out and say it and (2) the concept that this would be more time-consuming and inefficient in processing the huge number of divorces than having a flat-tax type formula. In any case, I’m not holding my breath on that.
—
You’re right that these things play out with a different flavor in modern Catholic parishes.
Each church has been impacted, but in different ways. In the Orthodox Church it very much varies also by parish and, to some extent, “jurisdiction” (the term used by diaspora Orthodox to refer to the bishop under which their parish lies). Even though almost all of our parish priests and deacons are married, of course among them it’s a mixed bag – some are very blue pill like garden variety married guys, and would fall into a more typical tradcon bent. Others are quite red pill and take a very critical stance on feminism similar to the lines we see discussed in this part of the internet, although formulated differently. The priest wives aren’t *always* a great influence, either, in this culture – again, it varies, and depends on the woman in question (“NAPWALT”, I guess).
I would say that because the Orthodox are small in number here in the West, and have an overall traditional bent to them, the actual damage that can be done has been a bit less in general. We don’t have huge suburban parishes with thousands of families and so on, so we don’t have the bureaucracy on the parish level that many Catholic parishes do, and which is mostly staffed by women. In most Orthodox parishes other than the very biggest ones (some of the bigger Greek ones are more like the Catholic model, with schools and the related parish staff, and they are also similar to the Catholic model in terms of the influence of women in that structure), the “office” is the priest’s cell phone, and he has a day job in most cases, too. On the diocesan level and above, this kind of mischief can happen, and is harder to comment on because mostly it’s not I the public or parish eye.
Liturgically there isn’t much that can be changed on a parish level, so there isn’t much mischief the more progressive sorts can make there – females are not permitted behind the iconostasis, period, so altar girls are out of the question. Orthodoxy doesn’t have “church music” as it is known in the West in terms of varying songs or hymns – the entire liturgy is chanted/sung and the words only slightly vary from week to week (the equivalent of propers in Western liturgics) – there are no modern hymns, or modern music, but rather sets of “tones”, which are musical/melodic systems which come from the various Orthodox national traditions (Greek, Russian, Romanian, etc.), with some adaptation generally to make them easier for a congregation to sing/chant along in some parishes – so not much mischief can be made there, either in terms of inserting forms or words that are more “contemporary”, if you will, in terms of reflecting a contemporary agenda. Some parishes have organs, which is considered problematic by many Orthodox – I’ve seen maybe one or two of them in the hundred or so parishes I have visited over the years, and mostly they are an artifact of an older generation’s desire 4-5 decades ago to assimilate into American Christianity than any kind of contemporary progressive agenda. Some of the more “progressive” parishes permit a woman to read the epistle reading, something which is supposed to be done by a male reader who is “tonsured” for the purpose – often the excuse is that there are no males who are tonsured present, so this is okay (as it would be in a convent, for example), but traditionally where there have not been tonsured readers present, another male would read the epistle. It’s that kind of minor tinkering that you see, because not much else can be tinkered with easily without either the priest getting in hot water with the bishop or the bishop, if he approves it, getting in hot water with other bishops in his own jurisdiction or otherwise. Not that this doesn’t happen sometimes – it does. And there are Orthodox who are quite “progressive” on the typical issues and find themselves endlessly frustrated with the church as a result, but because of the way that the Orthodox Church functions, de facto, there isn’t that much damage that can be done in the direct ways it has happened elsewhere.
The problem of sin is everywhere, but modernity generally isn’t easy to sneak into Orthodoxy other than in rather minor ways. A bigger issue we have is that many Orthodox simply leave when they come of age. Not all do, but many do. Some become Christmas and Pascha Orthodox. Some may find their way back when they are older, but it’s more common that if they do come back to Christ it will be in another church with values that are more contemporary than what Orthodoxy really permits to be expressed publicly.
Dalrock, Cail:
To the tradcon, no-fault divorce is like abortion. It’s bad. We don’t like it. We hope it never ever happens. But we need it in case a hard situation comes up, because hard cases make for harsh results, and we need to alleviate those harsh results.
We need no-fault in the case of a woman who’s married to a man who’s not beating her, he’s not cheating on her, and he hasn’t abandoned her and supports her reasonably well. It’s just that he’s not nice to her, or she has to work, or they have financial struggles, or one or both of them have “changed”. If we don’t have no-fault, then she has to stay in that hard marriage. And that’s not fair, so we have to have a “way out” for those people.
As Dalrock said, no fault exists for women who are married to men who aren’t living up to what their wives think they should be. No-fault, like abortion, is there for convenience, for an “easy out”, and to avoid sticking it out during the tough times.
MARRIAGE
A contract, according to the form prescribed by
law, by which a man and woman, capable of entering
into such contract, mutually engage with
each other to live their whole lives together in the
state of union which ought to exist between a husband
and wife
Blacks Law 4th
Even in a secular definition used by secular governments to write up secular legislation it makes no reference to a government being required to be a party to the contract. IBB must love and trust his nanny a lot to to want her part of his decision making process.
>>The main thing was to make sure no one starved or got killed.
Let me fix that. The main thing was to make sure no one EXCEPT MEN starved or got killed.
>>There was a time in this country when the government was not involved in the marriage process.
>Um, no. Marriage was understood as a civil compact in Calvinist societies, including Puritan Massachusetts.
I studied American History with a teacher who studied the Puritans in great detail. He said for years when historians looked at marriage certificates of Puritans, there was a note on the page which said, “CF.” After years of this, one day someone bumped into a certificate which spelled it out. “Confessed Fornication.”
He told us Puritans did not marry until the woman was pregnant, because a barren wife was a total disaster.
Maybe we didn’t explain it properly. “There was a time in this country when the government was not involved in the marriage process. Is that better?”
The fact that the witch burners had marriage as a civil compact does not negate the large percentage of American History when marriage had nothing to do with the government. A man and woman found a clergy of some sort who married them, and perhaps wrote out a marriage certificate.
In the Old Testament, marriage was totally private. Look up Rachel and Leah. There was no government marriage license; no marriage registrar. OT law was very strict. Adultery meant death, pure and simple.
Later, the clergy said, “Hey, wait a minute. We are God on earth. We decide who can marry and who cannot marry.” So, they took over marriage.
In Mexico, under State law, in most states, when your wife dies, the only women you can’t marry are her direct ancestors; (mother; grand-mother;) and her direct descendants (daughter; grand-daughter; etc). Under Catholic canon law, her kinfolk are also your kin exactly the same. So, you cannot marry her sister nor the sister’s daughters; nor her cousins to the second degree; nor her aunts nor nieces.
Later, the government realized, “Hey, wait a minute. We can charge lots of money if we control marriage.” So, the government took over marriage. In the US, they will “allow” clergy to perform the putting on the chains of the man and giving the key to his wife. But, it is still government control.
On DGM-2, a man interviewed a state marriage registrar, who said the marriage certificate turned over to the government, ownership of all property, past; present; and future; and offspring of those who married. He was pretty much unable to list any real benefits to men of marriage.
When counseling divorced father, I read millions of words of legal research so I would know exactly what the courts were doing.
I finally realized there were no issues before the law EXCEPT PROPERTY RIGHTS. None whatsoever. If you think there is, I got some real good swamp land for building houses on. Bring your own rowboat.
No sacramental characteristics. No holy bond between husband and wife.
There is talk about common law marriages. I found no case, at least in my region of the nation, where a couple could go and get a marriage certificate based on the common law rules. If you went in and asked for a marriage certificate based on, for example, living together for two years, you would be told to take a marriage license application, fill it out, then take the marriage license to a judge; J.P; or clergy; have it filled in and return it to the office. In other words, GET MARRIED.
All common law marriage does is GRANT A WOMAN THE RIGHT TO SUE FOR PROPERTY SETTLEMENT AND ALIMONY. One hundred percent an issue of property rights.
I had the usual view of marriage, which was apply for marriage license, get it filled out, and return it to the government. Nothing else was true marriage. Or, so I believed.
Then, I came to Mexico. The biggest cultural shock was having girls 50 years younger fall in love with me. (It is necessary because of the wide range of i.q.’s on this blog, for me to say I have not even so much as flirted with another woman since marrying my Mexican wife in 1975. If a young girl falls in love with me, that is a decision on her part, nothing wrong done on my part.)
The next biggest cultural shock was learning about what I call PRIVATE MARRIAGE. That is, marriage without government being involved. My wife’s best friend told me that half the couples she knows are Privately Married.
At first, I thought SHACKING UP. That is normal in the Anglosphere to think that. It took me a long time and a lot of study to realize, no, in Mexico, it’s not shacking up. They are really married in their own eyes and in the eyes of the family and neighbors. No one is more married than a couple which think it is married. And, no one is more divorced than a couple which thinks it is divorced. All the government does is charge a lot of money for the same thing.
I always thought of Anne Coulter as a smart woman. Her article was a fine example of stupid. How do we know a couple is divorced, she bleated.
You don’t, just like now.
With all the two-timer men and women, you just don’t know. Which is why smart people don’t play Marriage 2.0. And, those who are both smart and brave, GTHO.
Anne apparently still thinks we have marriage 1.0.
Anne apparently still thinks we have marriage 1.0.
But of course. Annie, like all tradcons, is nostalgically stuck in 1956 (an era that of course predates her existence and of which she has no living memories or experience). Annie, like all tradcons, knows that Marriage 1.0 is defunct and is never coming back, but she and her ideological fellow travelers are careful to never allow that pesky thing called “reality” to interfere with their ideological alternate universe.
I love Ann Coulter because she truly has feel for what it means to be a traditional conservative. She understands people and understands why conservatism is so important for saving civilization. She gets the big picture. For you guys who admitted to being “libertarian Christian” (whatever that is), look on this youtube and understand what I mean by “big picture” and why I think libertarians are wrong (particularly on their love of liberty regarding legalizing drugs.)
And by the by, Ann Coulter wants to strengthen marriage by reducing (or even eliminating) no-fault-divorce. She has said as much. She understands that A is A.
deti,
These are reasons why liberals and feminists vote for candidates who support no-fault-divorce and unilateral divorce laws. The root of their support for those forms of divorce stem from the liberal/feminist belief that marriage (in and of itself) is not necessarily a good thing for society because marriage has the possibility of removing an individual’s personal freedom. These are NOT reasons why traditional conservatives support no-fault-divorce. I can say that because I am a traditional conservative and I understand how traditional conservatives think. I don’t know where you could have gotten the idea that traditional conservatives use these as justifications for no-fault and then unilateral divorce laws. Traditional conservatives love marriage and see value for it in a stable society whereas liberals and feminists largely do not. You need to unlearn that which you have learned.
Let me clue you in on something about true traditional conservatives and their support for no-fault-divorce and unilateral divorce. They support laws behind no-fault-divorce and unilateral divorce because they are ignorant. The traditional conservatives that you may have met that get behind divorce in this manner, they do so because they don’t fully understand what no-fault-divorce and unilateral divorce is and they are too prideful to admit they don’t understand. They think they know, but really they don’t. They don’t know because they are still chewing blue pills. They have spent too much time being brainwashed by the feminist narrative. They can’t see that A is A.
That is where the manosphere can help. Be patient with the traditional conservative. He or she is your friend. They just might not know it because they don’t know what they don’t know. Gently and ever so gradually feed them red pills. They will come around (I know because I did.)
No it’s not due to ignorance. It’s due to hedging.
It’s the same mentality that traditional conservatives apply to raising their children: the young women are encouraged to pursue high-stress-high-pay careers, even if it is preferred that they will be full-time mothers “at some point”, because “just in case”. That means it’s a hedge. And that hedge is against the risks that either (1) she never marries or (2) she marries and divorces. So it’s a hedge against those risks.
It’s the same for support for no-fault de facto. It’s a hedge. They do not like divorce, but if their daughter is married to a jerk whom they don’t like, it’s nice to have the hedge of no-fault available so she can get out of that easily enough, and it’s nice to have the high-pay career fall-back as an additional hedge. Child support is yet another hedge.
The point being: “traditional conservative” people often hedge their bets, given what they assess to be realistic risks that they cannot control, and the choices/tools available as hedging mechanisms are generally supported, even if the idea of using them in a maximal way is not. So a tradcon may be against a ballbusting careerist feminist bitch as a lifestyle choice, and don’t want that for their daughter, but they will follow the same “early years” path as a hedge, “just in case”. The tradcon may be against the idea of c/s displacing marriage entirely in certain social segments and to varying degrees undermining it in most of the other ones, but they will support its existence for “justified cases” (i.e., their daughters) “just in case”, as a hedge.
They’re motives here are to hedge against risks relating to their daughters (or young female relatives, sisters, etc.).
I meant to say “c/s and no-fault divorce in certain segments”, rather than c/s only, as being seen as a hedge for “justified cases”.
This is a great conversation, but I think we’re falling short of the motivation, which has so far been mischaracterized as altruistic.
The tradcon/socon puts on the cloak of “protecting” women, but in reality, the tradcon/socon is hoping for a sexual reward in return for serving the feminist state (I use state in Marxist terms here, not necessarily the government, but merely the systemic ideological structure we live under — we may not have a feminist government, but we do have a feminist state).
Rather than tradcons, I prefer the term “pussy beggars” as that is what is ulitmately at the bottom of their bizarre behavior. The apparent hypocrisy collapses immediately when viewed this way.
Regards, Boxer
>> I can say that because I am a traditional conservative and I understand how traditional conservatives think.
I dunno’, IBB. Some who follow your writings closely aren’t even convinced you understand how you think. Just saying.
Novaseeker,
Excellent. Now we are getting to brass tacks for traditional conservatism.
Your assessment is incomplete. I would say you are damn close, but you missed one vital element. That element (of course) is ignorance of divorce law (as I said earlier.) I will explain using YOUR example.
Yes, they want their daughter to have “the hedge” against marrying a “jerk.” Correct. I even boldened that part of your comment. But what exactly is a “jerk” of a husband married to a daughter of a traditional conservative? You didn’t take your point to its conclusion. Let me fill in the gaps.
The “jerk” is a adulterous @sshole who whales the crap out of his daughter day and night, a drug addict who refuses to even look for a job, the man who isn’t really a man. That is a “jerk” to the traditional conservative. So the traditional conservative wants that “hedge” (as you said) but they are too ignorant to understand that the “hedge” was always available without no-fault-divorce law. Theirs, is a need for “AT-FAULT” divorce. Theirs, the “jerk” of a husband has done something to his “property” (property = daughter he is married to) that violates her and his marriage contract to her and to God.
That is a “jerk.” No traditional conservative is going to want his daughter to divorce her husband unless he has done something truly egregious.
Novaseeker, you were so close but you need to dig deeper to understand traditional conservatives, understand the “hedge.” They are your allies, they are just too ignorant of what no-fault-divorce law and unilateral divorce law is to really know if they should be supporting it or not. This is what happens if you are a conservative who has chewed blue pills for 40 years.
“Gently and ever so gradually feed them red pills.”
Hmmm… and here I was under the impression that the goal of the “red pill” was that you could only take it once. So one is either left with confronting the crocodile or try to appease the crocodile. Now it is said that people need to start popping pills. Wow I read that a large number of people in the US were heavily reliant on taking medication to get through the day but this is a new for me. I however doubt that IBB’s nanny state will provide these pills under Obama care coverage plan.
No, I don’t think it’s because they don’t know the difference between fault and no-fault. It’s because they want a way out to be available just in case. And I don’t think it’s only in cases of wife-beaters or adulterers, either. Being a “jerk” isn’t limited to those cases – it also applies where a daughter marries someone whom they just don’t like for various reasons, even if he doesn’t transgress the “fault divorce” lines. So they don’t like the marriage, they don’t like how he treats her, they think she deserves someone better, that the kids deserve someone better, and so on – again, even if he hasn’t committed a “fault divorce” trigger. They want the hedge for these cases, too, because “there are so few good men today”. (When people say that, they don’t mean that all men are alcoholics, adulterers or wife-beaters.) They know it might also be in cases where it isn’t a legal “fault” situation — they want the hedge against those.
Novaseeker,
You’ve almost got it. I would say you were a traditional conservative at some point, that is how close you are.
It is a “hedge” (correct again) but this “hedge” that traditional conservatives (like me) want for our daughters has nothing to do with no-fault-divorce or unilateral divorce. In fact this “hedge” has nothing to do with divorce at all.
This “hedge” is against the risks that either (1) she never marries (entirely likely with so many men GTOW) or (2) she marries a man whose income is insufficient to fully support the family at the level they want to be at or (3) she marries a man who’s career may have gone in the toilet due to automation or innovation and she will have to work for a while to support her husband until he figures out what he wants to do and then trains for that end.
“The root of their support for those forms of divorce stem from the liberal/feminist belief that marriage (in and of itself) is not necessarily a good thing for society because marriage has the possibility of removing an individual’s personal freedom.”
Correction, they don’t want to limit a woman’s personal freedom. Most of them have no compunction about limiting the personal freedom of men when they feel women or children will benefit.
Novaseeker,
No Nova, all of this is wrong, all of it. They truly do NOT understand the difference between at-fault divorce law and no-fault-divorce law. I would take it even further and stipulate that most (dare I say almost ALL) traditional conservatives are not even aware that there are so many different kinds of divorce law! I didn’t know about these differences until I started spending some time here at Dalrock’s blog. Then I started to think and it frightened me how much I didn’t know. Yes they are that ignorant about it (because for so many traditional conservatives, there simply was no divorce.) It is not something they study or research even in the simplest of sense because it does not interest them.
I took the liberty of defining “jerk” because the parameters of what makes a “jerk” (jerk = someone who my daughter if she married I would want her to divorce him) because we need to be that exact. Where you may be running into a misunderstanding is that when a traditional conservative hears about such-and-such getting a divorce from some guy and such-and-such says he is a “jerk”, the traditional conservative is not going to do two all important things: (1) ask what the “jerk” did that was worthy of the divorce or (2) SHAME such-and-such for the needless frivorce. The traditional conservative will not say these things to the woman frivorcing, but in private, afterwards, they WILL say how wrong she was to throw away the marriage. Once again, this is a problem with ignorance and eating too many blue pills. Traditional conservatives are somehow led to believe that they are no longer permitted to stand in judgment of women who needlessly frivorce their husbands over trivial matters and that is wrong. But it does explain part of the Churchian narrative.
The interesting thing about the “hedge” is that it’s only for their daughters. The need to protect their daughters from unhappiness at any cost is so paramount that they’ll rationalize non-scriptural divorce, years of cock-sampling on the carousel, putting off grandchildren until “someday,” and (for some) even abortion, all in hopes that their daughters will never have to be unhappy.
You see nothing like that for sons. Occasionally you’ll see a man’s parents take his side in a custody battle for the sake of access to their own grandchildren, but that’s about it. People with sons aren’t trying to change the laws to protect them as husbands and fathers. Articles (outside the manosphere) about how unemployment is up and wages down among young men generally present it as a moral failing of theirs rather than something that’s being done to them. Even those who oppose abortion rarely bring up the incredibly unfair fact that a man has no control over whether his own child is killed before birth. Of all the good reasons to oppose abortion, they don’t seem to find that one particularly compelling.
So it’s not a libertine desire to remove risk and expand freedom for everyone. It’s specifically about doing that for women, because women are seen to be morally superior to men and/or helpless victims.
@IBB,
I’m not sure which of you felt the need to put libertarian Christian in quotes (I never know whether I’m responding to Mr IBB or Mrs IBB – it would help if you differentiated between yourselves instead of sharing a screen name). You linked a John Stossel video about libertarianism, which means you know what a libertarian is, and you claim to be a Christian, which presumably means that you know what a Christian is. I would like you to explain why you felt that writing:
“libertarian Christian” (whatever that is)
is anything other than a cheap shot made by someone with no argument. Explain it or withdraw it – or be known as a coward.
For the record, I like a lot of what Ann Coulter has written over the years, and the work she did with regard to the truth about Joseph McCarthy earned her a permanent place on the list of people for whom I have some respect (future historians will hold Joe McCarthy in much higher esteem than his critics, and she deserves some credit for that). But she, like Ariana Huffington (who used to be an outspoken conservative), parrots the statist line when it suits her. Granted, she’s not nearly as far gone as Huffington, but Ann is not the girl she used to be even ten years ago… And it shows, she got her head handed to her by a handful of college students in that clip.
But let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? You like big government. You want government to regulate away things you dislike and mandate things you like. Not unlike a Marxist, secular government holds a very high status in your mind (or perhaps I should have written “heart” instead). As a guy with a Masters degree in a branch of history, let me assure you that your faith in the likelihood of beneficial outcomes when government inserts itself into private matters (particularly religious matters like marriage) is misplaced.
I don’t see it that way, IBB. People know what no-fault divorce is, and what it means. It isn’t new. They do not come out and support divorce, but they like having the option there if it’s needed – as an easy option. Again, people do know what no-fault divorce is, generally. You may have been personally ignorant about it, but people in general are not. They may not know about all of the ins and outs of child support and so on, although many do, but they do know that no-fault divorce means you can get a divorce without having any reason apart from wanting one.
I have known many traditional conservatives, and they tend to be very pragmatic when it comes to their own kin. This is so even in cases where they overtly spout the talk about X and Y being banned and so on. Just recently, a family I know who is more traditionally conservative than almost any other I have known, but who has a young 20s daughter who is “going off the rail” for a bit, as they say, recently started making inquiries about obtaining birth control (note, these are arch-conservative catholics who would lecture people as long as the day has hours about the evils of birth control, and why it should be banned and so on) in a discreet way for this daughter, in order to prevent her from having a second illegitimate child. They are quite happy that this is not illegal, as it turns out.
This is the same attitude towards no-fault divorce. It’s the same attitude towards all of the social changes regarding women, really. When faced with the actual choices that life presents, they are happy that these options exist. And that “facing the actual choices” comes up before the daughter marries, because of concerns about divorce, given the divorce rate overall.
So, no, just disagree with you on this. You’re quite wrong, actually, I think, based on my own interactions with a large number of traditional conservatives, and observations of what they DO rather than what they SAY over the course of 20+ years now.
The interesting thing about the “hedge” is that it’s only for [the tradcons’] daughters. The need to protect their daughters from unhappiness at any cost is so paramount that they’ll rationalize non-scriptural divorce, years of cock-sampling on the carousel, putting off grandchildren until “someday,” and (for some) even abortion, all in hopes that their daughters will never have to be unhappy.
Cail nails it. This goes back to my earlier post about how, among self-described “Christian” tradcons, the State and its perverse moral imperatives trump the laws of the God of Abraham – always. It’s just plain pathetic, but still very instructive, to watch IBB hamsterize this away.
Um, no. Marriage was understood as a civil compact in Calvinist societies, including Puritan Massachusetts.
Could you link me a source or two or at least further explain? Thank you.
IBB knows he can’t defend or deny the tradcons’ embrace of no-fault divorce here, so his only remaining option is to claim they’re naive and don’t really know what they’re embracing.
Cail,
Errrr… no. Novaseeker was correct in identifying the “hedge” and how important “hedging” is to Traditional Conservatives. He just didn’t complete the logic-flow diagram. The “hedges” apply to both sons and daughters (with very specific differences which I explain shortly.)
Here is a “hedge” I have mentioned before with Traditional Conservatives protecting their children. One biggie is (if they have more than one house) to let their married son or daughter live in a house and raise their family close to the grandparents, but never give the house to their son or daughter. It remains in an LLC (an irrevocable trust.) The “hedge” is against the spouse of the child (be it a son in law OR a daughter in law) divorcing their child and then going after half the house. If your child doesn’t officially own it (you still own it, you just let them live in it rent free) then you have a true “hedge.”
Where does it apply to just daughters and not sons? Expectations. This is a gender specific “hedge” that differs for sons and daughters. They (might) expect MORE of their sons than they typically do their daughters and they “hedge” against that. Example? College aged son wants to go to Florida on Spring Break. Traditional conservative parents might not be happy about it but whatever, they tell him to grab his friends, have them all pile in his sh-tball car, get out on the I-95 or I-75 and start driving to Daytona or Panama City if it is that important to him. They expect that he will be fine. If daughter wants to go, they will “hedge” against her being carjacked and raped by buying her a ticket to Orlando. There is the difference. Another one is that they expect that their son can find a job or a career where as with daughter they might “hedge” against that and look for ways to get her a job or guide her towards a career. But these things are still just generalizations, everyone is different.
An even better tell for the Tradcon (or anyone) is to propose eliminating or greatly reducing child support. This will get you a much more visceral reaction.
I tell them we need to eliminate child support altogether and return to default paternal custody. That usually gets the conversation going in a different direction.
@IBB
“The “hedge” is against the spouse of the child (be it a son in law OR a daughter in law) divorcing their child and then going after half the house. ”
Now you’re completely changing the topic – the topic was using the no-fault system as a hedge against daughter’s unhappiness. Now you are describing creating a legal hedge against the no-fault system. The point was that the Tradcons don’t seem to view the no-fault system as a hedge against their sons’ unhappiness, only their daughters. Most of them would tell their sons to suck it up and stay married, absent infidelity or the wife abusing the children.
Anonymous age 72 says:
May 21, 2014 at 12:40 pm
Well said sir!
The tradcon/socon puts on the cloak of “protecting” women, but in reality, the tradcon/socon is hoping for a sexual reward in return for serving the feminist state
I have seen this in action and it makes sense to me for most of the younger ‘blue pill’ crowd, but how are the older, faithfully married guys who are not looking for sex motivated to perpetuate these family killing statutes?
Perhaps those with daughters that would explain some of that, but what about the older married guys with no daughters? What’s in it for them?
Crank,
Uh no. I was replying (directly) to Cail’s comment about traditional conservatives and their willingness to “hedge” being only for the daughters. That is incorrect. They want “hedges” for both sons and daughters. Novaseeker is right about the hedging, but there are many different hedges.
Cail,
Three issues:
#1) as far as I’m concerned there is no defense for no-fault-divorce
#2) traditional conservatives are most certainly naïve about divorce law (that and a number of other things)
#3) traditional conservatives quite often do not know what they are embracing
Lyn87,
I will not withdraw it. I will explain it. I am no coward.
It was YOU (yes you Lyn87) who on May 20th, at 4:25 PM (on this very thread) said to me…
I just made a boo-boo for putting the libertarian before the Christian. To me, I have no idea what a Christian libertarian or a libertarian Christian is. I know what a Christian is, what a libertarian is, and I assume you know what they are (put together) since you called yourself that. So maybe you would care to clarify? Or are YOU a coward?
By the by Lyn87, Ann Coulter clobbered those libertarian kids in that exchange on Stossell. Her comments about pot and the welfare state were spot on and even the audience (when they stopped hooting and hollering) went dead quiet when they knew her point was unassailable. Are you one of those Christian libertarians who support same-sex-marriage like the one that Ann had to argue with on Stossell? Did you watch it to the end? Did you see how Ann handled the “libertarian” feminist who was trying to justify divorce and making sure divorce remained as easy as possible for her own benefit?
Ann is right. Libertarians are just pussies. They are economic conservatives who refuse to say something that might alienate liberals (from a social standpoint.)
Correction, they don’t want to limit a woman’s personal freedom. Most of them have no compunction about limiting the personal freedom of men when they feel women or children will benefit.
Bingo! And this applies to ‘left’ and ‘right’ wing feminists (progs and tradcons), except I think there is a stronger emphasis to have concern for the woman’s choices than the children’s benefits.
Novaseeker says:
May 21, 2014 at 2:24 pm
I’m inclined to mostly agree with you on the idea that people value divorce (fault or no-fault; uni- or bilateral) as a hedge (a “put” option, if you will), but there is incredible ignorance out there about the specifics of the likely actual resolution of a divorce in the USA, and these specifics (incentives) matter greatly in practice. For example, if you listen to a divorce attorney who’s been around for awhile, the idea of the option of a no-fault divorce is just the de jure recognition of the granting of a divorce that would have been granted in the absence of the no-fault option under specious fault grounds. They are perfectly ignorant of the embedded alimony is the CS calculation and do not understand the esoteric differences between legal and physical custody and what shared parenting might be or not be and on and on and on.
All of this points to the logic of the libertarian view that government should not be involved in the marriage business. Period. It will always have a rightful say in the determination of the welfare of minor children, but civil marriage confers no substantial benefit upon a father that I can reasonably ascertain. I’d imagine that the letter of the law reads so as to advantage a legally married father, but in practice, I’d say that in practice the advantage diminishes materially, especially when considering that so many of the other screws that could be turned against him would be off the table except in the few remaining common law states.
IBB,
Cail is right – people know about divorce stats. The percentage of marriages that end in divorce has remained remarkably consistent since the mid-1970’s (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005044.html), which means the end of the baby boom generation and everyone born after that came of age in a time when a 50% divorce rate was the norm. And if you think that both men and women didn’t know that divorce means “She got the gold mine and I got the shaft,” then you must not get out much… In fact, the Jerry Reed hit song by that name (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-p0zn3PijY&feature=kp) was recorded in 1982 – more than three decades ago.
And I find it interesting that you chose to use spring break in Florida as your example or differential expectations. A college kid going to Daytona or Panama City for spring break is almost certainly going there to get drunk and get laid. That is very bad for sons and absolutely disastrous for daughters. You laid out a very specific scenario – did you buy your daughters plane tickets to Orlando when they were in college? Not accusing or presuming – just asking.
I would like you to explain why you felt that writing:
“libertarian Christian” (whatever that is)
Lyn87 – IBB may be thinking of something along these lines (but maybe not). I think Mr. Mohler does have a point about the Libertarian platform supporting non-Christian values. I think the same applies to the Republican party and obviously the Democrat party too.
I have ceased placing confidence in any of the political parties. I guess that makes me an Independent or something else.
IBB, your goalpost-shifting is embarrassing. We’re talking about the risks involved in marriage, and the hedging which people do for their daughters and not for their sons — many times even against their own sons. That parents sometimes try to protect their sons from risk — when there’s no chance of the risk shifting to a female, generally — is irrelevant.
Instinct and habit; neither is easily discarded. Men of every age, married or not, on the prowl or not, get a charge out of being admired by a woman, even when sex isn’t in the picture. If a man believes that pedestalizing women or defending “women’s issues” will bring their admiration, that’s what he’ll do.
hurting,
I tend to agree with this. The key point here is (from a Traditional Conservative standpoint) is that they just don’t know the difference between fault and no-fault or that those differences have direct meaningful impacts on the resolution of said divorce.
I would even argue that Traditional Conservatives don’t even know any of the actual history of no-fault-divorce law (who started it in California in the late 1960s or what Ronnie was thinking at the time.) Again it just doesn’t interest them. And it should.
@ IBB again (I was typing my last post while you were typing yours):
You and I must have been watching different videos, because I saw Ann get creamed, and even John Stossel correctly pointed out that she refused to answer the first question. And yes, I watched to the end. Ann parroted nearly every absurd caricature of libertarians there is, and you’re doing the same. You think you know how libertarians think, but it’s clear that you do not. Like the worst of the Trad-Cons (and I am one – a real one), you and Ann abandon principle in the face of opposition. Ann was rightly complaining about having to pay for the welfare state, and the multitude of government offices, but neglected to mention that TradCons like you support all those things – show me any major department eliminated by “conservatives” in the U.S.. Republicans held the presidency and both houses of congress for several years during the last few decades – where has your pragmatism gotten us? Go ahead and try to prove me wrong… I’ll wait.
But when libertarians say, “Hey, maybe all these limitations on liberty are bad,” TradCon pussies like you and (in that clip) Ann Coulter, tell us that we shouldn’t work on the problems that we can solve because the underlying structures (that YOU support) are still in place. Well guess what? We’re tired of waiting for so-called conservatives like you to dismantle the feminist welfare state while simultaneously using its existence as a reason to not do anything about… the feminist welfare state. If you’re not going to be a sail, at least try to avoid being an anchor.
As for the same-sex marriage thing – once again you demonstrate that you don’t even know what libertarians believe, although you feel qualified to criticize us. No, I do not believe that the state ought to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples – Haven’t you been paying attention? I have repeatedly stated that I don’t think they ought to issue marriage licenses at all. It is YOU who wish to allow the state to define marriage rather than God. Since you accept that, then “Render therefore unto Caesar.” Me? I’ll pass. I chose principle and you chose pragmatism – deal with it.
As for this absurdity, “I just made a boo-boo for putting the libertarian before the Christian. To me, I have no idea what a Christian libertarian or a libertarian Christian is. I know what a Christian is, what a libertarian is, and I assume you know what they are (put together) since you called yourself that. So maybe you would care to clarify? Or are YOU a coward?”
In case it’s not obvious, a Christian libertarian is someone who is both a Christian and a libertarian. Is that really that hard to comprehend?
JDG,
I agree with your statement about political parties. I am a small-l libertarian, I am not a member of the Libertarian Party. The two are not synonymous.
JDG,
Yes that youtube was excellent. Thank you for that.
I still like Ann Coulter’s definition of libertarians better though. 🙂
@ IBB:
“The “jerk” is a adulterous @sshole who whales the crap out of his daughter day and night, a drug addict who refuses to even look for a job, the man who isn’t really a man. That is a “jerk” to the traditional conservative.”
No, IBB< you’re wrong about this. Nova is right.
“Jerk” husband in this context usually means one of the following:
1. Inadequate provider/unable to support family on his income alone, meaning she has to work and contribute substantially to the family finances.
2. Insists on his “own time”, i.e. golf weekends and time with buddies, requiring her to do the bulk of house work and child care.
3. He’s emotionally aloof and distant. He doesn’t “get” her like her girlfriends do.
4. He’s not a spiritual leader (bonus if the pastor thinks he’s falling down on the job spiritually).
5. He doesn’t do “his share” of housework or chores or childcare.
There could be other things, but you get the gist.
Why are we wasting time on whether tradcons know the minutiae of divorce law? That’s beside the point. The point is, when a tradcon’s daughter is unhaaaaappy, he wants her to have an escape hatch. If she’s unhappily married, he wants divorce to be available and easy for her, while making sure she doesn’t have to lower her standard of living. If she’s married and her husband divorces her, the tradcon dad wants the law to make sure she can stick it to the guy for as much as possible as long as possible. If kids are involved, he wants her to get primary custody — or at least as much custody as she wants — because while he believes kids need fathers, he believes they need mothers more.
If she’s unhaaaappy because she’s young and hasn’t figured out what to do with her life yet, he wants the state to make sure she can get into a good college and accumulate degrees as long as she likes. If she’s unhaaaappy in her job, equal opportunity had better make sure she can find a different one and get paid like a man regardless of her productivity. If she’s unhaaaappy because she can’t find a decent boyfriend, he wants her to be able to sample plenty of them to increase her chances — and if that means temporarily setting aside some of his moral strictures, as in the situation Novaseeker described, he probably will. If she’s unaaaappy because she’s hit 35 and men aren’t sniffing around anymore, he’ll complain that men need to man up and try to shame those who pursue younger girls.
It’s all about structuring society and the law (including religious demands) such that any time a woman is unhaaaaappy she has an escape hatch that’s as pain-free (for her) as possible. It doesn’t matter exactly how the escape hatch is shaped. What matters to the tradcon is that his precious princess never sheds a tear — and if she does, some man somewhere is gonna pay for it.
It seems both feminists and tradcons treat women as “Schrodinger’s Moral Agent.”
Well spoken, Cail. IBB has gone on record with tales of his (their?) wondrously intelligent, beautiful, and virtuous daughters who are simply unable to find any suitable men to marry. We all know that such women can have nearly any man they want – and since they can’t seem to get to the altar, it must be because of a dearth of suitable men rather than choice addiction or impossible standards.
Lyn87,
Unacceptable. You cannot put the cart before the horse. You want to smoke pot? You MUST wait until the welfare state is GONE.
We Tradtional Conservatives nominated Willard Mitt Romney as our nominee and he was ready to not only dismantle the department of education, but also the department of energy and PBS (remember his remark about Big Bird and Sesame Street?) Sadly we were outvoted. I think its because of libertarians voting to re-elect Obama because they want to be able to smoke pot! Yes I think libertarians are partially to blame here.
Did you even play that youtube that JDG included? Did you even look at it? That was a perfect explanation as to why libertarianism is dead wrong and believing that government can’t legislate morality is insane. The Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s are nothing but government legislating morality. That is what government (big or small) does.
And for the record, just because marriage is something to be sanctioned by government, I do not support big government. I vote to try and rid myself of it every chance I get. But I am outvoted Lyn87. Government would not have to sanction marriage were it not for BIG government sanctioning everything else (divorce, alimony, child support, etc.) Do you blame me for divorce, alimony, and child support? You better not.
No. If that were true, you’d see fathers doing everything they can to set their daughters up with mild-mannered accountants, and you don’t. (Because Dad doesn’t want to have to spend every Fourth of July talking to a boring beta either.) That’s the jerk caricature that the tradcon uses as justification for embracing the divorce/child-support system, turning a blind eye to his daughter’s carousel-riding, and all the other hedges. But “jerk” (or “abuser”) in real life is whatever a husband does that results in his wife going over to her parents’ house and complaining about him. It can be anything from not buying the top model of washer and dryer she wanted to failing to complement her on her lasagna after she’d had a bad day. Anything that makes Daddy’s Little Princess sad qualifies as jerkitude, and procedures must be in place to protect her from it.
Stossell has some good points, but he is ignorant of the implications of some of his positions, such as support for homogamy. The real issue is not claiming something to be marriage that is not, it is the fact the government will shove it down everyone’s throat in the future. It is not about individual rights, but forcing your choices on others. I had liked him quite a bit before hearing that, but I am seeing he is quite ignorant of the current power of the state.
> “The tradcon/socon puts on the cloak of “protecting” women, but in reality, the tradcon/socon is hoping for a sexual reward in return for serving the feminist state”
God some proof for that? I would almost certainly have been considered a tradcon several years ago and perhaps even now, but I never did it in hopes of getting sex. I have always been driven by doing what is right and I suspect many are motivated the same way. Their error is in seeing the world incorrectly, i.e. the blue pill vs. red pill discussion.
Some things should be favored if the current system were just. It is not, so the focus must shift.
That should say “got some proof for that”.
No one’s saying government doesn’t legislate morality, or at least try to. Of course it does. We’re saying it shouldn’t legislate the particular moral issue of marriage and child custody, except possibly to treat it as a matter of ordinary contract law. You, as a tradcon, are saying it’s essential that government continues to legislate this moral matter. Try to stick to the point.
You can write “I hate big government” on the chalkboard as many times as you like, but the fact is you want enough government to enforce all the things you think should be enforced. Just like any liberal, except that your laundry list is different.
Now you’re just insulting our intelligence.
By the way, be careful: your hero Ann (and I love her too, because she gives me a special feeling in my pants) has been drifting off the neo-conservative/Republican plantation lately, especially on immigration. You might be called to participate in a two-minutes hate against her soon, so be careful how much you praise her.
IBB,
You and bow-tie boy in the film clip make me laugh. Boy-tie Boy acknowledged that statists want the government to control everything and everyone, and that the libertarian impulse is THE thing that opposes it, but then says that the libertarian impulse is anti-Christian. The ONLY conclusion one can draw from that is that you and Boy-tie Boy favor a dictatorship, since you oppose the only thing that checks it’s progress. Good luck with convincing anyone that a statist dictatorship is the ideal form of government. Try not to trip over the mountain of skulls on your way to the oven, please.
And then you have the gall to point to Mitt Romney as the conservative political messiah who was going to set us back on the path to small government and moral rectitude? Really? The guy who INVENTED RomneyCare, after which ObamaCare was modeled? Your screen name indicates that you’re from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, but I think you have no idea what a mess a Romney Presidency would have been. Sure, he talks a good game, and my cat would be better than Obama, but there is not the slightest chance that Romney would have dismantled ANY cabinet-level department. ZERO.
Maybe you’re heard of a guy named Ronald Reagan (the first U.S. governor to sign a no-fault divorce law) – the guy who made an identical promise in order to get sheep like you to flock to the polls to vote for him. It worked on me… once. I have never cast a vote for a major party presidential candidate since that day in 1980. Dems are statists and Reps are spineless. I’ll stand on the principle of liberty, thanks anyway.
You’re in bed with people who play you for a chump every four years and you don’t even realize it… preferring to lick the boots of your masters rather than standing on principles you claim to have.
Cail,
Traditional conservative fathers don’t typically do anything to set their daughters up with anyone, mild-mannered account or alphamcharleyrockbanddrummer. It has nothing to do with dad not wanting to spend the Fourth of July talking to a boring beta. It has more to do with knowing his daughter(s) and understanding that the more he pushes her to do one thing, the more likely she is to rebel and do something else. And she is empowered to rebel because her mother feeds into that rebellion. And the father is put into a paradox (regarding his headship here) because mom has “threatpoint” if dad doesn’t do as she tells him.
This happens no matter what kind of man he is. You don’t know women at all do you? Don’t you think that married daughter goes back to mom and dad to b-tch about her husband (when he is not around) for just about everything, any little thing he does that she thinks is wrong or doesn’t do to make her happy? That is standard operating procedure and it does not end (no matter how long they are married.) This happens all the time and (eventually) Traditional Conservative parents start to turn a deaf ear to it (depending upon how long the two of them have been married.) They realize that (in their own minds) maybe they thought (incorrectly) that no man is good enough for their daughter but they start to realize that they were WRONG in that justification. This happens for parents of adult children.
I don’t really care about procedures provided that procedure isn’t a divorce proceedings. If princess is sad and dad wants to scream and yell at son-in-law because she’s sad, son-in-law can usually handle that because (if he’s smart) son-in-law understands that daddy-in-law is probably not acting rationally.
Lyn87
We’re tired of waiting for so-called conservatives like you to dismantle the feminist welfare state while simultaneously using its existence as a reason to not do anything about… the feminist welfare state. If you’re not going to be a sail, at least try to avoid being an anchor.
LOL! Isn’t that the truth.
I’m at the point where I think they are unwittingly marching in step with the enemy at the rear of the column only under a different banner.
IBB, you get the last word, because the more you talk, the less sense you make, and it’s clear that you’ll never stop. You make our point about tradcons better than I ever could anyway.
Holy Cow… I just noticed this from one of the IBBs:
I think its because of libertarians voting to re-elect Obama because they want to be able to smoke pot! Yes I think libertarians are partially to blame here.
Nope, libertarians did not vote for Obama. Obama never said that he wanted to legalize marijuana, so why would pot-heads vote for him if that was their issue? Unlike you, libertarians dislike big government, and Obama was very clear that he intended to expand government. It may interest you to know that Libertarian candidates draw roughly equally from people who might otherwise vote either Republican or Democrat (http://ideas.time.com/2013/11/06/stop-scapegoating-third-party-candidates-for-election-results/). We’re not “spoilers” – I do not “owe” my vote to a Mormon who would expand government.
Cail,
She is totally against comprehensive immigration reform.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ann-coulter-if-immigration-reform-passes-organize-death-squads-people-who-wrecked-america
Dear JDG:
Good question! Please see inside:
Bear in mind that I’m using “sexual reward” in its Freudian/Lacanian context. Men who are older and are of a (shall we say) “relaxed libido” still look for sexual rewards in a sublimated form. They are motivated to work hard not merely for intercourse, but for emotional responses, female approval and the pseudo-respect of being a useful utility (usually recast in the older dudes’ minds as a hero archetype).
There is another (somewhat more sinister) dialectic which is common in this society, that I have never heard anyone else talk about (though Cane Caldo has approached it with great deference on his blog) specific to fathers. Carl Jung’s Electra Complex seems to be played out more and more often in modern society. By that I mean a father and daughter entering protected emotional (sexual) space. Whether the father/daughter duo have actual intercourse is irrelevant, given the magnitude of the changes in the father’s personality.
Example: Man who is starved of affection/affirmation by his frigid/unavailable wife will begin supplicating to his daughters. Daughters find daddy a useful ally and string him along for extra money and gifts and favors, while father finds sexual release in bonding with daughters (even if it’s not an actual physical intercourse, a psychological intercourse takes place here). This is the type who serves the feminist state most ardently, and IBB seems to fit the profile. Princess can do no wrong, because princess has taken the “wife” role within the head of our protagonist.
Nowhere do I make the accusation that the men get actual sexual intercourse from their daughters. In fact, most repress what’s really going on so strenuously that they’d probably get all upset if you pointed out their actual motivations, which remain sexual. An emotional reward is a libidinal reward in this case, all the same.
Best, Boxer
As we seem to have drifted towards politics I thought I would bring you up to speed: tomorrow is Euro election day in Great Britain (not of course to be confused with EuroVision which was few weeks ago) and we have no less than thirty parties competing for votes. Amongst these parties there is one known as The Christian Party: I have looked at their policies and frankly I see little which SSM would be likely to object to. I am surprised that there is no Christian Party in American politics (or is there?). They aren’t going to do well tomorrow as they are dour Scotsmen and there is only one issue which people are concerned with and that is whether we should be in or out of Europe – tempers are riding high and the prediction is that one of the various Euro-sceptics parties will have a landslide in its favour. All the euro-sceptic parties are also de-facto pro-Christian as they are anti-immigration (and thus anti-Islam).
The Prime Minister (who previously said that he did not have a hot-line to God) announced that it was a Christian Country (this despite the fact that Christians are frequently arrested … for being Christian, preaching the Gospels and that sort of thing) – and this upset fifty academics who wrote a letter to The Times to deny the bleeding obvious: notable amongst the absentees from the letter was Richard Dawkins – though he seems to have added his name since.
deti
“Jerk” husband in this context usually means one of the following:
6. He actually functions as a leader in the home (then he’s domineering, controlling).
7. He dares to make a decision without her input.
8. He tells her no.
9. She is in a bad mood.
10. Her girl friends tell her he is a jerk (the rule of the herd).
Boxer
Nowhere do I make the accusation that the men get actual sexual intercourse from their daughters.
My bad. I didn’t mean to imply they were having physical relations with their daughters. I meant that they prioritize what they believe to be the best choices for their daughters at the expense of everyone else (like ‘left wing’ feminists do for women as a group).
Thanks for the response.
My emphasis was for IBB and those male feminists like him, who have a tendency to jump to the worst possible conclusions.
Female feminists tend to dissolve their own ego into a sort of theoretical collective mass, which they call “women”. My own pet theory is that part of their obvious and constant frustration is due to the inability of their ideal collective to achieve the worthiness that a rational person would demand upon merging with. No one wants to join a group that’s always failing, after all.
Male feminists keep their ego intact, insofar as they invite this same ideal which they recognize their daughters (or other close single females) as having joined within its boundaries. Thus the white knight/socon/tradcon/male feminist defends the concept of the carousel out of loyalty to what he perceives to be within his own horizon: his daughters are part of the “mass”, so he must defend the “mass” to defend them, etc.. He imagines that he is actually defending himself. Their behavior, which seems so bizarre by our standards, actually makes perfect sense in this light.
The difference between seeming psychopaths like Hugo Schwyzer and male feminists like IBB is merely difference of degree. Schwyzer is honest, in that he appreciates that he is getting sexual affirmation from women due to his adherence to the feminist precepts, so he goes for actual sex with his students and other younger figures who look to him for protection (he fulfills the Electra Complex, for realz, yo). The tradcon is so repressed that his sexual reward is entirely sublimated.
Best, Boxer
Opus,
Politics in nations with parliamentary systems confuse the crap out of me. I realize that federal systems like we have in the U.S. are odd by comparison, though. I was in Greece some years ago and was trying to explain the difference to a fetching young lass who was selling me pastry in an Athens bakery (she was transplanted to Athens from South Africa). Having been subject to the Euro-media, for some reason she was angry that our President at the time, George W. Bush, had not reacted with speed when New Orleans was clobbered by a hurricane. I had to explain to her that we do not confer executive powers to the head of whichever party wins in the legislature, nor are our political subdivisions always legally subordinate to the national government. We call them states – not provinces – for good reason, although Mr. Lincoln’s War in the 1860’s battered that bulwark down pretty thoroughly. So although Mr. Bush was the President, that doesn’t mean that he runs the country. In fact, our president doesn’t even run the government – only one of the three branches of it… and even then his power to act domestically against the wishes of our states is severely limited. In short, he did all that was within his authority as soon as he was legally permitted to do it. Not that I carry water for Republicans very often, but it’s simply a mater of historical fact.
It’s messy, but it’s designed to be that way – it should be hard to change the rules. Much of problem we have on this side of the pond is that liberals in general and feminists in particular have bypassed the process by getting judges to declare their positions legally binding despite the will of the people or even the black-letter law itself.
In fact, our president doesn’t even run the government – only one of the three branches of it… and even then his power to act domestically against the wishes of our states is severely limited.
Is it me or is this limited power becoming less limited with each new installment?
Note: I’m repeating a comment I made on the #poutyface thread.
White knights, and chivalrous fathers, the ones who are afraid of slut-shaming their own precious daughters and support Christo-feminism, are not the anti-abortion types. They send their daughters to college and give them contraception. They don’t go around abortion clinics handing out fliers, or spread the message of how the false god of Moloch exists.
The anti-abortion types seem more concerned with history, science and morality/ethics. In a weird way, they tend to put the concerns of unborn children over what women in general say, and they don’t put women on a pedestal since the whole image of a woman killing her own baby is a pretty ugly and horrifying one.
Anti-abortion types seem to tolerate illegitimacy on some level though, so that’s another issue.
The stuff between libertarians and tradcons/mainstream-cons is entertaining, as always, yet fruitless as well, again as always.
The problem is the entire system. It’s systemic. It can only be changed meaningfully in a systemic sense, because whatever pie-in-the-sky ideas people may have about a Lockean paradise with God in the picture, the basic ideas break down fairly quickly due to too many poisonous memes embedded in the structure which place primary emphasis on the individual. This is, of course, a corrupted version of Christian ideas, which emphasize the dignity of each individual person, but, critically, historically (before the Protestant Revolution, which was the root cause of all of the crap we are talking about here) Christianity also emphasized hierarchy, social/ecclesial/familial, as reflective of the divine order. The overemphasis on the individual, which started (in relevant historical proximity to us) in earnest with Protestantism’s rebellion against ecclesial authority in favor of individual conscience, finds no solution in either libertarianism (doubling down on the same problem) or some kind of traditional conservatism, which merely rolls back the tape a certain number of decades. The problem is deeper than that, and it requires a systemic solution.
Fundamentally, the problem isn’t political — politics follows the culture. When the culture is moving more permissively towards X or Y, the state will move there, too. Of course there are influences prodding the culture this way or that, coming from people affiliated, even unofficially, with the state (as Moldbug talks about in his modeling of this as a “Cathedral”). And the problem is not even primarily cultural, but spiritual. It takes a widespread spiritual malaise for the programme of Moldbug’s Cathedral to succeed. But in order to overturn that spiritual malaise, the real roots of it need to be unearthed and burned. And that will cause incredible pain for most of American Christianity, given its own roots.
“given its own roots”
They’re already dead and descended into Hell.
Care at this point is best focused on the new seed and its rearising.
“Anti-abortion types seem to tolerate illegitimacy on some level though, so that’s another issue.”
Hmmm, tolerance
“I didn’t mean to imply they were having physical relations with their daughters. I meant that they prioritize what they believe to be the best choices for their daughters at the expense of everyone else (like ‘left wing’ feminists do for women as a group).”
They are living vicariously through their daughters. Pulling for the female is considered more sporting.
If those are the best arguments against libertarianism you can find, it is no wonder it gains traction every day. At least Coulter makes coherent points. Bow ties basically thinks that because people may do untoward things with freedom, that freedom is anti-christian? How absurd.
Conservatives, much like Liberals, are statists at heart. Sure, they talk a big game, but they love Leviathan as much as Nancy or Harry do. They just wish to wrestle control and wield it’s power to outlaw things that make THEM clutch the pearls. Libertarians see this as the folly it is, and wish to neuter the beast.
It isn’t about right and wrong, but what is free and what is coerced.
@ JDG
He has a pen and a phone. Constitution be damned.
“They just wish to wrestle control and wield it’s power to outlaw things that make THEM clutch the pearls.”
That’s the half-truth that gets whispered in your ear. A similar one is whispered in the ears of earnest liberals and millions of apolitical decent folk to keep them apolitical. The conservatives get the one about The Left.
Cui bono?
Who conquers through this division?
Great point desiderian, and one I contemplate often. If there was one thing my godless college education was good for, it was to illuminate the machinations of media and advertising. By media, of course I mean the propaganda machine of the elite. And by advertising, I mean the mass transmission of emptiness to prod consumption.
Who benefits? The status quo of course. While we argue left/right and statist/individual and other minutiae, the meat hooks dig yet deeper. No matter the conductor, the train runs on it’s track regardless. The false dichotomy of red/blue has devolved into theater. An opiate of the masses to give the illusion of control where there is none. But the Father has warned us of this:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12
That’s the half-truth that gets whispered in your ear. A similar one is whispered in the ears of earnest liberals and millions of apolitical decent folk to keep them apolitical. The conservatives get the one about The Left.
That’s kind of what I’m thinking. I stopped watching the talking heads on tv because it struck me as a dog and pony show that was really just entertainment. They never would get to the bottom of any claim. Only spark some emotions and move on to the next topic. I am left with the impression that these folks often play a part to make a living and sell books.
Even if they are sincere, would it make any difference? In one corner we have a strong push to to have government regulate morality with a certain view. In another corner there is a push for government regulation of a different view of morality. Still in another corner is the push for a view that claims to want government to not regulate morality at all.
As far as I can tell none of the views line up with the Bible, and as a Christian that is where I get my moral bearings. The U.S. government in the late 1700s and 1800s was pretty small compared to today, yet sodomy and adultery were both illegal. Divorce was rare, and if it did occur custody was paternal. Abortion was unthinkable to most of the populace, and as far as I know the government did not insert itself into a man’s marriage or his family (at least not until the mid 1800s).
Try selling any of those ideas to anyone today, and you will be very quickly lambasted. Yet George Washington, John Adams, and most of America at that time thought nothing wrong with the moral notions I’ve listed above. I think a small government can be a moral government, and I think at least one of the founders agreed.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
Enjoy the decline folks.
Okay my rant is over.
Traditional conservative fathers don’t typically do anything to set their daughters up with anyone, mild-mannered account or alphamcharleyrockbanddrummer.
Maybe that should top the list of tradcon fatherly failures. It’s a very long list.
Don’s Johnson says:
May 21, 2014 at 9:26 pm
Yes, yes, absolutely yes.
Lyn said Holy Cow… I just noticed this from one of the IBBs:
I think its because of libertarians voting to re-elect Obama because they want to be able to smoke pot! Yes I think libertarians are partially to blame here.
Dear God in heaven, that is a new low in imbecility, even coming from the likes of IBB.
That does it. IBB has just been moved to my “ignore” list. It’s an insulting waste of life-minutes and server space to pay any attention or respond to any self-respecting individual who would actually post something like that AND affix their identity to it.
Some of us have no desire to use any kind of drug that is currently illegal, but we completely despise the “drug war” and the power it gives the government.
@Don Johnson
A gruesome–if appropriate–choice of words.
But what beast do you speak of? Well, we know he’s male, and we know that you think the best way to treat this male beast is to cut his balls off. That’s a start…at least it’s a start towards understanding what you think about this
balledmale “power to outlaw things that make THEM clutch the pearls”. Presumably, THEM would be females; the subordinate sex.So, this big male Leviathan of statism is bad and must have its balls cut off because it tells subordinates what is inbounds and what is out of bounds–what is right and what is wrong–, and also attempts to hold them to account for which side of the boundary the subordinates occupy. This statism is quite authoritarian; as if some people had a right or a duty to author the actions of others. How could we express our true selves by being right all the time? My, that does sound dreadful. Downright paternalistic if you ask me.
“Maybe that should top the list of tradcon fatherly failures. It’s a very long list.”
Fathers, mothers, church, school, state. All sources of authority have been delinquent.
They wanted to die before they got old. At least they’re on track to do so before they grow up.
@desidarian.
Two questions then. And I think it is what Cane is getting at.
1. Has authority been negligent, handicapped or both?
2. What is the most appropriate response and where do we start?
@Lyn 87
It might perhaps be properly observed that America has weak(er) government and Great Britain strong government – and your founding fathers went out of their way to ensure this – and got it wrong the first time I seem to recall. That is not a reflection on the quality of your country but merely that when the Prime Minister wakes up in the morning and decides he wants to invade Afghanistan, there is nothing to hinder him. By comparison in – say – Switzerland, which is entirely democratic, nothing can be done without a referendum, which of course takes months to organise. By the time they have agreed to bomb Afghanistan we are back home with our feet up drinking tea and congratulating ourselves on a job well done (or perhaps battle lost).
It does seem a bit much blaming hurricanes on Number 42. The Eurphiliacs want Europe to be like America; the Europhobes hate everything European, and tend to be Atlanticist (except when they are dreaming of The Empire).
A neologism y’all may appreciate: Prumbots – Professional Umbrage & Offense Takers.
Coined today in this blog post re: this weeks controversy in Australian state politics. Use freely and enjoy 🙂
“1. Has authority been negligent, handicapped or both?”
What handicap do you imagine precludes, say, tradcon fathers from setting up their daughters? my very decent, respectable, supportive mainline congregation from doing any evangelism whatsoever? from calling so much as one of its members to the ministry in the last forty years?
Yes, there are serious handicaps for individuals, but the failing is not just individual.
2. What is the most appropriate response and where do we start?
Before response (professio) comes call (vocatio). Who has your ear?
“If the priest is the instrument of religion, if his only thought
is to disseminate its morality and its benefits on the earth, he will
be gentle, tolerant, humble, charitable, and full of zeal; his life
will reflect that of his divine model; he will preach liberty and
equality among men, and peace and fraternity among nations; he
will repel the allurements of temporal power, and will not ally
himself with that which, of all things in this world, has the most
need of restraint; he will be the man of the people, the man of
good advice and tender consolations, the man of public opinion,
the man of the Evangelist.
If, on the contrary, religion is the instrument of the priest, he
will treat it as one does an instrument which is changed, bent and
twisted in all ways so as to get out of it the greatest possible
advantage for one’s self. He will multiply tabooed questions; his
morality will be as flexible as seasons, men, and circumstances.
He will seek to impose on humanity by gesticulations and studied
attitudes; a hundred times a day he will mumble over words
whose sense has evaporated and which have become empty conventionalities.
He will traffic in holy things, but just enough not
to shake faith in their sanctity, and he will take care that the more
intelligent the people are, the less open shall the traffic be. He will
take part in the intrigues of the world, and he will always side with
the powerful, on the simple condition that they side with him. In
a word, it will be easy to see in all his actions that he does not
desire to advance religion by the clergy, but the clergy by religion, and as so many efforts indicate an object, and as this object according to the hypothesis, can be only power and wealth, the
decisive proof that the people are dupes is when the priest is rich and powerful.”
Economic Sophisms—Second Series: Frederic Bastiat
re: “Anti-abortion types seem to tolerate illegitimacy on some level though, so that’s another issue.”
I posed this question before, but it’s better in isolation:
What percentage of abortions are of illegitimate children i.e. father not married, or maybe better question, what percent are due to formerly societally-disapproved nonstandard-partner sexual activities – cheating, one night stands, etc? I expect it’s a lot. Abortion is primarily for the purpose of making effects of such “mistakes” go away.
@jf12 – You do have a point. Abortion is used as a way to make cheating (adultery) go away, or more particularly its consequences.
Recently in some local Texan news outlet, there was this divorced woman who cheated during divorce proceedings with another man and got an abortion, and the soon to be ex-husband used this in court to hammer her as an unfit mother. She keep repeating about “women’s rights” but I don’t think that judge in question listened, and the police didn’t gang up on the ex-husband.
In addition, I should have restrained myself to some white American pro-lifers, because it seems that blacks as a collective group in the USA have extremely high abortion rates (50% of all abortions in the U.S. is from them), high homicide rates and even higher rates of single motherhood (most blacks reside in cities, despite USA regional differences).
@Desidarian
“What handicap do you imagine precludes, say, tradcon fathers from setting up their daughters? my very decent, respectable, supportive mainline congregation from doing any evangelism whatsoever? from calling so much as one of its members to the ministry in the last forty years?”
I dont think its an either or situation, thats why I phrased the question hence. There are elements of both involved. It is easy to blame the prior generation or two for their abdication, but these men werent created in a vaccum. Social Planners began crafting the context in which conditioned these men 150 years ago. As soon as Darwin dropped his bomb on God, every last vestige of restraint was gone. Nietzche saw it and proclaimed it from the rooftop, and the elites ran with it.
This is not an excuse for their failures but just the other side of the story. I would answer that nothing precludes a man from all of the responsibilities, but he has to see them, understand them and be encouraged toward them. This has been slowly but steadily eroded since the fall, but has increased exponentially in the last 150 years. Mainline Christianity bought the lie, and therin lies the issue. They didnt know they were deceived. No one does, thats how a lie works.
“Before response (professio) comes call (vocatio). Who has your ear?”
This is a rub in my own mind as well. For years I have waited for an invitation, or for a teacher. Some kind of guidance or example to learn from and havent as of yet in 15 years found a steady one. I have in fact confronted my own pastor over this very issue. It went straight over the top of his head. I got the same inane, churchian bullshit we see parodied here every day. The last generation, if not the last two, simply CANNOT wrap their brains around it. I know there are exceptions, and I know it sucks but you can not expect someone to do something they have demonstrated they cannot do.
Where does that leave it? Squarely on YOUR shoulders I’m afraid. But it doesnt make any sense to keep looking for water in an empty cup.
Over the course of my lifetime I know personally four women who had abortions, and one that I heard about. Four the five were all young women under 20 who got pregnant with their boyfriends.
The fourth was a married mother of 4 who was pregnant by her husband and the two of them decided they couldn’t afford anymore children. They were unbelievers who later came to faith and had 3 more children.
I think most abortions are just to get rid of inconvenient pregnancies. Of various stripes.
@alphabetasoup
Yes, and more. Scratch a libertarian and you’ll veal a feminist, even if they don’t know it. We don’t need any sophistry to show this either, as we can see it in their own language. Libertarians don’t just hate the rules, but rulership itself; the will and ability to legitimately impose on another person even for the good of the imposed and everyone else. At it’s root libertarianism is a hatred for fatherhood and husbandry; at least over the libertarian. He may be fine with being authoritarian over his own family, but we are seeing less of even that bittersweet hypocrisy.
I say all that as a former libertarian. What can I say? I was young, and confused my hatred of unnecessary burdens and the imposition of evil with the libertarian’s hatred of imposition in general. But I like sex–among other things, and it is a kind of imposition. That’s why all sex is rape in the worldview of the most consistent feminists.
Boy it would be nice to have any stats, ballpark, order of magnitude, any, about how many abortions are mutually decided by married couples, vs all the rest.
OT, Anne Marie Slaughter was invited to recommend that young men hit the snooze button instead of exerting themselves, in order to give women a chance.
http://now.tufts.edu/anne-marie-slaughters-commencement-address
So you favor a strong government enforcing “the right things” Cane? Your definition of “libertarian” may be a bit too broad. I have been migrating toward that, even though I still don’t buy the pro-death abortion support of many (and never will). I find that a state powerful enough to stop all the bad things is powerful enough to shove many bad things down our throats, as we see now.
Man cannot live without any government, but must actively work to keep in check whatever government he does have.
I doubt they keep those abortion stats jf12. I suspect far more are pushed on the woman by others (boyfriend, parents, etc.) than people would want to admit since it would impact the “woman’s choice” narrative.
You have to tolerate whatever caused the need for the abortion to at least some extent if you are going to oppose abortion. It may not be ideal, but opposing death is the priority, then other things. Unfortunately, those other things drive the perceived need for abortion, so you cannot ignore them completely either.
I am seeing that blanket support and encouragement of anyone having a child is not productive and may end up causing more abortions, such as the stories of clapping for an unwed pregnant teen going through graduation. We should not celebrate that as it is promoting the actions that brought her to that point and will result in more coming to that point if it is considered a fine and even wonderful thing to do.
@Brad
I favor anyone enforcing the right things because I favor the right things. Let me cut off right here any notions that I’m arguing for vigilanteism. Vigilanteism is not the right thing.
Sounds like my definition is right on target. You seem to be ok with a government setting boundaries as long as they don’t mean them. In other words: As long as they only pretend to set boundaries.
I’m sure the wives are taking note of this enlightened and nuanced stance as we write…
I’m sure the wives are taking note of this enlightened and nuanced stance as we write…
LOL
I’m sorry I know it’s not really a laughing matter, but I couldn’t help myself. I do see the correlation, and I think I concur.
Although I prefer a government much like our constitutional republic as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries (checks and balances to slow the effects of corrupt hearts), a righteous government is to be preferred over a corrupt government be it a constitutional republic or a monarchy.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that as the US populace has become less moral and religious the US government has become increasingly bloated and controlling. God is not mocked, and man will reap what he sows.
It seems every grouping of humans needs their bogeymen. Feminists have, well, all men everywhere.
Dems have the evil Republicans. Republicans have the evil Dems.
And, the manosphere has tradcons. Okay, I understand that is human nature to pick out a group of ‘OTHERS’ and blame them for all the evils of the world. So, you make up the hypothetical bogeyman, reframe everything you can, and then announce, “We are correct. Our bogeymen are responsible for all our problems.”
Okay, if standing up to the bogeymen gives you functional unity, why not?
However, now you have gone past the bounds of human decency, and someone has announced that tradcons probably have tingles for their own daughters, even though they lie to themselves about it. Enough already! (Unless, of course, y’all admit you have daughters and have tingles for them.)
As a general rule, you are simply fabricating things. Or, use a screwball like Mr. and Mrs. IBB who are definitely screwed up, and generalizing them to all tradcons. One or the other at one point said they wanted their daughters to have sexual experience BEFORE they married, though I think they tried to walk it back later. That is sick.
I am a tradcon and have been so for a long time. And, I worked hard to teach my Real Daughter what she needed to survive in today’s sick society.
For example, when she started college, she came in the house one evening, and asked me why I thought women shouldn’t be in the military. Of course, she was mistaken about my opinion, because actually I think women should do all the military duty until they have over 1,000,000 combat deaths. It wouldn’t take long.
But, I knew what she meant. So, I asked her, “How long would you last if we gave you and your brother both M-16’s with plenty of bullets, and shoved you into the park down the street with the lights out?”
She thought a minute and said, “Probably not very long.”
I said, “You are probably exactly correct. But, please remember you are a full grown adult woman, and your brother is a little 11 year old boy with a sunken chest. Do you have any idea what he is going to be like when he is 18?”
She thought a minute, gave me a big smile, and said, “Thanks. I just wanted to know.”
And, never once has she ever repeated feminist drivel. I put it in terms she could personally understand. That is what a red pill tradcon does.
Another thing I did around that time was explain what the Bible actually says about the submission of wives. And, I bought her a copy of ME? OBEY HIM? by Elizabeth Handford, a Baptist minister’s wife. I think it is back in print again, via Amazon. It gives the correct Biblical writings on the topic, and explains to women how it actually works for their own good, and for the whole family, to do what God has told them to do.
She had no dates to speak of back in the Midwest. Hispanic girls, unless they are 9’s or better, don’t get a lot of attention in the Midwest. When she moved to Southern Texas, things changed fast. Even her 8th grade students were asking her for dates. She finally had two men who were serious. She rejected the one who said he did not believe in male leadership, for the one who said he could do that.
She has been married now 17 years. They have never had so much as one serious quarrel. When a decision has to be made, they usually come to an agreement almost immediately. When they don’t, she says, “We do not agree. You are the head of this family. We are going to do it your way.”
Over the years, she has noticed almost always he was right anyway, and she was wrong. He understood something that she didn’t understand. And, the very few times he was wrong, the cost of his error was almost nothing. She says, “In exchange for this, I have peace in my house.”
That is what a red pill tradcon does.
The problem is most men are under constant vicious attack by almost everyone, even the manosphere kicks them in the n*ts at every opportunity. Their wives are on the attack. Their church is definitely on the attack. The government is on the attack. The media in every format is on the attack. They often have no red pill peer group.
In my case, my main support was: my own kids. They had a period of rebellion, but consistently the things I warned them about happened to their friends. And, if I was confused about something, I asked my daughter and she knew.
When she was 13, the feminists had a major campaign saying when 13 year old girls got knocked up, they didn’t even know how it happened. I asked her, and as polite as she normally is, she used the word STUPID several times, really fast. “Girls my age know how babies are made.” I believed her.
And, a man at work told me one day he never told his kids anything, because he knew if he did, they would run and do the opposite. They had to figure it out for themselves. Something sounded wrong, so I asked my daughter.
She said. “He is saying he has a kid so messed up he will run and do the exact opposite of what his dad tells him. But, if his dad leaves him alone, he will figure it out all by himself? Dad, that doesn’t make any sense.”
And, when she put it that way, it didn’t make any sense.
In high school, she was known as The Girll With The Dad. Most girls didn’t have a real dad.
Part of the problem is the phenomenon known years ago as The Old Maid Child Psychologist. It is easy to sit in judgment of fathers, when you have never raised a daughter yourself. And, in most cases, never will.
Elspeth,
Over the course of my lifetime I have known (roughly) twice that amount who had abortions (unfortunately.) Three were divorced at the time I knew them, the rest had never been married. For some of them the abortion made them a bit jaded. For others, they felt nothing….
…and none of them (in the time that I had known them) had come to Christ or repented for their sins. Although some said it was terrible, all said that they would have done it again and again.
Quite a few years ago, a local newspaper in the US had an article about a South American country. The average woman had like three abortions. When asked why they didn’t use birth control, they said, well, the church tells us that is a sin.
Apparently, day to day, with no panic, they obeyed the teachings of the church and banged away without b/c.
But, when they were pregnant again, that was an emergency, and they chose to have an abortion. Somehow I found that to be a bit sick.
@Boxer
Example: Man who is starved of affection/affirmation by his frigid/unavailable wife will begin supplicating to his daughters.
This is the root of the problem as I have said for years. In the American family, the wife plays the role of the mother of her husband (this is why she is so domineering). The husband plays the role of the son (this is why he is reminded about how useless he is). The wife balloons, cuts off sex and emotional intimacy. She becomes a matron.
The husband has no thing to live for, no way to express his emotions. But there is always little Jenny who, when a little girl, hugged her daddy and told him “I love you daddy”. She is his platonic sweetheart, his only way to receive something of sweetness and affection. So nothing is good enough for her. These guys are the enablers of feminism.
Carl Jung noticed this dynamic long time ago.
http://www.welmer.org/2009/08/13/carl-jung-founding-father-of-game/
The women are the mothers of their husbands as well as of their children, yet at the same time there is in them the old, old primitive desire to be possessed, to yield, to surrender. And there is nothing in the man for her to surrender to except his kindness, his courtesy, his generosity, his chivalry. His competitor, his rival in business must yield, but she need not.
@Dalrock, EatPrayLove cougars are now saving on the travel costs and moving operations into the home.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-gigolo/361628/
This is what your alimony check is paying for, your retroactive cuckolding. I expect feminized churchianity will co-opt this model (in the sexless sense) within a year and Family Values male pastors will endorse it.
Correct Rollo. Unfortunately, there is nothing that you or I could do about it other than not marrying one of these monsters. We have no chance at changing divorce law to prevent the economics of this happening since any politician that would put this on his or her platform would never be elected (thanks to the 19th Amendment) or if they were, they would be out-voted on their bill by their legislative colleagues in their state or federal legislatures.
@JDG
I agree, and I bet Brad agrees.
But does that describe abuse of authority in the male sense? Does it seems like what we ought to rebel against; that needs its balls cut off? When you think of bloated and controlling–a fat micro-managing busybody–does that remind you of paternalism?
When I think of paternalism I picture a masculine man who is some what fit. When I think of abuse of authority I don’t see it limited to sex or gender. Men and women often abuse the authority they have.
Have I unwittingly aligned myself to the notion that we need to castrate the government? Now that you mention it, wasn’t the populace (including members of the government) doing exactly that as we moved from patriarchy to matriarchy? One doesn’t need testicles to be fat and oppressive.
January 20th, 2017… President Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office.
Welcome to the matriarchy.
@JDG
But HOW do men and women differ in that abuse? If the paternalist is a masculine and somewhat fit man; what is the bloated and controlling characterization?
imnobody00:
Please post a link to your work. I’d love to read it. I’ve been reading manosphere stuff since about 2009, and the only time I’d seen the topic explored (even briefly) was at Chez Cane Caldo, a few months ago.
Best, Boxer
But HOW do men and women differ in that abuse?
That is something I would ask you or Dalrock or Lyn87. I haven’t given the differences much thought. I would guess that the differences are in the methods used to get one’s way. But then again the goals (if there are any beyond immediate satisfaction) might be different as well, at least on the surface.
If the paternalist is a masculine and somewhat fit man; what is the bloated and controlling characterization?
A matriarch?
A mangina?
I don’t always use a human caricature when I try to conceptualize or describe something, but to be honest when I do, and the object is bloated and controlling, the caricature is rarely male. It must be due to that time when I was 10 or 11 years old and I got stuck in a door frame with a 400+ lb woman. I don’t think I ever fully recovered.
I’ll just leave this here…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378553/not-all-men-james-lileks
If women have an innate need to surrender, they sure have a funny way of showing it. “Make me!”
@JDG
From my perspective, we’re all stuck in the frame of a 400 lbs. woman now. Nosy busybodies fretting away at inconsequential tasks* while they nag and harass those doing the heavy-lifting, or who aren’t featured in their favorite monthly magazine. That’s a much closer description of our government than a beast that needs its balls cut off because it is too cruel in its pursuit of justice. In fact, a feature of our western governments is their increasing discounts on the whole idea of right and wrong.
*If you’ve ever done any heavy-lifting work, by the bye, you’ll understand that making sandwiches for the lifter is not what he considers an “inconsequential task”.
MarcusD says:
May 20, 2014 at 3:06 pm
‘Most expensive divorce in history’: Russian oligarch ordered to pay more than $4.5 billion to ex-wife
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/20/most-expensive-divorce-in-history-russian-oligarch-ordered-to-pay-more-than-4-5-billion-to-ex-wife/
–
Guess who initiated the divorce?
The wife. Plus, another big hint:
They married in Switzerland (Northern Europe, Scandinavia).
A Swiss court has ordered a Russian billionaire to pay more than $4.5 billion to his ex-wife in what could become the biggest divorce settlement in history.
It wasn’t a Russian court, it was Swiss one, before others start misinterpreting the situation towards more anti-Russian hysteria and lies.
Switzerland is neither in Northern Europe, nor in Scandinavia. It’s an alpine country, south of Germany and East of France.
They married in Russia, long long ago. They got divorced in Switzerland, because that’s where wifey thought she’d get most of the dough (he had accounts there, apparently).
Sorry for that. That was a huge type. I misspelled again. ):
Yes, it’s near France. Sorry for the bad typo. I saw too many Scandinavians in Brazil and that left me an impression.
Switzerland = Near France, south of Germany
Northern Europe = Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania
Too many Nordics in Brazil for now thanks to “feminist outreach”…
By the way, I’m still in the process of moving and hence still travelling so jet lag is horrible.
Cane,
“I say all that as a former libertarian. What can I say? I was young, and confused my hatred of unnecessary burdens and the imposition of evil with the libertarian’s hatred of imposition in general.”
Check your solipsism, bra. You render too much to Caeser, and not enough to men wiser than your or I who instituted a government of enumerated powers not out of hatred of imposition, though they rightfully despised impostors, but from a true reckoning of the fallen nature of man, king and subject alike.
“When you think of bloated and controlling–a fat micro-managing busybody–does that remind you of paternalism?”
Cane, the evil runs far deeper than that. You see the Ungoliant. Meanwhile Sauron convinces the populace to sell their own children into slavery to defy the Gift of Men. We’re living in the Akallabêth and you yearn for more powers for Ar-Pharazôn.
I have nothing against Nordics (some of my best friends and all that) but my condolences to Brazilians everywhere for the influx of feminists. Nobody wants their kind around…
Notre Dame won’t recognize ‘traditional marriage’ student club
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/05/20/traditional-marriage-club-denied-official-recognition-by-university-notre-dame/
An interesting quote:
– Students for Child-Oriented Policy
Which echoes that of Jean Marc (a French mayor): “The rights of children trump the right to children” (from: http://c-fam.org/en/issues/human-rights-system/2050-french-homosexuals-join-demonstration-against-gay-marriage).
Notre Dame is really turning into a hive of screwballs.
@Desi
You’re bringing a lot of assumptions into your reading of what I said.
I don’t know any of the relevant pronouns except Sauron. You’re going to have to decode it for me if you want me to understand.
“We reject the view that the young have agreed to redefine marriage. Rather, we think that they have not explored the meaning and importance of marriage.”
Interesting indeed. It will the the children of divorce who get this shit straightened out. We know what we missed out on.
The Akallebeth is all of 30 pages long. It’s worth a read.
“You’re bringing a lot of assumptions into your reading of what I said.”
Fill in the blanks, then. A political philosophy is not an identity, so I’m not offended or anything, but your understanding of libertarianism is not up to your usual standards. I recognize the type you describe, but fail to see what is gained by taking that type to be the entire thing itself, particularly since that thing contains compelling critiques of the evil we both contend with together.
@Boxer
About “my work”, I think it would be misleading to call it that way. It is only some half-baked ideas that I have repeated once and again in comments of the manosphere, to see if I can get some confirmation.
I am tired and my English is not good but I’ll try.
The thing goes this way. When America was a country of farms, boys helped their fathers in the farm. This gave them a masculine role model. With industrialization, the father became absent from everyday’s life. This was more extreme than in Europe, where distances are shorter.
This gave boys a lot of time with their mothers. Having the husband absent, mothers turned to boys to feed their emotional needs. This is called “emotional incest”
http://www.amazon.com/Silently-Seduced-Revised-Updated-Children/dp/0757315879/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
This is the origin of the beta boy and the need that men have about replacing the unconditional love of their mother by the unconditional love of their girlfriend/wife. This is the origin of the reverence mothers (and for extension, women, since most women were mothers yesteryear) have in American culture.
Many men seek in their wife a replacement of their mother. This unconditional love, this nurturing instinct, the soul mate that really understand you…
So, as Carl Jung said, American men treat their wives as mothers. The rest was explained in my previous comment.
(Not that Europe is superior. It has its own problems).
(It could be argued that women look for a father, that is, an alpha who is strong but love them. The love for our parents is our first love and the template for all loves in our lives).
Dear imnobody:
You should really write some articles on this. I’d be glad to post them on my (generally unused) blog. The social-psychoanalysis angle is one that’s undertheorized in these parts.
Adding to your first-rate insights, I’d argue that father-daughter and mother-son psychological fusion isn’t a new thing that just happened with industrialization. It’s analogized in Sophocles, and probably in the bible too (Moses and his daughters may be an approach to the topic, though I’m not a bible scholar).
Best, Boxer
@Desi
I’ll give it a shot.
1. I can be (and am) for a strong government that is not a bureaucratic behemoth full of schemers and scammers. The choice between libertarians and Republicans/Democrats/neo-cons/whathaveyou is false. There’s no Biblical exhortation for Christian civilians to keep the government in check. There’s not even an exhortation for subordinates to keep pastors or fathers in check. There are ways to address grievances, but that’s different than constructing a system designed to frustrate good and evil authority in equal measure, or even pass judgment on it. In the Bible, the bridling almost always comes from above.
3. I find the cover-ups worse than the offense; from the ATF gun-walking scandal, to the abuse of the IRS to Benghazi. Included in that is my general belief that–whatever the situation, his prejudices, or his predilections–Pres. Obama is inclined to do whatever worsens the rest of the world’s perception of the US all while talking a pro-US game to our internal media. Mistakes are made and people are overly zealous, but lying undercuts grace, forgiveness, authority, submission…everything.
4. Politically Libertarians are not pro- anything concrete. They are only an anti- party. Their motivations–just as you have reiterated–are always centered on being against authority lest it be misused. It’s the political philosophy of a California wife who–having read about a deranged man in Iowa that beat his wife–is suddenly afraid of the sane and cubicle-dwelling husband that she’s nagged without retribution for 20 years straight.
4. The things that Libertarians are subliminally for, I’m generally not: weed, sodomy, pacifism, toll roads…
5. In real life, most of the ones I’ve met are stupid and ill-informed, but imagine themselves as enlightened. It’s that last bit that is dangerous. The fact that most of the adherents of the other political philosophies are equally deficient still does not recommend libertarians.
Sort of. I think it’s wrong that, say, the US administration kills untried Americans by drone if they are in another country aiding terrorists. But I can understand it and I’ll get over it. I think the media gossip machine they use to make everyone pleasured, passive, and politically-correct is much worse. Libertarians don’t have an answer for that…can’t have an answer for that.
Final exam question: just what Article of the Constitution does the State claim gives it the right to institute Marriage 2.0?
This is closed-book, unless you just have to research it.
“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Bonus question: if marriage (0.0 thru to 1.0) was regulated by the church/religion, how can the State usurp that function without de facto instituting a State Religion, in direct violation of the First Amendment stipulation against exactly that?
Not that it’s a good state religion, since the logic of man-fault divorce, mother custody, and child support is: “Hey, first we’ll rob him of his kids, then we’ll make it ‘even’ by robbing him of his money also…”. I.e., it’s criminal.
And it will only end when this criminal regime of the Republican and Democrat parties is overthrown and completely destroyed, finished.
The sooner the better.
Nice pair of lists comparing Nazis, Communists, Democrats, Republicans, etc. to Libertarians:
http://www.voxday.net/cave/planks.html
http://www.voxday.net/cave/planksII.html
Conclusions:
“In conclusion, I believe the facts support my assertion that the Communists and National Socialists were very closely akin philosophically, that the policies and platform of the modern Democratic party are ideological cousins to the historical National Socialist program, that the Republican party has more in common with the National Socialists than many of its members would like to think, and that Libertarian ideology is the only political philosophy in direct and consistent intellectual opposition to Communism and National Socialism.”
Agreed that Libertarians (capital “L”, or Libertarian party adherents, NOT libertarian philosophy sympathizers) are basically correct on property rights, taxes, regulation, gov’t size, etc., but are absolutely insane on borders/immigration and sexuality/marriage issues.
nnocentbystanderboston says:
May 22, 2014 at 2:15 pm
“This is what your alimony check is paying for, your retroactive cuckolding. [moving a gigolo into the previous marital home]
Correct Rollo. Unfortunately, there is nothing that you or I could do about it other than not marrying one of these monsters.”
Not exactly true. Post-frivorce, it is my express hope that one day every man will make what I feel is the patriotic choice and refuse to earn one cent that has any chance of being swiped by gov’t to become chilamony, whatever the cost to him. (Working gray market for cash, disappearing into the woods, permanently emigrating, whatever it takes.) If property division at the time of frivorce (for the bulk of currently-married couples under 40, likely wouldn’t be very much, so would run out soon) is all the monetary profit faithless ex-wives get out of the husband, watch the frequency of it go way down.
I like Vox Day’s blog, but he doesn’t know much about political theory.
The Libertarian party, in its contemporary form, is basically a Marxist-Leninist revision. Ayn Rand was born, raised and educated in the Soviet Union. You guys do realize this, yes?
The main theoretical difference between Randian Libertarianism and Marxist-Leninist philosophy is the geography of the United States, with its industrialized core and the plentiful food. Randian Marxists believe that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is not necessary for centralization here. All we need to do is “wither away” the state through legislation, at which point we’ll have our castle in the sky, where everyone is free to do whatever he likes, and all people will continue to behave themselves just because.
History is pretty clear on the fact that this ideology (it is one ideology) is a pipe-dream. Example: The Nazi invasion of the USSR at Operation Barbarossa. Ever wonder why the Germans pushed hundreds of miles a day at first, with no trouble at all? (They had more trouble clearing the Warsaw Ghetto than they did in the first days of the invasion of the Soviet Union).
It was because the Soviet Union was in the final stages of implementing the “Libertarian Paradise” that many here dream of. The Red Army was in the final stages of being dismantled. All power was in the hands of individuals and small groups. There were no border defenses, because every farmer on the kolkhoz was expected to simply pick up his personal firearms and defend the motherland when necessary. Soviet Power meant that individual communities were largely autonomous and individual households were expected to manage for themselves. What actually happened was that all those great self-sufficient libertarians were killed by a relatively small fighting force, operating far from home.
In any event, Vox Day is not a political theorist. I like his social articles, but on this one he’s way off base.
Boxer, when you used “Randian” as a modifier for “Marxist”, IMO you proved that you don’t understand what Objectivists believe and advocate at all. Have you read ANY books of Ayn Rand’s all the way through? Surely you would see how Galt’s Gulch operated in “Atlas Shrugged” to be a (only moderately improved) version of the U.S. between 1781 and 1789 (independence and the Constitutional Convention).
Luke: I’ve read Rand’s work, and I’ve read Piekoff’s *Ominous Parallels*. Sorta interesting, in an idealistic, Marxist, pie-in-the-sky way. Someday there won’t need to be laws or police or welfare systems. We’ll all live as a big peaceful blob with ample charity and everyone will go to work every day and get along with his neighbor just because he’ll be freed of the false ideology of (capital, religion, etc.). You can change a very few words from communist agitprop and get objectivist literature.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice dream, but I think people are a lot more troublesome than Marx/Lenin/Rand and the like give them credit for.
Boxer, please name ONE thing in Rand’s principles of political economy that is remotely sympathetic to the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism. (Her atheism is irrelevant, so don’t say “the second half of dialectical materialism” and think you defended your position.)
Luke:
I already named ONE thing in Rand’s political economy which is identical to the fundamental principles of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, namely, the “withering away” of state power. Rather than address that, you started telling me that I really didn’t know what I was talking about, etc.
If you want another source, this one looks good:
http://shlapentokh.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/the-marxist-and-bolshevik-roots-of-ayn-rand’s-philosophy/
It ain’t like I’m making any new revelations here. The most obvious ties between objectivists and bolsheviks is encapsulated in how bitterly they hate one another. It’s pretty much identical to any other two groups of Marxists who will gouge each other’s eyes out over the most petty and trivial revisions to their philosophy. (Trotskyists and Critical Theorists and Maoists and Randians and old-school MLs could all do cage fights together and grab a bigger audience than their utopian literature has so far commanded, but here I digress).
Best, Boxer
“Her atheism is irrelevant”
That will end well…
Wow! I must say I am impressed. I honestly can say I’ve never seen such a civil dialogue covering the big 3 (politics, abortion and religion ) even considering the assortment of generally like-minded people.
I have not heard anyone mention Theonomy here yet. Of course it flies directly in the face of all that we enlightened western folks hold dear but that may actually be a good thing. The theory is fairly straight forward and easy to understand. I’m curious if anyone here has ever considered it.
Here is a fairly good a article discussing it because many have probably never even heard of it.
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/what-reconstructionism-what-theonomy/
“I have not heard anyone mention Theonomy here yet. Of course it flies directly in the face of all that we enlightened western folks hold dear but that may actually be a good thing. The theory is fairly straight forward and easy to understand. I’m curious if anyone here has ever considered it.”
Well I think that every God fearing Bible reading and believing man here in some or other way tries to live this type of life. The only problem I have seen reading the comments is that although God fearing men really want to live as God has instructed them to they do not know how to prevent government imposing itself on them [except IBB, he still wants government oversight over his choices and decisions]. The examples most often used by men that are the biggest problem for them are divorce, child custody and alimony. Men today do not know how to counter this onslaught Biblically. They think they know what the problem is however the answers they come up with are merely a mobius strip. The question that every God fearing man really needs to ask is this. Who am I? And when they truly understand the answer to that it will lead one to ask the right questions, because the truth isn’t found in the answers given but in the questions ask, and that will automatically allow men to live as God intended. Thus giving the government and feminists and other parasitic groups the proverbial middle finger whilst still remaining in honour . And the best part is there is nothing that any one of these imposers can do to make you do anything you do not want to.
Boxer says:
May 23, 2014 at 2:42 am
“Luke:
I already named ONE thing in Rand’s political economy which is identical to the fundamental principles of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, namely, the “withering away” of state power”
Sigh. That doesn’t remotely qualify. My reasoning:
Under Marxism-Leninism, specifically, under the Dialectic imperative, the totalitarian power of the state never actually goes away. In fact, it gets ever stronger, but via the logic of the Dialectic, that is proof that it has withered away. (Confusing, yes, but if someone can understand this sophistry, they’ll find Third Wave feminism a snap.)
Conversely, in Rand’s view not only does state power actually get quite limited (contract law and criminal courts, police, military for purely external threats), it does so immediately. This is very much in line with (most of) the U.S. Founding Fathers’ general view of how government should work, at least at first (til the influence of Alexander Hamilton and the like became stronger, and the Articles of Confederation became thought of as flawed, wrongly or not, by enough people).
My challenge to you remains to find one true commonality between Ayn Rand’s views and those of Vladmir Ilyich Lenin (first ever actual implementer of Marxism), short of ones that only an advocate of total political anarchy could support. (This means her support of having a military to defend against external threats does NOT equal the USSR’s Politburo supporting the Red Army’s existence as the primary defense against Operation Barbarossa.)
Dear Luke:
I actually had to spend a couple of years studying some of this stuff, so you can “sigh” all you want. A couple of minor points, before I answer the question you finally get ’round to asking.
There is no such thing as the “dialectic imperative”. If you have a source for this, please post it.
Which, as I have said a couple of times, is the fundamental premise of communism. The state will cease to exist once people have outgrown their ideology, etc. If you’ll scroll up and actually read my first comment, you’ll note this.
“Only Lenin, in his book Materialism and Empirico Criticism published in 1908, had a philosophy almost exactly like Rand’s which was formulated a half-century later: “Consciousness is the mirror image of reality.” Any further than Lenin, the layman in philosophy, though educated for those times, Rand did not go.”
http://shlapentokh.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/the-marxist-and-bolshevik-roots-of-ayn-rand’s-philosophy/
Again, not only are you not reading my articles, but you’re not reading the other references I’m posting, which gives you the appearance of a little kid, shouting while plugging his ears. This is common among Marxists of all stripes, when confronted by the limitations of their “one true way”.
My goal is not to dissuade you (nor to dissuade any other Marxist). I have no problem with anyone’s pet theories; but I think the discussion of the theories themselves render their shortcomings up as fair game for criticism, which I will continue to provide.
Regards, Boxer
Boxer, when I refer to the Dialectic imperative, I am referring to the Dialectic part of Dialectical Materialism, a core tenet of Marxism-Leninism on the level of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
The Dialectic includes core concepts such as the ever-strengthening permanent grip of the Party on power IS PROOF THAT IT IS WITHERING AWAY. This is considered a contradiction or lie in non-Marxists, but is accepted as peachy keen right on by MLs. OTOH, massive government really does go away under an Objectivist-guided government. I don’t know what could be a greater contrast, between North Korea — and an even freer version of 1788 America. Do you not see this?
Out of curiosity, did you ever read Fred Schwarz’s “You Can Trust the Communists To Do Exactly As They Say”? (Alternate titles: “Naked Communist”, “You Can Trust the Communists To Be Communists”, etc.) It explains the concept of the Dialectic as Marxists quite clearly, as it can be explained to a non-ML. It’s pre-1965, I believe, and was once nearly as well-known as “None Dare Call It Conspiracy”.
Oh, and I’m at work, with only so much time to spare. I’ll look at your links when I can.
Luke:
I asked for sources, at least at the level of those I’m providing. Again, there is no such thing as the “dialectic imperative”, except perhaps in your own mind. I enjoy vigorous discussions, but you need to actually make some legitimate points with things other than your own opinions/interpretations.
The Naked Communist was not written by Fred Schwarz. It was written by Cleon Skousen, who is, just coincidentally, my cousin (all of us Canada Mormons are an inbred bunch, and we’re generally related to one another in multiple ways). He has several kids who were, last I checked, all still writing in the same style as their dad. Yes, I’ve read that book. It’s pure kook literature, with no theoretical basis for the shoddy analysis contained therein, much like your ramblings here. I don’t want to be rude, but you have yet to make a single point in support of your own Marxist revision.
Cleon Skousen would have been a much more effective critic of Marxist-Leninist philosophy if he had actually, like, read some of Marx’s work, rather than just parroting horror stories based in emotional propaganda.
Again, I had to slog through Marx’s work for years in pursuit of a degree (and am still recovering from the life-crushing boredom of it), so I am quite familiar with what you’re trying to talk about. Much of Marx’s work is up on the internet, freely available. I’ll be glad to continue this when you can cite some of it to support your positions. And again, I mean no disrespect to you, nor to any other Marxist of any other stripe. I just think the ideas have now been debunked so thoroughly that they’re easy fodder for criticism.
Regards, Boxer
Boxer, exactly why did you spend so much time studying marxism? I don’t know of any employers who are looking to hire students of marxist theory. What was the point?
Dear “Robert”:
I have a degree in history (spec: 19c) and a more general philosophy degree. Marx is marginally relevant to these disciplines.
Regards, Boxer
But what do you use it for? Do people pay you to tell them about marxism? Further, do you admire the man and his thought? If not, it sounds like a dreadful waste.
Yes, that is part of my job description, and has been, off and on, for a number of years now. I have a degree in pure mathematics too, so sometimes people have paid me to teach them the fast wavelet transform and such, but I have taught philosophy.
That doesn’t make much sense to me. For example: I think Plato was a miserable, life-hating bore, and I’m pretty sure I’d have hated him had I met him (and he me), but I have taught his work before, and I know it fairly well. We don’t have to personally admire individuals to recognize that their work has been influential in shaping social trends.
Regards, Boxer
Ok, but I prefer to read the ideas of those who interest me.
A solid background in Marxism could prepare you for a career in many industries: any level of government, labor unions (especially public sector), any university or school, most media operations, many church hierarchies….
“A solid background in Marxism could prepare you for a career in many industries: any level of government, labor unions (especially public sector), any university or school, most media operations, many church hierarchies….”
Heh, not Marxism as Boxer tells it. That sounds like Chesterton.
Like a good Marxist, I’m as concerned with praxis as with naked theory; and unlike one, with character and actions as much as intentions, good or otherwise, and ideas.
Some sources:
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment
Lenin
Young Stalin
The Black Book of Communism
Darkness at Noon
The World Was Going Our Way
Intellectuals
Boxer’s understanding of Marxism is about as complete as Cane’s is of libertarianism. I sense some unexpected truth in both your contrarian takes, but little evidence of grasping the breadth of existing understanding.
Cane,
Came across this passage in Niebuhr (Beyond Tragedy, pgs 182-185 – bold text mine) that may shed some light:
“The savior of the world is not crucified by criminals or obviously evil people; he is crucified with criminals by the “princes of the world,” to use the Pauline phrase. Love is the law of life; but when it enters the world of relative justice and balanced egotism it is destroyed in it. The suffering servant dies on the cross. “He was in the world and the world was made through him… he came unto his own and his own received him not.” (John 1:10-11) The implication is that human nature has deviated from the law of its existence, that man is estranged from his essential nature. Christ is the essential nature of man, or as St. Paul expresses it, the “second Adam.” But the second Adam is not a simple moral possibility for sinful human nature, as the liberal church has believed. The second Adam is crucified by the first Adam, particularly by the first Adam who is trying to be good and is seeking to build up governments and churches and standards of conduct which will hold sin in check. Jesus is destroyed by the chief priests and elders,the princes of the world; and his chief opponents are the best people of his day, the Pharisees.”
The Political Red Pill for TradCons and, evidently, you too, Cane. God commands us, you and I, to take up the Cross, not to leave the heavy lifting to Caesar.
“Thus when the Kingdom of God enters the world it is judged by the world and found to be dangerous to all of its tentative harmonies and relative justice. But it also judges the world in the very moment in which the world is condemning it.The commandment of love which Christ introduces in the world was “from the beginning,” the life which he manifests is the very pattern of life. The world does not know how far it has strayed from that pattern until the original is revealed… “If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin” (John 15:22). The sinful world is not destroyed by the Kingdom of God. It is however fully revealed. Any one who really understands the dimension of the Kingdom of God ceases to have illusions about the world’s kingdoms. He knows that their power and the relative justice of their balances of power are not the Kingdom of God. He knows that the anarchy of sin is still in them. If he tries to mitigate the anarchy by relative righteousness he will not regard that righteousness as the righteousness of the Kingdom of God. The righteousness of the Kingdom of God stands above it and condemns it. Without acceptance of that judgement, that is, without repentance, there is no entrance into the Kingdom of God. For without such repentance men live in the world without knowing that the goodness of the world is filled with evil and that the order and peace of the world are only an armistice between competitive forces. Without repentance those who have created peace through their power imagine that they have created pure peace; and suffer from the delusion that the enemies of their peace are God’s enemies. Without repentance the princes of the world, whether priests or governors, crucify the Lord afresh.
But what if the King and Kingdom are accepted? What if the law of life is understood? Can a man then simply live by it? The modern church has usually given a simple affirmative to that question. Its answer betrays that it has forgotten that the Kingdom of God enters into the world in tragic terms. The “prince of glory” dies on a cross… The simple moralism of the modern church is a corruption of the idea of the Kingdom in the very moment of its deepest insight into it. It’s mistake is to believe that the law of love will simply prevail in the world; that it requires only resolute action by good men. It believes that if you are forgiving toward your foe, your foe will relent. But you foe may take advantage of your forgiving spirit. It believes that if only a modern nation were adventurous enough not to arm and defend itself against its foes it would shame its foes into goodness (Niebuhr is writing this in 1937). But a defenseless Germany after the war was driven to madness by the vindictiveness of its foes. Now these foes are arming frantically to keep pace with the arms of vindictive Germany. Human sin always involves itself in these vicious circles. They are so obviously vicious that good men, who do not always understand the depth of human sinfulness, always imagine that sin will reduce itself to an absurdity and allow the strategy of the Kingdom a clear field. Unfortunately, there is nothing in human history to substantiate this hope.”
The Political Red Pill for liberal Churchianity and white knights of all stripes. Government is a necessary evil in this world. But it is necessarily that, an evil, and not a good, as our young are rediscovering, good and hard.
“I think the media gossip machine they use to make everyone pleasured, passive, and politically-correct is much worse. Libertarians don’t have an answer for that…can’t have an answer for that.”
Heh.
Hardly. It’s their very raison d’être.
@ desiderian
Mark 12: 16-17. “They brought one. And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” And they said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were amazed at Him.”
“The Political Red Pill for TradCons and, evidently, you too, Cane. God commands us, you and I, to take up the Cross, not to leave the heavy lifting to Caesar.”
I agree. They view that their “Caesar” (which is ironic in itself) has rightful claim to that which belongs to God as well.
I am not sure putting all modern pastors into the bin of the scribes and pharisees in Jesus’ day is accurate. He did not chastise all of them, only those who followed the ways of men and rejected Him. He accepted someone like Jairus without hesitation (healed his daughter/raised her from the dead) for example.
Dad’s night out is the three Hangover movies.
Or, if you’re a Boomer, “Wild Hogs”
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