A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Back To Patriarchy

     There are persons so consumed with themselves, so in love with their own imagined intellectual and moral superiority to the rest of us, that they think themselves immune to the laws of Nature.

     The single-sentence paragraph above is, sadly, about as well constructed as it was possible for me to make it. Yet there are problems with it. The most egregious of them is my use of the word think. It’s likely that very little thought goes into such persons’ assumptions or practices. But believe would have been no better, as it implies an equivalent degree of consciousness. Consciousness is not an element in the relevant persons’ lives or programs.

     However one reaches the posture described above, to recognize that Nature has laws requires a degree of consciousness that’s inconsistent with the observed behavior of the persons described. For example, consider the following snippet from Twitter, which has already garnered quite a lot of mockery from the DextroSphere:

     The woman who awarded herself that dollop of self-indulgence is plainly unaware of the implications of what she’s said. An exceedingly deep law of Nature is involved which she lacks the mental horsepower to recognize or understand...even as that law enforces itself upon her and those who think as she does. As Liberty’s Torch’s Gentle Readers are an unusually intelligent sort, I’ll forgo a detailed analysis of that law. In any case, there’s a more interesting topic available.

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     Among the funniest aspects of the rantings of militant atheists – you know, the sort who deride theists for not accepting their “proof” that there is no God – is their reliance upon evolution as a tactical stroke. I find this risible because when pressed, they demand that the analytical use of evolution stop exactly where they want it to stop.

     Evolution is a process (always assuming that the evidence for it really indicates the operation of the specified process) that doesn’t stop with species differentiation. Why should it? If there are distinguishable subgroups within a species, whether the distinctions are anatomical, physiological, or environmental, differentiation is likely to continue. That’s inherent in the mechanism. However, if those subgroups need one another for some urgent reason – propagation being the key – evolutionary pressures will result in intra-species differentiation rather than the generation of entirely new species.

     That process is what produced distinguishable races, sexes with different aptitudes and specialties, and enduring distinctions among ethnicities. That the various races and ethnicities of Man can interbreed confirms that the differentiation has not produced new, immiscible species.

     There are many aspects of these differences that are worthy of exploration. Today my attention has fixed upon that greatest of the bug-bears of the feminist Left, the “patriarchy.”

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     Specialization is driven by the quest for greater efficacy and efficiency in particular, sufficiently important undertakings. In economics, this is expressed in the Law of Comparative Advantage. Expressed as an example: It simply doesn’t matter that lawyer Smith types twice as well as his secretary Jones. Jones is an acceptable secretary, but not nearly as good a lawyer as Smith. Therefore, Smith should leave the typing to Jones, even though he could do it faster and better, and concentrate on providing legal services.

     We see this all around us in business and commerce – it’s the basis of a division-of-labor economy – but it’s no less important in the other aspects of our lives. For example, it’s almost inevitable that in a household of two or more adults, each will acquire responsibilities that are better suited to his aptitudes than those that go to others. Any other distribution will incur both inefficiency and resentment. It is here that the indestructible germs of patriarchal organization are most easily seen.

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     Statistically, men are favored in the following characteristics:

• Size;
• Physical strength and speed;
• Focus and concentration;
• Initiative;
• Aggression.

     Statistically, women are favored in the following characteristics:

• Fine motor control;
• The senses of smell and taste;
• Ability to organize disparate tasks;
• Emotional susceptibility;
• Consensus building.

     Are there exceptions? Yes. But they’re few, which is why they’re called exceptions. Posing a six-foot-tall female weightlifter next to a five-foot-tall male office worker doesn’t disprove the statistical correlation, which is strong worldwide.

     Doesn’t it seem, then, rather natural that the “jobs” of defense against enemies and predators, of acquiring necessities or the wherewithal to buy them, and of initiating and prosecuting commercial ventures generally fall to men, while the “jobs” of homemaking, nurturing of offspring, and community involvement generally fall largely to women? Wouldn’t the comparative advantages of the two sexes be wasted otherwise?

     Dislike of this natural distribution of responsibilities between the sexes is the core of contemporary (i.e., as opposed to original) feminism. But then, sociopolitical movements are almost always implicit rebellions against a law of Nature.

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     What has been derided by the term patriarchy is nothing more than the usual, natural distribution of responsibilities delineated above. Because defense and survival are the primary requirements of life, pride of place has always attached to those jobs. They whose profession is war must be commanded by others who understand them, which elevates men to high places in the military and the governments they serve. For the risks they court on our behalf, they’re accorded honor and awarded authority.

     The less risky undertakings that generally go to women deserve honor as well, but it is inappropriate and disproportionate to award them the kind and degree of authority that goes to other kinds of leaders. Feminists regard that as unacceptable, a kind of oppression, when it’s only the consequence of the natural distribution of responsibilities. He who puts his life and health on the line for others’ benefit will not tolerate being told what to do, or how to do it, by those others.

     If you’ve wondered about the resentment felt by military men at being subordinated to persons who have never seen military service, this is the reason. It manifests proportionally in the seasoned warrior’s disdain of the “REMF:” the commissioned officer who has never seen combat, and whose position allows him to avoid risk to himself.

     Consider this in tandem with Mark Steyn’s observation that:

     Today, in your typical election campaign, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much every party in the rest of the West are all but exclusively about those secondary impulses: government health care (which America is slouching toward incrementally but remorselessly), government day care (which was supposedly the most important issue in the 2006 Canadian election), government paternity leave (which Britain has introduced). We’ve elevated the secondary impulses over the primary ones: national defense, self-reliance, family, and most basic of all, reproductive activity. [From America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It]

     ...and ponder how that “reprioritization” has been propelled by feminism and feminist-favoring public policies, both here and abroad.

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     The more completely feminized nations of the First World – i.e., Europe – are currently experiencing invasion, colonization, and conquest by a patriarchal order. We hear about it in the nightly news. No sane American can doubt what terrible consequences this will ultimately have for the people whose continent was once known as Christendom. Yet the forces of feminization have been at work in our nation too, as if they were eager to bring upon Americans the very horrors that Europeans already suffer.

     Perhaps they are. One cannot be certain about such things. But about one thing we can be certain: To the extent that we allow the natural patriarchal structure of society to be set aside in favor of feminist fantasies about the interchangeability of the sexes, we will suffer as our European cousins have suffered. It might be at the hands of invading Muslims, but they are not necessary to this scenario. There is another, highly patriarchal culture in our hemisphere already. It would not be slow to exploit the opening the deliberate weakening of our society would offer.

     Now return to the feminist-progressive tirade embedded in the opening section, and ponder whether you would want a president of that sort. After all, we very nearly got one.