Once again, in response to my last post, John offered some very interesting comments. I encourage everyone to give it a read. Many thanks, John; your comments certainly help me focus my thoughts. I’ve added your web site to my list of Men’s Sites.
On many points I think we agree, however I disagree on some, and strongly disagree with what I infer is your solution. Where I think we most agree, although I don’t know that you see it, is in your argument that we should attack the cause of our current situation, i.e., politicization, not directly, but by attacking its cause, i.e., feminism. It’s mainly the tactic on which we disagree.
I agree with your comment that the real party in this conflict is the state. I agree because ultimately I think the general problem is that the relationship and the power balance between men and women has been fundamentally changed by the inclusion of the state. For example, marriage is now a three-way contract between men, women and the state. It is the alliance between the state and feminism that is our true enemy. Angry Harry
recently addressed this alliance.
With respect to your comments regarding politicization, I do agree that, “the law is itself a restrictive phenomenon upon freedom,” and so must be addressed. I do see the state as the ultimate enemy of freedom. Importantly, it is also the source of female power. I do indeed see the politicization of private matters, such as marriage, divorce, and children, as a crucial problem.
More broadly, I agree that the law’s “value begins and stops with that (a restrictive phenomenon upon freedom).” I do not, however, observe that the current law has limited itself to its value. It is true that this is the historically unique ideal upon which the United States was founded: the idea that rights are naturally inherent and so government power limited.(*) In this experiment, the government supposedly does not bestow rights. One can see clearly the seed of our problem in the arguments for and against the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. The danger of inclusion was the implication that the government was conferring limited rights (hence, the 9th Amendment). Our instant problem is chiefly that this danger has now been realized.
But our problem is not just politicization, but more fundamentally, a faction problem as discussed in Hamilton's Federalist No. 9 and Madison’s Federalist No. 10. The feminist faction is indeed females “united . . . by [a] common impulse of passion . . . adverse to the rights of other citizens [i.e., men], . . . and [the] aggregate interests of the community.”
More precisely, our problem is a perverse realization of the faction problem as expressed through the feminist-state alliance. This codependent power relationship between government and feminism is the root cause of politicization, and our real enemy. In this case, Madison’s solution, a large republic, has not served to temper the feminist faction problem. Instead the government has embraced and rather opportunistically enabled feminism. From this man’s viewpoint, the feminist faction has served as little more than a sanction of government oppression.
With the allocation of government authority to the feminist faction, effected through so-called public policies that conferred special rights to females, the federal government skillfully escaped its constitutional limitations. It became a government that bestows limited privileges on men and suppresses our natural rights. Females of course self-servingly wield that government authority over men. Moreover, females’ selfish use of special rights supports and strengthens the government beast. The allocation and execution of such power is just too tempting for females to resist, and too advantageous for the government to curtail.
It is a problem of increasing government power as facilitated by the feminist faction. The quasi-communist feminist faction, with a very specific strategy and by using well-defined wartime tactics, allied itself with the government. Feminist expansion became government expansion. Our government happily acceded to the feminist demands because it fed the government’s ever increasing, self-serving, appetite for expansion.
Feminists understood this.
But I don’t assess our situation as having arisen principally because of some tyranny of the female majority. Again, I believe it to be a perverse faction problem. If our government functioned as initially restricted, I might conclude that its decisions were representative of the majority. However, there is more than ample evidence that our federal government plainly does not head the majority when its ever-increasing power is at stake.
Nevertheless, although the majority of females may not have pressed the feminist agenda, all females now, at least tacitly, enjoy and encourage the feminist-government pact.
We must break this feminist-government alliance.
Feminism will never abandon government, for government is truly its only source of real power. Moreover, so long as all females enjoy the benefits of a feminist-government union, they will never truly abandon feminism. Most importantly, government will never abandon feminism while it serves the government appetite for power and expansion. We cannot defeat the state directly. Nor can we defeat government-empowered feminism.
But we can defeat individual females at each and every turn.
Females have become the feminist-government alliance’s front-line soldiers. This is the principal reason I regard all females as members of the enemy camp. Given the opportunity, in a very utilitarian fashion, each female will treat us as the enemy; they will do so with the government’s full support.
Consequently, I cannot agree with your conclusion that the solution is as simple as depoliticization through transcendence, because I basically do not believe that will work.
I disagree that a man might transcend the power of the state through his own choice to opt out, with nothing more. Frankly, I believe that to be a false impression of freedom. While it is certainly true that, “a workhorse cannot be made to produce if he refuses to work,” in our case, females, through the power of the government, have many options to force compliance. As I said before, you can only go your own way so long as the government allows. I have to agree with the Elusive Wapiti when he says, “[t]he law will simply be changed so as to ensnare men that are attempting to avoid the government marriage trap.” We already see this government approach in countries other than the U.S.
Truly, how better to enslave a man than to delude him into believing himself free?
You seem to acknowledge this problem when you state that men must “have the backbone to say ‘no’ to entitled women. You state that, “cultural attitudes filter into democratic processes,” and that it is the “culture that projects its cultural and spiritual shortcomings into the force of law.” You seem to argue again that the solution is to man-up, go our own way, and thereby change both our and the female mindset. As mentioned before, male transcendence of the politicization is not a solution, so presumably it must be the change in female culture that will change the law. You give the impression that females will surrender if we do not fight them. Again, you leave our fate to the whims of females. With this, I strongly disagree.
Frankly, I simply don’t believe that most females awoke one morning with a sudden epiphany, nor, left alone, will they in the future. I do not think that the men-going-their-own-way tactic, without more, is sufficient to dissuade females from allying with feminism. Females must be actively led by men to realize that feminism is contrary to their best interests. They simply will not come to this realization on their own. Consequently, with your argument, that in conclusion again seems little more than leaving our fate in the hands of females, I strongly disagree.
The fact is, the foot soldiers on the ground are the females. Females exercise the state’s power and sustain the feminist-government alliance. Only by defeating the soldiers can we break the feminist-government alliance.
We must compel females to forcefully reject feminism and the feminist-government alliance.
We must take aggressive action against rank-and-file females to actively convince them that a change is in their best interest. We must treat all females as our enemy until they no longer wish to fight or to passively support our enemy. At every turn, we must contest the female use of government power until females surrender. With each battle won we diminish the power of feminism.
Only when females surrender, en masse, will the feminist agenda cease to be a source of government’s ever increasing power. Once rejected feminism no longer serves as a source of government power, government, fickle and self-serving as it is, will abandon feminism for more effective sources of power.
This is how we win.
We must make deserters from feminism of females, not become deserters ourselves.
(*) We can argue this point later. I tend to think of this more as propaganda for the masses.