Two Other Voices on The Shriver Report

Home economics reduced

Shriver Report condescends to full-time mothers

The Shriver Report Summary: A Bona Fide Culture War

Many Americans are under the impression that feminism isn't relevant anymore -- or if it is, it's only relevant to mothers or young women. Nothing could be further from the truth. The "women's rights movement" post 1960 is the single greatest fraud ever perpetuated on modern society -- and it affects all of us.

In Part 2 of my rebuttal I point out that feminists want the government to enact policies that allow parents to drop their children off somewhere all day, every day -- all throughout the year. This new world they forsee -- in which homes are essentially empty all day -- has a domino effect. As an example, The Shriver Report suggests doctors change their schedules so parents who both work can make it to the doctor outside of normal business hours.

"Most workers—men and women—now have family responsibilities they negotiate daily with their spouses, family members, bosses, colleagues, and employees. But it is still a rare doctor’s office that is open evenings or weekends," writes Podesta.

So now doctors can't have a life of their own b/c feminists want them available at all hours of the day.

Tammy Bruce, a self-described "gay, pro-choice, gun-owning, pro-death penalty, liberal, voted-for-Reagan classic feminist (I LOVE Tammy!), exposes the truth about modern feminism in her excellent book, The New Thought Police. As a former member of NOW (the National Organization of Women), she should know. (You gotta love the folks who quit their jobs after seeing the ins and outs of how certain organizations operate -- they're your best bet for acquiring truth.) In a chapter called "Not Now: The Selling Out of the Feminist Establishment," she writes this:

"Do not be mistaken: What Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patricia Ireland, and all the rest have presented to you over the last 15 years (at least) has not been feminist theory."

Bruce writes in detail how the civil rights and feminist movements are no longer classic liberal organizations that support freedom of speech and personal liberty. "As the organized Left gained cultural power, it turned into a monster that found perpetual victimhood, combined with thought and speech control, the most convenient and efficient way to hold onto that power. The Left now wields more cultural and political power than the Right and has been abusing it at our expense."

The social change women like Shriver and the folks at the Center for American Progress want is cloaked in a respectable label known as "women's rights." Knowing that few people will stand publicly against "women's rights," which sounds so basic and good, assures them of power. They can wield it all day long -- and they have.

That's why everyday Americans must ban together to defeat the feminist movement and not be afraid to speak up out of fear that people will label you an oppressor. That's essentially what this blog is for: empowering men and women who may or may not lean left on various issues but still think America is a fair and noble country just the way it is.

If you don't stand up against these forces, America will cease to exist. I hate to sound fatalistic -- that is NOT my style at all -- but I do believe it has come to this. The good news is that with blogs like this, regular Americans have access to information they otherwise would not. As a result, people are armed with the tools they need to fight. And as Bill O"Reilly says in the opening paragraph of Culture Warrior, "At times you have to fight."

The Shriver Report Rebuttal -- Part 3

"Our policy landscape remains stuck in an idealized past, where the typical family was composed of a married-for-life couple with full-time breadwinner and a full-time homemaker. Government policies and laws continue to rely on an outdated model of the American family, " writes Podesta in the opening to TSR.

Gee, I don't know. Seems to me that even if the model of the American family is dwindling, that's no reason to chuck what we know works and adopt a new model that encourages single motherhood and the dual-income family. That's like saying that since Americans are so obese today, we should just accept it and adopt policies that support this lifestyle.

Make no mistake: Changing public policy is precisely what this report is about. That last sentence -- "government policies and laws continue to rely..." is mentioned over and over again throughout the 450-page report. The goal is to change America. And they're not hiding this fact. Recall Podesta's opening: "This report contemplates what a new America should look like after we finally embrace this important new dynamic in our lives and the changes it has caused in our homes and businesses."

Indeed, it's no accident this report was completed this year. President Obama and the First Lady are wholly committed to the goals of TSR. As soon as Obama took office, Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress went to work. They know Obama and Michelle will take this report seriously. Consider these statements the President and his wife have made that show their allegiance to the liberal and/or feminist movement:

"I won't deny my preference for the story the Democrats tell, nor my belief that the arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact." (Obama)

"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and [a] revamped education system, someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so someone else can have more." (Michelle)

"I am extremely concerned that [the partial-birth abortion ban] will [cause] conservative Supreme Court justices to erode Roe vs. Wade, which is a matter of equal rights for women." (Obama)

The partial-birth abortion law is a "ban on a legitimate medical procedure" that "is clearly unconstitutional and must be overturned..." (Michelle)

"The right wing has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, but it's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia." (Obama)

No wonder conservatives weren't consulted for The Shriver Report. Our arguments would disprove their analysis and ruin their plans to change America for the worse.

The Shriver Report Rebuttal -- Part 2

Not every aspect of The Shriver Report is a myth. Some parts are just insanely unrealistic. Consider below:

• Schools still let kids out in the afternoon, long before the workday ends, and they shut their doors for three months during the summer, even though the majority of families with children are supported by a single working parent or a dual-earning couple.

It's very important that Americans understand what it is these folks want. Shriver and the CAP (Center for American Progress) envision an America where parents are not in the home at all during the week. They believe we are already on this path and will continue down this same path in the future. They imagine homes with no one in them from sun-up till sun-down all throughout the year. America's children would therefore need to be raised by hired help -- caregivers, babysitters, preschools, day cares, etc. -- around the clock.

Now one of the findings CAP addresses, which is accurate, is that there are approximately 40% of single mothers in America. This is an astounding figure we should all be concerned about -- yet rather than address this major social phenomenon as the travesty it is, the Left wants to accept that it is a fait accompli -- one we should encourage by changing society to fit this new pattern. Conservative-minded folks, on the other hand, recognize the pitfalls of single motherhood and wish to lower the 40% figure, not accomodate for it by making it easier for women to remain unmarried or get divorced.

There were two main findings from the TIME article, "The State of the American Woman," last week. (This cover story was designed to be released alongside The Shriver Report, as the TSR was funded in part by TIME -- I'm telling you, these left-wing organizations are like a cult the way they operate.) The first is the evidence that as women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy. This was the whole point of the cover story, yet it is not addressed at all in The Shriver Report.

No one on the Left even entertains that idea that maybe, just maybe, the reason women are so unhappy is b/c they've been fed a lie. (Recognizing this would eradicate their entire agenda; they'd have nothing left to fight for!) Modern feminism, which came about in the 1960s, is not the same as the kind of feminism that existed earlier. Feminists like to think it's all one long fight, but it isn't. There's a difference b/w fighting for the right to vote, for example, and the "right" to abortion and child care. Indeed, the early feminists were pro-life -- and they never entertained the idea of leaving babies and toddlers in substitute care so they could fulfill their adult needs outside the home.

It is modern feminism that told women they're just like men. It is modern feminism that taught women to postpone motherhood is search of greener pastures. It is modern feminism that taught women they can juggle demanding careers with babies and toddlers -- if they have the "right kind" of government. And now that women have seen the truth -- yes, women and men really are different; gee, postponing motherhood causes a plethora of fertility problems; and wow, motherhood is hard enough on its own without a full-time job -- they are overwhelmed, exhausted, and downright unhappy.

You won't see any of this argued in The Shriver Report.

The second important finding of the TIME article is that "women no longer view matrimony as a necessary station on the road to financial security or parenthood." This is huge. Huge. Yet no mention of it in The Shriver Report. It is modern feminism that has caused women to believe marriage is unnecessary. According to the article, more men than women consider marriage "very important" to their happiness. Too bad for them, I guess, since women don't agree. Men have become totally irrelevant in this country. We need a bona fide men's movement.

More on TSR tomorrow...

The Shriver Report Rebuttal -- Part 1

As I wrote yesterday, The Shriver Report was completed by a left-wing organization with strong ties to the Obama adminstration. There are no recognizable conservative-minded names on the report, save for Condoleeza Rice -- who did not contribute to the writing but merely acted as an "advisor" in some way, which doesn't mean anything. She could have just offered some statistic the CAP (CAP stands for Center for American Progress, the left-wing think tank that did this research) was looking for.

The contributors to The Shriver Report are committed left wingers whose goal is to change American policies regarding work and family. They include Heather Boushey, senior economist at CAP; Ann O'Leary, senior fellow at CAP who served as a legislative director for Hilary Clinton; Karen Skelton, who also worked for the Clinton administration and was first director of political affairs for Al Gore; Ed Paisley, VP for CAP; Laura Nichols, another senior fellow at CAP and worked for former House Democratic Leader Dick Gebhardt; Leslie Miller, who is part of the senior communications team with the Obama presidential campaign; Jessica Arons, director of the women's health and rights program at CAP and prior to that, worked at the ACLU; Stephanie Coontz, director of Council for Contemporary families and author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap; Kelly Daley, women's studies major; Susan Douglas, feminist, media critic for The Progressive and author the The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women; Maria Echaveste, used to work for Bill Clinton; John Halpin, senior fellow at CAP,worked for the Al Gore presidential campaign and author of The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can Save Our Economy, Our Climate, Our Country...and I'm going to stop here. There are about five more, and they are no different from the above.

See a pattern yet?

That this report will be used to enact left-wing policy changes is a given. That there are no conservative voices in the report is outrageous. So let's begin with Podesta's first claim (from yesterday's blog):

• Moms aren’t home all day caring for younger children, waiting for the cable guy or to pick up the kids from school, yet quality child care and flexible hours at work are in short supply.

This is false on all three fronts.

1) Approximately 60% of mothers in America with children under 18 are their children's primary caregivers.Twenty-six percent of these mothers are not employed, while 34% work part-time. However, working “part-time” can mean working as few as ten hours a week, or only during the hours children are in school. For babies and toddlers, the percentage of mothers at home increases. Approximately 63% of mothers with children under age 6 are their children’s primary caregivers. In addition, there are approx. 148,000 SAHDs (that's stay-at-home dads) in America. In other words, saying that "moms aren't home all day waiting to pick the kids up from school" may be accurate -- but millions of parents with children under 6 are home. Podesta and his ilk routinely lump parents of small children together with parents of school-age children. They PRETEND old-fashioned parenting (with one parent bringing home the bacon and one caring for the kids) is outdated and that no one does this anymore. The truth is that most parents do stay home when their kids are young and/or work PART-TIME. Millions of them are available and able to wait for the cable guy, when needed.

2) Quality child care can never exist b/c it's open to anyone who wants it. Quality can only exist when demand is kept to a minimum. Moreover, most Americans are not clamoring for more and better child care. Sixty-eight percent of parents say child care is “not much of a problem” for their families and feel the primary responsibility of child care rests with them.

3) Arlie Hochschild's groundbreaking book, The Time Bind, proved unequivocally that despite companies offering their employees flexible hours, few women took advantage of them.

More tomorrow...

THE SHRIVER REPORT

Maria Shriver is making the rounds in the media promoting her newly released year-long report (an exhaustive report, about 400 pages) titled "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything." She did the research with the help of the Center for American Progress -- a liberal think tank -- NBC, and Time magazine. Her report was meant to be released alongside the Time cover story I wrote about last week -- titled "The State of the American Woman." The report includes an epilogue from Oprah and other left-wing contributors. I have no doubt this report will fall in the President's hands -- and he and Michelle will salivate over it. Then they'll get busy changing America.

This is very important information you need to know about. Here are some blurbs from the report, written by John Podesta, former chief of staff under Bill Clinton and President of the Center for American Progress (CAP):

When we look back over the 20th century and try to understand what’s happened to workers and their families and the challenges they now face, the movement of women out of the home and into paid employment stands out as a unique and powerful transformation. Unlike the America our parents still remember and even helped to build, today:

• Moms aren’t home all day caring for younger children, waiting for the cable guy or to pick up the kids from school, yet quality child care and flexible hours at work are in short supply.

• Workplaces are no longer the domain of men. The last remnants of those days can scarcely be found at all, save on episodes of “Mad Men” or on “Leave it to Beaver” reruns. Women now comprise half the workers on employers’ payrolls. And while men and women still tend to work in different kinds of jobs, most workers under 40 have never known a workplace without women bosses and women colleagues.

• Schools still let kids out in the afternoon, long before the workday ends, and they shut their doors for three months during the summer, even though the majority of families with children are supported by a single working parent or a dual-earning couple.

• Most workers—men and women—now have family responsibilities they negotiate daily with their spouses, family members, bosses, colleagues, and employees. But it is still a rare doctor’s office that is open evenings or weekends, even though so many people work at all hours in our 24/7 economy.

Women becoming primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners changed everything. But, even though we were all witness to this phenomenon’s slow emergence over many years, these changes seem somehow to have snuck up on us. As a result, our policy landscape remains stuck in an idealized past, where the typical family was composed of a married-for-life couple with a full-time breadwinner and full-time homemaker who raised the children herself.

Government policies and laws continue to rely on an outdated model of the American family. And, despite the existence of innovative practices in corporate America, most employers fail to acknowledge or accommodate the daily juggling act their workers perform, they are oblivious to the fact that their employees are now more likely to be women, and they ignore the fact that men now share in domestic duties.

Slow, too, have been our institutions of faith in recognizing this transformation of male-female dynamics at a time when increasingly urgent lives make spiritual support more needed—and, perhaps, less available—than ever before. And the media present flawed images of the real challenges women face, embracing glamour, power, and sex while ignoring the daily struggle to raise children and pay bills. At one level, everything has changed. And yet so much more change is needed.

This report contemplates what a new America should look like after we finally embrace this important new dynamic in our lives and the changes it has caused in our homes and businesses. At CAP, our work builds upon the progressive ideals of leaders who brought needed change to our national life, people such as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Jane Addams, and Martin Luther King. We draw from the great social movements of the 20th century, from labor rights and worker safety to civil rights and women’s suffrage.

“A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything” is work in the best tradition of those ideals. It flips a switch in our culture, sparking a collective acknowledgement of the interdependence of men and women today. With that switch we hope will come changes in the collective mindset of our government, business, faith institutions, our culture, media, and most importantly, men and women. Embracing these new dynamics and sparking new conversations is what “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything” is all about.

There is so much that is wrong with this report that I can't possibly cover it in one blog, so I will be covering it piecemeal over the coming weeks. Each day, starting tomorrow, I will be debunking the myths of The Shriver Report -- aka The Feminist Report -- and providing details this report doesn't offer.

Until tomorrow...

Conservatism Is Back

Politics and Coaching

There was a great article in the WSJ last month (I should just call this blog the Wall Street Journal Cliff Notes) about why coaches are overwhelmingly conservative.

Bobby Bowden is a Florida State coach who says there's a natural connection between politics and coaching. "In coaching, you've got to have more discipline and you've got to be more strict and just conservative, I think. It fits with the Republicans."

Lou Holtz was a coach at Notre Dame. He says, "You aren't entitled to anything. You don't inherit anything. You get what you earn -- your position on the team. You're treated like everyone else. You're held accountable for your actions. You understand that your decisions affect other people on that team...There's winners, there's losers, and there's competitiveness."

I thought that was an interesting parallel. If only every American agreed!

Nice Liberals

I have a dear friend who, after she finishes sharing an anecdote about someone who is clearly lacking a moral compass, says "But she's so nice..."

My former publisher once wrote a great blog about this phenomenon. It went like this:

"I recently got a peek at "Blue America" It wasn't pretty, but it was instructive." A friend, a thoroughly good-hearted liberal, told me how he had got to know a Palestinian businessman in Dallas over the past few years. The man's warmth and courtesy charmed my friend. Sometime later, the FBI raided the guy's office and arrested him for channeling money to Hamas. My friend was flummoxed. It was as though he were trying to reconcile two mutually contradictory pieces of data: The man is a terrorist, but he is also nice."

I loved this blog and thought of my friend when I read it. I have had numerous conversations, particularly with women, who can't fathom the idea of a nice person being evil or simply misguided. As if mean or evil people are going to show their stripes to others. Indeed, most people can be described as "nice" -- but it doesn't necessarily make them good.

"A conservative, it seems to me, has no trouble accepting that a man can be both nice and evil. But for liberals, being nice and being good are the same thing -- a serious misunderstanding of human nature that, if you think about it, informs their entire political agenda."

Amen.

The State of the American Woman

This week Time’s cover story is titled “The State of the American Woman.” It includes a statistical look back from the 1970s to today with respect to women’s role in society. More importantly, it outlines the results of a new poll that studied the various changes that have occurred. “Among the most confounding changes of all,” writes Nancy Gibbs, “is the evidence, tracked by numerous surveys, that as women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy.” The media elite may be flummoxed by these results, but I am not.

Today we are witnessing the results of a revolution that claimed to help women improve their lives, but in fact did just the opposite. “Among the most dramatic changes in the past generation is the detachment of marriage and motherhood; more men than women identified marriage as “very important to their happiness.” Women no longer view matrimony as a necessary station on the road to financial security or parenthood,” writes Gibbs.

This is a frightening conclusion, yet not many people will take on the feminist establishment.

Here are some stats in the article that I thought I'd share with you. The first and most aggravating one that if I hear one more time I'm going to scream is the idea that women have made gains in pay "but still lag behind men." "For every $1 men make, women earn 77 cents."

Newsflash to Time: There is a very good reason why women don't make what men make -- it's called sequencing: women move in and out of the workforce throughout the course of their lives to care for children and, sometimes, their own parents -- that has nothing whatsoever to do with discrimination. The media make me so flippin angry about this one it gets me all hot and bothered -- b/c it's not just once or twice that they've reported this bogus stat. It's constant. All the time. And no one has the courage (or knowledge) to correct them.

There's a bunch more. Like the number of "female Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet members, Avon executives, governors, FNI agents, and Ivy League presidents" was "ZERO" in 1971 and has grown ever so slightly since then. Well, DUH. Does this really require an explanation?

Beginning on Monday, I will be taking apart a report that was done by Maria Shriver in conjunction with this cover story. The material is vast, so I need to focus on it piecemeal. Come back Monday.

Career Women

In 2006, Michael Noer, executive editor of Forbes magazine, wrote an article entitled “Don’t Marry a Career Woman.” The gist of the article was that men are unhappier in marriages in which the women earn more than $30,000 a year, as opposed to marriages in which the women work less. Not surprisingly, Noer was vilified for daring to point out social science research and empirical evidence that suggests “career women” (defined as women who work more than thirty-five hours a week) are “more likely to divorce, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, are more likely to be unhappy about it.”

Due to the furor among readers and bloggers who read Noer’s piece, the article was taken down off the Internet (but republished hours later with a counterpoint piece entitled “Don’t Marry a Lazy Man,” by Elizabeth Corcoran, another Forbes editor). In the end, Steve Forbes, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, was forced to issue a public apology for Noer’s piece.

The cultural message is clear: Never even allude to the differences between men and women or dare suggest that a wife’s choice to pursue a full-time career could in any way impinge upon her marital happiness. Even if it were true that men are unhappy when their wives work so much, the collective response seems to be, “Too bad. Get another husband.”

If only it were that simple.

Consider, for a moment, the following women: Oprah, Condoleeza Rice, Martha Stewart, Diane Sawyer, Judith Regan (publishing giant), and Barbara Walters. These women are all highly successful; they are also single, divorced, or childless. Even the two who are mothers have only one child. These women are textbook examples of Noer’s argument. The truth is, the more successful a woman is in the marketplace, the less successful she will be at home.

Ouch.

This is an inconvenient truth, to be sure; but the reason isn’t what people think. It’s not that men can’t handle strong women, as feminists would have you believe. The issue is time—and human nature. Marriages in which both partners work full-time have little time to devote to one another, particularly if they have children. The travel, long commutes, sleep deprivation, household neglect, and needs of their children take up the bulk of non-working hours. Moreover, these marriages are less complementary and more competitive than traditional marriages—which doesn’t bode well for intimacy. Modern men may like ambitious women, but they don’t want to compete with them. (For deeper analysis of this issue, I suggest you pick up a copy of The Surrendered Wife. But first you have to get over the title.)

Normal People

This summer there was an article in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Boomers to This Year's Grads: We Are Really, Really Sorry." Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, 60, tells the graduating class at Butler Universitythat boomers have been "self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish." The purpose of the article was to demonstrate how baby boomers’ financial choices have hurt the economy, which is all well and good -- and certainly appropriate for a college graduation. But the real legacy of the boomer generation is its impact on American culture.

Neil Howe, an author and historian highlighted in the article, identifies the source of the problem. He writes that the social movements of the 1960s "caved in on itself" as boomers focused more on "their own inner voyage" and less on their obligation to society. Dinesh D’Douza makes the same observation in his book Letter to a Young Conservative. “Before the sixties, most Americans believed in a universal moral order that is external to us, that makes demands on us. Our obligation was to conform to that moral order and its commandments: work hard and try to better yourself, be faithful to your spouse, go when your country calls, and so on. But beginning in the sixties, several factions attacked that moral consensus as narrow and oppressive. They fought for a new ethic that would be based not on external authority but on the sovereignty of the inner self." Indeed, this myopic focus on the self, at society’s expense, is still with us today -- and we have baby boomers to thank for it.

Attempting to eradicate the universal moral order to which most Americans subscribed was not difficult to do. As John Malkovich’s character – he plays a reverend -- says in The Changeling, “Once you give people the freedom to do whatever they want as the Lord found them in the garden of Eden, they will do exactly that.” This is precisely what has happened in America since the 1960s. Before that time, freedom in America meant freedom from – tyranny, religion, oppressors, and so forth. But the counterculture of the 1960s introduced a new kind of freedom -- freedom to do as one pleases. That’s an entirely different kind of freedom than our Founding Fathers intended – and ever since Americans got a taste of it, they haven’t been able to resist.

Before the boomers came along to change the definition of freedom, America was a relatively unified nation. There were Democrats and Republicans, to be sure; but they were more alike than different. They disagreed about public policy, but they agreed on right and wrong. They agreed on familial duty and societal responsibility. They agreed on national defense and the military. This is no longer the case. Today we have a full-fledged culture war: on one side are modern liberals – who place the individual and his rights at the center of society -- and on the other side are, to borrow Ann Coulter’s phrase from her piece in July on Sarah Palin, “normal people.”

Normal people represent most of America. Whether they refer to themselves as “conservative,” – as 41% of Americans do – or “moderate” -- as 34% of Americans do – they’re normal because their views represent an accurate understanding of human nature. It’s natural to think of personal responsibility toward others; it’s natural to think in terms of right and wrong; it’s natural to believe there’s something or someone greater than ourselves governing the universe. That 75% of Americans do not identify with modern liberalism proves how natural it is to think right-of-center. It just isn’t normal not to believe in right and wrong. And a good portion of the 21% of self-described liberals in this country knows this; they simply go along with their friends because it’s the “thing to do.” In addition to their steadfast belief in moral relativity, liberals also think everyone is the same at heart. When it comes right down to it, says the left, there are no real differences between people -- only misunderstandings.

The twenty-one percent of liberals in America are simply leftovers from the 1960s era. They either hailed from this generation (think Pelosi), or they were raised by parents who hailed from this generation. (Think Obama.) Either way, they’re of one mind -- and they are the reason for every social ill that exists today. They are the reason partial-birth abortion is not considered a travesty by 100% of the population; they are the reason parenting has changed dramatically – and for the worse; they are the reason divorce and single motherhood are touted as good things; they are the reason public schools are a disgrace; and they are the reason sex education has become a license for kids to have casual sex. Indeed, the result of Americans taking their focus off society and onto the self is mind-numbingly far-reaching.

Fortunately, the majority of Americans still believe in the real definition of freedom. Everyday folks between California and New York are busy taking responsibility for their lives and the people in them. People do tend to mature as they age – and consequently think less of themselves and more about society as a whole. Unfortunately, 21% of Americans have yet to grow up (as the jacket cover to Reb Bradley’s Born Liberal, Raised Right, says, “The future of America is threatened by adults stuck in their terrible twos”); and many of them have the microphone. They can be found in the White House, Hollywood, college campuses, and the media. Indeed, their voices are so loud they drown out the masses, resulting in capitulation. Normal people feel defeated, and thus remain silent.

Fortunately, there’s a new optimism underway – which is why I’m grateful for Obama’s presidency. I think he’s precisely what America needed. By having Obama in office, Americans get a glimpse of what far left politics looks like – and we needed that. I don’t think most Americans, before the election, truly understood the difference between conservatism and liberalism. I don’t think normal people ever fathomed – they’re too damn normal to fathom it -- that there are people in the world who think like Obama and his cronies in Congress. Less than a year ago Smart Girl Politics, a grassroots organization dedicated to “engaging, educating, and empowering conservative women” was a fledgling website with less than 1,000 members; now there are 11,000 members. Less than a year ago people loved the idea of Obama; now they’re scratching their heads. Less than a year ago people didn’t believe an innocent young woman could proclaim her belief in traditional marriage and be pilloried by the media as a result; now they do. Less than a year ago people didn’t believe Democrats honestly believe it’s okay to take people’s money away from them and give it to other people; now they do. I firmly believe, now that normal people have witnessed what modern liberalism looks like, that America will reunite.

As Winston Churchill once said, "We can always count on Americans to do the right thing...after they've exhausted all other possibilities."

Conservatives vs. Liberals

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, they don’t buy one.

If a liberal doesn’t like guns, then no one should have one.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, they don t eat meat.

If a liberal is a vegetarian, they want to ban all meat products for
everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his
enemy.

A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he or she quietly enjoy their lives.

If a liberal is homosexual, they loudly demand legislated respect.

If a black man or Hispanic is conservative, they see themselves as
independently successful.

Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government
protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his
situation.

A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.

Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.

A liberal wants all churches to be silenced.

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for
it, or may choose a job that provides it.

A liberal demands that his neighbors pay for his.
Which category would you prefer to be in ??

And Some People Say There's No Culture War...

Apartment residents told to take down U.S. flags

ALBANY, Ore. - At the Oaks Apartments in Albany, the management can fly their own flag advertising one and two bedroom apartments - but residents have been told they can't fly any flags at all.

Jim Clausen flies the American flag from the back of his motorcycle. He has a son in the military heading back to Iraq, and the flag - he said - is his way of showing support.

"This flag stands for all those people," said Clausen, an Oaks Apartment resident. "It stands for the people that can no longer stand - who died in wars. That's why I fly this flag."

But to Oaks Apartment management, Clausen said, the American flag symbolizes problems.

He was told to remove the red, white and blue from both of his rides, or face eviction.

"It floored me," he said. "I can't believe she was saying what she was saying."

Even long-time residents like Sharron White, who has flown a flag on her car for eight years, has been told to take it down.

White said management told her that "someone might get offended."

"I just said to her 'They'll just have to get over it,'" White said.

Resident we talked to who had been approached to take down their flags all told us the same thing: that management told them the flags could be offensive because they live in a diverse community.

Attempts to find out for ourselves why management would ban flags were unsuccessful. KATU wanted to talk to management at Oaks Apartments, but no one has returned our calls. The woman we were told had made the decision said she was "not going to answer any questions."

Joy Behar

Joy Behar has a new show -- opposite Larry King at 8pm on HLN (that's Headline News).

Chances are, most of you know Joy from The View -- a show I'm quite sure I've never seen all the way through but have seen enough clips to get the gist of the program. That's why I don't watch it.

However, I have to say that I love Joy Behar. I know some of you will think I'm nuts, but I've watched her fill in for Larry King enough to grow a fondness for her. Obviously I disagree with everything that comes out of her mouth, but I still love her.

She's feisty. Thick-skinned. Opinionated. Relatively knowledgable. Funny. And she's not intimidated by Ann Coulter. (She interviewed her once on Larry King -- I think I blogged about it a while back -- and it was extremely entertaining.)

I think I like her b/c she reminds me of an old friend -- another Jewish woman from New Jersey, as it happens -- who's far left without being a loon, and is totally delightful. Naturally, she thinks I'm a right-wing nut, but of course any far left person would think that. She and I used to duke it out all the time.

I could see myself duking it out with Behar at a bar. And at the end of the night, I'd tell her I still think she's fantastic. It's a rare kind of relationship (makes me think of James Carville and Mary Matalin), but it's fun.

Obama's Nobel Prize

Giving a Nobel Prize to Barack Obama reminds me of my teaching days when I was told I had to pass the students in my class who were failing.

The Mental Health of America's Preschoolers

For years I’ve been lamenting the great social experiment in which America has been engaged these past several decades: sending our babies and toddlers off to day care in record numbers. While the correlation between long hours in child care and increased behavioral problems in young children has been clear for some time, apparently we’ve up the ante. According to Sue Shellenbarger’s work and family column in The Wall Street Journal, 29 states in America -- along with a few cities -- now offer mental health services to our nation’s three and four-year-olds. Mental health services to our nation’s 3 and 4 year olds. “From 9.5% to 14.2% of children under 6 have emotional problems serious enough to hurt their ability to function, including anxiety or behavioral disorders,” writes Shellenbarger. Another study by the Archives of General Psychiatry found depression in children “as young as 3.” Lynn Hopson, executive director of a New Haven, CT preschool says, “We’re seeing more and more children with challenging behaviors every year.”

What, we ask ourselves, has happened to cause these little ones such distress? In our hearts, we know. We know instinctively, whether we admit it or not, that parents abdicate too much of their responsibility to substitute caregivers. Despite common sense and hard evidence, Americans refuse to connect the dots between the existence of routine child care and the physical and emotional well-being of our children. Instead, we allow ourselves to be swayed – even if it goes against our gut. In learning about the mental health trend, Shellenbarger’s response was this: “The idea of assigning mental health workers to child care centers and preschools is jarring; I was skeptical when I first heard the idea. Children so small shouldn’t need mental-health help.” This paragraph is then followed by the word “However.” Apparently Shellenbarger was sufficiently convinced that mental-health programs benefit “entire classrooms of children by reducing behavior problems and supporting overburdened teachers.” Maybe they do. But it’s a mistake to think that’s all there is to it. Children are masterful at hiding their true identities; just because they comply doesn’t mean the problem is solved.

The issue of child care in this country is not unlike divorce. Since the 1970s, Americans have chosen to believe it’s better for children if their unhappily married parents divorce. This is not unlike the argument that children whose mothers are unhappy at home are better off in day care. But Judith Wallerstein’s 25-year landmark study about children of divorce, which she chronicles in her book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, demonstrates that it isn’t as simple as we think. Yes, children will adapt to whatever their circumstances may be -- they have no choice -- but the effects of divorce become shrouded behind subsequent negative behaviors or depression. Indeed, almost every point Wallerstein makes about America’s divorce culture can be applied to the child care culture. “A depressed child,” writes Wallerstein, “often goes unnoticed in school. [Children] learn to comply with adult demands but without a growing inner sense of confidence and direction.”

According to Shellenbarger’s article, the purpose of having mental-health specialists in preschools is, among other things, to “provide targeted, expert help to teachers and parents on ways to interact with children.” But it’s not preschool teachers who need help in learning how to interact with children. It’s parents. Parents are the folks who need an education in how to parent, and we can start by telling them that too much child care is a bad thing. To be sure, age-appropriate preschools are harder to find these days; but they do exist. When I was searching for a preschool for my children, I found two schools that operate like old-fashioned nursery schools. How could I tell? One was in the name – Eliot Chapel Nursery School – but the most obvious way to determine whether a preschool functions as a preschool (vs. a day care) is in the number of hours the children are allowed to attend. This has been a great source of conflict for nursery schools that wish to remain nursery schools. Until recently, nursery schools allowed parents to drop their 3 and 4 years-olds off for 2-3 hours at a time – several days a week. Today the average “preschool” (often a pseudonym for day care) offers parents the option of dropping Johnny off every day -- for up to six hours. This didn’t happen because preschool directors all the sudden decided children prefer to be in school all day, or because they believe – as President Obama does – that kids this age need more academic instruction. On the contrary, it happened because parents demanded it. They demanded it for their own reasons – whatever they may be – and the choice of preschools to cave into these demands has resulted in “9.5% to 14.2% of children under 6” suffering from “emotional problems.”

The truth is that the emotional well-being of our youngest citizens has been at stake for several decades, but it takes about this long to see the results of any social movement. If you’re like Obama, you believe America should “invest in early childhood education by dramatically expanding programs to ensure all of our young children are ready to enter kindergarten” – which means you believe the more exposure children have to child care and preschool, the smarter and better socialized they will be. If, on the other hand, you know instinctually, or from experience, or from the plethora of research now available, that it is children’s emotional development that matters during the early years, you will agree with the critics of these new mental-health programs -- who they believe “hit the wrong target,” writes Shellenbarger. As Lisa Snell, education director for the Reason Foundation, says, “Negative behavior in general seems to be an unintended consequence of every child going to preschool at younger and younger ages.”

What Americans need to know – but do not know because the media won’t tell them – is that the early years are critical for children to develop intangible traits such as as empathy, trust, and confidence. The best and only way for a child to develop these traits is by spending the bulk of their waking hours with a parent. As Diane Fisher, Ph.D., said in a 1997 congressional testimony, “Science cannot quantify important social qualities such as compassion, courage, character, and moral vision. These traits are inextricably linked with attachment and emotional development. Do we really believe these and other important values can be reduced to learning objectives and effectively taught in all-day early childhood group settings?”

Indeed, the idea that very young children require formal instruction is patently false, and shows a marked ignorance on the part of those who argue otherwise. It’s true that children from low-income families -- whose parents are often divorced, drug-addicted, or poor -- can benefit from high-quality child care (“high quality” being the operative phrase); but to suggest this same theory applies to the middle-class is simply false. If we spent half the amount of time, money, and energy trying to strengthen the American family as we spend on child care – and the subsequent mental health programs to fix the problems brought on by child care – America would be a much stronger nation.

Human Events Article

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GREAT New Link for Politically Incorrect Facts about Sex

What the Public Thinks of Public Schools

Below is an op-ed piece by Paul Peterson, a professor at Harvard and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Yesterday President Barack Obama delivered a pep talk to America's schoolchildren. The president owes a separate speech to America's parents. They deserve some straight talk on the state of our public schools.

According to the just released Education Next poll put out by the Hoover Institution, public assessment of schools has fallen to the lowest level recorded since Americans were first asked to grade schools in 1981. Just 18% of those surveyed gave schools a grade of an A or a B, down from 30% reported by a Gallup poll as recently as 2005.

No less than 25% of those polled by Education Next gave the schools either an F or a D. (In 2005, only 20% gave schools such low marks.)

Beginning in 2002, the grades awarded to schools by the public spurted upward from the doldrums into which they had fallen during the 1990s. Apparently the enactment of No Child Left Behind gave people a sense that schools were improving. But those days are gone. That federal law has lost its luster and nothing else has taken its place.

It's little wonder the public is becoming uneasy. High-school graduation rates are lower today than they were in 1970. The math and reading scores of 17-year-olds have been stagnant for four decades.

You cannot fool all the people all the time, President Lincoln said. And when it comes to student learning, the public seems beyond deceit. When asked how many ninth graders graduate from high school in four years, the public estimated that only 66% of students graduated on time—slightly less than the best available scholarly estimates.

When asked how American 15-year-olds compare in math with students in 29 other industrialized nations, the public did not fool itself into believing that the U.S. is among the top five countries in the world. Those polled ranked the U.S. at No. 17, just a bit higher than the No. 24 spot the country actually holds.

In another sign of declining confidence, the public is less willing to spend more money on public education. In 1990, 70% of taxpayers favored spending "more on education," according to a University of Chicago poll. In the latest poll, only 46% favored a spending increase. That's a 15 percentage point drop from just one year ago when it was 61%.

But when it comes to actual dollars spent per pupil, Americans get the numbers wrong. Those polled by Education Next estimated that schools in their own districts spend a little more than $4,000 per pupil, on average. In fact, schools in those districts spend an average of $10,000.

One can understand the public's confusion on the dollar and cents question. Schools' money pots are filled with revenue from property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, gambling revenues, and dozens of other sources. It's not easy to add up all the numbers, and no one does it for the voter except the federal government, which manages to get the information out two years late. When those surveyed are told how much is actually being spent in their own school district, only 38% say they support higher spending.

The public also dramatically underestimates the amount teachers in their state are being paid. The average guess in 2007 was around $33,000—well below actual average salary of $47,000 across all states. When told the truth about teacher salaries, support for the idea that they should get a salary increase plummeted by 14 percentage points.

A presidential truth-in-spending address is definitely in order. Over $100 billion of the stimulus package went to K-12 education, doubling the federal contribution to school spending. A powerful public-school lobby will fight fiercely to keep federal aid to education at these historic highs. President Obama could head off such deficit-driving pressures by sharing accurate information about how much students learn, how much schools spend, and how much teachers are paid.

The president didn't hesitate to tell American kids to take responsibility for their behavior. It's time he delivered that same message to states, school districts and unions.

Liberalism Hijacked the Democratic Party

While all liberals vote Democrat, not all Democrats are liberal. Indeed, liberalism has become an entity unto itself.

In fact, it's conservatives who are the true liberals. "The term liberal, in its Greek meaning, refers to the free man, as opposed to the slave," writes Dinesh D'Douza in Letter to a Young Conservative. A true liberal (aka "conservative") believes in economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech and religion. True freedom means "limiting the power of government, thus increasing the scope for individual and private action."

The problem is that liberalism has morphed into something else altogether. It has taken decades to experience how insidious its effects can be, but we're seeing it today -- and it's tearing this country apart. Barack Obama and his cronies in Congress are not Democrats; they're liberals. These are two different things.

Indeed, America was not divided the way it is now when Kennedy and Carter were in office; the divide became progressively worse as the meaning of liberalism changed. You might say liberalism has become a bona fide disease.

If you vote Democrat today, it means one of two things: You're either a follower by nature, or you lack a moral compass (which means you were raised without God or religion).

The followers who vote Democrat aren't liberal. They vote this way b/c they truly, honestly believe it means they care about people, particularly the downtrodden. Ask these folks to get any more specific than that, ask them to explain how the policies of Democrats will help lift the plight of the poor or make things more equitable and they won't have an answer. They simply believe one thing: voting Democrat means they care.

The rest of the group who vote Democrat are folks who lack a moral compass. They truly are modern liberals -- and have nothing in common with traditional Democrats. Most of these folks can be found in one of three places: academia, Hollywood, and the mainstream media.

These Americans (if you can call them that) have an allegiance not to being Democrat but to modern liberalism -- which at its root means "there is no right and wrong, only what's best for you." These folks might otherwise be redeemable except for one thing: They live in a bubble.

Take the Polanski debacle, for example. In a recent WSJ article Terry Teachout writes that "the rush to support Roman Polanski shows how isolated the entertainment industry is from the rest of the world." Indeed, "Hollywood is a company town, a place where the powerful can go for months at a time without hearing anyone disagree with them about anything."

Same goes with the media and college professors. These folks all live in a bubble (hence the reality of media bias), one that bears no resemblance to the real world. The real world does not think like they do, yet it is they who have the microphone. It is they who hold the power.

So don't make the mistake of thinking all your friends who vote Democrat are necessarily liberal. They may think they are; but the truth is, they just don't know any better.

What We Would Have Told Obama

Below is an op-ed piece by three former presidents -- Donald Palmisano, William Plested, and Daniel Johnson -- of the AMA (American Medical Association). The sentences in bold are my doing.

We aren't among the doctors invited to a Rose Garden event today to "join the President in pushing for health insurance reform this year and [who] have offered their help and support," as a White House press release put it. It's unfortunate only supporters of the president's plans will be there. Mr. Obama has missed an opportunity to learn more about the real issues facing patients and doctors and to formulate a plan that truly puts patients in control with doctors as trusted advisers.

The United States has the best health care in the world today, and thanks to the ever-expanding frontiers of science and medical innovation the brightest days are ahead. It is true that there are Americans who fall through the cracks of our medical system every day—and as a caring nation, we must do what we can to expand access to medical care to those who need it. But this can be accomplished without a costly and inefficient government overhaul of the entire system. One easy reform would be to enable individuals to buy policies offered in any state, not just where they live. This will enhance competition. But more government-run health insurance will only lead to disaster.

Today, Medicare already reimburses doctors less than what many of their treatments cost to provide. Now the government is saying that additional Medicare cuts are coming—thus forcing doctors to try and make up the difference in volume, by seeing more patients. If you ask patients about this, they understand that more volume means less time with the doctor. That's something that all patients and doctors should oppose. In time, it will be difficult to find a physician.

If the goal of reform is to provide the best possible patient care, let's take the government-controlled "public option"—and any legislative trick that could lead to a public option—off the table. It will result in long waiting lines to see a doctor, substandard care, and an end to medical discovery.

There are many other ways to expand access to health care for uninsured Americans. We could strengthen incentives to purchase low-cost health savings accounts, provide tax credits for individuals and families buying health policies on their own, and extend subsidies for those who need financial help. Also, the right of patients to privately contract with physicians to ensure they have the medical care they want, without penalty—regardless of what the government pays—must be recognized and protected. Today, if a doctor wants to bill a patient for additional payment over the Medicare reimbursement, he has to withdraw from Medicare entirely for two years. A patient who agrees with this arrangement can't receive any Medicare money for that service, either.

We need to maintain a plentiful supply of medical expertise. But cuts in payments and bureaucracy could mean fewer individuals entering the medical field—and a dearth of health-care professionals down the road as specialists retire early or limit their practice. Every patient wants to be taken care of by the best medical professional possible. A patient with cancer wants to see a doctor who has had years of training in oncology and is knowledgeable about the latest ways to beat the cancer. But in some provisions in the proposed legislation (such as the medical home model of HR 3200), physician assistants and nurse practitioners may get the authority to make important medical decisions.

The federal government should also continue its investment in medical research through agencies like the National Institutes of Health, and it should better reward innovative discovery in the private sector with tax incentives and patent protection. Americans are living longer, healthier lives thanks to the trillions of dollars in public and private research investment in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and advanced surgical techniques. We must not put future progress in jeopardy.

Finally, the nation needs comprehensive medical malpractice reform. It is the surest and quickest way to slow down the rising cost of health care. Statistics from private insurers, as well as a Justice Department report of 2007, indicate that upwards of 80% of malpractice cases are closed without payment—and when there is a trial, the physician-defendant wins 89% of the time. Yet these lawsuits, even when dismissed or closed without payment, cost doctors time and money, and encourage defensive medicine. This adds billions to the cost of medical care. It also increases malpractice insurance premiums, the costs of which get passed on to patients. In too many cases, the malpractice environment forces doctors to leave communities, depriving patients of their trusted medical advisers or specialists whom they might need in an accident or other crisis.

The drive to reform health care has led to an acrimonious and often divisive debate. Yet we still believe that doctors, patients and legislators working together with goodwill can improve the medical system and extend its benefits to all Americans.

Parenting: Science or Common Sense?

The media is in love again. Now that God is firmly perched in the White House, they can turn their attention elsewhere. And they have: on the new parenting book Nurtureshock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.

Nurtureshock: New Thinking about Children is not a book about how to raise children; it’s about how not to. It’s been hailed as “one of the most important books you’ll read this year,” “fascinating,” “empowering,” and “soft-pedaled guidance for parents.” This last description – “soft-pedaled guidance” – nails it. The authors refrain from making personal judgments about modern parenting (unless they’re including themselves in the admonishment) and instead rely exclusively on scientific evidence. They are indeed soft in their approach, as they explain to America -- how should I put it -- that parents today have no idea what they’re doing.

Bronson and Merryman are dead on in their analysis. They write, “The central premise of this book is that many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are backfiring. The resulting errant assumptions about child development have distorted parenting habits, school programs, and social policies.” According to the authors, the reason modern parents have screwed up so bad (my phrase, not theirs) is because “key twists in the science have been overlooked.”In other words, parents stink at raising kids because they just don't know any better.

And that’s where Nurtureshock comes in. The book is chock full of impressive research that provides solid evidence for what children need from adults. But this research is only impressive to those who are surprised by the results. Traditional parents won’t be the least bit affected by this book – save for the fact that it proves they’re doing something right.

The media, on the other hand, have always prided themselves on being hip. Consequently, Katie Couric calls Nurtureshock “eye-opening”; Matt Lauer calls it “a whole other school of thought”; and Kelly Ripa concedes she’s “broken every rule in the book.” This isn’t surprising. Anyone who’s not present in their children’s lives on a daily basis to see exactly what it is children need are inevitably at a loss as to how to parent.

Which is not to say every parent at home is a natural. The authors are correct that the “maternal instinct” is merely “the fierce impulse to nurture and protect one’s child.” But “as for how best to nurture, [parents] have to figure it out.” That’s why cultural trends – like whether or not most parents stay home with their kids, whether or not spanking or time-outs are the “in” thing – are so important. Most people need to be validated for the work they do, and they want to do things the way everyone else is doing it. So if everyone is doing it wrong – which is precisely what the authors are saying -- so will they.

Fortunately for modern parents, they finally have some great advice. Bronson and Merryman have a video clip circulating on the web that assures readers “the world of parenting is about to change.” Here are some of the things they say:

“Having lopped on to some wrong ideas about childhood has led people to overlook some amazing science.”

“In each chapter of this book, we take on an idea that has become conventional wisdom, something parents and society have invested in – and we use the science to debunk that.”

“We went to the scholars who write the tests that are used for kindergarten readiness. The tests used for kindergarten screenings were wrong 72% of the time.”

Unlike the authors, I’ve never been accused of being “soft,” so forgive me if my words jump off the page with a little more bite. The fact is, for decades now parents have been fed a load of crap about children. Like the idea that children are delicate creatures incapable of handling setbacks or the word No. Or the idea that early preschool will make children smarter. Or the idea that children’s needs are no different from adult needs – particularly with respect to sleep, which is why children today are entirely sleep-deprived. Bronson and Merryman take on these popular trends and “debunk” them one by one, which has the folks in the media – who for years have been providing advice to viewers from modern parenting “experts” -- completely flummoxed.

Fortunately, not everyone is confused. As Tricia Huff, a reader from Cincinnati, writes in an Amazon review:

“That children do not think like adults is hardly shocking news. Bronson and Merryman's book is a readable recitation of several interesting studies that contradict some of the child rearing advice the public have received through popular media sources such as magazines and parenting books. But many lay people interpreted the advice in such a manner that they are already doing what the current studies now recommend. For these readers the book is going to fall somewhat short of the expectation implied in the title of turning our parenting ideas upside down.”