It’s always a pleasure when someone from the other side of the political spectrum agrees with something that you have believed all along. One thing worth mentioning in the debate is that we have to be humble enough sometimes to realise that people on the ‘other side’ as it were might just have a point in some areas. Political discourse is enhanced with a good dose of seasoning of salt sometimes, as insults, abuse and downright intimidation sometimes seem to dominate the narrative these days. It’s easy to allow that log just to be embedded in our own eyes for a long time and not see the good sense other people might have. We are all a complex jumble of different beliefs, experiences and motivations, and you can learn something from virtually anybody. My own conviction is that politics should involve doing what’s right regardless of whether you are considered to be on the ‘right’ or the ‘left.’
Some people take a ‘journey’ from one side of the political spectrum to the other, believing that they have received greater enlightenment in doing so. I have certainly read of those who have moved left to right, not so sure how many have moved the other way.
Famous luminaries who have made the journey from the left to the right include Melanie Phillips, who although seen as shrill by some has her finger on the pulse of the main issues of the day in a way that few others have. Not bad for someone who started their journey on the left as a Guardianista. Perhaps those who have made such a journey are the most effective spokespersons for their resulting worldview. Winston Churchill famously said that if you are not a liberal when you are 20 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative by the time you are 40 you have no head!’
Now we have a famous feminist, lesbian author and social critic, Camille Paglia, supporting some of the beliefs of the conservatives. I picked up two articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail.
Camille Paglia probably has more perception than a lot of conservatives, although she is certainly not about to give up her feminist principles and has evidently chosen an unconventional lifestyle. But she has nowse in spades in certain areas that are vital to the West’s survival.
One issue of great prescience is that it is one thing enjoying western freedoms and liberties, it is entirely another defending those freedoms and liberties to the death. Lots of us are Premier League exponents of enjoying the liberties we have inherited, doing virtually what we want, but we are not so good at understanding the roots of those freedoms in the first place. There never has been a time in history when men and women don’t have to fight for their freedom. The danger is that we have enjoyed such a long period of freedom and prosperity in the West that we have become too soft and unable to defend our culture or what is left of it if necessary. Sometimes you have to lay off the mantle of a peaceful unassuming citizen and take on the cloak of a warrior, and this especially applies to men.
Camille understands that men need a tough fighting spirit to draw upon in times of peril to literally defend their civilisation and culture. Men need a warrior mentality to deal with existential threats. To acknowledge this you have to recognise and accept the fundamental differences between men and women.
Camille has this to say about the West right now, ‘What you’re seeing is how a civilisation commits suicide.’ She gets really passionate about the efforts of modern society to undermine the basic biological differences between men and women. She is very concerned that many of the leaders in society, the elite, don’t have any background in military service so don’t think in military ways, having no clear conception of good and evil, that there are evil people out there and that you cannot be nice to everyone.
She says of that elite, “These people don’t think in military ways, so there’s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we’re just nice and benevolent to everyone they’ll be nice too. They literally don’t have any sense of evil or criminality.”
She sure has a point there. A lot of the problems the US faces are similar issues in the UK. Many British for instance are trained to be nice to a fault, not to offend anyone unnecessarily, and that is a problem we are going to have to get over pretty quickly if we are to survive as a nation.
She argues that the softening of American society begins in the kindergarten “Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys,” She goes on to say, “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.” Here she laments the shortening of ‘recess’ in American schools, or ‘break time’ as it is called in the UK, when boys can go and let off steam.
She sees the issues with her own son who she is raising with her ex partner, a female, hardly a traditional family. ‘She sees the tacit elevation of “female values”—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.’
We can see this pattern in the UK where primary schools are dominated by female teachers and the home situation is far from ideal in many households, with no father figure because women are bringing up boys on their own in single parent households or where the father has abandoned the family. The epidemic of fatherlessness in the UK is nothing less than a national disaster. No one is condemning anyone, we are where we are.
She goes on to say, ‘And the process goes on as education progresses “This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it’s all about neutralization of maleness.” The result: Upper-middle-class men who are “intimidated” and “can’t say anything. . . . They understand the agenda.” In other words: They avoid goring certain sacred cows by “never telling the truth to women” about sex, and by keeping “raunchy” thoughts and sexual fantasies to themselves and their laptops.’
‘Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America’s brawny industrial base, leaves many men with “no models of manhood,” she says. “Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There’s nothing left. There’s no room for anything manly right now.” She does have a point!
The UK’s ‘brawny industrial base’ has been dying a death for a long time. Years ago Britain was full of coal miners, factory workers, farm labourers, skilled craftsmen, those that used their physical strength and skills to make a living. And those old trades were male dominated. Now the UK has become an economy with seven or eight out of ten workers in the service sector where often more feminine skills are needed for success.
I have to say that I have noticed completely apart from this article over recent years that a lot of American men that I hear on the radio or in the media, especially on the radio, do not sound very masculine, in fact worryingly feminine, or even effeminate. Perhaps we should be thankful that both The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry who will play prominent roles in our nation in the future have both had military experience which should go against the grain of Camille’s fears.
She is a bit more impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of the guys she hears on sports radio, ‘If we had to go to war,’ the callers are the men that would save the nation.’ Again for the UK maybe there’s hope for us to be found on the football terraces every Saturday afternoon.
A key part of the remedy, she believes, is a “revalorization” of traditional male trades—the ones that allow women’s studies professors to drive to work (roads), take the elevator to their office (construction), read in the library (electricity), and go to gender-neutral restrooms (plumbing). Gender neutral restrooms are of course open to dispute! Surely such restrooms are blurring the gender differences she is pointing out.
She is just arguing for the place of good old apprenticeships in skilled trades for young men, who will never take to the academic world but are itching to get out to work on something worthwhile.
As she says, ‘Michelle Obama‘s going on: ‘Everybody must have college.’ Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go to college? Especially when college is so utterly meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum” and “people end up saddled with huge debts,”
By denying the role of nature in women’s lives, she argues, leading feminists created a “denatured, antiseptic” movement that “protected their bourgeois lifestyle” and falsely promised that women could “have it all.”
Camille is nothing but brutally realistic about the nature of life and the role of men and women, she could probably give David Cameron and Nick Clegg some pretty sound advice.
‘But men, and especially women, need to be honest about the role biology plays and clear-eyed about the choices they are making.’ Quite. ‘Our culture doesn’t allow women to know how to be womanly,’ she said. She is rather scathing about elite middle class women, ‘clones’ condemned to ‘Pilates for the next 30 years.’
She goes on to say, “I want every 14-year-old girl . . . to be told: You better start thinking what do you want in life. If you just want a career and no children you don’t have much to worry about. If, however, you are thinking you’d like to have children some day you should start thinking about when do you want to have them. Early or late? To have them early means you are going to make a career sacrifice, but you’re going to have more energy and less risks. Both the pros and the cons should be presented.”
The feminist movement can win converts, she says, but it needs to become a big tent, one “open to stay-at-home moms” and “not just the career woman.”
The feminists have been criticized for not being robust enough by far when it comes to the way women are treated in certain parts of the world, such as in India where the issue of gang rape has topped the agenda and in Islamic societies, where they are basically second class citizens. Ms Paglia has something to say about this as well.
‘More important, Ms. Paglia says, if the women’s movement wants to be taken seriously again, it should tackle serious matters, like rape in India and honor killings in the Muslim world, that are “more of an outrage than some woman going on a date on the Brown University campus.”’
To add fuel to the fire, she’s supportive of Duck Dynasty Star, Phil Robertson and his right to hold ‘homophobic views.’ Well, this old firebrand of the left keeps surprising us. Again here’s what she said:
‘In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality – as I one hundred percent do.’
‘If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again, they have a right of religious freedom there.’ In my humble opinion you either have freedom of speech or you don’t. Once you legally start proscribing peoples’ speech on the grounds of offence you are on the road to hell.
You have to say this is pretty refreshing stuff. It shows how in reality it’s impossible to stereotype people in the rigid way we love to do, and is a lesson to those politicians who are obsessed with identity politics, trying to neatly pigeon hole everyone into a particular ‘victim group.’ Camille represents a hotch-potch of views taken by both the traditional left and right.
If you take Camille’s logic to its conclusion, if nothing changes it’s a scary world ahead, men emasculated of their manhood and incapable of defending their culture, and women not being presented with an honest debate about choices of career and family. In the end whatever happens, if families don’t have those babies, there is no future anyway.
Sources
Wall St journal:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303997604579240022857012920
Daily Mail: