I Just Found Out Republicans Are Oppressing Me

Sometimes you read a blog so stupid it kind of makes your day.

That happened today when Google obligingly sent me my daily news results for articles containing the words "Texas" and "abortion," and I clicked on a link titled "Barefoot, Pregnant, and In the Kitchen." This blog post for Salem-News.com is written by one Daniel Johnson, who looks in his photo like a deflated Wilford Brimley.

Fasten your seatbelts for this roller coaster ride, because you are about to experience the heights of idiocy, interspersed with sharp plummets to crazy.

Here is how the whole thing starts off:

I was outraged by the headline when I opened this morning’s New York Times: Women in Texas Losing Options for Health Care in Abortion Fight. I’ve never been a great fan of democracy because it’s a given that people can usually be counted on to vote against their own best interests. 

Isn't it awesome how this guy just goes right ahead and admits it? "I've never been a great fan of democracy..."

Liberals hate it when people get to do stuff they don't think we should do, like believe in God and drive SUVs. It drives them bonkers.

A drunk liberal at a party once accidentally let slip something like, "I don't believe in free speech..." She then tried to backpedal (and later punched my friend in the face, but that's another story) but the damage was done, and the truth was out.

Louis C.K. can refer to Sarah Palin's vagina as a "disgusting retard-making c***" and everyone think's it's a real scream, but call one of the ladies of the Left an ugly name, and we just cannot continue to go on as a nation unless Limbaugh apologizes. Better yet, pull your sponsorship dollars! Yank him from the air!

I don't want Louis C.K.'s despicable ass taken off the air. Let him have his show. It's called the First Amendment.

Anyway, Johnson goes on to say:

This is what Abrahamic religion does to women. We have come to see it in Islamic countries where women are not allowed to go out in public without a male "guardian".

It's always really fun for me when people point out the obvious correlations between Islam and Christianity. There are lots of similarities, after all. Have you ever noticed how in the United States, where we have Christian Law, there is no punishment for men who throw acid on the faces of women who deny their marriage proposals? And have you noticed how women have to cover themselves or be beaten? And how women who talk to non-Christian males, lose their virginity before marriage, or get raped, can legally be killed by their fathers and brothers? Oh, and remember how homosexuality is a crime punishable by death, and women can't drive, vote, or speak to a man unless spoken to?

Yeah, me neither.

Moving on.

The real fun comes when Johnson starts perusing the comments section of the NYT article in question. Now, Internet coments are never what you'd call a forum for enlightened and even-handed debate, but even for the insanity of the Webbertubes, these are pretty insane.

This one is my personal favorite:

Texas should be regarded as a third world country, such as Afghanistan: Primitive beliefs, rampant corruption, lacking in education, mistreating women. It's a pity it can't be ceded to Venezuela, or at least be forced to move culturally in the direction of the 21st century. Banning cowboy hats and boots, and other such adolescent props, might help. If hats are needed, let them use pith helmets.

I'll bet you five horses and a moo-cow that thar Yankee ain't never even been to Texas! Hell, I bet he thinks we still ride horseback to skewl, when the truth is ever' last homestead has us a covered wagon. Yeeeehaw!

Compared to the rest of the U.S., Texas has a high standard of living. In a tanking economy, we are remarkably solvent and jobs are comparatively plentiful. We also take the dishes out of the sink before we pee in it.

Apparently we don't excel at the kind of fancy book-learnin' this person favors, and we aren't as 21st century as he would have us be. He's also not fond of our style of dress. (Apparently his fancy books have taught him all Texans run around in cowboy hats and boots all the time.)

So, like a typical liberal, what he doesn't like he wants to ban. Note how he uses the words "forced" and "banning" both in that small paragraph. Ah, yes: the party of tolerance.

To you, anonymous NYT reader, I would like to extend this invitation: come to Texas. We'll show you just how primitive we are.

Here comes another comment I really liked:

Any woman who votes Republican deserves what she gets.

That's a little ominous, isn't it? If he means I get a Republican president, then... that's awesome. Cool. But this seems to have a weird threatening twist to it.

It reminds me of Janeane Garofaloalolflo on MSNBC saying that women and "people of color," a PC phrase that makes my eyelid twitch, who identify with the Republican party must have a form of Stockholm syndrome and that we subconsciously seek to "curry favor with the oppressor."

It would be really funny, but it's so hard to laugh while looking at Janeane Garolalalfoalala. Remember when she was cute and fun? Remember Reality Bites? What happened, Janeane? She looks all dry and bitter, like a dessicated almond in hipster glasses.

Here's the last little bit of Johnson's cuckoo blog:

Then I read about the Republicans' physical assault on women.

In Texas a woman seeking an abortion must first allow an ultrasound probe to be inserted into her vagina. "It’s state-sanctioned abuse," said Dr. Curtis Boyd, a Texas physician who provides abortions. "It borders on a definition of rape. Many states describe rape as putting any object into an orifice against a person’s will. Well, that’s what this is. A woman is coerced to do this, just as I’m coerced." [Emphasis in original.]

First of all: spare me the dramatics. A woman seeking an abortion is going to have an ultrasound anyway. That's part of the process. This law just makes sure she has the opportunity to view it, and have it described to her, before a 24 hour waiting period.

I attended a meeting hosted by Planned Parenthood of North Texas at which Nancy Northup of Center for Reproductive Rights spoke about their case against the Texas Sonogram Law. One slightly off-kilter lady stood up and started ranting about the vaginal probe being rape, and Northup, the crusading abortion advocate, dismissed this. You could tell she thought it was silly.

The woman stood up again and again her concern was waved off by Northup. Trust me: if there was a case against the probe, CRR would have mentioned it.

Second: let's talk about Dr. Curtis Boyd for a second. He commits abortions (right here in Dallas) up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. By any standard, that is past viability. He famously told WFAA-TV, "Am I killing? Yes I am."

So forgive me if I am simultaneously yawning and rolling my eyes when Boyd acts concerned about women being "abused" by a sonogram probe. Okay, Boyd: if the probe is abusive to a woman, what is it when you jam things into her cervix and suck her baby out of her? It ain't no foot massage.

What Boyd does to women is the ultimate form of abuse. And his concern for her well-being and virtue is utterly false. His only concern is for his paycheck, which he knows is threatened by the sonogram law. Late term abortionists stand to take a particularly hard hit: a woman viewing an ultrasound of a 24-week-old fetus is going to see clearly discernible limbs, movement, perhaps even yawns and hiccups. Kind of hard to sell the old "clump of cells" line when the clump is sucking its thumb, huh, Boyd?

I hope you enjoyed this ride into the fascinating mind of Daniel Johnson and his fellow wackos. I think I'll send a copy of this blog to him and see what he has to say. I bet it'll be interesting, and I'll be sure to share it with you.

I better get going. I have to pump out this young'un and cook up some vittles 'fore sundown iffen I don't wanna git beat.

The Feminist Case Against Abortion

Former Feminists for Life of America president Serrin Foster's wonderful 1999 speech can be found here. (Scroll down to pg. 28.)

An excerpt:

Without known exception, the early feminists condemned abortion in the strongest terms.

Susan B. Anthony’s and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s radical feminist newspaper, The Revolution, called abortion “child murder.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848 organized the first women’s convention in Seneca Falls, New York, classified abortion as a form of “infanticide” and said, “When we consider that women have been treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”

Since there were no American laws to protect women and children from abortion, the early feminists worked to outlaw abortion. (This is the dirty little secret of women’s studies departments across the United States.) Feminists, doctors, and the media worked together in an uneasy alliance for anti-abortion laws.

The feminists agreed with doctors and the media about providing legal protection for the unborn, but they disagreed sharply on the reasons that women had abortions—and on their proposed remedies.

Male physicians blamed the woman, saying that if she just did what men said, she wouldn’t have gotten herself into “trouble.”

Feminists argued that women who had abortions were responsible for their actions, but women resorted to abortion primarily because of their lack of autonomy within the family and society and their lack of financial resources and emotional support.

A passage in Susan B. Anthony’s and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s newspaper, The Revolution, states:

Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the des- peration which impelled her to the crime!

The first woman to run for president, Victoria Woodhull, said: “Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, or think of murdering one before its birth.”

Some—who begrudgingly admit the early American feminists were anti-abortion—have suggested that the reason was the Victorian attitude about sex. That’s not true either.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton shocked Victorian society by parading around in public visibly pregnant. She raised a flag to celebrate the birth of a child in a time when children were not seen in socie- ty until the age of two. She celebrated womanhood. She was “in your face” about her ability to have children.

Yet like today’s pro-life feminists, early feminists recognized that women do not have to bear children to share in this celebration of womanhood.

Susan B. Anthony was once complimented by a friend who thought that she would have made a wonderful mother. Anthony responded, “Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.”

Read the full speech on pg. 28 and marvel at the wisdom of Ms. Foster and the Feminists for Life.

Definition

I found this on A Conservative Blog for Peace, which is always a great read.

"What is ‘tolerant conservatism’?

Charity and discretion about people’s failings while at the same time not making excuses for those vices either.
Don’t ask, don’t tell, we give you your space and God forgives but we don’t teach that it’s not a sin."
(The man who coined the term? The Right Rev. Peter Robinson, Rector of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ.)

I like this definition, except maybe for the "don't ask, don't tell" part. I need to think that bit over before I decide.

This weekend some core members of New Wave Femmes gathered to make signs for next weekend's Roe v. Wade memorial events in downtown Dallas. (There will be a memorial mass for the approximately 50,000,000 children killed in the U.S. since abortion was legalized in 1973, followed by a rally and a peaceful march to the federal courts building and back.)

It was a wonderful experience of fellowship for NWF, with probably too much wine. We spent hours discussing matters of faith, morals, womanhood, sex, hair dye, swearing, attractive monks, ghost hunting, bean dip, and more.

What came out of this evening of work and fun, other than attending Mass with a pounding headache, were some dynamic ideas about where New Wave Femmes is going and what the next year might have in store for us. Together we can do a great deal to help women and children, and the men who love them.

Later I'll be posting more about NWF, but meanwhile I am reflecting on the definition of "tolerant conservatism" and what it means for our organization.

While discussing what we should print on our signs for the rally and march, knowing that there will be press there and whatever we write might be on the 6 o'clock news, I found myself saying to the other girls: "Never apologize for telling the Truth." I want to capitalize truth because I do believe there is an objective Truth that exists independent of what (or whether) we think about it. While we want to be nurturing to people, to show them compassion and act always from love and kindness, we are only doing them a disservice if we lie to them.

That's why I like, for the most part, the term "tolerant conservatism" and the way it's defined. It is possible to love people and even understand why they do what they do without condoning it.

"What to Expect When You're Aborting"

I just found a website that filled me with sadness. It's the blog of a young woman who had an abortion. The description says: "I'm 23, I'm knocked up, I'm not keeping it. You can fuck yourself Judd Apatow." (She is referring to the director of the film Knocked Up, in which a young professional woman, played by Katherine Heigl, becomes pregnant during a one night stand and, despite her mother's advice that she abort this one so later she can get married and have "a real baby," decides to keep it.)

"What to Expect When You're Aborting" treats the subject of the author's abortion with a sort of dark, dry humor. I can identify with her sense of humor, but not about this particular subject matter. While she seems to obliquely admit to having an emotional response to the experience, in the few posts I read, she has the bitter, snarky tone I've found common to pro-abortion activists.

The pro-choice anger has always struck me as interesting. You'd think we'd be the bitter ones; they have what they want: abortion is legal. But consistently I find pro-lifers to be hopeful, caring people, while there seems to be a lot of barely-concealed rage from pro-aborts. I know this is true because I was one, and I felt the rage. It was a feeling of "How dare they tell us what to do!" It was the anger of indignation, which is self-focused. Now, as a pro-lifer, I feel the the righteous anger that is focused on others -- the innocent, misguided, and lost -- and tempered by sadness and love. It is a totally different feeling.

I remember in particular some photos taken at a pro-life march in San Francisco -- in the lions' den! Having lived in San Francisco, I could almost have predicted the content of those photos. The pro-lifers had been taught to be quiet, respectful, and prayerful. The pro-aborts -- many of them -- were out of control. Several women were dressed in all white, with their crotches splattered with red paint and wire hangers hanging off their clothes.

The author of "What to Expect..." makes it clear that she's not interested in debate, but she certainly can't stop us from praying for her. What she is doing is not only activism -- and it is activism, make no mistake, as surely as this blog is -- but also a cry for help that she might not even be aware she is making.

Pro-lifers need to read these sorts of blogs. We need to get to know the women we are trying to help. We need to understand the way she thinks, why she did what she did, how she feels about it. It is essential to what we are trying to do here. We're not just saving babies, we're saving women, too.

We should also stay abreast of news, events, victories, setbacks and trends in the pro-choice community. "Know your enemy" is a rule of warfare. But remember: although we have to study the pro-choice movement to know how they think, what they fear, and how to fight them, they are not really our enemy. Just like the women who abort, they are the people we are trying to save. Evil is the real enemy, and it comes from a place darker than any on this earth, and an Enemy crueler than any earthly foe.

A Comment

I wrote too much to post this as a comment. Figures! So I am posting it here. MBS said:

"really trying to figure out how you reconcile a feminist pov while trashing on a 'culture of contraception' and abortion rights. feminists got us where we are now with those things! that stuff is all about women taking control of their bodies and their futures..."

I replied:

Thanks for commenting, MBS. You bring up some interesting points.

First of all, I claim a New Feminism. I do not share the classic feminist view of "reproductive rights."

Secondly, yes, our feminist sisters got us the right to vote and the right to enter the workplace as equals, and we thank them for that, but they also got us to deny the differentness that makes us unique and special, and in so doing opened up a Pandora's box that us Catholics call the Culture of Death.

Before I step up on my soapbox, please understand: you don't have to be a Catholic, a Christian, or anything at all to understand what I'm about to say. I was pro-life before I was Catholic, Christian, or anything at all. I would probably have described myself as an Agnostic Pagan, and had been for years, on the night when I had The Conversation. (Yes, I was stubbornly pro-choice for as long as I could remember, but it only took one Conversation to change my mind. Such is the power of Truth.)

You've given a great example of the standard party line of feminism when you say "that stuff is all about women taking control of their bodies and their futures."

I agree, first of all, that women should take control of their bodies and their futures. I absolutely agree with those things! Wholeheartedly!

What I do not agree with is what feminists consider "taking control of their bodies and their futures." It is a lie.

First, when it comes to abortion, it is quite simply not "their bodies" we are talking about. It is someone else's body. Now, back in the 70s, during and just after Roe v. Wade, there was still some more or less intelligent argument about when life began. That argument is over, thanks to advancing science. Open any obstetrics textbook, ask any biologist, and they will tell you that human life begins at conception. Period. Only people trying really hard to defend abortion will argue that point, such as a Planned Parenthood abortionist who recently claimed that in "his opinion" life began when "the child was viable," as in, able to live outside the womb. Of course that has nothing to do with a definition of life; he's just trying to justify what he does for a living. We know that children are alive long before they're viable. Things that aren't alive do not yawn and suck their thumbs.

So, life begins at conception. That point is no longer even questioned in intelligent debate about the subject. So what you're doing when you abort a child is, you're killing a human being. Period. Any honest abortionist will admit that to you. The abortionist at Southwestern, right here in Dallas, has admitted in writing, "I know that what I'm doing is killing."

From there, pro-choicers like to get into semantics and toss around words like "personhood" and "viability" and then start screaming about "women's bodies." But what they are really doing is trying to justify murder in one of two ways: either by claiming that, despite the fact that it most definitely is a life, it isn't really and TRULY a life because we can't see it walking around and going to Starbuck's and stuff. They'll say it's a human life but not a PERSON, forgetting that it most definitely would end up a PERSON (in their definition) if they didn't KILL it.

The other argument they like to make is that, yeah, it may be a human being, but it is inside another human being. In other words, it's okay to kill it because of where it's LOCATED. So, killing a baby in a bassinet by the hospital bed is murder, but killing a baby three feet to the left in its mother's womb, that's okay. Never mind the fact that in more than 99% of cases, the woman voluntarily let it in to her womb by having concensual sex. (If you want to debate cases of rape and incest, let's do that later 'cause this is getting long; and they also count for less than half of one percent of abortions.)

Oh, I forgot about another argument, which is surprisingly prevalent and incredibly disgusting: the argument that all those murdered babies, if they had been born, would have been a drain on society, and grown up to have more unwanted babies and so on and so forth. This makes a lot of sense if you hold a utilitarian view of human life, the kind of view that the Nazis held and that told them it was a really good idea to gas prisoners who couldn't work and to use natural selection to create a super race. At some point they forgot that society exists for people, not the other way around. If your pants are too short, you don't cut your feet off, you buy longer pants. Darwinist natural selection leads to eugenics leads to murder. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was an American pioneer of eugenics. (Don't take my word for it; look it up.) Her platform was that it was a terrible idea to let poor brown people breed. That's why to this day most Planned Parenthood offices are in poor brown neighborhoods.

That's not helping women take control of their bodies and their futures. That's genocide. If we cared about those women, we would help them value themselves and their bodies so they become pregnant in loving, committed relationships, and promote a culture that takes care of women and children so women are able to afford health and child care. THAT is helping women.

You know who gives a shitload of money to Planned Parenthood? Playboy Magazine. That's right. Hugh Hefner. Know why? Because birth control and abortion are not about empowering women. They're about making it easier to view women as objects, something to use for pleasure and throw away. Do you think Playboy cares about women's liberation? Think again. Let's train that gal to take her little pink pill every day like a good girl, never mind what it does to her hormones and her body, and if she does get knocked up, give her a few hundred bucks to get the little bugger sucked out of her. It's cheaper than child support! Then, we'll convince her that all of this an EMPOWERING EXPERIENCE!!!

My advice to you is, don't be like I was. I embraced the tenets of feminism because I thought it was part and parcel of being a strong, independent, intelligent person. It came with the "liberal starter pack," so I accepted it without really questioning it. Before November of 2006, I would have called you a lot of nasty names if you had tried to sell me your pro-life rhetoric. Then someone cared enough about me to show me pictures of aborted children, and I became aware, while having a visceral, soul-shaking experience, that what I was looking at was not okay, could never be justified as okay. It was the broken, shredded, discarded body of an innocent human child.

A culture that does that to its most innocent, helpless members is doomed. It's sick to its very soul.

That's why to me abortion is the most important issue there is. It is the ultimate human rights issue because abortion "rights" are the ultimate in "might makes right" thinking. It's the most important issue because while this is going wrong, even if everything else goes right, it's still a sign of a deep sickness in our culture.

I implore to you to find out exactly -- EXACTLY -- what it is that you're defending. I never did until I had the Conversation. Most people don't. They consider it "distasteful" to look at pictures of aborted fetuses. (It kills me when pro-choicers say this "disrespects the dead." They don't mind the actual killing, but they mind photographs of it. Unreal.) Viewing these images is a horrible experience. But you owe it to them and to yourself. Know what you're defending. If you're gonna say it's okay, go look at it. Look at the pictures, and while you're looking, see if you can say to yourself, honestly, "This is okay." Never mind "good" or "righteous." Try to say, "This is okay."

If you have a heart, or a conscience, you won't be able to do it.

Fashion Rocks

I am flipping through magazines.

I should explain.

I have this piece of poster board on my wall covered in random images torn from magazines, newspapers, old calendars, and so on. It is my Visualization Board. It is supposed to keep what I want in life constantly visible to me and on my mind, the idea being that you get what you focus on. So far I don’t have a Scottish castle or a Ducati Superbike or Liam Neeson, but I am sticking with it.

So I am flipping through fashion magazines. I hardly ever do this because it is demoralizing. I tell myself, "Don't read, don't focus. Just look for details, little details – things you can cut out and put on your board, images that symbolize love and kindness and family and faith and creativity and good times."

I do not find any of these images. Well, I take that back. I find three very small things, after 400 pages of glossy full-color madness. These three tiny images were not worth the bile I am choking on at the moment.

First, a special Vogue supplement called “Fashion Rocks!,” with J-Lo on the cover. Up-and-coming models pose with their favorite bands. In the section that disgusts me most grievously, a gaggle of leggy supermodels pose in page after page of bony tableaux, each spread representing a different musical genre.

"Punk" is my favorite: here are seven skeletal nineteen-year-old girls, each making several thousand dollars an hour, decked out in ripped fishnets and a great deal of plaid clothing that is supposed to look distressed and authentic but which actually costs about eight hundred dollars per item. They have had their makeup and wigs – my favorite is the two-foot Mohawk strapped on over a girl's peroxide-blonde ponytail – professionally applied, and they have been told by the photographer or the production designer or whoever to look surly and vicious. Their legs are spread, their spines curved, in disdain, and they are trying very hard to look anarchistic or apathetic – one even manages to stick her tongue out – but instead they look like what they are: children playing pretend, making a mockery of a movement that once meant something to working class kids.

The "goth" spread is almost as bad; it features the same models, looking how Siouxsie Sioux would have looked if she'd had a lot more money in 1979 and the means with which to drape her backyard in black gauze and lie about with wolves. That's right, wolves. Somebody rented wolves for the shoot. They look bored.

Meanwhile, on another page, Sean Lennon is frolicking with something called an "it girl" (there are a lot of those in this magazine) and on yet another page a model is demonstrating how you can capture Janis Joplin's soulfulness and spirit by choosing the right sort of shaggy coat.

I'm glad I came across this magazine, because I used to think it was David Bowie's music that made him an icon, not his orange hair and pale skin and fedora. And I'm also really glad that I know how to dress like Debbie Harry and Marianne Faithfull. I used to think that the whole point was being yourself – which is, after all, what made Marianne and Debbie's styles interesting in the first place – but apparently it is not about that at all. It is about how the right combination of skirt and tunic can make you look like Stevie Nicks, only better.

However, upon closing the pages of this magazine, I still feel a little too good about myself, so I open up Bazaar's fall fashion issue, featuring Kate Hudson on the cover, looking like a little girl playing dress-up. The first two hundred or so pages are nothing but ads. By the time I have finished looking at these ads, I feel like my handbag collection is terribly inadequate. Nevertheless, I plunge on, and I am sorry I did. Scarlett Johannson is everywhere. She is very beautiful, but is this so important? I ponder this.

I come upon an article about Courtney Love. Apparently everyone started hating her because she wore a Chanel knock-off to Paris Hilton's birthday party. I feel stupid for being so far behind the times. Here I was hating her because she is a foolish and repugnant woman, when all the time I could have been hating her for her clothes. She appears naked on one page, but in dim lighting. In the three photos, you never get to see her face, I would imagine because she has paid plastic surgeons to disfigure it beyond recognition. Throughout the interview, she talks about clothes a lot, and mentions over and over how cool it is that she is no longer a size 8. She talks about how she was unable to be anybody in the fashion world as a size 8. Everyone accepts her now, because she is a size 4 or whatever, and because the Chanel guy forgave her for the fashion faux-pas. She fired the assistant who told her that dress was real, and now her life is okay again. She can hold her head up high in public, assuming of course that she is physically capable of holding her head up.

I am flipping faster now. I am no longer concerned with cutting out images for my Visualization Board. There is nothing in here that I want. Occasionally I see a pair of cool shoes, but the amount of attention that is paid to the shoes makes me loathe to cut them out. They are not just shoes, you see. They are something more, much more. I flip even faster. A shiny top and gray trousers will take you from day to evening. Keep your quilted bags but opt for a glossy black piece this season. The talk of the runways is tailored; you can't have too many turtlenecks. Invest in a hip-length cape. Sarah Jessica Parker's new perfume is named after the least interesting of the seven deadly sins (Covet) and a Manhattan socialite talks about juggling motherhood, charity work, and shopping (her secret: two nannies).

I understand that we as humans have an aesthetic sense. We like what is beautiful, what attracts us by its form and content. I mean, Scarlett Johannson is very beautiful, but: so what? Those shoes are really cool, but: so what? Louis Vuitton bags are apparently beautifully made and stuff: so what?

It's not fashion that bothers me, the idea of making yourself look as lovely as you can just for the sake of it – I appreciate art in all its forms. It is pretension, coupled with elitism, that makes the whole thing so repulsive. There is no "otherness" in these magazines. You are thin and tall and rich or you are nothing. Period. Nothing. You are not invited in.

This is what we worship. More Americans read magazines than any printed material, even more than newspapers. This is where we get our values: shiny, expensive, gorgeous, decadent, rich, famous, modern, cool, edgy, young. These words have replaced faith, hope, love, charity, kindness, warmth, family, friends. These are the new values—how much your stuff costs, how much you own that is new and "cool," how many people recognize you, how many clubs you can get into without having to wait in line, what film director you sat next to at that bistro in Tribeca.

I feel sorry for the people in these magazines, and I feel sorry for the people who buy into what they see in these magazines. They are going to wake up one day and realize that they are 56 years old, they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on things that mean nothing, and they are still going to die one day. They are going to die in a suite at Cedars Sinai, wearing a Gaultier kimono, but they are still going to die, and everyone at their funeral will be looking at what everyone else, including the corpse, is wearing, and dabbing at their plastic faces with couture hankies.

I will die fat and happy in my bed at home, in my Wal-Mart pee-jays, surrounded by people I love, people who do not care if I am a size 8 or 18. To me there is nothing more shiny, expensive, or gorgeous than that.

The New Eve

Every woman alive today was born on a battlefield.

The war is not between women and men, or women and the state, as "feminists" would have you believe. The war is between Good and Evil. It is a spiritual war.

Do not be fooled into thinking that Good and Evil are abstract, subjective concepts. They exist as surely as you and I exist. If they did not exist, we would not have conscience. We wouldn't know the difference between right and wrong in our hearts. But we do know, don't we? We know in our hearts it is evil to harm the innocent, good to help those in need. Good and Evil are real, and they are really at war, all around you, all the time. If you don't believe it, open a newspaper or turn on the TV.

I call on today's woman to be a warrior for Good, and it starts with being a rebel. We need to be rebels, not in the way the "feminists" would have us be, by denying our womanhood and our femininity, but in the most radical way possible.

G. K. Chesterton said, "The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice." It is as true today as it was a hundred years ago.

There is nothing rebellious about radical feminism. There is nothing revolutionary about immorality. Promiscuity, pornography, abortion: these things are the status quo. This is the age of the hook-up; we are expected to embrace casual sex, the denigration of our bodies and an "easy fix" for the "inconvenience" of pregnancy.

Women will not be respected until we respect ourselves. It's that simple.

I call on today's woman to embrace womanhood, not run from it. The most rebellious thing a woman can do today is refuse to be objectified by pornography and the advertising and fashion industries; refuse to be disrespected by the culture of promiscuity, contraception, and misogyny; refuse to be made complicit in the sins of the world by harming your body and soul and killing your children through abortion.

We will be treated no better than we treat ourselves. It's time to give ourselves the respect and care we deserve. Only then can we demand the same from the world. Only then can we call ourselves warriors, and begin to fight.