"British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life.

The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own.

Gay men could follow suit by using the technique to make eggs from male bone marrow."

"Greg Aharonian, a U.S. analyst who is trying to patent the technologies behind female sperm and male eggs, said he wants to undermine the argument that heterosexual marriage is superior because it is aimed at procreation. "I'm a troublemaker," he said."

These stories are not unrelated to my previous post on the middle school in Maine offering birth control. These are all examples of a particular liberal mindset--the presumption of orgasmic entitlement. Again, Malcom Muggeridge's observation in his essay, The Great Liberal Death Wish, is apropos:

The vast, obsessive outpouring of erotia in every shape and form; in book and film and play and entertainment, in body and word and deed, so that there is no escape for anyone. The lame and the halt, the doddering and the infirm, equally called upon somehow to squeeze out of their frail flesh the requisite response. It is the flesh that quickeneth, the spirit profiteth nothing; copulo ergo sum, I screw therefore I am--the new version of Descarte’s famous axiom. All possible impediments swept away; no moral taboo, no legal ones, either.

What strikes me, is the acquiescence to the supposed inevitability of pre-adolescent concupiscence. According to Richard Veilleux, who said his child attends King Middle School, “This is about giving kids who are sexually active the tools that they need.” Sexually active kids? Kids? Kids!!!

This is just like the liberal mindset of our day. All they need are the the right tools. They just need more education.

In his essay, The Great Liberal Death Wish, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote,

If sex provides the mysticism of the great liberal death wish, it needs, as well, its own special mumbo-jumbo and brainwashing device; a moral equivalent of conversion, whereby the old Adam is ut aside, and the new liberal man is born--elightened, erudite, cultivated. This is readily to hand in education in all its mny branches and affiliations. To the liberal mind, education provides the universal panacea. Whatever the problem, education will solve it. Law and order breaking down?--then yet more statistics chasing yet more education; venereal disease spreading, to the point that girls of ten are found to be infected?--then, for heaven's sake, more sex education, with tiny tots lisping out what happens to mummy's vagina when daddy erects, as once they did the Catechism...

One problem, among many, with the idea of simply giving younger and younger children "education" and "tools" is that it reduces one's sexual perspective to mere mechanics. Which is not surprising as Malcolm Muggeridge also observed, "Sex is the only mysticism materialism offers, and so to sex the pursuers of happiness address themselves wih an avidity and dedication seldom, if ever, surpassed."

When pleasure is the only comprehensible end for the materialist to seek, then it is only natural for sexual deviance to proliferate, because, after all, sex is the penultimate pleasure (never mind that the direct pursuit of pleasure as an end is a futile endeavor). And why not? We have the blessed pill to isolate the pleasure of copulation from any inconvenient consequences.

Because, as we all know, the only two things anyone needs to concern themselves with in relation to sex are birth and disease, which leads me to the observation that so called comprehensive sex education is quite deficient. It ignores the overall context--the very spiritual and emotional design inextricably bound to our biological design. J. Budziszewski has written an excellent essay about that here.

Unfortunately, what these kids need are not "tools." Just giving them tools is most unhelpful in that it falsely assures them that they are safe to flout sexual design so long as they take measures to protect their physical plumbing.

Go check it out! (and if you see any editing or formatting issues, please let me know...)

And to get the geek vote, candidates should also consider hiring people to Digg articles in their favor...

Sadly, my little cousins don't get to the same enjoyment that I once did. With elementary schools now pooling supplies, a lot of kids don't even get to use the supplies their parents bought for them. And, if you happen to wander the school supply aisles at your local Target, you'll frequently hear parents complaining about it.

Here's an insightful article by Charlotte Hays on the effects of this whole communal supplies deal. The Communal Pencil.

Here is a story of a real man.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=6062

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* torture (3x)
* pain (2x)
* sex (1x)

This can only mean one thing: Shawn is not posting frequently enough

I can't shake the sense that boys are supposed to become manly. Rather than neutering their aggression, confidence and desire for danger, we should channel these instincts into honor, gentlemanliness and courage. Instead of inculcating timidity in our sons, it seems wiser to train them to face down bullies, which by necessity means teaching them how to throw a good uppercut. In his book "Manliness," Harvey Mansfield writes that a person manifesting this quality "not only knows what justice requires, but he acts on his knowledge, making and executing the decision that the rest of us trembled even to define." You can't build a civilization and defend it against barbarians, fascists and playground bullies, in other words, with a nation of Phil Donahues.

Maybe the problem isn't that boys are aggressive, but that we've neglected their moral education. As Teddy Roosevelt wrote to one of his sons: "I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his studies than high in athletics, but I would a great deal rather have him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or physical prowess." Manliness, then, is not the ability to survive in the wilderness, or wield a rifle. But having such skills increases the odds that one's manly actions--which Roosevelt and others believed flow from a moral quality--will be successful.

The good father, then, needs to nurture his son's moral and spiritual core, and equip him with the skills he'll need to act on the moral impulse that we call courage. A real man, in other words, is someone who doesn't run from an Osama bin Laden. But he may also need the ability to hit a target from three miles out with a .50 caliber M88 if he wants to finish the job.

...

The trick is not to squash the essence of boys, but to channel their natural wildness into manliness.

Manly assertion is the quality that controls and directs manly aggression. But manly assertion must be groomed and nurtured and it must be grown in the right direction, toward a moral end. Mr. Woodlief is spot on.

Several years ago when making my short film 'Knight Time' I was severely harrassed by Oregon State Park Rangers and my day was nearly canceled because I didn't have official state permits and $1million liability insurance.

Well a similar incident happened in NYC and the CLU fought back on the side of the filmmaker.

An excellent excerpt that I couldn't agree with more:
"In a democracy, individuals don't have to ask before taking pictures or making films," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. "Those activities are protected by the First Amendment. The Civil Liberties Union will continue to prioritize their protection."

For full article, clicky clicky
http://www.nyclu.org/sharma_pr_052307.html

Upon further examination over the next day doctors find that all is well, there is no brain damage and no spinal problems. That was two years ago and the little girl is as healthy as could be. The author sums up the fiaso well:

Sometimes when I’m rocking her to sleep, I lean down and breathe in her breath, which now smells of bubble-gum toothpaste and the dinner I cooked for her while she sat in her highchair singing to the dog. And I am amazed that this little girl is mine.

It’s tempting to think that our decision was validated by the fact that everything turned out O.K. But for me that’s not the point. Our decision was right because she was our daughter and we loved her. We would not have chosen the burdens we anticipated, and in fact we declared upfront our inability to handle such burdens. But we are stronger than we thought.

WASHINGTON — An accused enemy combatant held at Guantanamo Bay told a military hearing he was physically as well as mentally tortured there by having to read a newsletter full of 'crap,' being forced to use unscented deodorant and shampoo and having to play sports with a ball that would not bounce...

That's what you get when you mess with the U.S. of A.