Submitting Cheerfully
Last week one got to watch and hear various face-saving gestures by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who was discovered to have taken politically incorrect positions on a signature issue. As a senatorial candidate from Arkansas in 1992, Huckabee had dared to state that he opposed sending women into combat because it jarred with their “dignity.” The former Arkansas governor also endorsed the Southern Baptist Convention’s stance that “women should submit graciously to their husbands.” Reading the responses to Huckabee’s apparent missteps on CNN’s blog (December13), it seems that some of our fellow-Americans are going bonkers over his “barbaric” and “medieval” opinions. Perhaps this Baptist minister should be sent away to a detention camp where he can be indoctrinated in all the latest PC gibberish. (I suspect the Germans, who cannot be surpassed in such exhibition of breast-beating, have already set up such centers of reeducation. The spoof on South Park dealing with the German antifascist Nazis is probably more accurate than many of the viewers realized.) Still someone might get confused about rapidly changing party-lines.
Until just a few years ago people from across the political spectrum would have barfed at the idea of sending women into battle. At the time the ERA was being considered in the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of this redundant progressive project ran around denying that the constitutionally guaranteed equality for the sexes that they were seeking implied the policy that Huckabee (mind you back in 1992) rejected as incompatible with female dignity. Now anyone who questions the wisdom of sending women into battle to be raped or worse is being relegated to a subhuman status. How quickly Progress has progressed! It might be harder to get in line here than it was for American Communists to accept the Soviet-Nazi Pact.
As for the supposedly inappropriate stance of the Southern Baptist Convention, I’ve no idea what a Bible-believing Christian is supposed to do. Should he check with the PC mavens what exactly he is supposed to believe? Perhaps another biblical teaching will have to be suppressed in the next five minutes, in order to please the harpies and their obliging spouses. The Southern Baptist position about women cheerfully submitting to their husbands is the only reasonable one that one could arrive at from reading Ephesians 5, 22-25. The same passages teach that just as women should recognize their husbands as heads of the household, the men should “give their bodies to their wives,” as Christ gave Himself to His church. There should be nothing even vaguely offensive about this organic relation, built on mutual service; nor should anyone in his/her right mind be annoyed by Paul’s references to Genesis 2 about Adam cleaving to his wife.(proskallethesetai pros ten gunaika autou). It contains the most stirring description of marital obligation perhaps ever composed.
This doesn’t mean that a non-believer is conscience-bound to accept it. We are only talking about what the text requires believers to believe. Perhaps the male-bashing tracts of Andrea Dworkin should be appended to the Old and New Testaments, as a final authoritative revelation for those “religious” candidates running for political office. But that may not go quite far enough in keeping up with the accelerating demands of sensitivity training. There may be even more twists and turns on the PC highway waiting for us down yonder.
Having noticed Huckabee’s PC cringe on “Today America” after it was learned that he had accepted certain traditional teachings about social relations in the family, it seemed entirely proper that he should be forced to kowtow to the media priesthood. It would only be with their permission that he would be running the country if he ever happened to become president. One of his most awesome duties would then be to oversee the vast panoply of social engineering apparatus that the federal government, through the Justice and other Departments, has at its disposal. Presumably Huckabee would apply that apparatus to punish and stigmatize those who had dared to speak or act contrary to the social preferences of Matt Lauer and that Obama-enthusiast Oprah. Why the hell, except for obsolete male sexist concerns about freedom, should we tolerate an insensitive environment, one in which “medieval” thinking people are to be left alone to feel and express their unfashionable values! Neither CNN bloggers nor the media would want that to occur. Moreover, from Huck’s latest exhibition of cowardice, reflected in his nervous boasting about the scads of “women” he had appointed as Arkansas governor, he would be a willing camper, providing he makes it to the top of the Republican heap. Perhaps he could then trot out a biblical exegesis, showing that Moses and St. Paul favored gay marriage. I’m sure Matt, Oprah and the Bible-scholars among the CNN-bloggers would all approve.
Comments
Any links to the reaction and Huckabee backtracking? In all the anti-Huckabee hysteria, I seemed to have missed this one.
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This was reported in the New York Post last week, and
it was the subject of a commentary on FOX.Huck could
have defend the eminently reasonable and throughly
decent stands he had previously taken on women and
family relations. His failure to do so has aroused
my disgust. God help us if such putty in the hands
of a morally degenerate media were to become
president! Of course almost all of the frontrunners
in both parties would be the same.
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It is dubious that the Huckster understands the “What’s the Matter with Kansas” syndrome. As a few pundits have pointed out, Midwest and Southern conservative voters (many of whom were Democrats) in the Reagan coalition chose the GOP solely on the basis of its stance on the “value” issues like abortion and gay rights, even though the Democrats offered policies (e.g., subsidies to farmers) which would have satisfied their economic interests. If there is not one crack of light between the GOP and the Dems on social policy, why would they vote GOP? To paraphrase Harry S. Truman, if voters have to choose between two liberals, they will choose the real McCoy every time.
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The best study of the question that I’ve found is Martin van Creveld, Men, Women, & War. In a nutshell, women have never served in combat. To put them into combat is recipe for defeat.
St. Joan, at her trial, testified that she had not actually participated in blood letting. Her testimony is credible: It takes a lot of training to do sword play.
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in 1992, Huckabee had dared to state that he opposed sending women into combat because it jarred with their “dignity.”
I have written to my Congressman and my Senators and the Editor of my local rag and the Dept of Defense etc etc about this issue. The response? NADA.
AFAIK, at least 92, NINETY TWO,service women have died in combat zones since these Unites States invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the deaths have been in Iraq.
http://www.cmrlink.org/WomenInCombat.asp?docID=292
I have tried to learn how many of our Private Benjamins were killed while carrying babies in their bellies. I can’t find out.
I tried to get an estimate of the number, or percentage, of girls sent into combat zones who become pregnant and how long they remain there before they are either talked into an abortion or sent home. NADA
I guess our brave Decider, who spent the Vietnam War Years ferrying exotic plants from Florida to Texas and keeping Texas safe from the Viet Cong Air Force, has not thought it necessary to have those stats generated.
This is the time of year when the thoughts of many turn towards Mary and the child she was carrying.
These days, our Mary’s are in uniforms. Carrying rifles. Overseas. Surrounded by a vicious enemy. And they are being killed and NO BODY. NO BODY seems to care.
I hate out govt. and our Epicene candidates. Even Ron Paul is silent about this abomination. He ought be ashamed.
I am the same age as Israel and when I was young, if some politician said girls should be sent into combat zones we would have kicked the crap out of him.
Now? NADA. Silence.
WHERE are all the putative MEN? Have YOU raised hell about this issue with your congresscritters and local media nitwits?
Is this a country that can be saved (say nothing about ought be saved)? I do not think so.
And this issue was the one which convinced me my country is DEAD.
God Bless you, Mr. Gottfried for raising the issue.
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Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, captured, died in captivity, Mar. 23, 2003, two children, 4 and 3, Mar. 23, 2003
Died in captivity. Was she raped? Was she tortured? I do not know.
I do know she spent her last days worrying and thinking about her two young children. I do know she was petitioning God in that God forsaken place she was being held captive.
She had a FOUR year old and a THREE year old and my country sent her to a war zone in Iraq.
BASTARDS!!!! Our Govt is nothing but a bunch of demented barbarian bastards and there is not one, NOT ONE, man in the house or senate who has taken to the floor to denounce this evil barbarism.
When her children grow-up and ask the gov’t = Why did you send my Mommy to Iraq? - what can the govt (or us) possibly say that will make any sense?
We are the Evil Empire. May God have mercy on our children because we adults more than deserve every evil headed our way
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Gottfried is correct that the Mainstream Media Elite is a Priestly caste that controls the agenda and the debate and can destroy anyone that steps outside of it. This means that we aren’t paying enough attention on creating a work around of this issue. The internet is a great tool to reach those of like mind and a small number of others who are open minded, but this is limited to those who actively seek out their news.
We can only reach a mass audience with our own version of the Mainstream Media.
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Review the stories of the American nurses captives of
the Japanese in the Philippines and you’ll discover that
women do not need to carry weapons to become casualties
in a war zone.
Why it is all right to send nurses to risk their bodies
and lives but not armed women?
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Adriana. Christian or Civilised men do not send women into combat. Women have other vocations and men have the duty NOT to oppose the Will of God in this matter.
The epicene men comprising the Govt of these United States govern as neither Christian or Civilised men.
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I agree about women in combat,its awfull.My aunts were both combat nurses in WW2,one retired as a full colonel in the reserves.I don’t know how you could replace them then, but there plenty of male nurses now.
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Sam Spade is right in that the Mass Media controls the candidates and herds them into a PC environment. But Mr. Spade misses the point that in a democracy it is Media that is in control.
In a Monarchy, the media is NOT in control. We left the Old Order, adopted the New Order. In the New Order, demogoguery rules the day and it is the Media that rules. Democracy and demogoguery are synonymous. And that us, the virtuous, the principled, the religious should now stoop down and participate with a counter media---is losing the game. The only thing principled true conservatives advocate is the restoration of Monarchy in classical republics.
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I want to congratulate Mr. Gottfried on his double entendre “Submitting Cheerfully”. That all politicians (esp. of a democracy) like women, cheerfully submit themselves to Political Correctness. A man well trained in philosophy, sociology, and in true Christianity and who is Manly (a Virtue) can easily stand up and demolish Political Correctness. But since we live in a de-masculinized society, since we live in a dumbed down society, since boys are effeminized, it is no wonder that the leaders produced from said society are wimps and “Submit Cheerfully” to Political Correctness which is Cultural Marxism.
Huckabee is an effeminate know-nothing. He blows with the wind. That is how you ride the dragon of democracy! So of course Huckabee runs from his record on some things and changes his tune on others---like Adolf Hitler---one needs to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to run. Cultural Marxism is the goddess which practically all men kowtow to.
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A former military officer myself, I second Mr. Not-Spartacus’ remarks, and commend Mr. Gottfried for his prod into an exceptionally significant event.
Even the most liberal and deist of our forefathers would have barfed all over themselves if they saw what America would become.
It is not clear what sort of hope there can be for a society which applauds women going off to wage war—while at the same time advising a girl not to “waste” her gifts by marrying young and having a large family.
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@i_am_not_Spartacus
You seem upset.
Putting women in combat is an effective way
to normalize war and without war how else will
we be able to spread democracy and without
democracy how else can we covertly control
foreign governments and without control how else
can we steal the worlds wealth with impunity and
without impunity how else can we escape Dante’s
inferno?
Get it, kiddo?!
Ha! Just foolin’ around wit ya. We need our women
in combat because who else is gonna lead our men?
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