Much
to-do is being made about the number of women, especially Republican women (and
thus presumably conservative as well), who were elected to State and federal
office in the elections just held. An
ensample:
The
2014 midterms were a huge win for Republicans, but it also was a big night for
female candidates in both parties.
Republican
women helped lead the GOP to victory in some of the biggest races last night,
and the party achieved new milestones in gender diversity. In addition to
flipping a key Senate seat for Republicans,
Joni Ernst will be the first member of Iowa’s congressional delegation and the
Senate’s first female combat veteran.
Republican
Shelley Moore Capito will become West Virginia’s first female senator, giving
the Republicans a record six women in the Senate. Utah’s Mia Love, an incoming House member, will be the
first black Republican in Congress, and in New York’s 21st district, 30-year-old Elise
Stefanik has become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
Republican
pollster and strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson believes the election is a
breakthrough for the party’s gender gap. Historically speaking, Republican
women “were significantly less likely to make it through a primary than
Democratic women were. It was tougher for them to wind up on the ballot,”
Soltis said.
Soltis is particularly excited about the fact that
younger female Republicans are prevailing. As the newly elected GOP women begin
to rise in leadership roles, Republicans will make more headway in changing its
image as the party of “old white guys,” she said.
A
freshman college student, Saira Blair, made history Tuesday when she defeated
her 44-year-old opponent in the race to represent a small West
Virginia district, becoming America’s youngest elected politician. It
was the first election where the 18-year-old was legally able to vote.
. . .
Source: Suzy Khimm, ‘2014: Historic Gains for Women
in Politics’, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/2014-midterms-big-step-women-politics,
posted 5 Nov. 2014, accessed 7 Nov. 2014
After
reflecting on this, one is forced to ask, Do so-called conservative Republicans
wish to conserve any traditions at all?
Is dragging women out of the home (those few who are left), away from
husbands and children and other relatives, to be ‘smeared with the greasy paw’
(Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership)
of corrupt, bankster-run American politics, going to do any good in the long
run?
It
seems that all is dispensable in order to save the favorite idol of these
‘conservatives’ - an all-powerful, divinized ‘America’ that is awash with
material riches at home and that can do as it pleases abroad. If the remnants of the traditional family, we
may infer, must be sacrificed for the good of this wonderful deity, then
let us draw our knives and see to it that it withers and dies and troubles us
no more.
With
apologies to the ancients: ‘Let America
rule though the heavens fall.’
Let
us turn away from them. There are better
guides. Richard Weaver is one.
Distinctions of many kinds will have to be
restored, and I would mention especially one whose loss has added immeasurably
to the malaise of our civilization—the fruitful distinction between the sexes,
with the recognition of respective spheres of influence. The re-establishment of woman as the cohesive
force of the family, the end of the era of “long-haired men and short-haired
women,” should bring a renewal of well-being to the whole of society. On this point Southerners of the old school
were adamant, and even today, with our power of discrimination at its lowest
point in history, there arises a feeling that the roles of the sexes must again
be made explicit. George Fitzhugh’s
brutal remark that if women put on trousers, men would use them for plowing has
been borne out, and I think that women would have more influence actually if
they did not vote, but, according to the advice of Augusta Evans Wilson, made
their firesides seats of Delphic wisdom (The
Southern Tradition at Bay, Regnery Gateway, 1989, p. 378).
Rev
Dabney, another.
It is indignantly
asked, "Why should politics corrupt the morals of women more than of the
'lords of creation'?" Suppose now we reply: American politics have
corrupted the morals of the men? Suppose we argue that the retort is so true
and just and the result has actually gone to so deplorable an extent, that were
the female side of our social organization as corrupt as the male side has
already become, American society would crumble into ruin by its own
putrescence? It is better to save half the fabric than to lose all. And
especially is it better to save the purity of the mothers who are, under God,
to form the characters of our future citizens, and of the wives who are to
restrain and elevate them, whatever else we endanger. Is it argued that since
women are now confessedly purer than men, their entrance into politics must
tend to purify politics? We reply again that the women of the present were
reared and attained this comparative purity under the Bible system. Adopt the
infidel plan, and we shall corrupt our women without purifying oar politics.
What shall save us then? (‘Women’s Rights Women’, Discussions, Vol. IV, Secular, https://archive.org/details/DiscussionsOfRobertLewisDabneyVol.4Secular,
p. 500)
‘Little
children, keep yourselves from idols.
Amen’ (I John 5:21 KJV).
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