Tales of New America #20

Previous TALES are found here: Tale #1, Tale #2, Tale #3, Tale #4, Tale #5, Tale #6, Tale #7, Tale #8, Tale #9, Tale #10, Tale #11, Tale #12, Tale #13, Tale #14, Tale #15, Tale #16, Tale #17,Tale #18 Tale #19.

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The Fighting Whities Redux

Part Two

"The first matter I have to mention is that excluding the right to vote by sex or property and income status violates the basic American principle of no taxation without representation. It also violates uniformity in the Rule of Law as we conceive it. That argument alone ought to be enough to trump any that the other side proposes," Emily Welby insisted.

She and Janet Gaines sat side by side at a table facing the rest of the class. Prof. Bythewood, took a seat with the students and took notes.

Emily, a small blond haired girl who appeared shy and timid in and outside of class, was expressing herself confidently as she addressed the question of exclusive suffrage in the proposed Constitution.

"But to take the sex argument alone, why should women be excluded from the vote? Studies have shown that women tend to make better managers than men; that they work more cooperatively; that female managers listen better. Even in matters of life and death. It has been shown that female airline pilots are more attentive and listen better to traffic controllers and take instructions better. This was exemplified in a famous crash where a cockpit of men in a jetliner were warned numerous times that there was a small plane in their vicinity and they needed to keep an eye out for it. Instead, the men ignored the warnings and the flight recorder showed them so involved in talking about sports and their weekend to come, that they never acknowledged the warnings and that small plane collided with theirs, killing everyone aboard."

"Women serve as auxiliaries in the armed forces. Are they to be denied any say in the running of a country they have risked their lives for and served extremely well? Is this new nation going to be like Saudi Arabia? Are women going to have to ask permission for the right to travel, speak, drive, or go shopping?"

"Even as Christians, how can we allow this discrimination when even Jesus Christ didn't recognize male nor female, gentile or Jew, free or slave as different peoples, but equals in faith?"

"If we're going to discriminate, why this as a basis? Why should a drunken wife beating louse with an inheritance have a vote while a sober, life saving female doctor have none? Why not discriminate based on IQ or musical ability or eye color? Because they are all completely arbitrary and whimsical determinations just as this proposed law on voting is," Emily finished with a flourish, and then looked across at Janet with a nod as if to say, "take that!"

Janet gathered her thoughts and looked over her note cards and began, "St. Paul instructs us that the husband is the head of the family and that wives ought to submit to their husbands in matters of authority, just as husbands should submit themselves to God for guidance and wisdom. As Christians, we don't ask for an entirely egalitarian society because we recognize there are hierarchies in life and in our very being. If God created society as a natural patriarchy, who are we to deny it or attempt to thwart it? We are not to be proud."

"The question, then, is not whether we have a vote or not, but whether we have a voice? The unfranchised can speak freely, form associations, collect money and lobby for their causes and promote their own well being or that of others."

"Furthermore, the history of universal suffrage has proven to be a scheme of plundering and pillaging the wealth of the middle class for redistribution to the rich and the poor. In every State that allowed women the vote, spending on social conditions immediately doubled and increased year after year as emotional irrationality caused women to embrace socialism in the greater society as it was practiced in the home."

"Let me explain. The idea of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need", the Marxist ideal, only works in one place: the family. A man's ability to earn a living and to freely use it for the good of his wife and children is socialism, per se, since the children can do little to satisfy all their own needs."

"A wife's dependence on her husband's income for herself and children creates great anxiety should the man be deeply flawed or impaired. A woman's greatest desire is for security, and for this reason, is emotionally incapable as a sex, in general, from evaluating the necessity of small government. If her children were going hungry, what mother would not beg, borrow, or steal to feed them? But then she applies this logic to the overall society when she hears of men out of work, children going hungry, people not receiving medical care. Whereas previously, she would have formed civic charities to aid the needy, with the vote, politicians persuaded women that government should do the job, and so women and the needy, who also were able to vote, robbed their husbands, brothers, and even their children to feed the government huge sums of money that was almost entirely wasted. Today we see the result."

"As families had less and less money, women went into the workforce. That lowered wages so that more families needed dual incomes to enjoy a life that had previously been provided by the husband alone. Women delayed marriage and had fewer children, which lowered consumption and production since fewer babies meant fewer goods needed to be created. Women who stayed at home . . . well, their husbands had to work longer hours to try and make up for declining income. He spent less time with his wife and family. That created strain. He was exposed to more women in the marketplace leading to a higher rate of divorce, harming society further."

"Just as we recognize Natural Law, that it comes from God, but all people can discover it without having to know God, so too, we need to recognize that men are our natural leaders; and we have to go one step further in recognizing that not all men are equally capable of prudent judgment. The poor are just as greedy as the rich and have no right to grant themselves other people's goods and money simply by outvoting them. Miss Welby made a point about uniformity to the Rule of Law; well, patriarchy is also the Rule of Law, Natural Law. Civilizations thrive so long as they are masculine rather than effete and decadent. We have seen what feminization does to a nation in the USA and elsewhere."

"On the surface disenfranchisement may not seem fair, but God doesn't seem fair, either in the way he treats us, but it is right because it is the way things are and were created to be. And our duty is to do what's right, not to have our way in everything. This proposal in the Constitution is wise, just, and fair when looked at in the right light. I recommend it for your approbation," she concluded.

The professor stood up and said, "Well done, both of you. Let's have the class decide the winner. Hands up for Miss Welby."

A dozen hands went up.

"Hands up for Miss Gaines."

The rest of the class, around twenty arose.

"Miss Gaines, you're the winner, but I'm going to give extra credit to you both. Thank you. You may return to your seats."

"Well done," Kevin whispered as Janet took her seat next to him.

"Oh yuck, puke, and blech," she whispered back. "I hate myself."

Kevin felt like shaking his head over the fact that Janet was such a willful and opinionated girl, but she was so much more interesting to talk to than girls who gushed about some YouTube video of cats doing something cute. Janet was kind of a pain, though, but an interesting one like a loose tooth you'd keep working on with your tongue because it was loose and gave you something to do; and it was kind of fun to fool with it. The day it was yanked out was a bit depressing. It had been entertaining, oddly enough, to have a loose tooth to play with and now it was gone.

Janet would be such a great girl if only she could make a little attitude adjustment. It was fine that she was smart, but she was also pretty damn proud and blind to any opinion apart from her own.

Kevin liked WCC and Wyoming and the spirit of the people in the State. He was a little bit proud of himself, but for a different reason. He felt like he was learning how to be a man.

He was proud of how he'd stood up to the coaches at Stanford and their bullying tactics. He was grateful to coach Colson and Swinner. They let him prove he could play and then played him. They had no anger towards him for overlooking them for another college. They seemed like decent Christian men and treated him fairly. (They had been angry, of course, but were forgiving sorts, and were too busy to carry a grudge.)

And frankly, as terrible as it sounded, he was glad to be surrounded by guys like him, white guys. Sure, there were a number of teammates he wasn't buddies with or felt warmly about, but it's that they understood each other. There were no undercurrents of anxiety or stress where race or prejudice entered into one's thinking. If someone didn't like you, it was because he didn't like you and nothing else.

And what a season so far! To go from the practice squad to starting, and then winning like they had thus far to become challengers for the national championship, well, that's what made sports so great. The excitement, drama, joy, and pure thrill of competing at the highest level, what could beat that? Risking one's body seemed small in comparison to the rewards.

And Stanford? They'd lost two games and were out of contention. That fullback, Jackson? Seven not very productive games then a knee injury, and his replacement sucked at blocking, running, and catching. Their halfbacks were hardly better. So they relied on passing, but when you have to pass a lot in college, you throw a lot of interceptions or you get sacked a lot and the quarterback fumbles a lot, then he gets gun shy of taking brutal hits. They weren't expected to win another game with two more left. They'd probably end up in some third tier bowl and lose that, too.

But there was no time to gloat between football practice and classes. There were no gym majors, basket weaving, or bonehead courses at WCC. Kevin wasn't sure what his major would be, but was leaning toward civil engineering.

But thinking about Janet, what was he going to do with her? Should he tell her how much he liked her, admired her, wanted to sleep with her, but that she was not feminine enough in her behavior? Why did she have to be so rigid, angry, and determined?

He wasn't a Christian goody-too-shoes, but she didn't seem to have any real feeling for submission to the transcendent. Whereas he felt he was growing a deeper feeling about the ineffable nature of being alive.

Maybe being part of a team, of subordinating himself to a greater good, a bigger cause than selfish desire was part of it. Of course, he wanted to succeed, be a star, get drafted by the NFL, make a lot of money and be celebrated if he performed well, but inside, he was beginning to see that life, living, was being a part of something more: family, country, people.

What Janet was, he decided, was catty. Not like dumb sorority girls, but intellectually catty. It wasn't enough that she was smart, but that other people had to be stupid in her eyes, and she was ready to let them know it, insist on it, or complain of it.

As attractive as she was, it made her less so. He wondered if he meant enough to her that she might consider him worth trying to please and amend her behavior? He understood that he was what some people called an alpha male, and was more desirable a partner than the average Joe Shmoe, and thus had a greater pick of attractive girls, but he wasn't a cold, inconsiderate bastard. He just wanted a warm, loving, pleasing, and tender girl who was also smart, laughed at his jokes, and was easy to get along with. Janet stressed that portrait of his. Nor immensely, but enough.

The problem, as he saw it, was how to know when this person was the best you could do in the time you had to choose, or should one hold out for someone closer to the ideal? Did someone close to ideal even exist? Men had been asking themselves that for quite a few millennia.

He liked Janet. She was pretty, had a great figure, was of a size to his liking, but her intellectual cattiness made him think she was a basically unhappy person. Nothing was ever quite right enough in her estimation. If she knew that, was told that, could she change? Does anyone ever change?

Fish or cut bait? A dilemma. But it could wait until the football season was over. Men are like that: good at delaying confrontations with reality and consequences. Most men have no idea how weak they are nor how proud. Fatal conditions.

****

"So where do you stand, now?" she asked Kevin.

"I liked your arguments."

"I hated them. It was a bunch of bull," she spat out.

"So, you're against Natural Law and patriarchy?"

"Damn right."

"So you're for murder, rape, and theft."

"What? Huh?"

"Natural Law. You know, the idea that some things are inherently wrong and everyone knows it or would if they thought about it."

"Of course I'm not against Natural Law like you mean it."

"Then you hate patriarchy."

"Yes."

"And civilization. You said yourself that patriarchy is basically responsible for civilization."

"No. Women should be free to vote. That's all."

"Even if it means it will destroy a great civilization?"

"Yes. If it comes to that. If people want to destroy their own society, that's their right."

"But people don't want to destroy it. Women do, though, as you said. They can't help themselves according to what you said."

She looked at him peevishly. Was she being hoisted on her own petard? "That's just rhetoric. It isn't true. Not really."

"How not really? Dismissing something isn't the same as disproving it."

"Do you really want women to be like, 'Oh, Kevin dear, I made you your favorite meal, I washed your favorite shirt, I'm wearing your favorite perfume. Oh darling!' " she simpered adding, "Is that what you want?"

"You tell me," he said stopping her and making her face him directly.

She looked away after a moment. "No, I guess not."

"Don't presume it of any man, then, either. Mockery and sarcasm aren't arguments either. At least not civil ones. People do have different roles, you know."

She had been humbled to being less willful or spirited at the moment. "What if some women don't want such roles? Does everybody have to fit in a box of what's expected of them because they're male or female?"

"Yes, to some extent, but obviously, there are a lot of misfits in the world. Are you saying you're one of them or want to be? That doesn't sound like a happy life."

"I don't know. I'm not happy now, so why should I expect to be happy later?"

He considered a number of things to say, but thought better of it. Her admission didn't so much surprise him as it seemed to surprise her. A self-confession blurted out. A sudden realization -- if I can't be happy with Kevin, with knowledge and learning, with having children and raising them, what can I be happy with? Anything? What does make me happy, she wondered? What is it that I truly love about being alive? She liked a lot of things, she thought. Enjoyed most aspects about life, she supposed, but what do I really love apart from proving how smart I am, how much I admire my own thoughts about everything?

It also occurred to her that if she wanted to change anything about herself, she had no idea of how to go about it. She turned away from him.

"I'll talk to you later," she said as she began to walk away.

He watched her go, shaking his head a little as he thought, "That is not the kind of girl I want to marry. I want someone who's basically happy who I can please. Someone who appreciates me." His psych professor told the class that people change but little over the course of their lives. Look around at your classmates. What you see now is pretty much what you'll get later.

To Be Continued