Boys And Books And Marriage And Abuse

IN THE PAST week we’ve seen The New Republic worry about Boys and Books, how boys just aren’t doing well in school, and how colleges are conducting an informal affirmative action program to favor unqualified boys because otherwise their male student percentage would go below 40 percent.

Then we have City Journal’s Kay S. Hymowitz observing how the only women who are sticking to marriage and children like glue are women who are college graduates, women devoted to “The Mission” of giving their children the best possible start in life.

Then we have Phyllis Schlafly observing that one effect of feminists insisting that Title IX be treated as a demand for exact equality of results in college sports is that boys don’t go to colleges that don’t have a good male athletic program.

Of course we should not forget the Nixzmary Brown story, the little girl beaten to death by her step-father, even though the government’s child protective services knew all about the abuse Nixzmary had suffered.

And we should certainly celebrate the amazing story of British barrister Constance Briscoe, cruelly abused by her mother as a girl, but taken in by a teacher in her school when a teenager, graduating out of high school top of her class and ending up a municipal judge.

What is all this telling us?

It is telling us that liberals are wrong. They told us that the big problem was that girls weren’t being properly served in school. They were wrong. Girls were doing fine. But boys were falling behind.

Liberals told us that the old traditional marriage was a thing of the past, that people were searching out new relationships, and this was healthy. But they are wrong. Now we know that homes without fathers are homes that will likely generate girls that have sex too early and boys that are violent and criminal. And more than that. Homes that do not contain their married mother and father are dangerous to children and other people.

Liberals told us that it was a terrible thing that girls were denied a chance to participate in sports. Now we are gutting youth sports to impose an artificial standard of participation.

Liberals told us that we needed government to come in and prevent abuse of children. Now we find out that government child protective services are hopeless.

There’s a pretty obvious lesson here, staring us in the face, isn’t there?

Of course. We need more funding for all those underfunded programs.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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