lundi, avril 28, 2008

samedi, janvier 12, 2008

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080112/NEWS01/80112002

Saturday, January 12, 2008
By Steve Lieberman, Khurram Saeed and Laura Incalcaterra
The Journal News

A Rockland County woman was charged Friday after being accused of putting her 7-year-old son in a hot oven as punishment.

Tiffany Fraser, 26, of 1 Tallman Place, Airmont, the mother of twin sons, pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault, a felony, in Village Court. She previously had been charged with a misdemeanor in the case.

The child's day care provider also was charged because, police and state officials said, she learned about the abuse from the boy and mother but never reported it to authorities.

The day care provider, Joelle M. Lherisson, 37, of 10 Country Club Lane, was charged with a misdemeanor count of failure to report child abuse. She has pleaded not guilty. Her license to operate a day care facility at her house has been revoked by the state.

"In this case, we have horrific acts," Ramapo Detective Lt. Brad Weidel said yesterday during a Town Hall news conference attended by the police chief, town supervisor and council members. "This case has been very unnerving for us, especially those of us who have children.

"Our investigation found the mother threatened to put the child in the oven and then did so. We found the day care operator knew and didn't report the incident."

Fraser's twin sons were removed by the Family Court in November and placed with a foster family under the auspices of Rockland Child Protective Services.

Weidel said Fraser's other son was not physically abused, but police were investigating more abuse against the child and Lherisson's day care business.

Fraser, a single mother, is accused of putting her son in the oven in July because he had lost a cell phone, Weidel said.

"He was being punished," Weidel said.

The child's burns - including to his arm, hand, nose and left leg - were noticed by Lherisson, who questioned the boy at the day care facility, police and the state Office of Children and Family Services said.

Lherisson never reported the abuse as required by law for mandated reporters, according to a Nov. 8 letter from the state agency revoking her license to operate a child care facility.

State inspectors visited Lherisson's day care facility Oct. 26 to investigate a hair-pulling incident between a staff member and a child, said Pat Cantiello, a representative of the state Office of Children and Family Services.

During that visit, the inspectors learned about the July incident with Fraser's child, Cantiello said.

"During the the month of July 2007, you observed burns marks and blisters on the inside of the arm of a seven-year-old day care child," the state wrote Lherisson in the Nov. 8 letter.

"You questioned the child and he disclosed that his mother tried to put him in the oven. You contacted the child's mother, who confirmed the incident did occur."

Lherisson, who had a license since Nov. 30, 2005, appealed the revocation of her license on Dec. 20. A hearing officer upheld the state's decision on Dec. 31.

She has 120 days under the law to appeal her revocation. Lherisson could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Brian Berkowitz, did not return two telephone calls seeking comment.

While the state learned about the alleged child abuse on Oct. 26, Ramapo police learned about it on Oct. 31. Weidel said the police had been investigating a separate incident of child endangerment at Lherisson's facility, but declined to comment further.

Fraser reported her son missing to the police that Halloween Day, Weidel said. The boy was found at the ShopRite on Route 59, about two-tenths of a mile from his home.

The boy told Ramapo police "that he had run away from home and did not want to return," Weidel said.

"He indicated to them that his mother had put him in an oven and burned him as a punishment," Weidel said. "When you hear something like that from a 7-year-old kid, you wonder if it's accurate. But we investigated."

Fraser appeared in court yesterday, dressed in a white jacket, gray sweat pants and boots. She wore black-rimmed glasses. She has appeared before the judge in this case before on the misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child.

After the arraignment, Fraser's lawyer, Edward Cigna, questioned the filing of an assault charge. Cigna said the Ramapo police had known about the abuse allegations for three months and only charged her with a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child.

"This has been kicking around for months with the same known facts," Cigna said. "They returned the children to her back then. This has gone overboard."

Weidel said police filed the assault charge based on results from forensic evidence. He also said the child didn't have burn marks when police first saw him on Oct. 31.

Fraser's only comment to Justice Anthony Benedict during her arraignment referred to the media.

"I just don't want nobody coming to my house," she told the judge.

Benedict said he couldn't stop people from knocking on her door. He released her without bail, because she has shown up at all her previous hearings and at Family Court, where custody of her twin boys is at stake.

Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe's office called in a recommended bail of $5,000 on the assault charge, but didn't send a prosecutor to Fraser's arraignment. Zugibe didn't return a telephone call seeking comment.

Fraser waited inside Airmont Village Hall in hopes the news photographers would leave. She eventually ran out the back door.

Tallman Place, where she and her two sons lived, is just off Route 59, a short street near railroad tracks, an industrial park and the New York State Thruway.

Deon Raymond, a homeowner, said he was shocked by the charges against Fraser, whom he knew only in passing.

"She didn't look like someone who would do this type of thing," Raymond said.

Lherisson's home on Country Club Lane is on a quiet cul-de-sac where the houses have broad lawns and wooded backyards. Toys and play equipment sat inside a fenced area in the home's side yard.

Several neighbors declined to comment on Lherisson yesterday.

jeudi, janvier 10, 2008

'Career divorcee' in $100m fight

By Charles Miranda in London



A WOMAN once married to racing magnate Robert Sangster has been called a career divorcee by her fourth husband as she tries to grab a chunk of his $100 million fortune - just 14 months after they wed.

Susan Sangster became Susan Crossley after marrying Australian developer Stuart Crossley in a whirlwind courtship and wedding in Barbados.

They have agreed to divorce - but she is declaring the pre-nuptial agreement they signed is invalid because he failed to tell her about "tens of millions" he had in offshore accounts.

In a groundbreaking ruling yesterday, three British Court of Appeal judges dismissed her appeal over a hearing next month which will evaluate the pre-nup and whether it means her claims against her husband should be thrown out.

Lord Justice Thorpe, giving the ruling of the court, said: "This is a quite exceptional case on its facts. If ever there is to be a paradigm case in which the courts will look to the pre-nuptial agreement as not simply one of the peripheral factors of the case but a factor of magnetic importance, then it seems to me that this is such a case."

Lawyers for Mr Crossley said the appeal judges had ruled it is possible to short-circuit normal procedures when a financial claim in a divorce appears to be hopeless and there is a pre-nuptial contract.

The judges dismissed Mrs Crossley's appeal against a High Court judge's decision that the facts of the case could be heard in a one-day hearing rather than multiple hearings covering 18 months.

Mr Crossley had asked Justice Bennett in the High Court to short-circuit normal procedures because they were only married for 14 months, there were no children, both had independent wealth and had signed an agreement forbidding court action over their finances on divorce.

His lawyers said the final decision after the hearing next February should provide long-awaited clarification on the degree to which pre-nuptial agreements are binding in the courts.

Mr Crossley said after the hearing: "This is a fair decision. I am upset that our marriage failed. Sadly, my wife is a career divorcee."

He met his future wife in the summer of 2005 and was engaged within a few months.

Before their marriage in January 2006, they signed the pre-nuptial contract agreeing they would leave the marriage without making claims against each other.

She filed for divorce in August - although from June 2006 the couple had lived largely separate lives.

When Mrs Crossley applied for the full range of financial claims against her husband, he asked the court to order that the case should be heard in one day.

Justice Bennett agreed, ordering a hearing to consider all the facts of the case and whether Mrs Crossley should be held to the terms of the pre-nuptial contract.

The story of Ms Crossley's string of wealthy men began in her teens when, as an attractive blond model, she married the heir to the Kwik Save store chain in England.

The marriage lasted 18 months. She then met tax exile Peter Lilley, heir to the Lilley and Skinner shoe fortune, and at age 22 they married but divorced a short time later.

She then met multi-millionaire Robert Sangster - 20 years her senior - and three years later became Mrs Sangster. Their marriage ended in 2000.

Her divorce payouts are worth an estimated $50 million.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22959113-5001021,00.html

Libellés :

jeudi, mars 02, 2006



To view this email as a web page, go here.




Dangerous Professors Threaten Young Minds

Breaking from NewsMax.com

Time magazine once called author David Horowitz "a clear and ruthless thinker. What he says has an indignant sanity about it."

Horowitz lives up to that description in his latest blockbuster book -- "The Professors - The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." [Editor's Note: Check out our FREE offer for this book -- Click Here Now.]

In it he offers "indignant sanity" as he draws blazing portraits of some of the worst leftist propagandists now infesting America's colleges and universities.



FREE Offer
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Those unfamiliar with the extent to which the nation's campuses are being held captive by left-wing radicals will find his revelations shocking. He goes about the task of unmasking the most virulent of academic terrorists who brook no dissent from their student victims.

Horowitz is well suited for the job. He knows the left, its tactics and its goals because he is a child of the extreme left, a background he detailed in his classic books, "Radical Son" and the more recent "Left Illusions."

A lifelong champion of civil rights, he shifted from his parents' vigorous communism - a vigor he shared - to battling his former comrades on the left, paying special attention to their continuing assault on America's institutions of higher education.

In the 1990s Horowitz created the Individual Rights Foundation to combat the epidemic of so-called speech codes being used by colleges to stifle free speech. In 1998 he created the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, his vehicle for fighting the culture wars raging on campuses.

He has visited hundreds of campuses and has been frequently attacked - sometimes physically - by students egged on by bigoted academics who despise any opinions but their own Marxist creed. Now in his mid-60s and recovered from a bout with prostate cancer, he's still at it. Says radio hostess Laura Ingraham: "Beware the unhinged, leftist academic when David Horowitz hits campus."

Florida State Rep. Dennis K. Baxley, chairman of the Education Council of the Florida Legislature, says, "David Horowitz has done more than anyone I know to throw light on the political abuse of our college and university classrooms by activist professors who have been enabled to do so because of the incestuous self-selection process for faculty recruitment and tenure."

In "The Professors" Horowitz traces the advent of leftist domination of the campus to "an academic generation that came of age as the anti-war radicals in the Vietnam era." He notes that many of these activists stayed in school to avoid the military draft and earned Ph.D.s, "taking their political activism with them when they became tenured-track professors in the 1970s."


David Horowitz

Horowitz reveals in detail the extent of professorial radicalism being imposed on students.

He cites federal government statistics showing that the total number of college and university professors is a staggering 617,000. Of that number, he estimates there are between 25,000 and 30,000 radical academics on America's campuses.

The number of students annually passing through their classrooms, he estimates, would be on the order of 3 million potential brainwashees.

Writes Horowitz: "This is a figure that ought to trouble every educator who is concerned about the quality of higher education and every American who cares about the country's future."

Profiled in the book are some of the most radical academics in the United States, representing every form of Marxism, radical Islamicism and sexual deviancy imaginable. He explores a political and cultural loony bin whose inmates are determined to warp the minds of every student they "teach":

At the University of Oregon, professor John Bellamy Foster, editor of the Marxist magazine "Monthly Review," considers the collapse of the Soviet empire to be a setback for human progress.
University of Texas (Arlington) professor Jose Angel Gutierrez says: "We have to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to worst, we have got to kill them."
Columbia University professor Victor Navasky has somehow convinced himself that the traitor Alger Hiss and the Rosenberg spies who betrayed our atomic secrets to the Soviets were as pure as the driven snow.
University of Michigan professor Gayle Rubin, a fan of pedophilia, argues that the government's crackdown on child molesters is a "savage and undeserved witch hunt."
Rutgers University professor Michael Warner advocates public homosexual encounters with strangers.
There are 96 other academics covered in this excursion into the madness of campus extremism. None subscribed to the description of teachers' duties offered by distinguished leftist professor Stanley Fish, who wrote: "Teachers should teach their subjects. They should not teach peace or war or freedom or diversity or uniformity or nationalism or anti-nationalism or any other agenda that might properly be taught by a political leader or talk-show host."

If the examples cited above are not frightening enough, what Horowitz wrote at the conclusion of "The Professors" should scare the wits out of any parent whose child is enrolled in an American college or university: "More than 90 percent of the professors profiled in this text have attained tenure rank, an indication that their academic work is approved by their peers ... within their department and university and nationally."

Their tenure, he notes, makes them eligible to vote on who will be hired in the future in their departments and who will be promoted to tenured rank. He goes on to warn that "the problems revealed in this text - the explicit introduction of political agendas into the classroom, the lack of professionalism in conduct and the decline in professional standards - appear to be increasingly widespread throughout the academic profession and at virtually every type of institution of higher learning."

dimanche, août 21, 2005

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forum: Foibles of feminism
Published August 21, 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Driving home from a high school mentoring luncheon held by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, I contemplated my discussion with the girls at my table.
They were troubled by the information at the weekend conference. It seemed a few considered themselves feminists. Luce Policy Institute President Michelle Easton's speech -- aptly titled "The Failures of Feminism" -- worried them.
Now a junior at Drake University, I couldn't help but think of my own high school days. For all I knew, I was a feminist. Packing up my belongings for that all-important first year of college, I never bothered to categorize myself as a Democrat or a Republican or even a liberal or a conservative. I was 17 and in the middle of that angst/rebellion stage, meaning I no longer went to church with my parents and had purposefully chosen a college 500 miles from home.
Surprisingly, my otherwise mediocre public high school employed a teacher passionate about American history. Come to think of it, the man is the most objective instructor I ever had. My younger sister's revelation the teacher was a Kerry supporter came as quite a blow. Nevertheless, he taught my Advanced Placement U.S. History class and he did so fairly. We spent a good deal of time on the suffragettes at Seneca Falls, and I grew to respect the women who fought for equal rights.
Thus, my view of feminism was neutral, if anything. There was a general appreciation -- "isn't it nice women have the right to work and vote." I didn't see modern feminism directly affecting me. Equal pay for equal work? Sounded logical. I was OK with claims that women should seek fulfillment outside the home.
Naively assuming Women's Studies would be a thorough analysis of the obstacles women had overcome and, perhaps, a comparison of the rights American women have versus the rights of women in other countries, I followed my orientation counselor's advice and enrolled in Women's Studies 101. Call me gullible, but alongside courses titled Marxist Principles of Economics, Intro to Women's Studies looked harmless.
"Harmless" is perhaps the perfect description of how feminist activity seems to those, like my high school lunch companions, who have yet to experience the hateful wrath of the actual movement. This movement is often glamorous and fashionable present but still ever-present in some shape or form on every American college campus.
For three hours a week during my first semester of college, my tuition dollars were spent studying that oppressive beast, the white male. I don't exactly specialize in staying quiet, so for 12 long weeks I was known as the enemy by my Women's Studies professor and classmates.
Soon after leaving home, I had an "Aha" moment. I stopped hating my mother for her selfless devotion to her children and began looking forward to having children of my own. I voiced this desire in class, in response to a question about any justification of heterosexuality, and it was not well received.
If you haven't been in a Women's Studies classroom, just imagine a situation where open-mindedness is touted so long as everyone shares the same liberal ideology. Then multiply it by one woman with a Marxist agenda equally fond of saying "America entered Iraq unpre[expletive deleted]pared" and "King George II," to 30 impressionable and self-conscious peers.
Combine that with assorted readings and film clips shining a positive light on self-centered, lesbian, anti-male existence, and you might see the feminist movement for what it really is: Anything but harmless.
Most despicable in my view is the movement claim to represent all women equally. My professor could not get her mind around anyone disagreeing with her. Her open-mindedness simply did not extend to someone with pro-family convictions.
The Women's Awareness Coalition at my school certainly does raise awareness -- the question is: of what? Trying to explain to a feminist that feminism furthers a leftist agenda, not the rights of all women, is something I think I'll have earned a minor in if I survive the second half of my college career.
After the mentoring lunch, a ninth-grader wrote to me, "I learned that most feminists are very confused." I couldn't have put it better myself.

DANIELLE STURGIS
Miss Sturgis is the recipient of the Phillips Foundation Clare Boothe Luce Journalism Award at the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. She is a junior at Drake University in Iowa.

lundi, juillet 11, 2005



dimanche, juillet 10, 2005


Patschef

mercredi, juin 29, 2005

Congress Should Kill Discriminatory Domestic Violence Act

"I hope VAWA becomes the Titanic of the legislative approach to social problems. I hope it sinks spectacularly."

June 29, 2005


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Wendy McElroy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) will expire this September if it is not reauthorized by Congress. Largely viewed as an anti-domestic violence measure, VAWA has become a flashpoint for the men's rights advocates who see it instead as the living symbol of anti-male bias in law.
Although a significant number of domestic violence victims are male, VAWA defines victims as female. As one result, tax-funded domestic violence shelters and services assist women and routinely turn away men, often including older male children.

Estimates vary on the prevalence of male victims. Professor Martin Fiebert of California State University at Long Beach offers a bibliography that "summarizes 170 scholarly investigations, 134 empirical studies and 36 reviews."

It indicates that men and women are victimized at much the same rate. A lower-bound figure is provided by a recent DOJ study: Men constituted 27 percent of the victims of family violence between 1998 and 2002.

Accordingly, men's rights activists not only accuse the VAWA of not merely being unconstitutional for excluding men but also of dismissing the existence of one-quarter to one-half of domestic violence victims.

The criticism should go deeper. In many ways, VAWA typifies the legislative approach to social problems, which arose over the past few decades and peaked during the Clinton years.

The legislative approach follows a pattern: public furor stirs over a social problem; Congress is pressured to "do something"; remedial bureaucracy arises, often with scant planning; the problem remains; more money and bureaucracy is demanded; those who object are called hostile to "victims."

VAWA arose largely from the concern stirred by feminists in the '80s. They quite properly focused on domestic violence as a neglected and misunderstood social problem. But their analysis went to extremes and seemed tailor-made to create public furor.

As an example, consider a widely circulated claim: "a woman is beaten every 15 seconds." The statistic is sometimes attributed to the FBI, other times to a 1983 report by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. But neither the FBI nor the DOJ sites seems to include that statement or a similar one.

Men's rights activists contend that the elusive statistic derives from the book "Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family" (1980) by Murray Straus, Richard J. Gelles and Suzanne K. Steinmetz. The book was based on the first National Family Violence Survey (1975), from which the FBI and other federal agencies drew.

The survey does support the claim that a woman is battered every 15 seconds but also indicates men are also victims. By omitting male victims from their efforts, however, domestic violence activists create the impression of a national epidemic that uniquely victimizes women who require unique protection.

In response to public outcry, Congress was pressured to "do something." It passed VAWA 1994, granting $1.6 billion to create a bureaucracy of researchers, advocates, experts, and victim assistants, which some collectively call "the domestic violence industry."

Reauthorized in 2000, VAWA's funding rose to $3.33 billion to be expended over five years. Now, VAWA 2005 seeks more money.

Voices like the National Organization for Women insist that "the problem" remains. To argue for the "growing problem of gender-based violence," however, NOW reaches beyond traditionally defined violence against women and seeks to protect high school girls from abusive dating experiences. NOW states, "Nearly one in three high-school-age women experience some type of abuse -- whether physical, sexual or psychological -- in their dating relationships."

Without expanding the definition in such a manner, it would be difficult to argue for more funding.

Data indicates that traditionally defined violence against women has declined sharply. The rate of family violence reportedly "fell from about 5.4 victims per 1,000 to 2.1 victims per 1,000 people 12 and older," according to DOJ statistics.

VAWA 2005 faces much more opposition than its earlier incarnations. One reason is that men's rights activists have been presenting counter-data and arguments for over 10 years.

Advocates of VAWA 2005 have responded with pre-emptive accusations that paint opponents as anti-victim: for example, "If Congress does not act quickly to reauthorize the legislation, they are putting women's and children's lives at risk."

But most of the anti-VAWA arguments are not anti-victim. Many are anti-bureaucracy and could apply to any of the so-called "industries" created by the legislative approach to social problems. (The Child Protective Services is another example.)

Some anti-bureaucracy objections focus on the billions of dollars transferred into programs, often with little oversight or accountability attached.

Other objections point to those dollars being used for political purposes rather than clear and immediate assistance to victims. The misuse of tax dollars is most often alleged on the grassroots level, where men's rights activists often face VAWA-funded opposition to political measures, especially on father's rights issues.

One incident in New Hampshire illustrates the point. Earlier this year, The Presumption of Shared Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act was defeated by vehement opposition from the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. The coalition both wrote to and spoke before the Legislature. Accordingly, father's rights advocates in New Hampshire are seeking language in VAWA 2005 to prohibit any VAWA-funded agency from "legislative lobbying, advertising, or otherwise supporting the endorsement of, or opposition to, any state proposed legislation" which is not explicitly related to the prevention of domestic violence.

I think they should seek to kill the act entirely. I believe VAWA is not only ideologically inspired and discriminatory, it is also an example of why bureaucracy-driven solutions to human problems do not work.

I hope VAWA becomes the Titanic of the legislative approach to social problems. I hope it sinks spectacularly.

Wendy McElroy


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Congress Should Kill Discriminatory Domestic Violence Act

"I hope VAWA becomes the Titanic of the legislative approach to social problems. I hope it sinks spectacularly."

June 29, 2005


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Wendy McElroy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) will expire this September if it is not reauthorized by Congress. Largely viewed as an anti-domestic violence measure, VAWA has become a flashpoint for the men's rights advocates who see it instead as the living symbol of anti-male bias in law.
Although a significant number of domestic violence victims are male, VAWA defines victims as female. As one result, tax-funded domestic violence shelters and services assist women and routinely turn away men, often including older male children.

Estimates vary on the prevalence of male victims. Professor Martin Fiebert of California State University at Long Beach offers a bibliography that "summarizes 170 scholarly investigations, 134 empirical studies and 36 reviews."

It indicates that men and women are victimized at much the same rate. A lower-bound figure is provided by a recent DOJ study: Men constituted 27 percent of the victims of family violence between 1998 and 2002.

Accordingly, men's rights activists not only accuse the VAWA of not merely being unconstitutional for excluding men but also of dismissing the existence of one-quarter to one-half of domestic violence victims.

The criticism should go deeper. In many ways, VAWA typifies the legislative approach to social problems, which arose over the past few decades and peaked during the Clinton years.

The legislative approach follows a pattern: public furor stirs over a social problem; Congress is pressured to "do something"; remedial bureaucracy arises, often with scant planning; the problem remains; more money and bureaucracy is demanded; those who object are called hostile to "victims."

VAWA arose largely from the concern stirred by feminists in the '80s. They quite properly focused on domestic violence as a neglected and misunderstood social problem. But their analysis went to extremes and seemed tailor-made to create public furor.

As an example, consider a widely circulated claim: "a woman is beaten every 15 seconds." The statistic is sometimes attributed to the FBI, other times to a 1983 report by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. But neither the FBI nor the DOJ sites seems to include that statement or a similar one.

Men's rights activists contend that the elusive statistic derives from the book "Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family" (1980) by Murray Straus, Richard J. Gelles and Suzanne K. Steinmetz. The book was based on the first National Family Violence Survey (1975), from which the FBI and other federal agencies drew.

The survey does support the claim that a woman is battered every 15 seconds but also indicates men are also victims. By omitting male victims from their efforts, however, domestic violence activists create the impression of a national epidemic that uniquely victimizes women who require unique protection.

In response to public outcry, Congress was pressured to "do something." It passed VAWA 1994, granting $1.6 billion to create a bureaucracy of researchers, advocates, experts, and victim assistants, which some collectively call "the domestic violence industry."

Reauthorized in 2000, VAWA's funding rose to $3.33 billion to be expended over five years. Now, VAWA 2005 seeks more money.

Voices like the National Organization for Women insist that "the problem" remains. To argue for the "growing problem of gender-based violence," however, NOW reaches beyond traditionally defined violence against women and seeks to protect high school girls from abusive dating experiences. NOW states, "Nearly one in three high-school-age women experience some type of abuse -- whether physical, sexual or psychological -- in their dating relationships."

Without expanding the definition in such a manner, it would be difficult to argue for more funding.

Data indicates that traditionally defined violence against women has declined sharply. The rate of family violence reportedly "fell from about 5.4 victims per 1,000 to 2.1 victims per 1,000 people 12 and older," according to DOJ statistics.

VAWA 2005 faces much more opposition than its earlier incarnations. One reason is that men's rights activists have been presenting counter-data and arguments for over 10 years.

Advocates of VAWA 2005 have responded with pre-emptive accusations that paint opponents as anti-victim: for example, "If Congress does not act quickly to reauthorize the legislation, they are putting women's and children's lives at risk."

But most of the anti-VAWA arguments are not anti-victim. Many are anti-bureaucracy and could apply to any of the so-called "industries" created by the legislative approach to social problems. (The Child Protective Services is another example.)

Some anti-bureaucracy objections focus on the billions of dollars transferred into programs, often with little oversight or accountability attached.

Other objections point to those dollars being used for political purposes rather than clear and immediate assistance to victims. The misuse of tax dollars is most often alleged on the grassroots level, where men's rights activists often face VAWA-funded opposition to political measures, especially on father's rights issues.

One incident in New Hampshire illustrates the point. Earlier this year, The Presumption of Shared Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act was defeated by vehement opposition from the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. The coalition both wrote to and spoke before the Legislature. Accordingly, father's rights advocates in New Hampshire are seeking language in VAWA 2005 to prohibit any VAWA-funded agency from "legislative lobbying, advertising, or otherwise supporting the endorsement of, or opposition to, any state proposed legislation" which is not explicitly related to the prevention of domestic violence.

I think they should seek to kill the act entirely. I believe VAWA is not only ideologically inspired and discriminatory, it is also an example of why bureaucracy-driven solutions to human problems do not work.

I hope VAWA becomes the Titanic of the legislative approach to social problems. I hope it sinks spectacularly.

Wendy McElroy


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Congress Should Kill Discriminatory Domestic Violence Act

"I hope VAWA becomes the Titanic of the legislative approach to social problems. I hope it sinks spectacularly."

June 29, 2005


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Wendy McElroy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) will expire this September if it is not reauthorized by Congress. Largely viewed as an anti-domestic violence measure, VAWA has become a flashpoint for the men's rights advocates who see it instead as the living symbol of anti-male bias in law.
Although a significant number of domestic violence victims are male, VAWA defines victims as female. As one result, tax-funded domestic violence shelters and services assist women and routinely turn away men, often including older male children.

Estimates vary on the prevalence of male victims. Professor Martin Fiebert of California State University at Long Beach offers a bibliography that "summarizes 170 scholarly investigations, 134 empirical studies and 36 reviews."

It indicates that men and women are victimized at much the same rate. A lower-bound figure is provided by a recent DOJ study: Men constituted 27 percent of the victims of family violence between 1998 and 2002.

Accordingly, men's rights activists not only accuse the VAWA of not merely being unconstitutional for excluding men but also of dismissing the existence of one-quarter to one-half of domestic violence victims.

The criticism should go deeper. In many ways, VAWA typifies the legislative approach to social problems, which arose over the past few decades and peaked during the Clinton years.

The legislative approach follows a pattern: public furor stirs over a social problem; Congress is pressured to "do something"; remedial bureaucracy arises, often with scant planning; the problem remains; more money and bureaucracy is demanded; those who object are called hostile to "victims."

VAWA arose largely from the concern stirred by feminists in the '80s. They quite properly focused on domestic violence as a neglected and misunderstood social problem. But their analysis went to extremes and seemed tailor-made to create public furor.

As an example, consider a widely circulated claim: "a woman is beaten every 15 seconds." The statistic is sometimes attributed to the FBI, other times to a 1983 report by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. But neither the FBI nor the DOJ sites seems to include that statement or a similar one.

Men's rights activists contend that the elusive statistic derives from the book "Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family" (1980) by Murray Straus, Richard J. Gelles and Suzanne K. Steinmetz. The book was based on the first National Family Violence Survey (1975), from which the FBI and other federal agencies drew.

The survey does support the claim that a woman is battered every 15 seconds but also indicates men are also victims. By omitting male victims from their efforts, however, domestic violence activists create the impression of a national epidemic that uniquely victimizes women who require unique protection.

In response to public outcry, Congress was pressured to "do something." It passed VAWA 1994, granting $1.6 billion to create a bureaucracy of researchers, advocates, experts, and victim assistants, which some collectively call "the domestic violence industry."

Reauthorized in 2000, VAWA's funding rose to $3.33 billion to be expended over five years. Now, VAWA 2005 seeks more money.

Voices like the National Organization for Women insist that "the problem" remains. To argue for the "growing problem of gender-based violence," however, NOW reaches beyond traditionally defined violence against women and seeks to protect high school girls from abusive dating experiences. NOW states, "Nearly one in three high-school-age women experience some type of abuse -- whether physical, sexual or psychological -- in their dating relationships."

Without expanding the definition in such a manner, it would be difficult to argue for more funding.

Data indicates that traditionally defined violence against women has declined sharply. The rate of family violence reportedly "fell from about 5.4 victims per 1,000 to 2.1 victims per 1,000 people 12 and older," according to DOJ statistics.

VAWA 2005 faces much more opposition than its earlier incarnations. One reason is that men's rights activists have been presenting counter-data and arguments for over 10 years.

Advocates of VAWA 2005 have responded with pre-emptive accusations that paint opponents as anti-victim: for example, "If Congress does not act quickly to reauthorize the legislation, they are putting women's and children's lives at risk."

But most of the anti-VAWA arguments are not anti-victim. Many are anti-bureaucracy and could apply to any of the so-called "industries" created by the legislative approach to social problems. (The Child Protective Services is another example.)

Some anti-bureaucracy objections focus on the billions of dollars transferred into programs, often with little oversight or accountability attached.

Other objections point to those dollars being used for political purposes rather than clear and immediate assistance to victims. The misuse of tax dollars is most often alleged on the grassroots level, where men's rights activists often face VAWA-funded opposition to political measures, especially on father's rights issues.

One incident in New Hampshire illustrates the point. Earlier this year, The Presumption of Shared Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act was defeated by vehement opposition from the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. The coalition both wrote to and spoke before the Legislature. Accordingly, father's rights advocates in New Hampshire are seeking language in VAWA 2005 to prohibit any VAWA-funded agency from "legislative lobbying, advertising, or otherwise supporting the endorsement of, or opposition to, any state proposed legislation" which is not explicitly related to the prevention of domestic violence.

I think they should seek to kill the act entirely. I believe VAWA is not only ideologically inspired and discriminatory, it is also an example of why bureaucracy-driven solutions to human problems do not work.

I hope VAWA becomes the Titanic of the legislative approach to social problems. I hope it sinks spectacularly.

Wendy McElroy


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mardi, juin 28, 2005

Senator Biden's Biggest Lie

June 28, 2005


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by Carey Roberts
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Ol’ Joe Biden has been waiting 17 long years, hoping the American public would forget.

Back in 1988 Mr. Biden was running against Michael Dukakis for the Democratic presidential nomination. But then it came to light that Mr. Biden was lifting lines from the speeches of Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and others.

Where I come from, folks call that plagiarism. That, along with other previous peccadilloes, drove Biden from the nomination race. [www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/biden.htm]

Time erases all bad memories, as they say, and now Mr. Biden is letting on that he wants to join the 2008 presidential race.

But Mr. Biden has another stain on his ethical resume’. This fib is far worse because it has the potential to rend the very foundations of the social order. For the last 15 years, Biden has been saying that women, and only women, can suffer from domestic violence.

Try telling that to the three young children of Clayton Carter, who watched in horror as he was run over by his wife with their Ford SUV. This past week Marquetta Jordan pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in Washington DC.

And consider Herman Winslow, who was shot and killed by Lena Driskell when their yearlong romance came to an end. “I did it and I’d do it again,” Driskell yelled when the police came to her Atlanta home on June 10.

When women kill their husbands and ex-boyfriends, the media never use the term, “domestic violence.” That’s because according to Mr. Biden, only men commit DV.

Clayton Carter and Herman Winslow are just two of the 835,000 men who are assaulted each year by their wives or girlfriends, according to Department of Justice statistics. [www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/172837.pdf]

Indeed, women are just as likely as men to commit partner aggression, and men suffer 38% of all DV-related injuries, according to the research. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10989615&dopt=Abstract]

But Biden’s silver-tongued oratory and cloak room arm-twisting counted for more than the truth, and in 1994 President Clinton signed the first Violence Against Women Act into law. That compelled the Department of Justice to create a new bureaucracy, the Office on Violence Against Women.

A lie is never static. A lie must always grow in order to stay one step ahead of the skeptics.

So the billion-dollar-a-year VAWA has spawned even more falsehoods. It wasn’t enough to say that women were the exclusive victims of DV. Soon we learned that violence against pregnant women was the leading cause of birth defects, that half of all homeless women are on the streets because of partner violence, and other propaganda-like factoids. [http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/factoid/factoid.html]

Recently a hyperventilating Catherine MacKinnon, law professor at the University of Michigan, compared partner aggression to the tragedy of 9/11: “Just like terrorist attacks, acts of violence against women are carefully planned, targeted at civilians, and driven by ideology.”

Eventually a lie becomes so bloated, so distorted, and so grotesque that people begin to have their doubts.

Indiana University law professor Linda Kelly recently exposed the neo-Marxist underpinnings of the DV industry. Kelley explained, “the ‘discovery’ of domestic violence is rooted in the essential feminist tenet that society is controlled by an all-encompassing patriarchal structure.” [www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf]

Earlier this year the non-partisan National Academy Science delivered this stinging critique of VAWA-funded programs: “the design of prevention and control strategies…frequently is driven by ideology and stakeholder interests rather than by plausible theories and scientific evidence of cause.” [http://nap.edu/catalog/10849.html]

Fox News columnist Wendy McElroy lambasted VAWA as a “hand-me-down from the Clinton administration based on gender myths, anti-male bias and an infatuation with Big Government.” [http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0112.html]

And earlier this month columnist Phyllis Schlafly offered this wish to America’s fathers: “Congress can help us celebrate Father’s Day this year by refusing to reauthorize the costly VAWA boondoggle.” [www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7713]

For years the Democrats have clung to their receding power base by playing on the fears and vulnerabilities of racial minorities. Now the Dems are misleading women with the same red-meat rhetoric by saying they live under the constant threat of being beaten and bloodied.

Thanks to DV-induced hysteria, laws make it possible to evict husbands from their homes simply on the word of the woman. So it’s no surprise that so many eligible bachelors are refusing to marry. And it’s no coincidence that single women are far more likely than their married counterparts to vote Democratic.

An ever-growing climate of fear, an unaccountable federal bureaucracy, and a fading-away of the institution of marriage -- all that bodes well for Senator Biden’s presidential aspirations.

Carey Roberts


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dimanche, juin 26, 2005

We Must Take a Stand Against Misandry
Let me remind the reader of certain values every
democracy holds. That includes the belief that all
humans are created equal, that collective guilt or
punishment is unfair, and freedom of _expression.
Unfortunately with the rise of misandry – viewing men
as villains, oppressors and potential rapists these
values are on the way of disappearing completely.


Misandry is so prevalent, that in our age of
diversity saying that all men bear collective guilt
for rape is considered progressive. Male bashing
cards are everywhere. TV commercials portray men as
fools. Our media censors male domestic violence
victims in order to portray us as batterers and
abusers. While violence against women on TV is
denounced, revenge fantasies in which hundreds of man
are cut up, castrated and tortured are blockbusters.
Sin City got $33M in sales the first weekend it was
released. Ireen von Wachenfeldt, chairman of ROKS,
The National Organization for Women’s Shelters and
Young Women’s Shelters in Sweden denied us our
humanity by claiming on TV that men are animals.


Many of us consider misandry a harmless game. But
unfortunately hatred in words leads to discrimination
in action. About 100,000 men in US are in jail at any
given time for inability to pay child support. Any
man who slaps a woman would face a choice between a
year in jail or 72 hours of “reeducation”, yet women
slapping men is considered harmless fun by most. Our
media encourages ladies to kick men in private parts,
yet a man who commits such act of sexual assault would
be given a life sentence divided between prison
“treatment” and other supervision. Male victims of
domestic violence get very little help and are
frequently treated as perpetrators. You should read
The Myth of Male Power and Women Cant Hear What Men
Don't Say to find out more about antimale
discrimination in modern world.


Many of us would ask what is the cause of the
prevalent misandry, and what we can do about it. Many
men and women believe that men at least partially
deserve the modern misandry – and that the best way
for us to deal with it is to ignore it. I believe
that approach is 100% wrong. I do not believe anyone
deserves to be blamed for belonging to a birth group
-- everyone is created equal.


The main reason for the rise of misandry is not the
fact that we commit some crimes more then women –
Americans commit much more crime than Japanese, people
with depression commit more crimes then the
non-depressed, etc. Yet in the XXI-st century, me is
the only group singled out for demonization and
scapegoating.


The perception of men as the “fair game” or the
softest target – someone who can be ridiculed,
insulted or demonized for fun. In this day and age of
cruel and violent entertainment industry, even more
people consider it fun to be cruel to someone. Yet
anyone who tries attacking a race or attacking women
via public media would soon find themselves stopped by
virulent counterarguments, protests and possibly
lawsuits. The fact that there is no such resistance
from men makes all forms of male-bashing fun and
profitable.


We may think that the fad of male-bashing and
anti-male discrimination may pass by itself, but
unfortunately, that is not the case. Without a very
vocal protest anti-male hate and discrimination can
only increase. Both male bashing and anti-male
discrimination grew a lot between 1985 and 1995, and
grew more between 1995 and 2005. There is no reason
to think that the growth of these factors will be any
less this or next decade. We may think, that
misandrists will not try to be more cruel then they
are, but history will prove us wrong. If we look at
the history of American slavery we will see how cruel
can people be to those who can not speak up for
themselves. Given that that much cruelty was shown in
the generations much closer to our forefathers and US
Constitution and raised on religious values of
universal love, we can only imagine our generation's
capacity for cruelty.


Hence, our society has to address this problem as
soon as possible. I believe that men and women who
value our rights should be as vocal on the issue as
possible. We should write letters to newspaper
editors, call in to our local radio shows, and those
of us who are students speak up in classes and at
events, and post fliers on public bulletin boards
protesting vilification of men. Given that many men
resent being demonized and many women do not dislike
men, if we have courage to speak up, we will gather
lots of support.

The question arises how do we rebell against the current culture of misandry?
By refusing to participate in our oppression. If we refuse to interact with American & Western Women and go our own way we can reshape our culture to our benefit. Don't Marry American Women, don't date American Woman, boycott the companies that promote the misandry and promote a sane male oriented subculture. If Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Artists have their own subculture why not Males? Why must we act like a herd and do as we are told? What obligation do we have to support our oppression? It is no longer about equality Feminists want revenge against Men and Boys, they are nearing their goal of the elimination of the family as a structure in our culture.

Let the Skanks whine when we refuse to be part of this debased and sick culture. We are also under no obligation to support Churches who have caved into the FemNags & FemHags. Our debased culture is a result of our Institutions caving into their isane ideaology. If we listen to the current attacks on Men & Masculinity the victory of Islam over our current tolerant culture is assured. Women get your Bhurkas now. You are not worth fighting for.

vendredi, juin 24, 2005

Not the Era of the Deadbeat Dad but the Era of the Hero Father

June 24, 2005



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by Jeffrey Leving and Glenn Sacks

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Fatherhood has changed dramatically in the era of divorce and out of wedlock births, and much attention has been paid to two unfortunate products of this era—the absent father and the deadbeat dad. However, there is another type of father this era has produced, one which has received very little attention—the hero father.

According to the Children's Rights Council, a Washington-based advocacy group, more than five million American children each year have their access to their noncustodial parents interfered with or blocked by custodial parents. Behind that statistic are legions of heroic divorced or separated fathers who fight a long, hard but generally unrecognized battle to remain a meaningful part of the lives of the children who love them and need them.>

Some hero fathers move repeatedly to be near their children. In the controversial case of DeBrenes v. Traub, Eric Traub had already moved to new cities twice in order to be near his daughter when he was forced to conduct a lengthy and expensive legal struggle to prevent her from being moved to Costa Rica. As is typical, the court allowed the move. Traub’s determination paid off, however, as the now teenaged girl became so set against the move that her mother, to her credit, dropped the request.

Most fathers are not so fortunate. In a recent California Supreme Court case, Gary LaMusga, who operates a business in Northern California, fought for eight years to prevent his two young sons from being moved to Ohio, 2,000 miles away. He eventually won, but his victory was a pyrrhic one because his children had already been moved out of state in violation of court orders. In the strange world of modern family law, even with the new decision his children will not be moved back.

While divorced dads are unfairly stigmatized as stingy, some noncustodial fathers raise their children in their homes but still pay child support to the children’s mothers. Many others never ask for child support. In the face of a family court system which usually grants mothers a monopoly of power over children, these fathers must buy or rent their children back. When mothers allow their children to live with their fathers—or send them there because they’ve become unruly or inconvenient—fathers often won’t challenge custodial and financial arrangements because they fear doing so will mean they’ll be pushed out of their children’s lives.

Other fathers endure physical abuse at the hands of their wives but remain in the relationships because they know that divorce will leave their children alone in the custody—usually sole custody—of an abuser. Decades of research show that women are as likely to abuse their male partners as vice versa, and that heterosexual men make up a significant minority of those suffering injuries in domestic assaults. However, gender politics has kept this research from influencing government and law enforcement policies. Many men know that revealing their wives’ violence usually means the wife will claim that she was abused, and the system will side with her. Fathers are commonly arrested, punished or slapped with custody sanctions for their wives’ violence.

In one highly publicized case, Dr. Xavier Caro, a Northridge, California rheumatologist, endured years of physical abuse at the hands of his wife Socorro, who once assaulted him so badly he had to have surgery to regain his sight in one eye. Xavier stayed in the relationship for the sake of his kids but his efforts failed, as Socorro later shot and killed three of their four children.

Some fathers face false charges of domestic violence or sexual abuse, which are commonly used as custody maneuvers in divorce. Those most vulnerable to these charges are dads who are their children’s primary caregivers. Such charges are often made to separate these dads from their children so a new custody precedent can be set with mothers as the primary caregivers.

Falsely accused men often bankrupt themselves fighting to regain access to their children. Meanwhile, many can only see their children in nightmarish visitation centers where fathers are treated like criminals.

Over the past several decades the love and devotion of millions of fathers has been tested in ways few in previous generations experienced. This Father’s Day, let’s honor the hero father.

This column was first published in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (6/19/05).
Jeffrey Leving & Glenn Sacks

jeudi, juin 23, 2005

The Semi-Declared War on Men - Bernard Chapin - MensNewsDaily.com�

The Semi-Declared War on Men

June 23, 2005


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by Bernard Chapin
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The battle between the sexes has ceased being a battle and has quickly turned into a rout. With women the recipients of state sponsored advantages such as affirmative action, preferential treatment in the courts, and a public educational system uniquely sensitive to the needs of girls, men are like frogs in an aquarium where water is added incrementally at ever-increasing temperatures. The frogs only realize the danger just as they begin to boil to death. This is exact warning that Dr. Richard Hise gives us in his 2004 book, The War Against Men.

Its full title includes the secondary, Why Women are Winning and What Men Must Do If America is to Survive, and this is the approach the author takes within. He first outlines the problems of today and then gives suggestions as to what we should do about them. Dr. Hise is a professor of marketing at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School. This would not be a natural subject for a business professor to address, yet he wrote the book for highly passionate reasons. Indeed, the author “…cried when I read how our young sons are degraded in school through the feminization efforts espoused by and, unfortunately, implemented by the female dominated educational system.”

This is very much a work of scholarship. Dr. Hise has read just about everything he could get his hands on regarding radical feminism and the decline of men. The farther he got into his research, the more surprised and dismayed he became. He was shocked as to the extent in which contemporary society is biased against men. The clear message here is that war is being waged against us, and if we continue to stand down we will become serfs within our own country.

He leaves no stone, or troglodyte in the case of radical feminists, untipped in the pursuit of the truth. Most of The War on Men highlights the exact nature of our dhimitude in the United States. From the start he stresses that men and women are not the same, yet the desire of our social engineers is to feminize men and masculinize women. They have been most successful thus far. Dr. Hise surveys the available evidence and paints us a Guernica: women are now more sexually aggressive than ever before, in many cases they consciously attempt to look like men, they choose traditionally male professions, and copy male hobbies and interests. The androgenizing of women reduces male sexual desire as we inherently are attracted to the feminine. What is the overall effect of this process? The camaraderie and complementariness of the sexes is eliminated which is a major factor in our society’s decline.

Women are becoming dominant in the work place and within education as the rules of productivity have been altered to ensure their competitive advantage. In higher education, as most of us are already aware, the universities are devoted to fighting the “phallocracy” which means paranoia in regards to men. The author uncovers a horrifying piece of propaganda put out by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Women’s Studies Director. It demands that Ameican universities make gender “part of all pertinent programs of institutional research,” and that all “curricula would be transformed according to guidance from an autonomous women’s studies site.” The “gender” that would be imposed would be exclusively female in its orientation. If such ideas were ever adopted, then a college education would be next to worthless. Dr. Hise wisely shares with his readers a list of the Top 10 most anti-male universities which is something that every prospective student should consult.

Most frightening of all is what’s happening in the courts where men are forced to pay for children they did not father, and thrown in jail should they not be able to come up with the amount of monthly funds arbitrarily determined by a judge. The case of Dr. Griffin is recounted where he was falsely accused of sodomizing a female patient after he refused to testify on her behalf in a suit she filed against her landlord. The judge barred the doctor from mentioning her past request of him, and also from mentioning her history of instigating frivolous lawsuits. He got 3-and-a-half-years before being acquitted on appeal.

As alluded to earlier, the book is not merely confined to outlining what is wrong with the system. Several recommendations are given for men to follow in the hopes of providing the boys of today with a future. Here are but a few:

1. Men, individually, must be proud of our achievements. We should not allow others to denigrate us.

2. Men must be informed as to what’s going on around us. Work and family cannot prevent us from following political events.

3. Avoid the mainstream media as the information they provide is too biased.

4. Men must take a more active role politically and make sure we vote in every election.

5. Men should fight for the elimination of anti-male legislation like the Violence Against Women Act.

6. We should use the Equal Protection Clause to protest anti-male practices like affirmative action.

Overall, I recommend the book but I must point out to the reader that I have some serious reservations regarding it. While I agree with all of the author’s major themes, there are some details that give one pause. First, Dr. Hise evokes the name of the Lord early and often in his defense of men. This certainly does not offend me, but it does make him a caricature of a religious rightist. The Bible may well be right and true, but it has long ceased to influence political opinion in America (at least for the majority of the population). Second, within some of his passages, Dr. Hise introduces occasional ideas or arguments that are frankly bizarre. I know of no other way of describing a comment like this one about Ritalin, “[t]here are some experts who claim that the drug will turn boys into homosexuals by the time they are 15 years old.” Whoever’s saying that should be called “an idiot” as opposed to an “expert.” Of course taking Ritalin will not result in one becoming a homosexual. Temporarily altering the work of the brain’s neurotransmitters is not going to change one’s sexual identity. An egregious tidbit like that can delegitimate his fine efforts elsewhere. Third, like other writers on this subject, he sometimes seems to confuse “women” with “radical feminists.” This is done inconsistently as in some places the division is clear while in others it is not. Other than these points, it is a book worthy of our time.


Bernard Chapin

mercredi, juin 01, 2005

Socialism....The Price of Idiot Proofing America

June 2, 2005


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by J.B. Williams

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Being a member of congress used to be a part-time job held by our society’s most successful individuals who wanted to preserve the free society they so enjoyed. Now it is a life long career for people who can’t do anything else, the proverbial brass ring, like hitting the lottery. No matter how humble your beginnings, once elected, you are forever rich, forever powerful and forever respected, at least by some.

Overseeing our nation’s security interests, our infrastructure, protecting and defending our Constitution and way of life, these things do not demand the full-time attention of our elected officials, nor would they suck the lifeblood from an enormously successful capitalist society. Idiot proofing America? Now that’s a full-time job and there is no end in sight to the expense of such a proposition.

Not so long ago, the federal budget was less than 3% of GDP. This was when America was building its infrastructure. Now it is above 20% of GDP and growing at a record pace. Add all other taxes to that for a whopping 43% of GDP. We have “public debt” of 65% of GDP and deficits as far as the eye can see. Eventually, we will have no choice but to balance our budget. Guess how? Can anyone tell me what you call a society where the majority (51% or more) of its GDP is controlled by a central government, allegedly for benefit of society at large? Or how we will pay our debts any other way?

America was once the land of the free and the home of the brave. Why? Because only the brave can ever be truly free. Freedom requires accepting risk. It requires individual choices and sacrifices which result in some level of success or failure. Freedom requires good judgment, or the acceptance of consequences inherent with bad judgment.

The socialist view subscribes to the theory that no matter what individual choices one makes, no matter what initiative one takes, what risk or what sacrifice one accepts, we are all entitled to equal results, or at least the same economic rewards. (Not to be confused with honest individual charity.) In other words, a consequence-free society, where all ideas have equal benefit even though they don’t have equal merit.

Those who have chosen badly have come to expect their government to bail them out via any number of government funded social welfare programs, beginning with the graduated tax scale, itself designed to redistribute wealth right from the onset.

From our tax code to Social Security, from Food Stamps to Medicaid, even speed limits, gun laws, smoking bans and EPA guidelines are all attempts to save foolish Americans from their own ill conceived notions. Almost every law on the books in America today, and certainly every new law passed is an effort to idiot proof some segment of American society.

Why not? There is great political power in the promise to solve every Americans self inflicted disaster. People prone to inflicting such disasters upon themselves will readily relinquish the freedom they used so poorly in exchange for government issued absolution.

Anyone with a calculator knows that Social Security is a raw deal for every American. But some have paid into it (or bought into it) for so long, that to walk away from even a failing system now only proves just how flawed their judgment was in the beginning. Rather than admit the mistake and face the music, they search for a band-aid and kick the can down the road.

But here’s the part nobody talks about at social events or around the kitchen table anymore. The only way to save you from yourself is to remove or restrict your freedom to do harm to yourself. Social Security is a perfect example. Because some did not manage their own financial future, government seized control of part of every paycheck in an effort to manage it for us.

They idiot proofed your economic future, or so they say. But if you can work a calculator, you will find that you could have done better even at simple passbook savings rates. Your freedom to do so was exchanged for a government promise. But who gets the money you paid in?

Social Security amounts to another fleecing of America and every member of congress knows it. They just can’t get elected by admitting it. The graduated tax scale is nothing more than the tyranny of some (the haves) for benefit of the others, (the have nots). On the most basic level, we all know that there is no such thing as free stuff. Everything has a price… and free stuff almost always costs the most.

So in our effort to idiot proof America, we pass laws that remove or restrict individual freedoms for benefit of society as a whole. Some people can drive safely at 150 miles per hour. But since some are not safe at 35 miles per hour, we establish speed laws in an effort to idiot proof our roads.

Some have used their freedom to become independently wealthy in America, while others have used theirs to become bankrupt. In an effort to idiot proof America, we remove or restrict ones right to succeed in an effort to remove another’s right to fail.

Some have used their freedom to become respected productive members of their community, while others have used theirs to become a drug addict, a criminal or a freeloader. Because we want everyone to be treated “equal” in our society, we must take from those who contribute something of value for benefit of those who contribute nothing to society.

And so it goes…the steady march towards an American version of socialism, all in the name of idiot proofing society, saving the American people from themselves, at the expense of everything our forefathers died to provide us.

Freedom only works for those who use it well. All others will gladly exchange their freedoms for the promise of a risk-free consequence-free life. Even if the promise is a lie.

Each day we pass new laws to tell people in the most culturally diverse nation that they need to respect other cultures. We pass laws to define words that have been around for centuries, like marriage. We legislate what you can drive, what you can eat, what you can smoke, even what you can think or say. We do it all to idiot proof America, even though America was never designed for idiots…

It seems to me that we only need one law in America. NO IDIOTS ALLOWED! If people could manage their own finances, we won’t need government to do it. If they already know that the most culturally diverse nation on earth must have respect for other cultures, we won’t need government programs to tell them.

People who can read the definition of marriage won’t need the government to explain what the word means. People who understand the consequences of sleeping with anyone, or anything, anytime and anywhere won’t need government funded abortions or programs to combat STDs.

In short, people who take responsibility for their own lives don’t elect people who seek to control their lives. People capable of making sound decisions don’t want anyone else making their decisions.

As long as we have idiots, politicians will pander to them for power, promising a government bailout to every idiot who can vote. Eventually, idiot proofing America will cost America its rightful place in the world as the free home of the brave.

A central government in control of the majority of a nation’s resources is by definition, a socialist form of government. 51% is a majority, just ask John Kerry. In calendar measurements, we now work until June 1 of each year to pay taxes and we are still running red ink. When we are working until July 1 to pay taxes, we will be at 50%. Think about it…

There isn’t enough money in the world to fully idiot proof any free society. A society without the freedom to do itself harm would just be a society full of idiots who foolishly relinquished their own freedom. America is fast becoming the land of the free-ride and home to the government dependent and there is no end in sight to the public demand for more free stuff from their government.

Idiot proofing America is not possible. Just as gun laws leave guns only in the hands of criminals, idiot proofing laws leave the nation only in the hands of idiots…


Copyright ©2005 JB Williams All rights reserved.


J.B. Williams

mardi, mai 24, 2005

More on Fathers' Rights: The State Matriarchy

May 24, 2005



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by Paul C. Robbins, Ph.D.
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Under the current system of family law, fathers typically lose their children in return for financing the destruction of their own families. When the system fails to work as promised, fathers are blamed and put in jail. But the system is at fault, not fathers. The system makes it far too easy for mom to expel dad, keep the children, and force him to pay for her decisions using the police power of the state.

The theory behind the system holds that the traditional family and marriage can be destroyed with acceptable consequences, as long as mom gets the kids and dad (or the taxpayers) can be forced to pay.

Feminist sociologist Stephanie Coontz presents a version of this theory in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial. According to Coontz, over the past decade "the number of families headed by single mothers rose five times faster than the number of married-couple families"and "the number of couples living together unmarried increased by more than 70 percent" but several negative trends decreased during this same time. She attributes this decrease in part to more dads paying their child support, then argues that "it doesn't help today's diverse families to be told their children are doomed unless they can shoehorn themselves into a traditional marriage."

Maybe not, but would Ms. Coontz make the same arguments if "diverse families" were routinely created by fathers expelling mothers from the family home and then forcing these mothers to pay child support under threat of jail? I doubt it.

And despite the rosy tone of her piece, she concludes that "there is much left to work on" and that "divorced and unwed parents" (read "single mothers") need advice on effective parenting, job training, more education, and high-quality daycare.

In other words, more government programs. This is the hallmark of the system that I call "state matriarchy": the creation of single-mother families followed by calls for more government programs to help those families. We are assured the problem is not single-mother families; the problem is a government that doesn't do enough to help these families.

So why shouldn't government spend massive amounts of money on welfare, daycare, and training programs for single-mother families? And why shouldn't the government expend even more money to round up fathers and put them in jail?

Because to do so requires the government to spend massive amounts on welfare, daycare, and training programs for single-mother families, then expend even more money to round up fathers and put them in jail.

Until recently, few political powers had either the means or the will to do so. Especially since there was a much simpler and less costly alternative: fathers. And especially since there was a very simple way to give children fathers: marriage.

Marriage was an agreement based on an exchange: roughly, his ability to provide for her ability to have children. Marriage was the central agreement in a system of agreements that made families possible. Without this system of agreements, reproduction took place at will, with children likely left in the care of the mother, creating a de facto matriarchy. No man knew who his children were and thus had no reason to undertake their care, making family formation impossible. Marriage was the solution to the problem of de facto matriarchy, the solution adopted independently by every major civilization.

The current system of family law is creating what might be called "state-mandated" or "state-imposed" matriarchy (or simply "state matriarchy" for short). Historically, matriarchies fail, but in a theory a matriarchy can be made to work with sufficient use of government force and money.

In a state matriarchy, the children belong to the mother but the state is responsible for supporting those children, either indirectly, by forcing absent fathers to support those children (child support), or directly, by using tax monies (welfare and other government programs). The ideological foundation for the state matriarchy is modern feminism, which opposes both traditional marriage and to fathers' rights but favors expanded welfare and child support enforcement programs.

In the state matriarchy, marriage is not an agreement based on a mutually beneficial exchange. It is merely a "no-fault" contract that serves as the legal pretext for a divorce in which mom usually gets the kids and dad gets a support order. Marriage and fatherhood thus become unilateral obligations for the man, who can expect little in return.

The state matriarchy presumes a custodial mother financially supports her children–she's innocent until proven guilty. The state matriarchy presumes the absent dad does not financially support his children–he's guilty until proven innocent.

And if for some reason the father cannot be forced to support the children, the state does so using tax revenues, aligning taxpayers against fathers–after all, if he doesn't support the children, the taxpayers must. A divorced or unmarried father thus becomes public enemy number one.

The state matriarchy gives women rights and powers that can be exercised arbitrarily and without accountability: the unilateral right to decide if children are born (abortion), the power to divorce their husbands at will (no-fault divorce), the right to retain the children when they divorce (sole mother custody), the power to force fathers and men to pay for reproductive decisions made unilaterally by women (child support), and the right to lie about the paternity of their children (paternity fraud)..

It also gives women a number of ancillary rights: the right to preferred treatment in academia (Title IX), the right to preferred treatment in employment (affirmative action and sexual harassment laws), the right to remove their husbands at will (restraining orders), the right to have their husbands arrested at will (domestic violence laws), and the right to refuse marital relations within a marriage (marital rape laws).

Men have no legal say over abortion, can file for no-fault divorce but will likely lose their children and property, are less likely to graduate from college, find it difficult to get restraining orders against wives, will likely be arrested themselves if they file a domestic violence complaint, and can be jailed for failing to support another man's children under default judgments and "presumption of paternity" statutes.

The state matriarchy makes marriage and motherhood an easy game for women to win, but makes marriage and fatherhood a game very difficult for men to win. And when men do lose that game, to offer them no way out. Tragically, some men do find a way out: suicide. Sometimes suicide preceded by homicide.

The feminists provided much of the anti-male and anti-marriage ideological impetus for the state matriarchy, but they could not have created it without the help of judges and elected officials. How did they get judges and elected officials to help? By portraying women as poor helpless victims abused and brutalized by ruthless men, like the hapless heroines of old-time melodramas. The politicians and judges fell over themselves running to their rescue.

The dominant cultural narratives of the state matriarchy are two: the noble, virtuous single mom and the "deadbeat dad." In these cultural narratives, single moms are bravely struggling to raise their children, saintly victims of circumstance and scumbag dads who abandoned them. (In fact, most single mothers today are single by choice.) Her counterpart is the "deadbeat dad" who walked out on his family and now refuses to support them. (In fact, most divorced dads are legally expelled from their families against their wills.)

If these narrative don't work, a third one is hauled out: domestic violence. According to this narrative, husbands routinely batter their wives as a way to impose patriarchal dominance.

These narratives are told over and over again by politicians and social commentators and even pro-marriage groups. Any facts that don't fit within these two narratives are denied or ignored. These two polarizing narratives define the social context in which social policy is defined. Fathers can expect few rights within the social policies defined by these two narratives.

Any human rights fathers might have--such as the right to their own children, to their own property, or to their own liberty–get in the way of the state matriarchy's authority to determine the "best interests" of the children and force fathers to pay for its determinations. And certainly, the state matriarchy does not grant men the same reproductive rights as women, for that would really muck up the system.

So what's wrong with state-mandated matriarchy?

The system is unfair to children, depriving them of their rights to a father. Fatherless children suffer numerous disadvantages compared to children with fathers. Even Stephanie Coontz recognizes that being fatherless is a risk factor for teens.

It is inimical to human rights, depriving men of their rights to their children, their own property, and often their liberty. It discourages men from marrying and becoming fathers.

Its power is virtually unchecked. Women are rewarded for using its power. Men can avoid marriage, fatherhood, and sexual relations with women, but few will do so. The state matriarchy counts on women being able to find men to have sex with it. Women usually do.

It cannot deliver on what it promises. In theory, it promises women the social and sexual freedom of being single while retaining both their children and the economic benefits of marriage. After all, if mom has the children, she can demand support from dad in the name of the children.

But that is a promise made by the state to women on behalf of men. The state does not ask men what they promised women; it simply jails men if they fail to deliver on the promises it made to women on their behalf.

Some would reply that single moms don't have it all that great. Look at all the child support that isn't paid, how many divorced moms struggle. Why, being a single mom is practically synonymous with being a victim. But that is simply another argument against the system–it makes victims of single moms because it cannot deliver on what it has promised.

Victim moms, jailed dads, fatherless kids. That is what the state matriarchy delivers.

So what can we do?

While I support a number of changes, including presumptive joint custody, if I were to make one change, it would be the following: return to the practice of treating marriage as an agreement between two parties. That means that the two parties should have the right to define the agreement in advance. It is my view that neither party would enter an agreement that assures they will be treated unfairly in the event of a divorce.

A pre-defined marriage contract would be broad in many aspects, but definite about what happens if one or both parties wants to dissolve the contract. The role of the government would be limited to enforcing the contract as written if either party seeks to end the contract. Either party could request a trial by jury, limiting the power of judges to decide the matter based on unwritten social policies or the judge's opinion of the "best interests" of the children.

Under current no-fault divorce laws, a divorce court does not enforce the original marriage contract. It enforces the only right provided by the contract: the right of one or both parties to break the marriage contract. Divorce judges do not care who kept or did not keep the terms of the marriage contract because the contract had no terms; the only term it defined was the right to divorce. Judges simply decide who gets the spoils of the marriage using their own criteria, in effect defining the terms of the contract ex post facto, after the fact. Both parties should be able to know and define the terms of the marriage contract in advance.

Yes, private marriage contracts take the romance out of falling in love and getting married, but they're better than placing one's life, children, and livelihood in the hands of a biased family court judge. And they would begin to dismantle the state matriarchy, wherein the rule of law is replaced by the rule of a woman's will, backed by the police power of the state.

I have no problem with society expecting fathers to meet their responsibilities to their children. But society in turn must protect fathers' rights to the care and custody of their children. That is a fair an equitable arrangement, not unaccountable judicial power backed up by unaccountable state power in the service of divisive social theories.

A society that fails to protect a father's rights loses the moral authority to demand he comply with his responsibilities.


Paul C. Robbins, Ph.D.

lundi, mars 28, 2005

Sex, Women, and Conservatism

March 28, 2005


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by Dallas Claymore

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“The world has changed.

I feel it in the water.

I feel it in the earth.

I smell it in the air.

Much that once was is now lost.”

Although these lines from Galadriel are in reference to Tolkien’s Middle Earth as opposed to our modern age, they aptly describe the revolution in social relations that has transpired since the 1960s. Former ways of interacting are now obsolete. The old social mores and rules are gone forever. Nowhere can this be seen more vividly than in attachments between the sexes. Until only recently on the historical timeline, interconnections occurred with a clear understanding that men and women are different from one another, and that differences must be tolerated. With the transcendence of radical feminist thought, these same differences, at least when they are displayed by men, are now treated as signs of mental pathology.

Recent evidence substantiates long held beliefs concerning the presence of innate distinctions between the sexes. These disparities are not simply genital deep. Variations in behavior are more hard wired than the majority of the mainstream media ever suspected:

An international team of 250 scientists, conducting research first reported

last Thursday in the British journal Nature, has completed a full map of

the X or "female" chromosome which helps determine sex in human beings.

The researchers found much greater genetic variation between the sexes

than they had expected. All told, as the Los Angeles Times described the

team's conclusions, "men and women may differ by as much as 2 percent

of their entire genetic inheritance, greater than the hereditary gap between

humankind and its closest relative--the chimpanzee." Huntington Willard

of Duke University, one of the key researchers participating in this latest

effort, told the Chicago Tribune that by now "any of us over the age of

two realizes there are plenty of differences between males and females

that are characteristic of the two sexes."

Regardless of what science is able to prove, many of us tainted with post-modern college educations side with the social constructivists regarding sexual variation. It is believed that the reason “male” and “female” are not synonyms is due to society imbuing us with norms of behavior to which we conform. The belief that men and women could be interchangeable, were it not for the stereotyping of the community, is something commonly believed among progressives, but, most alarmingly, supported by large segments of the general population.

Many readers undoubtedly matured in the setting of full equality for men and women, but this has not prevented men from being unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, guided by the standards of chivalry when interacting with women. For those who grew up in the seventies and eighties, it was a time when boys were expected to follow both the mandates of chivalry and equality. The result often was confusion. It is bewildering for a young man to make sense of how one should behave towards women when every public authority proclaims “Men and Women Are Equal” while these same public authorities rig the laws to favor women over men via affirmative action hiring practices, the creation of a sexual harassment industry, and the unjust treatment of husbands and fathers in divorce and custody courts. It is constantly alleged that men are favored in our society yet the government has taken every measure to ensure that the exact opposite is the case. As conservatives, it is hard to know if there is anything about the current juridical practices and statutes that anybody would wish to preserve, but the only thing that’s for certain is that none of these laws and preferences will be changing anytime soon.

In this new millennium, we are immovably wedded to much of the irrationality that has posed as conventional wisdom for the last forty years. As much as we’d like to make fun of the mumbo jumbo that emits from relationship “experts” and talk show hosts on our boob tubes, we still must vicariously deal with all the soot they’ve blown into the public’s lungs every time that we greet an unfamiliar person.

The current situation can be depressing and disheartening, but my message to the reader is strictly one of hope. Certainly the culture has become toxic but that does not preclude us from exploiting it to our own advantage. We can, and must, excel in an arena that is biased against both men and conservatives. Intellectually retaliating against those who attack us is certainly worthwhile, but many men regard it as unmanly to stand up for their rights before women or anybody else who derides us on the basis of gender alone. However, in this book, while I will be refuting many a lie in the pages that follow, the goal is for conservative men to resign themselves to the fact that, while this zeitgeist is not one that we created or necessarily approve of, it is one to which we can adapt. Man can always profit from circumstances to which he did not wish to be placed. Living in the past is counter-productive. We must live and conquer in the present–regardless of how we wish things to be. It is our duty.

In light of this, in the chapters that follow, I will identify and analyze many of the tank traps blocking our advancement and suggest the most efficient and least costly ways of getting around them. I certainly am not King Solomon, but I do regard some of my ideas as being valuable and applicable to others.

There are a million “how to” books out there giving advice concerning women and sex. “Sex, Women, and Conservatism” is not one of those books. What follows is a strategic discussion to be used in any way the reader likes. All I am attempting to do in these pages is toss a ball into the air and send a Methedrine serve across the net. If it comes back at 500 mile per hour and disembowels me, that’s my problem and not yours.

A quotation from a character in The Lord of the Rings was cited above. In keeping with my mentioning of Middle Earth, I would like to identify your narrator as being far more closely related to the character of Bilbo Baggins than Aragorn. There is nothing inherently noble or royal about me. I am simply one who has seen and observed a large sample of behavior and wish to make use of my experiences for the purposes of analysis. I am just an average guy who had the wits to be more observant than my peers. I certainly was never a Don Juan and never will be.

On the subject of Casanovas, I think you will find that most of them are not the type of men who can teach one much of anything. Their skills simply are not transferable. If you asked them what the secrets of their success were, chances are they would not be able to tell you. As for me, the only areas of life in which I outshined others were the result of study and effort. Few achievements came naturally, but this is why I am able to convey worthwhile advice. The fact that I am not gorgeous, rich, or connected in any way to famous people is perhaps the reason why I have something legitimate to say about this topic. The mediocrities of my birth necessitated a need for me to pay attention.

It’s no accident that Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells were not outstanding football players but turned out to be tremendous coaches because natural phenoms rarely have much of an understanding as to how challenging it is for the average person to perform their craft. My friend Duke is an example of this. He’s one of the rare men I’ve known who qualifies as a lady’s man. If you were to ask him how and why he has done what he’s done, he would undoubtedly respond by sheepishly shrugging his shoulders. He honestly doesn’t know why life has been so easy for him. Only when one begins from the bottom or middle can one have any information with which to impart others.

One must face the realization that whenever one attempts to write a book that is intended to speak chiefly to a male audience that it will, in turn, be read quite often by women. Such an eventuality tells us much about why works like this one need to be written in contemporary America as political correctness has made the truth contraband. Yet, even though this will have female readers, the result will not be the same as in the case of a popular “How To” book boasting of it routinely being bought by women for their men as a way for them to better understand their partners. I don’t think any women will be buying this this one for their men anytime soon or perhaps ever. There’s too much ambiguity in what follows for most women to be completely comfortable with it.

Indeed, even though this is about as mild a tone that I am capable of adopting, I have already said some things that will be construed as harsh by many. Why? Simply because chimpanzees and genetic inheritance are not things we’re bred to acknowledge in the post-millennial United States. Yet, regardless of what our anti-intellectual PA systems convey, there is no reason that a subset of men cannot reset the paradigms within ourselves. In the words of Rosie the Riveter: “We can do it.”

Speaking of Rosie, let me emphasize in bold type an important bylaw that we must always remember; Women are not our enemy. Many a modern woman has been just as lied to and as manipulated by the oppression mongers as any man has ever been. Political correctness is absolutely evil and it’s misconceptions poison everybody. The freshman co-ed in the Womyn’s Studies ovular has been just as fooled as the manicured Metrosexual with Prada shoes at an Indigo Girls concert. They’re both unwittingly part of an experimental grouping within a sick study created by our social engineers.

Speaking of women, I should let you know that there is no misogyny in the pages which follow. Yet, many would try to dye me with that tired misogynistic pen due to my central theme which happens to be,

Women do not have the same interests as men. We are

different creatures. We have our own unique desires

which should be pursued whenever possible.


I made mention of this in something I wrote over the summer. A woman responded to me that my stance was selfish. I countered, “Shouldn’t I be selfish about my own interests?” I can’t remember whether she called me a name and then ignored my statement or simply ignored my statement. Either way, it’s a profoundly sad fact about our world that a man is not free to identify his own needs and strive for their realization. Just as nations must safeguard their own interests, we as men must identify ours and attempt to protect them when we can. Should we subjugate our needs to another’s there better be a DGR (damn good reason) for us to do so.

The other day I watched a friend’s dog shred a doll that she had just purchased for him. He meticulously tore the insides from it and then deposited them in various places about her condo. The dog’s actions provide us with a very good analogy for the role of men in society. We so oftentimes are rag dolls to be thrown about and to be turned to fluff. I honestly do not believe that becoming compost it the reason that we were placed on this earth. Our lives were not given to us in order for them to be mindlessly sacrificed. We should be grateful for what we have been given. Taking punches and being discriminated against is not an option. We should not go quietly into that good night. We must defend ourselves. We must stand and fight. If we don’t defend ourselves nobody else will.

One more note should be made on the subject of men. “Men” are not a monolithic entity. I readily admit that all men do not think as I do. There’s no question about it. Some of my brothers waste their entire pay checks and family fortunes on dominatrixes, drugs, toys for their cats, shares in Portuguese gerbil farms, or, most deplorably, the greatest hits of the Bee Gees.

Just last month, I met a guy at the gym who sniffed, after a comment I made about a girl on the Stairmaster, that he “doesn’t look at women in the gym.” I gazed at him with the same bewilderment that I would if I encountered an Ocelot walking down the middle of Madison Street. Why would anyone want to avoid staring at girls in the gym? I could not possibly guess what the answer would be. Yet, the fellow was undeniably a man and he had a completely different perspective that your narrator. That’s perfectly acceptable because I do not profess to speak for all men, but they’ll certainly be more than a couple who have had many of the same experiences as I and can profit from my assessment of the situation.

Lastly, there is the topic of “conservatism” which is part of my title and thank God for that. For one thing, it alerts readers that I may just reference God once in awhile in these pages and will not do so in a mystified or angry manner. For my enemies, this will be a goddessend, as it will allow them to paint me as a religious fanatic which fits in perfectly with their pre-primer understanding of those who are not politically correct.

Yet, it is conservatives alone who can most completely, although admittedly not most effectively, refute cultural Marxism on the whole. Many leftists nowadays think that the other side is evil simply because they’re on the other side which is instructive for us as it decreases the need to appease them. I don’t know why they regard America in 2005 as being a patriarchy rife with discrimination, rape, and Rophynol vending machines, but I do know that their views are false and need to be rebutted. Understanding them is not something that I’ll attempt to do in these pages. The causation for their feelings of anger, depression, and guilt would make for a wonderful book but it cannot be this one.

As conservatives, we hear phrases like “the personal is political” and express amazement that anyone could be that confused about the world. We are able to easily separate what is good for the country from what is good for ourselves. Many on the other side cannot or refuse to do this. They are stuck having to run errands with Marxists and feministas babbling at them from the back seat. Luckily, we are free from such parasitic passengers. When we marvel at the shape of a woman’s derriere we understand that our appreciation is reflective of our own biological programming and not an attempt to entrench a fictional patriarchy. Finding women attractive is not a political statement. It’s a personal statement and, oftentimes, what is attractive to one of us is not attractive to another. We can live with that To us, the purely personal can remain personal. For this reason, this book could be appreciated by many men who are not conservative in the political sense but are old school types who revel in just being the way they are and despise having to pretend to be something they are not. That is why I ask all of you to join me in this impromptu tour of our milieu and insist that the rest of society tolerate our diversity.

Galadriel, from the introduction of Peter Jackson’s film, The Fellowship of the Ring.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/373erfbt.asp?pg=2

I would like to recommend an excellent article to you by Dr. John J. Ray on this subject.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=1226


Dallas Claymore