...I dunno man, good ol' Lewis was really good at coming up with creative ways to make a good point. But there's a reason Tolkien's representation of his best friend in The Lord of the Rings is a an old tree who never gets around to the point. 😂
Sowell was kind of a genius at packing alot of dense info into short, understandable segments.
Step one: I’m ashamed of being a man due to factors I don’t understand.
Step two: I realize now I was ashamed because of the feminism of my culture. How dumb. I delight in being a man and want to lean into the goodness of that.
Step 3: I realize that the lack of good masculinity is the cause of a lot of ills in the world. I want to help remedy this problem, calling men and women to embody what God has designed them to be. To delight in it.
Step 4: Men are so much better than women. It’s not lack of men stepping up that’s the real problem. It’s women. Women are the problem. Well, and men who don’t agree with me.
Step 5: The best way to fix the problem is to be derogatory to women, to uncritically support all appearances of machismo and to become very rude online.
Step 6: Declare victory. Say I’m winning no matter what. And whatever caricature those to my left have of me, I will struggle hard to embody. I’ll pretend I’m doing it ironically.
Step 7: Shrink into an ever smaller circle of influence complaining that people just weren’t ready for my epicness. Blame the women. End up being exactly what they said I was all along. Become the best example for feminists to use against godly masculinity.
The only way to win is to stop at Step 3. Steps 1 and 7 are the inverted images of each other.
Stop at step 3.
I still can't get over how good this is. Conservatives have always stuck with the "It doesn't work" argument against Leftism while pointing to their charts and graphs, hoping people will follow along.
But THIS is the argument to make. 👇Leftism is ugly. It's repulsive. It's disgusting. It's lame. It's immoral. It's boring. It's depressing.
This isn't a fight between two competing economic models, one of which happens to work better. This is a fight between beauty and ugliness. Building and destruction. Thankfulness and resentment. Love and hate. Greatness and cowardice. Good and evil.
@Connor_Shack This is completely true. Anyone who honestly reads his stuff walks away understanding so much better how the world works, in so many ways
I wish I could talk about how badly I did not want this pregnancy in this timing without falsely communicating that I regret the existence of Baby Girl, because I don't remotely.
I've been so angry about the pregnancy. I was desperate after my 2nd in 2 years, after my 2nd preeclampsia experience and the NICU time, to rest and get healthy again, feel like myself again, and get past the horror.
But I didn't get that. I thought we took sufficient measures, but Baby Girl came into existence anyways. I didn't get to lose all the baby weight from 2. I went from feeling fat and disgusting to stuck getting fatter, and it's easier to talk about the self-image part than the fear, so I will. Trapped in a body I hated and didn't trust that was only going to get worse for months and months. It's enough to drive you mad after 3 years of pregnancies. I've been so angry.
I spent most of my 2nd trimester alone with my 2 under 2 since my husband had already committed to the National Guard before we got that positive test.
Almost as soon as he got back I started to feel unwell. All the symptoms I've learned to associate with preeclampsia. The headaches, the blurry vision, episodes of cognitive alteration. Our home blood pressure machine was way off, but we didn't know for a couple weeks, so I believed things were worse than they were. I thought things were almost done by 31 weeks when I got the steroid shots, and that should have been awful because of the NICU prospect, but it was just a relief, and a false one.
Doctors tried some nutrition support including B12 shots and iron infusions, and it helped a lot with the scarier symptoms. Then I started having contractions every day. Every other day. So many nights of thinking it was almost over, and it wasn't. I've felt so humiliated and exhausted and strung along. And now I do have preeclampsia, just much later than I expected.
We're scheduled to induce Friday at 37 weeks so it really is almost over now, but I had hope for a month that I could have a natural labor without being on a mag protocol. Hope for things that did not come has been crushing. I wanted God to give me either an easy pregnancy or a short one as a consolation for not wanting it, but he allowed a long, hard one instead. I've been really angry.
I know I sound dramatic, but I don't think I've found words to actually touch how bad these last couple years have been. I LOVE my kids. I am so thankful for their existence and health. I'm excited to meet my girl. I even like how close they are in age. I'm pro-life without exception or apology. And I will never pretend pregnancy is sunshine and roses for all women. I'll never pretend it's only bad for evil liberal anti-natal women who hate their children or only bad for unhealthy slobs who don't exercise or eat right. That's just a lie. Sometimes it is much more like months of torture. Babies still have the right to live. As angry as I have been, God had the right to create this infinitely precious girl in his timing, and I cannot see the purpose in going through all this right now. It feels like pointless cruelty. But he is my God. He does only good things. He creates life when and where he wants to, and he is right, but the suffering has been real.
I'm just gonna say it now. Anyone who judges Abby for this tweet literally has no idea what or fully understands and is virtue signaling.
I feel like the one thing that the pro life movement is missing is that they are afraid to talk about the realities many women experience during pregnancy. Of the pain and emotional turmoil of an unexpected pregnancy. Of the physical toll it takes on a woman who, through no fault of her own, has especially difficult pregnancies.
We need to stop being afraid to talk about this. We need to stop pretending that it is all sunshine and rainbows. If we really want to win the war against the pro aborts, we have to be willing to be real about how painful and exacting pregnancy can be. Not that it is always this way or even typically this way. But it happens all the time and we shouldn't ignore it. Our message should be able to withstand the realities.
Men go to war. They see horrible things, and experience trauma. Sometimes they are physically wounded themselves. That doesn't make fighting to protect your own people any less important or necessary.
The same goes for women who, for whatever reason, experience hell on earth bringing their children into the world.
That doesn't mean that the left's fear propaganda about pregnancy is to be believed
But it does mean that pregnancy and labor can be extremely painful and debilitating to some women, through absolutely no fault of their own. And if we just pretend that isn't the case, we aren't really helping our cause. We should be able to look these difficulties in the eye and say that it's worth it to bring a new life into the world. A life that we created. I life that God created.
So whether you are extremely pro-life or extremely pro-choice, give Abby some grace here for just being real. We need more of this.
@RyanBea64600306@megbasham@bu97586@ShawnRyan762@RealCandaceO It's going to be...SO funny when she gets sued into bankruptcy. 🤣 She chased the money and loyalty of goobers like you, which is like building on a foundation of rattlesnakes: ton of fun until you need the building to hold, and then you just get bit in the ankle.
By that logic, reading any books or watching any movies is a bad idea too. Or listening to any music, period. It's just a question of how far you extend the same reasoning. Bad argument, even IF the conclusion turned out to be correct.
Again, Dale is a lightweight thinker who only says what he knows his audience will already agree with.
@not_our_guy Yep. Nothing has changed about humanity. The new tools available to us in the modern era just reveal our inherent weaknesses in *kind of* new ways.
Everyone everywhere is the same all the time, is my motto.
The only things that really define us are what we choose to do.