A self-evident but forbidden thought

A self-evident but forbidden thought

A simple thought just came to me. There?s nothing new or strange about it. Here it is:

The job of both sexes is the maintenance and flourishing of the human good, but the two sexes are each primarily responsible for different sides of the human good.

As I said, there?s nothing new or strange about this thought. For traditionalists, it?s just common sense, just the way the world is. However, what struck me with the quality of strangeness was my next thought: that no mainstream conservatives would ever think or utter this commonsense thought.

They would never think or utter it, because it means that women should not have career equality with men. All Republicans and mainstream conservatives now take it as an unquestionable axiom that women should have career equality with men.

- end of initial entry -

Josh F. writes:

You wrote:

The job of both sexes is the maintenance and flourishing of the human good, but the two sexes are each primarily responsible for different sides of the human good.

A corollary of your statement is that boys and girls should not be put on equal and identical educational paths. But that commonsense thought is also contrary to what mainstream ?conservatives? now wholly believe.

Laura Wood writes:

They would never think or utter it, because they look down upon that aspect of the human good that women have traditionally maintained. It cannot be collectivized, rationalized, or quantified. It is therefore uninteresting and not worth defending.

Jim Kalb writes:

That?s a nice way to point out the oddity of our situation. There?s something as basic as the division of the human race into two sexes, and it?s not supposed to mean anything at all. Everybody in public life agrees on the point, and a contrary view is simply unthinkable.

Jewel A. writes:

My how times have changed!

When my mother died at age 29 shortly after childbirth, I grew up without the influence, love, and education only a mother can give a child, especially a daughter.

I didn?t go froward growing up, but felt strangely amputated somewhere in my soul, since almost all my friends had mothers and fathers, and most of them were married still.

As I grew older, married, and had children myself, the only thing I wanted to be was a mother! Full-time!

I worked for liberal women in the press as a proofreader for a newspaper, and when I expressed my desire to be a full-time mother, you would have thought I?d uttered a blasphemy! How these harpies scolded me, reminding me how women sacrificed so much to have careers, and I was betraying?BETRAYING?the cause!

I simply said, ?That was never MY cause, and when you have never HAD a mother, you can?t complain about MY choice.?

When my twins were born, the personnel director of the newspaper suggested I put my preemies in daycare. She was unmarried, and had no concept of my dilemma. My husband was bedridden with a broken collarbone, and even then, he did all he could do to help, which wasn?t much. After he was back on his feet and working, I stayed home.

Now my daughters are grown. One is married with a child of her own. She told me how so many of her peers had no mothers at home waiting for them, and she thanked me for making that choice to stay home and for being a full-time mother.

Every day, Lawrence, is Mother?s Day for me. I am one grateful, happy woman. Never had a question about what I was going to be in life.

Peter F. writes:

Though concise, ?A self-evident but forbidden thought? is a vitally-important thread. I especially liked Laura Wood?s comment:

They would never think or utter it, because they look down upon that aspect of the human good that women have traditionally maintained. It cannot be collectivized, rationalized, or quantified. It is therefore uninteresting and not worth defending.

Feminism, along with cheap and easily-obtained contraceptives?especially oral contraceptives?has proven to be a virtual suicide pill for the West. Birth rates are falling all over Europe and also in Japan. Some demographers believe that such self-imposed population declines are unique in recorded history. Meanwhile, the Sex and the City model of female living explodes in popularity as women decide to work (so they can buy all of those pricey clothes, go to nightclubs, and have one-night stands with throwaway men of their choice), and decline to have children, or have fewer of them later in life. The cultural left has done its best to delegitimize motherhood and being a respectable lady as things to which a young woman should aspire. Although our birthrates remain at replacement level, we here in the USA also dishonor and degrade motherhood and the traditional role of women as the keepers of home, hearth, and family.

One example concerns the cavalier manner in which our society sends its daughters, mothers, and sisters off to fight wars. Women are the basis of civilization because only they can bear children. Men have always been expendable in nature?think of the male drones sacrificing themselves for the female queen in a bee hive. The death of a man in war is tragic, but the death of a woman in battle is an affront to all we are alleged to hold dear. This is especially true if there were men available to go in that woman?s place. In plain-spoken terms, sending women to war is killing the seed corn?the very basis of coming generations. Only an intellectually confused, morally sick nation sends its women to war when there are able-bodied men available to go. Needless to say, only intellectually confused, morally sick men allow this to happen, and even cheer the women as they go off to war!

The program of the cultural left has come full circle; the men?who have been made into geldings by feminism?stay home and cheer their women off to war. I cannot help but think of C.S. Lewis and The Abolition of Man:

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

LA replies:

You wrote:

?Only an intellectually confused, morally sick nation sends its women to war when there are able-bodied men available to go. Needless to say, only intellectually confused, morally sick men allow this to happen, and even cheer the women as they go off to war!?

I have felt the same ever since I became fully conscious of the females-in-the-military issue over 20 years ago. I felt intense moral horror at it. I have said many times that a nation that sends its females and mothers to war, and boasts of doing so, does not deserve to exist. But somehow I haven?t felt that particular horror in some time, or in any case not so acutely as I once felt it. Perhaps because it?s been surpassed by worse moral horrors. Or perhaps because America has become so decadent that I don?t care anymore. In other words, so long as I felt that there was a norm that still held somewhere in our country, a norm that America was violating, a norm that could be appealed to, I felt the horror. But as I progressively realized that there was essentially no one in mainstream America, on the left or the right, that shared this horror, as I gradually realized that essentially everyone in mainstream America thinks women in the military is fine and normal, or as I realized that essentially everyone in mainstream America thinks Sex and the City or Madonna are fine and normal and to be celebrated, or in any case not to be objected to, I stopped, on some level, caring about the issue and caring about them. On some level I wrote them off. This feeling, which I don?t think I?ve ever articulated before, is of a piece with my view that liberal America cannot be saved. It must destroy itself, before there can be any hope of something normal and decent replacing it.

Note: this doesn?t mean that I judge or write off individuals with whom I have dealings. It is a feeling directed at the society as a whole, not at individuals. I always assume the best of individuals, unless they give me reason to think otherwise. And if an individual with whom I have dealings does give me reasons to think bad of him, I will, within reason and to the extent that it?s possible and appropriate within the circumstances, tune it out and see the good.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 17, 2012 09:43 PM | Comment | Send

Source: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/023327.html

Nadia Comaneci Rebecca Soni Snoop Lion big brother London 2012 Table Tennis badminton Dominique Dawes