Category Archives: Family

UPDATED: Importing Monstrous Morals (The Utouchables)

Business, Ethics, Family, Government, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Labor, Media, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, The West

The excerpt is from “Importing Monstrous Morals,” now on WND.COM:

“In its contempt for women, India, our democratic ally, has advanced little since the time it practiced Sati, ‘the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband.’

Then, Western values had valiant defenders like General Sir Charles James Napier. When ‘Hindu priests complained to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities,’ Napier replied:

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.” (Via Wikipedia. )

Nowadays, our ‘national customs’ are exemplified by ‘enlightened’ observers—ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, for example—who gather and disseminate spotty, decontextualized data, in this case, about “the systematic, widespread elimination of India’s baby girls.” Vargas traveled to India for the current affairs program ’20/20.’

Back in the 1800s, Napier understood “Sati” as a cultural barbarity.

In 2011, Vargas is somewhat vague. Critical faculties dulled by the belief in the equal worth of all cultures and peoples, Vargas failed to firmly finger the sacred cultural cow to which Indians sacrifice a million girls every year. (The Economist is more optimistic, putting the number of girls who go missing as a result of a gender preference for boys at 600,000.)

… poverty and lack of education play almost no role in this morally monstrous practice. …

In utero and outside of it, the elimination of women in India is not about what we here in the US call “reproductive rights.” This is about the right to life. In India, a woman’s life, fetus or fully formed, is worthless.

… Empirical proof of these impregnable positions was provided by the University of California, San Francisco. UCSF conducted a “qualitative study of son preference and fetal sex selection among Indian immigrants in the United States,” showing that “Indian immigrant women are using reproductive technologies and liberal abortion policies in the United States to abort female fetuses.” The study was published in Social Science & Medicine. Therein, the objects of observation are quoted as saying that, “There is such a thing as too many daughters, but not too many sons.”

The complete column is, “Importing Monstrous Morals.” Read it now on WND.COM.

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STAIRWAY PRESS HAS LAUNCHED A HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY AND FACEBOOK EVENT FOR MY BOOK, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.

Invitation have gone out from The Cannibal’s Facebook Fan page. (“Like” The Cannibal when you pop by.) On offer is Mercer merchandise galore. Every fifth buyer of Into the Cannibal’s Pot will receive a free copy of my libertarian manifesto Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash with a Corrupt Culture, together with a CD of the progressive rock guitar virtuoso and composer Sean Mercer.

Order NOW and The Publisher will endeavor to deliver in time for Christmas.

And do please “Like” Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s Fan Page.

UPDATE (Dec. 16): Pam Maltzman: About the US getting India’s best and brightest: It’s probably the opposite, as those who come here are likely untouchables fleeing the cast-system in India and seeking a better station in life. It is well known, if not documented—for who would have the courage?—that Indians working in our massive high-tech conglomerates, as I stated in the column, are often very average in technical skills. They do, however, excel in exercising bureaucratic power; are quarrelsome, arrogant, and can talk up a storm. As soon as they are in positions of power, they are in the habit of hiring their own kind, often irrespective of merit, and to the detriment of The Other Kind. Massive companies, flush with billions, work much like government, within which fiefdoms with power structures develop. In these chieftainships, the relationship between productivity and profit is loose, at best. So long as the Chief has a good connection to the next top dog, he can chug along for years, before his little nexus collapses. Looking diverse is one of the main goals of the multinational with billions to blow. If a project collapses with a female at the helm, for example, a lot of musical chairs and cover-up action will ensue, as females are a prized minority too.

UPDATED: The Individual? The Family? What About Property?

Elections, Family, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property, Ron Paul

RICK SANTORUM said this during the CNN Western Republican Debate, last night: “I disagree in some respects with Congressman Paul, who says the country is founded on the individual. The basic building block of a society is not an individual. It’s the family. That’s the basic unit of society.”

[SNIP]

What came first; the unit or its constituent parts? Is not a social unit like the family comprised of individuals? And did not the sovereign states precede the union? Although it all begins with the individual, the preeminence of the individual in no way negates the vitality of the family.

CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL REPLIED: “Well, I would like to explain that rights don’t come in bunches. Rights come as individuals, they come from a God, and they come as each individual has a right to life and liberty.”

Someone please stand up for property, next time. The defense of private property rights is urgent as the Occupy Wall Street hooligans encroach.

UPDATE: Contemplationist below is right. With his “Live, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as I observed, Jefferson has “bequeathed us a vagueness that has helped undermine the foundation of civilization: private property.”

Paul on the Value of Peace & Personal Sovereignty

Christianity, Conservatism, Family, Foreign Policy, Judaism & Jews, Morality, Religion, Republicans, Ron Paul

Ron Paul melds the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to remind “Values Voters” at the 2011 Summit of the Biblical imperative and the blessings of peace, and personal sovereignty; of the need to follow the Golden Rule (treat others as you wish to be treated), of the importance of striving for virtue and excellence as individuals—and not as subjects beholden to the proverbial king about whose evils Samuel forewarned. Above all, Paul emphasized the urgent need to revive the restraints this country once placed on the federal government. And fast.

Read the complete speech.

The Texas congressman won 37% of the poll at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, sponsored by the Family Research Council, a social conservative group.

[CNN]

Toy Makers Play Sexy Games With Toddlers

Family, Feminism, Gender, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Sex

Breast feeding is a perfectly wholesome choice but so is privacy paramount. As is age- and gender appropriate behavior. At least in a healthy society, which our post-modern culture is certainly not.

“After a successful run overseas, reports RT, “Spain-based Berjuan Toys is bringing their Breast Milk Baby to the United States. The realistic play-thing aimed at kids two and up is trying to teach the youth of America that breast-feeding is a healthy, natural way to feed a baby — and this is something that can be taught with a $90 piece of plastic complete with a realistic suckling mechanism.”

I don’t mean to be a prude, but I’m glad my daughter was raised at a time, not so long ago, when “My Little Pony” was prized above all toys—lots of My Little Ponies and paraphernalia. How innocent and sweet such play-things now seem.

I don’t want your two-year-old tot playing with mine if yours is a precocious, sexualized brat who shows mine how to append a suckling doll to her tiny chest and encourages little brother to join in the breast-feeding “fun.”

Children learn socially appropriate behavior through role models and modeling. Having breast fed my daughter until she rejected me (at 10 months), I did so in private and was modest about it. No one feels comfortable around a woman who insists that her mammary glands are not sexual object too, and foists them on bashful company (now boys, behave yourselves).

And who wants a two-year-old brat to sound like a breastfeeding advocate during playtime? Propagandized American kids are painful enough as it is.

The feminization of little boys is as serious as the sexualization of little girts. Oh for boyhood before BB guns and “bang-bang you’re dead” were banned; and for family life prior to “One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads.”

Then there is the importance of boundaries—between the private and the public, between adults and children, between experience and inexperience (the last should respect the first). Uncouth, uncivilized societies such as ours is becoming are typically without boundaries.

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