Spanking != Shouting

Spanking Does Not Equal Shouting:

Via the Sage of Knoxville, another of those pieces from the New York Times on how hard it is for the upper class to feel good about themselves while raising children.

Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do."

A bit of advice on that: screaming is much worse than spanking. Screaming demonstrates lack of control, and the breakdown of authority.

Spanking a child is a terrible thing to do in anger, but it can be effective if done calmly and without passion. A father might order his child to report for a spanking in quite placid terms. He might likewise order his son to do pushups -- a time-tested means of corporal punishment that benefits the body as well as the soul. A mother might wield the hairbrush dispassionately when the child has pushed the limits too far.

In each of these cases, the authority of the parent is obvious and explicit. Accompanied by a calm explanation of why the child is being punished, it makes the clear case that you are exercising a distasteful duty out of long-term concern for the child's well-being. You are on their side, even if that means right now you must do something you'd prefer not to do.

Screaming at a child cannot be done dispassionately. It makes you look like a fool to other adults, but far worse is how you look to the child: out of control, undisciplined, lacking the power even to control yourself, let alone anyone else. Not only is your authority not obvious, but acting out in this way calls into question whether or not you merit authority. I wouldn't follow someone who blows his top and screams at people; would you?

Louis L'amour once wrote of one of his characters that he 'could be ruthless with others, because he was ruthless with himself.' That model commands respect, and respect is what is most necessary in parenthood. To lead, you have to have it. To have it, you must deserve it.

Sucker

Sucker:

Let this post be clearly marked "viewer discretion advised." I normally try not to let this kind of thing happen here; but today, I'm going to do it anyway.

I have to admit that I love it when Congressional grandstanders get what they have coming. Consider the case of the famous 'die quickly' grandstander, who has set up a website to memorialize the names of those killed by the Republican menace:

Grayson may be leaving himself open to some online practical jokers. At the moment I write this, four names are memorialized in the site's rotating list:

• Lassie Martin, 10, Kanab, UT

• Norma Jeane Mortenson, 36, Los Angeles, CA

• Steve Rogers, 90, New York, NY

• Wile E. Coyote, 55, Sedona, Arizona

All four of those names are fraudulent. Lassie Martin is the dog "Lassie," whose owners on the 1950's TV show were called the Martins (and the town of Kanab, Utah, was one of the filming locations). Norma Jeane Mortenson was Marilyn Monroe's real name. Steve Rogers is the fictional Captain America from Marvel Comics, and of course there's Wile E. Coyote....

Late Update: The automated list of names has been removed from the site. It may be that mourning "Hugh G. Reckshinn," age 44, from Dumas, Texas, was a bit too much for them.

It's a shame about old Hugh. I've heard that some of our lady readers were personal friends of his. Still, I have to wonder -- though I wouldn't want to run afoul of the Obama administration's anti-blasphemy initiative: is it certain that he won't rise again?

Since we've gone so very far down this road already, I'll take the opportunity to mention that the famous Irish song "Danny Boy" is set to a tune called the "Londonderry air," or "Derry Air" for short. Which means, of course, that there is a version entirely appropriate for dedicating to certain congressmen:



Indeed, it's hard not to think of Congress while that song is playing.

Cowboy Songs

Cowboy Songs:

Having spent most of the day with a bunch of horses, it's on my mind; and this one particularly, because I caught the wife humming it to her Tennessee Walker as she was coming back from the trail. This is the original version, a majestic piece by Dimitri Tiomkin. The song is called "Settle Down," from the movie Red River.



But of course, that wasn't the version of the tune she was singing. It's better known in this form:



The pieces are the same tune, but the effect is not at all the same. The first, and older, is sung in the fashion of a chorus of angels looking down on men working and dying; or in the fashion of the valkyrie, singing while they weave the fates. The chorus is not the actor; rather, apart, they sing to enrich and ennoble the action.

The second is the voice of a man, echoing the divine song in a single and more personal voice. He sings of the concerns of a man, of work and love and the ride home. He is the actor in the scene, not an observer, but a man with his own perspective.

Could a man hear, imperfectly, the songs of angels or valkyrie? Would he feel called to reproduce some poorer version of their song in his own voice, in the same tune even if from a more limited perspective?

Do we do that in life, as we do it in art?

CIA Terminators

CIA Terminators:

Boom.

Some Men, From Ireland

Some Men, From Ireland:

This bit is a study in joy, and not chiefly even the music:



Good lads, and merry in their hour. "Let the wind and the rain and the hail blow high, snow come traveling from the sky." The hour is what we get: do as well with yours.

English Reformation Ends

The English Reformation Ends?

In what must be regarded as a remarkable event by those of us who study the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, a fair number of those who remain in the Anglican Church have asked to rejoin Catholicism.

Groups of Anglicans will be able to join the Roman Catholic Church but maintain a distinct religious identity under changes announced by the Pope.

The Vatican said the new rules follow requests from Anglicans wanting to join but retain their liturgical heritage.

It comes amid splits among Anglicans worldwide over homosexuality and the ordination of women.

But Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said he did not think it was a "commentary on Anglican problems"....

The measure, known as an Apostolic Constitution, was shown to leaders of the Church of England just two weeks ago.

Under its terms announced by the Vatican, groupings of Anglicans would be able to join "personal ordinariates".

This would allow them to enter full communion with the Catholic church, but also preserve elements of the Anglican traditions including the possible use of Anglican prayer books.

There weren't many left to start with. The Episcopal Church is about 1/30th the size of the Catholic Church among Americans, for example; and that though the Church of England had a substantial advangate in early American culture. (Indeed, Catholics were outright banned from Georgia during the colonial period, along with slaves and lawyers.)

A Classified Ad

A Classified Ad:

Health in China

Health and Polution in China:

An article that brings back memories. I picked up tuberculosis in China, though apparently I also beat it there, untreated except by Chinese beer (HangZhou's local, XiHu Pijiu, was the miracle cure). The pollution was often so bad that, if you climbed anything of any height, you could look down through it in thick, translucent gradients.

Yet, as the man says, you get over it.

Tell it, Victor:

I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture? I am not particularly proud of this quietism (many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD), but not really ashamed of it either.

Yeah, that's about what I feel these days, too.

(via Instapundit)

Wow

Wow:

So, really, all of you who listen to talk radio? (I don't myself, but I'll guess some of you do.) According to a doctor of psychiatry, you like to suck up to bullies. You're stuck in a sort-of childhood playground mentality.

She's never met you, but you know, prove it's not true. And, I mean, she's a doctor.

Ardi, Myself

A Fair Point on Evolution:

Anthropologists can be excused for never passing a chance to take a swipe at Creationists, since there are plenty of Creationists never pass up a chance for a swipe at them. Aside from that forgivable bit of spleen, this is a very clever piece:

For example, there is useful attention paid to the reduction in the size of upper teeth [in the Ardi fossils now being discussed openly] -- the sharp fang-like instruments for aggression and defense. A possible explanation given for this is that teeth in Ardi's clan were no longer as important for male-male combat as in other fossilized and contemporary primates. And going on from there, it is suggested that Ardipithecus was less socially aggressive than the living chimpanzees we thought were our closest relatives, and other African apes. In addition, the canine teeth of males and females are relatively similar in size--in contrast to those of African apes, among whom male teeth are larger--and this suggested to the team of researchers that Ardi lived in a social system with less male-male competition than in other species.

Not only does this imply that Ardi males were morally more acceptable to contemporary values than other species, but it is suggested that an important possible outcome of the greater male-male conviviality could well have been greater male emphasis on their work as fathers....

The long-term result of all this is of course the affable males and comfy families of Berkeley, Calif., or Ann Arbor, Mich. How convenient that our evolution took this correct pro-social form.

But there's an embarrassing problem here, which is that Ardipithecus ... didn't make it. His politically correct social behavior didn't, for example, get to modern Somalia and Afghanistan. Somehow, rather than have Ardi predict our behavior, it seems humbler and more sensible to employ retrodiction--to look at what we do now and posit that, yes, this is how our ancestors behaved.

Well, yes. An equally plausible theory is that Man's ancestors had so long-ago developed the use of weapons that fangs were no more necessary to them than they are to us. That would be the kind of ancestor you'd expect, frankly, even if he weren't the sort you'd care to have over for tea and sandwiches.

By the same token, I'm going to go out on a limb and declare that this theory is unlikely to be true:

"We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. "These people were much more robust than we were.

"We don't see that because we convert to what things were like about 30 years ago. There's been such a stark improvement in times, technique has improved out of sight, times and heights have all improved vastly since then but if you go back further it's a different story.

"At the start of the industrial revolution there are statistics about how much harder people worked then."

There are also some graves from before the start of the industrial revolution. I'd expect an anthropologist to have looked at one or two of them. People were smaller -- because less well-fed. Having lived among less-well-fed-and-smaller people in China, who nevertheless work very hard indeed in a country not-yet fully industrialized, I can assure you: they are not stronger than me. There are plenty of places not yet industrialized, in fact -- go see them. I've been to a few in my time, and I've yet to find a people anywhere as physically imposing as modern Americans.

There are also some very precise figures from the Middle Ages on how hard people worked, because the duties of serfs (for example) were defined and codified. We know, in some cases, how large the fields were and how many people were to work them, and for how long. They indicate a fairly hard day's work; but not Supermen.

As for the fossilized footprints, what's more likely -- that some physical fact like pressure from layers of soil accumulating above the footprints might have caused them to spread somewhat, or that hunter-gatherers who barely collected enough calories to feed themselves were really more fit than modern Olympic atheletes, who do nothing but train all day every day with the benefits of science to improve their performance?

Mrs. Grim and the Red Ryder:

Nobody likes to be left out of a good time.

Communist Apotheosis

Communist Apotheosis?

Here's the piece BillT was referring to below:



Of course, there's no 'enforcement' regime for this that could have any potential to make us comply, whether or not the government signs it. It's only our own government that could enforce it on us; otherwise, we'll do what we like. If the international community can't enforce nonproliferation on Iran and North Korea (!), they're certainly not going to be able to do anything to the land where -- misattributed or not, the sentiment is quite correct -- 'there is a rifle behind every blade of grass.'

Of course, we'll be told we don't live up to our treaties if we don't comply. If the Constitution is not a suicide pact, however, I don't see how any treaty could be held to be one.

Separate Worlds

Separate Worlds:

Democracy Corps has been down Georgia way.

The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America, according to focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps. These base Republican voters dislike Barack Obama to be sure – which is not very surprising as base Democrats had few positive things to say about George Bush – but these voters identify themselves as part of a ‘mocked’ minority with a set of shared beliefs and knowledge, and commitment to oppose Obama that sets them apart from the majority in the country. They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism. They overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country’s founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail.

Instead of focusing on these intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters’ beliefs – but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson’s incendiary comments at the president’s joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion – but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.

First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives.

Their ears work. I've heard that sentiment expressed several times lately.

The argument is difficult to counter, more difficult than you might imagine. The reason it's hard is that all of the facts are in their favor, and the only thing against them are unprovable: questions of intention, of character, of the meaning behind observed acts.

The facts are these:

1) America is the most powerful nation in the world, and has set the terms of international debates for more than a decade.

2) This power results from three basic things: military strength, the superiority of the market instead of central planning to make basic decisions, and the strength of our economy (this last to include the dollar's position as a reserve currency).

3) Therefore, to undermine that strength, you'd need to undercut all three things.

4) The Obama administration has asked for deep cuts in military spending, while continuing to maintain a heavy deployment schedule in two wars. The Obama administration has also called for unilateral cuts in our strategic nuclear forces. These actions undermine both our conventional and nuclear military strength.

5) The Obama administration has nationalized major industries and banks, not completely, but enough to give the government a controlling interest in the corporation. The argument that taxpayer money is going to these corporations, and therefore that the corporations must submit to government designs whenever the government feels it is important. These actions have vastly reduced the role of markets, and increased the role of central planners, at the center of major decisions in our economic life.

6) The destruction of the dollar is well documented. Obama's major remaning initiatives are health care reform and cap and trade. If successful, the first intends to result in a further government takeover of a massive part of the economy, again working against markets; furthermore, the expense of the thing will compel much higher taxes at some point. The addition of a major new entitlement adds to the fiscal crisis already expected from Medicare, Social Security, and pension funds. Cap and trade will likewise suppress US industry and call for higher taxes, perhaps passed on as "higher prices" on goods, across the economy. These actions undermine our fiscal strength, and make it more likely that the nation will be bankrupted.

7) Therefore, the Obama administration has acted to weaken all three pillars of American strength. Its stated agenda will further weaken all three pillars, perhaps to the breaking point in the case of fiscal policy.

Now, all of that comes from nothing more than reading the headlines. Usually, conspiracy theories are fairly easy to counter because they have some lie at their center: the famous Truther bit about how steel can't be melted by fire(!), or the idea that a missle hit the Pentagon, or whatever. None of this is undocumented. Obama has called on the military to cut its budget while fighting two wars; he has purchased interests in major banks and corporations, and then used those interests to issue orders to the corporations; the dollar has suffered a serious undermining in world markets, to the degree that there is talk of replacing it as the world's reserve currency; and the debates on health care and cap-and-trade both involve the eventual admission that higher taxes or prices will be necessary.

What remains is to argue that all of this is resulting from the Obama administration's adherence to bad economic philosophy, rather than from a secret plan to ruin America. You're left to argue that yes, these things are happening, but it's because the President has no executive experience. He's never run anything in the real world before. His people genuinely believe in their claims that the government can plan better than the market, and will make better decisions. They're trying to help, in other worlds; they just don't realize the effects their decisions will have, because they are too young, too inexperienced, or have lived lives too removed from the private sector and too insulated by government or academia from personal economic consequence.

Then they remind you of Obama's several apology tours in which he's essentially stated that America has been wicked up until now, but he's going to fix us. Everyone reading blogs is well aware of the Rev. Mr. Wright, Bill Ayers, Ms. Dunn and her Maoist credentials, etc., etc. So are people here. There is, in other words, plenty of empirical evidence on his feelings and associations that reasonably reinforces the worldview.

Democracy Corps says that this means that conservative Republicans are going to have a hard time appealing to others in future elections, because the chasm in worldviews is so wide.

I don't know if that's true or not. It seems just as likely to me that, if things don't get better between now and 2012, other people may decide that these folks may be right. The famous "confirmation bias" suggests that people first decide if you are "good" or "bad," and then interpret everything to fit the profile. Right now, most Americans have their mental switch on Obama flipped to "good," and so they are interpreting all this as unconnected difficulties associated with a challenging situation and inexperience. If that switch flips to "bad," it all becomes convincing evidence of a desire to undermine the nation's strength.

That's where we are now. Obama's favorability ratings line up with this worldview nicely, with both personal negatives and this worldview being higher in the South, and among Republicans. People outside the South, and independents, are more likely to view Obama as personally favorable -- which means they are unlikely to consider him a wicked tool of evil interests.

If unemployment continues at a heavy rate for a long time, some people may find their switch flipping. As they begin to view him unfavorably, they become open to the argument that he might be actively wicked instead of accidentally wicked. There's plenty of room for conversion as the economy grinds down, because his plans will either fail or succeed: if they fail, they won't help; yet if they succeed, the extra taxes and costs will make things worse.

Some may argue that it doesn't matter whether the President is actually trying to destroy the country, or is merely destroying it by accident. It does matter, though. It's very important how we perceive him, because it defines our duty as opponents of the agenda. If you believe as I do, your duty is the duty of the loyal opposition: to try to swing policy through debate and argument, but to support at least foreign policy wholeheartedly once the debate is over. Afghanistan is a good example of this: I hope to inform the debate we are having, but once a decision is made I will, as our military will, try to help bring about whatever we decide to do.

If the President is a "domestic enemy," actively trying to destroy America, your duty may be very different. The performance of that duty creates a world that I hope we'll not have to live in. If you do believe, let me suggest this: it would almost certainly be better for the nation to be led for four years by a wicked man who wanted to destroy it, chafing within the confines of the separation of powers, than to suffer what would come from traveling those roads.

Inspired Commies 2

Those Inspiring Communists II:

One good thing the Communists did inspire was jokes at their expense. West German spies used to collect them:

Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never survive on just two bananas a year.

What would happen if the desert became Communist? Nothing for a while, and then there would be a sand shortage.

A new [East German car] has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow.

The Chinese had jokes too.

It was like that in those days. As soon as you went into the shop it went like this: “Serve the People!” Comrade, I’d like to ask a question.

A: “Struggle Against Selfishness and Criticize Revisionism!” Go ahead.

B: [to the audience] Well, at least he didn’t ignore me. [Back in character] “Destroy Capitalism and Elevate the Proletariat!” I’d like to have my picture taken.

A: “Do Away with the Private and Establish the Public!” What size?

B: “The Revolution is Without Fault!” A three-inch photo.

A: “Rebellion is Justified!” Okay, please give me the money.

B: “Politics First and Foremost!” How much?

A: “Strive for Immediate Results!” One yuan three mao.

B: “Criticize Reactionary Authorities!” Here’s the money.

A: “Oppose Rule by Money!” Here’s your receipt.

B: “Sweep Away Class Enemies of All Kinds!” Thank you.

Most Chinese humor doesn't translate well, because it is word play depending on the tremendous number of like-sounding words. That's pretty decent satire, though.

Ironhead

Ironhead:

I ran across this old bit featuring Waylon Jennings the other day.



His musical advice on the way forward sounds very much like our Eric Blair.

Those Inspiring Communists:

First Thomas Friedman, but he's just a journalist from the New York Times. To someone of that particular distinction, covering up the horrors of Communism must seem like an honorable tradition of the firm.

Now it's someone from the White House.

Chairman Mao is an important figure in military science, and anyone who intends to fight a guerrilla war -- or resist one -- needs to read his writings on the subject.

Ms. Dunn is sketching that position by claiming that she's talking about his thoughts on how to fight war, but that isn't really what she's doing. What she's doing is claiming him to be an inspirational philosopher, because 'he did it his way,' and didn't let others tell him it couldn't be done.

Having listened to her speech, you don't know anything about what his insights into that particular war might have been, or how he differed from Saddam. Yet Saddam, too, 'did it his way' and refused to listen to those who told him it couldn't be done. He had a plan too: a plan to resist conventionally, and a backup guerrilla plan that included massive pre-lain caches and support zones seeded with allied families and tribes. Nevertheless, he ended up being plucked out of a spider hole, and hanged a few years later, having led his movement into disaster.

People who learn only the lesson to 'do it your way, and don't listen to those who raise concerns' are at least as likely to end up badly. To the degree that Mao is worth studying, it's to learn how he defied the odds -- how he developed his plans and used his forces, brought pressures to bear, and sustained his movement to victory.

As for the rest of Mao's "philosophy," it's chiefly worth studying to learn how completely it failed. The "Hundred Flowers" movement, wherein intellectuals were encouraged to speak truth to power? Great idea, very inspirational; led to the slaughter or re-education of China's entire educated class. The "Great Leap Forward," wherein China was going to swap out from an agricultural to an industrial economic base? Wonderful thought, very progressive and bold; led to the starvation of tens of millions.

That's the thing to study, if you're going to look at Mao. The chief, key lesson of his life is the horror and misery he brought to everyone he touched.

Punt NFL

Punt the NFL:

College football is better anyway. Go, mighty Bulldogs!



Who wants to watch a bunch of mercenaries who'd leave your team for the first better offer? The college students are, at least, your own true sons and neighbors.

Victory

Victory:

People used to ask, "Can you define what victory in Iraq might look like?" How about this?

I think this makes it official: the liberal Brookings Institution is apparently no longer bothering to update their Iraq Index, with the last update having been done on September 1st. Final score: 8500-11000 MW of power (vs. 4000 prewar), vastly improved access to potable water/sanitation/trash removal, something like five hundred times as many cellphones, a million people with Internet access in a country that previously had essentially none, a tripling of GDP, billions in foreign investment, national debt halved, and thousands of trained judges. Even the endemic fuel shortages appear much ameliorated, with the number of Iraqis saying they had good access to fuel rising from 19% in 2008 to 68% this year. Oh yeah, and a fairly liberal Arab constitutional democracy with basic rights for minorities, including the rights of voting, free press, free assembly, and free speech.

Meanwhile, the security situation in Iraq is better than ever (and far, far better than the average ~7,000 a month killed under Saddam), with icasualties reporting an incredibly low 158 deaths total in September -- the lowest ever recorded....

Iraq is still literally the unthinkable victory. If [opponents currently in office] want to lay any claim to credible analysis of ongoing events in the GWOT, they will need to start acknowedging this basic, painful fact: we won.

They don't, however. They declared the GWOT over, some time ago now.

Slander

Slander:

Once again, MSNBC is host to a vicious, nasty attack directed at a lady because she doesn't hold 'progressive' political opinions. Jenn Q. Public has a list of prior offenses for the character involved here, one Keith Olbermann. He's one of the few TV hosts I'm familiar with, because AFN played his show in the DFAC about the time I'd take lunch chow every day.

Ms. Public has covered some of his historic offenses, but it's worth remembering the treatment Chris Matthews gave the same lady. Zell Miller remembered it, in the famous interview he did with Chris Matthews after his 2004 speech at the Republican National Convention.

Zell was right: it is a shame that we can't challenge people to a duel. As a distant second-best option, however, Ms. Public suggests you might write the network. Since these networks are in show business, and controversy means viewers, I doubt that will do more than encourage the thuggery; but if you like, she has the addresses on her site.

UPDATE: In the comments section of a post about Google searches as they apply to the failed relationships between modern men and women, Cassandra writes:

I rarely hear anyone acknowledge that a man who behaved the way many men behave today would have been shunned by society when I was growing up. Men, too, are demanding that behaviors society has never approved of be not just legitimized but mainstreamed and approved of.

I would not want to have to raise a daughter in today's climate.

This is exactly the kind of thing she's talking about. The reason we've got this kind of behavior going on is that we've created a society in which the rude are completely protected from any sort of reprisal.

It's exactly like the way that virtual communication leads to flaming: because you have removed the physical elements of the communication, there's nothing except personal character to stop people from flaring up emotionally at each other. This is a well-known phenomenon among bloggers, though it predates blogs, and has been observed since the beginning of internet communication.

The removal of the duel -- and the practice of filing criminal charges for assault every time a jerk gets a punch in the face -- has performed a similar transformation on non-virtual society. Neither Chris Matthews nor Keith Olbermann is the sort who would dare to speak that way in the presence of a man like Zell Miller if he were permitted the duel he wanted, even though Zell is spotting them both about fifty years.

Instead, modern society has made the good men powerless to do anything about the bad ones. You can point out that they are mannerless, cowardly puppies; but the more they get called names, the more attention they get, and the more money they make. They are actually rewarded for their bad behavior. Of course you're seeing more bad behavior as a result, and of course their model is being emulated by young people who witness it and see it being rewarded.

Like the internet flamer, they find that all restraints on their worst impulses have been removed. There is nothing to stop them from being abusive except their personal character. If they have any, it is clearly overwhelmed by the actual monetary rewards paid to them for generating controversy.

Of course things are getting worse: there is a powerful, practical mechanism to encourage them to get worse. There is no similar mechanism to ratchet things back the other way. It's been removed from society, and we are seeing the natural consequences of that.

UPDATE: Cassandra's use of Google inspired me to do a little self-check to see how well we've lived up to these standards here. I Googled grimbeorn.blogspot.com for three common insults used against women. (You can click the links to see the terms, if you wonder which ones I searched for, but your imaginations will probably work fine.)

In the history of the site, there are three uses of the first, plus one use of the "-y" version: all in block quotes from other pieces, one of them a reference to a man ("son of a..."); two of the others quotes from other women (including Peggy Noonan!); and the third a quote from a Navy SEAL, who was not directing it at women particularly, but just employing a profanity to suggest emphasis in the way that sailors will.

There are no instances of the second.

The third has one citation, another block quote, from an author who agrees that Britney Spears "dresses like a...," but not that she is one.

All of the posts featuring quotes including these words were mine. None of my co-bloggers have ever employed any of them, even in block quotes from other places. I'm proud of them for that, and want to say so.

I invite readers to apply a similar test to any male-run progressive site they like.

Profanity isn't everything, though. Equally important is your treatment of individual women to whom you are opposed politically or culturally. You might wish to contrast our treatment of, say, Cindy Sheehan with how Mrs. Palin was treated at those progressive sites.

For those of you who choose to test your own sites, and are ashamed with what you find? I call on you to do better in the future.