Tag Archives: Self-Defense

Dennis Prager: the feminization of America harms the whole world

My favorite painting:
My favorite painting: “Godspeed” by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1900

A few days back, I wrote a post that I really enjoyed writing about the movie High Noon. In it, I talked about the conflict between Marshal Will Kane and his new wife. He wanted to stay and protect his home town against outlaws who are coming to kill him and raze the town. His new wife cannot understand why he has to stand and fight, she wants him to run away with her. In the end, she helps him to defeat the outlaws, saving his life.

That post was inspired by something I heard Dennis Prager talking about on his radio show. He was talking about a survey of boys and girls done by the toy company Mattel. Well, I wanted to blog about his comments, so I ended up writing the High Noon post. But then Dina found an article about the Mattel survey on National Review. I think this is one of the wisest and most perceptive articles I have ever read, and it will really help you to understand what has happened in the last 50 years to this country.

Prager writes:

Last week the New York Times published an article, “Sweeping Away Gender-Specific Toys and Labels,” that contained three sentences that explain one of the most important phenomena in American life. In discussing the increasing move to do away with gender-specific toys — something the New York Times approves of — the article quoted Tania Missad, the “director of global consumer insights” at one of the world’s largest toy manufacturers, Mattel:

Mattel’s research showed some differences in what girls and boys wanted in their action figures, Ms. Missad said. “For boys it’s very much about telling a story of the good guy killing the villain. . . . [Girls] would tell us: ‘Why does the good girl have to kill the villain? Can’t they be friends in the end?’”

Prager comments on the part in red:

This difference may be the most important of all the sex differences. Indeed, it can actually shape the future of America and of the world.

Of course, there are women who want evil destroyed — the late Margaret Thatcher, for example. And there are men who oppose confronting evil — the men who lead the modern Democratic party, for example. (One such man is the president of the United States, who has a feminized view of those who do evil — talk to them, but don’t confront them, label them, or fight them.) But these exceptions happen in large numbers under two circumstances: when women get married and when men are feminized.

When women get married, they are often influenced by their husbands with regard to political and moral issues, just as married men are influenced by their wives on a whole host of micro issues. As a result, married women are more likely than single women to prefer to fight villains than to befriend them. Unfortunately, more and more American women are single.

Meanwhile American boys are increasingly raised by single women and taught almost only by female teachers. In addition, they are often taught to be ashamed of their masculine natures and to reject traditional masculine virtues.

As a result of the above two trends, the amount spent on national defense will continue to decline (while the amount spent on welfare will continue to increase), and America will confront the world’s evils less and less. The consequences will be disastrous for millions of people around the globe.

When America retreats from killing bad guys, bad guys kill more innocent people. We are witnessing this right now as a consequence of America’s abandoning Iraq and retreating from the world generally. Islamic State took over more and more territories as America abandoned them. Ironically, therefore, as American foreign policy becomes feminized, more Middle East females are raped.

Whenever I see on a car the liberal bumper sticker “War Is Not the Answer,” I look to see who is driving. In years of looking, I have seen one male driver.

Both women and men have flawed natures. They share human nature, which is deeply flawed, and the sexes have their own particular natures, which are also flawed. That is one reason men need women and women need men. Men need women to soften their intrinsic aggressive nature and to help them control their predatory sexuality; and women need men to, among other things, better understand that evil people and regimes must be fought, not nurtured.

So, there is something in male nature that thinks that it is acceptable to use violence as a last resort in order to defeat evil. Evil might be things like criminals, terrorists… even wolves and bears, if they attacked innocent people.

So what are the solutions?

Here’s what we should do:

  • We should stop paying women money to have children before they are married, so that boys have fathers to raise them who have made a commitment before they got handed free sex.
  • We should rollback no-fault divorce, which leads to fatherless children. People should be less emotional about who they marry, and not think “there’s an escape hatch if I feel unhappy”.
  • We should try to get more male teachers into classrooms, and maybe allow parents to pull boys out of failing schools and put them into all-male schools if they think those work better.
  • We should try to vote for policies that empower law enforcement, national security, and our armed forces to detect, attack and defeat evil. For example, we invest in defense spending, and avoid undermining the morale of police and armed forces with political correctness.

I guess the list could be longer, but that’s a start for the issues that Prager raised.

We need to work against the forces that demean male nature and male roles, and work to promote male nature and male roles.

Shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College occurred in gun-free zone

Guns are for self-defense against criminals
Guns are for self-defense against criminals

Another shooting in a gun-free zone.

The Federalist explains what happened:

Although reports are highly fluid, it appears that at least 15 people are dead as a result of the massacre, with at least 20 individuals injured. The identities and motivations of those responsible for the mass shooting in Oregon are not yet known.

White House demands for increased gun control ring hollow, however, given that Umpqua Community College, the site of the mass shooting, is a gun-free zone. School policy bans the possession of firearms on campus property. A cached web page of the school’s safety and security policy, pictured below, states that “[p]ossession, use, or threatened use of firearms…on college property…is prohibited.”

Directly below the school’s notice of its gun ban is a section entitled, “Don’t Be a Victim,” which includes advice such as “[w]alk in groups when possible” and “don’t look like a victim[.]”

The shooter asked victims what religion they were.

Only law-abiding people obey gun-free zone signs, criminals obviously don’t. If they are about to commit murder, they are not going to be deterred by a little poster telling them not to carry a gun into a gun-free zone. And the hypocrites in the White House use an ARMED Secret Service. Even they don’t believe their own lies.

Shootings in gun-free zones

The most recent one prior to this was at Fort Hood, and I wrote about that in this post.

This article from National Review shows that multiple-victim public shootings are common in gun-free zones.

Excerpt:

Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

Here’s Dr. John R. Lott to explain why gun-free zones should really be called “helpless victim zones”.

Excerpt:

Contrary to public perception, Western Europe, most of whose countries have much tougher gun laws than the United States, has experienced many of the worst multiple-victim public shootings. Particularly telling, all the multiple-victim public shootings in Western Europe have occurred in places where civilians are not permitted to carry guns. The same is true in the United States: All the public shootings in which more than three people have been killed have occurred in places where civilians may not legally bring guns.

Look at recent history. Where have the worst K–12 school shootings occurred? Nearly all of them in Europe. The very worst one occurred in a high school in Erfurt, Germany, in 2002, where 18 were killed. The second-worst took place in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, where 16 kindergartners and their teacher were killed. The third-worst, with 15 dead, happened in Winnenden, Germany. The fourth-worst was in the U.S. — Columbine High School in 1999, leaving 13 dead. The fifth-worst, with eleven murdered, occurred in Emsdetten, Germany.

It may be a surprise to those who believe in gun control that Germany was home to three of the five worst attacks. Though not quite as tight as the U.K.’s regulations, Germany’s gun-control laws are some of the most restrictive in Europe. German gun licenses are valid for only three years, and to obtain one, the person must demonstrate such hard-to-define characteristics as trustworthiness, and must also convince authorities that he needs a gun. This is on top of prohibitions on gun ownership for those with mental disorders, drug or alcohol addictions, violent or aggressive tendencies, or felony convictions.

Dr. Lott then lists about two dozen incidents – all occurring in gun free zones.

A quick refresher on why people own guns

People own guns so that they deter criminals and reduce the violent crime rate in their communities. The more guns there are in the hands of law-abiding citizens, the lower the violent crime rate goes, because criminals don’t like being shot at by their crime victims.

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

The first book clearly shows that across all states who have adopted concealed-carry laws, the violent crime rate went down. When you let law-abiding citizens arm themselves, violent crime rates go down, because criminals don’t know whether their victim will defend themselves, and they don’t want to take the risk.

The second shows the flip side. In the UK, they banned hand guns in 1997. In the four years following the 1997 ban, violent crime rates DOUBLED. When you prevent law-abiding citizens from arming themselves, then criminals are emboldened to commit more crimes – they know there is no risk of getting shot by their victim.

Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book.

Excerpt:

The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.

[…]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England‟s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.

I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people.

A more recent study – from 2014

A new study that was in the news just last week confirms these findings. Newsmax reported on it.

Excerpt:

A recent study showing a reverse correlation between concealed weapons and murder rates has renewed the contentious national debate about the effect of gun controls on violent crime.

[…]In research first published in Harvard’s Journal of Public Law and Policy, criminologists Don Kates and Gary Mauser looked at the correlation between gun laws and death rates.

“International evidence and comparisons have long been offered as proof of the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths,” the pair wrote in their introduction. “Unfortunately, such discussions [have] all too often been afflicted by misconceptions and factual error and focus on comparisons that are unrepresentative.”

The pair found “correlations that nations with stringent gun controls tend to have much higher murder rates than nations that allow guns.”

It’s not a reasonable position to think that disarming law-abiding citizens will reduce crime rates. The evidence is against it. It’s all fine for clowns in the White House to get up and wring their hands for gullible voters who are more moved by feelings than by facts, but the data is clear. Disarming law-abiding citizens and promoting gun-free zones encourages and emboldens violent criminals. Period.

Public school punishes student for punching bully

According Wikipedia, “Huntington Beach High School (HBHS) is a public high school in Huntington Beach, California. Built in 1906, it is part of the Huntington Beach Union High School District. HBHS is a California Distinguished School. Huntington Beach High School is also the home of the Academy for the Performing Arts.”

Consider this article from the UK Daily Mail.

It says:

A California teenager has been hailed as a hero after he rushed to help a blind classmate being beaten up by a bully.

Shocking footage of the attack, filmed by a bystander, shows the ‘visually impaired’ student being repeatedly hit round the head during lunch break at Huntington Beach High School, California on Wednesday.

The assault only ends when the high school intervenes by knocking the bully to the ground with a single punch.

A California teenager has been hailed as a hero after he rushed to help a blind classmate being beaten up by a bully.

Shocking footage of the attack, filmed by a bystander, shows the ‘visually impaired’ student being repeatedly hit round the head during lunch break at Huntington Beach High School, California on Wednesday.

The assault only ends when the high school intervenes by knocking the bully to the ground with a single punch.

Now why is this happening? Why is it that the use of force to resolve conflicts between good and evil are frowned upon in public schools?

I think there are two reasons. One, schools tend to frown on objective morality, and try to teach kids that everyone constructs their own moral view is as valid as anyone else’s. In practice this means that might makes right, since there is no objective morality to appeal to in a relativistic system. The school doesn’t want to step in and take a side here, because they don’t believe that anyone is right or wrong. Second, there is a war against boys in the public schools. Teachers and administrators teach that the natural inclinations of boys to punish evil with force are bad. And they escalate that from the stomp-the-bully level to the anti-police level to the anti-war level. There is no good use of force ever, ever, ever, if you ask these teachers and administrators.

Why is there this emphasis on compassion over moral standards, and this war against male nature in the schools?

ABC News reports that there is a huge disparity between the numbers of male and female teachers.

Excerpt:

For the past 20 years, the numbers of male teachers in elementary and middle school grades have stagnated at about 16 to 18 percent, according to MenTeach, an organization whose mission is to increase the number of males working with young children.

There were no statistics for grades K-3, but in 2011, the most recent year for which there are data, only slightly more than 2 percent of kindergarten and preschool teachers were male.

“The gap and discrepancy between girls’ performance and boys’ performance is growing ever more marked,” said Massachusetts psychologist Michael Thompson, co-author of the groundbreaking 2000 book “Raising Cain,” which argues that society shortchanges boys.

“There are lots of explanations for it,” he said. “One is the nature of the elementary classroom. It’s more feminized and it does turn boys off, perhaps because they are in trouble more or because the teaching style is more geared to girls’ brains.

Some students go through public schools and never see a male teacher.

Men and women are different when it comes to moral judgments, and the use of force against evil, either in self-defense or in war. Men are traditionally more likely to see the use of force against evil as morally praiseworthy. Since there are few male teachers in the schools, naturally this sort of broad condemnation of all violence and all war as wrong is much more accepted – and taught to children. Either in the classroom, or through suspensions and other punishments. And the suspensions and other punishments are for things as small as drawing anything military, or chewing your sandwich into the shape of a gun, or… punching a bully who is attacking a blind kid.

When we as a nation wonder why people walk past others in distress instead of doing something, we should not underestimate the messages that children receive in public schools. The moral courage to oppose evil is beaten out of children in public schools, because they are being taught by those who see no moral value to self-defense against evil or any kind of use of force against evil. My advice is to not send your kids to public schools, especially boys.

An excellent resource to read about discrimination against boys and traditional boy behaviors is “The War Against Boys”, 2nd edition, by moderate feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.