Where Feminists Get It Right -- By: Jonah Goldberg | read this item
In Cameroon, some mothers “iron” their daughters’ breasts to delay or prevent them from having sex. The procedure often involves grinding a very hot rock into the chest of the girl, but sometimes kerosene or hot plantain peels will do the trick. The practice, which permanently disfigures the girls, starts in adolescence because that’s when girls start becoming attractive to boys.
And heaven forbid that anyone expect anything like self-restraint from the boys.
I’d never heard of the practice until I read about it in the Washington Post. But the story is all too familiar. Around the world, women — girls — have to pay the price for the barbarity of boys.
In Saudi Arabia, and across the Middle East, men can’t handle seeing a little leg — or even an ankle — so rather than put a blindfold on the men, they throw a tarp over the women. Indeed, throughout vast swaths of the Muslim world, men can’t compute dealing with women as equals, so they lock up the women.
The Taliban in Afghanistan is the most extreme example of the trend. Its members claim they want to keep the “chasteness and dignity” of women “sacrosanct,” but it seems like what they really want is to protect themselves from the apparently hard work of not being savages. So under the Taliban, women couldn’t ride bicycles. They couldn’t wear high heels because the sound of women’s footsteps might excite men. Forget appearing on radio, TV, or at public gatherings. Women couldn’t step out onto their balconies.
The Taliban has hardly given up on its agenda since being forced from power. In 2008, ten Taliban militants were arrested for throwing acid in the faces of 15 girls going to school in Kandahar.
The worst cases of female-phobia appear to be in the Muslim world, but the problem is hardly unique to Islam. Across Southeast Asia and throughout Africa, in Christian, animist, and Muslim countries alike, women are asked to pay for male inadequacies.
In Cameroon — not a majority-Muslim country, by the way — an ob-gyn told Washington Post contributor Jamie Rich: “It’s very rare to see a 13-year-old girl who is still a virgin.” And that’s why the mothers mutilate their daughters — because boys can’t be expected to keep it in their pants.
“Feminism” is a loaded word in the United States because it carries so many controversial connotations. Professional feminists often insist that they have a monopoly on the word and its meaning, which forces lots of people to reject the label. Conservatives are the most obvious example of that, but many young people, including very “liberated” young women, avoid the term because they think it means rejecting any traditional understanding of motherhood, courtship, etc.
But if you can lay aside all of those worthwhile arguments about Western society for a minute, the simple fact is that “the feminists” are absolutely right when it comes to the treatment of women in much of the developing world. If women were seen as a religious or racial minority, this would be glaringly obvious. Imagine if a white country refused to let blacks learn to read, never mind go to school or even go outside. I don’t know a social conservative — and I know many — who doesn’t agree with radical feminists when it comes to recognizing the barbarity of female circumcision, wife-burning, breast-ironing, and the rest.
Forgetting the question of decency and morality for a moment, there’s the matter of national interests. Female equality seems to be a pretty reliable treatment for many of the world’s worst pathologies. Population growth in the Third World tends to go down as female literacy goes up. Indeed, female empowerment might be the single best weapon in the “root causes” arsenal in the war on terror.
The reason strikes me as fairly simple. Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands force them to be. “Liberate” men from those expectations, and Lord of the Flies logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow.
Tonight’s Rescue brought to you by ItsJessMe, YatPundit, dadanation, srkp23, claude, grog, and pico.
Diary Rescue is all about promoting good writers, so remember to subscribe to diarists whose work you enjoy reading.
Moving mountains (of coal ash) will not be easy, as DWG explains in this thoroughly researched analysis of the issue, the EPA, and coal in general. (claude)
In a must-read diary, Ojibwa recounts the historical importance of water to Native American cultures in Dam Indians: Some Background. (dadanation)
terrypinder waxes philosophic about dinner with his relatives, religion and RH Heinlein character Nehemiah Scudder. (claude)
In this installment of a weekly series, emizzy describes a cookbook tribute she’s working on in memory and in honor of her mother: The Grieving Room: Bittersweet Memories. (ItsJessMe)
Artificial Stupidity -- By: Thomas Sowell | read this item
A woman with a petition went among the crowds attending a state fair, asking people to sign her petition demanding the banning of dihydroxymonoxide. She said it was in our lakes and streams, and now it was in our sweat and urine and tears.
She collected hundreds of signatures to ban dihydroxymonoxide — a fancy chemical name for water. A couple of comedians were behind this ploy. But there is nothing funny about its implications. It is one of the grim and dangerous signs of our times.
This little episode revealed how conditioned we have become, responding like Pavlov’s dog when we hear a certain sound — in this case, the sound of some politically correct crusade.
People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.
Educational institutions created to pass on to the next generation the knowledge, experience, and culture of the generations that went before them have instead been turned into indoctrination centers to promote whatever notions, fashions, or ideologies happen to be in vogue among today’s intelligentsia.
Many conservatives have protested against the specific things with which students are being indoctrinated. But that is not where the most lasting harm is done. Many, if not most, of the leading conservatives of our times were on the left in their youth. These have included Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and the whole neoconservative movement.
The experiences of life can help people outgrow whatever they were indoctrinated with. What may persist, however, is the lazy habit of hearing one side of an issue and being galvanized into action without hearing the other side — and, more fundamentally, not having developed any mental skills that would enable you to systematically test one set of beliefs against another.
It was once the proud declaration of many educators that “We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think.” But far too many of our teachers and professors today are teaching their students what to think — about everything from global warming to the new trinity of “race, class, and gender.”
Even if all the conclusions with which they indoctrinate their students were 100 percent correct, that would still not be equipping students with the mental skills to weigh opposing views for themselves, in order to be prepared for new and unforeseeable issues that will arise over their lifetimes, after they leave the schools and colleges.
Many of today’s “educators” not only supply students with conclusions, but promote the idea that students should spring into action because of these prepackaged conclusions — in other words, vent their feelings and go galloping off on crusades, with neither a knowledge of what is said by those on the other side nor the intellectual discipline to know how to analyze opposing arguments.
When we see children in elementary schools out carrying signs in demonstrations, we are seeing the kind of mindless groupthink that causes adults to sign petitions they don’t understand or, worse yet, follow leaders they don’t understand, whether to the White House, the Kremlin, or Jonestown.
A philosopher once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of one’s own ignorance. That is the knowledge that too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach our young people.
It takes a certain amount of knowledge just to understand the extent of one’s own ignorance. But our “educators” have given assignments to children who are not yet a decade old to write letters to members of Congress, or to Presidents, spouting off on issues ranging from nuclear weapons to medical care.
Will Rogers once said that it was not ignorance that was so bad but “all the things we know that ain’t so.” But our classroom indoctrinators are getting students to think that they know after hearing only one side of an issue. It is artificial stupidity.
Time to stock up on "survival seeds"! | read this item
With over 100 advertisers (and counting) abandoning Glenn Beck’s show, it’s obvious that what’s left is the dregs of the world, like these guys. But the gold dealers dominating the ranks of his advertisers have new competition:
Yup. All those Beck viewers are suckers, because their gold stockpile will be worth less than seeds! But that’s not all! You know how Obama wants to steal your guns and shit? That’s not all he’s trying to confiscate!
Phew! That’s a relief. Because as we all know, the Second Amendment protects an American’s right to bear arms … and seeds! Then again, no seeds are truly indestructible. They are, after all, living things. The Glenn Beck patriots can’t just wait for the apocalypse, and then plant them in the ground.
Of course, they don’t need to wait long. Obama is obviously a one-termer, so will need to trigger the end of the world before Sarah Palin can take him out in 2012. So we’re pretty much talking two years before the End of Times. Better to start planting now, before the first nukes strike.
They they better hope the apocalypse happens during rainy season, because it’ll be tough to irrigate a whole acre without electricity. (And that’s assuming they don’t need municipal water.)
On the plus side, they won’t have any trouble with fertilizer.
p.s. Given that they are a Glenn Beck advertiser, this should go without saying, but yes, they’re a scam.
Credit, and when and where's it's due | read this item
Another day, another parasitic rip-off of someone else’s journalistic heavy-lifting. Must be another case of the traditional media complaining about riffraff bloggers living off its professional investigative work, right?
Oh, wait.
Here’s Roll Call, presenting a lengthy hard news piece about Base Connect (formerly BMW Direct), a direct-mail fundraising firm that rips off right-wing candidates by pocketing 75% or more of the money they raise. Funny thing is, TPMMuckracker had an in-depth story on the company yesterday, with a follow-up today that highlights how Louisiana Republican Joseph Cao’s campaign “suspended its relationship” with the firm after learning of Base Connect’s background from Talking Points Memo. Yet Roll Call makes no mention of the online outlet’s coverage.
It’s not like Roll Call isn’t aware of TPM’s reporting — the reporter on the story, Shira Toeplitz, actually links in a CQ blog post to the NOLA account that specifically quotes Cao’s adviser as making the decision to quit using the firm because of TPM’s article.
To be fair, Roll Call, in its “Money Matters” column way back in April 2008 took a quick look at the firm’s shady dealings, but it appears to have dropped the subject entirely until yesterday’s article. TPM, on the other hand, picked up the ball in June 2008 and has followed it doggedly down the rabbit hole and back out.
While yesterday’s Roll Call article has some original quotes, there’s simply no way the story would have advanced this far without TPM. Not unlike the US Attorney scandal for which TPM rightfully won a Polk Award and accolades, the online investigative outlet took a routine small fact reported by the traditional media (which dropped it) and continued to pursue it.
The point here is not so much the irritating fact that Roll Call re-entered the game on this story late and did a splash piece that’s making the rounds without so much as a hat tip in TPM’s direction. There’s a larger issue: the constant insistence by the traditional media that the newer outlets like TPM (and online media in general) are parasitic. This is simply not true, as this case amply illustrates. Even aside from intensive investigative series like the US Attorney scandal or BMW Direct, legacy media reporters constantly scout blogs for leads on interesting stories, as they should.
The media landscape these days is truly symbiotic. Both old media and new can pursue stories in tandem, teasing out different aspects, with the more nimble online outlets actually advancing stories further–and more quickly–than cash-strapped traditional media newsrooms often can. This is all to the good of the news consumer.
But it’s a new world and a two-way street. It’s no longer enough to show your work–showing the work you built your story on is necessary too. You want new media to acknowledge the digging provided by traditional outlets? Gladly. Now it’s time to require traditional media to return the favor.
With Friends Like Rush Limbaugh ... | read this item
Poor Eric Massa — it only took a day to go from being Rush Limbaugh’s hero:
This story speaks for itself … Massa says the White House and Emanuel went after him because of the health care vote … Now, Massa warns us what we all know, but I think you need to hear it from a Democrat being forced out by Obama and Steny Hoyer and Pelosi … So Congressman Massa, we’re doing our part here to make it a national story … This guy is as fired up as anybody I’ve ever heard anywhere opposed this, and the process and how they’re getting it done. This guy is going to have so much support from people.
All I knew was this guy was telling great stories about Rahm Emanuel … Here we have a legitimate kook … Anybody who embraces this guy is going to get caught … This guy is a loose canon and he’s a risk … This guy’s name didn’t even ring a bell.
Of course, the funny part is that it took Limbaugh nearly a day to figure out that it was probably not a good idea to embrace a guy whose story went from cancer, to salty language, to fracking, to, THEY’RE ALL OUT TO GET ME, and now to groping. Maybe he was stoned.
The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers is doing more than complaining about how much money bailed-out bank executives are making:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) was sued on Monday by a large union pension fund that accused the Wall Street investment bank of overpaying its executives.
The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers fund filed the lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court, seeking to recover money for the company on behalf of other shareholders.
It seeks to stop Goldman from allocating roughly 47 percent of 2009 net revenue as compensation, saying such allocations “vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste.”
The lawsuit also wants Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and others in management, rather than shareholders, to be responsible for charitable contributions that Goldman is making as a an apology for its activities.
A spokesman for Goldman Sachs said the lawsuit was “completely without merit,” which is how most Americans would describe the compensation the executives received for nearly running the U.S. economy into the ground.
Roberts troubled by Obama criticism of Citizen United ruling | read this item
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts isn’t happy with the President of the United States:
Chief justice: Obama criticism ‘troubling’
From NBC’s Pete Williams Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts today called President Obama’s remarks about the court during the State of the Union message “very troubling.”
Speaking to a law school class today in Alabama, Roberts said while anyone is free to criticize the court, the sight of a president dressing down the justices in front of Congress was “very troubling.”
Roberts said he wonders if justices should attend State of the Union addresses anymore.
I guess Roberts is entitled to is political opinions, but as long as he’s inserting himself into the public discourse, he should keep in mind that the people of the United States of America aren’t that thrilled with his jurisprudence:
In Supreme Court Ruling on Campaign Finance, the Public Dissents
Memo to the Supreme Court: President Obama isn’t the only one who’s annoyed.
Obama raised eyebrows at his State of the Union address last month by criticizing the high court’s ruling throwing out limits on corporate spending in political campaigns. Turns out he’s got company: Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 80 percent of Americans likewise oppose the ruling, including 65 percent who “strongly” oppose it, an unusually high intensity of sentiment.
Emphasis added, just in case Chief Justice Roberts reads this blog.
As you can see in the video above, it turns out that Eric Massa, the right-wing media’s newest darling, hasn’t exactly managed to tell a consistent story on health care reform. In just a few months, he’s gone from supporting single-payer even if opinion were 80-20 against it to saying he opposes reform because Democrats haven’t done enough to forge popular consensus.
Yesterday, he said he was being forced out of Congress because he opposed efforts to “ram this [health care reform] down the throats of the American people” when “the entire nation has said let’s rewrite the health care bill. Let’s find what we can agree on.”
But last August, speaking at Netroots Nation, Massa said on health care legislation, members of Congress should vote for reforms like single-payer even if they are deeply unpopular — as long as they believe those reforms will be good for their constituents. “Sometimes members of Congress must vote against popular opinion because they know what is in the interest of their districts and the country,” he said. “I will vote against their [his constituents] opinion if I actually believe it will help them.”
So even though Massa now says he is the target of a conspiracy because he believes we need to “rewrite the health care bill” to find a popular consensus, just a few months ago, he said he would vote for a single-payer system even if 80% of the public was against it. Now that’s change Fox can believe in.
