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. 17,275: manly character

“Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.” ― Robert E. Lee

A man is not an island and any man who strives to be seen as a lone wolf is not a good man. He may be good at getting his way, but he does not possess the character of a man as much as he has the disposition of a boy. He throws his tantrums with muscles and lawsuits. He does to people what a three year old would if they had the resources (and with just as much sense).

Matthew 8:8-10

The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

The centurion was a good and godly man because he both commanded respect from others and respected the commands of his superiors. Men hopped to when he talked because he hopped to when his boss talked. The kind of man who gladly obeys his master is the kind of man who can humbly lead others. 

A man cannot be an authority until he is under authority. He can be a boy and try to take short cuts, but he will not have authority. He may be feared and obeyed, but he cannot be respected by conducting his business that way.

Manly character is not just a matter of being in charge, it is a matter of being under authority.

day no. 17,258: the danger of love and the danger of lust

“Fighting for a thing without loving it is not even fighting; it can only be called a kind of horse-play that is occasionally fatal." — G.K. Chesterton

Love is the desire to put oneself between the beloved and the danger.

Lust is the danger of putting one's desires before the other.

James 4:1-2

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

We fight for things we love.

We fight with things we lust after.

Most modern warfare is not about loving what is behind us but hating what is in front of us. It involve a lot of horsing around online and most of the time people merely get their feelings hurt, but sometimes it escalates out onto the streets of Minneapolis where someone dies.

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. 17,192: Jesus was not gay, He was God

“I despise the picture that is painted in our culture of a sissified, needy Jesus.” — Voddie Baucham

Jesus is not now nor was He ever gay. He was, is, and ever will be God.

2 Corinthians 11:3-4

I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

Why do people find it easier to bear a gay-adjacent Jesus than they do a fire-breathing Jesus? To ask the question is to answer it. An effeminate culture gravitates towards a Jesus in its own image rather than the picture of the one pointed in the Gospels and the book of Revelation. The Word of God with a sword in His mouth and a blood-stained robe doesn't vibe with a generation raised by their cell phones. 

Revelation 19:13-16

And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

That is God. He is who He is. Like it or lump it, but either way, your opinion does not change it. So, accept Him as He is and submit to His law as it is and you will be forgiven for who you are and be given His Spirit to guide you to be who you should have been.

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. 17,163: boys to men

“If boys don’t learn, men won’t know.” — Douglas Wilson, Future Men

Manhood must be conveyed. You do not become a man by growing up or growing a beard, you only become a man when a man confirms your manhood. It is like being knighted or like apostolic succession. You cannot be knighted without a knight to convey the title to you. You cannot be an elder in the church of God without elders ahead and above you to confirm you. You cannot confirm your own arrival. You cannot be trusted to grade our own exam. Without another man, you cannot know that you are a man. 

Colossians 3:21

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.

Fatherlessness is a void that cannot be easily filled. God must by adoption provide fathers where previous men failed or fell short. Boys need men in order to become men. Men must make the time to teach masculinity to boys or we will not have any men. When fathers fail, they provoke their progeny to agent. They leave a lot of boys discouraged and unable to validate themselves through the natural, normal channels that God has provided and so they find synthetic substitutes like gangs or video games.

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. 17,155: don't fight feminism like a girl

“A man must insist that his children honor those whom he honors, and the first one on this list should be his wife and their mother . . . a man rarely stands taller than when he stands for a lady. Such respect for women is not a capitulation to feminism but rather the only antidote to it.” — Douglas Wilson, Federal Husband

Feminism is the confused idea that a man who opens a door for a lady is shutting the door on her opportunity to open doors for herself. It is the lie that a man goes off to war in order to keep her from getting to. It is the absurdity of saying that a man pays for the date in order to rob her of the privilege of spending her own money.

1 Corinthians 11:7

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

Honoring women is not the surrender of men to feminism, it is the submission of men to God, it is the glory of God honoring the glory of men.

The misogyny of the manosphere overreacts to the demands of feminism by refusing to give regular women what they are owed. Instead of cherishing women as the weaker vessels, they rough house them as an equals. In fairness, this is merely giving the feminists what they asked for. They wanted to be treated like men and so the men beat them up. The feminists said that women were the same as men. The chauvinists simply allow them to get their way and give them the opportunity to see that they aren't.

"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

The manosphere has tried to solve the puzzle by getting rid of their own shame rather than using their strength to resist the taunts of loudmouth hussies. Men began boasting about how strong they are by taking to the internet to whine and complain about women and how unfair everything is out there. Those men have become women. They gossip and slander and resent their rulers. 

Honoring women as a weaker vessel is not waiving the white flag of surrender to feminism, it is the battle cry to sunder it. Men honoring women unravels feminism. You cannot fight feminism by treating women like equal sparring partners. If men want her to be as terrible as an army with banners, and they should, they must fight for her, not against her.

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.