Free Republic

  The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is upon us. Rather than ruminating on pious platitudes or reporting the trite remarks of gaseous politicians, I thought it might be appropriate to update some prior columns that attempt to shed light on the subject. This is this first. Where Do Heroes Come From? David C. Stolinsky Sept. 1, 2011 Army Staff Sergeant Leroy A. Petry earned the ninth Medal of Honor awarded during the current war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and only the second given to a living recipient. Despite prior wounds, Petry picked up an enemy grenade and threw it...

<p>STOCKHOLM (AP) — At the "Egalia" preschool, staff avoid using words like "him" or "her" and address the 33 kids as "friends" rather than girls and boys.</p> <p>From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don't fall into gender stereotypes.</p>

Look, I’m a sensitive New Age guy — I cook, I do laundry, I choke up at movies (well, Gladiator, anyway). But does anyone think our enemies abroad are as enlightened as we are about feminism?... the specific lesson they’re learning is that nukes are the best insurance against invasion — but a broader one is that our commander-in-chief is an effete vacillator who is pushed around by his female subordinates. Prof. Althouse notes, “A feminist milestone: Our male President has been pulled into war by 3 women,”... One of the reasons Khrushchev gambled on missiles in Cuba is that...

The Feminization of the Church and Vatican II Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D. There has been much talk of late about a long-observable fact: the feminization of the Catholic Church. My friend Jan was quite impressed with the term and thought it accurately expressed the reality. “I went to a Catholic church downtown yesterday,” she said, “and really, it was all women on the altar – except for the priest. At Communion four ladies – three in pants –went to the side altar to pick up the chalices. The song leader was sensuous, in a blouse showing cleavage, waving her arms...

NaturalNews) In a bombshell finding that has far-reaching implications for society and culture, scientists at the University of Rochester have found that phthalates -- the chemical found in many vinyl and plastic products -- tends to "feminize" boys, altering their brains to express more feminine characteristics. The study has been published in the Journal of Andrology. Phthalates are found in vinyl products (including vinyl flooring), PVC shower curtains, plastic furniture and even in the plastic coating of the insides of dishwashing machines. The feminization process happens during pregnancy when phthalate exposure causes hormone disruptions in the unborn baby. This chemical...

No Sex Please, We’re Middle Class By CAMILLE PAGLIA Published: June 25, 2010 WILL women soon have a Viagra of their own? Although a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recently rejected an application to market the drug flibanserin in the United States for women with low libido, it endorsed the potential benefits and urged further research. Several pharmaceutical companies are reported to be well along in the search for such a drug.

The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men. The virtues of manhood which had been extolled and celebrated throughout the middle ages right up to the 1950s have been completely expunged from academia and pop culture. The baby boom generation was the last to be taught the values of rugged individualism, risk-taking, courage, bravery, loyalty, and reverence for tradition. John Wayne epitomized the rugged individual who was committed to fighting "the bad guy," but he was only one of a whole host...

From the day the founding Fathers risked their liberty and life by signing the Declaration of Independence, there has been those who have wanted to sink this great ship called the United States of America. Well 143 years later the good ship America took a torpedo hit that at the time seemed like just another glancing blow. What many still consider the greatest step forward in equality for the sexes, was more then just a glancing blow however. It was in fact a deadly strike that entered the very heart of the ship and has been smoldering since. The...

Two-year-old children are being exposed to dangerous levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals in domestic products such as rubber clogs and sun creams, according to an EU investigation being studied by the government. The 327-page report says that while risks from "anti-androgen" and "oestrogen-like" substances in individual items have been recognised, the cumulative impact of such chemicals, particularly on boys, is being ignored. The EU's environment council of ministers is due to agree on a regulatory approach to the use of so-called "gender-bender" compounds before Christmas. On Monday, EU officials will try to work out a strategy for creating risk assessments of...

I have written a great deal about the feminization of America's boys. While Feminists have become more masculine with every passing year, men and boys have become wimpy, feminized and afraid of their own shadows. About five years ago at a Boy Scout meeting for my son who had been recently promoted to Boy Scout from Weeblos, I looked around the room and shivered. I leaned over to my husband and whispered, "There's not a single male role model in this room." Shortly after that meeting, my son changed Boy Scout troops to another where men ran the troop -...

A retired space cowboy takes on a neutered age. If you’re a man of a certain age, it’s impossible not to harbor affection for actor Dirk Benedict. While he is a veteran of a number of serious films and impressive stage productions, he’s best known for two roles — Lt. Starbuck, the roguish, cigar-chomping space cowboy always ready with a quip on the original Battlestar Galactica; and Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck on The A-Team — not coincidentally, a roguish, quip-ready soldier-of-fortune who had one arm wrapped around the waist of a different babe every week. Neither show lasted very long,...

There is a frightening penchant in today’s gradually feminizing America for people to abandon their God given ability to think and reason. True authority – the kind that summons respect, reverence and even a touch of fear – is being pushed aside, condemned as antiquated patriarchal nonsense, for more “progressive” methods of trying to maintain order. Thus, authority itself is emasculated, common sense is effectively castrated and unintended consequences create new difficulties where there should be none. In New York City, for example, students are not permitted to carry their cell phones into school with them (except in very specific...

The sports culture surrounding football and wrestling may be fueling aggressive and violent behavior not only among teen male players but also among their male friends and peers on and off the field, according to a Penn State study. "Sports such as football, basketball, and baseball provide players with a certain status in society," said Derek Kreager, assistant professor of sociology in the Crime, Law, and Justice program. "But football and wrestling are associated with violent behavior because both sports involve some physical domination of the opponent, which is rewarded by the fans, coaches and other players." Using a national...

From the Telegraph:According to a report due for release this autumn, there will be as many female priests as male by 2025. The study, entitled Religious Trends, concludes that without the rapid growth in the number of women being ordained - as many women will be becoming priests as men by the end of the decade - some parishes would be forced to close.(snip)Some dioceses, many of them in rural locations, already report a higher number of women being ordained than men.The report estimates that by 2016 one in every three priests will be a woman. This year, 47 per...

The chickens have come home to roost. The first generation of students swaddled in the insanity of the self-esteem movement have emerged on the scene as arrogant, self-absorbed twits with an exaggerated sense of entitlement and self-importance. In short, they’ve been spoiled. Potentially, they’ve been ruined. The idiocy of social engineering in the classroom is again bearing catastrophic results. Here’s how we know. A group of five university professors has evaluated more than 16,000 personality profiles of college students gathered over the last 24 years. What they’ve discovered is that today’s young people have dramatically different self-concepts than the two...

If the 1976 western The Last Hard Men has it right, we Occidentals metamorphosed into jellyfish sometime around the early twentieth century. Although this title is more movie marketing than historical statement, there may be something to it. After all, Robert Baden-Powell, a lieutenant general in the British Army, was motivated by the belief that western boys were becoming too soft when he originated the Boy Scouts in 1907. Regardless of the origin and rapidity of our transition from he-men to she-men, one thing is for certain: We have become a very soft people. When pondering this, I think about...

An upsurge in the number of male fish growing female reproductive parts is sounding an alarm bell for the dangers of pollutants and estrogen-like compounds in U.S. rivers, where millions of Americans get their drinking water, environmental experts say. A recent survey of bass in the Potomac River, a major tributary in the nation's capital, found almost 100 percent of the smallmouth bass species were feminized, or had eggs in their testes. In largemouth bass the incidence of feminization was lower, but still highly prevalent. ~snip~ A motley assortment of chemicals, pollutants containing hormones and estrogen-like compounds are likely the...

The skies were clear but a haze hung over hundreds of marijuana activists as they paraded up State Street to the Capitol for the 36th Annual Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival. Some who marched advocated marijuana for medicinal purposes, while others championed hemp as an answer to the state's agricultural woes. And more than a few undoubtedly toked up for the sheer pleasure of smoking a doobie on a sunny afternoon on State Street. "The sky didn't fall, nothing happened, nobody got hurt, and we went all the way down the road in full public view and nothing went wrong,"...

InteSummer 2006 Table of Contents EMAIL | PRINT | RESPOND | VIEW SELECTED RESPONSES How the Schools Shortchange Boys Gerry Garibaldi In the newly feminized classroom, boys tune out. Since I started teaching several years ago, after 25 years in the movie business, I’ve come to learn firsthand that everything I’d heard about the feminization of our schools is real—and far more pernicious to boys than I had imagined.

The run-up-the-score grievance in high school sports is a trite but universal one. It is inevitably leveled by the parents of the vanquished because no one outside the respective school districts usually cares if Team X defeated Team Y by a zillion points. But in these touchy-feely, self-indulgent times, the run-up-the-score gripe is increasingly gaining traction around the nation. The latest "score-management" policy comes from the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, which has implemented a 50-point rule in football. If a coach allows his team to defeat an opponent by more than 50 points, he will receive a one-game suspension and...