Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Blogging It Forward: Ladies’ Day
There's been some rumbling on the Web lately about under-representation of female bloggers among the top 100 or 1000. Never let it be said that your Curmudgeon wouldn't leap to the promotion of women's worthy contributions to the Internet Commentariat at such a time.
Careful, now. He didn't say he would leap thus; he just doesn't want it said that he wouldn't. But he will anyway, being the all-around nice chap he is.
At the top of today's hit parade is Kat of The Middle Ground. Kat isn't an every-day poster, but her pieces are always substantive and well written. She mixes personal reflections with public policy in about equal measure, making hers one of the more eclectic sites in the Blogosphere. When she gets her teeth into a subject, the reader has to be prepared for a thorough exposition; hers is not a site for the sound-bite aficionado.
Next we have Fausta Wertz of The Bad Hair Blog. Fausta distributes her attention about equally between matters on the national radar and subjects of interest specifically to her home state of New Jersey. Like Kat, she writes at length, and very well. She also posts quite frequently, making Bad Hair Blog a treat for the voracious reader.
Third is one of your Curmudgeon's favorites: Heather, the Lil Cup of Love. Heather is just plain charming. Her site is more personally and domestically oriented than the other two, but nevertheless will be of interest to many, owing to Heather's striking way with words and her fund of experiences as a military wife. Her descriptions of her family's travails as she and her husband, a recently retired Marine, pursue "civilianization," have always held your Curmudgeon spellbound.
Another military wife, Sarah of Trying To Grok, has her own fund of stories to tell. Sarah's husband is still on active duty, though he's just recently returned to her side from an extended deployment in the Middle East. Sarah's charm is much like Heather's, as is the balance she maintains between general commentary and personal vignettes. Your Curmudgeon would encourage her to post more, if she could.
Last but not least is Deb Sochor, the True Blue Gal. Deb and her husband Guy of Snugg Harbor are one of a few fine husband-and-wife blogging couples. Though they maintain separate sites, they frequently cross-fertilize and reference one another, which can make for amusing protracted exchanges. Like the other ladyblogs above, Deb's is a mix of the personal and the political -- and as with Sarah, your Curmudgeon would like to encourage her to post more.
Take it away, ladies.
The Backpedaling Has Begun
Apparently Red China expected to get away cleanly:
BEIJING — China said Tuesday that its new law authorizing military force against rival Taiwan had been misunderstood by the United States."They don't fully understand the significance of this law," Chinese Foreign Ministry (search) spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a regular briefing.
"We reiterate that this law is a law for peace," Liu said. "It's conducive for maintaining cross-straits relations and the stability of the Asia-Pacific region and the growth of relations between China, Europe, the United States and other countries."
"If they realize that, they will not have other opinions on such a law," he added.
Sorry, Mr. Forked-Tongued Communist Shill: America understands all too well. Your "law for peace" is an attempt to coerce a sovereign and quite satisfied state into passively submitting to annexation. You're attempting to win by threat what you're not yet able to take by force -- and never will be, if the United States Navy has anything to say about it.
Liu also said that while the cross-straits situation is of interest to many countries, Taiwan is "the internal affair of China."
If we weren't willing to allow Afghanistan and Iraq to stand on such a claim, what makes you think you'll get away with it? Possession of a few nukes? Have you ever heard of a country named Israel? You could have a nuclear power across the Formosa Strait from you in very short order.
Speaking of which, how are things going in your client state of North Korea? Planning on annexing that one any time soon?
Advancing Their Adversaries’ Cause
There's a reason California is known as the Land of Fruits and Nuts:
San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer ruled Monday that while withholding marriage licenses from gays and lesbians has been the status quo, it constitutes discrimination the state can no longer justify."The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional," Kramer wrote. "Simply put, same-sex marriage cannot be prohibited solely because California has always done so before."
[...snip...]
"Today's ruling is an important step toward a more fair and just California that rejects discrimination and affirms family values for all California families," San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said.
Your Curmudgeon remains baffled by the judicial acceptance of the notion that marriage is an individual right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Individual rights must logically be the property solitary individuals; they cannot require the cooperation of others as a condition of their existence. More, individual rights must be enforceable, at least in theory, by the claimant; what enforceability could a "right to marry" have that would leave it distinguishable from involuntary concubinage?
But leave that to the side. Marriage is a special term: a name given to a contract whose purpose is and has always been the protection of a vulnerable party and her even more vulnerable progeny from maltreatment or neglect by a stronger party. It lays obligations on the stronger party specifically to compensate for the asymmetry of the thing. But two persons of the same sex are presumed symmetrical in this regard. Neither can claim, ab initio, to be at risk of same possibilities for sexual exploitation and later neglect or abandonment that motivated the development of the legal marital contract.
Absent the passage of a Constitutional amendment federalizing the definition of the marriage contract, this will be the death knell of marriage. The institution that for six millennia has protected women and children from the vagaries of male sexual desire and the indifference of men toward their paternal obligations will have been destroyed. Stanley Kurtz has delineated the consequences, which are already visible in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. When (not "if") these consequences come to the United States, homosexuals, who've made such great strides toward general acceptance by normal persons, will be blamed. But the Defense of Marriage Amendment appears not to have sufficient support for its ratification.
To those persons of good will but little understanding, who think this is a trivial matter where no one will be harmed and homosexuals will simply gain access to a tradition of declining relevance: May you all be safely and cozily dead before the chickens come home to roost. That's not a malediction; it's only what your Curmudgeon wishes for himself.
