The Age of Liberal Grift

The German-American writer Eric Hoffer famously wrote in his 1967 book of essays The Temper of Our Time in a chapter titled "The Negro Revolution" the following:

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation [my italics]. Unlike those anywhere else, the masses in America have never despaired of the present and are not willing to sacrifice it for a new life and a new world. In this, the American Negro, despite his handicaps, does not differ fundamentally from his fellow Americans.

Hoffer, the longshoreman, writes this after discussing Negroes and whites in the laboring classes and his life laboring in the fields and as a longshoreman alongside blacks, and he writes

My kind of people does not feel that the world owes us anything, or that we owe anybody -- white, black, or yellow -- a damn thing.

Now, let us take off from Hoffer and note that the educated class's advocacy for various groups over the past century or so has been exactly as Hoffer describes it. In other words, whatever might be the origin of the labor movement or the civil rights movement -- or the feminist movement or the LGBT movement or the environmental movement -- all of them became, and remain, rackets, and rackets that primarily benefit not the workers and the "Negroes" but the ruling-class satraps that run the rackets. And what is today's "woke-ism" if not a cult?

So let us say that everything that our liberal friends support today is a racket: a grift.

Let us say that a genuine mass movement would issue from some existential despair about the present, and a conviction that normal life and normal politics cannot change anything.

Hey, I know a place where that happened: in post-WWI Germany, humiliated and plundered by the Treaty of Versailles. So millions of Germans felt they had nothing left to lose; and in the chaos in the aftermath of the 1929 Crash they abandoned the normal day-to-day and enlisted in the paramilitary formations of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.

Note that all respectable people agree that the rise of Nazism was the worst thing ever. But it occurred because of the utter stupidity of ruling classes all over, from Germany to Austria to France to Britain to the USA.

Everything that our liberal friends do is a fake facsimile of revolution, a political play where young elitists strut and fret their hour upon the stage acting out a fantasy of revolution and activism, a fantasy of helping the helpless victims of oppression.

And so I say it is time to declare the present age An Age of Liberal Grift, a cynical elite exploitation of ordinary people, their work, their hopes, and their lives, and to baldly state that almost all the works of government boil down to some grift or other that helps create and sustain power for the liberal ruling class.

If it is climate change, it is a liberal grift. If it is systemic racism it is a liberal grift. If it is CRT in the schools it is a liberal grift. If it is Tesla electric automobiles it is a liberal grift. If it is infrastructure spending it is a liberal grift. If it is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion it is a liberal grift. If it is vaccine mandates it is a liberal grift for health administrators. If it is a payout to illegal immigrant families separated at the border is is a liberal grift. If it is green energy it is a liberal grift. If it is university research grants it is a liberal grift.

Hey, even Newsweek editor Batya Ungar-Sargon gets it. She tells Brian Stelter, in the aftermath of the Virginia governor election that

We are hiding the total dispossession of the working class of all races by focusing on a very highly specialized academic language around race[.]

Hey, this is not hard. There is a tendency for any ruling class towards naked self-dealing and hiding it in the decent drapery of patriotism or wisdom or protecting the country. 

The difference between a good ruling class and a bad ruling class is that a good ruling class keeps its self-dealing -- its grift -- down to a dull roar, and it knows that its continuance as a ruling class depends on keeping the plebs from getting desperate.

It Cannot Be That...

The thing to remember about, e.g., systemic racism, is that it issues from a saving faith in our liberal friends that all the gubmint programs they have advocated in the last century are the best possible programs which will result in the best and most equal and equitable society ever.

It cannot be -- it cannot be -- that all the programs and all the politics have actually Made Things Worse. And it cannot be that the Democrats' current agenda, fighting climate change and systemic racism is going to Make Things Even Worse.

Situation One: Your liberal friend plays the Race Card.

We can see this with the the notion that GOP Lt. Gov. elect Winsome Sears is a "black mouth" for "white supremacist practices." Of course. Because it cannot be -- it cannot be -- that liberal race politics amounts to vile racism, straight up, and liberal race politics Makes Things Worse, worse for blacks, who are coddled as Little Darlings of the ruling class instead of being encouraged to make their way into the mainstream of ordinary American Yeomen and Commoners.

But what do you do when someone accuses you of being a racist? Obviously there are four responses:

The Nice Liberal Lady response: I can't believe you said that. After all, the Civil Rights Act was passed half a century ago. And if there is any racial disparity left the clearly it is the fault of civil-rights administrators, directors of diversity equality and inclusion who are just not up to the mark when it comes to eliminating systemic racism. What do you recommend, in the face of this failure?

The medium response: You know, Bob, I didn't think you were that sort of a guy. I'm disappointed in you.

The Sophisticated Intellectual Response: Gosh, Travis, I didn't think you were that sort of a guy. After all, as Hegel says, the Thing is the Same as its Opposite, so really, an Anti-Racist is the same as a Racist, a rather nasty piece of work that is all obsessed with race.

The Culture of Insult response: Hey, pal. You know what kind of a guy plays the race card like that? Yeah, you guessed right: only a complete A**hole. Welcome to the club.

Situation Two: Your liberal friend complains about the white working class, as a Trump voter, or a Let's Go Brandon chanter, or as uneducated, or a deplorable, or a bitter clinger.

But what do you do when someone sneers at the white working class?

The Nice Liberal Lady response: I can't believe you said that. Especially as the experts agree that the white working class has been dying of despair ever since the government offshored its well-paid union jobs in the Seventies and instituted racial quotas for police and firemen jobs. I'm really surprised you would say that.

The medium response: Oh come on, Bob. Hey I remember a time when good liberals like you loooved the white working class. What happened to that Bob?

The Sophisticated Intellectual Response: Gosh, Travis, I didn't think you had bought into the Narrative like that. Come on now. What do you expect people to do when the plant closes and the jobs that sustained families for generations just go pouf! And it's not as if this is the first time. What about the Long Depression of the 1870s, when the crash of 1873 put millions out of work, and put millions of farmers on the Great Plains underwater on their mortgages. And whatbout the Great Depression, when even the Great FDR could do nothing for the Forgotten Man until he started cranking the economy up for World War II. I could go on, Travis, but I think an educated man like you would get it.

The Culture of Insult response: Hey, pal. You know what kind of a guy dumps on the working class like that. Yeah, you got it. Only a guy that Literally Knows Nothing. You and all the twentysomething journalism grads.

Situation Three: Your liberal friend is all-in on masks, and mandatory vaccination, and vaccination passports.

What do you do when someone sneers at the anti-vaxxers?

The Nice Liberal Lady response. Evelyn. You know I can't believe you said that. For people like us, the COVID crisis has almost been like a vacation: working from home, Zooming meetings. But think about being an essential worker, where you are much more at risk from infection. Or a worker in the hospitality industry, where you you have been out of a job for months and months and never know next what the regulations will be. I really feel for people like that. And you can't really expect them to understand the science like people like us. Uneduacted people have always wondered about the rulers, and whether they really have the interests of ordinary people at heart. And then, of course many of the people not getting vaxxed are Black and minorities. And who can blame them after the Blacks that were misled in the Tuskegee syphilis study back in the day and were left untreated.

The medium response. Oh come on, Bob. I remember when your Irene was all worked up about the measles vaccine. How come you guys are both completely down for this one?

The Sophisticated Intellectual Response. Yes, Travis, you've got a point there. The ignorance of the ordinary American voter is a national scandal. But then, you have to give them a bit of slack. After all, spokesmen like Dr. Fauci haven't exactly been founts of wisdom and consistency. The story keeps changing, and you know, from your understanding of persuasion techniques, that consistency and track record are important in securing and maintaining trust. I wonder if we can't do better with the messaging on this. Of course, first there was Trump, and who could trust him? But I'd say that President Biden isn't exactly Snow White either.

The Culture of Insult response: Hey, pal. How in the heck can you expect ordinary Americans to trust you guys when you keep changing the rules? And the rules always seem to benefit wokey guys like you?

Situation Four: Your liberal friend doesn't think that schools are teaching Critical Race Theory.

What do you do about someone that calls parents protesting at their local school board "violent extremists."

The Nice Liberal Lady response. Joan, I can't believe you said that. I talked to my friend Sharon yesterday and she told me about what she had been watching her kids' Zoom classes. Of course, racism and sexism is a real problem, but I really wonder about this 1619 Project. Even The New York Times has revised its take on the idea of the founding of the United States as a slave society. 

The medium response: Oh come on, Bob. First we are told that BLM and AntiFa are nothing but mostly peaceful protesters when they burn down business in Minneapolis and attack the federal court-house in Portland, Oregon. And then we are supposed to believe that a plumber that gets a bit excited about his daughter being assaulted in the school restroom is a violent extremist? I thought you were better than that, Bob,

The Sophisticated Intellectual Response: Yes, I agree, Selwyn. Those parents really don't know much. And there is no question that the problem of Black underperformance in our nation's schools is a real problem and needs to be tackled with a sophisticated and multi-pronged approach. But I really think that we need to keep the activists and the crazy lefties on a fairly short rein. They do tend to get a bit over-enthusiastic about things. I mean. Let's not pretend that we can explain everything in society through the lens of racism. We are better than that.

Culture of Insult response. Hey, pal. I'd like to know how you'd react if they sent a bunch of right-wing crazies and KKK hoodies into your kids' school and started selling them on QAnon conspiracy theories. You'd wouldn't like it, would you.

Situation Five: Your liberal friend supports the Democratic spending agenda for a radical expansion of the entitlement state and fighting climate change.

What do you do with someone that's all in on the Progressive Agenda of Build Back Better?

The Nice Liberal Lady response: I can't believe you said that. I talked to Sophie and she said that her financial advisor said that the additional spending will cause serious inflation that will affect her financial wellbeing negatively and perhaps seriously delay retirement for many people without a guaranteed pension. And, of course, minorities and women will be hardest hit by the inflation.

The medium response: Of course, everyone knows that we need to make college more affordable and prepare for the energy transition. But it seems to me that this is going to benefit special interests and benefit big universities without really helping ordinary people. And meanwhile, how are people going to make ends meet if gasoline and gas for heating goes up 50 or 100 percent?

The Sophisticated Intellectual Response: Here's the problem, Jonathan. It's all very well to get tackle climate change. But should we really be making a one-way bet when the climate models really are not tracking with the change in global temperatures? Yes, electric cars are probably a good thing, but should we really be subsidizing a guy like Elon Musk and buying all the rare-earth metals from China, given the environmental impacts from the mining and the pollution that is already seriously impacting rural life in the areas impacted by rare-earth mining? Now, of course we should make college for affordable and institute parental leave and pre-K. But is this the way to do it, by ramming through a multi-trillion dollar package in a 50-50 Congress? Moderate Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, a generation ago, that when you want to pass big programs you need to pass them 70-30 in the Senate, so that there is a general consensus behind the reform. Does it really help matters to push these partisan measures that do not have bipartisan support?

Culture of Insult response: Hey pal. You really think that ramming a controversial bill pushed by crazies like Jayapal and the Squad is going to work? If you do, I gotta bridge to sell you.

I could go on. But you get the point.

And we deplorables all need to be better at communication. And effective communication depends on knowing who you are talking to and adjusting your message so that they will listen, and maybe even accept your message.

All Ruling Classes are Conceited

One of the fallouts from the current electoral fallout is this: what in the world did our Democratic friends expect? How could they not have seen this coming from miles away? 

I mean, come on. The welfare state had gone about as far as it can go decades ago. And you guys want to pile on with pre-K and free college and I know not what right now in 2021?

The answer is, of course, that all ruling classes are like this. They go on doing what they do until, as per Wiley E. Coyote, they suddenly see nothing below them but disaster.

It's a conceit, that's what it is, the conceit that we are the good people, the smart people, the evolved people, the knowledgeable people,we courtiers in our magnificent silken court apparel.

Earth to rulers: that's not how the world works. The world is not the glorious reign of the Sun King in whose shining light the world is reflected. The world is an emergent phenomenon, constantly adapting out of apparent chaos into an order that is always dissolving back into chaos.

If you think you have got it all figured out, I got one thing to tell you. No you don't, and if you don't find that out this year, then wait until next year.

Here's how the world works. Today, it looks like things are pretty good. But tomorrow the world changes and you'd better be ready to adapt.

The conceit of today's educated ruling class is that the neo-feudal government structures built up over the last century are magnificent temples that will last for a thousand years.

I suppose that's the conceit of every temple-building ruling class down the ages. I suppose that's the conceit of every plutocrat that ever built a weekend cottage at Newport, Rhode Island.

I suppose that's the conceit of every corporation in the Dow Jones Industrials index. Only, the average corporation spends about 20 years at the top, and then declines and disappears, merged into another corporation, it it's lucky.

Here's the problem with the magnificent temples of the welfare state. They are soon going to crumble and fall.They are already crumbling, only nobody wants to admit it. If the ruling class had known what it was doing it would have designed repair and renewal right in from the beginning.

If it cared about the people it would have put in serious reforms two decades ago. Oh yeah, remember how the Republicans went in to talk to Bill Clinton about a reform of Social Security around 1997. Just hours before the Lewinsky scandal put Bill Clinton in survival mode.

But, of course, the programs were not really designed for long-term use. They were just designed to win an election: 1936 in the case of Social Security and I know not what in the case of Medicare.

And so, in the end, every program eats the budget and can never be reformed, can never be reduced.

Because hell hath no fury like a beneficiary scorned.

And then, when the whole temple crumbles and the roof collapses onto the floor in some earthquake, the people starve and the rulers retire to their patrimonial estates.

If they are lucky.

Of course, maybe our educated ruling class will recover itself and nobly rule for another generation, or another 50 years. Or not.

After Trump, DeSantis?

 We all know -- or at least know that we have been firmly told -- that women just don't like Donald Trump's alpha-male behavior. The mean tweets, an ordinary manifestation of the male Culture of Insult, is just too exhausting.

But, of course, women expect to be protected. So if they determine, two by two in their Kaffee Klatsch meetings of the women's global conspiracy, that President Biden doesn't protect them, then I fearlessly predict that they will have nothing to say about a mean-tweeting Trump in 2024.

But whatabout Ron DeSantis? My liberal neighbors already hate him, so there's that. So the only question is whether they and their liberal friends are going to be hating him as much as they hated Donald Trump. I guess we need to keep track of this by polling the nation's mental-health professionals for an upsurge in CNN/MSNBC-watcher pre-traumatic stress syndrome in the months and years ahead.

(By the way, whatabout the mental health of disappointed Trump supporters? Does nobody in the mental health community care about them? Or are Trumpists merely sub-human deplorables that don't come to the notice of fully-qualified mental health professionals?)

But I have this weird feeling that, with regard to Trump, we are been-there-done-that. As I look back to the early presidential debates of 2016, when I was a Cruz supporter, there is no doubt that Donald Trump, by rolling over all the rules about being a "nice Republican," really gave me a buzz. He showed us all what could be done in the public square. The US political world will never be the same.

Now I think that Ron DeSantis is shaping up as Donald Trump without the mean tweets. Yesterday he was featured mentioning the "Brandon administration.¨ It was clearly fully planned and worked out, and he talked several minutes about the Let's Go Brandon phenomenon, explaining its origin for anyone that didn't know. And boy, did his audience absolutely loooove it.

See, I think that Let's Go Brandon is absolute political gold. First of all, it avoids straight up vulgarity, so the women of the world don't need to be offended. In fact, I suspect that the phrase rather neatly appeals to women, because it is indirect. It makes the point, but it stays "nice."

And I'd say that, overall, Ron DeSantis passes on the "likability" front.

Let's put it another way. Donald Trump was the guy that helped us storm the barricades of the Deep State back in the day; he was the leader of the Forlorn Hope, crashing through a breach in the walls of the ruling class.

But now, I suspect, we don't need a rough tough leader that stakes everything on "once more unto the breach." We need a nice affable guy with a will of iron that will outthink and outflank and outstrategize our dear liberal friends.

Is Ron DeSantis that man? Who knows? That's why we have campaigns.

But I tell you this. When I experience Ron DeSantis I experience a guy trying to look around the corner and think where he needs to be tomorrow or next month. I think that his COVID strategy is pure gold, and the Democratic Party strategy of lockdowns and masks and vax mandates will eventually crash and burn. I think that any sensible politician with a strategic mind is thinking about where we end up in a year or so. Whereas I think that the Dems are merely reacting and pandering to the women that expect to be protected.

Earth to Democrats. When women expect to be protected they have no idea how. They just want to be told by a Maaan that everything is under control.

Here's the problem with the Dem lack-of-strategy. If and when it turns out that the reactive lockdown-mask-vax policy was a stupid mistake, the women of America are not going to say, well, at least his heart was in the right place. They are just going to feel that the Democrats did not protect them and look for another protector.

Men, Women, Politics, and the Public Square

According to one of the exit polls last night, the voters that moved most towards the Republicans from Democrats was white women.

Which means, I suppose, that while women don't like mean tweets, they really don't like men in the women's bathroom.

I suppose that this is the reason why, they say, the most important thing in a political candidate is "likability." Kennedy was likable, Nixon was not.

Guess what kind of voter thinks that likability is important.

Or let's get back to my pal Nazi Carl Schmitt who says that politics about the friend / enemy distinction. But I prefer Curtis Yarvin who makes it real simple and says: "There is no politics without an enemy."

See, in my belief system women don't have "enemies;" they only have women that they don't talk to, of whom they have said "I can't believe she said that."

Put it another way: in the Carl Schmitt friend / enemy distinction the point about the enemy is the possibility of "conflict," or violence, or killing. In the "conflicts" that women have the most extreme result is really no more than "never talking to her again." Obviously, in the male case, fisticuffs, or worse, is always a possibility. Anyway, in the US, male murder offenders outnumbered female offenders by about 7 to 1.  And if you factor in that blacks are 55 percent of murder offenders, then how many white women murderers does that leave you?

What I mean is that, if politics is about the enemy, and for white women the enemy is almost certainly no more than that woman down the street that she is not talking to, then politics is really a guy thing. Because the enemy is almost certainly male, and only the guys are going to put it to a fight.

That's why women hate the mean tweets.

Mean tweets are a part of the male Culture of Insult, which we may consider a polite form of dueling, or a civilized form of conflict. We modern men trade insults instead of fists. It's a guy thing. But for women mean tweets don't make sense: "I can't believe he would tweet that."

When women don't like something they complain; when men don't like something they trade insults: thus the women's Culture of Complaint and the men's Culture of Insult.

But when prices are spiraling into the stratosphere and grocery-store shelves are empty, and little Susie is getting attacked in the school bathroom, that's different, because all of a sudden the protected world in which a woman can go about her vital day-to-day business is no longer protected.

I say that "women expect to be protected" and when they discover that the current protector isn't protecting them, then they go get another protector. So if the gubmint isn't providing a safe neighborhood and a functioning economy, and safe schools for little Susie, then women start talking to the neighbor women and pretty soon they all come to the conclusion that they are all going to vote for the other guy.

But it's worse than that.

I say there is no need for politics, because there really isn't an "enemy" any more, some Viking band that will sail up the river and kill all the men and take all the grain -- and the silver from the church -- and sell the women into slavery at the main European slave market in Dublin. If you, the Russkies, loot the factories in eastern Germany and take all the machines back to Russia what good does it do you? The Soviet Union still collapses 45 years later.

What? No enemies? No need for politics? Tell me it ain't so!

That's why our liberal friends, who believe in politics like a religion, have to conjure up fake enemies, like the "armed insurrectionists" of January 6, and the violent extremists that are upsetting education bureaucrats at school-board meetings, and the white oppressors that are systematically oppressing oppressed peoples despite the best efforts of the allies. And that is to say nothing of "climate deniers," the foul enemy that is preventing noble ecological heroes from tackling climate change.

But here's the problem. We men, we few, we band of brothers, are programmed to be ready at a moment's notice to jump up and fight the foe. But if there isn't any foe, then what do we do?

The answer is simple. We have to fake it. If you are a liberal you conjure up fake political enemies and mount on your charger and set your wokey lance and charge the enemy oppressor. For everybody else you become a road warrior and battle the other road warriors for market share. Road warriors are guys that create products and services; liberal social justice warriors just divide everyone into battling tribes.

For women? They go to college and decide they want to get into "activism." So they get a job in HR and start forcing CRT on the employees and the kiddies.

This is not that hard.

How Bad Could It Get?

Never mind about who wins the Virginia governor's race today, or CRT in schools. What I want to know, as an old geezer that has to make his RMDs every year, is this.

How much money should I take our of my ETFs to make sure I don't have to sell in a downturn to make my RMD?

Because for an old geezer the worst thing in the world is having to sell equities at the bottom of a bear market.

Here's my point. The result of the disastrous COVID shutdowns and Biden administration money machine is that we are going to have a nasty reckoning, at some point. But how nasty, and when, and for how long?

So I took a look at the Dow Jones history for the last century. Do you know what the worst bear market was? OK, We all know it has to be the great crash from 1929-32. But, as I look at it, the worst period seems to be the bear market from 1966 to 1982. In January 1966 the Dow was at about 8,500. In July 1982 the Dow bottomed out at about 2,275. Take a look.

Let's see, that's a decline of about 73 percent in 17 years. And that doesn't include the effect of inflation, which, you may not remember, reached 10 percent a year in the late 1970s. However, the S&P 500 index was basically flat during that period, from about 100 in March 1966 to 105 in March 1982.

Now, of course, the period from 1965 to 1980 was a period of multiple stupidities, from the Great Society social programs that cranked up gubmint spending to the Vietnam war that cranked up gubmint spending to the wage and price controls of 1971 when President Nixon, the Republican took the US dollar off the gold standard and instituted a wage-price freeze. Then we had the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 that quadrupled the price of Middle East oil and encouraged the government to impose price controls on oil. Then we had the recession of 1974. Then we had the Carter stagflation of 1977-80. President Reagan finally abolished price controls on oil and gasoline in 1981.

Do you see what the period of 1965 to 82 was all about? It was all about politicians being politicians and doing stupid things in response to the effects of their stupid policies. And this went on from the glorious dawn of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in 1965 to Richard Nixon's 1971 ploy to fix the economy in neutral until after the 1972 election to Carter's Keynesian apocalypse in 1977-80.

It took a really dumb B-movie actor to put a stop to it all, and that took a nasty recession that resulted in a 26 member GOP loss in the 1982 midterms.

We are doing the same thing now with Biden's absurd continuation of free money in the COVID crisis to the ridiculous super-expansion of the welfare state with the Build Back Better or "social infrastructure" bill.

You know what? There is bound to be a really nasty market crash / inflation / recession / who-knows-what in the next few years. And the glorious crusade to end global warming as we know it won't help.

(That's why I think that the Dems were fools to jink the 2020 election. Much better to have let Trump deal with the aftermath of Money Printer Go Brrrr. And take the blame.)

But what's a geezer to do to avoid getting demolished in the undertow?

I wonder if all the nice suburban moms that really didn't like Trump's mean tweets will soon be calling for a "strong leader" to protect them from the Biden disaster.

The Four Stages of Women in Modernity

So. Whither women now? Mary Harrington at UnHerd proposes a four-chapter story of women in the last couple of centuries, because now "The sexual revolution has killed feminism."

Chapter One is women on the farm at the beginning of the 19th century.

The typical American matron was a disciplined, skilled, devout individual who worked alongside her husband in a productive household... The patriarchal legal system of ‘coverture’, which subsumed her legal personhood and property into that of her husband, rendered her technically a subordinate class of citizen. It also served to shield her from market pressures.

Chapter Two is women in the industrial city. 

In the new private household, the bourgeois woman was more economically dependent than her agrarian grandmother. Her main activities were the education of children, the management of servants and the consumption of goods produced elsewhere. She may have been more materially comfortable. But this woman had in many respects less agency than her foremothers.

But was this new situation a shelter from the competitive frenzy in the industrial city or a monstrous and patriarchal injustice? Enter the first stage of feminism demanding equal property rights and right to vote.

Chapter Three is post World War II.

Labour-saving devices and booming consumerism have shifted society once again... And for bourgeois twentieth-century housewives, labour-saving devices combined with an increasingly atomised, individualistic social world to trigger a renewed search for agency, this time within the workplace.

Chapter Four is the Sexual Revolution, that imposed "a liberal male-centric understanding of what a person is: a radically separate individual... [and imposed] the right of atomised individuals to exert absolute mastery over their bodies."

For women to be human on this model, we must have total ownership over all these aspects of our bodies that differ from those of males. Even a conflict between total autonomy and an unborn human life must be resolved for autonomy.

But, she says, "It’s a worldview that believes human freedom necessitates radical unmooring from the givens of our bodies."

So now what? Back to the Future.

What we need to face this challenge is not more freedom. It’s more and better obligations...

To respond, first and foremost we must stop treating the question of family as a women’s issue. It’s a human one. And we need to accept that men and women are equal in dignity and personhood but different in physiology. 

Well, yes. And also different in psychology. In that men are fighters and women are nurturers; that men must go out and provide while women are dealing with the disability of childbearing and the dependent years of children. And the need for children to grow up with a mother and a father, their mother and their father.

And so on.

Which means that all the conceits and the fantasies of the last century or so are heading for the wood-chipper. Item One would be that there is no such thing as "The Independent Woman" of Simone de Beauvoir. Or, for that matter the free-ranging male taking his pleasures where he may.

Because underneath all the sound and fury of patriarchs and freedom from unwanted pregnancy and oppressive sexual mores there is the simple fact of human existence. Like all living things, the only really important thing is to have children and grow them to maturity.

Everything else is just fantasy.

And, by the way, there are also the tens of millions of women who are not in the educated gentry class and whose lives have been wrecked by the fashions and the fads of gentry women and gentry men.

But that is another story.