The Post-Partisan Emporium

There are 3 basics to being a good dad, and they will make you a better man as well. Being present in their children's lives is one of the qualities of a good dad. (Biba Kayewich)   By Jeff Minick 10/17/2023 There are millions of good dads, and I’m privileged to know some of them. These men are a mix of professions, beliefs, and life circumstances. There’s Ben in Virginia, father of four kids ages 7 and younger, who knocks himself out working six days a week for his family’s construction company but nonetheless spends time in the evenings and on the weekends with his children. There’s Andy, a chemist in Raleigh, N.C., who’s divorced but delights in seeing his three daughters whenever possible. There’s John in Texas, whose wife died in a car crash last winter and who now devotes every spare minute away from work to his teenagers still living at home. We all know dads like these men—sons and grandsons, nephews, friends, and neighbors. They're the fathers who balance w

Why Sexual Morality May be Far More Important than You Ever Thought View fullsize The Proposal by Sir Alma Tadema, 1892 Source:  Quest One winter afternoon I was relaxing with a half-dozen fellow graduate philosophy students discussing theories of law and punishment. About an hour into the discussion, it occurred to me that some moral laws might limit pleasure and enjoyment in the short term but in the long term minimize suffering and maximize human fulfillment.   A few days ago I finished studying  Sex and Culture for the second time. It is a remarkable book summarizing a lifetime of research by Oxford social anthropologist J.D. Unwin.[1] The 600+ page book is, in Unwin’s words, only a “summary” of his research—seven volumes would be required to lay it all out.[2] His writings suggest he was a rationalist, believing that science is our ultimate tool of inquiry (it appears he was not a religious man). As I went through what he found, I was repeatedly reminded of the thought I had as

The Time of Our Time James Howard Kunstler Let’s face it: most people will not read Justice Alito’s carefully crafted arguments about what the constitution says or doesn’t say about abortion, or the meaning of “ordered liberty” through our history. We do not live in history. We live in the time of our time. And, until just recently, this has been a time that discarded former modes of conduct between men, women, and children as inconvenient to the presumably greater project of self-actualization. To  be-all-that-you-can-be  is a stirring notion, and it seemed to work nicely within the colossal techno-industrial armature of the past century, with all its inducements to thrive personally, at least for the comfortable elites who pulled the levers of that system — though not so much for those below caught in the gears, who produced children despite all the novel means for avoiding it. For the fortunate, motherhood became just another “no” box to check off, while fatherhood merged into the o

Defeminisation Women have been liberated from womanhood Frank Wright This post is about the direction of travel of one of the most successful consumer identities of the twentieth century. It will argue that feminism in attempting the liberation of women has begun the process of erasing them completely. Regular readers will be aware of the argument that delimited desire and the removal of restraints on personal choice do not result in liberty but in enslavement. Feminism is a progressive movement, meaning it must constantly find new barriers to break. This permanent revolution articulates the impulse to be free from reality. As with every other so called progressive cause, it is concerned with destabilising the meaning of common words, of making ordinary people incapable of describing their lives with confidence. It mobilises around confusion and control, ultimately promoting inversions of reality as the latest radical chic. This is the fate of all social revolutions - once finished wit