Conservative forum

How to Cure Platonic Androgyny

Ann Coulter gets our attention with a striking headline, "Reconsidering the 19th Amendment," but then lapses into discursive gender-gap talk without a clear message (HE, February 18, page 6).

In fact, she obscures the dire impact of the gender gap and never returns to the Peculiar Amendment at all.

Noting that women helped elect Reagan but missing the fact that they liked Reagan's looks and charm, she then says that William Weld "had a huge gender gapP and Jesse Helms "no gender gap at all," which means nothing unless it is that women helped elect Helms and not Weld.

If so, however, it was not for the reasons she claims.

Ah! she says that women vote for "moral not fiscal issues," which apparently include "breast cancer, gun control, medical benefits, childcare, cost of college, pollution and health, equal pay, Social Security,'budgeting, not earning, political extremes, UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child (allowing kids to divorce their parents), prochoice," and so forth.

None of which builds much confidence in their grasp of traditional mores or Aristotle's ultimate good, or self-government and freedom, nor do they seem particularly "moral issues, not fiscal."

Although, no less than Eve, women now wield immense power, unfortunately the irrational is not always restrained by the rational and there's the rub.

Sadly, no less than Adam, too many modem males also resort to fuzzy, emotivist thinking along with their womenfolk, like resorting to "gun control" to "protect the children," although disciplining the children and less gun control would do more to deter crime and prevent tragedies like Columbine.

But, in general the gender gap (i.e., 10%20% more women than men) votes more liberal (socialistic) than conservative and will prove our downfall.

Before the Peculiar Amendment, back when males gathered on election day to gamble, drink, and fight and vote, at least they stuck to basics and not the appearances of morality.

As Thomas Sowell might say, they didn't opt for "cosmic justice" but merely for "traditional justice," a less ostentatious paradigm but, in the long run, more virtuous.

While men were far from perfect, freedom, was more important than prostate cancer, gun control, "childcare," and so on, because people knew how to handle childcare and civil society better than we do today.

They voted simply for men, women, society and ordered freedom, rather than the special interests and gyno-centered causes taldng hold around the turn of the century, especially after the 19th Amendment.

Women in general didn't crave the vote back then. Morals were effectively instilled locally by towns' churches, families, and more virtuous citizens instead of by resort to Washington, D.C.

Of course, John McCain's favorite progressive, Teddy, and his bemused followers, blinkered by feminism, and so on, changed all that, and we traded male-carousing on election day for female simpering, primping and cosmetic, utopian reforms that eventually dismantled the constitutional system.

Now, women's loose-gun thinking ("political extremes," in Coulter's words) is similar to that of John McCain, Bill Clinton and other opportunistic 2000s politicians seeling the female vote with a facade of perceived "causes" of the moment-appearance over substance--reminding one of Tocqueville's prediction for sex equality: "weak men and disorderly women."

In the end, despite her good "conservative" intentions, Coulter's essay is its own best example of why we need to return to Aristotelian male leadership and not an AllyMcBealish, Platonic androgyny.

So, I shall offer the cure she omits: Repeal the 19th!

-W Edward Chynoweth

Sanger Calif.

PBS's Unkosher Rabbi On Ten Commandments

In February, the Colorado State Senate considered a bill that would have allowed public schools to post the Ten Commandments as a symbol of our nation's moral heritage and allow for a moment of silent meditation-both on a strictly voluntary basis.

According to its sponsor, Sen. John Andrews, the bill was intended to provide "a small step" whereby schools might attempt to reverse the pervasive sense of alienation that seems to have become manifest in the tragedy at Columbine High School and other schools across the nation.

Sen. Andrews' bill failed to gain adequate support in the Colorado legislature, but the legislature and governor of Indiana have agreed to a similar bill.

So the issues of the voluntary posting of the Ten Commandments and voluntary meditation is likely be tested in the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future.

On February 11, PBS's "NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer featured a discussion by Sen. Andrews and Reform Rabbi Steven Foster of Congregation Emanuel in Denver.

Foster opposed the Andrews bill on the grounds that religious symbolism and meditation would be ineffectual and insisted that what is needed to avoid future school tragedies are stricter gun control laws.

Let's take a closer look at the "rabbi" the "NewsHour" chose to represent American Jewry.