Independence in Today's American, Status-Quo Authority Society

This past Independence (i.e. 4th of July) weekend earlier this month, I thought about the value and meaning of being in a free society. But my reflecting didn't go too far beyond reports and commentaries that we, as the people, and as the reputed greatest democracy on planet Earth, are trending AWAY from personal liberties, and towards a far more dense culture of conformity.

Let me be clear from the jump: I'm not saying modern America is comparable to life even in today's Russia under the regime of Alexander Putin, or China's continued controlling regime, and certainly not like Arab and Muslim societies under Sharia Law. But based on the premises of our own founding, the grounds have clearly shifted, according to this research:

The idea that personal liberty defines America is deeply rooted, and shared across the political spectrum. The lifestyle radicals of the ’60s saw themselves as heirs to this American tradition of self-expression; today, it energizes the Tea Party movement, marching to defend individual liberty from the smothering grasp of European-style collectivism.

But are Americans really so uniquely individualistic? Are we, for example, more committed individualists than people in those socialist-looking nations of Europe? The answer appears to be no.

For many years now, researchers worldwide have been conducting surveys to compare the values of people in different countries. And when it comes to questions about how much the respondents value the individual against the collective — that is, how much they give priority to individual interest over the demand of groups, or personal conscience over the orders of authority — Americans consistently answer in a way that favors the group over the individual. In fact, we are more likely to favor the group than Europeans are.

Surprising as it may sound, Americans are much more likely than Europeans to say that employees should follow a boss’s orders even if the boss is wrong; to say that children “must” love their parents; and to believe that parents have a duty to sacrifice themselves for their children. We are more likely to defer to church leaders and to insist on abiding by the law. Though Americans do score high on a couple of aspects of individualism, especially where it concerns government intervening in the market, in general we are likelier than Europeans to believe that individuals should go along and get along. (emphasis mine)

...The International Social Survey Programme, or ISSP, and the World Value Surveys, or WVS, are probably the longest-running, most reliable such projects. Starting with just a handful of countries, both now pose the same questions to respondents from dozens of nations.

Their findings suggest that in several major areas, Americans are clearly less individualistic than western Europeans. One topic pits individual conscience against the demands of the state. In 2006, the ISSP asked the question “In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?” At 45 percent, Americans were the least likely out of nine nationalities to say that people should at least on occasion follow their consciences — far fewer than, for example, the Swedes (70 percent) and the French (78 percent). Similarly, in 2003, Americans turned out to be the most likely to embrace the statement “People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong.” (emphasis mine)

But here's the upshot:

American individualism is far more complex than our national myths, or the soap-box rhetoric of right and left, would have it. It is not individualism in the libertarian sense, the idea that the individual comes before any group and that personal freedom comes before any allegiance to authority. Research suggests that Americans do adhere to a particular strain of liberty — one that emerged in the New World — in which freedom to choose your allegiance is tempered by the expectation that you won’t stray from the values of the group you choose.

Moreover:

The nature of individualism is complex, however, and there are at least a couple of ways that Americans in the ISSP and similar surveys do appear more individualistic than Europeans. For one, Americans are usually the most likely to say that individuals determine their own fates. What happens to you is your own doing, not the product of external circumstances. For Americans, things are the way they are because individuals made choices.

Yeah, in other words, take "personal responsibility" and don't have a "bad attitude" about whatever goes wrong for you. Don't think in any way of blaming the authority structure that has you under its foot. Things are the way they are -- period.

And what does this give us to celebrate as (a clearly emasculated) nation and society? Besides copious economic opportunity today and a wonderful free market enabling it, not a whole hell of a lot. Perhaps how there's less crime than there used to be, and how we're so much safer? While I'm on this anti-authority kick, consider this growing problem, outlined on The American Conservative blog:

Here are seven reasons why police misconduct is a systemic problem, not “a few bad apples”:

1. Many departments don’t provide adequate training in nonviolent solutions.

This is particularly obvious when it comes to dealing with family pets. “Police kill family dog” is practically its own subgenre of police brutality reports, and most of these cases—like the story of the Minnesota children who were made to sit, handcuffed, next to their dead and bleeding pet—are all too preventable. Some police departments have begun to train their officers to deal more appropriately with pets, but Thomas Aveni of the Police Policy Studies Council, a police consulting firm, says it’s still extremely rare. In the absence of this training, police are less likely to view violence as a last resort.

2. Standards for what constitutes brutality vary widely.

“Excess is in the eyes of the beholder,” explains William Terrill, a former police officer and professor of criminal justice at Michigan State. “To one officer ‘objectively reasonable’ means that if you don’t give me your license, I get to use soft hands, and in another town the same resistance means I can pull you through the car window, [or] I can tase you.” The special deference police are widely given in American culture feeds this inconsistency of standards, producing something of a legal Wild West. While national legislation would likely only complicate matters further, local or state-wide ballot propositions should allow the public—not the police—to define reasonable use of force.

3. Consequences for misconduct are minimal.

In central New Jersey, for instance, 99 percent of police brutality complaints are never investigated. Nor can that be explained away as stereotypical New Jersey corruption. Only one out of every three accused cops are convicted nationwide, while the conviction rate for civilians is literally double that. In Chicago, the numbers are even more skewed: There were 10,000 abuse complaints filed against the Chicago PD between 2002 and 2004, and just 19 of them ”resulted in meaningful disciplinary action.” On a national level, upwards of 95 percent of police misconduct cases referred for federal prosecution are declined by prosecutors because, as reported in USA Today, juries “are conditioned to believe cops, and victims’ credibility is often challenged.” Failure to remedy this police/civilian double standard cultivates an abuse-friendly legal environment.

4. Settlements are shifted to taxpayers.

Those officers who are found guilty of brutality typically find the settlement to their victims paid from city coffers. Research from Human Rights Watch reveals that in some places, taxpayers “are paying three times for officers who repeatedly commit abuses: once to cover their salaries while they commit abuses; next to pay settlements or civil jury awards against officers; and a third time through payments into police ‘defense’ funds provided by the cities.” In larger cities, these settlements easily cost the public tens of millions of dollars annually while removing a substantial incentive against police misconduct.

5. Minorities are unfairly targeted.

“Simply put,” says University of Florida law professor Katheryn K. Russell, “the public face of a police brutality victim is a young man who is Black or Latino.” In this case, research suggests perception matches reality. To give a particularly striking example, one Florida city’s “stop and frisk” policy has been explicitly aimed at all black men. Since 2008, this has led to 99,980 stops which did not produce an arrest in a city with a population of just 110,000. One man alone was stopped 258 times at his job in four years, and arrested for trespassing while working on 62 occasions. Failure to address this issue communicates to police that minorities are a safe target for abuse.

6. Police are increasingly militarized.

During President Obama’s gun control push, he argued that “weapons of war have no place on our streets;” but as Radley Balko has amply documented in his 2013 book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, local police are often equipped with weapons powerful enough to conquer a small country. Police use of highly armed SWAT teams has risen by 1,500 percent in the last two decades, and many police departments have cultivated an “us vs. them” mentality toward the public they ostensibly serve. Although possession of these weapons does not cause misconduct, as the old saying goes, when you have a hammer everything begins to look like a nail.

7. Police themselves say misconduct is remarkably widespread.

Here’s the real clincher. A Department of Justice study revealed that a whopping 84 percent of police officers report that they’ve seen colleagues use excessive force on civilians, and 61 percent admit they don’t always report “even serious criminal violations that involve abuse of authority by fellow officers.”

This self-reporting moves us well beyond anecdote into the realm of data: Police brutality is a pervasive problem, exacerbated by systemic failures to curb it. That’s not to say that every officer is ill-intentioned or abusive, but it is to suggest that the common assumption that police are generally using their authority in a trustworthy manner merits serious reconsideration. As John Adams wrote to Jefferson, “Power always thinks it has a great soul,” and it cannot be trusted if left unchecked.

More American heroism to be proud of, I suppose. The above list refers to AMERICAN police forces, by the way, not those in New Zealand or Western Europe.

So I suppose we can just keep on celebrating ourselves with those burgers and dogs on the grill, and perhaps some fireworks (where you won't get cuffed and stuffed in a police cruiser for lighting them, that is).

Rhode Island Department of Health Director Dr. Michael Fine's Unexpected Crisis

This is unbelievable, and disgraceful.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Twenty-two people died of drug overdoses in Rhode Island during a 13-day period this month — far more than the average for that time period, health officials said Friday...Health officials offered no explanation for the spike in deaths, up from the usual three to four per week. The deaths involved a variety of illicit and prescription drugs and were scattered in 13 cities and towns around the state. Those who died from Jan. 1 through Jan. 13 ranged in age from 20 to 62.

What's more:

Among those who died of overdoses during the past two weeks is a 23-year-old man who was in recovery and relapsed, said Tom Coderre, chief of staff for Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed and chairman of RICARES, an addiction recovery advocacy group. Coderre was planning to attend his wake Friday night.“If you have people dying we should be addressing this a little more aggressively,” Coderre said. “It’s like we can’t do anything fast enough.” Of the 22 deaths, 19 were screened with blood tests that found evidence of an overdose. Three cases were presumed overdoses because of “history and things found at the scene,” said Dr. Christina Stanley, chief medical examiner.Of the 19 screened, 13 indicated the presence of the painkiller fentanyl, but not the acetyl fentanyl linked to deaths last June. Other drugs detected included cocaine, opiates, benzodiazepines, methamphetamine, oxycodone and carisoprodol.

The real mystery (if you want to call it that) is this: With all of the mental health/substance abuse providers in the Providence area, fanned out among many clinics but largely concentrated at Butler Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital, why these horrible results? Rhode Island was already becoming known as the number one state for drug use.

Ironically, Dr. Fine, a public official, may already hold the answers to this abysmal situation. The fact is that many of Rhode Island's numerous mental health/substance abuse professionals are inept and corrupt. Most likely, Dr. Fine's health department has received copious complaints about some of them, and inaction has been the result. It seems as though many of these drug abuse victims have been "treated," only for their deaths to result from continued, illicit substance use.

By this time next year, Rhode Island will have a new governor. Let's hope it gets a new health director as well.


CRITICAL UPDATE, April 11:

In the past two and a half months, the total dead from overdoses has risen to 72 as of a week ago. This has attracted national attention, as this San Francisco-based publication demonstrates. It states:

Rhode Island Emergency Medical Services administered the overdose antidote Narcan 328 times between Jan. 1 and mid-March, said health department spokesman James Palmer...Health and public safety officials have taken a number of steps in response. Fine last month issued emergency regulations to make Narcan, also known as naloxone, more widely available, including to law enforcement agencies. The regulations allow the antidote to be prescribed not only to a person experiencing an overdose or at risk of one, but to family members and friends in a position to assist.

Several police departments, including state police and some municipal departments, have begun assigning officers to carry and use Narcan, or have started training.

WOW. Who EVER imagined that, in the seminal hippie subculture land of Haight-Ashbury, that a small, Northeast Corridor enclave would become THE NEWS about THE LATEST drug overdose epidemic? This strongly suggests that not even the Bay area is going through an epidemiological episode quite like Rhode Island's.

A separate but tangential issue is this: while law enforcement officers here in Rhode Island are increasingly carrying and are able to administer Narcan, it wasn't too long ago that some of them dangled the handcuffs at the drug users instead. Beyond the continued failures of the Rhode Island health authorities (72 users dead now, up from 22, even when 22 was a crisis), this tragedy likewise represents a microcosm of failure for the Reagan-Bush-Clinton 'War on Drugs.' No?

Merry Christmas from Shock-Prof

We in Western Christianity have many Christmas classics. Some are sung everywhere, while others are a bit less known and performed. Having belonged to a church with a great choral program for many years, here are links to some of the great classics by various performers. Enjoy!


DARKE: In The Bleak Midwinter



MEDIEVAL CHANT: Gaudete



RUTTER: What Sweeter Music



SAINT-SAENS: Tollite Hostias



CARTER: A Maiden Most Gentle

American Men Boycotting Marriage: Pseudotraditionalist FNC Hosts Say To Man Up

Found this on YouTube. I'll let some of the viewer comments do the speaking from here:

xxxxxxpimptaddyone


"50% of women are obese, 50% of women are single moms, 52% of marriages end in divorce, 70% of divorces filed by women, The average woman has a partner count in the double digits. Women get child custody 90%, they get a free house and car courtesy of the husband. She can call 911 and lie about abuse and ruin your life, the church preachers take her side and don't hold her accountable. Lifetime alimony and child support. A Real Man doesn't take that deal. A real man goes his own way"


MNeilGri

"I think this video shows just how closely feminism and traditionalism are tied together. Kind of hard for feminism to claim they are fighting the patriarchy when patriarchal values, such as these traditionalists are spouting, are just as readily heard coming from the mouths of feminists themselves. They are two sides of the same coin."

"The reality is, there is nothing in the wedding vows that is binding for women anymore. Women offer nothing in modern vows... but modern vows for men still offers his wealth and property. Furthermore, any and all expectations and/or obligations on a wife are severed upon divorce, while a man's obligations (to provide) remain intact, and government enforced. In effect, when a couple divorces, the woman is released from the marriage, the man isn't"


ZephZhang

"You derive deep satisfaction for taking responsibilities for others".

"No. I am responsible for my actions TO other people. I am not responsible FOR other people. This man has a broken sense of priorities and obviously doesn't understand the value of allowing people free choice. That a human is born with a Y chromosome does not obligate him to live or deal with the choices of another simply because they weren't. Equality means equality for everyone."


Nairby L

"These guys will understand when their wives divorce them and they have to start paying alimony and not see their kids and pay child support under threat of incarceration."


goose1077

"Its' not just child support, it's that child support is not tied to what the child needs but to what the man makes. They can take huge sums of money from a man. Of course a man should support his child but it's not up to him to support the woman who dumped him."


postwardreamz

"I finished undergrad back in 94. Grad school in 96. Every woman I met, tried to get to know wanted either perfection, or guys who thought everything was a joke. Time rolled by...the decades wore on. I used to get very depressed about this. As I crested into my forties. All of my college friends divorced and financially raped. Guys who are still married it's a cheating spouse. A loveless marriage. Everything that is wrong is "his" fault. Man, I dodged a bullet. I really did. Glad I never married."

Keeping it Real With Pope Francis: The Catholic Neo-conservative's Sticky Dilemma

In the wake of two revealing interviews with the current pontiff in recent weeks, Catholic "conservatives" are both rationalizing, and reeling over, Francis' off the cuff comments. The central matter is well summed up here:

"To be sure, many Catholics wholeheartedly embraced the change in tone and spirit in which the pope discussed difficult questions like abortion. Unfortunately, some deeply involved in the prolife movement have taken those remarks as a rebuke. That is an overreaction and misinterpretation of what the pope said. Obviously, Francis was objecting to the uncompromising and confrontational rhetoric of some Catholic activists. Why? Because that approach is simply not working. Worse, it is preventing the larger gospel message from being heard both within and beyond the Catholic community. With a third of all baptized Catholics abandoning the church, and those who remain increasingly divided on ecclesial, cultural, and political questions, the pope’s diagnosis is hard to refute. Is it not time, as Francis urged, to “find a new balance” in presenting the church’s teaching to an often doubting flock and a sometimes hostile secular world? “Otherwise,” the pope warns, “even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the gospel. The proposal of the gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

"Even more refreshing was the pope’s insistence that “thinking with the church” does not mean thinking only with the hierarchy. “The church [is]…the people of God, pastors and people together. The church is the totality of God’s people.” It has been a long time since that bit of orthodox wisdom has been heard from Rome..."

The original interview can be seen here.

The American Catholic right (as distinguished from traditionalists) has had a scattered response to Francis' comments, to say the least. Just consider this initial, bang-up analysis from the online Catholic World Report..

"Hours after the interview was released, the dissenting group Catholics United (see the August 2012 CWR article, “The Catholic Con Continues”) released a press statement penned by the CU communications director, Chris Pumpelly. The statement opens by claiming that “Francis articulates his vision of moving the priorities of the Catholic faith away from divisive social issues, like what he calls an 'obsession' with gay marriage, abortion and contraception, while refocusing on core Gospel teachings relating to poverty.” That statement is misleading at best, as “the priorities of the Catholic faith” have always been focused on proclaiming the gospel, even if many individual Catholics—laity, clergy, and religious alike—fail to do so. Pumpelly, like so many “progressives”, seeks to create a faulty “either/or” approach that seeks the silencing of those who uphold the clear and consistent teaching of the Church about sexuality, morality, and marriage.

"...Pope Francis has his own style, which reflects his unique personality and background, but it is also evident that he has the same central goal as his predecessors: to “proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching” (2 Tim 4:2)."

He's still on our side, you guys!!! But NOT SO FAST. According to this write-up by Catholic right-wing writer and scholar John Zmirak:

"The pope’s most controversial statements seem to arise from a single motive: He doesn’t like “right-wing” Catholics, and wants to make it clear to all the world that he’s not one of them...I have met this kind of smug zealot up here in the U.S...who joke about burning heretics or who condemn the American founding because so many Founders were Freemasons...Some right-wing Catholics embrace a hardline agenda because they feel weak and irrelevant, and prefer magnificent fantasies of wielding power over their neighbors to the slow grunt work of evangelizing.

Zmirak, though, ultimately concludes:

"We are not living in fascist Argentina. The Culture of Death does not answer to men like General Galtieri, but to the likes of George Soros and Barack Obama. The bitterest traditionalists are not serving as tools of a grasping government which seeks to impose an anti-Christian ideology. Angry conservatives are not the cat’s paws of a potent political movement that seeks to marginalize the Church. The mass murder occurring throughout the West is not happening with the connivance of the Catholic right, but of the Catholic left, which pretends a moral equivalence between fundamental issues like abortion and prudential disputes over poverty programs and immigration totals, as a pretext for supporting candidates who oppose the natural law and the sanctity of life...

"Holy Father: Absurd as some of us are, we on the Catholic right are not your enemy."

Francis is clearly not their friend, either. That's going to become painfully apparent in the weeks and months ahead. Francis had this to say to La Repubblica as well: "It also happens to me that when I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity. St. Paul, who was the first to speak to the Gentiles, the pagans, to believers in other religions, was the first to teach us that."

Now, the pope's the "dissenter," and what are we to do? The absolute foolishness of the neocon ecclesiology has been laid bare, as now we can't just blindly follow all that Pope Francis says. So let's "guard the office" from the tainting of his unscripted, off the cuff interviews, and try to filter what he says ourselves to suit our agenda. JPII disliked left wingers because of the political history of his homeland. Francis dislikes right wingers, also because of the political history of his homeland. This translated into JPII's embrace of right wingers from other countries as well, and looks like it will mean Francis casting them aside. He's got their number, well beyond the secular politics he finds objectionable. The neocons are heavily clericalist, and like many Jesuits today, Francis loathes clericalism.

This could mean the complete undermining of entities like E.W.T.N. and its popular lay surrogates. They've always been tacked on to the papacy, but now what? Dissent from it? Save the papal office from the current pope, when all popes before him in the last century were 'saints?' The attempted integration of Catholicism into the public square (per the late Father Richard John Neuhaus and First Things) has been a disaster...former First Things editor Joseph Bottum now endorses gay marriage. Why? because there's no way back now. Rather than enforcing the Church's points of morality through the secular government (via the G.O.P.) onto non-Catholics, it's now high time to follow the REAL mission of this pope, and fix the Church from within, from the top-down. Now not only curia figures are being tossed out, but ordinary bishops (like Archbishop John J. Myers in Newark) are as well. Stay tuned there.

"The War Against Boys" second edition: Where were Dr. Sommers' G.O.P. and conservative comrades after the first edition?

For more background on The War Against Boys, please see this.

Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers has been a guiding luminary in the quest to combat the excesses of the women's liberation movement for many years now. She is one of just a handful of scholarly researchers and authors - including Dr. Warren Farrell and Cathy Young - who have persistently and thoroughly exposed and debunked the politics of radical "gender feminism" for what is really is. In completing my own non-academic journalism fellowship on male-female relations (and its tragic condition today), I first met Dr. Sommers at least eight years ago at a D.C. conference, hosted by a well-known right-wing women's group. She and I subsequently chatted over the phone the following spring. But she was never quite available to have a full, on-the-record discussion. The thrust of my concern for Dr. Sommers, a resident scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, was then and remains the same:

"You first published The War Against Boys in 2000. Following that was eight years of the Republican George W. Bush administration-led Department of Education. Laura Bush even said repeatedly that she wanted to help our nation's boys. In that time-span, the G.O.P. held Congress for six years. You now write that it's 'inconceivable that reports on the US boy gap would emanate from US Congress.' Why is it that one of radical feminism's central dogmas, which is that girls continue to suffer from massive disadvantage -- held dear as a cause by left-wingers -- is being sidestepped in such left-leaning countries as Canada, the U.K. and Australia? As you now point out, their governments have been intervening on behalf of males in schools for years. Why is it so different here in America, especially during and after lengthy conservative and Republican leadership, where the situation for boys is getting worse?"

Apparently, much didn't happen in the U.S. that should have, and Obama's and Biden's radical feminist sympathies have compounded the problems, thus calling for a second edition of this classic narrative. But with all their railing against excessive feminism among their most noted members, what have the G.O.P. right, including academic icons like Bill Bennett, ever done for boys? I can appreciate the change of the book's subtitle between editions, now omitting "misguided feminism." But I was hoping that this would allow for an elaboration of the way the modern right, and the G.O.P., is in some ways just as gynocentric as the left.

Surely, some who are right-of-center agree with much of modern feminism in general. But more of the political and cultural right seems to be based in misguided chivalry, which is equally paternalistically protective of females -- but in different ways. Just attend one of those conservative women's group conferences down in the D.C. area sometime to see what I mean. While emphasizing sex differences, as does Dr. Sommers, they'll lay bare their expectations of being wined and dined by male suitors, of women being able to "marry well," and then "stay home" as wives and mothers. As such, they'll rail that women being "driven to work outside the home" is more of a conspiracy by unmanly, non-committal sex-seeking men than any choice or cause carried out by women. This has been proven to be drivel many times over.

Of course, they'll give Dr. Sommers (and a few others like her) a time slot to give a breakdown of just how badly boys are treated in the American education system (including higher ed), the appeal being Dr. Sommers' arguments based on sex differences. But, as Dr. Sommers certainly makes clear by outlining the vast male underachievement in this new edition, the sorts of "manly, good providers" these ladies so desperately seek are going the way of tag games at recess. Of course, some of the pearl necklace G.O.P. ladies will give speeches reassuring themselves that most real men can still "make a decent living" without four-year degrees (at now-mostly liberal dominated campuses), or in some cases, without even two-year voc-tec programs past high school. If that's the case, a war against boys in formal classrooms, leading to their academic underachievement, wouldn't matter so much.

The War Against Boys (2013) shifts some of the focus off of organized, institutional feminism's warped, anti-male campaigns (that have received plenty of coverage) onto every day, local level, garden variety initiatives, including the scaling back of recess (for either more formal academic time or to curb aggressive behavior), zero-tolerance policies (to presumably curb at-school violence), and against single-sex schooling (that feminists once championed to improve girls' outcomes). Much of Sommers' original 1990s research illustrating boy-averse patterns remains in the new edition, and unfortunately remains relevant. The re-do of Chapter 1 is profound in itself: while the 90s figures pointed to several gaps, these latest figures depict more of a rift between the sexes. Test scores for boys are evermore lower than girls, on average, but now men's wages are falling off the cliff, with younger female workers in large metropolises out earning (after out learning) their peer males.

Many skilled, technically-based, decently-paid jobs are going unfilled today. The now-untrained, potential workers for many of them would otherwise be younger men. The economy and society simply cannot sustain this course. But Dr. Sommers describes some of this in the future-tense, as problems still yet to come IF we don't implement solutions. But it seems to many that they're already here. The White Knight-ism of some right-wingers sentimentally and indignantly declares that, no matter, what, "men and women aren't competitors," as though gender feminists comply with this view on some level. Women, these right wingers say, study humanities in college more often, while men are more likely to go to college and study the much higher-paid STEM fields, and they figure that this (along with eternal sex differences) is enough to combat any "imbalance." Otherwise, they would have lined up with Dr. Sommers ten years ago, and Congress would have acknowledged and explored this dreadful achievement gap between girls and boys.

I think it would be beneficial for Dr. Sommers to address the role of conservatives (or lack of), as the problems she keeps writing about remain partly due to them.

Blogger's Note

In the past year of blogging, I have posted much about the Catholic Church. However, I do NOT want this blog to be mistaken as a "Catholic Blog." I am an individual in practicing communion with the Catholic Church, who believes there exists much misguided understanding about it, both from within, and on the outside. It is an entity that somewhat predominates the religious landscape in much of the Western world, and love it or hate it, and cite whatever trends, but it is not going away anytime soon. Understanding it is integral to both current political and cultural literacy, regardless of what emotions Catholicism make evoke.

This is a blog on sociopolitical themes and trends (this includes religion, as just explained), and should be considered somewhat anti-establishment. The "establishment" generally refers to the ruling, political elite of the day. For our purposes, it includes those in lockstep with corporate, as well as government interests. But it also pertains to certain predominate social interests, like political correctness, which can be rather amorphous. On the political front, my fervent opposition to the G.O.P. establishment -- which hinges on corporate primacy,government statism, and interventionism -- is unmistaken.