A Tale Of The Times

AS WE BATTLE on in the culture wars, trading barbs and op-eds back at headquarters, it is good to pause and find out what is going on at the front lines.

I was struck recently by this report on a cohabiting couple by Sandra Parsons. She writes about the experience of a thirtysomething woman of her acquaintance.

I’ll call her Anna, who for the past ten years has lived with her partner, who I’ll call Harry. They have two young children. For years, Anna said to Harry she thought that they should get married, for the sake of the children if nothing else. Harry refused.

Well, that’s all right, isn’t it? This is the twenty-first century, after all and women are free from the necessity of depending on a man.

Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple. Let’s go on.

Anna had a job when they first got together but gave up work when she had her first child. This suited her; she wanted to be at home.

And it suited Harry too. He gave his er, partner, $160 per week to cover the groceries and every other expense she might incur.

You might ask why Anna accepted this situation. The answer is because she is a gentle, fragile soul with no stomach for a fight. She pretended to herself for a long time that everything was all right, and then she went to see her GP, who gave her antidepressants.

Shall I go on? Fueled by something, maybe the antidepressants,

Anna has now decided she has had enough. She wants to leave Harry. When she told him, his response was that it was his house, his money and his children.

Oh, and by the way, Harry would fight for custody, “using her depression as his weapon.” Nice chap that Harry.

One of the things we are learning, in this age of independent, liberated women, is what the point of that silly little piece of paper, the marriage certificate, is all about.

It is to protect women—many of whom are gentle souls without the killer instinct—from their own gentle, loving instincts.

You can see that if society sets up a rule—say, no sex without marriage—then it protects a lot of gentle souls who just want to love and have a baby.

Because if a gentle soul cohabits with a man and has his children and settles down to raise them then she is not going to be in a very good situation when it’s time to trade her in for a newer model. Especially if she is depressed because of his continual low-level cruelty.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as an “independent woman,” any more than there is such a thing as an independent man. When a woman gets in the family way, she needs help. And not just help, but safety. The safest thing for her and the kiddies, studies show, is to be married to the biological father of the children.

You could look it up.

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

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

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

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

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

Democratic Capitalism

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

Action

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

Churches

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

Conversion

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

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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