Feminism

The Return of Her Inevitableness

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As I called her, during the Hillary-Obama knock-down and drag-out over the Dem nom leading up to the 08′ Presidential Race festivities. I termed that particular contest “Ebony vs Ovary.” They were well-matched for awfulness, back then, weren’t they? Chicago machine politics vs Arkansas skeevy corruption; in the words of Henry Kissinger, it was a pity that both of them couldn’t lose.

So she has lost out twice, but now we see Her Inevitableness mounting up once again and setting out to bash the windmills once again, although that particular image means that Huma Abedin is in the Sancho Panza role, which doesn’t work on so many levels that you’d have to explore other dimensions to reach them all. All props for grim determination, I have to say and I’d also have to say that once upon a time, I might have respected her a lot more if she had only dumped that sweet-talking sleaze of a husband once they were done with the White House the first time, taken back her family name and … like actually done something efficient and effective on her own.

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History Weekend: The Curious Case of Ma and Pa

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Exactly a hundred years ago, an enterprising gentleman named James Edward Ferguson took office as the Governor of Texas. He was of a generation born long enough after the conclusion of the Civil War that hardships associated with that war had faded somewhat. The half-century long conflict with raiding Comanche and Kiowa war-bands was brought to a conclusion around the time of his birth, but he was still young enough to have racketed around the Wild West as it existed for the remainder of the century, variously employed in a mine, a factory making barbed wire, a wheat farm and a vineyard. Having gotten all that out of his system, he returned to Bell County, Texas, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and married the daughter of a neighbor, Miriam Amanda Wallace. Miriam Amanda was then almost 25, and had been to college. James Ferguson and his wife settled down to a life of quiet prosperity in Belton, Texas. There he founded a bank and dabbled in politics as a campaign manager, before running for and winning the office of governor in 1914 as a Democrat, which was expected at the time and in that place and as an anti-prohibitionist, which perhaps was not. Two years later, having not done anything in office which could be held against him, James Ferguson was re-elected … and almost immediately walked into a buzz-saw. A quarrel over appropriations for the University of Texas system and a political rival for the office of governor ensconced among the facility as the newly-anointed head of a newly-established school of journalism eventually blew up into such a huge ruckus that James Ferguson was impeached, with the result that he could not hold public office in Texas again at least not under his own name.

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I Am Woman …

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… hear me roar … and then turn around and whine because some cis-male said something, or looked something, and I feel so … so threatened! Look, girls…ladies … possessor of a vagina or whatever you want to be addressed as this week in vernacular fashion; can you just please pick one attitude and stick too it? Frankly, this inconsistency is embarrassing the hell out of me (sixty-ish, small-f feminist in the long-ago dark days when there was genuine no-s*it gender inequality in education, job opportunities and pay-scales to complain about and campaign for redress thereof). This is also annoying to my daughter, the thirtyish Marine Corps veteran of two hitches. The Daughter Unit is actually is very close to losing patience entirely with those of the sisterhood who are doing this “Woman Powerful!-Woman Poor Downtrodden Perpetual Victim!” bait and switch game. So am I, actually, but I have thirty years experience in biting my tongue when it comes to the antics of the Establishment Professional Capital-F Feminist crowd.

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Some Catholic Items

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cardinal_burke2

There was much discussion and speculation regarding the recent synod on the family, including a media-driven suggestion that the Catholic Church was going to change long-standing rules pertaining to sexual morality.

George Weigel has a good recent piece which clarifies matters.

The Church’s diminishing appeal to men is a crisis which few have been willing to speak about bluntly. Cardinal Burke (pictured above) is an exception, as this piece shows.

One snippet:

“Sadly, the Church has not effectively reacted to these destructive cultural forces; instead the Church has become too influenced by radical feminism and has largely ignored the serious needs of  men.”

The truth will set you free.

Pope Francis, in one of his controversy-provoking interviews, mentioned that one of his favorite spiritual writers is Fr. Louis Lallemant. I found on the Internet, and read, The Spiritual Doctrine of Father Louis  Lallement, which is indeed an excellent book. Recommended.

UPDATE:

I meant to include this list of ten really short prayers to say during the day.

A very good list, with good commentary.

History Friday, or, Demography is Destiny, Theodore Roosevelt in 1916

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TR Family

I am currently reading Theodore Roosevelt’s outstanding book
A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open. In it he describes visits to various interesting locales where he enjoyed the outdoor life of hunting, riding and exploring.

Chapter 4 is entitled THE RANCHLAND OF ARGENTINA AND SOUTHERN BRAZIL. He begins by telling us of his visit to a ranch house in Argentina. His hosts were an “old country family which for many centuries led the life of the great cattle-breeding ranch-owners.” He notes that the modern Argentine ranch is no longer a frontier outpost, but part of the world economy, and not much different than you would find “in Hungary or Kentucky or Victoria.”

But, he notes a critical difference, and offers a stern lecture against those would fail to produce large families, as they are duty-bound to do:

[T]here is one vital point—the vital point—in which the men and women of these ranch-houses, like those of the South America that I visited generally, are striking examples to us of the English-speaking countries both of North America and Australia. The families are large. The women, charming and attractive, are good and fertile mothers in all classes of society. There are no symptoms of that artificially self-produced dwindling of population which is by far the most threatening symptom in the social life of the United States, Canada, and the Australian commonwealths. The nineteenth century saw a prodigious growth of the English-speaking, relative to the Spanish-speaking, population of the new worlds west of the Atlantic and in the Southern Pacific. The end of the twentieth century will see this completely reversed unless the present ominous tendencies as regards the birth-rate are reversed.
 

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