Dear those who condescend to follow my humble little blog,

Being somewhat shameless and not always knowing my place (or better), a few years ago I chose to put my oar in the water and speak publicly on what I consider to be the stupidest idea ever hatched, namely, institutionalising women in combat. The result was my little book Women in Combat: Feminism Goes To War. I’ve added the link to it below.

As I like to say, my little tome (or screed) has had an impact on the debate equivalent to that of a lone seagull’s feather falling from 1,000 feet and crashing into the ocean.

Oh well. When I stand before the pearly gates I’ll at least be able to say that I didn’t hide my lamp under a bushel, dim though it may have been.

What follows is Chapter 9 which is in the centre of the book and may be considered its climax and summary. I offer it here to you ’cause you’re special.

Have a good one!

M.C. Atkins

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Women in Combat: Feminism Goes To War

CHAPTER 9

HUMAN DUALITY: HOW THE BAD IDEA THAT IS FEMINISM IS SPAWNED BY OUR UNHEALTHY-NATURE

Yes, the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution have had a profound and unprecedented impact on the way we live and on the home in particular, but what they haven’t done is change human nature. We humans have one and it cannot be escaped. Yes, it is clearly in man’s nature to produce, build, and protect; and yes, it is a woman’s nature to make a home for a man, herself, and their offspring. Together they make the natural-rational-family, which is the ideal.

But if this division of labor is natural, then why is it that throughout history it has so often failed to achieve the ideal? Indeed since the beginning of time the reality has been less than ideal and the result has always been homes and people ranging from the quirky to the hopelessly dysfunctional.

In a nutshell the reason is because life is full of contingencies and man is imperfect.

* * *

Men and women will forever be subject to accidents and events beyond their control that impede their ability to perform their natural roles of husband-father and wife-mother.

Sometimes we fail to fulfill our nature because we are simply not intellectually or physically up to the challenge that life has dealt us, or that we have dealt ourselves because of foolish decisions or honest mistakes.

Troubles and calamities are the nature of things in human life. Nature, accidents, events beyond our control, folly, and weakness will forever leave men and women sitting on the edge of their beds weeping in their hands.

As a result of life’s troubles and calamities we all suffer pain, and sometimes this pain translates into what we call baggage or dysfunction, that state of mind that impedes contentment or that inclines us to behave in such a way that needlessly injures others or our own best interest.

Troubles and calamities beget dysfunction, which in turn begets more troubles and calamities—a  cycle that is self-perpetuating from generation to generation.

As an extreme example, consider the civil war that has been raging in Syria. By death and severe wounds, that war has prevented untold numbers of Syrian men and women from performing their roles as husbands and fathers and wives and mothers. The rest have been marked to one degree or another and many have been deeply scarred or broken. This latter group will for the remainder of their lives (to one degree or another) wound everyone they are ever close to, especially their own children.

Troubles, the pain they cause, and the baggage caused by the pain are all unavoidable. It’s part of life. By wisdom, will, and strength (or by God’s grace if you believe in Him) all we can hope to do is minimize them until such time as we cross the Jordan, the Styx, or just rot.

However, there is one cause of trouble and pain that dwarfs all the others combined in the amount of pain caused. I speak of that which inclines us to behave in a way which pleases or benefits us but hurts our own selves or others unnecessarily. It is that aspect of our nature that is most like that of animals. It is the fount of weakness, thoughtlessness, sloth, neglect, lies, theft, meanness, hate, vengeance, and cruelty. It is what we recognize as evil and has been aptly called the flesh, always and forever the greatest source of human misery. It is an inescapable inheritance of the first humans, and has always produced most of the troubles and calamities that have befallen mankind and thus most of the dysfunctions that we bear and in turn pass on to our children, even as they were passed on to us.

I will call this fleshly nature which inclines us to do that which is desirable but unwise or unprofitable our unhealthy-nature and contrast it with our healthy-nature. I say nature because they are both equally parts of our human nature which we can no more change or escape than the birds can theirs.

These two natures, equally human, wage relentless war on each other, and this conflict is the principal source of the history of man. After all, remove hate and love, or pride and humility, or gluttony and temperance, or sloth and industry from our nature and history would be considerably less interesting.

In a nutshell, our healthy-nature produces strength; our unhealthy-nature produces weakness.

Our healthy-nature inclines us to do that which is wise, which in turn yields the best fruit. I will declare this best fruit to be peace of mind, or the well-being and survival of our children and our people. It produces quality of life.

It is our healthy-nature that inclines us to love and sacrifice for others and to enjoy that love and sacrifice returned in kind. This love that we share is imitated by those that receive it (just as dysfunction is) and is passed on to others, binding us, making us stronger together.

It is our healthy-nature that inclines us to do that work that strengthens our mind and body, satisfies the soul, and that sustains ourselves, our families, and our people.

It is our healthy-nature that at all times makes war on our unhealthy-nature by inclining us to do that which we do not want to do but which benefits us or our fellow man, and inclines us not to do that which we want to do but which would be injurious to ourselves or our fellow man.

Monogamy vs. promiscuity is a prime example of this conflict.

Man thinks about woman a lot and pretty much sizes up every woman that comes into view. It’s not that he wants every woman that he sees or that there is a latent porn director in every man, but the idea of sex does flit across the mind of even the most chaste and self-disciplined of men.

So does this make men like the bull in the pasture who is ready to go in a moment’s notice as soon as any heifer gives the signal? Not quite, because there is another side to man’s human nature that wants something every bit as much as he wants sex. That thing is a home that only a woman can make.  That woman is called wife.

Man cannot have both, because woman has her own nature. She is not nearly so tempted by her unhealthy-nature to take multiple mates, but is rather inclined by her healthy-nature to take one and then become intensely devoted to him in thought and deed. She is further inclined to give him the home and adoration that he craves. However, by her nature she is fiercely jealous and will not share her mate with any other woman, and should her man spread his affections elsewhere he can wound her so deeply that she will be unable to adore him as he would wish. While she may do his laundry and fry his eggs, her heart will not be in it—without which his home is just a box and she a maid.

Man is just as inclined to mate for life as he is to rut like a stag. Do we say, then, that he is promiscuous or monogamous by nature?

Well, he is both. His healthy-nature inclines him towards monogamy, his unhealthy-nature towards promiscuity, and we know which nature is healthy and which is not by their fruit.

Monogamy contributes mightily to the contentment and security of the wife, who in turn contributes mightily to the serenity and contentment of the home, which contributes mightily to the well-being of the husband and the children. As they say, happy wife, happy life! A contented wife and a stable home support him in his labors and thus serve his family’s prosperity. Furthermore, lifetime monogamy avoids one of the greatest destroyers of wealth: divorce. Her monogamy means that her children are his, which is by nature of great importance to man. His concern about his paternity inclines him to be, unlike the bull in the pasture, more responsible for his own. Monogamy means that children are raised by both of their biological parents, which is best for them, exceptions notwithstanding. Monogamous couples don’t contract STDs or produce unwanted children who themselves are laden with the dysfunctions associated with not being raised by one’s biological parents.

But promiscuity simply leads to all manner of troubles, calamities, hurt, baggage, and dysfunction.

Both monogamy and promiscuity are natural, but one leads to the good, and the other to the bad.

Work or restraint are the hallmarks of our healthy-nature, and satisfaction and increase is its fruit. Ease or pleasure are the hallmarks of our unhealthy-nature, and tears and decay is its fruit. Just compare the hardworking, active man who eats good food and enjoys his pleasures in moderation to the video-game-warrior-porn-addict who works only enough to support his pleasures and lives on root beer floats, pizza, and potato chips.

How we answer the call of these two natures dramatically impacts our own peace of mind and physical health as well as those whom we influence, and thus the survivability and prosperity of ourselves and our offspring.

And also our people.

The strengths and dysfunctions that are bequeathed to us by those who raise us, and which we pass on to our children and others that we come into contact with, can become so widespread amongst a people that they can become their cultural markers. In the South we find good examples of this. Southerners are well known for being friendly and quick to forgive, but it has also been said that they don’t always tell you what they are really thinking and hold silent grudges. I believe there is truth in these stereotypes. If true, it is because of the timeless conflict of the two natures of the first humans, but more specifically because of the immediate ancestors of Southerners that came here to the Land of Cotton (a.k.a. Dixie or God’s Country), the centuries that their descendents have mingled together, their shared experiences, and now memories of that time. Just as the Mexican has emerged in Mexico since 1521, the Southerner has emerged in the South since 1607.

Just like individuals, entire peoples can be shaped by the movements and great events of their times that are outside their collective control. Ideas, war, famine, and pestilence will alter their character as well as good or terrible leaders who lead them through the shoals or dash them against the rocks.

The upheavals of great events can strengthen peoples, but they can also weaken, bend or break them. Syrians may be living through such a period now. Mexicans did between 1910 and 1920, and Southerners between 1861 and 1876. The list could go on and on and on.

It does not matter that the mass of these peoples may have been living quiet, peaceful lives, filled with work and bridled by self-restraint. Living well can offer little protection when the interests of entire peoples clash or when a rat scurries off a Venetian galley carrying a plague-infested flea that will kill upwards of half the population of Europe.

Some bullets can’t be dodged.

But others are self-inflicted, the result of a people embracing a bad idea or making a bad decision, only to be exposed as such in hindsight and sometimes by historians performing post mortems.

Regardless, whether a people are swept up in events beyond their control or whether they embrace a bad idea, sometimes the outcome is just more than they can bear and they are never the same, and just as individuals, will bear scars for generations in the form of collective quirks, baggage, and dysfunctions.

The American people are not immune to this and neither is this age.

But before we can assess the strengths and weaknesses of the American people it must be noted that ours is not a monolithic culture, not in the way the Polish or Japanese cultures are with their homogenous peoples still occupying the same land their ancestors occupied in prehistoric times and still speaking the same language. No, the American people are too young, have been drawn from too many disparate peoples, and occupy too large a space for us to point to a single American type.

So what do we have in common that will permit us to even refer to an American people or an American culture? The US is a nation encompassing half the North American continent, and includes a far flung arctic state and an even farther flung Pacific island state. Given such expanse and diversity the only commonalities that Americans share are the English language, a legal system, and a general respect for freedom and equality, though there is little agreement on the nature of these last two points.

While it is true that all people are born equal in the sight of God (if you believe in Him), and while it may be true that they should be equal in the eyes of the law, men are from birth manifestly not equal (or the same, if you prefer) and these inequalities or differences only increase over time. We can hardly be born above or below our parents, and we will be poured into the mold that is our family and the people of which that family is a part and be shaped by the times and place in which we grow up. All of this produces endless inequality. Not only are we not the same, some men are decidedly better than others, and this difference is directly proportional to the degree in which they, their parents, and their people have embraced their healthy-nature vs. their unhealthy-nature, or good ideas vs. bad ideas.

Just as some men are better than others, some peoples, or the sub-peoples or sub-cultures that make up a greater people, are better than others and for the same reason. Consider the subcultures of collegiate wrestling and that of the college party culture. College wrestlers must embrace the physical and mental discipline of their healthy-natures in order to succeed on the mat. The result is not just a young man in superb physical condition but one who also possesses a high degree of confidence in himself. He possesses the ability to do the hard thing and the courage to face the dangerous thing, both attributes that will serve him for the remainder of his life, no matter what may ambush him along the way.

But the young man that gives way to his unhealthy-nature and spends four years buzzed, drunk, and hammered, hoot’n and holler’n with his boon companions, chasing drunk college girls and a 2.5 GPA only weakens his body and mind, which limits the paths he may choose and makes every path harder, and decreases his chances of surviving when the zombies come. And in one form or another the zombies always come.

The culture of collegiate wrestling is simply better than that of the collegiate party culture. By their fruits ye shall know them.

Likewise we know the strengths and weaknesses of our American culture by its fruit and the fruit of its many peoples and subcultures. Its strengths we will readily acknowledge, but its weaknesses we are not so quick to concede. But who will deny that American culture is flawed or that it has produced some dysfunction?

Of course it is and of course it has! And I posit that when historians look back upon contemporary American culture from a dispassionate vantage point there will be general agreement that one of the greatest cultural markers of our age and the greatest producer of dysfunction in it shall have been the manifest breakdown of the natural-rational-family.

* * *

We humans possess a healthy-nature, and this nature inclines us to produce instinctively and forever the natural-rational-family. Inasmuch as any ideal can be reduced to a formula, I posit as sovereign truth and offer no evidence beyond what common sense observation can provide, that the ideal family, born of our healthy-nature, consists of:

• A masculine man and a feminine woman united for life,
• in mutual respect,
• in a sexually exclusive union,
• the man leading,
• the woman following,
• the woman providing them and their offspring a home,
• the man protecting and providing for them and their home,
• both committed to the well-being and development of their children,
• both emotionally and physically affectionate towards each other and their children.

This family is most likely to produce the well being and survival of children and by extension the people. This family is the greenhouse that is most likely to produce the young man or woman that will withstand the vagaries of life, and make, support, and protect what is good, passing on the strengths of the people to the next generation. It is least likely to produce the young man or woman that is laden with baggage or dysfunctions.

That this ideal is rarely achieved does not justify our chucking it out the window. It is in fact broadly achieved by many, and many more over the course of a lifetime will make progress towards it. Indeed, the strength of any given people is a product of the degree to which its constituent families are able to embrace the ideal of the natural-rational-ramily. The further removed a people’s families are from this ideal, the weaker the people.

Just imagine the kind of men and women that would be produced by the anti-ideal family. This anti-ideal family is as rare as the ideal family, but semi-dysfunctional and dysfunctional families are not uncommon in any people or any age and they have always been and will forever be the principal fount of emotional pain, baggage, dysfunction, sexual deviancy, and criminality.

But what is remarkable in this era is the number of dysfunctional and semi-dysfunctional Americans that have been created since World War II and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s in particular—remarkable, because this has been a period of extraordinary peace, prosperity and so-called Progress. Shouldn’t this have created a more balanced and contented American on average? But instead we are seeing dysfunctional Americans on a scale that one would expect to find only in times of great loss of life such as war, famine, or pestilence.

This has come about not because we have been swept up in events beyond our control, but because We the People have embraced bad ideas, namely elevating Freedom and Equality to sovereign status, making them the foundation upon which we have ordered American society rather than important and honored elements of it. As a consequence we have embraced the worst conceivable bad idea: Feminism.

The goal of Feminism was never limited to gaining for woman political power, equality before the law, protection against abusive husbands, or equal pay for equal work, but rather the complete elimination of all distinctions between man and woman, at any cost, in order to achieve for woman Freedom from and Equality with man. Indeed to make them not just equal but the same.

Feminism would have us believe that man and woman are the same or ought to be the same. That their manifest behavioral differences are cultural constructions supported by millennia of tradition, rather than born of our DNA, or that their physical differences should be of no consequence or be made of no consequence.

It would furthermore see woman liberated from man.

Feminism does not view man as a half with whom woman is to be reconciled in order to make a complete, purposeful whole, but rather as the enemy to be defeated, or from whom she must be liberated.

By means of a Progressive propaganda (print, radio, cinema, television, and now the Internet) and educational establishment Feminism has been able, because of the very peace and prosperity that resulted from our victory in the Second World War, to preach that human nature is not what it appears to be and ask heretofore unaskable questions. Feminism has successfully tempted both man and woman to pursue their unhealthy-natures by seeking that which they have alike wanted since the beginning of time—namely, to have their own way.

But all of this pretending that we can be something we cannot be has only created an illusion that hides the deep cultural rot that the pretending itself has produced, rot that is even now drawing to a close this prosperous age that allowed us to do the pretending in the first place.

By its fruit we may know Feminism.

THE FRUIT OF FEMINISM

What the preaching of Feminism has done is to produce on a massive scale generations of confused and ill-prepared boys and girls that have grown up to become confused and ill-prepared adults, ignorant of their fundamental natures as man and woman and thus incapable of producing sound families.

WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES

The union between man and woman is universal, timeless, and fruitful because it is born of our human nature. This union is not always blissful, which is equally born of our nature. However, this natural conflict can result in a much stronger union that is better able to perform its mission. Feminism, by stoking woman’s timeless and understandable grievances against man, by inflaming her natural envy at the power and status of man in the natural order of things, and by magnifying womankind’s natural sense of solidarity, has started and sustained in this prosperous and peaceful age a war between the sexes that has produced a profound, enduring, and highly destructive disharmony between American men and women. 

DIVORCE AND ILLEGITIMACY

Healthy cultures regulate procreation because it is a sovereign truth that children need to be raised by both of their biological parents who themselves dwell together in some degree of mutual respect. If you can count the stars you can count the anecdotes in human literature and our own lives that support this obvious conclusion. Children that are not raised by both of their parents, regardless of the circumstances, are injured to one degree or the other. Yet in the best of times and healthiest of cultures fathers and mother die young, marriages fail, and few marriages are perfect. But by openly encouraging women to put their own happiness first and championing divorce Feminism has exploded the number of broken homes, and these broken homes have produced a tidal wave of injured, semi-dysfunctional, and broken people. Likewise Sexual Liberation. Sexual passion is one of the fundamental characteristics of our kind and has always and will forever impact our choices and be a primary fount of both fruitfulness and contention. But Feminism’s free sex bargain with man in exchange for equality in every sphere, and Sexual Liberation’s destruction since the 1960’s of common sense restrictions on this most powerful of impulses, has produced in the wake of our divorce culture the second great cultural marker of this age. Namely, hordes of illegitimate and often unwanted children (who slipped through the abortion dragnet). Like children from broken homes, unwanted children are a new American type—damaged kids that have had to be rescued by aunts, uncles, grandparents, adoptive parents, foster parents, and the US taxpayer. Some are repaired. All too many are not.

SEXUAL LIBERATION AND CHASTITY

Sexual self restraint is critical for the stability and security of any people. Chastity is a sovereign virtue. Its fruit is simply good. Sexual Liberation’s war on it may have produced some pleasure, but its primary fruit has been far more emotionally bent, warped, or broken men and women than there otherwise would have been. Due to sexual excess, more Americans are incapable of forming lasting marriages or finding contentment within marriage because they have made themselves incapable of satisfying or being satisfied. Our openly promiscuous culture has been especially damaging to girls because of their uniquely feminine nature in which chastity is a natural fount of honor and self-esteem. Sexual Liberation hasn’t led to a more fulfilled American woman or made her equal with man. It has, however, made the self-loathing American woman a stereotype.

Man has fared no better for it is woman’s inclination to chastity born of her healthy-nature that in a healthy society acts as a natural break on his inclination, born of his unhealthy-nature, to copulate like a feral hog. 

Man and woman were not designed (or suited by Accident if you prefer) to be promiscuous. It is very harmful for both of them and not just because of STDs.

ABORTION

In order to sustain Sexual Liberation as a practical reality, Feminism has encouraged women to do that which is most contrary to their nature, i.e., to destroy their own offspring. How much anecdotal evidence do we need to finally believe that abortion is profoundly harmful to women and that its occurrence on such a massive scale has not poisoned our culture?

MASCULINITY AND FATHERHOOD

Masculine, loving, and present fathers are needed in order to produce a fruitful family. To remove them is to remove the beef from the beef stew. Feminism’s war on the father as the head of the family and on masculinity in particular has resulted in a war on little boys that has produced generations of confused, ignorant, weak, effeminate, frustrated, discombobulated, or unfulfilled American men. These men are a fount of dysfunction who struggle and often fail to be the fathers their children need or good husbands to their equally dysfunctional wives.

This war on little boys has also all too often produced hateful, violent, or unhinged men. Our prisons are full of them.

FEMININITY, WIVES, MOTHERS, HOME

Woman’s own healthy-nature inclines her, and the natural world demands, that she put the needs of her husband and children first, just as man’s healthy-nature inclines him, and nature requires him, to put the needs of his wife and children first. Sacrifice is at the heart of human survival and progress, and the mutual self-sacrifice of the husband and wife is its first and most fundamental form. This self-sacrificing wife and mother is a principle fount of human good, the foundation of man’s progress, and the central pillar of his works. 

Feminism rejects this. Instead via propaganda and miseducation it has poisoned generations of American girls, making armies of masculinized, self-centered, or bitter women unwilling to submit to a husband or fully enjoy the home that they would make. Women unwilling to endure flawed husbands or forgive their mistakes, or suffer through the rough patches inherent in marriage or the midlife crises common to both men and women. It has caused women to despise making a home, the principal product of a woman’s life and the greenhouse and shelter of us all. Feminism has despised the femininity that man so craves and needs, and has ridiculed that feminine sweetness and gentleness which are the wings under which a woman’s children grow up to be strong, emotionally stable, and useful to their people. This woman has been the exception in film for two generations. The masculinized, sexualized, or charmless has been ubiquitous.

DRUGS AND PORNOGRAPHY

All ages produce problems that must be contended with. Chemical abuse and fornication are two such timeless problems, since man would rather not go through life sober all the time and will get his jollies where and when he can. However, the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the globalization of the marketplace have radically increased the potency and variety of narcotics. Via photography the marketplace has radically increased the availability of pornography and, since the advent of the Internet, everything that man or woman can imagine that might awaken dormant desire, from the titillating to the depraved, is now available to everyone, and is more than ever tempting and inflaming the passions.

There is general agreement in this country among Conservatives, Progressives, and users alike that the abuse of narcotics is the source of all manner of social ills and health problems. There is not so much agreement regarding pornography, though it is obvious enough that unrestrained sexual activity is emotionally as well as physically unhealthy. However, in the case of internet pornography there is now an ocean of anecdotal evidence that cries to heaven that it can stunt, warp, and bend sexual desire and seriously impede one’s ability to be sexually satisfied within the bonds of marriage. 

The social ills caused by these two problems today are manifest, but they have been made vastly worse than they otherwise would have been because rootless, dysfunctional, and broken men and women are far more susceptible to the temptation of easy pleasures than are the rooted and emotionally sound. Feminism must bear the lion’s share of the blame for this because it is the single greatest fount of dysfunctional men and women in America today because of its war on human nature and thus the natural-rational-family.

The dysfunction produced as a result of Feminism’s war on human nature has made the contemporary problems of narcotic abuse and pornography vastly worst than they would have otherwise been.

THE WELFARE STATE

Self-sufficiency is good and necessary as is the lending of mutual aide. A healthy people do indeed take care of their own that are in need. But Feminism has been a chief supporter of the modern welfare state not so it could help the down and out, but rather that it might liberate woman from her material dependence upon a husband. The intended consequence has been fewer life-time marriages. The unintended consequence has been the cultivation of mass sloth and corruption, and the collapse of the work ethic of the uneducated, unskilled laborer, who robbed of the virtues born of work has become morally impoverished and thus incapable of rising. 

Feminism’s support of the modern welfare state has helped produce a new fruitless American slave.

* * *

The fruit of Feminism has been confusion, dysfunction, and misery on a an epic scale that can hardly be exaggerated. We see it all around us everyday as well as in the mirror. In its determination to eliminate the distinctions between man and woman, and to liberate them from their dependence upon each other, Feminism has made naturally occurring and inevitable problems vastly worse than they would have been otherwise. Feminism has pounded the square peg into the round hole, damaged both, and declared victory. Not satisfied with having wrecked the American family and thus American culture with its bad ideas, Feminism is now wrecking the United States military.