I thought i would post something that is more at the root of the difference between conservative and liberal thought in my view. It is also certainly on the controversial side, but i would be curious what people think. To me it struck a cord when i read it a few years back and to me ties into the point of what often brings together fiscal and social issues in general; compassion (feminine traits) tie together the liberal views while standards (masculin traits) tie together conservatism. This article is brief and clearly not thorough in its charges, but i think the point is an interesting one.
The Feminization Of Society (The Case For Judeo-Christian Values, Part XXII)Townhall.com ^ 09/13/05 Dennis Prager
Posted on Monday, September 12, 2005 10:21:53 PM by goldstategop
As a result of the repudiation of Judeo-Christian values, we are witnessing the ascendance of the feminine in Western society.
There are two reasons for this. One is the overriding belief in equality, which to those who reject Judeo-Christian values means sameness. Judeo-Christian values emphatically affirm the equality of the sexes. In fact, given that the creation story in Genesis proceeds from primitive to elevated, the last creation, woman, can easily be seen as the most elevated of the creations. Every man knows how much a good woman helps him transcend his animal nature.
Judeo-Christian values do not conflate equality with sameness. But the Left rejects any suggestion of innate sexual differences. That is why the president of Harvard University nearly lost his job for merely suggesting that one reason there are fewer women in engineering and science faculties is that the female and male brains differ in their capacities in these areas. A secular liberal who advocates affirmative action based on sex, Harvard's president nevertheless also has -- or had, until his humiliation at the hands of his faculty -- a belief in seeking truth.
And the truth is that men and women are profoundly different.
One of these differences is that women generally have a more difficult time transcending their emotions than men. There are, of course, millions of individual women -- such as Margaret Thatcher -- who are far more rational than many men; but that only makes these women's achievements all the more admirable. It hardly invalidates the proposition.
Far more common than Margaret Thatcher's rationality was the emotionality of the women jurors in the Menendez brothers' trials. All six women jurors in the Erik Menendez trial voted to acquit him of the murder of his father (all six males voted guilty of murder). A virtually identical breakdown by sex took place in the Lyle Menendez trial for the murder of their mother. The women all had compassion for the brothers despite their confessions to the shotgun murders of their parents.
To say that the human race needs masculine and feminine characteristics is to state the obvious. But each sex comes with prices. Men can too easily lack compassion, reduce sex to animal behavior and become violent. And women's emotionality, when unchecked, can wreak havoc on those closest to these women and on society as a whole -- when emotions and compassion dominate in making public policy.
The latter is what is happening in America. The Left has been successful in supplanting masculine virtues with feminine ones. That is why "compassion" is probably the most frequently cited value. That is why the further left you go, the greater the antipathy to those who make war. Indeed, universities, the embodiment of feminist emotionality and anti-Judeo-Christian values, ban military recruiters and oppose war-themed names for their sports teams.
A sentiment such as "War is not the answer" embodies leftist feminine emotionality. The statement is, after all, utter nonsense, as many of the greatest evils -- from Nazi totalitarianism and genocide to slavery -- were quite effectively "answered" by war. (Virtually every car I ever have seen display the bumper sticker "War is not the answer" was driven by a woman.)
The response of one of the leading women professors who attended Harvard President Lawrence Summers' talk aptly illustrates this point. As The Boston Globe reported, Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "walked out on Summers' talk, saying later that if she hadn't left, 'I would've either blacked out or thrown up.'" It is difficult to imagine a male MIT professor, even another leftist, walking out of a lecture and saying that he had to lest he vomit or faint.
In the micro realm, the feminine virtues are invaluable -- for example, women hear infants' cries far more readily than men do. But as a basis for governance of society, the feminization of public policy is suicidal.
That is one reason our schools are in trouble. They are increasingly run by women -- women with female thinking moreover. Such thinking leads to papers no longer being graded with a red pencil lest students' feelings be hurt; to self-esteem supplanting self-discipline as a value; to banning games such as dodge ball in which participants' feelings may get hurt; to discouraging male competition; to banning peanut butter because two out of a thousand students are highly allergic to peanuts.
In a masculine society governed by Judeo-Christian values (which include a masculine-depicted and compassionate God), feminine virtues are adored and honored. In a feminized society, male virtues are discarded.
Then both sexes suffer.
Just one more consequence of the war against Judeo-Christian values.
I do agree very much that the idea of not marking in red pen and self-esteem supplanting self-discpline the traits you describe as feminine are held by both genders.
ReplyDeleteI completely resent when emotions get in way of decision making by male or female. (anger or compassion from either sex) Decisions must be made by looking at facts and applying a value system. eg: Killing is wrong.
This trait is missing in men and women equally. There are just as many incompetent men as women in the world.
Whether that trait is missing equally is unclear. But i do think what the 1960s/baby boomer generation changed in our culture, is to emphasize "feelings" (if it feels good do it) as opposed to "thinking". Emotional responses (good/bad) are more of a traditional feminine trait (is this what you disagree with?) To the extent these traditionally more feminine tratis impact public policy by replacing standards with compassion - by both men and women - i think it has had a negative impact on society.
ReplyDeleteI have been uneasy about this blog from when I first read it, and I think now I have been able to but my finger on it. I hope we are talking about empathy and compassion (and the absence of these emotions), rather than male and female. So if we had a way of measuring empathy and compassion in men and women, we would find this reflected in a bell curve, and you are right that the male bell curve would not exactly match the female one. So there would be a large area of overlap, with the female curve more on the empathy and compassion side, and the male one more on the side lacking it.
ReplyDeleteAnd this can be explained from the point of evolution. Empathy was a necessary trait in the home, where the children were raised, whereas empathy interfered with hunting and war.
So why would a writer speak about the feminization of the school system, rather than a move toward more empathy and compassion in the school system. I may be wrong, but I think it is because he deliberately wanted to appeal to the macho in men. (:
And I agree with you Karl that there has been an increasing acceptance that empathy and compassion are a good thing. Genocide, torture, Stalinism, Nazi-ism cannot take place in the face of compassion and empathy. I think that standards in the absence of compassion denies the essence of what it is to be human.
Agreed that describing it as a move to feminism is largely for effect.
ReplyDeleteI also agree you need compassion in society and that society cant be binary. My point is more the difference is what is emphasized by liberalism is compassion, and standards are emphasized in conservatism.
I think if we look at the housing crisis, the route cause is compassion/liberalism. The government wanted to provide housing for the poor (compassion) regardless of whether they could afford it or nor (lack of standards). So as a conservative, i would have preferred keeping the standards of lending in place, and largely left the compassion to churches and private citizens. This is a tiny example, and again i think most aspects of liberalism and conservatism are vetted through this lense.
Agreed that genocide, torture, nazism are probably not routed in compassion (or standards for that matter). But i do believe communism is routed in a compassion for the poor, with a lack of realism for human nature.
This is too good. This is worth a new blog. It will appear shortly as compassion vs standards
ReplyDelete