day no. 17,393: big league chew

"Some acknowledge that some women are ahead of some men, but then attribute this to the men concerned not actualizing their full potential. But I believe that there are men who are maxed out, and are still behind some women. This is because some women were created to be helpers to men who are way above average." — Douglas Wilson, Late May Letters Late in May

There are some women who are out of some men's leagues. There are men who are maxed out and would still be a step down for some women to submit to. She could humble herself and submit to him, but she could not submit to him without descending to his level. 

To be fair, the same can be said for men. There are some men who are out of some women's leagues. There are some women who are maxed out and would still be a step down for some men to lead. He could go slower in order to lead her, but he could not lead her without hamstringing himself to do so.

Some men are better men than others and so it stands to reason that better men need better helpers. That said, no man should need so much help as to need a helper merely to be a man. That man does not need a woman, he needs Jesus. God gave Adam a wife, not a mom. God gives boys a mom, but if they do not grow up, they should not look for another one. A man must leave his father and mother in order to cleave to a wife. She cannot be another mother, she must be a helper and a lover.

day no. 17,353: the HRification of everything

"I am indebted to Helen Andrews for the pithiest expression of what has happened to us as a result of women coming into these spaces in large numbers. She calls it the 'HRification' of everything. Men and women tend to view conflict differently. Men think of conflict as one of the means for making progress, as one of the necessary tools that will get us to a solution. Women tend to view conflict as the problem that must be solved. All conflict must therefore be suppressed. And from this we get all the woke nonsense, with busybodies trying to stomp out all the micro-triggers. I think it is useless to deny that this paradigm is now the dominant one in our public discourse. And I think the 19th Amendment was one of the original culprits." — Douglas Wilson, On Repealing the 19th Amendment

Is conflict good or bad? If we disagree over the nature of conflict, is that conflict permitted? Lump it in with those who hate hate and are intolerant of intolerance. The micro-aggression mongers show that they know how to make big deals out of little things. They also know how to create conflict in their effort to reduce other kinds of conflict. What is comes down to is the conflict that gets them what they want and the kind that gets them angry. In other words, the kind of conflict they can win and the kind that they cannot.

Isaiah 3:12

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way.

Women in positions of leadership is a sign of God's wrath. Oppression is the only result of female liberation movements. Women are less free when women rule than when men do. The masculine ideal is better equipped to govern both sexes than the feminine ideal. The feminine ideal has its place and it is good and proper in it, but it is tyrannical and oppressive when it get promoted beyond its ability. The feminine mystique on steroids does not produce a better woman. It does not make her more beautiful, but less. It does not make her as strong as men, it only makes her about as ugly as one. 

day no. 17,351: cultures are covenantal

"We believe that every healthy culture—and every healthy subculture, like a church—is something that has to be molecular, and that the essential building block of every complex molecule is going to be the family. This is why we vote in the way we do, and why I have written about twenty books on marriage and family. These are Burke’s little platoons, and we honor them." — Douglas Wilson, On Repealing the 19th Amendment

All cultures are covenantal. 

As such, covenant breakers cannot create a culture, they can only feed off an existing one. In that way, they are like locust. They can eat the produce of a land, but they cannot plant. They can only pillage and plunder. Covenant breakers can, like the prodigal, devour a culture, but they cannot create one. They can spend their inheritance, but they cannot save one or pass one down to their offspring.

The family is the first and foundational covenantal reality with which everyone comes into contact. It is there that we learn how to depend on others to do their duty while being dependable in the execution of our own duties. It is there that we learn that we do not need the State to survive, we simply need them to pick up the phone when lethal force is required. 

day no. 17,350: atomistic or adamistic

"The integers out of which the State is constituted are not individuals, but families represented in their parental heads.” — R.L. Dabney

Men are not atomistic, they are Adamistic. They are not made without respect to others like individual widgets on an assembly line, they are made as sons and daughters in a covenantal line. Families are fundamental. Every one is born under the headship of another. No one is born outside of a covenantal reality. As such, we are not individuals, we are, as Rene Girard has noted, interviduals.

The building blocks of society are not individual souls, but independent households. As image bearers, we are molecular, not atomistic. The State wants to destroy our molecular bonds, but since it cannot win a war against reality, it settles for the same subtlety that Satan employed in Eden. It preaches radical individualism reinforced by individual votes. It tries to convince us that freedom is found in being your own god and that obedience to a head is offensive.

Husbands are the heads of their wives and parents are the heads of their children. The civil magistrate is the representative head of those households.

day no. 17,336: a longhouse headache

“If there must be a head, why the man? Well, firstly, is there any very serious wish that it should be the woman?” — C.S. Lewis

Men were made to be responsible. Many do not like that and try to abdicate, but that just leaves their responsibilities to fall on others's shoulders. But whose fault is that? Men's. Men can be irresponsible, but they cannot be aresponsible. They do not have the ability to avoid that weight. And everyone knows it.

“What is called ‘matriarchy’ is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.” — G. K. Chesterton

Matriarchy is not women ruling, it is men ruling poorly. Men cannot NOT rule. They can only rule well or not so well. The feminists know this. They hate men for leading and then they hate men for failing to lead. They do this because they hate men, not because they hate authority or responsibility. They want to separate what God has joined together. They want to possess authority without having to take responsibility. They are at war with reality. They want to live according to a new dictionary, but they want men to live according to the old one. 

They want to blast a man for opening a door for a lady and they want him to pay child support he abandons her. They want him to pay for the abortion and they want him to pay for the wedding.

day no. 17,324: women in the workplace

“Most of the Feminists would probably agree with me that womanhood is under shameful tyranny in the shops and mills. But I want to destroy the tyranny. They want to destroy womanhood. That is the only difference.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

Womanhood in the workplace is tyrannical because women in the workplace is a tyranny. It is not a matter of women being allowed into the workforce as much as it is women being forced into the workforce by abdicating fathers and abandoning husbands. Women were marched into the workplace long before they marched to secure a place there. 

So, like Chesterton, I agree. Women in the workplace is less than ideal.

"Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity. They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm. That is why they do office work so well; and that is why they ought not to do it." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

Feminists want to turn women into men. They want the standards of men applied to women and the rewards of masculinity available to feminists. I, like Chesterton, want that tyranny toppled. No one should be held to someone else's standard. Each servant should answer to his or her master and not for his or her fellow servants.

Romans 14:4

Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.

So, a woman should not be held to a man's standard in the workplace and a man should not be held to a woman's standard in the classroom. But both should answer to God and strive to live according to His standards for them respective to their posts.

“The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

When men fail to work, women must fill the void. When men are willing to let others starve, others either need to get to work or starve.

“What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.” — G.K. Chesterton

Women in the workplace would be necessary if husbands went home to their wives and fathers went home to their children. Men must go to work, but they also must come home when they are done. When the men abandon their posts, it is only natural that the the women will unnaturally abandon theirs.

day no. 17,315: to accept warriorettes is to accept defeat

"Battles are ugly when women fight.” — C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, book 1: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Battles are never pretty, but they are never uglier as when they involve women on the battle front. Women were made to help men by holding down the fort, not by having their six. 

In short, women in warfare are ugly.

"When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her. He can be afraid of her speech and still more of her silence; but force reminds him of a rusted but very real weapon of which he has grown ashamed." — G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

There are few things more embarrassing than beating a girl. If you win, you lose and if you lose, you lose.

“Any nation that defends herself with women in combat is not worth defending.” — Douglas Wilson, A Christian View of War

Any nation that sends its women off to war has already lost the war. Even if they win, they lose. Their behavior is indefensible even if their borders still are.

“A nation that sends its women to fight its wars is not worth defending.” — Pat Buchanan

Allowing women to fight in your place is embarrassing enough, but forcing them to fight is worse. Conscripting anyone is a sin, but conscripting women is a double sin. No woman should be fighting on the front lines and no woman should want to. And no man should force a woman to fight who doesn't want to. The man that would do that should be ashamed. He is worse than an unbeliever.You should not defend the indefensible. It is unconscionable to send women and children to die in order to save the men.

Jeremiah 51:30

The mighty men of Babylon have forborn to fight, they have remained in their holds: their might hath failed; they became as women: they have burned her dwellingplaces; her bars are broken.

If you win the men, you win the war.  But if you send your women our into harm's way, your homes are already forfeit. If you've lost the men, you've lost the war and someone else's men are soon to be your masters. If your men are content to send men to war, you don't have men anymore. Your men have become women. 

To accept warriorettes is to accept defeat.

day no. 17,308: women's work

“The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

Man was made for the garden and woman was made for the man. He takes care of the earth and she takes care of him. His work is to go out and bring back while her work is to receive and give back.

“What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.” — G.K. Chesterton

There would be no room for women in the workplace if men were already there. Women work when men are lazy. Women punch in where men have checked out. Women go out where the men won't get up. Women take charge where men have given up.

day no. 17,307: second rate women and fifth rate men

“Ten thousand women marched through the streets shouting, ‘We will not be dictated to,’ and went off and became stenographers.” — G.K. Chesterton

Feminism is second rate woman wanting to be a first rate man. A first rate women does not want to be a man and a second rate woman cannot be one. She cannot even be a first rate woman. At best, she ends up a fifth rate man. So, she forfeits what she has to get a worse version of what she can never have. She forsakes who she is in order to fall short of what someone else is.

"Feminism is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers, but slaves when they help their husbands." — G.K. Chesterton

Women were made to help, not to lead. If they do not follow their husbands, they will follow their employers. Like the rest of us, girl bosses get their paychecks signed by the man in charge.

day no. 17,277: daddy sang bass, mama sang tenor

"When a man is being both masculine and on pitch, and his wife is being both feminine and on pitch, there are few things in this world that can compare to it for glory. But when a man is singing masculine, but flat, and the woman is singing feminine, but sharp, there are few things on earth that can compare to it for sheer auditory insult. It is enough to make you stop and stare." ― Douglas Wilson, Hayden and Danis

Soft men and hard women are a sign of God's curse on a community. Men who are flat instead of bold and muted instead of dynamic cannot lead. Women who are shrill instead of sweet and loud instead of lilting cannot complement anyone. 

"The Spirit will never try to create a false peace, where the man and the woman take the lazy way out and sing something really boring in unison. That happens when a blustering man demands that his wife sing his part along with him, or more frequently, as in these our times, when the woman insists that he sing the Longhouse Blues along with her." ― Douglas Wilson, Hayden and Danis

Egalitarian sex swapping cannot produce happy homes and androgynous notes cannot produce dynamic music. It can drone along, but it cannot crescendo. Feminism wants everyone to sing bass while misogyny wants women to sing while men sit and listen. 

1 Corinthians 11:16

If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.

Harmony in the home is only in singing the part God made you to sing, everything else is discord.

Good marriages, like good music, is Christ or chaos. If Daddy sings bass and mama sings tenor the home will be full of music, if not, it will be full of noise.

day no. 17,232: feminism is the white flag of feminine

“Feminism often means the refusal to be feminine.” — G.K. Chesterton 

No one hates a woman like a group of women. 

“In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World

Women apparently agree. They like being who they are and doing what they like, but all of them as a group have begun to despise what women were made for. They resent their biology and envy the livelihood of the man. Feminism is the confession that femininity has failed. It is a concession speech. It is the white flag of domesticity. At least, it would be white if someone would have stayed home to bleach it. As it is, it is a rather dingy yellow and looks as though it would make things dirtier by touching them instead of cleaner. In that regard, it is a good metaphor for feminism, which only makes beauty uglier while contributing no added strength to masculinity.

"There has happened a strange and startling thing. Openly and to all appearance, this ancestral conflict has silently and abruptly ended; one of the two sexes has suddenly surrendered to the other... the woman has in public surrendered to the man. She has seriously and officially owned that the man has been right all along; that the public house is really more important than the private house." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

Feminism has conceded that the workplace is the only thing that matters. While men used to work hard to provide for a wife and kids at home, the woman now insists on being next to him providing enough for them to pay some other woman to watch their kids.

"Feminism is a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands." — G.K. Chesterton

Feminism has so elevated the ability to make money that it has abandoned the feminine ideal of making home.

“The Feminist, I think, is one who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.” — G.K. Chesterton

By the woman attempting to join — or in some cases take — the place of the man, no one is left to take the place of the woman. In this, everyone is agreed that no one wants to be feminine or subscribe to the feminine ideals. If a man sees the need and attempts to fill the void with his effeminacy, he does not succeed. Effeminacy is not femininity. A man cannot be wife. He is excluded from doing so by definition. He can do the dishes, change the diapers, and stay home with the kids, but he isn't a mother. He is not a homemaker. He cannot be.

day no. 17,195: women's rights and wrongs

“This common movement for women’s rights, and women’s preaching, must be regarded, then, as simply infidel. It cannot be candidly upheld without attacking the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.” — R.L.Dabney

It was once considered self-evident to presuppose that all people were created equal and that they were endowed by their Creator with particular, unalienable rights. It was also previously understood that man was a representative of all people the same way that a father was a representative of his entire family or a pastor of his church or a governor of his territory. 

When we began to parcel out people into classes with particular rights distinct to their sub-section, we also began to stop acknowledging where these rights came from. God above gave all people certain rights: life, liberty, and property. These did not come from any alien agency. They were not the product of a foreign government. They came down directly from God, our Creator and Father. When we introduced the idea of rights being manufactured in Washington like widgets in a factory, we turned our back on what our ancestor's eyeballs. What everyone once knew and took for granted was not forgotten or even worse, openly refuted and ignored.

Women had the right to vote before the 19th amendment was passed. They voted through their dad as a daughter in her father's home and she voted through her husband as a wife in her husband's home. She was represented and accounted for in the final tally. 

Matthew 19:6

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

The 19th amendment pitted wife against husband and legally divided the what God had covenantally joined. God does not recognize their legal fiction. He holds them accountable to the covenantal reality. And that is why curses come on those who break faith by inventing new rights to idolize while violating the rights provided by their Father.

"A man with God is always in the majority." — John Knox

Heaven is not a democracy. You cannot vote God away. He is a Monarch and your vote count for nothing in His courts. Christ is King... so come along quietly. And with a little less backchat, ladies.

day no. 17,180: made from and made for

“The man was created to tend the garden, and the woman was created to tend the gardener.” — Douglas Wilson

Man was made from the dirt of the ground and woman was made from the rib of the man. Man was made out of the dust of the garden and woman was made from the fruit of the garden. The woman is the garden of gardens and has within herself a garden. She is the garden incarnate. As such, she serves the man by receiving his seeds and growing his crops. She produces fruit and provides nurture. 

He was made to take care of the dirt he came from and she was made to take care of the man she came from.

1 Corinthian 11:12

For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.

The first woman was made from the man, but every man since has been made inside a woman. God has knit all things together that each may honor the other by being who He made them to be and for the reason He made.

1 Corinthians 14:33

For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

God is a God of order. He does not do things haphazardly or without the end in mind. Nothing is done out of sequence, too soon, or too late.

1 Timothy 2:13

For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

Forms and functions matter and God is the Author of all of them. 

day no. 17,157: poetry or pornography?

"Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.

When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.

But we cannot make gravity disappear just because we dislike it, and in the same way we find that our banished authority and submission comes back to us in pathological forms. This is what lies behind sexual 'bondage and submission games,' along with very common rape fantasies. Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the 'soon to be made willing' heroine. Those who deny they have any need for water at all will soon find themselves lusting after polluted water, but water nonetheless.

True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity. When authority is honored according to the word of God it serves and protects — and gives enormous pleasure. When it is denied, the result is not 'no authority,' but an authority which devours." — Douglas Wilson, Fidelity:  What It Means to be a One-Woman Man

The sexual act is packed with meaning and mystery. 

Marriage is a living metaphor. It is intimacy incarnate, which is to say it is the myth with some meat on its bones.

Men are seed, women are soil.

Men are gardeners, women are gardens.

The man initiates, the woman responds.

The man conquers, the woman cultivates.

Ephesians 5:30-32

For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

The mysteries of marriage and lovemaking are images of Christ and His church. Every marriage and every sexual act is either telling the truth about God or it is lying about Him. The one thing they cannot do is be silent. The way we marry is saying something about Jesus. The way we make love is saying something about God. It is either orthodox or it is heretical. It is either good and glorious or it is evil and malicious.

“You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.” — Horace 

Biological sex and physiological sex are both pictures of the glory of God. If you deny them, they will come back to you in inglorious forms. They are either accurate portrayals or they are slanderous caricatures. They are either beautiful or they are ugly. They are either fruitful or they are fruitless. They cannot do nothing. They always do something. They either draw us closer to God or they separate us from Him. They nurture our souls or they poison them. They are either poetry or they are pornography.

day no. 17,140: wisdominion (men may be strong, but God is stronger)

“A return to sanity will be a return to an unapologetic acceptance of the fact that men are of necessity going to be dominant. The only choice we have as a society is between whether the dominance is going to be constructive or destructive. Because the poobahs in charge have spent the last generation or so outlawing every form of constructive male dominance they can identify, we are now discovering that—far from empowering women—they have actually empowered destructive male dominance. Put another way, when constructive male dominance is outlawed, only outlaws will have male dominance.” — Douglas Wilson, Virgins and Volcanoes 

Men were made to dominate. They were put on this planet to rule and subdue the world. This will either be done with wisdom from above (wisdominion) or it will be informed by wisdom from below (wisdumb).

Proverbs 20:29

The glory of young men is their strength:

and the beauty of old men is the grey head. 

Men will either be strong and productive or they will be strong and destructive. They will either conquer evil or they will conquer the innocent. They will either plant and prune or they will rape and pillage. Either way, men will rule. The question is not if men will rule, how will they rule.

“And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” — Jordan B. Peterson

We cultivate what we celebrate. Men were made to conquer and called to cultivate. When we thank God for the gift of men, we cultivate good men who are good at being men. When we force men to apologize for what God did (in making them masculine), we cultivate weak men who are only good at being better at masculinity than women are. This is why we see men competing in women's sports and not women competing in men's sports. This is why feminism is for weak men. Women are not as good at being men as women are so feminism makes masculinity the standard so that it can win. It cannot compete with men, so it goes to war with women, just like the serpent in the garden.

1 Peter 3:7

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

Women are weaker than men. Men must remember this without taking advantage of this. Men were made strong in order to protect the weakness of women, not to force its strength upon them. When men forget their place and use their strength to abuse women rather than protect them, God uses His strength to stop them. Men may be strong, but God is stronger. If a man uses his God-given strength for evil, he should not be surprised to discover that God uses His strength to restrain him and take his borrowed strength back.

day no. 17,139: emasculinity

“Women really do need to be protected and guarded from men. They need this because there really is a thing called toxic masculinity. But the only ones who are capable of protecting women from men are the men. The only thing capable of protecting women from toxic masculinity is masculinity.” — Douglas Wilson, Virgins and Volcanoes

Feminism cannot protect women even if it wanted to, which it doesn't. Feminism is the brain child of weak men who needed even weaker women in order to remain top dog in the gender wars. The only thing capable of delivering women from wicked weaklings is good strongmen. Evil men can sway good women because men are stronger than women, but good men can defeat evil men because they are better men. As such, they are capable of resisting the strength of weak men in order to save even weaker women and children.

Proverbs 20:29

The glory of young men is their strength: 

and the beauty of old men is the grey head.

The world does not need less masculinity, it needs redeemed masculinity (and much more of it). Men were made to be strong and if they are not good, they will be evil and strong or in the case of feminism, evil and weak, but stronger than women.

Masculinity is only toxic in deficiency, not in excess. Only men can protect women from other men. Only masculinity can guard femininity from emasculinity. 

Emasculinity seeks to make second rate women into fifth rate men so that third rate men can rule over them.

day no. 17,128: smooth men and smooth sailing

“When the seas are smooth and the waves are placid, even girly men will sail.” — Joe Rigney, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage

It takes no masculinity to sail on smooth waters. Anyone can do that. Smooth men can take to the smooth seas. When good men provide good times, soft men can skate, but if and when the hard times come, the smooth men slip and fall. They do not have sea legs or any muscle memory of surviving choppy waters to fall back on. They are untested so when the test comes, they fail.

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.” — Norman Schwarzkopf

In a good environment, men will need to create artificial adversities in order to stay trim for the real adversities that will inevitably come. If a man does not make some things harder on purpose, he will find out that hard things are much harder by accident. 

Proverbs 24:10

If you faint in the day of adversity, 

your strength is small.

So, lift weights, read books, compose essays, etc... Make things harder sometimes in order to keep your courage from atrophying into something that resembles the structural integrity of a bag of soup.

day no. 17,102: muscular Christianity

“Kingsley, though romantic and attractive in many ways, was a great deal more like Nervous Christianity than Muscular Christianity.” — G.K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature

Nervous Christianity is always looking over its shoulder because it isn't sure the Savior has its back. It lacks faith in what God has said so it only keeps its ears attentive to what others are saying. It takes the temperature of the room and does what it takes to avoid registering any heat. It does not want to rock the boat because it worries that Christ might capsize. But it forgets that a lack of faith is the only thing that can send a man overboard. 

1 Timothy 1:19

Faith and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.

Muscular Christianity is always abounding in good works because it is focused on its Lord. It has faith in God's Word and so it reads it before it reads the world. It is intimate with the timeless and so it does not fret the frivolous times. It is a fire from God constantly kindled and burning bright for all to see and some to be warmed by. It does not fear the storms. It walks on water. It finds safe harbor because Christ is both the Captain of its ship and the lighthouse on the Rock that never fails to provide guidance.

day no. 17,087: no one hates a woman like other women

"Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school mistress, but not a competitive schoolmistress; a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

A woman does not need to be the best cook in the world, but she should be the best cook in her home. She does not need to be the most beautiful woman in the world, but she should try to be as beautiful as she can be in her own right according to what her husband finds most attractive about her. She does not need to be the best blogger in her friend group, but she should be her husband and children's favorite mom blog.

Too many women get catty with one another because they are trying to win bragging rights from one another without respect to the men in their lives who actually have the authority to hand out blue ribbons. 

No one hates a woman like other women.

A wife is not called to be a better wife than the one next door because she doesn't live next door. A wife is suited to her husband and to her house. The only way she can be better is by asking her husband what else he needs or seeing where her own household could improve. She may borrow ideas from another wife on how to improve her own household or how to better serve her own husband, but not in order to best her neighbor. They are running their respective races on separate tracks. They could not beat the other to the finish line because it is not a timed event.

Yet, women often insist on competing with one another without respect to their own husband's judgment. They post in order to impress their friends or tp be the envy of Instagram, but they ignore their own people. They throw shade at another's woman's cake recipe in order to gain a spotlight for their own. They are often competing with each other over things their husbands do not give a fig about.

No one hates a woman like other women.

day no. 17,084: brutalitarian

"If comfort gives men virtue, the comfortable classes ought to be virtuous—which is absurd. Then, again, we do hear of the yet weaker and more watery type of sentimentalists: I mean the sentimentalist who says, with a sort of splutter, 'l Flog the brutes!' or who tells you with innocent obscenity ‘what he would do’ with a certain man—always supposing the man’s hands were tied. This is the more effeminate type of the two; but both are weak and unbalanced. And it is only these two types, the sentimental humanitarian and the sentimental brutalitarian, whom one hears in the modern babel. Yet you very rarely meet either of them in a train. You never meet anyone else in a controversy. The man you meet in a train is like this man that I met: he is emotionally decent, only he is intellectually doubtful.” — G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles 

The brutalitarian is always rough with people in theory and often hiding from people in reality. Social media has only exacerbated this type of behavior by giving this type of a person a platform where they can be as rough as they like with actual people in a simulated environment without ever having to be in the same physical room as another tangible person.

"Two things to remember in life. Take care of your thoughts when you are alone, and take care of your words when you are with people." — Anonymous

Ideas have consequences, but ideas do not knock on our front door. Ideas do not come over for dinner or ask to talk to us after service. Ideas do not text us in the middle of the night or ask us to help them move this weekend. Ideas do not take our orders or leave their blinkers on in traffic. People have ideas, but they are rarely one idea incarnate. They have all kinds of ideas about all kinds of things and those ideas influence them, of course, but when you interact with the person, you are not interacting with any particular idea in isolation. The online option has changed all that, however. People are still people, but it is now possible to isolate certain ideas in them when posting or replying to them. Instead of sitting across from them and their ideas over a pot roast, we are able to roast them over the airwaves for their ideas.