Saturday, January 30, 2010

WE SHOULD DETEST(ICLE) FEMINISM!

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In early November of 2007, out of the blue, I received a letter from a woman I had known long ago. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then I’m going to refer to her as “Venus” because she certainly seems to have originated from a “different” planet than Yours Truly.

Back in the day, I had a tremendous crush on Venus, and although I hadn’t seen her since 1985, my thoughts still turned to her from time to time because I feared that perhaps I had let “Miss Right” get away.

I wasn’t overly surprised when I suddenly received this letter from her, for many years ago I’d had a couple of dreams which I had interpreted to mean that someday Venus would reach out to me again. Sometimes dreams really do come true . . . but not always in the way we expect.

In her letter, Venus, who went on to become a psychologist in a faraway state, apologized “for abandoning our friendship.” Prior to telling me what she had been up to for the last couple of decades, she said, “I miss you in my life. I almost feel like I gave my soul away.” Venus explained that she had recently had a dream in which I appeared, after which she read all of my old letters and a poem I had written titled ‘Ailing Spiders.’ The poem made her cry.

Venus was still single, but desiring children, she had ordered sperm through a catalog and underwent what turned out to be unsuccessful treatments at a fertility clinic.

Well, that alone told me that Venus had never actually been my “Miss Right.” However, I still thought maybe we could reestablish some sort of friendship. I knew that back in ’85 Venus was a Republican. I thought: Well, at least she believes in political conservatism. Maybe I could help her to see politics more clearly and understand how both major political parties are merely two sides of the same deceptive, un-American coin. All hope was not lost . . . or so I thought.

We corresponded through August of 2008, and during that time I learned that things were much worse than I had assumed. Venus was no longer a Republican; she was now a Democrat. Furthermore, she was a self-proclaimed “feminist.” (And you’re trying to reconnect with ME?! Ha! Well, good luck with THAT!)

The more we wrote to each other the further apart our views were revealed to be. There were a couple of minunderstandings and a couple of “Let’s start overs” but it was all a fruitless, frustrating exercise for both of us. So, when it became too obvious that the idea of any meaningful relationship was hopeless, I somewhat bluntly laid some of my issues with her right on the table.

I told Venus that I was put off by her attempt to become artificially inseminated and that I hold modern Feminism in the very lowest possible regard. Having studied Feminism in great detail, I had offered to recommend some books to her that I thought would give her a fresh, unimagined viewpoint on Feminism and how it has adversely affected not just men and women but society as a whole. I mentioned to Venus that many women think of men as “expendable” or even “dangerous.” I told her that, thanks to Feminist indoctrination, a huge segment of the female population currently thinks of fathers as “helpful at best.” And, of course, I didn’t fail to point out that this would seem to be her belief as well, as her attempts to become pregnant without a husband and to raise a child without the presence of a father apparently indicated. (I somehow managed to restrain myself from saying, “And that’s all this freakin’ country needs is another single mother, working and trying to raise a kid alone, without the strong influence of a good father figure.”)

After months passed, Venus responded in late August. Below are excerpts from her letter:

The difficulty I’m experiencing is that you hold such strong opinions about certain topics, and about those, whose opinions differ; and believe, so strongly, that you know the “real truth”, that an open discussion doesn’t seem possible or pleasant.

Given that, I’m not going to defend or explain my opinions and beliefs to you.

Fathers:
I don’t believe that most Americans believe that fathers are “expendable” or “dangerous.” I never said or would ever agree with the statement that “fathers are helpful at best.”

My desire and decision to have a child in the way that I did was not a black and white decision, nor was it an easy decision. And that decision certainly does not imply that I believe fathers are unimportant.

You can judge me because you would “never ever” come to the decision that I made or take the road that I took; and you have no idea what was in my heart, thoughts, or spirit around having a baby.

On the subject of Feminism she said:

I believe that we see the world through the lenses we put on, attend to, and polish. I also believe that we can always find evidence to support any position and/or find negativity and ugliness in some people, if that is what we look for. I don’t believe that I am being naïve or “seeing what I want to see” if I focus on what is good and compassionate. I see the results of ugliness daily in my practice. I also believe that what you oppose, grows and what you put your attention on, grows.

I personally want to see the beauty and kindness that is all around me. So, really, I’m not interested in any anti-feminism articles.

Well, that was her devastating and enlightening reply to my charge and to my suggestion that she should consider the opposing side’s opinion of Feminism.

When a person tells you that they are not going to defend or explain their opinions to you, more times than not, it’s an unconceded admission that they are simply incapable of doing so. I have little if any doubt that this was the case with Venus.

Surely, you’ve noticed that her statement on fatherhood contained no information one could understand or contend with – it was just highly personalized, nebulous flimflam. And she completely ignored my statement about her apparent lack of appreciation for fathers - choosing instead to simply deny the evaluation I applied to her view and declining to illustrate how and why I was mistaken. But the fact remains unchallenged: if she truly did not think of fathers as “helpful at best” she never would have attempted to give birth to a child and raise it without a father. Venus may believe that fathers are helpful, but she certainly doesn’t believe that they are usually essential to the raising of a healthy, well-adjusted child. On the other hand, if she honestly thinks of fathers as nonexpendable and more important than merely “helpful”, then we would have to conclude that she was knowingly going to shortchange her would-be child’s development. How selfish is that?

And, of course, anyone who is even mildly interested in knowing truth is required to examine both sides of any argument to determine which one the preponderance of the evidence supports. So, the denial of Venus notwithstanding, she most certainly IS “being naïve” and seeing only what she chooses to see when she refuses to even consider the arguments of those who hold a different view than she does.

When Venus turns down any opportunity to understand why some people oppose Feminism because (as she says) she wants “to see the beauty and kindness that is all around” her and avoid the “ugliness”, it’s quite ironic that she’s actually passive-aggressively supporting the terrible ugliness that Feminism has wreaked upon society and she’s refusing to see the facts that would help to defeat that ideology and assist in ushering in more “beauty and kindness” in male/female relationships.

I believed psychologists to be interested in objectively examining the workings of the human mind in order to dispassionately understand why we react (often in a hypersensitive manner) to particular situations in certain ways. Isn’t the idea to be able to make sense of our emotions and learn to control them better by developing a conscious knowledge of why we feel what we do? Isn’t knowing and appropriately reacting to objective facts rather than emotionally overreacting to subjective impressions part of the goal? Shouldn’t a psychologist be interested in taking a calm, clinical look at a situation from all sides before arriving at any conclusion? Isn’t part of an understanding of psychology about learning to “look before you leap”?

I’m not sure what sort of psychology Venus practices but it seems to rest on a foundation less sturdy than what I base my “opinions” on. For example, before making bold pronouncements, I have been willing to take a look at an opposing side’s arguments – illogical, scatterbrained, and emotionally-based though they may often be. For crying out loud, I was even willing to read Hillary Clinton’s ridiculous ‘It Takes A Village’ before publicly castigating it. If I could read “Hellary”, you’d think the least a psychologist could do is read a couple of recommended anti-Feminism books before discounting the entire idea of anti-Feminism!

But you see, that’s what we have in Feminism – an ideology driven by a bunch of raving, emotionally-overwrought, self-centered Man-Haters. The promoters of Feminism can’t afford to take a good, hard look at the truth because it will not support their position. Feminists, like my former friend the psychologist, must avoid the truth at all costs, for they will always wind up on the wrong side of a fact-based debate. The great thinker C.S. Lewis once wrote that, “Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.” The same is true for Feminists. They also cannot guard their faith – and a “faith” it is - too carefully, for it would fall apart in the light of cold, objective facts.

I don’t really expect that there will ever again be any significant exchange of ideas between Venus and myself. After receiving her August 2008 letter, I sent just the briefest reply, assuring her that I was not “angry” at her, but declining to defend my position any further. It goes against my nature not to fully defend my viewpoints with the facts available to me. However, after all, if Venus couldn’t or wouldn’t even attempt to articulate a reasonable explanation why her actions did not reveal an unstated lack of respect for men and fathers, and if she wouldn’t peruse even a single anti-Feminism book that came with my highest praise, how was any worthwhile dialogue even possible? And as Yoey O’Dogherty, the Doggtor of Debate, has often said: “You can't reason with a person who forms their beliefs without reasoning.”

Nevertheless, I am exceedingly pleased that my dreams came true about Venus reaching out to contact me again after so many years. Although it’s clear she and I could have never gotten along well enough to forge a healthy, long-term romantic relationship, Venus has finally put to bed (pardon the pun) all of the little doubts that had long survived in the back of my mind about whether or not I had stupidly let “Miss Right”— er, I mean, “Ms. Right” - get away. Now she can go her way and I can go mine . . . in mental peace.

I am posting below a truly outstanding article titled ‘Feminist Gulag: No Prosecution Necessary.’ This was written by Stephen Baskerville and it appeared recently in The New American magazine. This excellent article makes evident some of the horror that Feminism has unleashed against men in today’s society. Read it if you can bear to look at some very dark, disturbing and disheartening facts about the effects of Feminism. Of course, Venus, the trained psychologist, would never read it because she chooses to focus solely on “beauty and kindness” and refuses to look at the “ugliness” promoted by ANTI-Feminism. Here’s hoping you are more intellectually honest than my former friend is.

Immediately below the Baskerville article, I am posting a short list of some of my most highly recommended anti-Feminism books for your further enlightenment on this sad, sad situation.


FEMINIST GULAG: NO PROSECUTION NECESSARY
By Stephen Baskerville
The New American magazine;
Jan. 18, 2010

Liberals rightly criticize America’s high rate of incarceration. Claiming to be the freest country on Earth, the United States incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than Iran or Syria. Over two million people, or nearly one in 50 adults, excluding the elderly, are incarcerated, the highest proportion in the world. Some seven million Americans, or 3.2 percent, are under penal supervision.

Many are likely to be innocent. In The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000), Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence Stratton document how due process protections are routinely ignored, grand juries are neutered, frivolous prosecutions abound, and jury trials are increasingly rare. More recently, in Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (2009), Harvey Silverglate shows how federal prosecutors are criminalizing more and more of the population. “Innocence projects” — projects of “a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing” — attest that people are railroaded into prison. As we will see, incarcerations without trial are now routine.

The U.S. prison population has risen dramatically in the last four decades. Ideologically, the rise is invariably attributed to “law-and-order” conservatives, who indeed seldom deny their own role (or indifference). In fact, few conservatives understand what they are defending.

Conservatives who rightly decry “judicial activism” in civil law are often blind to the connected perversion of criminal justice. While a politicized judiciary does free the guilty, it also criminalizes the -innocent.

But traditionalists upholding law and order were not an innovation of the 1970s. A newer and more militant force helped create the “carceral state.” In The Prison and the Gallows (2006), feminist scholar Marie Gottschalk points out that traditional conservatives were not the prime instigators, and blames “interest groups and social movements not usually associated with penal conservatism.” Yet she names only one: “the women’s movement.”

While America’s criminalization may have a number of contributing causes, it coincides precisely with the rise of organized feminism. “The women’s movement became a vanguard of conservative law-and-order politics,” Gottschalk writes. “Women’s organizations played a central role in the consolidation of this conservative victims’ rights movement that emerged in the 1970s.”

Gottschalk then twists her counterintuitive finding to condemn “conservatives” for the influx, portraying feminists as passive victims without responsibility. “Feminists prosecuting the war on rape and domestic violence” were somehow “captured and co-opted by the law-and-order agenda of politicians, state officials, and conservative groups.” Yet nothing indicates that feminists offered the slightest resistance to this political abduction.

Feminists, despite Gottschalk’s muted admission of guilt, did lead the charge toward wholesale incarceration. Feminist ideology has radicalized criminal justice and eroded centuries-old constitutional protections: New crimes have been created; old crimes have been redefined politically; the distinction between crime and private behavior has been erased; the presumption of innocence has been eliminated; false accusations go unpunished; patently innocent people are jailed without trial. “The new feminist jurisprudence hammers away at some of the most basic foundations of our criminal law system,” Michael Weiss and Cathy Young write in a Cato Institute paper. “Chief among them is the presumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.”

Feminists and other sexual radicals have even managed to influence the law to target conservative groups themselves. Racketeering statutes are marshaled to punish non-violent abortion demonstrators, and “hate crimes” laws attempt to silence critics of the homosexual agenda. Both are supported by “civil liberties” groups. And these are only the most notorious; there are others.

Feminists have been the most authoritarian pressure group throughout much of American history. “It is striking what an uncritical stance earlier women reformers took toward the state,” Gottschalk observes. “They have played central roles in … uncritically pushing for more enhanced policing powers.”

What Gottschalk is describing is feminism’s version of Stalinism: the process whereby radical movements commandeer the instruments of state repression as they trade ideological purity for power.

Path to Prison

The first politicized crime was rape. Suffragettes advocated castrating rapists. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who opposed it for everyone else, wanted rapists executed.

Aggressive feminist lobbying in the legislatures and courts since the 1970s redefined rape to make it indistinguishable from consensual sex. Over time, a woman no longer had to prove that she was forced to have non-consensual sex, but a man had to prove that sex was consensual (or prove that no sex had, in fact, happened). Non-consent was gradually eliminated as a definition, and consent became simply a mitigating factor for the defense. By 1989, the Washington State Supreme Court openly shifted the burden of proving consent to the defendant when it argued that the removal of legislative language requiring non-consent for rape “evidences legislative intent to shift the burden of proof on the issue to the defense” and approved this blatantly unconstitutional presumption of guilt. The result, write Weiss and Young, was not “to jail more violent rapists — lack of consent is easy enough for the state to prove in those cases — but to make it easier to send someone to jail for failing to get an explicit nod of consent from an apparently willing partner before engaging in sex.”

Men accused of rape today enjoy few safeguards. “People can be charged with virtually no evidence,” says Boston former sex-crimes prosecutor Rikki Klieman. “If a female comes in and says she was sexually assaulted, then on her word alone, with nothing else — and I mean nothing else, no investigation — the police will go out and arrest someone.”

Almost daily we see men released after decades in prison because DNA testing proves they were wrongly convicted. Yet the rape industry is so powerful that proof of innocence is no protection. “A defendant who can absolutely prove his innocence … can nonetheless still be convicted, based solely on the word of the accuser,” write Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson in Until Proven Innocent. In North Carolina, simply “naming the person accused” along with the time and place “will support a verdict of guilty.” Crime laboratories are notorious for falsifying results to obtain convictions.

The feminist dogma that “women never lie” goes largely unchallenged. “Any honest veteran sex assault investigator will tell you that rape is one of the most falsely reported crimes,” says Craig Silverman, a former Colorado prosecutor known for zealous prosecutions. Purdue University sociologist Eugene Kanin found that “41% of the total disposed rape cases were officially declared false” during a nine-year period, “that is, by the complainant’s admission that no rape had occurred.” Kanin discovered three functions of false accusations: “providing an alibi, seeking revenge, and obtaining sympathy and attention.” The Center for Military Readiness (CMR) adds that “false rape accusations also have been filed to extort money from celebrities, to gain sole custody of children in divorce cases, and even to escape military deployments to war zones.”

In the infamous Duke University lacrosse case, prosecutor Michael Nifong suppressed exculpating evidence and prosecuted men he knew to be innocent, according to Taylor and Johnson. Nifong himself was eventually disbarred, but he had willing accomplices among assistant prosecutors, police, crime lab technicians, judges, the bar, and the media. “Innocent men are arrested and even imprisoned as a result of bogus claims,” writes Linda Fairstein, former head of the sex-crimes unit for the Manhattan District Attorney, who estimates that half of all reports are unfounded.

Innocence projects are almost wholly occupied with rape cases (though they try to disguise this fact). Yet no systematic investigation has been undertaken by the media or civil libertarians into why so many innocent citizens are so easily incarcerated on fabricated allegations. The exoneration of the Duke students on obviously trumped-up charges triggered few investigations — and no official ones — to determine how widespread such rigged justice is against those unable to garner media attention.

The world of rape accusations displays features similar to other feminist gender crimes: media invective against the accused, government-paid “victim advocates” to secure convictions, intimidation of anyone who defends the accused. “Nobody dependent on the mainstream media for information about rape would have any idea how frequent false claims are,” write Taylor and Johnson. “Most journalists simply ignore evidence contradicting the feminist line.” What they observe of rape characterizes feminist justice generally: “calling a rape complainant ‘the victim’ — with no ‘alleged’.” “Unnamed complainants are labeled ‘victims’ even before legal proceedings determine that a crime has been committed,” according to CMR.

Rape hysteria, false accusations, and distorted scholarship are rampant on university campuses, which ostensibly exist to pursue truth. “If a woman did falsely accuse a man of rape,” opines one “women’s studies” graduate, “she may have had reasons to. Maybe she wasn’t raped, but he clearly violated her in some way.” This mentality pervades feminist jurisprudence, precluding innocence by obliterating the distinction between crime and hurt feelings. A Vassar College assistant dean believes false accusations foster men’s education: “I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration.… ‘If I didn’t violate her, could I have?’”

Conservative critics of the Duke fiasco avoided feminism’s role but instead emphasized race — a minor feature of the case but a safer one to criticize. Little evidence indicates that white people are being systematically incarcerated on fabricated accusations of non-existent crimes against blacks. This is precisely what is happening to men, both white and black, accused of rape and other “gender” crimes that feminists have turned into a political agenda.

The Kobe Bryant case demonstrates that a black man accused by a white woman is also vulnerable. Historically, this was the more common pattern. Our race-conscious society is conditioned to remember lynching as a racial atrocity, forgetting that the lynched were usually black men accused by white women. Feminist scholars spin this as “the dominant white male ideology behind lynching ... that white womanhood was in need of protection against black men,” suggesting fantastically that white “patriarchy” used rape accusations to break up a progressive political romance developing between black men and white women. With false rape accusations, the races have changed, but the sexes have remained constant.

Violent Lies

“Domestic violence” is an even more purely political crime. “The battered-women’s movement turned out to be even more vulnerable to being co-opted by the state and conservative penal forces,” writes Gottschalk, again with contortion. Domestic violence groups are uniformly feminist, not “conservative,” though here too conservatives have enabled feminists to exchange principles for power.

Like rape, domestic “violence” is defined so loosely that it need not be violent. The U.S. Justice Department definition includes “extreme jealousy and possessiveness” and “name calling and constant criticizing.” For such “crimes” men are jailed with no trial. In fact, the very category of “domestic” violence was developed largely to circumvent due process requirements of conventional assault statutes. A study published in Criminology and Public Policy found that no one accused of domestic violence could be found innocent, since every arrestee received punishment.

Here, too, false accusations are rewarded. “Women lie every day,” attests Ottawa Judge Dianne Nicholas. “Every day women in court say, ‘I made it up. I’m lying. It didn’t happen’ — and they’re not charged.” Amazingly, bar associations sponsor seminars instructing women how to fabricate accusations. Thomas Kiernan, writing in the New Jersey Law Journal, expressed his astonishment at “the number of women attending the seminars who smugly — indeed boastfully — announced that they had already sworn out false or grossly exaggerated domestic violence complaints against their hapless husbands, and that the device worked!” He added, “The lawyer-lecturers invariably congratulated the self-confessed miscreants.”

Domestic violence has become “a backwater of tautological pseudo-theory,” write Donald Dutton and Kenneth Corvo in Aggression and Violent Behavior. “No other area of established social welfare, criminal justice, public health, or behavioral intervention has such weak evidence in support of mandated practice.” Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly documented how “allegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage” in custody cases and “become part of the gamesmanship of divorce.” Domestic abuse has become “an area of law mired in intellectual dishonesty and injustice,” according to the Rutgers Law Review.

Restraining orders removing men from their homes and children are summarily issued without any evidence. Due process protections are so routinely ignored that, the New Jersey Law Journal reports, one judge told his colleagues, “Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you’re violating.” Attorney David Heleniak calls New Jersey’s statute “a due process fiasco” in the Rutgers Law Review. New Jersey court literature openly acknowledges that due process is ignored because it “perpetuates the cycle of power and control whereby the [alleged?] perpetrator remains the one with the power and the [alleged?] victim remains powerless.” Omitting “alleged” is standard even in statutes, where, the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reports, “the mere allegation of domestic abuse … may shift the burden of proof to the defendant.”

Special “integrated domestic violence courts” presume guilt and then, says New York’s openly feminist chief judge, “make batterers and abusers take responsibility for their actions.” They can seize property, including homes, without the accused being convicted or even formally charged or present to defend himself. Lawyer Walter Fox describes these courts as “pre-fascist”: “Domestic violence courts … are designed to get around the protections of the criminal code. The burden of proof is reduced or removed, and there’s no presumption of innocence.”

Forced confessions are widespread. Pennsylvania men are incarcerated unless they sign forms stating, “I have physically and emotionally battered my partner.” The man must then describe the violence, even if he insists he committed none. “I am responsible for the violence I used,” the forms declare. “My behavior was not provoked.”

Child-support Chokehold

Equally feminist is the child-support machinery, whereby millions have their family finances plundered and their lives placed under penal supervision without having committed any legal infraction. Once they have nothing left to loot, they too are incarcerated without trial.

Contrary to government propaganda (and Common Law tradition), child support today has little to do with fathers abandoning their children, deserting their marriages, or even agreeing to a divorce. It is automatically assessed on all non-custodial parents, even those involuntarily divorced without grounds (“no-fault”). It is an entitlement for all divorcing mothers, regardless of their actions, and coerced from fathers, regardless of their fidelity. The “deadbeat dad” is far less likely to be a man who abandoned the offspring he callously sired than to be a loving father who has been, as attorney Jed Abraham writes in From Courtship to Courtroom, “forced to finance the filching of his own children.”

Federalized enforcement was rationalized to reimburse taxpayers for welfare. Under feminist pressure, taxpayers instead subsidize middle-class divorce, through federal payments to states based on the amount of child support they collect. By profiting off child support at federal taxpayer expense, state governments have a financial incentive to encourage as many single-mother homes as possible. They, in turn, encourage divorce with a guaranteed, tax-free windfall to any divorcing mother.

While child support (like divorce itself) is awarded ostensibly without reference to “fault,” nonpayment brings swift and severe punishments. “The advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support,” writes Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University, “have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state.” Abraham calls the machinery “Orwellian”: “The government commands … a veritable gulag, complete with sophisticated surveillance and compliance capabilities such as computer-based tracing, license revocation, asset confiscation, and incarceration.”

Here, too, “the burden of proof may be shifted to the defendant,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Like Kafka’s Joseph K., the “defendant” may not even know the charge against him, “if the court does not explicitly clarify the charge facing the [allegedly?] delinquent parent,” says NCSL. Further, “not all child support contempt proceedings classified as criminal are entitled to a jury trial,” and “even indigent obligors are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer.” Thus defendants must prove their innocence against unspecified accusations, without counsel, and without a jury.

Assembly-line hearings can last 30 seconds to two minutes, during which parents are sentenced to months or years in prison. Many receive no hearing but are accused in an “expedited judicial process” before a black-robed lawyer known as a “judge surrogate.” Because these officials require no legislative confirmation, they are not accountable to citizens or their representatives. Unlike true judges, they may lobby to create the same laws they adjudicate, violating the separation of powers. Often they are political activists in robes. One surrogate judge, reports the Telegraph of Hudson, New Hampshire, simultaneously worked “as a radical feminist lobbying on proposed legislation” dealing with child support.

Though governments sensationalize “roundups” of alleged “deadbeat dads,” who are jailed for months and even years without trial, no government information whatever is available on incarcerations. The Bureau of Justice Statistics is utterly silent on child-support incarcerations. Rebecca May of the Center for Family Policy and Practice found “ample testimony by low-income non-custodial parents of spending time in jail for the nonpayment of child support.” Yet she could find no documentation of their incarceration. Government literature “yields so little information on it that one might be led to believe that arrests were used rarely if at all. While May personally witnessed fathers sentenced in St. Louis, “We could find no explicit documentation of arrests in St. Louis.” In Illinois, “We observed courtrooms in which fathers appeared before the judge who were serving jail sentences for nonpayment, but little information was available on arrests in Illinois.”

We know the arrests are extensive. To relieve jail overcrowding in Georgia, a sheriff and judge proposed creating detention camps specifically for “deadbeat dads.” The Pittsburgh City Planning Commission has considered a proposal “to convert a former chemical processing plant ... into a detention center” for “deadbeat dads.”

Rendered permanently in debt by incarceration, fathers are farmed out to trash companies and similar concerns, where they work 14-16 hour days with their earnings confiscated.

More Malicious Mayhem

Other incarcerations are also attributable to feminism. The vast preponderance of actual violent crime and substance abuse proceeds from single-parent homes and fatherless children more than any other factor, far surpassing race and poverty. The explosion of single parenthood is usually and resignedly blamed on paternal abandonment, with the only remedy being ever-more draconian but ineffective child-support “crackdowns.” Yet no evidence indicates that the proliferation of single-parent homes results from absconding fathers. If instead we accept that single motherhood is precisely what feminists say it is — the deliberate choice of their sexual revolution — it is then apparent that sexual liberation lies behind not only these newfangled sexual crimes, but also the larger trend of actual crime and incarceration. Feminism is driving both the criminalization of the innocent and the criminality of the guilty.

We will continue to fight a losing battle against crime, incarceration, and expansive government power until we confront the sexual ideology that is driving not only family breakdown and the ensuing social anomie, but the criminalization of the male population. Ever-more-repressive penal measures will only further erode freedom. Under a leftist regime, conservatives must rethink their approach to crime and punishment and their unwitting collusion with America’s homegrown Stalinists.

Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick Henry College and author of 'Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family'.

AN ESSENTIAL DVD:
Dangerously declining Population Replacement levels worldwide has been one of the unintended negative effects of Feminsm. Unlike the phony "Global Warming", this is a genuine disaster in the making!

'Demographic Winter: The Decline Of The Human Family'

SOME ESSENTIAL ANTI-FEMINISM BOOKS:
I've read plenty of anti-Feminism books and below is the cream of the crop which has thus far passed before my eyes.

‘The Privilege Of Being A Woman’
by Alice von Hildebrand

‘Spreading Misandry’
by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young

‘Legalizing Misandry’
by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young

‘The Gender Agenda’
by Dale O’Leary

‘Manhood Redux: Standing Up To Feminism’
by C. H. Freedman

‘Women Who Make The World Worse’
by Kate O’Beirne

‘The Kinder, Gentler Military: How Political Correctness Affects Our Ability To Win Wars'
by Stephanie Gutmann

‘Weak Link: The Feminization Of The American Military’
by Brian Mitchell

‘Why Women And Power Don’t Mix’
by J. P. McDermott


Please don’t be repulsed by the poorly chosen title of the McDermott book; it’s unquestionably one of the very best I have ever read. We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and I suppose sometimes we shouldn’t judge a book by its title either.

You can be certain that the very next anti-Feminism book I read is going to be ‘Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family' by Stephen Baskerville.


~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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23 comments:

  1. Mr McC
    That was quite a post that took a good deal of time for me to digest and even now it is not totally digested partly because it goes down with such difficulty. I wonder if "Venus" read this?

    This is a topic with which I totally agree and with which I have had experience. After two marriages that ended in divorce I know the vindictiveness of a resentful female. I certainly don't condone domestic violence, but I do know that some women can be extremely provoking with their words and actions and I can see how a man who is raised to respond with force can react physically inappropriate.

    I have been pushed and fortunately never physically responded, but my second wife falsely reported me for this sort of thing. Fortunately no actions were ever taken by anyone judicial body.

    Ironically, after the dissolution of my second marriage I had physical custody of my three daughters and the court ordered that child support be paid to me by their mother. For a while I got checks, then I got some bad checks, and finally I stopped getting any checks. If I tried to reasonably ask her to pay up, she would get her goon boyfriend to berate me and threaten me. A further irony was that when she unceremoniously dumped him like she dumped me, he called me to apologize and see if I wanted to help him get revenge on her--I politely declined because I knew she would eventually bring the revenge on herself.

    I've seen other men beaten down by the system with false accusations and child support issues that dismantled their financial condition and virtually destroyed them as decent men who were separated from their kids and living under very severe circumstances.

    The agendas of feminism and homosexuality go hand in hand as far as trying to destroy our traditional system of values. Wonder how they'll feel if Islam takes over?

    Long post, but important post that probably a lot of people will ignore.

    Your buddy,
    Lee

    ReplyDelete
  2. `
    Thanks for your excellent comment, rLEE-b.

    Yes, you're right - this Blog Bit will go almost totally ignored (like most of my serious installments on this Blog do). The people suffer from a severe case of "Ostrich Syndrome." They'd rather read about TV shows and baking recipes than consider a truly important social topic. If I did nothing but post pictures of cute animals on my Blog, its readership would quickly grow by leaps and bounds.

    You, sir, were most fortunate, because ordinarily just the accusation of physical abuse from a woman - and often even just an accusation of verbal abuse - (whether true or not) will get a man hauled in to jail. In fact, in many places, there are laws on the books dictating that the local police MUST make an arrest anytime there is just an accusation of physical abuse, even if there is no physical evidence of abuse. I don't need to tell you who virtually always gets arrested. Nor do I need to tell you what I think of police officers who mindlessly contribute to a prejudged, unjust police state.

    Polls conducted in recent years (some of them anonymously) indicate, however, that women initiate physical altercations with men more than men do with women. It's not difficult to understand why: women KNOW that the authorities are going to side with them no matter what the evidence appears to be. The man who defends himself against a woman's attack is going to jail for Domestic Abuse. Never mind that it was actually the woman who initiated the incident. This situation is quite common.

    And this is why there exists such an animal as "male-battering women." The men dare not do what is necessary to put an end to the physical abuse because they also KNOW that THEY are the ones who will wind up behind bars.

    Obviously, I'm not saying that there are no men who are guilty of abusing women; certainly there are. But, as I said, polls (and other sources of information) indicate that as a group, women are more guilty of this than are men. But the state and the mainstream media, of course, usually hype only one side of this issue.

    As for "Venus"... no, she hasn't read this. She knows I Blog but I never shared the sites with her. After posting this, I did toy with the idea of sending her a link. But I feel confident it would do no good in changing her perceptions. Like a lot of people, she chooses to believe what she chooses to believe, and I seriously doubt she would want her world-view interrupted by inconvenient truths. After all, she has already determined for herself that I couldn't possibly know "the real truth" since my truth doesn't coincide with hers.

    I deal in fact-based beliefs, whereas "Venus" seems to prefer to look at only what she wants to see.

    Again, excellent comment, Lee. Thanks for posting it, my friend!

    ~ Stephen
    <"As a dog returns to his own vomit,
    so a fool repeats his folly."
    ~ Proverbs 26:11>

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  3. Hi, Stephen:

    Although you know I don't post very often, this Blog really touched a nerve.

    I think the liberal press and Hollywood (TV and movies) are particularly notorious in promoting this agenda. Men are routinely portrayed as lovable buffoons or testosterone-driven Neanderthals, and generally discounted as essential and complex human beings. The nuclear family is represented as passé and obsolete. There is also a reverse sexual harassment that is presented as “acceptable” and which I find genuinely shocking. Women groping or sexually harassing men (either in the workplace or social situations) is on the rise and heaven help the poor guy who asks them to “knock it off.” Women seem to have a sense of entitlement to behave in a way that they would never in a million years tolerate if they were on the receiving end of the same behavior from a man.

    Many years ago, I thought I was a “feminist” (before I had a full understanding of what that meant). These days, a horrifying number of women have become a twisted version of the tyrannical bullies they once accused men of being.

    Excellent post, Pal.

    ~The Aard~

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  4. Flyin' AardPal ~
    It's always a special treat to receive a comment from you, and a superspecial treat when it appears on my political Blog. THANKS for reading and posting!

    All that you've written is spot on! The book on my list titled 'Spreading Misandry' by Nathanson and Young is particularly exceptional in examining in a very intellectual, scholarly manner the way in which Hollywood portrays men as "lovable buffoons or testosterone-driven Neanderthals" - or, as they put it, either inadequate or dangerous.

    You wrote: <<[Women seem to have a sense of entitlement to behave in a way that they would never in a million years tolerate if they were on the receiving end of the same behavior from a man.]<<

    Right off the top of my head, I can illustrate both of these ideas from firsthand observations at my current job site:

    There was a woman in her late-50s, early-60s (now retired) who had a cartoon hanging in her work cubicle for years. She had clipped it from some magazine. It showed a man buried in the ground up to his shoulders and above him it said, "Grow your own dope..." Below him it said, "Plant a man", or something much like that.

    Now, can you imagine the outrage that would have been expressed if that same illustration was directed at women? It would have been a race to see which female could reach Human Resources first to report the "Neanderthal" with the sexist cartoon displayed in his work space.

    But the thing is that, by and large, men tend to let this sort of thing roll off them like water off a duck's back, while women won't hesitate to file an official complaint.

    As for the "entitlement" issue, I see it almost daily in a small but revealing way: Where I work there is a certain policy that is in place for a reason but it tends to slightly inconvenience some employees. But in the 11 or 12 years I've been employed here, maybe 5 or 6 times (total) have I observed a man ask if he could ignore the policy and proceed despite it.

    However, women - evidently feeling that they are "entitled" to never be even slightly inconvenienced - request permission to ignore the policy 5 times EVERY SINGLE WEEK! Not the same woman, mind you, but 5 different women every week. I often get the impression that a large number of women really do believe that they are "princesses" and that rules and regulations are meant for the "commoners" but not for them.

    Naturally, I'm not talking about all women - for example, I know The Aard well enough to state with certainty that this does not apply to her. But speaking generally, yes, my experiences indicate that women as a whole think of themselves as very special and entitled to extra consideration.

    Anyway, before this turns into a personal rant, let me just say how pleased I am to know that you no longer think of yourself as a "feminist", and let me thank you for your fine contribution to the comment section of this Blog Bit.

    Yak Again Soon, Pal.
    ~ "Lonesome Dogg" McMe

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  5. Great post friend. My uncle once was married to an opportunistic feminist. She had a long history of getting married, pissing the guy off, start to hit him, get him to react, call the cops, take him to the cleaners. It was something of a laundry list for her.

    My grandmother wrote a note to my uncle that my mother once summarized for me, "Please don't marry her. The only difference between her and a street hooker is that she marrys them, brings them home and performs her whoredom in front of her children." Both of her kids (both male) ended up in prison I heard. Needless to say my uncle ended up being attacked by her, she called the cops, he got arrested, went to jail, exc. exc... He can't say he wasn't warned. In our day and time that's the way it goes.

    Working in healthcare I work with male nurses that have their children 5 out of 7 days of the week and still pay child support. As a guy you have to be sure about the women period. If nothing else I feel this whole thing should be concrete proof that the road away from biblical principles is the road to slavery. You can see it in finances, marriage, and in every facet of our lives.

    Feminists like Ms. Venus love to say, "I believe." "I feel." She commited the "I'm a useful idiot" rule Number one. I don't care what you believe. I only care about the truth and facts. As a matter of fact no one will find truth unless they are willing to change their own look on things. To speak plainly, "You can't find the truth if your in love with an ideology."

    There are those who believe that as a follower of Christ I must stick my head in the sand. Quite the reverse is in fact true. I have read opinions against the validity of Christ. I have had my faith challenged by my own research but if keep digging I always eventually find the answer. These supposed experts against Christ are always leaving out details, or a hundred. Needless to say after some practice I've learned that people are more than a little dishonest in their research.

    Sorry I've been away. Life has been busy with the little guy making a few trips to the ER. Dang asthma.

    God Bless you friend.

    Marc

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  6. >>[Feminists like Ms. Venus love to say, "I believe." "I feel." ... I don't care what you believe. I only care about the truth and facts.]<<

    BINGO, BR'ER MARC! Bingo!

    I've said the same thing countless times, my Brother. Always be watchful for those expressions, especially the "I FEEL" one. It's almost ALWAYS an indication that someone hasn't done their homework and they're only spewing out the worthless "World According To Them" scenario. That is to say, they're telling you what they "feel" should be the truth, and more times than not, it bears no resemblance to reality.

    And that's what is wrong with most Liberals: they're idealists, and they never get beyond the realm of emotion and into the realm of genuine objective thought. And their idealism almost always leads to fascism.

    When I myself was a young, foolish idealist, one of my frequently used slogans (a slogan of my own invention) was: "Don't Think - FEEL!"

    Well, needless to say, as I got older and wiser, I began to realize that "Uhp! I was an idiot!" I came to understand why that slogan and belief system was horribly flawed and would lead to nothing but problems or unintended bad outcomes. But sadly, a lot of idealists never do outgrow their youthful stupidity to become intelligent, thinking realists.

    I thank God I'm no longer as big an idiot as I once was. Now I'm merely a minor idiot rather than a major one.

    >>[Sorry I've been away. Life has been busy with the little guy making a few trips to the ER.]<<

    Ah, shoot! Sorry to hear that, Bro. I really hope he's doing well now. And, yes, your presence around here has been missed. "Come back, Shane!"

    ~ "Lonesome Dogg" McMe

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  7. [When I myself was a young, foolish idealist, one of my frequently used slogans (a slogan of my own invention) was: "Don't Think - FEEL!" ]

    Well at least you were an honest and misguided liberal. Same can probably be said for a lot of younger people today. I talked with a lib friend who is for universal healthcare the other day. He's waking up. He's starting to question the whole process. BINGO!!! He's on the right track. Who knows if he'll GO. ALL. THE. WAY.

    However, most high profile libs now a days just aIn'T that honest. For example, you can hear Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama start to use the word progressive instead of liberal. After Woodrow WIlsons term they were running from the world Progressive and destroyed the word liberal by changing it's definition to fascism. Now that they are totally destroying the rest of the democratic party they'll try to sell us the Repubs again. Why not play the same game? It's worked for them for a hundred years plus. Most people will never get it.

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  8. Speaking of changing word meanings to further agendas: Remember when "gay" meant happy and was a great rhyming word for poetry and songs? And when a rainbow symbolized a promise from God and was a thing of beauty?

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  9. >>[Well at least you were an honest and misguided liberal.]<<

    Actually, BR'ER, I wasn't.
    I was NEVER a "Liberal", although with a slogan like that on my lips, one would think that I was - it's EXACTLY the sort of mind-set that normally leads to a "Liberal" world-view.

    But, strangely enough, I was always a conservative. Or, I should say, I was always a "Republican", which I mistook at that time for Conservatism. Of course, I'm much less an idealist now, when it comes to politics anyway, and I'm wise enough to understand why the slogan "Don't Think - FEEL!" is just a disaster waiting to happen.

    And yes, you are right, BR'ER: the "professional" Liberals are all intellectually dishonest, and it makes no difference whether they refer to themselves as Liberals, Progressives, Socialists, or Communists. Their type of thinking - regardless of the self-applied label - will always, inevitably, lead to "Fascism." The "professional" Liberals understand this because Fascism is EXACTLY their aim!

    The non-professional Liberals (i.e., the dude and dudette on the street) can occasionally be reasoned with and eventually made to see the error of their thinking because, as you implied, some of them are honest but merely misguided. But even so, my experience has shown me that the number of "intellectually honest misguided" Liberals on the street is still rather small.

    And you're right again that most voters - both Democrat AND Republican - "will never get it." For one thing, that would require shutting off the TV and picking up some good nonfiction titles. Can you imagine a mass movement like THAT ever occurring in the U.S.A.? Ha! Yeah, me neither!

    ~ "Lonesome Dogg" McMe

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  10. rLEE-b ~
    Yes, Brother, I am indeed old enough to remember those times.

    In fact, there's a part of me that would like to actively rebel against the co-opting of the word "gay." I have occasionally thought about using it frequently in its older form in a one-man attempt to take the word back.

    But I guess I would have to make a very conscious effort to do that because even I have now been conditioned not to think of that word unless I'm meaning to use it in its newer,... uhm... "corrupted" form.

    ~ "Lonesome Dogg" McMe

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  11. A great biblical scholar E.W. Bullinger once pointed out in his book "How to Enjoy The Bible" that man has been corrupting language for a long time. He pointed to translation dishonesty, and how many english words have been butchered (this is in the 1800's no less). He actually had to make a list in the back of the book to correct the misuse of words in the King James Bible in his day.

    You have to remember that we didn't have all the translations we have today back then. You had your choice of two or three. The original American Standard and Revised Version came around in the 1900's I believe. Though come to think of it the Revised Version was around at that time. In any case language has been on this road for awhile.

    Websters added the word, "Meh" to the dictionary last year. Meh came from the simpsons TV show. Teenage slang like Frenemy made it in the other year as well. But don't worry this is not newspeak. ;)

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  12. `
    "Meh"?
    Hmmm... Are you sure you don't mean "Doh!"? I don't recall anyone saying "Meh" on The Simpsons, but then I haven't watched the show in many years. What is "Meh" supposed to mean?

    Br'er, I've been meaning to read a couple of Bullinger's books for awhile now. I actually have a few of them in mind, sitting in a "shopping cart" at an online book store. Someday I'll get to them, Brother.

    ~ "Lonesome Dogg" McMe

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  13. "I believe that we see the world through the lenses we put on, attend to, and polish."

    Ahhhhhhhggghh! That takes me all the way back to "NOW" - the feminist LENS. That tells me she's a lot deeper than she led you to believe, and you really pulled off an important escape getting away from her.

    "When a person tells you that they are not going to defend or explain their opinions to you, more times than not, it’s an unconceded admission that they are simply incapable of doing so."

    Such is always the case with feminism when it meets logic or objectivity.

    "Surely, you’ve noticed that her statement on fatherhood contained no information one could understand or contend with – it was just highly personalized, nebulous flimflam."

    Women's "way of knowing" (epistemology) strikes again. It's deliberately ANTI-objective.

    Ann Coulter has done good work on the "single mother" question, as you likely know. I know her "Victim of a Crime? Thank a single mother" was deliberately hyperbolic (as are many things she says) but obviously that serves to highlight and draw attention to issues that otherwise barely see the light of day.

    "Isn’t knowing and appropriately reacting to objective facts rather than emotionally overreacting to subjective impressions part of the goal?"

    Not in feminism, no.

    "Shouldn’t a psychologist be interested in taking a calm, clinical look at a situation from all sides before arriving at any conclusion?"

    Ohhhhhhh Stephen. No. You'd be better off with a phrenologist.

    Now I'm going to quote part of a sermon I want you to look at, because it's important (sound theology, no worry), but after that, please do consider reading "Whores of the Court" which gives an in-depth look at the ways courts operate with these pseudo-scientists and allow them power over us that is absolutely ungodly. And ANY person concerned with liberty needs to know what kind of evil power is being exercised over them. Stay far far away from psychologists. It's the original reason I stopped reading Dobson - sufficiency of scripture. At any rate, DEFINITELY go to the PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries and sign up for their free newsletter - I've been reading it for many years, and it's a RELIEF, believe me. An excellent ministry indeed. Continued...

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  14. From the John MacArthur Sermon, section about how "Scientific" these behavioral "sciences" really are.

    "Psychology is not a uniform body of scientific knowledge, like thermodynamics or organic chemistry. It rather refers to a complex menagerie of ideas and theories, many of which are contradictory. Psychology has not proven itself capable of dealing effectively with the
    human mind and with mental and emotional processes. Thus it can
    hardly be regarded as a science.
    Many will object to classifying psychology as a pseudoscience, but that is exactly what it is`the most recent of several human inventions designed to explain, diagnose, and treat behavioral problems without dealing with moral and spiritual issues."

    Whole thing here: prepare to be blown away (The Psychology and Psychiatry Epidemic and Its Cure - pdf warning): http://www.tms.edu/tmsj/tmsj2a.pdf

    The great thinker C.S. Lewis once wrote that, “Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.”

    He's about the greatest author ever to live. What an amazing man, and every sentence is sometimes a precious pearl. The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment...wow! I'll have to post that soon.

    "I certainly don't condone domestic violence, but I do know that some women can be extremely provoking with their words and actions"

    Interesting. Wonder if he was aware that in the cases of domestic violence in which women (who are more likely to instigate physical violence) often use the technique of hitting a man who is simply trying to LEAVE - in order to resist his urge towards violence. They close the door and start hitting, escalating the whole thing only to cry victim when they finally get a fat lip. Make no mistake, women are every bit as violent as men, they just end up getting hurt worse eventually. Women are also more likely to use the element of surprise, a weapon (such as hitting a man from behind over the head with a chair or running him over with a car) and poison. We all know the shrews with their cutting tongues, but women cut with more than tongues.

    Re: the clipping at work, a friend of mine made serious waves when a woman at his job put up a cartoon called "Evolution" - showing first a set of paw prints, then a set of human footprints, then a set of high heel prints. The meaning should be obvious. He was pissed. I don't think they took it down.

    Note that Michael Douglas tends to make movies that explore the other side of gender relations, from a men's rights point of view. Falling Down, War of the Roses, the sexual harassment movie, heck, he was behind "Cuckoo's Nest" and you know what gender relations were in THAT. So he's one to keep in mind when selecting movies.

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  15. I forgot to mention that if one is not given a name when reading much of my stuff, it gets assumed that I am a man. I even ran my best stuff through that gender program that analyzes whether a writing is from a man or woman, and almost always came up as a man. The NOW feminists were calling me "Manniee" for at least a year, and assumed I was a man under a false identity. I took it as a compliment ;)

    That's because unlike Ms. Venus, I tend to focus on ideas, objectivity, logic, fact. I do not write a whole lot about my personal life; first of all because it's personal and second because it's exhausting but third of all it tends to be the least interesting thing to me to write about and think about in depth.

    As a feminist and a psychologist, your former friend is EXACTLY the opposite there (and naturally you would never have been compatible - she would not have been a yin to your yang, either) - psychology and feminism go hand in hand with "the personal is the political" (a core feminist belief; probably THE core belief) and focus on women's "way of knowing"; knowing only that which we personally experience and pulling thoughts out of our asses and calling them "true". Intuition is the keyword there. That's why psychology IS a mishmash of opposing ideas and theologies; it's pulled right out of the psychologist's hindquarters, same as feminism. It's why if you MUST be exposed to someone in the field, you would be advised to try and make sure it's a psyCHIatrist; at least they've undergone the rigorous training in order to become a physician and maintain at least one foot in the objective world. Not that they aren't just as seduced by the siren call of their "ology", and thus to be avoided anyway. I mean, where do you think all that McMartin madness came from in the early nineties - people all over the country being accused of the most heinous acts of "satanism" and child abuse, who were almost all completely innocent, but it was a national PANIC. It came straight out of the minds of therapists, who implanted phony ideas in the children, who then ended up thinking they'd been abused in unthinkable ways.

    It was Cornerstone, Jesus People USA, who exposed that whole panic for what it was and started dismantling the whole "Satanic Panic" attack the country was having. They did good work then, but they're also communists so uh, yeah, no. (As in, they live in a commune which, while charitable in nature, also espouses the most leftist ideology imaginable.)

    I can't overstate enough just how dangerous that pseudo-science really is and to what degree it has been given ungodly amounts of power over our lives. When someone puts together "Christian" and "psychology" I see RED. Don't associate these opposites in front of me. Gah!

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  16. Excellent comments, as always, ANNIEE!

    Yes, it's apparent that you and I have studied the dogma known as "Feminism" in great detail and, of course, right you are: "the personal is political" is indeed often considered the core doctrine of Feminism.

    >>> . . . "Whores of the Court" which gives an in-depth look at the ways courts operate with these pseudo-scientists and allow them power over us that is absolutely ungodly.

    I'm not familiar with 'Whores Of The Court', but I've certainly come across similar information in articles and books I've read.

    I don't dismiss Psychology out of hand as I believe there is, at times, some validity to some of it, but by no means is it a "science", and I am aware of how some have attempted to utilize some Psychological theories as a way of conditioning the masses toward social change and to "free" us [Cough!-Cough!] from the supposedly false constraints of morality, etc. Yes, yes, there is a real dark side to some psychologists and the application of some Psych theory directed toward social change. It gets quite ugly!

    I'm afraid we part company a little bit when we get to John MacArthur. Well, I do not have mainstream "orthodox" Christian views to begin with, but if I did, I think MacArthur would perhaps have cured me of them.

    I used to attend his church in the Los Angeles area for awhile in 1994. It was never really MY church, but I would accompany my then-girlfried, who had been going there for a year or two.

    I was not always comfortable with some of what he preached (and to be honest with you, his "style", if we can call it that, nearly bored me to death). But still, I was willing to sit there and listen on Sundays with my girlfriend... until the day he criticized Mother Teresa from the pulpit before his whole congregation. That was it for me. From then on, I would just wait for my girlfriend in the car, praying and reading the Bible there.

    Of course, that's not to say that I disagree with everything he writes or says, as I surely do agree with what you posted here. I would indeed classify Psychology as a hit and miss "pseudoscience".

    C.S. Lewis... yes, an amazing thinker/writer. Have you ever read 'The Screwtape Letters'? That was ingenious; it blew me away.

    Wonderful comments, Anniee, my friend!

    ~ D-FensDogg
    'Loyal American Underground'

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  17. Don't worry, I'm no Johnny Mac die-hard follower; though he has written some very good stuff. He also...well, he and I part company in many areas. He's at his best when he's shredding something that needs shredding, like charismatics and psychology - then other things he just does a nosedive or doesn't really live up to the promise. But he did get me out of the whole warfare area and frankly I was getting weird, and needed out. He occupies the place of Limbaugh except for Christianity, if you take my meaning. I had no idea you knew him - I knew some of his members via the net, but never a former visitor.

    Oh yes, Screwtape was just the beginning, heh. The Space Trilogy - omg, AMAZING. Narnia of course. A wealth of short stories and so forth. Then his exposition. I have "The Complete Works of C.S. Lewis" (not that any of those are ever complete) so tons of great stuff in there, unknown stuff. Though I'd have to say Mere Christianity was a life-changer. Couldn't make it through Miracles - I guess I could have but it was way too lofty and I didn't feel like reading something that hard. Even though it's probably well worth it.

    One thing I simply couldn't read "A Grief Observed" - about suffering through the grief for his late-in-life wife (the subject of Surprised by Joy). Not because it was bad, but because it was so INTENSELY painful to read - unbearably painful. If I didn't want to spend a month or three grieving with him, I had to put it down. And I am still not ready to face that one. He really really spoke to the human heart in a way...well, things that I thought were just ME - like literally - he'll just come out with something from deep inside me and I say "How did he know?" I get chills when he does that. So when he's sharing out the deepest pain of his life...yeah, I couldn't do that. If you ever do it have plenty of tissue boxes nearby.

    Yeah, we don't have anything like that anymore, do we? And, all hand written. Something about that gets under your skin if you let it. God bless him.

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  18. ANNIEE ~
    >>> . . . But he did get me out of the whole warfare area and frankly I was getting weird, and needed out.

    Not sure what you mean by that. "Warfare area"?

    I had already turned to Christ before reading "Mere Christianity", so it didn't exactly change my life, but I can see how it has that potential for a lot of people, because it is freakin' brilliant.

    And I hold some very "unorthodox" views, very unacceptable to mainstream Christianity. In fact, as a result, I never refer to myself as "Christian". They wouldn't have me, and I'm content to remain "outside". So, I don't necessarily agree with C.S. Lewis on every point (e.g., I am not a Trinitarian), but that man was a great, great thinker - had the mind of a genius - and I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to debate him about anything. Even if I was right I'd probably get my arse kicked.

    I wrote extensively about C.S. Lewis HERE. It’s very lengthy and it probably won’t hold your attention for the duration, but you might want to give it a go and see how far ya get.

    ~ D-FensDogg
    ‘Loyal American Underground’

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  19. "Not sure what you mean by that. "Warfare area"?"

    Ugh talking about this publicly is rough. But OK, yes, warfare. Spiritual warfare. The pentecostal/Catholic version where you kind of "feel" what's wrong and start casting out devils by ordering them out, naming them and all that hairy horseshit.

    Yeah, no, we're never, anywhere told to talk to demons. And we're not apostles. (Disciples, but not apostles.)

    Anyway, MacArthur's book on the subject, "How to Meet the Enemy" is absolutely excellent, and it brought me out of something that was frankly insane and into something much more sane.

    "In fact, as a result, I never refer to myself as "Christian". They wouldn't have me, and I'm content to remain "outside"

    Well I refer to myself as Christian (though as you'll note, not very often) and yeah, for the most part they wouldn't have me either. Church isn't on our roster, even if it should be. Not sure. I was sick of having "roast pastor" for Sunday dinner, especially when it really wasn't fair most of the time, and I was sick of being me in front of people who were nothing like me. It could be entirely my fault but I'm the queen of misplaced guilt so who knows. All I know is I'm not going to subject innocent people to me if I don't have to, and I...well I don't measure up. Whatever.

    "So, I don't necessarily agree with C.S. Lewis on every point (e.g., I am not a Trinitarian)"

    If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.

    So you don't believe in Father, Son and Holy Spirit? What do you believe then?

    "but that man was a great, great thinker - had the mind of a genius - and I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to debate him about anything"

    He sure was. You don't have to sell me lol. And I'm sure I disagree with him on a thing or two, but that doesn't remove any of his genius and it also doesn't mean I'm right. Though I think I am or I'd change my view.

    "Even if I was right I'd probably get my arse kicked"

    Most likely. However, I believe he debated a prominent atheist at one point, and he considered himself the loser, even though he supposedly technically won. He was very smart but he wasn't afraid to admit when he was wrong any more than I am. There's an enormous gap in Mere Christianity, and I would have liked to see him fill that in eventually, but it isn't to be. Maybe I'll ask him when I reach that beautiful shore and the shining ones are reaching out. I daresay he will be shining ;)

    Thanks for the link. Will check it out.

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  20. By the way, if you've never read "The Great Divorce" I beg you, I've never begged you to read something before, but that one I do. You will be as blown away as you were reading Screwtape. Promise! Without giving much away, it's about a bus trip from hell to Heaven, and the mechanisms he uses to get all that across...just read it. It's no longer or harder than Screwtape and it's along the same lines anyway.

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  21. Also, omg, did you just imply I was mainstream? You're kidding, right? Have you ever seen me mainstream about ANYTHING? If I become mainstream I'm going to have to switch views arbitrarily, because I can't live with that. Tell me you didn't call me mainstream.

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  22. Part 1 Of 2:

    ANNIEE ~

    >>> . . . So you don't believe in Father, Son and Holy Spirit? What do you believe then?

    Can I answer “I believe I’ll have another martini” and get away with it?

    Didn’t think so…

    Well, I DO believe in The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost (or Spirit), but not in the sense that most “orthodox” Christians do.

    I do not believe in the Trinitarian application of that formula (i.e., a single God of three equal parts or facets).

    I believe that God is represented as our “Father”; the “Holy Spirit” is the Activity of God or the interacting Mechanism; Jesus is The Sinless “Son” – the first Created, and the Vine (symbolically) through whom we also came into existence. (Don’t ask me to explain that last part about “the Vine” in detail because The Bible only alludes to it in a few places and I never pretend to be an authority on things I’m not really an authority on.)

    But – hold on, you might not like this next part – in a certain sense, we are all also “The Son”, because although Jesus is unique - He is The Prophesied Messiah, He is the one and only Savior, He is the Atonement for our sins, He is the Christ – “Christ” essentially means “Annointed”, and in a very real way, we are all “annointed” by God our Father. So, although this is not easily understood, there is a specific, singular “Christ” (or “Messiah”) and that is Jesus, but there is also a collective “Christ” (or body annointed by God the Father), and that “collective Christ” is the entire family of God – all of us.

    Anyway, that’s what I believe.

    >>> . . . However, I believe he debated a prominent atheist at one point, and he considered himself the loser, even though he supposedly technically won.

    Now THAT is news to me. Where did you come across that information? I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that Lewis ever lost any debate to an atheist, because I can’t even believe that I could lose a debate to an atheist – and if I wouldn’t lose, how could Lewis lose, when he was undoubtedly my superior in debating?

    I’m going to speculate and “merely” guess that Lewis didn’t have his “A-Game” going that day and simply didn’t kick the atheist’s ass to the degree he normally would have and thus, being hyper-critical of himself, he perceived “himself the loser”.

    Continued Below...

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  23. Part 2 Of 2:

    >>> . . . There's an enormous gap in Mere Christianity, and I would have liked to see him fill that in eventually, but it isn't to be.

    Oh? What do you consider this enormous gap to be? I don’t mean for you to go into detail about it, but just in 1 to 3 sentences, what would you say it is?

    >>> . . . By the way, if you've never read "The Great Divorce" I beg you, I've never begged you to read something before, but that one I do. You will be as blown away as you were reading Screwtape. Promise! Without giving much away, it's about a bus trip from hell to Heaven, and the mechanisms he uses to get all that across...just read it. It's no longer or harder than Screwtape and it's along the same lines anyway.

    Sounds intriguing to me. OK, I’ll try to locate a copy of it. Thanks! (I still have an unread copy of ‘God In The Dock’ - sitting in a box of about 40 other books - which I’ve been meaning to get to for a few years now, but I will move ‘The Great Divorce’ ahead of them all.)

    >>> . . . Also, omg, did you just imply I was mainstream? ... Tell me you didn't call me mainstream.

    I didn’t call you mainstream.

    What, am I five beers short of a six-pack?!
    I simply said that I AM NOT mainstream.

    Anniee, if I were in an entirely smoke-filled room, tripping on Acid, and drunk on the 13-year-old virgin blood of an Aztec sacrifice to the god of Confusion, I would still never mistake you for “mainstream”.

    Now, we’ve never really discussed our religious beliefs before, and I knew you considered yourself “Christian”, so for all I knew, you MIGHT have held “mainstream” or “orthodox” Christian views, but seeing as how you are ANYTHING but mainstream in EVERYTHING else, I would never have assumed that.

    ~ D-FensDogg
    ‘Loyal American Underground’

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