First evers
“On the Democrat side; there are two ’first ever’ possibilities. Hillary Clinton is the first ever viable female candidate who could be the Democrat nominee and Barack Obama is the first serious black candidate that has a real chance of winning.
“I asked a friend of mine (black, conservative and typically Republican) if he was taking a Democrat or Republican ballot in the Georgia primary on Feb. 5. He said Democrat. In addition, he said, ’I didn’t believe in my lifetime that there would be a chance for me to vote for a black man that really had a chance to win, so I’m voting Democrat.’ This thought process is not unlike the man I met in Iowa who had never voted in a caucus, but did this time for the same reason.
“For that kind of commitment, these men deserve better candidates and they are not getting them from Clinton Inc. or Barack Obama.”
— Martha Zoller, writing on “Clinton Inc. v. Obama: The Gloves Are Off Among the First Evers,” Monday at HumanEvents.com
Modern ideas
“Rousseau claims that the equality of the sexes is a foolish, modern idea. The differences between the sexes are there for anyone to see, linked as they are to anatomy. Rousseau will not quarrel with nature’s plumbing. Women, he argues, are not only the receivers of sexual advances, but the inherently weaker sex as well. But, he says, nature gave women a weapon to protect themselves from more powerful males: modesty.
“For Rousseau, modesty is the means by which women fend off undesirable males and encourage only the ones they regard as potential mates. And once the appropriate male has been snared, Rousseau says, women employ another tool to keep their otherwise hit-and-run mates around for the long haul: love. …
“Rousseau turns upside down the ideas my students carry about the sexes. He seems to say that women are fit only to become dutiful, breeding Stepford wives. … During one of my seminars, students unanimously contended that modesty is imposed on women by insecure men.”
— Hofstra University professor Laurie Fendrich, writing on “Creative Class, Dismissed,” in the Jan. 25 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education
Good news
“Pro-lifers have been very quietly receiving some good news in recent years. On Thursday, the Alan Guttmacher Institute released data indicating that the number of abortions has fallen by 25 percent since 1990. These findings are very consistent with data that was released this past November by the Centers for Disease Control. Overall the number of abortions has fallen 13 out of the past 14 years, including every year of the George W. Bush administration. Furthermore, there is a growing body of social-science evidence indicating that legal restrictions on abortion are playing a key role in these declines.
“However, one would not know this from listening to the mainstream media. The media continue to largely ignore America’s long-term abortion decline. Instead, they continue to provide plenty of favorable coverage to a relatively small number of analyses which supposedly indicate that both the passage of pro-life legislation and support for pro-life candidates does little to affect the incidence of abortion.”
— Michael J. New, writing on “Quiet Decline,” Monday at NationalReview.com
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