The Church weighs in

This is a bit of an unusual experience for me - an issue that I've been writing about for some years is going mainstream.

The political point I've made is this: liberalism holds up autonomy as the highest good, but women are most autonomous when they pursue a single girl lifestyle of career, travel, partying and flings with unsuitable men. Most women don't, however, want to give up entirely on marriage and motherhood. So there is a compromise in which women are supposed to spend their 20s doing careers and single girl things before finally taking family formation seriously in their 30s.

But there are problems with this delay in family formation. The most obvious one is that it gives women little time to meet someone, date, get engaged, marry and then finally have children. By the time the process in properly underway, many women won't be far off declining fertility. Second, the women who wait too long might find that their male peers have adapted to a bachelor lifestyle, or opted out, or married women from overseas, or are interested in younger women, or haven't seen the point in committing to a career.

And so you get women like Kate Bolick, who admits she broke up with a perfectly suitable man at age 28 expecting there to be plenty of replacements later on. But, at age 39, she had to accept that there weren't. And why did she break up with Mr Right? Because she wanted to preserve her autonomy:

...the elevation of independence over coupling (“I wasn’t ready to settle down”) is a second-wave feminist idea I’d acquired from my mother...

I was her first and only recruit, marching off to third grade in tiny green or blue T-shirts declaring: A Woman Without a Man Is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle, or: A Woman’s Place Is in the House—and the Senate, and bellowing along to Gloria Steinem & Co.’s feminist-minded children’s album, Free to Be...You and Me...

...my future was to be one of limitless possibilities...This unfettered future was the promise of my time and place...We took for granted that we’d spend our 20s finding ourselves, whatever that meant, and save marriage for after we’d finished graduate school and launched our careers, which of course would happen at the magical age of 30.

The problem of delaying family formation is now getting some attention in the mainstream Australian media. I reported recently on an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Bettina Arndt. And now the Catholic Church here in Melbourne has voiced concerns:

WOMEN should marry earlier and not be too picky if they want to avoid an Aussie man drought, the Catholic Church has warned.

Australia is experiencing a huge decline in the number of available men, with the church telling the Herald Sun women should also forget living with their partners before tying the knot.

Statistics show there are just 86,000 eligible blokes for 1.3 million females aged between 25 and 34...

But the reverend Father Tony Kerin, episcopal vicar for justice and social service in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, said women wanted the best of both worlds.

"Are women getting too choosy? I'd say yes," said Father Kerin, speaking on behalf of the archdiocese.

"I think many are setting aside their aspirations for later, but by the time they get around to it, they've missed their chance.

"In trying to have it all, they end up missing out."

Father Kerin said the rate of marriage had halved despite nearly four in five people still wanting to settle down.

"For many, it remains an unattainable dream," he said...

Demographer Bernard Salt calculated there are 1.3 million women aged 25-34.

But of the 1.343 million men in the same age bracket, only 86,000 single, heterosexual, well-off, young men were available after excluding those who were already married (485,000), in a de facto relationship (185,000), gay (7000), a single parent (12,000) or earning less than $60,000 a year.

The statistics given here are a bit misleading. There aren't 1.3 million women chasing 86,000 men as a fair proportion of those women would already be in a relationship (plus, not every woman would expect a man to earn over $60,000). Even so, it's interesting that of 1.343 million men in the 25-34 bracket only 86,000 are single and earning more than $60,000 a year. It does suggest that women who, like Kate Bolick, deliberately ditch a Mr Right are unwise to think that there are plenty more to be had later on.

And I congratulate the Catholic Church for speaking up on the issue. Inevitably there will be those who will criticise the Catholic Church for doing so, but if a culture of marriage is to be protected then delayed family formation needs to be tackled.

Sisters of Marxianity

Laura Wood has posted some items which are rightly critical of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the largest organisation of American nuns.

I went to the LCWR website and found it to be inspired more by radical leftist ideology than by Christianity. A good example is a statement on racism which runs like this:

Racism in its institutional form continues because some people assume, consciously or unconsciously, that white people are superior. Therefore, the dominant race of whites develop and maintain institutions that privilege people like themselves and give less credibility to the contributions of other peoples and cultures. White privilege often goes unnoticed because it has been internalized and integrated as part of one’s outlook on the world by custom, habit and tradition.

Peggy McIntosh, author of White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, wrote about her experiences of white privilege. Her education gave her no training in seeing herself as an oppressor and advantaged person. Any work to benefit others was to allow "them" to be more like whites. She described white privilege as similar to an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.

Social rules about what work is, who works for whom, how work is compensated, and the social process by which the result of work is appropriated operate to establish relations of power and inequality. These relations are reinforced by a systematic process in which the energies of the have-nots are continuously expended to maintain and augment the power, status, and wealth of the haves. This structural relationship between social groups is exploitation. (Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference)

That's a left liberal analysis of race, not a Christian one. The left liberal analysis goes like this:

i) The aim of politics is to disband unchosen social ties so that we are left as self-determining individuals subject to the same autonomous conditions of life

ii) Our race, just like our sex, is predetermined rather than self-determined and therefore must be made not to matter

iii) But race does still seem to matter. Some races do worse than others in education, in employment, in crime statistics etc.

iv) This is to be explained by a dominant group setting themselves up as a false racial category (whites) in order to enjoy an unearned privilege at the expense of an oppressed group (blacks)

v) Whiteness is therefore an artificial and oppressive social construct which only those whites seeking supremacy would want to uphold.

vi) White privilege is also to be regarded as systemic, as the institutions and culture of society were created to serve it

vi) Whites should therefore seek to deconstruct themselves and their society as whiteness is a uniquely immoral category associated with race supremacy and privilege

When the nuns endorse Peggy McIntosh's complaint that she was not educated to see herself as a white oppressor they are following not Christianity but left-liberalism.

Christianity cannot follow along the same lines as left-liberalism as Christianity accepts that we have a creator which means that we do not autonomously self-create who we are. To put this another way, if you believe that you are autonomously self-created, then you do not have the Christian view of man's relationship to God.

So Christians will focus on different things to liberals. Less on achieving equally autonomous life conditions and less on making predetermined qualities not matter.

If race does matter in certain respects that does not invalidate the core purposes of Christianity. It does not require Christians to resort to a class/oppressor analysis or to seek to deconstruct white people and white society.

The minds of the nuns of the LCWR have been colonised by a secular ideology. They may as well be just any other kind of leftist academic or political activist. They have made themselves redundant as nuns and therefore it is no surprise that their numbers are falling so rapidly.

Learning from Voltairine

In 1908 a woman named Voltairine de Cleyre delivered a lecture to the Radical Liberal League in Philadelphia.

Her purpose was to argue against marriage. What I think we can learn from her lecture is the underlying trend within modernity to "disband" the ties that are intended to hold together a society in favour of a highly individualistic concept of freedom.

She begins by dismissing the idea that there is a real, objective right that might guide people's behaviour:

there is no absolute right or wrong; there is only a relativity, depending on the consciously though very slowly altering condition of a social race in respect to the rest of the world. Right and wrong are social conceptions: mind, I do not say human conceptions. The names “right” and “wrong,” truly, are of human invention only; but the conception “right” and “wrong,” dimly or clearly, has been wrought out with more or less effectiveness by all intelligent social beings. And the definition of Right, as sealed and approved by the successful conduct of social beings, is: That mode of behavior which best serves the growing need of that society.

It is humans who create what is "right" and that alters according to evolving social needs - that is the gist of her moral theory.

If you have this starting point you will then ask "How are social needs evolving?" And she has a clear answer. She believes that until recently men had to respond to the demands of their environment. In other words, in a tough environment men responded of necessity to what had to be done - any other response would have imperilled survival.

But that realm of necessity is gradually giving way. She therefore sees society evolving along these lines:

What is the growing ideal of human society, unconsciously indicated and unconsciously discerned and illuminated?

By all the readings of progress, this indication appears to be the free individual; a society whose economic, political, social and sexual organization shall secure and constantly increase the scope of being to its several units; whose solidarity and continuity depend upon the free attraction of its component parts, and in no wise upon compulsory forms.

She still talks about solidarity and continuity but these have been fatally demoted as they are not what she is defining the "right" by. What is right, in her theory, is a constant increase in the extent to which individuals can self-determine their social ties.

Once she has established this principle, some very radical conclusions follow. For instance, she is led to reject all forms of marriage:

By marriage I mean the real thing, the permanent relation of a man and a woman, sexual and economical, whereby the present home and family life is maintained. It is of no importance to me whether this is a polygamous, polyandric or monogamous marriage, nor whether it is blessed by a priest, permitted by a magistrate, contracted publicly or privately, or not contracted at all. It is the permanent dependent relationship which, I affirm, is detrimental to the growth of individual character, and to which I am unequivocally opposed.

And here we have the great, splintering clash of modern society. On the traditionalist side, marriage is held to be one important aspect of how we fulfil our being as men and women - a stable, happy marriage is therefore a great good. But the Voltairine moderns see it differently - for them individuals develop as an autonomous (non-dependent) self.

Voltairine was a principled kind of woman. She not only rejected formal marriage as leading to dependent relationships, she rejected de facto marriage as well. She insisted on men and women living apart. To those who claimed that she wanted to do away with relations between the sexes altogether she replied:

“Do you want to do away with the relation of the sexes altogether, and cover the earth with monks and nuns?” By no means. While I am not over and above anxious about the repopulation of the earth, and should not shed any tears if I knew that the last man had already been born, I am not advocating sexual total abstinence.

Predictably, her concern for "solidarity and continuity" was shallow - she had little sense of solidarity with anyone, not even with humanity in the abstract.

She then sets out to counter the argument that we fulfil our being as men and women through marriage rather than through absolute individual autonomy:

“But,” say the advocates of marriage, “what is there in marriage to interfere with the free development of the individual? What does the free development of the individual mean, if not the expression of manhood and womanhood? And what is more essential to either than parentage and the rearing of young?

Her answer is that the instinct to have children is now redundant. People once had children, she believes, in order to help ensure survival in a war against nature, but that survival instinct is now being met by science and technology. There is no longer a need for sons when you have mechanical harvesters:

Hence the development of individuality does no longer necessarily imply numerous children, nor indeed, necessarily any children at all. That is not to say that no one will want children, nor to prophesy race suicide.

She was right about families becoming smaller, but wrong that it would not hasten race suicide. She was wrong, too, in thinking that the instinct to have marry and have children exists simply as part of a struggle to survive against nature. That misses the point, which is that our masculinity is expressed, in part, through our roles as husbands and fathers and therefore marriage and fatherhood is one significant aspect of fulfilling our being.

And what of the small families she allows might exist in her future society? How will these be arranged if men and women are not supposed to live together?

Again, true to her principles, she believes that men and women can only develop apart from each other:

People will not, and cannot, think and feel the same at the same moments, throughout any considerable period of life; and therefore, their moments of union should be rare and of no binding nature.

Children, therefore, should be raised outside of marriage:

I believe that children may be as well brought up in an individual home, or in a communal home, as in a dual home; and that impressions of life will be far pleasanter if received in an atmosphere of freedom and independent strength.

Modern society has shifted in the direction Voltairine wanted it to.  Those who understand the fulfilment of being her way have won out.

Why? Why should the Voltairines have triumphed?

Perhaps one reason relates to a point made by Voltairine herself. When living conditions are tougher, such a radically individualistic outlook is simply less viable. But when a society finally produces a comfortable level of material security, then perhaps a certain aspect of human nature starts to assert itself - a certain kind of person emerges who wants to go their own way and who therefore far from wanting to uphold social ties of family, ethny or nation wants to actively disband them.

That's made worse when the "disbanders" are well-off, anonymous urbanites, rather than, say, a landed gentry with a sense of noblesse oblige and dynastic tradition.

And the "disbanders" can recruit to their side all those who don't like the structure of the traditional society: early on, for instance, it might be the merchant classes pushing against feudal economic restrictions, or dissenting churches pushing against the established church. It could include as well ethnic minorities, or some homosexuals, or the mannish kind of women, or even those who are depressed or resentful, or those from unhappy homes.

So perhaps any developed society is going to have take care to protect itself from the likes of Voltairine, from those who are ready to cast off social ties in favour of autonomous development.

A Christian defence of nationalism

Ruskin at Occidental Traditionalist has posted an interesting Christian defence of nationalism. He writes:

Before birth God assigns to every man the species, sex, family, and nation to which s/he will be given. These assigned identities can never be truly revoked. In this case we are dealing specifically with the nation and to a lesser extent; the family. Since God has pre-selected for us our nation it is our responsibility to love what God has chosen. To express our appreciation, beyond prayer, would be to love one's nation, the people who built it, the land which sustains it, and the culture which had sprung forth from it.

Reading that is going to give a liberal a headache, as the emphasis here is not on self-chosen identity but on appreciating an identity we are assigned by God - an identity that is so part of us that it cannot be wholly abandoned.

Ruskin argues, tellingly I believe, that we express our appreciation for what God has chosen by acting on our responsibility to love our nation, our forebears, and the land and culture to which we are connected.

One journalist sees the bigger picture

Marine Le Pen, the nationalist candidate in the recent French elections, came in third with 18% of the vote. An English journalist, Richard Waghorne, thought her policies flawed but nonetheless supported her as the only candidate representing a self-governing French nation.

Richard Waghorne has taken the lead in adopting this stance - it is a break from the usual practice in which mainstream journalists toe the two party line. Waghorne summarised his position this way:

Marine Le Pen remains, among an imperfect choice in urgent times, the only candidate capable of saving France’s control over her finances, borders, and identity. She is the only candidate available to conservative voters advancing the case for an exit from the Euro, the one measure which if executed carefully might yet save France from being swamped by foreign debts amassed elsewhere in a European project largely of its own making.

Waghorne isn't taken in by Sarkozy:

Nicholas Sarkozy has campaigned on the theme of a ‘Strong France’. His speeches consciously allude to the Fifth Republic’s founder General de Gaulle, praising an ‘Eternal France’ Sarkozy himself has never been in danger of embodying. Rather, he is the latest architect of the decline of French democracy to something bordering on irrelevance.

The most urgent, the most assiduously avoided challenge facing France is the erosion of its self-government. Sarkozy’s European policy has abetted the long-desired European federalism of the French political class.

Even though one article doesn't change a lot, it does at least set a precedent - so well done Richard Waghorne.

Don't play the waiting game

Bettina Arndt has written a column for the Sydney Morning Herald which brings into the mainstream media an argument I've made at this site for some time.

Her column looks at the problems that arise when women are encouraged to leave family formation until their 30s:

Many [professional women] thought they could put off marriage and families until their 30s, having devoted their 20s to education, establishing careers and playing the field. But was their decade of dating a strategic mistake?

Jamie, a 30-year-old Sydney barrister, thinks so: "Women labour under the impression they can have it all. They can have the career, this carefree lifestyle and then, at the snap of their fingers, because they are so fabulous, find a man. But if they wait until their 30s they're competing with women who are much younger and in various ways more attractive."

What's particularly interesting is that Bettina Arndt backs this up with some demographic information.

• one in three Australian women aged 30-34 don't have partners; even by the late 30s the figure is still very high at 25%.
• in 2006 there were only 68,000 unattached graduate men in their 30s for 88,000 single graduate women in the same age group.
  
  

And this is the paragraph that really stood out for me:

Although there are similar numbers of single men and women in their 30s overall - about 370,000 of each across Australia - half these available men had only high school education, 57 per cent earned $42,000 or less and 95,000 of them were unemployed.

There are similar numbers of single men and women in their 30s but 57% of men are on a low income of $42,000 (US$43,600) or less. To put this another way, there are 370,000 single ladies and 160,000 men earning more than $42,000.

There are two points to make here:

i) It's possible that part of the explanation for the statistics is that a large percentage of men on a high income are already married in their 20s.

ii) One consequence of preferences given to women in education and employment is that many women will not be able to find a husband on a high income.

Feminists don't mind so much about the second issue. They think it's a good thing as they hope it will force a change in relationship patterns so that the woman will go out to work whilst the husband stays home. But that won't be for everyone - note that 25% of women are still single in their late 30s.

And that's not just because of male preferences. Some of those 30-something professional women are determined to partner with professional men. The owner of one dating organisation,

finds many of his female members are determined to meet only men who are tall, attractive, wealthy and well educated. They want the alpha males. ''Most of the professional women rarely give out 'yes' votes to men who aren't similarly successful,'' reports Parfitt, who struggles to attract enough of these successful men to his speed-dating events. Sixty per cent of his members are female. Most are over 30.

The dating imbalance leads to complaints like this one from a 30-something lawyer:

She is stunned by how hard it is to meet suitable men willing to commit. ''I'm horrified by the number of gorgeous, independent and successful women my age who can't meet a decent man.''

Penny acknowledges part of the problem is her own expectations - that her generation of women was brought up wanting too much. ''We were told we were special, we could do anything and the world was our oyster.'' And having spent her 20s dating alpha males, she expected them to be still around when she finally decided to get serious.

But these men go fast, many fishing outside their pond. The most attractive, successful men can take their pick from women their own age or from the Naomis, the younger women who are happy to settle early. Almost one in three degree-educated 35-year-old men marries or lives with women aged 30 or under.

I don't write this in order to demoralise those women in their 30s looking for a husband, nor to suggest that every such woman is single in her 30s by choice.

The point is that it's not wise for women to play the waiting game - to see your 20s as a waiting room where you run down time until you finally spring into action in your 30s ready to find a husband.

Look at the numbers. For a lot of women that plan is not going to work out too well. It's better for women to take things seriously in their 20s.

Girls Inc. turning girls into boys since 1974

Laura Wood has a post up about Michelle Obama addressing a meeting of Girls Inc. Her post is titled "First Lady Tells Girls To Be Anything But Girls".

I had a look at the aims of Girls Inc. and it turns out that Laura Wood's title was well chosen. When you read through the aims of Girls Inc. you get a sense that they want to turn girls into a hypercharged kind of boy.

There is nothing that they say about girls which is distinctively feminine - they seem if anything to reject femininity as something negative:

Growing up in a male-dominated culture, many girls face enormous pressure to judge their self-worth based on narrow standards of physical attractiveness; to put others ahead of themselves; and to conform to damaging notions of femininity that promote passivity and self-sacrifice while discouraging autonomy and pursuit of their dreams.

That's an interesting message to push on girls. Femininity will damage you, it will get in the way of your dreams. You must be autonomous of men and not make sacrifices for others - that's the gist of the message.

Nor is there an alternative femininity set out in the Girls Inc. project. The idea is for girls to play sports and to be careerists. They are to be competitive, interested in science, maths and technology, assertive, bold, self-reliant, loud, adventurous, powerful, athletic, confident, independent and self-sufficient.

So how is that different then to being a boy? Could you not take each of the adjectives listed above and describe a boy in the same way?

It's as if girls are being told that being a boy is better, so they had better set out to become one.

Climate scientist admits he was alarmist

This was easy to predict. A leading climate scientist, James Lovelock, has admitted that he was overly alarmist in his doomsday predictions of global warming:

Five years ago, he had claimed: 'Before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.'

But in an interview with msnbc.com he admitted: 'I made a mistake.'

'The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing,' he said. 'We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear cut, but it hasn’t happened.

'The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world.

'[The temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.'

What's annoying is that those who were sceptical about such claims were treated like lepers. The science was in, they were told. There was a scientific consensus. Only the ignorant or those with a vested interest could possibly have doubts, it was said.

And now we have an admission that the science is fallible. What was predicted to happen isn't happening.

That doesn't mean that the goal of developing clean sources of energy is a bad one. But it shows that we need calm, clear and courageous minds to stand up to unreasonable claims, even if those claims are made under the mantle of science.

Think of what was being suggested in reaction to the alarmist claims made by Lovelock and others. A Melbourne academic, Dr John Reid, believed that something should be put into the water to make people infertile. He also suggested that society would need to withdraw health care for the middle-aged and elderly.

English environmentalist George Monbiot called for "global revolutionary change" including the establishment of a "New World Order" led by a world parliament.

Another Australian academic, Associate Professor Barry Walters, called women who had children polluters of the planet and wanted to hit them with a levy and an annual carbon tax.

The U.N. meanwhile called on Australia to pay $7 billion a year as a carbon debt.

The alarmism became a cover to try to railroad through some radical policy objectives. It created an unhealthy political climate - the sceptics were right to challenge outlandish claims and to insist that the science be properly debated and assessed.

Anzac Day not feminine enough?

I attended an Anzac Day ceremony (the day Australians commemorate those who served in the armed forces) and thought it was very well done.

But I was floored afterwards when I asked two female friends what they had thought of the service. One gave the reply that she worried that it glorified war. This attitude surprised me as the mood of Anzac Day has never struck me as militaristic. People are encouraged to be quietly reflective and to remember the human loss of the wars that were fought.

The other response, from a lovely young woman who is not at all political, was that Anzac Day is not feminine enough. I pressed her to explain what she meant and it seems that her complaint is that it is too focused on men and not women.

That's a sign of how a liberal mentality has penetrated her mind. In a society that was focused on holding together, men and women would recognise a common cause. The women of that society would think of "our men" and the men would think of the women as "our women". They would not be two groups set radically apart.

Liberal society is not focused on holding together. Its view of life is based on the idea of a self which is defined by its wants and preferences. This leads inevitably to a focus on who is advantaged or disadvantaged in pressing forward such wants and preferences. The natural solidarity is broken and replaced by a fracturing along group lines.

Is it really just a case of being you?

The modern world tells us that everything is fungible, nothing is of real value, everything can and should be replaced—our spouse, our culture, our religion, our history, our sexual nature, our race, everything. It is the view of atomistic liberal man, forever creating himself out of his preferences, not dependent on any larger world of which he is a part.

Lawrence Auster

I've been reading the Times of India a bit lately, in fascination and dismay at how quickly India is picking up the modernist disease.

The paper even has a "new age" section which recently featured a short article titled "Be what you want to be". I found it interesting as it was a summary of ideas that are commonly held in the West.

According to the article, what matters in life is a freedom and power to be ourselves:

True freedom means the power to be really you. Every one of us is unique, with our own basic personality, wants, desires, likes and dislikes. The sum total of all these makes us what we are. However, few of us are lucky enough to be in control of internal and external circumstances to be able to express our true selves. So we could end up being what we’re not.

The core idea here is that we are the sum of our preferences. We are a bundle of wants and likes, so that what matters is the freedom to "express our true self" by following our desires.

The worst thing then is to be impeded by some external force in following our uniquely desiring "true" self:

Family and society, friends and colleagues create circumstances – albeit perhaps with good intentions -- that condition us, often forcing us to do or become what we are not. Invariably, it suits many of us too, to be what others want us to be, rather than to be ourselves.

Sounds nice, but remember what "being ourselves" is thought to mean. Our self is understood to be the "sum total" of our preferences, so being our authentic self means nothing more than following through with our self-generated desires rather than external ones that "force" us to be something else. Humans are being defined here by wants, likes and desires.

Once you accept this definition, other consequences follow. For instance, who knows better what we want than ourselves? It therefore will seem logical that the individual should be made as autonomous as possible, as there is no point for the individual to accept direction from any other source. What other source can tell me what my unique wants or desires are?

Note as well that if we follow this idea that our "self" is a unique combination of likes and desires that if we do something we dislike we are thought to lose our very self. There's not a very strong basis for the concept of duty here, of acting for the right or the common good rather than acting to fulfil a personal desire.

What happens if we are blocked in following our own wants? According to the article we become stressed and this leads to disease. The suggested cure is this:

So let’s give ourselves absolute or total freedom, to think, to speak and to do what we really want to.

Total freedom to do what we really want to? What if we want to spend our children's inheritance in a bar? The article cautions us as follows:

This does not mean becoming selfish or license to cause injury to others. On the contrary, a person who values his freedom will immediately realise the value of others’ freedom. Absolute freedom means freedom for all. It means giving up controlling ourselves and controlling others.

That sounds like Millsian liberalism. I don't see that it's necessarily true. If my purpose in life is to make sure that my desires are unimpeded, then what is to stop me taking the attitude that the fulfilment of my own desires should come before those of others? And even if I do choose to value the freedom of others to pursue their own desires that does not make me unselfish. I'm still just doing my own thing for myself, I'm not acting for others.

Nor is it the case that this formula, in which we are each supposed to act for ourselves but respect the rights of others to do the same, leads in practice to a happy mindset of mutual freedom. In the West, what it has led to is the breaking apart of the natural solidarity of a traditional society. If what matters is the power to define and follow our desires, then there will be a sharp focus on which group is thought to hold a controlling influence, thereby holding back all the rest from a genuinely human status. Western society has been riven by a focus on hierarchies of dominance, privilege and oppression.

And what about the idea, expressed in the quote above, that we should give up controlling ourselves? That makes sense if life is simply a matter of following our individual desires. If that is true, then we can simply move from one desire to another - control will be thought of as a block. The problem, though, is that we all learn soon enough that if we pursue our wants in an uncontrolled way that we end up harming ourselves. And we are more likely to live a lesser, rather than a greater, life.

As I suggested earlier, it seems to me that this "free to be me" view of life is a common assumption of modernist liberalism. It has the advantage of being a clear and simple way to view things; all we have to accept is that we are unique in our desires and preferences and that life therefore becomes a matter of individual preference satisfaction and "tolerance," "respect" and "non-discrimination" when it comes to the preference satisfaction of others.

(Here's something else about this system of thought. If you were not to respect a preference or want of someone else it would mean that you were not just rejecting the preference or want but their very personhood, as they are defined as a person by their wants.)

Why should we reject the "free to be me" ideas as set out in the Times of India article? First, it doesn't even work on its own terms. Many of our deepest wants require a social setting. If, for instance, I deeply want to marry a feminine and family-oriented woman, then I need a society in which such women exist in numbers. If I want to live in a community which respects moral virtue, then I need a society in which individuals maintain such standards. If I like my own ethnic tradition and want to see it continue, then I need for that aim to exist at something larger than an individual level.

How can I maintain such conditions of society if the understanding of what it means to be human is so radically individualistic? The "free to be me" philosophy emphasises that my wants are unique and that I fulfil them simply by not controlling myself or others. So how then am I supposed to uphold the social conditions that are necessary for the fulfilment of my deepest wants and preferences? What is likely over time is that my wants will become increasingly trivial; they will be limited to what is possible within the system.

The second reason for rejecting the "free to be me" philosophy is that it is a false statement of what it means to be human. We are not just a bundle of random preferences. We are creatures with a definite nature to be fulfilled and able to recognise a common good and a moral right existing over and above our fleeting desires.

Thumbs up for Marine?

I haven't followed the French election closely, but Tiberge at Gallia Watch has been impressed with the performance of the nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen:

She has run an impeccable campaign, wisely designed to appeal to the best in human nature - the love of country, the longing for freedom from fear, the need to feel at home in one's own land, to raise children in safety and prosperity, to speak one's mind freely, the aggressiveness to fight forces both alien and domestic that seek the destruction of the country. She has, we hope, reawakened the self-preservation instinct and squashed the suicidal way-of-least-resistance that the French have been taking for too long.

It seems unlikely that Marine will make it to the run-offs, but she has polled a respectable 15% of the vote. Interestingly, she is more popular with younger than with older voters:

Farmers: 21%
Salaried workers, private sector: 24%
Salaried workers, public sector: 22%
Young people from 18 to 23: 23%
Retired people: 13%

Should childhood really be gender neutral?

I hadn't realised but there is also a feminist campaign in the U.S. against distinct toys for boys and girls (at the moment they are targeting LEGO). At the Fox news site they did a survey in response to this campaign to gauge public opinion. Here are the results:

As you can see, the response is overwhelmingly on our side. 94% think it's OK to have toys that foster a distinct sex identity. Only 3% are against, with the rest in the undecided/other category. Nor are the numbers small: almost 30,000 cast a vote. Admittedly the numbers might be a bit different at a more lefty news site, but even so you can see that the campaign to make childhood gender neutral isn't a popular movement - it's being carried out by activists without public support.

What the modern world tells us

A comment by Lawrence Auster on a Bob Dylan song, I shall be released:

This Dylan song can seem amorphous and mystical in the negative sense, especially as it became a kind of countercultural anthem and meaningless through overuse. But the lyrics are coherent and profound, especially the first verse:

They say everything can be replaced
They say every distance is not near
But I remember every face
Of every man who put me here.

The modern world tells us that everything is fungible, nothing is of real value, everything can and should be replaced—our spouse, our culture, our religion, our history, our sexual nature, our race, everything. It is the view of atomistic liberal man, forever creating himself out of his preferences, not dependent on any larger world of which he is a part. The singer is saying, No, this isn’t true. Things have real and particular values and they cannot be cast off and replaced by other things. And, though we seem to be distant, we are connected. I am connected to all the men, the creators and builders and poets and philosophers, and my own relatives and friends, who have come before me or influenced me, who created the world in which I live.

Was Zimmerman's photo doctored to better fit the script?

I clicked on a Daily Mail story about George Zimmerman and was surprised to see just how Hispanic he looks:

My immediate suspicion was that the early photos of Zimmernan may have been photoshopped to make him seem whiter. It fits the liberal script better if Zimmerman, who is facing trial for shooting a young black man, Trayvon Martin, can be portrayed as a "white racist" (if you are unaware of the background to this story see here).

I don't know if I'm right in suspecting the media, but look at the set of images below. It shows the images of Zimmerman used by major media outlets after the story broke. It does seem as if both the ABC (American Broadcasting Company) and CBS have altered the original photo - the last two photos in particular seem suspect.

We're going down the Swedish path

It seems as if Australia is going to follow Sweden in insisting on "gender neutral" childhoods. In the Herald Sun this morning we learn that Australian toy catalogues are copying the Swedish example in making children's play androgynous:

TOY catalogues are increasingly gender neutral, reversing years of tradition between boys' and girls' playthings.

Toy catalogues feature boys playing with pink doll houses while girls play with trucks and robots.

Child rearing experts have applauded the move, which they say is a more realistic representation of how preschoolers play.

Sweden is leading the way to gender neutral. Swedish company Leklust recently featured a child dressed as Spiderman pushing a pink doll's pram.

I posted on the Swedish spiderman story earlier this month. Kaj Wiberg, the CEO of the company which produced the toy catologue, justified having a boy dressed as Spiderman pushing a pram on the grounds that "Gender roles are an outdated thing".

And how is the same thing being justified in Australia? One academic has this to say:

Paul Harrison, lecturer in consumer behaviour at Deakin University, said young children had no concept of gender.

"But for adults, from the moment a child is conceived, we start defining them by whether they are male or female," he said.

That's the liberal view: we are born as blank slates and the primary aim is to then self-define who we are rather than being predefined or other-defined.

I don't know if Paul Harrison has children or not, but it hasn't been my experience that young children have no concept of gender. Both my son and my daughter showed obvious signs of masculine and feminine behaviour by about the age of 6 months, i.e. early enough for it to be difficult to be produced by socialisation alone.

The gender neutral toy catalogue was also defended by a child psychologist on these grounds:

Child psychologist Sally-Anne McCormack said all toys were gender neutral and it was society that linked them with a gender role.

"Rather than telling little girls and little boys what they can play with, parents should let them decide," she said.

"This is not about being politically correct. It's about letting children experiment ... our role as parents is to facilitate our children becoming the people they want to be by letting them explore as much as possible."

Here again we have the typically liberal idea that sex distinctions are created by society alone - that they are socially constructed. And the psychologist also pushes the liberal idea that it is individual preference or desire that creates who we are, rather than any higher standards external to us.

Is it good advice to simply let your child choose to be whatever? Mostly not. It's true that you have to take your child's personality, talents and interests into account in your efforts to socialise them to become successful adults.

But boys need to be masculine. That's even more true in today's society when there are so many reasons for men to become demoralised. A man who doesn't have a strong masculine core is likely to give up in some way - perhaps he won't attempt to compete for women, or won't embark on the rigors of career.

That's one reason why the average parent does still encourage distinct forms of play when it comes to their young children. They don't want to raise up insipid sons - and why would they?