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Moms at (Culture) War

In Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War, the pseudonymous Peachy Keenan, a convert to the Catholic Faith, takes aim at feminism and advocates for traditional human values rooted in faith and family.

July 3, 2023 Jesse Russell The Dispatch 29 Print

(Image: www.regnery.com)

“Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.” — Aristotle

While commenting on the long 1960s, the redoubtable Roger Kimball once observed: “The long march of the cultural revolution of the 1960s has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of all but the most starry-eyed utopians.”

This sentence, which has been repeated by other conservative figures, was written in 2008, before the advent of the Obama and then post-Trump/post-George Floyd, “woke” era. Most people living in the Western world during the Bush era were indeed “liberals” and have been since the end of the Second World War. These liberals mostly agreed that individuals have inherent rights and freedoms that are not dependent upon titles or birth. It was thought that America, although historically allowing chattel slavery as well as various forms institution racialism, had shed these wrongs and was in the process of creating a truly just and meritocratic society.

Those who argued for affirmative action in the twentieth and early twenty-first century did so, by and large, believing that diversity quotas were temporary measures that would redress disadvantages in the playing field and allow for a truly just and meritocratic society. Yes, men and women were fundamentally different but both should be allowed equality of opportunity in academia and the work place, granting a level playing field where the best and brightest would rise to the top. Sexuality was largely a private matter, but some form of Christian ethics combined with Enlightenment liberalism should govern public policy on gender and reproduction.

Arguments, overall, were framed in terms of rights, freedom, and the ethics of equality. Now, in 2023, this liberal stalemate of sorts between the political right and left has been completely abolished.

There is, in effect, a hot war raging in the United States between left and right. Dismissing earlier liberal arguments over rights, privacy, and freedoms, both sides now demand that the other submit in adherence to a political orthodoxy. Both sides, moreover, apparently believe that executive force—from the county level up to the national level—is necessary in order to achieve their goals. Rational debate has been replaced with what has been called “psychological warfare” or “memetic warfare”

Both sides, finally, believe that losing the twenty-first century culture wars will result in apocalyptic devastation.

In Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War, the pseudonymous Peachy Keenan—a southern California progressive turned Catholic populist mother of five—argues for women to reconsider what she perceives as the empty promises of the 2nd and 3rd (and 4th and 5th?) waves of feminism. The central premise of Keenan’s book is that women who choose to marry, reproduce, stay at home (even if working part time from home as Keenan herself does), practice their faith, and raise their family according to traditional human values are considered, in the current era, “domestic extremists.”

Keenan’s work is part of a (relatively) recent internet phenomenon of the “trad wife” or women who advocate a return to some form of traditional female virtues. However, as she makes clear in her work, Keenan does not advocate a return to early “homesteading” lifestyles that reject much of modernity; for instance, she humorously notes her distaste for raising chickens, a staple activity on many “trad wife” social media accounts. Keenan confesses that she bakes with Duncan Hines mixes and does not have any of the handicraft skills with which tradwives adorn their social media.

These elements set Domestic Extremist apart from other tradwife manifestos and thus make the book appealing to modern women who do not have the luxury or the desire to raise chickens and sow scarves on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Keenan believes that the culture war can be fought and won by women who remain firmly modern while being rooted in the domestic life of suburban America.

There is an notable autobiographical element to Domestic Extremist. Keenan explains that she was a quintessentially suburban Southern California girl who watched Sesame Street and MTV growing up, and later even attended an Ivy League school. She further once identified as feminist and advocated, prior to her conversion to Catholicism, the long litany of left-wing reproductive issues. However, she now identifies feminism as being the key lynch pin in the decline of American life. Keenan argues that parents have lost influence over their kids, who are now being raised by the State—sometimes covertly and against their parents’ will (Keenan provides a number of horror stories of children taken from their all too conservative parents).

Keenan argues that feminism is to blame for both the transformation of women into neurotic “harpies” (Keenan’s words) as well as men into effeminate weaklings. She notes that this lifestyle has come at personal price for her and will likely do so for those who follow her advice. The work is not especially focused on Keenan’s Catholicism, although there is one chapter dedicated to faith (there are a few of Keenan’s comments with which some readers might take issue; at one points, argues for an alliance between conservatives and “old school” homosexuals and some of her language is graphic). She nonetheless, at one point, identifies later forms of feminism as an “evil”.

One of the most curious threads of the book is Keenan’s reflections on the plight of Generation X. As she notes, Gen X is the last generation of Americans to mature with relative stability. While Millennials and Generation are usually considered a mess of social disfunction (in fairness, this was largely due to outside stressors), Generation X has largely matured into functioning members of American society. Like their Baby Boomer parents, Gen Xers sowed their wild oats in the decadent but relatively orderly 1980s and 1990s. However, they then, for the most part (Keenan notes friends who fell to suicide and addiction) graduated into adulthood. Oddly though, Gen X is another “silent generation” wedged between the very vocal Baby Boomers and Millennials. Moreover, Gen X is stuck in a Janus-faced position of having grown up in a united and functional United States, only to witness the country’s unraveling in the twenty-first century.

There is no question that many of Peachy Keenan’s examples of radical left-wing institutional oppression are shocking and have had dire consequences for the lives of those who have attempted to “fight the power” and resist conformity. Moreover, her anti-feminist vision of celebrating monogamy, motherhood, and a more domestic life has, ironically, been voiced among some left-wing feminist figures lamenting the effect of the corporate life on motherhood. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the “Benedict Option” movement on the right is that some of the earliest critiques of the medical establishment, as well as some of the pioneers of homeschooling, were in fact “Old Liberals” and hippies.

However, the key issue with Keenan’s proposals are the very same problems that some of have raised with Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option. While the American family is in shambles, and both parents would do better to spend more time with their kids, there is also the need for leadership in the public square. Thus, Peachy’s “domestic extremism” should be complimented with a political realism that engages the cultural left with strength while also seeking to work to build a just and moral public square.

Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War
By Peachy Keenan
Regnery Publishing, 2023
Hardcover, 347 pages

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About Jesse Russell 18 Articles
Jesse Russell is the author of The Political Christopher Nolan: Liberalism and the Anglo-American Vision (Lexington, 2023), as well as a number of articles on twentieth-century Catholic political thought and the poetry of Edmund Spenser. He is assistant Professor of English at Georgia Southwestern State University.

Related Articles

No Picture
News Briefs

‘Canceled’ radical feminists and the Catholic Church: These unlikely allies believe women are female

December 30, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Dec 30, 2020 / 11:25 am (CNA).- This article is the first part of a two-part series on the Church, gender-critical feminists, and transgender ideology. Part two can be found here.

Mary Kate Fain doesn’t agree with the Catholic Church about anything. Or, nearly anything, at least. But she does agree with the Catholic take on gender and identity. And that’s cost her. A lot.

In July 2019, Fain wrote a piece critiquing non-binary gender identities. She questioned why so many of her female friends felt the need to shed their identities as women and to instead identify as “non-binary” – neither male nor female.

Fain published the piece on Medium, an online social publishing platform.

Not long after the article published, Fain was fired from her job as a software engineer. She claims her viewpoints are the reason she was let go.

“I guess one of my coworkers complained about the article and I was fired. And since then it just started the slew of cancellation,” Fain told CNA.

“I was canceled from conferences, and canceled for multiple groups that I was a volunteer in, et cetera. And it just really highlighted to me that they all wanted to shut me up, but what it proved was that there really is a need for a place for women to be able to say this.”

Since her firing, Fain, a millennial and freelance writer living just outside of Houston, founded 4W, an online publication that publishes articles analyzing radical feminist issues such as gender, male violence, sex positivity, and the portrayal of women in media. She is also co-founder of the feminist social media platform Spinster.xyz, and a volunteer with the Women’s Human Rights Campaign.

And she is just one of many “canceled” women.

Why women are being “canceled”

Fain, along with several other women writers, intellectuals, and activists, have been “canceled” for their conviction that women are adult human females, whose sex-based rights, such as the right to female-only spaces like bathrooms or sports teams or therapy groups, deserve protection.

This view is no longer seen as politically correct by some tastemakers and gatekeepers, because it is “trans-exclusionary” – to hold this view means to hold that a man cannot “become” a woman because he identifies as one, and vice versa.

“…this is not something that you’re supposed to say,” Fain said. “We’re supposed to just blindly accept what anyone says about their own identity, without any critical analysis, without any feminist analysis even. We’re supposed to ignore that sex-based oppression exists and just admit, ‘Oh yes, we are what we say we are and that defines our reality.’”

“But I think for any feminist, any real feminist, we know that that just simply isn’t true,” she added.

“Our sex does define certain aspects of our reality, and people are not allowed to say that in today’s day and age.”

Many women who hold this view refer to themselves as radical feminists, trans-exclusionary radical feminists or gender critical feminists, or even “canceled women.”

“Cancel culture” is a relatively new term, used to describe the phenomenon that happens when someone, usually a famous person or one with some kind of platform, experiences a kind of shunning, harassment, or social banishment for doing or saying something with which a lot of people disagree.

Being “canceled” can take many forms: being trolled or doxxed on social media, being banned from Twitter or other platforms, or finding that events featuring the canceled person are quickly, well, canceled.

In January, an event entitled “Evening with Canceled Women” was canceled by the New York Public Library, where the event was to be hosted.

The canceled event was organized by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a group that advocates for the “rights, privacy and safety of women and girls, by which we mean human females,” Kara Dansky, a board member with WoLF, told CNA.

“We were being told over the course of a week that the contract was being processed (for the event), and then the day before the deposit was due, we were told that we could not proceed with the event and we were not given a reason,” Dansky said.

The event would have included the voices of women “who have, in one way or another, been silenced or canceled as a result of their outspoken views on behalf of women and girls,” she added.

For example, the event would have featured Canadian feminist Megan Murphy, an advocate against pornography and prostitution whose insistence that women are female got her banned from Twitter, Dansky said.

It would also have included Posie Parker, a UK feminist known “for her insistence that the word woman means adult human female, which is simply the dictionary definition of the word,” Dansky said. Parker has also been banned from Twitter for her views.

The event also would have featured Linda Bellows, a Briton “who speaks on behalf of lesbian rights. And she has been told that it is transphobic to insist that lesbians are women who are attracted to women,” Dansky said.

These canceled women join a slew of others, with particularly high numbers in the UK, where the 2004 Gender Recognition Act lets adults register their gender as something other than the biological sex with which they were born.
 

Common ground with the Catholic Church

While trans-exclusionary radical feminist women typically hold many views with which the Catholic Church disagrees, such as approval of abortion and gay marriage, they share common ground in the belief that women are female and men are male – and they are born that way.

“It has been a tremendous plus to have radical feminists speaking out so strongly about the reality of sexual difference and against the new tyranny of gender,” Mary Rice Hasson, the Kate O’Beirne Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and director of the Catholic Women’s Forum, told CNA.

“Although we disagree about many things – most significantly about abortion-– we agree on some important truths about women,” she said, such as opposing violence and exploitation against women, as well as “the importance of acknowledging the reality of sexual difference and the dangers of the transgender agenda.”

“Specifically, we agree that sexual difference is real, that males and females are different in significant ways, and that a person’s sex cannot change,” Hasson said.

“The Church’s vision of the human person differs radically from gender ideology,” Hasson noted. “Christian anthropology teaches that the person is a unity of body and soul, that we are created male or female, forever.”

“Gender ideology, in contrast, imagines the person as a bundle of assorted dimensions,” she said, such as gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and biological sex, none of which “needs to align – the person is self-determining. God is really not in the driver’s seat.”

Fain said she agrees that gender identity, “this idea that we have an internal sense of being male, female or neither, and that this has any effect on our material reality, is nonsense.”

Dansky, whose group’s primary goals are to fight violence against and exploitation of women in rape, sexual and domestic assault, and pornography and prostitution, said that her work is made nearly impossible in the context of broad social disagreement about what makes someone a woman in the first place.

“It’s very difficult to solve all of those problems when we’re not permitted to name the category of women,” she said.

“It’s very interesting to me that when our society talks about domestic violence and rape and sexual assault, and we talk about the rampant rates of these crimes being perpetrated against women and girls, everybody knows what the words ‘women’ and ‘girls’ mean.”

In light of increasing acceptance of transgender ideology, the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education’s issued a document entitled “Male and Female He Created Them” in June 2019, explaining the Church’s teaching on transgender issues and encouraging dialogue with those experiencing gender dysphoria.

The document cited the need to reaffirm “the metaphysical roots of sexual difference” to help refute “attempts to negate the male-female duality of human nature, from which the family is generated.”

Such a negation “erases the vision of human beings as the fruit of an act of creation” and “creates the idea of the human person as a sort of abstraction who ‘chooses for himself what his nature is to be.’”

Theories of gender, whether moderate or radical, agree that “one’s gender ends up being viewed as more important than being of male or female sex,” according to the document, which also reflects on the role of gender theory in education and speaks of a “crisis” in any alliance between the school and the family.

“Although ideologically-driven approaches to the delicate questions around gender proclaim their respect for diversity, they actually run the risk of viewing such differences as static realities and end up leaving them isolated and disconnected from each other,” it said.

The document called for dialogue, and the protection of human and family rights. It also decried unjust discrimination and noted points of unity among people with different perspectives on gender ideology.

“Key allies“

Looking for concrete examples of common ground, Fain told CNA that she thinks that protecting the freedom of speech of those who oppose transgenderism will be one of the most important things that radical feminists and Christians can work together for.

“(W)e need to deal with this freedom of speech issue that’s happening and cancel culture, which is making most people terrified to speak out on the issue,” she said.

Fain noted that when she wrote the controversial article that got her fired, she had anticipated the backlash and had been saving for months to protect herself from the blow. She recognized that most people cannot afford to lose their jobs for speaking up on this issue.

“Most people can’t, and especially women who are already at a financial disadvantage are more likely to be caring for kids,” she said.

“And people are terrified to speak out on this issue because of the serious economic consequences that are happening.”

“And although I have many issues with the right in general, I will say that I think religious freedom and freedom of speech do go hand in hand,” Faid added.

“And so the Church’s work on that is probably relevant here.”

Hasson identified women like Fain as “key allies” in the fight against transgenderism going forward, and said she looks forward to working with them despite differences on other issues. 

“Radical feminists have been fearless in speaking the truth about sexual difference – over social media, at universities, and in public hearings. They have refused to be silenced – even after being ridiculed, ‘de-platformed’ at public universities, or having their Twitter accounts shut down,” Hasson said.

“We differ greatly about abortion and our views of men, but I am hopeful that our work together and personal regard for each other will open up some opportunities in the future for discussions about those areas where we disagree. But for now, I’m grateful for their commitment to speak the truth, even at great personal cost.”

 

This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 10, 2020.


[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Pope Francis: It’s our duty to give a voice to women who are victims of abuse

November 9, 2023 Catholic News Agency 2
Pope Francis at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 17, 2023. / Vatican Media

Vatican City, Nov 9, 2023 / 09:17 am (CNA).

Pope Francis has underlined that it is “everyone’s responsibility” to aid women who are victims of abuse and domestic violence by giving a “voice to our voiceless sisters.”

In a message to an Italian campaign to end violence against women published on Nov. 8, the pope urged the importance of educational action that “places the dignity of the person at the center.”

“It is our duty, everyone’s responsibility, to give voice to our voiceless sisters: women who are victims of abuse, exploitation, marginalization, and inappropriate pressure,” Pope Francis said. 

“Let us not remain indifferent! It is necessary to act now, at all levels, with determination, urgency, and courage.”

According to the United Nations, nearly 1 in 3 women worldwide has been subjected to some form of either physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, a statistic that does not include sexual harassment. Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo were found by a Reuters survey in 2018 to be among the most dangerous countries for women. 

Italian government data released in 2022 showed that on average one woman is killed every three days in Italy, many of them by an act of violence from an intimate partner or ex-partner.

“How many women are overwhelmed by the burden and trauma of violence,” the pope said in his message. “How many are mistreated, abused, enslaved, victims of the tyranny of those who think they can control their bodies and lives, forced to surrender to the greed of men.”

The pope said that violence against women must be “eliminated from its roots” — namely prejudiced ideas that see people as “objects” that can be dominated, obscuring their human dignity.

“The Lord wants us free and in full dignity! Faced with the scourge of physical and psychological abuse of women, there is an urgent need to rediscover just and equitable relationship patterns based on respect and mutual recognition,” Pope Francis said.

The Vatican released the message two weeks after Pope Francis signed it on Oct. 27 — the same day that the Holy See Press Office announced that the pope had decided to lift the statute of limitations in the case of Father Marko Rupnik, a priest accused of serious abuses against women, after news that the priest had been returned to priestly ministry in Slovenia sparked outrage and disappointment from many Catholics and abuse victims over the handling of the clerical sex abuse allegations.

Pope Francis encouraged women’s shelters in Italy to continue raising awareness about violence against women. The pope’s message addressed a campaign by CADMI, which provides housing and legal support for women who have suffered from domestic violence, and D.i.Re, a network of women’s shelters and organizations in Italy.

“From the heart and flesh of a woman salvation came into the world; our degree of humanity is revealed by how we treat women, in all her dimensions,” the pope said.

[…]

27 Comments

  1. President Biden is out of sorts and out of his element. His era passed away and the “old guard” is gone. By “old guard” you have to picture the “consensus” that worked very well in the favour of the Democrats, in days gone by, Trent Horn, Ted Kennedy, John Boehner, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi, the Clinton Brigade and others -even if you will Newt Gingrich. On top of that the Democrat Party is all over the place on issues for which people like Biden never got prepared. They never really saw it coming and did NOT get a grip. One side of it is a reflection on the President but the other side of it prompts the troubling question: who can govern with the Democrat Party.

    Can ANYONE be a sound leader for Democrats?

    Reply

    • Dr. Simone Gold has worked out that 20% of US economy is medical care “dominated by Government”. That can trip into medical tyranny and an economic dictatorship.

      The latest proposed cuts don’t necessarily rectify the situation/deficits either.

      ‘ “This isn’t the end,” McCarthy said. “This doesn’t solve all the problems. We only got to look at 11% of the budget to find these cuts. We have to look at the entire budget. … The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt.” ‘

      America’s Frontline Doctor, Simone Gold on Medical Marxism | CPAC 2023
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9VQbS9Aay0

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/retirement/major-cuts-to-social-security-are-back-on-the-table-what-s-being-proposed-now/ar-AA1cE0vg?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=a9af2d3f0d494b6abb4f62ebe3120c6c&ei=100

      Reply

      • Under the new Dobbs “mandate” many “stabilized” situations necessarily become unstable. For instance they can no longer command complete uniformity; or, entrenched interests have no bearing how to frame things or where to draw lines.

        ‘ Clare has led NFPRHA and its 1,000 organizational members through the most damaging policy attacks in the history of Title X, America’s family planning program. Under Clare’s leadership, NFPRHA repeatedly sued the US government in 2018-19 to prevent the Trump administration from doing irreparable harm to the Title X program, which serves millions of people with low incomes who otherwise may go without critical contraceptive and sexual health care. ‘

        https://www.nationalfamilyplanning.org/page.aspx?pid=662

        Reply

    • I am a recovering Republican. You say “Can ANYONE be a sound leader for Democrats?”.

      I am not a RINO, rather a RINOP, Republican in need of a party. I am sick of hearing “left vs right” Right is good, Left is wrong”. That idiocy foments our current national dilemma. No compromise, no bi-partisanship, not invented here.

      The “WOKE” acronym, invented by RIGHT,(wrong), DeSantis who fails to define it causing more issues. Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism. His WOKE vitriol speaks volumes.

      You say, the Dems need a strong leader. I agree, but where is the strong GOP leader? Because of Trump’s destruction of the party we need sane new blood, We are not doing the people’s business. We are buffaloed by the violent right, Marjorie Taylor Green, who now runs the House GOP caucaus, and several other toxic radicals investigating the investigators, impeaching Biden.
      God save the Union.

      Reply

      • morganD:

        I agree that Republicans are — with a few exceptions — a fairly craven and pusillanimous bunch.

        But there’s one thing that makes them the only party worth voting for: The fact that they’re not Democrats.

        The Democratic Party is a death cult.

        They favor killing children in utero. At any time. For any reason. In this way, generations of individuals are canceled from existence.

        And for the lucky children who escape that horrific death? Democrats favor sterilizing them. Mutilating them. Sexualizing them.

        Legalizing drugs; gay “marriage”; the sexualization of children; the green new poverty; the open border fentanyl conduit; the denial of the biologically determined sexes; the racist, divisive CRT curriculum — everything the Democratic Party advocates is aimed at attenuating life and promoting death.

        Death is the Democratic Party’s central tenet.

        Which is why it is quite clear. Undeniable, in fact.

        The Democratic Party is doing the bidding of its real master, the lying, ratfaced evil one.

        And, no, I am not referring to Biden.

        Catholics who continue to vote Democratic, look to your souls.

        Reply

        • brineyman. I never said I favored the Dems. I implied they need a return to Jesus. Biden is an anomaly and must be defeated. My Republican fear is that we must find a younger conservative. Trump is our worst frontrunner. Because of his criminal penchant. He is not a Republican, he is an autocrat. Just consider Trump’s ridiculous attempts to regain power defying the will of the people.

          Reply

          • Would to God that Mr. Biden actually was an anomaly in the Democratic party, but that’s not been the case for decades. He’s pretty typical of what that party has become.

      • What you have set forth as a definition of “WOKE” is how it is used as a slang term, not as an acronym.

        More importantly, as just a made up slang term, the reality is actually this:

        “WOKE”: The benighted pretense of being specially alert to various forms of prejudice and discrimination, often punctuated by jumping to false conclusions to unjustly declare that prejudice and discrimination exist where there is no objective evidence to support such declarations, and to also wrongly insist that people must act in certain ways based on the false conclusions. Among those who frequently enjoy membership among the “WOKE” are Marxists and their fellow travelers, far left liberals, conspiracy theorists, historical revisionists, and modern day secular gnostics who often pretend to have special knowledge and insights that others do not have. When asked to prove the objective truth of any of their claims, those who are “WOKE” will often only respond by unjustly declaring the questioner to be motivated by some kind of bigotry.

        Because of the much greater reliance on false narratives than on objective truth, as an acronym, “WOKE” is rightly recognized as referring to all those delusional people who very proudly act Without Objective Knowledge & Enlightenment.

        Reply

        • I will leave a final note. In 2024 pray for our democracy and our children. The babies are listening and watching. They are innocent and not familiar with incendiary and hateful rhetoric.

          God save the union.

          Reply

          • You mean like the often incendiary and hateful rhetoric that constitutes many of your posts? People in glass houses…🙄.

      • What you have set forth as a definition of “WOKE” is how it is used as a slang term, not as an acronym.

        More importantly, as just a made up slang term, the reality is actually this:

        “WOKE”: The benighted pretense of being specially alert to various forms of prejudice and discrimination, often punctuated by jumping to false conclusions to unjustly declare that prejudice and discrimination exist where there is no objective evidence to support such declarations, and to also wrongly insist that people must act in certain ways based on the false conclusions. Among those who frequently enjoy membership among the “WOKE” are Marxists and their fellow travelers, far left liberals, conspiracy theorists, historical revisionists, and modern day secular gnostics who often pretend to have special knowledge and insights that others do not have. When asked to prove the objective truth of any of their claims, those who are “WOKE” will often only respond by unjustly declaring the questioner to be motivated by some kind of bigotry.

        Because of the much greater reliance on false narratives than on objective truth, as an acronym, “WOKE” is rightly recognized as referring to all those delusional people who very proudly act Without Objective Knowledge & Enlightenment.

        Reply

  2. As intelligent as Aristotle was, we should not take our political guidance from him, unless you want to be ruled by an aristocracy or oligarchy. He thought women inferior to men and hence his labelling of democracy as feminine — weak, emotional, easily swayed, irrational.

    Reply

    • Read Aristotle’s Politics for a bigger picture. He predicted a lot of things that have happened in cycles for centuries.

      Reply

  4. As an addendum to my comment on Aristotle, Taylor Caldwell wrote a lot about this political deterioration.

    Reply

  5. Wow. I am a life-long Republican. Would occasionally vote for a Democrat who clearly had the NATIONAL or STATE INTEREST at heart, instead of that of his party. Mayor Ed Koch of NY was one such example. I wouldnt vote DEM now with a gun to my head. Their deliberate destruction of the US over the last few presidencies is far too well known and clear to bother repeating. Calling suburban parents at school board meetings “terrorists” ranks right up there with the old McCarthyism.Intimidation at it’s slimiest. Their attempts to buy votes with cancelled student loans for example, is so obvious only the grossly uninformed would fail to see it. Ditto their efforts to destroy American history, Americans families, and divide us into competing and thus weaker slices of demographics. Their next telegraphed move appears to be the stacking or destruction of the Supreme Court, whichever they can accomplish, largely because not EVERY decision goes their radical way.That it has worked to preserve the country on a fair and even course for almost 250 years means nothing to them. Nor does verified voting which they oppose at every step. (The “why” of that could not be more obvious). Their destruction of our history bothers me the most. And removal of vestiges of American history continue with another statue of a Revolutionary War general here in NY last week. “Racism” has become the accusation du jour. It is trite and generally a lie, hurled ironically by those who are themselves well educated, well connected and well-off, and I no longer listen to it. Many of our present DEM leaders are clearly impaired and should not be in office at all( Biden, Feinstein, Fetterman). I can only say I have never seen the country in so much danger and in such bad shape. Science and biology has been turned on it’s head, and criminals are permitted to attack ordinary citizens and rob businesses with no penalty. Cities are being emptied while their leftist rulers shrug. I no longer recognize us, and I am not young. I pray for the country each day at Mass. We stand at the edge of an abyss, and it feels like time is running out.

    Reply

    • Absolutely, LJ.

      It’s astonishing to me that Catholics continue to vote Democratic, considering all the outrageous policies you mentioned and many, many more.

      As you say, the left is intent on destroying America. It’s undeniable.

      And that’s clearly okay with half of the country.

      Reply

    • ALL Dems are evil? Painting your own corner? You disregard my concerns pertaining to Trump, not “Catholic” CINO Biden, and the TRUTH. Examples of some…

      I see little evidence that current Democrats openly platformed a lie. defying the constitution by trying to overthrow the government, gerrymander voter suppression, openly threaten my family if I disagree with him, fake electors, using hateful nicknames for those in objection, align with extreme criminal cults, visiting NRA meeting 2 days after Uvalde, pardoning criminal leaders of the 1/6/21 Capitol incursion, oh and himself, Trump and Stormy Daniels Had Sex Four Months After Melania Gave Birth, and on and on.

      May God shed his grace on the 2024 election.

      Reply

  6. There is not a hot war raging in the United States between left and right. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. The noisy Americans are in the far right and the far left.

    Reply

    • Gerald. I disagree that America is not at war. Today the oft used word is “HATE”. We are so divided that we are imploding. There is no compromise in the congress. McCarthy has relinquished the GOP caucus power to crazy radical Marjorie Taylor Green The presidency has been defiled and SCOTUS, because of ethics issues, are at its lowest rating in decades. We are investigating the investigators and not attending to the people’s business. Internationally we have diminished our position as the leader of the free world. Imagine trying to remove the US from our NATO allies. Tell me where we start. Thanks. God bless.

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      • Marjorie Taylor Green is not nearly as radical or unhinged at AOC. She certainly voices her opinion, which by the way is STILL an American RIGHT, but the GOP does not operate in lock-step like the Dems do, where ALL jump if AOC speaks. AOC pontificates like an expert on every topic and yet knows not a single thing. The obvious “hate” I see is coming from the left. ONLY. In the pro-dem media especially, which cannot suppress enough conservatives, and they target with lies and accusations as many republicans as possible. On a more pedestrian, non-office holder minion level, there is all that violence in the street by BLM, flash mobs of thieves, and those who vandalize or set fire to pro-life centers and churches. In the judicial system it appears to be ok to attack people in the streets, stores and subways with impunity, but woe to conservatives attempting to engage a pregnant woman outside an abortion mill. You WILL be arrested and thrown in jail for that. That they put on trial in NY the young former Marine who saved himself and others from a subway attack with a defensive choke-hold, yet released a black man who had STABBED his assailant, tells you everything you need to know about leftist partisanship and corruption. There is NO violent movement on the right and making up breathless stories about white supremacists etc does not make it true, no matter how often that lie is repeated. The presidency has NOT been “defiled”, certainly not by Trump, who put America first and did a fantastic job with our economy. Biden however, is barely functioning and appears to have had relationships with China which can only charitably be described as highly dubious. That China has been circling the waters with its military lately, but did not while Trump was in office, should tell you who they feared. Now Biden has suckered us into a War in Ukraine which could turn into WW III. Many of us have no interest in sacrificing our sons for that. Americans in certain quarters persist in seeing “mean tweets” as more dangerous than nuclear armed Russia and China. Such uninformed views are exceptionally dangerous to our future.

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    • Gerald, morganD, I would just say as an observer abroad there has been some “hotness” in the war with 1. the large scale violence we saw in the mob rioting during COVID with the activists openly stating their claims and 2. the variety of physical attacks against pregnancy centres and pro-lifers.

      The other side to that “hotness” is the police and security services failing.

      The illegal immigration has been a very contentious issue but you do not see sustained mob violence going on organized and led by people opposed to it.

      The attacks on Trump are unrelenting and quite intense and ordinarily you wouldn’t say those are part of a “hot war” -but the fury is tangible and monstrous. Trump deserves some praise for this I think, deflecting the pummeling and being undaunted.

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  7. How does one know when “the cultural war” has been “won?”

    The fact is that the war comes down to alleged law and the intellectual milieu which is enabled by the same. The “cultural war” is ultimately about Satan attempting to lead all souls to Hell. As such, what is necessary is that Catholics are orthodox, uncompromising, political, and increasing in number and/or influence.

    There is one extremely weak US political party which ATTEMPTS to duplicate what in Europe were and maybe still are called or described as “Christian Democratic” parties. It doesn’t have all of the orthodox positions.

    Taking the traditional Democratic concern for the poor, and the Republican concern for faith and freedom and combining it with the proper application of Catholic social teaching and antiliberalism would likely make an ideally indestructible new political party.

    An alternative might be that the Republican Party would become more Democratic while embracing something described in the prior paragraph. There is a small group of “heretical” Republicans which seems to be moving in this direction.

    I would say that the cultural war will only be won after false religions have been vanquished and the Catholic Church, and the City of God are triumphant.

    Reply

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