There's almost no better measure of a society's freedom and liberty than how it treats its women.
True, but it can be broadened usefully: The measure of a society's stature as a civilization is how its members behave toward those weaker than they.
Consider how "lesser breeds without the law" (Kipling) treat their weaker members. Women are actually near the top of that heap, though the status does them little good. By contrast, America has laws -- admittedly, silly and unConstitutional ones -- that mandate provisions for the handicapped in our workplaces and public gathering spots. More, and more critically, private persons in the main make accommodations for the less fortunate on their own initiative.
One of the questions that's occupied your Curmudgeon these past two days was whether Americans would rally to the aid of the devastated Gulf Coast as we did to the areas ravaged by the Christmas Tsunami. It struck him that there was a real chance that we'd say, "Let Washington take care of it. That's what we pay our taxes for." Happily, that attitude has not materialized -- or if it has, it's too bashful to show itself.
Which is a big part of why your Curmudgeon loves his country.
The Curmudgeon Emeritus: Fran's acerbic, irascible alter ego, to whom most of his tirades are attributed.
The Co-Conspirators: Your Curmudgeon's esteemed co-contributors (see the left sidebar).
The C.S.O.: The Curmudgeon's Significant Other, a.k.a. his wife Beth.
The Place of Little Appreciation: Where your Curmudgeon earns his daily bread and struggles to afford the C.S.O's shoe addiction.
The Fortress of Crankitude: Your Curmudgeon's Long Island home, from which he refuses to budge even though it perpetually threatens to collapse around him.
The Menagerie: Keiko (Chow Chow)
Sable (Border Collie)
Electra (Shorthair)
Orestes (Shorthair)
April (Shorthair)
Uriel the Great (Shorthair)
Irving the Creamsicle a.k.a. Creamy (Shorthair)
Gentle Reader: That's you, fuzzface. Look awake when your Curmudgeon is talking to you!
The Internet Commentariat: We who labor, mostly unpaid and uncelebrated, to vent our frustrations (and, hopefully, yours, Gentle Reader) with Things As They Are.
The Punditocracy: Gasbags who recline on silken couches, eating peeled grapes and being fanned by pretty slave girls, and emit bilious nostrums about politics, culture, and society for which they are, astonishingly, paid.
The Old Media: The enemies of all that is right, true, and beautiful, i.e., they who pay the Punditocracy (and the pretty slave girls). (What, you think the lasses would fan those creeps for nothing?)
