January 20, 2005

Feminist Utopia, Social Nightmare
By Carey Roberts

Every era has its utopian movements that hold out the promise of social perfectability. One such movement is feminism, which claims the path to social nirvana is the liberation of women and the creation of a genderless society.

One hundred years ago, feminism claimed that equal rights under the law was its goal. Once women won the right to vote in 1920, many predicted that having achieved its objective, the women's movement would close up shop and fade away.

But feminism did not lapse into the dust-heap of history. It merely went underground.

For 40 years, the feminist cause was sustained and nurtured by the Communist Party of the USA. This was accomplished by establishment of the CPUSA Women's Bureau in the 1920s, and later through the creation of a front organization, the Congress of American Women. (Read the rest here)

The Gimlet Eye of Tom Wolfe
by Bob Wallace

Tom Wolfe has this uncanny ability to see to the heart of things. You'd think he'd be unsympathetic to his characters, who tend to be unsavory people who bring their problems onto themselves, but he's not. That's one of the reasons he's so good at what he does.

In his latest novel, I am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe takes aim at the elite universities. It's pretty scary stuff. The young students going into them are now the "adults" coming out of them? These are the people now getting the best and most influential jobs? Yech.

You'd think--you'd hope--that these elite Eastern universities would produce world-famous scholars. Hardly. All colleges are hotbeds of drunkenness and drug use and sex (I went to college, too), but if Wolfe's depiction of these people is accurate--and I don't doubt that it is--please give me some students from Big Sky Jr. College in Sheepflock, Montana. (Read the rest here)

Libertarian Commentary on The News
By Nathan A. Barton © 2004

The times and seasons are changing, and the fight for liberty must change with them. We need, more than ever, winter patriots and not just summer soldiers. And as we’ll see in today’s news, a winter patriot requires a strong stomach. So goes my view of things, not necessarily those of TPoL, RRND, FND, or anyone else.

We got into a bit of a discussion yesterday about vandalism and soldiers, and I learned that it was a legend (or possibly propaganda) that Nappy’s soldiers shot off the Sphinx’s nose - not that they didn’t do a lot of other vandalism - but the true winners of the modern times vandalism “contest” was the Muslim Turkish soldiers who used the Parthenon as an ammo dump, which got blown up - leaving the modern ruin of a building that certainly means as much to Western civilization as the ruins of Babylon do to the world - and before that Turkish destruction, it had NOT been a ruin (unlike Babylon, which has been a ruin for about 2500 years).

Anyway, on with the news.

DC Follies
Confirmation hearing: Rice takes the stand
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
"Condoleezza Rice defended the conduct of the war in Iraq against withering Democratic criticism during testimony Tuesday before a Senate panel reviewing her fitness to serve as the next secretary of state. ... The day of testimony and commentary veered wildly, from glowing praise for the accomplishments of a daughter of the segregated south to charges that she misled the country into a costly war in Iraq in her role as national security adviser. ... 'With you in the lead role, Dr. Rice, we went into Iraq,' said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. 'Your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth.' ... 'I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything,' Rice said." (01/19/05)

Boxer is showing her slip here - her own allegiance to the truth has been lacking for years - and I doubt she ever “respected” it. The number of liars in DC is very close to the number of MOUTHS in DC. (Oh, and there is another Rice story farther on down.) (Read the rest of the Commentary here)

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