With Deepest Gratitude
Member Post
As someone whose marriage has gone over the edge, metaphorically speaking, and crawled its way back up, I believe I have some helps to offer for those in a similar struggle. By “over the edge,” I mean that we were separated for a year and a half as we painstakingly worked our way upward and […]
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Join Jim and Greg as they welcome Judge Cahill publicly rebuking Rep. Maxine Waters for demanding a guilty verdict and demanding more confrontation from demonstrators if they don’t get it. They also hammer CBS News for talking about where some of the jurors live as we wait for a verdict. And they cringe while discussing a legal effort to decriminalize incest in New York. Finally, they share their memories of former Vice President Walter Mondale, who died Monday at age 93.
The First Rule of Romance
Romance is the lover at play.
An acquaintance of mine told me how he had asked his live-in partner to marry him. He and his partner had lived together for several years. He had been married before and had grown children. The kitchen faucet started acting up, so she got under the sink and began working on it. He was watching her work and was moved by how much he loved this remarkable person.
Ayaan speaks with Dan Seligson about polygamy and the marriage market. They explore the question: does polygamy breed poverty or does poverty breed polygamy? Dan also explains where polygamy still exists, the chronic scarcity it creates, and the commodification of women.
Dan received his PhD in physics from Berkeley. From 1984 until 2001, he worked at Intel Corp. in Santa Clara and Jerusalem where he focused on manufacturing technology and machine learning. He has been an investor in, advisor to, and board member and founder of several genomics-related companies. He has been awarded 9 US patents.
The Four Marriage Questions
I remember growing up hearing about the “Birds and the Bees”. It didn’t seem to be something that my parents wanted to talk much about. In about the sixth grade, I wanted to be a Doctor and had several books on medicine and Anatomy. I think my mother thought I would learn what I needed […]
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We’re delighted to bring Scott Yenor to the show this week to discuss his important new book, The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies, which is being officially released tomorrow from Baylor University Press. Unlike many other fine books on the family today that rely chiefly on social science, Scott also brings his immense learning in political philosophy to bear on family questions, from Plato and Aristotle through to de Tocqueville—and even Russian novels.
Yenor takes us through a grand tour of the “rolling revolution” wrought by the ideologies of sexual liberation and unlimited individual autonomy over recent decades, which has led to, among other things, the degradation of love, and a civilization-threatening collapse in the birth rate. Scott has some thoughts on what policy makers can do to reinforce strong family life.
Our conversation ranges widely over the controversies Scott has had to weather on campus, and also how the left has attempted to purge him from Idaho’s State Advisory Commission on Civil Rights—an episode you can read about here. Also be sure to take in his essays at The American Mind, the new commentary website of the Claremont Institute. And there’s even something for college football fans in this episode!
I’m stealing these from Gary Chapman (the five love languages guy) and blogging about them for my own sake. I’m going through something right now, a struggle I always new was coming, and it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. Thankfully, due to God’s grace, I think I’ve been better prepared for […]
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G’day, mates! I just watched a fine video by John Anderson, a former deputy prime minister of Australia. Most of the video addresses issues in America. In this 12-minute video, Anderson reads an op-ed recently published in the Australian: Preview Open
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So, our friend Mark Regnerus has a new book out. You can find reviews of it here and even purchase it: https://www.amazon.com/Future-Christian-Marriage-Mark-Regnerus-ebook/product-reviews/B08DYCPLQK/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews Other friends of ours have asked for support in the form of reading reviews by Chris, AEH and Joel and marking them as helpful. Mark is a frequent target of the totalitarian […]
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A Cabbage Patch Guy in a World of Barbie and Kens
I was misled.
I grew up in the era of “Ozzie and Harriett” and “Leave It to Beaver.” In my formative years, I was taught that men grew up to be fathers and women grew up to be wives. Marriage was for life, except for that odd situation where a man abused a woman, or either party cheated. Sex was only proper when you loved someone. Somewhere in between first grade and high school, however, that changed. We had the Summer of Love starting in 1967, and the Vietnam War, and the integration of the public schools. Any one of those things would have been a social phenomenon, but all of them together at the same time truly upset the apple cart.
If I sound like a cranky get-your-kids-off-my-lawn old man, that’s not my intent. Integration was long overdue, and purchased in blood and toil. Women had been fighting for equal rights for decades and were not to be limited to one career choice as breeding stock. Allan Sherman explained in his book The Rape of the APE (American Puritan Ethic) that men and women had been having sex and not following the church rules for about 200 years. In fact, the myths that were sold by Ozzie Nelson and June Cleaver were already on their way out. Change is often painful, but stasis is more so. The Vietnam War put generations in conflict with each other, and it took until September 11, 2001, for that rift to finally heal with a united country. It’s taken less than 19 years for the rift to reappear.
One Man, One Woman
I am a traditionalist and I seem to find myself in a tiny minority. Sometimes it feels like a minority of one, though I know that there must be a few others who share my views.
There has been a tremendous Leftward shift in many public attitudes over the past 20 years or so, with homosexuality being one of the most notable changes. I have been shocked and mystified by this shift. Within my adult lifetime, we’ve gone from widespread condemnation of homosexuality itself to widespread condemnation of opposition to homosexuality. This seems to have happened even on the political Right, among people who consider themselves conservatives, including many of you, dear readers.
Last April, I published “Release the Kraken!” about how I got sucked into granting my wife permission to have our master bathroom remodeled. Here’s the post: http://ricochet.com/618062/archives/release-the-kraken-2/ Preview Open
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A Day of Great Social Import
Fourteen years ago today. It was a Sunday. A beautiful, young nurse became so fed up with the dating life that she let her father walk her down the aisle aboard the Tall Ship Silva in Halifax Harbour. There she stood, never looking more gorgeous in her flowing white wedding gown, in front of a socially awkward, unemployed former lawyer three years her senior. Ignoring her father’s offer to steal a lifeboat and bring her back to shore, she married him.
That loser found a job a few months after the wedding. It was a really bad job, terrible hours, little pay, soul-crushing work. But within weeks of starting, he got a slightly better job with a much better company. A couple of months later, he got a better job within the company and the news that the beautiful young nurse was now expecting a child. Two promotions followed in rapid succession and by the time that child was born (six weeks premature), that nurse’s husband had a job he could be proud of.
Long, long ago read my first Aubrey-Maturin novel. Then I read my second. Then I read the series. Then I did it again. And again. Time for another read. One thing the series did to me was to introduce me to Port wines. So I have tried a number. My first choice is Dows, second […]
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After a brief discussion of the media and the markets and convenient coronavirus excuses, we dive into Wednesday’s Three Martini Lunch. Join Jim and Greg as they are gratified to see convicted rapist and former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years in prison. They also discuss what this episode says about our justice system. They also have different reactions to South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn suggesting Joe Biden’s big wins on Tuesday suggest the Democratic National Committee should “shut this primary down” and “cancel the rest of these debates.” And they get a kick out of the writer for “The Atlantic” who feels betrayed because her husband voted for Bernie Sanders for strategic reasons in the California primary while she stuck with Elizabeth Warren.
Member Post
I recently realized that many people on Ricochet do not know the good news. The PIT, the irreverent, jovial, crude, erudite, mercurial center of Center-Right oddity is also probably the center of Ricochet dating. There. I said it. To date, I believe the PIT has scored three Ricochet marriages, perhaps more if I need to […]
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The Perils of Postmodern Love
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, perhaps the one holiday hated by everyone — the one day when all singles long to be coupled and all couples long to be single. With Valentine’s Day come obligations and expectations: Christmas, but without the music, gingerbread cookies, and living-room conifers. (“I bought her a box of chocolates last year — and a bottle of sauvignon the year before that. Hmm. What to get her? I guess a Trumpy Bear will have to do.”)
No doubt, the Internet will soon be awash in articles about the dating scene, which, like the weather, is something everybody complains about … but nobody does something about. It’s frankly a wonder that a problem so universally acknowledged should be in want of a solution. Yet here we are.
Why is it so hard to date in 2020? Why does every single person feel compelled to submit to the ongoing pain and humiliation of online dating? Why does my generation’s romantic pessimism make Greta Thunberg look like a climate optimist? The reasons are simple, really — (a) we’ve failed to develop the requisite social habits, (b) we’ve lost the institutions capable of guiding us toward marriage, and (c) we have standards.
