What I've always found idiotically ironic is that leftists consider a legitimate role for a woman to be daycare worker, nanny, pre-school 'teacher'. I guess as long as you get paid to watch some other woman's kids (as long as they aren't your own) it is a worthy, legitimate, and valuable work for a woman to do. Hey, maybe even laudable - especially if it is a particularly expensive little institution.
But do the damn job yourself for your own kin, and accept remuneration in the form of a single wage earner in your husband, and you are a patsy, a compromiser, a betrayer of the sisterhood. Even worse if you actually LIKE it, and prefer that other, unreliable (and possibly disturbed) people do not interact with your offspring....well, now - that's a completely unacceptable perspective.
Lunacy is the rule of the day and this just proves a point men often make about women being irrational.
The "nanny" role is only legitimate for a black, brown woman, or trailer woman. Not for a person of, as was put so eloquently back in the day, Quality.
You say that the gay and gender appropriation references were insignificant, but they’re easily cancel-worthy to the Alphabets. Even moreso his mentions of abortion.
Butker’s heresy is that he holds these views while not wearing a keffiyeh.
But yes, it’s been very obviously true all along that one person can’t hold two full-time jobs. The feminist “have it all” promise is insulting to those who do only one of the two, and the people who do both never did either as well as did people who focused on one.
The “fully realized mother and fully realized professional” concept has always been a lie, not a promise. And you’re right about the problem of anyone trying to hold down two full-time jobs. Physics simply won’t allow it.
The scissor statement seems pretty reasonable to me. Every one of us alive today was popped out of a woman, why would you get mad about someone else getting popped out? Hypocrisy.
And the hard choice between career/family is somewhat supported. A man cannot serve two masters, and while you can have some of one and some of the other, being pressed hard enough will force you to make a choice between those two.
I enjoyed reading this. I'm not at the point in my personal journey where I'm giving money to substack, but this kind of thing draws me that direction.
Thank you Nick. I did buy your book, so maybe let's just trade beers one night in lieu of substack subscriptions. I'm otp North. We can debate the relative merits of LSD synthesis vs bathroom mycology.
> These comments reinforce harmful stereotypes that threaten social progress.
> These comments threaten social progress.
I will actually tentatively agree with the statement, insofar as I recognize what the left considers "social progress". I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, I must say. I must be getting more conservative as I get older. ;)
Yeah, that's about how I'd sort that, these days. Though I wouldn't have, thirty years ago.
Which, some of it I'm still fine with. I think gay people shouldn't be beaten just for who they are, and should be allowed to congregate and marry so long as they aren't harming anyone else. If the state will recognize a union between two people, it shouldn't matter what sex they are.
The whole push to sterilize autistic gay kids, I'm significantly less down with.
Great piece, thank you. My brother and I were raised by both parents; Mom stayed home until he was in college and I was in 10th grade. We had family dinner, freshly made, every night. We had consistent discipline. And consistent expectations for what being an adult looked like, which boiled down to "choices, trade-offs, and consequences." From a purely feminist perspective, what I was taught that all choices are legitimate including staying home to have a family. I did not travel that path, pursuing a career instead. All of my girlfriends chose to have children with about half and half staying home or returning to work. The "feminism" practiced today looks nothing like how we Gen Xers were raised.
One of my favorite songs ever is Joni Mitchell's "Song of Sharon," in which she sings to her childhood friend who stayed in Saskatoon to marry a farmer, and contrasts their respective careers (Joni Mitchell's songs were almost always almost painfully autobiographical). It's a beautiful song, and at no point does it say Sharon's choice was better or Joni's choice (to become a pop star) was better; they were just different.
In the song (and the album, Hejira), Joni Mitchell celebrated a life her mother could not have lived, due simply to history. But while staying on the farm in Saskatoon was not for Joni, it was clearly the right choice for Sharon. And that was okay.
I myself am not a believer. That being said, I see absolutely nothing wrong with a single point he made. Especially the stay at home mom area he covered. I have had a kid who was raised by a parent who worked whom ended up leaving my daughter and myself. My daughter struggled her whole life because I worked a lot after her mom left and my mother stepped in and took the mom role. Not the same for a child as her real mom. My current wife of 20 yrs now and I had a son. She was a stay at home mom till he could drive. No issues with him all around great kid. I refused to have another child unless she agreed to be a stay at home mom. We can both completely tell the difference in attitude,life choices and many other things between these two. We love them both equally and dearly. But one was much easier to deal with than the other . It’s just a fact.
One more point. This is still America I believe. This will be very bad for our country if the alphabetters are able to get him canceled and fired because of his honest opinion. Won’t be good at all.
The claim of his speech being racist is the standard scream of a person who cannot provide a rational reason for his objections, much like calling a person “Hitler”.
I've made no bones about how I feel given our current circumstances as a nation. More and more I'm losing hop of a peaceful resolution and am under the firm impression that the United States of America will end up fractured, tribal, regional, and no longer a untied country, but four to seven regions that share the middle of North America. In the past, I've made statements, shared memes, and commented on others pieces that if drastic and rapid action is not taken, I may live long enough to witness what's coming.
Now that said, a meme of Val Kilmer, in his role as Doc Holiday in Tombstone with the accompanying text - "Make no mistake, it's not revenge we are after, it's a reckoning."
Someone asked me, "When do we start?"
And there's the rub. there is no shortage of "red" folks that have had enough. Even plenty that believe we should do something... anything. But what?
I believe first we have to define who we are and what we believe. Butker's address defined that pretty damn well. The US vs THEM, Red vs Blue, Right/Left, Woke/Trad, Conservative/Progressive, and on and on, but in each of these designations carries local prejudices and customs. Conservatives in Idaho don't necessarily have the same outlook as those in Florida. Now multiply that by 160 million and trying to save this nation becomes a Herculean task.
Butker and others have pretty well defined who's who, what we now need to define is exactly what's broken. Can it be fixed within the system, using the system? My Magic 8 Ball says, 'Outlook Not Good'. If we can define the problem(s) and agree at least in part on how to proceed in addressing them... well, it'd be a start.
Now, can we find enough of the like minded willing to set all other considerations aside and begin what is obviously so necessary? I don't know, but I'm making a list and asking for volunteers. Given what our 45th POTUS has had to deal with the last few years, the opposition will be great. They won't fight fair. But as my father always told my brothers and I, if you're fighting fair, you're doing it wrong.
Before having read that, I've thought or said much the same. Spooky. Id love to find a way to prevent it, but it'll be anything but trying, terrible, and terminal for many. If we can't stave off the insanity, that shining City On The Hill will be gone forever and it's like never seen again by anyone living.
i suppose sometimes amputation is necessary to keep the infection from killing the host, but damn, there's a lot of infection.
Ok, it's "just a Catholic guy preaching to a Catholic audience - what's the big deal?"
Off the top of my head:
1) Would it be a big deal to see a KKK member speaking to the KKK? I went to an extreme example, but give me some points for not going full Hitler XD Ok, yes this is a pretty Catholic viewpoint, but rarely do those leak so openly into the limelight and it's a shock.
2) If that's really the Catholic position, seems like a big waste of time and money to be telling these women AFTER they've gone through the trouble of getting a degree. Oh, wait, I guess they do that up front throughout their lives, at church and elsewhere. Is this one last ditch effort, or is he really preaching to the women that have ALREADY decided the homemaker-only path was not for them?
3) Following up the previous point, it's pretty obviously not the time to be downplaying the achievement. If it were up to them, would they give the same speech at the Olympics? "Yeah, nice... gold's pretty good. But I bet you're MUCH prouder to be a wife, am I right?? Maybe this should be your last Olympics...?"
4) How's this for a scissor statement? It seems pretty obvious to the blues that he skipped the part about how all the men graduating are probably MUCH more excited about how they'll get married and be fathers, careers and accolades be danged. Not only did he forget that part, but if that's what all the stats say, that fathers are what make for healthy, happy families, and reduce violence, maybe he should have spent more time on that side of the equation...? I'm guessing the reds didn't notice it was missing.
1) would it be a big deal if it was an Aztec speaking about child sacrifice?
1b) would it be a big deal if it was an Afghan mullah speaking about selling daughters into arranged marriages for cash?
I think the "big-deal-ness" of things, largely, has to do with how large of a perceived threat they are. The woke wouldn't be threatened by either of those if they were out-of-country, but might be threatened if they were in-country. Neither would be as big a threat as Butker making a college commencement speech to a cheering crowd, because that carries a present culture war significance.
2) Most colleges are actually just dating sites with a few classes attached. Yes it would have been better to give them the speech at the beginning of college, but giving it at the end isn't terrible. More:
3) I disagree. The achievement, while nice, is basically a piece of paper indicating that they know how to follow instructions and are willing to spend 20 years doing it. Once they get it, they have to figure out what to do with their lives. It was a good speech in that regard.
4) He didn't forget fathers, that's the next part of his speech after the scissor. I just didn't dwell on it. It's a trad take, but it's in there, and it's just as long as the mothers bit. Go watch the video.
So, I agree with you that the shock is greater because it's in America.
2) For Catholics, I suppose so. I feel bad for the women that actually are hoping for an education and a purpose in life beyond wife and motherhood at that school.
3) Ok, I've already conceded similar in a previous response. It's a question of taste, and not outside the realm of commencement speech material.
4) You're right, he did. In fact, he said what I said was missing - and it was right in your transcript <facepalm>. But the difference there is that what he preaches for men is not at all contrary to the context of the whole event - it's "be a father, be present in the community" and lean into your skills to find your best role. That identical message given to women wouldn't be shocking or controversial.
All in all, I think you're right about the scissor issue. As a "blue", the big problem is the way he said it. If he had said "to the women here who decide not to focus on a a career and choose instead homemaker and motherhood, I know that you may suffer from the pressures of society that say that's not enough.", that would have been less controversial. I'm perfectly fine with celebrating women (or men) that choose to be full-time homemakers.
But his speech isn't a "live and let live" speech - it very clearly reflects the Catholic world view with underlying assumptions. He ventures to guess that most women are more excited about marriage and children than career. His says of his wife "her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother." The standard Catholic gender roles are a bit jarring to hear in 2024.
Look at his words. He "guesses" that "a majority" (that being 51%+) of women at the Benedictine college graduation ceremony were more excited about making babies than having a career. Not that all women everywhere are. And I'd guess that his guess is dead on.
Their statement is interesting because, in becoming a nun, they aren't mothers. Butker basically said mothers are more important than nuns, and that's what set them off.
Yes, I noticed that. So, for one thing, he entirely forgot about the people that went there to be nuns! But they also came out in support of women going after careers and other purposes. Given that the nuns' school is part of the picture (about 12% of female graduates studied theology and religious vocations), perhaps he was off the mark on his stats after all. I wonder if he checked before making the speech.
> "2) For Catholics, I suppose so. I feel bad for the women that actually are hoping for an education and a purpose in life beyond wife and motherhood at that school."
No, not just the Catholics, *most colleges*.
Any woman who goes to college and wants a real degree can have one, likely even at Benedictine. I don't *know* what their engineering programs are, but I presume they exist. Maybe not. I certainly haven't perused their catalog.
But a lot of young people are looking to pair up. It's just a species thing. The Catholic ones may be more open about it, but I was *excruciatingly* not Catholic (or even vaguely Christian) and I still graduated with not just a degree but a wife as well.
> "If he had said "to the women here who decide not to focus on a a career and choose instead homemaker and motherhood, I know that you may suffer from the pressures of society that say that's not enough.", that would have been less controversial."
I suppose you're right that it's the scissor, but I think it's reasonable for folks who are Catholic, speaking at a Catholic college commencement, to not feel the need to couch their language for consumption by people who despise them and want them exterminated.
See my discussions with HWFO. There's a link to a story about the Benedictine Nuns associated with the university that likewise objected, partly because he elevated "homemaker" above "nun", but also because it diminished those that felt they had more to offer, or whose purpose in life differed.
My experience at college was VERY different. I didn't meet a single woman whose purpose was mainly to pair up. It depends on the university you attend, obviously.
Mainly, I find it disingenuous to send your daughter to a very expensive university because that's her best chance to hook up with a successful Catholic man. I know this is how things have "always" been, but I'd like to see us evolve from that. Many places already have.
I belonged to a Catholic young adult group that was pretty much all college grads.
Rather then waiting to get married in their 30s and maybe succeeding and maybe having 1-2 kids, people in The group were focused on getting married in their mid 20s and most seem to have ended up with 3+ kids.
It wasn’t rocket science. People just assumed dating in one’s 20s was supposed to be reserved for potential future spouses. Didn’t mean you had to marry the first person but you didn’t date unintentionally or hook up. Since you were spending all your time with the church group you could assume the same about the people you were meeting in social settings.
There are chapters like this all over the country and the women listening to this speech could obviously seek them out.
1) That wasn't the point of the analogy. The point was that the explicit Catholic world view is actually jarring to a lot of people when brought to light.
2) Ok, I'll give you this one. Commencement speeches are often about making a point. I found that the one time he tried to connect with the audience, it belittled rather than celebrated their achievement, but that's just my opinion, and not outside the realm of commencement topics.
3) Again you missed the point of the analogy. It's hard for me to come up with another one in this post-civil rights era that means "That's nice, but don't forget your place."
4) I guess you hit the scissors issue right on the head there. Blues don't see "pressures to not be happy with procreating" as a problem. Reds don't see "pressures to be happy with your main purpose in life being to procreate" as a problem. Given this viewpoint, it's still galling and presumptive of him to assume he knows what most women in the audience are thinking. But, yeah, from a Catholic/red perspective it's no big deal.
I didn't miss the point of your analogies. I just didn't think they were very good ones. Primarily because they were either excessively extreme, or unrealistic.
Re 4.) I'm not sure he assumes he knows what the women in the audience are thinking as much as he's saying "Hey, you've been fed this line in a lot of subtle ways, but BTW, it might be bullshit, and in fact I think it is.
And I agree that the scissors is that the Reds think it's fine to point out that people might be happier procreating versus Blues thinking it's reasonable to sway ladies towards avoiding that.
Given that I'm somewhere on the "Squant" spectrum of anarchism, I'm not sure I actually have an opinion beyond the ironically evolutionary one of "Everyone is descended from women who thought procreation was a great idea". Which is seemingly solidly fluorescent purple.
The KKK has become socially unacceptable to nearly everyone in the modern US, though. I don't follow sports, but I'd be shocked if a pro team allowed an open KKK member to play for them in the first place, and if a player was suddenly revealed to be an active KKK member I'd expect him to be fired immediately. Conservative Catholics aren't anywhere near that social position, much as some might like them to be.
As explained to others, it was an extreme analogy. The point was he was expressing a point of view that might seem fairly standard to the audience, but is shocking to many in society at large, outside the community. I chose the extreme example in order to pull the discussion out of the "scissor issue", to make sure everyone could relate.
Yes, I understood your point. But *my* point was that people who find conservative Catholic values shocking to the point of thinking anyone who holds them should be expelled from mainstream society, are themselves living in a bubble of ignorance, because a substantial number of their fellow Americans hold similar values. A conservative living in a red-tribe bubble might well be shocked to hear a liberal athlete advocate for both abortion and puberty blockers to be made available on demand, but that conservative would also be foolish to start demanding said athlete be fired.
1) College is fucking easy for anyone not getting an engineering degree. It’s simply not a huge accomplishment.
2) Getting a college degree doesn’t mean a woman doesn’t want to be a homemaker. Educated stay at home moms tend to be better stay at home moms because they can do more than be babysitters. They can also ease their way back into the white collar work force once the youngest child/children are in school.
RE 1; at a certain point in my Engineering degree, it became a joke/truism that once you graduate, you are qualified to be an apprentice. My brother, an architect, told me that when he finished that was not a joke, it was explicit. You needed to serve under a practicing architect for 5 years to take the Architecture Board exam, and the only way to get that job was the degree.
As far as 2 goes, my mother is very explicit that she has an MrS degree, from a UC no less. She went looking for a husband, specifically a husband on the tenure track.
> "RE 1; at a certain point in my Engineering degree, it became a joke/truism that once you graduate, you are qualified to be an apprentice."
This is true of many things. Computer Science, Truck driving, Machining, Welding, Emergency Medicine, to name a few things I've gone to school for and realized at the end that I needed finishing.
Given our long lifespans, the viable compromise position can be encapsulated as:
STOP trying to make young adults save for retirement! Yes, there is interest to be earned, but life is to be lived. And the best time to start a family is while reasonably young. So putting money into a home in a safe neighborhood is more important than saving for retirement. Ditto, living on less so that Mom can stay home full time while the kids are young.
Policy wise, this entails changing positions that Republicans currently favor.
1. Social Security and Medicare taxes should be replaced with consumption taxes -- especially taxes on luxury goods. The young need to focus on their families.
2. The allowance for putting money into retirement plans should be lifetime amounts, not annual percentages of income. To live traditionally and still have money to retire, the optimum strategy is to live off a single income while young and then use the second income to save for retirement after the children have grown up.
I don’t actually know if outbreeding feminists actually replaces them, having seven kids seems like it would reduce the quality of parenting they receive compared to someone with one or two kids, possibly making the R-strategy kids comparatively less successful in society?
This was my thought too. There is probably a societal optimum where women are free to participate in the labor force but having children is also viewed positively and there is a balance probably somewhere in the 2-3 children per woman range. Enough for growth but not too much growth and a reduction in the feral young people that can happen with really high rates.
The question is- does involving women in the workforce overcome the smaller number of children being generated? There is clearly an economic advantage to having women work that offsets the lower child bearing rate?
Coming from a large Catholic family where my mom had to start working outside of the house when I was around 14, I can confidently say we turned out just as well, if not better, than my friends and peers who grew up in much smaller families and where the mom didn’t work at all.
My mom made sacrifices for all of us, she didn’t get a cellphone until 2014, I can assure you, you can have a strong, tight bond, with your children even with a dozen kids, even with the mom working several jobs to support the family, it’s just the willingness to help your kids.
So I think 3 kids is still on the too small side for good parenting, those numbers could be bumped up.
Not going to act like I know the finances of children, since I’m not married, but we were broke growing up. My dad was lying about working and was cheating on her for 10+ years and we almost lost the house several times due this. She worked hard, and she and us made sacrifices. Mind you, my youngest sister was 6 during 2008, so so this isn’t ancient history. You just need to be willing to make sacrifices, find cheap fun that isn’t bad for you, and you’ll be fine.
Several of my siblings are married and have kids, one just had her third kid and her husband is just working in the oil fields. Make sacrifices, work hard, and you can have kids. I see plenty of larger families(4-6 kids) at my church. I think people just don’t want kids because the media has pushed not having kids or having only one or two for years.
May 21·edited May 21Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
Well, Upright, in my part of the country we don't have a lot of the first, not many of the second who speak English, and very few of the third (except for druggies from Cali). So the nannying is often done by college girls, or (in a case I know) by a young woman whose husband was still in school whilst she was not. One does what one can with what is available. I nannied my own damn kids. And I thank God that three of my daughters in law do the same, with joy. Sadly, the fourth is stuck with punishing student loans and has to work, so now I am nannying a grandson. For free. So it isn't cool or legit.
What I've always found idiotically ironic is that leftists consider a legitimate role for a woman to be daycare worker, nanny, pre-school 'teacher'. I guess as long as you get paid to watch some other woman's kids (as long as they aren't your own) it is a worthy, legitimate, and valuable work for a woman to do. Hey, maybe even laudable - especially if it is a particularly expensive little institution.
But do the damn job yourself for your own kin, and accept remuneration in the form of a single wage earner in your husband, and you are a patsy, a compromiser, a betrayer of the sisterhood. Even worse if you actually LIKE it, and prefer that other, unreliable (and possibly disturbed) people do not interact with your offspring....well, now - that's a completely unacceptable perspective.
Lunacy is the rule of the day and this just proves a point men often make about women being irrational.
The "nanny" role is only legitimate for a black, brown woman, or trailer woman. Not for a person of, as was put so eloquently back in the day, Quality.
Really nice article. Imagine a Catholic-centric speech being delivered to a Catholic audience; strange, right?
Cue the, "I believe in free-speech, but...." crowd.
They don't believe in free speech. Lately, they've begun to admit it.
You say that the gay and gender appropriation references were insignificant, but they’re easily cancel-worthy to the Alphabets. Even moreso his mentions of abortion.
Butker’s heresy is that he holds these views while not wearing a keffiyeh.
But yes, it’s been very obviously true all along that one person can’t hold two full-time jobs. The feminist “have it all” promise is insulting to those who do only one of the two, and the people who do both never did either as well as did people who focused on one.
Yes, but they were minor in comparison to what's out there now that the 2020 dam broke. Those comments were 2018 cancel worthy, not so much now.
The “fully realized mother and fully realized professional” concept has always been a lie, not a promise. And you’re right about the problem of anyone trying to hold down two full-time jobs. Physics simply won’t allow it.
To be fair, everything is cancel-worthy by the alphabet cult.
It’s not as if the people tagging onto that petition actually watch football. If you’re KC, why worry about what they think?
🎯
The scissor statement seems pretty reasonable to me. Every one of us alive today was popped out of a woman, why would you get mad about someone else getting popped out? Hypocrisy.
And the hard choice between career/family is somewhat supported. A man cannot serve two masters, and while you can have some of one and some of the other, being pressed hard enough will force you to make a choice between those two.
I enjoyed reading this. I'm not at the point in my personal journey where I'm giving money to substack, but this kind of thing draws me that direction.
Thank you Nick. I did buy your book, so maybe let's just trade beers one night in lieu of substack subscriptions. I'm otp North. We can debate the relative merits of LSD synthesis vs bathroom mycology.
Basements, not bathrooms. EWWWWWW!
Meh my mycology days were spent living in a condo... :)
Kitchen! Automobile trunk! But bath'shrooms are just... EWWWWWWW!
The flushing! The flushing! EWWWWWWW!
*gag*
> These comments reinforce harmful stereotypes that threaten social progress.
> These comments threaten social progress.
I will actually tentatively agree with the statement, insofar as I recognize what the left considers "social progress". I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, I must say. I must be getting more conservative as I get older. ;)
"social progress" = "the destruction of all things traditional"
"Threaten social progress" = "undermine our culture war efforts."
Yeah, that's about how I'd sort that, these days. Though I wouldn't have, thirty years ago.
Which, some of it I'm still fine with. I think gay people shouldn't be beaten just for who they are, and should be allowed to congregate and marry so long as they aren't harming anyone else. If the state will recognize a union between two people, it shouldn't matter what sex they are.
The whole push to sterilize autistic gay kids, I'm significantly less down with.
Great piece, thank you. My brother and I were raised by both parents; Mom stayed home until he was in college and I was in 10th grade. We had family dinner, freshly made, every night. We had consistent discipline. And consistent expectations for what being an adult looked like, which boiled down to "choices, trade-offs, and consequences." From a purely feminist perspective, what I was taught that all choices are legitimate including staying home to have a family. I did not travel that path, pursuing a career instead. All of my girlfriends chose to have children with about half and half staying home or returning to work. The "feminism" practiced today looks nothing like how we Gen Xers were raised.
One of my favorite songs ever is Joni Mitchell's "Song of Sharon," in which she sings to her childhood friend who stayed in Saskatoon to marry a farmer, and contrasts their respective careers (Joni Mitchell's songs were almost always almost painfully autobiographical). It's a beautiful song, and at no point does it say Sharon's choice was better or Joni's choice (to become a pop star) was better; they were just different.
In the song (and the album, Hejira), Joni Mitchell celebrated a life her mother could not have lived, due simply to history. But while staying on the farm in Saskatoon was not for Joni, it was clearly the right choice for Sharon. And that was okay.
Lovely, lovely song.
When we live life as a zero sun game there is no room for balance. Thank you for such a find remembrance.
I myself am not a believer. That being said, I see absolutely nothing wrong with a single point he made. Especially the stay at home mom area he covered. I have had a kid who was raised by a parent who worked whom ended up leaving my daughter and myself. My daughter struggled her whole life because I worked a lot after her mom left and my mother stepped in and took the mom role. Not the same for a child as her real mom. My current wife of 20 yrs now and I had a son. She was a stay at home mom till he could drive. No issues with him all around great kid. I refused to have another child unless she agreed to be a stay at home mom. We can both completely tell the difference in attitude,life choices and many other things between these two. We love them both equally and dearly. But one was much easier to deal with than the other . It’s just a fact.
One more point. This is still America I believe. This will be very bad for our country if the alphabetters are able to get him canceled and fired because of his honest opinion. Won’t be good at all.
The claim of his speech being racist is the standard scream of a person who cannot provide a rational reason for his objections, much like calling a person “Hitler”.
OK, Hitler. ;)
I've made no bones about how I feel given our current circumstances as a nation. More and more I'm losing hop of a peaceful resolution and am under the firm impression that the United States of America will end up fractured, tribal, regional, and no longer a untied country, but four to seven regions that share the middle of North America. In the past, I've made statements, shared memes, and commented on others pieces that if drastic and rapid action is not taken, I may live long enough to witness what's coming.
Now that said, a meme of Val Kilmer, in his role as Doc Holiday in Tombstone with the accompanying text - "Make no mistake, it's not revenge we are after, it's a reckoning."
Someone asked me, "When do we start?"
And there's the rub. there is no shortage of "red" folks that have had enough. Even plenty that believe we should do something... anything. But what?
I believe first we have to define who we are and what we believe. Butker's address defined that pretty damn well. The US vs THEM, Red vs Blue, Right/Left, Woke/Trad, Conservative/Progressive, and on and on, but in each of these designations carries local prejudices and customs. Conservatives in Idaho don't necessarily have the same outlook as those in Florida. Now multiply that by 160 million and trying to save this nation becomes a Herculean task.
Butker and others have pretty well defined who's who, what we now need to define is exactly what's broken. Can it be fixed within the system, using the system? My Magic 8 Ball says, 'Outlook Not Good'. If we can define the problem(s) and agree at least in part on how to proceed in addressing them... well, it'd be a start.
Now, can we find enough of the like minded willing to set all other considerations aside and begin what is obviously so necessary? I don't know, but I'm making a list and asking for volunteers. Given what our 45th POTUS has had to deal with the last few years, the opposition will be great. They won't fight fair. But as my father always told my brothers and I, if you're fighting fair, you're doing it wrong.
You'll like this article
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/abolish-the-federal-government-and
Before having read that, I've thought or said much the same. Spooky. Id love to find a way to prevent it, but it'll be anything but trying, terrible, and terminal for many. If we can't stave off the insanity, that shining City On The Hill will be gone forever and it's like never seen again by anyone living.
i suppose sometimes amputation is necessary to keep the infection from killing the host, but damn, there's a lot of infection.
That “Demand for dismissal” is hilarious in that most likely the authors probably don’t even watch football.
Ok, it's "just a Catholic guy preaching to a Catholic audience - what's the big deal?"
Off the top of my head:
1) Would it be a big deal to see a KKK member speaking to the KKK? I went to an extreme example, but give me some points for not going full Hitler XD Ok, yes this is a pretty Catholic viewpoint, but rarely do those leak so openly into the limelight and it's a shock.
2) If that's really the Catholic position, seems like a big waste of time and money to be telling these women AFTER they've gone through the trouble of getting a degree. Oh, wait, I guess they do that up front throughout their lives, at church and elsewhere. Is this one last ditch effort, or is he really preaching to the women that have ALREADY decided the homemaker-only path was not for them?
3) Following up the previous point, it's pretty obviously not the time to be downplaying the achievement. If it were up to them, would they give the same speech at the Olympics? "Yeah, nice... gold's pretty good. But I bet you're MUCH prouder to be a wife, am I right?? Maybe this should be your last Olympics...?"
4) How's this for a scissor statement? It seems pretty obvious to the blues that he skipped the part about how all the men graduating are probably MUCH more excited about how they'll get married and be fathers, careers and accolades be danged. Not only did he forget that part, but if that's what all the stats say, that fathers are what make for healthy, happy families, and reduce violence, maybe he should have spent more time on that side of the equation...? I'm guessing the reds didn't notice it was missing.
1) would it be a big deal if it was an Aztec speaking about child sacrifice?
1b) would it be a big deal if it was an Afghan mullah speaking about selling daughters into arranged marriages for cash?
I think the "big-deal-ness" of things, largely, has to do with how large of a perceived threat they are. The woke wouldn't be threatened by either of those if they were out-of-country, but might be threatened if they were in-country. Neither would be as big a threat as Butker making a college commencement speech to a cheering crowd, because that carries a present culture war significance.
2) Most colleges are actually just dating sites with a few classes attached. Yes it would have been better to give them the speech at the beginning of college, but giving it at the end isn't terrible. More:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/burn-the-universities-and-salt-the
3) I disagree. The achievement, while nice, is basically a piece of paper indicating that they know how to follow instructions and are willing to spend 20 years doing it. Once they get it, they have to figure out what to do with their lives. It was a good speech in that regard.
4) He didn't forget fathers, that's the next part of his speech after the scissor. I just didn't dwell on it. It's a trad take, but it's in there, and it's just as long as the mothers bit. Go watch the video.
Catholics espousing traditional Catholic values, not illegal.
KKK members espousing traditional KKK values? Well, some of the things they espoused were illegal.
Child sacrifice is illegal, as is selling your daughter. And while you can certainly talk about it, making plans to do it is pushing the boundaries.
The problem is conflating the first two under the rubric of Progress and/or Feminism.
1) Yes. Horrifying and illegal.
1b) Yes, in America, yes.
So, I agree with you that the shock is greater because it's in America.
2) For Catholics, I suppose so. I feel bad for the women that actually are hoping for an education and a purpose in life beyond wife and motherhood at that school.
3) Ok, I've already conceded similar in a previous response. It's a question of taste, and not outside the realm of commencement speech material.
4) You're right, he did. In fact, he said what I said was missing - and it was right in your transcript <facepalm>. But the difference there is that what he preaches for men is not at all contrary to the context of the whole event - it's "be a father, be present in the community" and lean into your skills to find your best role. That identical message given to women wouldn't be shocking or controversial.
All in all, I think you're right about the scissor issue. As a "blue", the big problem is the way he said it. If he had said "to the women here who decide not to focus on a a career and choose instead homemaker and motherhood, I know that you may suffer from the pressures of society that say that's not enough.", that would have been less controversial. I'm perfectly fine with celebrating women (or men) that choose to be full-time homemakers.
But his speech isn't a "live and let live" speech - it very clearly reflects the Catholic world view with underlying assumptions. He ventures to guess that most women are more excited about marriage and children than career. His says of his wife "her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother." The standard Catholic gender roles are a bit jarring to hear in 2024.
Look at his words. He "guesses" that "a majority" (that being 51%+) of women at the Benedictine college graduation ceremony were more excited about making babies than having a career. Not that all women everywhere are. And I'd guess that his guess is dead on.
Maybe. But it looks like even the Benedictine Nuns bristled at his presumption. https://www.npr.org/2024/05/19/1252357764/harrison-butker-benedictine-college-commencement-nuns-denounce
Their statement is interesting because, in becoming a nun, they aren't mothers. Butker basically said mothers are more important than nuns, and that's what set them off.
Yes, I noticed that. So, for one thing, he entirely forgot about the people that went there to be nuns! But they also came out in support of women going after careers and other purposes. Given that the nuns' school is part of the picture (about 12% of female graduates studied theology and religious vocations), perhaps he was off the mark on his stats after all. I wonder if he checked before making the speech.
> "2) For Catholics, I suppose so. I feel bad for the women that actually are hoping for an education and a purpose in life beyond wife and motherhood at that school."
No, not just the Catholics, *most colleges*.
Any woman who goes to college and wants a real degree can have one, likely even at Benedictine. I don't *know* what their engineering programs are, but I presume they exist. Maybe not. I certainly haven't perused their catalog.
But a lot of young people are looking to pair up. It's just a species thing. The Catholic ones may be more open about it, but I was *excruciatingly* not Catholic (or even vaguely Christian) and I still graduated with not just a degree but a wife as well.
> "If he had said "to the women here who decide not to focus on a a career and choose instead homemaker and motherhood, I know that you may suffer from the pressures of society that say that's not enough.", that would have been less controversial."
I suppose you're right that it's the scissor, but I think it's reasonable for folks who are Catholic, speaking at a Catholic college commencement, to not feel the need to couch their language for consumption by people who despise them and want them exterminated.
See my discussions with HWFO. There's a link to a story about the Benedictine Nuns associated with the university that likewise objected, partly because he elevated "homemaker" above "nun", but also because it diminished those that felt they had more to offer, or whose purpose in life differed.
My experience at college was VERY different. I didn't meet a single woman whose purpose was mainly to pair up. It depends on the university you attend, obviously.
Mainly, I find it disingenuous to send your daughter to a very expensive university because that's her best chance to hook up with a successful Catholic man. I know this is how things have "always" been, but I'd like to see us evolve from that. Many places already have.
I belonged to a Catholic young adult group that was pretty much all college grads.
Rather then waiting to get married in their 30s and maybe succeeding and maybe having 1-2 kids, people in The group were focused on getting married in their mid 20s and most seem to have ended up with 3+ kids.
It wasn’t rocket science. People just assumed dating in one’s 20s was supposed to be reserved for potential future spouses. Didn’t mean you had to marry the first person but you didn’t date unintentionally or hook up. Since you were spending all your time with the church group you could assume the same about the people you were meeting in social settings.
There are chapters like this all over the country and the women listening to this speech could obviously seek them out.
1.) Do you know of any KKK colleges?
2.) The point of a commencement speech is, in fact, to round out the experience.
3.) When the Olympics starts holding speeches, and he gives one, get back to us.
4.) Men aren't subjected to the same pressures to not be happy with procreating as women are. You do what you can with the time you've got.
NEXT?!
1) That wasn't the point of the analogy. The point was that the explicit Catholic world view is actually jarring to a lot of people when brought to light.
2) Ok, I'll give you this one. Commencement speeches are often about making a point. I found that the one time he tried to connect with the audience, it belittled rather than celebrated their achievement, but that's just my opinion, and not outside the realm of commencement topics.
3) Again you missed the point of the analogy. It's hard for me to come up with another one in this post-civil rights era that means "That's nice, but don't forget your place."
4) I guess you hit the scissors issue right on the head there. Blues don't see "pressures to not be happy with procreating" as a problem. Reds don't see "pressures to be happy with your main purpose in life being to procreate" as a problem. Given this viewpoint, it's still galling and presumptive of him to assume he knows what most women in the audience are thinking. But, yeah, from a Catholic/red perspective it's no big deal.
I didn't miss the point of your analogies. I just didn't think they were very good ones. Primarily because they were either excessively extreme, or unrealistic.
Re 4.) I'm not sure he assumes he knows what the women in the audience are thinking as much as he's saying "Hey, you've been fed this line in a lot of subtle ways, but BTW, it might be bullshit, and in fact I think it is.
And I agree that the scissors is that the Reds think it's fine to point out that people might be happier procreating versus Blues thinking it's reasonable to sway ladies towards avoiding that.
Given that I'm somewhere on the "Squant" spectrum of anarchism, I'm not sure I actually have an opinion beyond the ironically evolutionary one of "Everyone is descended from women who thought procreation was a great idea". Which is seemingly solidly fluorescent purple.
The KKK has become socially unacceptable to nearly everyone in the modern US, though. I don't follow sports, but I'd be shocked if a pro team allowed an open KKK member to play for them in the first place, and if a player was suddenly revealed to be an active KKK member I'd expect him to be fired immediately. Conservative Catholics aren't anywhere near that social position, much as some might like them to be.
As explained to others, it was an extreme analogy. The point was he was expressing a point of view that might seem fairly standard to the audience, but is shocking to many in society at large, outside the community. I chose the extreme example in order to pull the discussion out of the "scissor issue", to make sure everyone could relate.
Yes, I understood your point. But *my* point was that people who find conservative Catholic values shocking to the point of thinking anyone who holds them should be expelled from mainstream society, are themselves living in a bubble of ignorance, because a substantial number of their fellow Americans hold similar values. A conservative living in a red-tribe bubble might well be shocked to hear a liberal athlete advocate for both abortion and puberty blockers to be made available on demand, but that conservative would also be foolish to start demanding said athlete be fired.
Ok, I agree with that. I wouldn't call for him to be fired.
Direct with a civil tone. Well done, sir.
1) College is fucking easy for anyone not getting an engineering degree. It’s simply not a huge accomplishment.
2) Getting a college degree doesn’t mean a woman doesn’t want to be a homemaker. Educated stay at home moms tend to be better stay at home moms because they can do more than be babysitters. They can also ease their way back into the white collar work force once the youngest child/children are in school.
RE 1; at a certain point in my Engineering degree, it became a joke/truism that once you graduate, you are qualified to be an apprentice. My brother, an architect, told me that when he finished that was not a joke, it was explicit. You needed to serve under a practicing architect for 5 years to take the Architecture Board exam, and the only way to get that job was the degree.
As far as 2 goes, my mother is very explicit that she has an MrS degree, from a UC no less. She went looking for a husband, specifically a husband on the tenure track.
> "RE 1; at a certain point in my Engineering degree, it became a joke/truism that once you graduate, you are qualified to be an apprentice."
This is true of many things. Computer Science, Truck driving, Machining, Welding, Emergency Medicine, to name a few things I've gone to school for and realized at the end that I needed finishing.
Given our long lifespans, the viable compromise position can be encapsulated as:
STOP trying to make young adults save for retirement! Yes, there is interest to be earned, but life is to be lived. And the best time to start a family is while reasonably young. So putting money into a home in a safe neighborhood is more important than saving for retirement. Ditto, living on less so that Mom can stay home full time while the kids are young.
Policy wise, this entails changing positions that Republicans currently favor.
1. Social Security and Medicare taxes should be replaced with consumption taxes -- especially taxes on luxury goods. The young need to focus on their families.
2. The allowance for putting money into retirement plans should be lifetime amounts, not annual percentages of income. To live traditionally and still have money to retire, the optimum strategy is to live off a single income while young and then use the second income to save for retirement after the children have grown up.
I don’t actually know if outbreeding feminists actually replaces them, having seven kids seems like it would reduce the quality of parenting they receive compared to someone with one or two kids, possibly making the R-strategy kids comparatively less successful in society?
This was my thought too. There is probably a societal optimum where women are free to participate in the labor force but having children is also viewed positively and there is a balance probably somewhere in the 2-3 children per woman range. Enough for growth but not too much growth and a reduction in the feral young people that can happen with really high rates.
The question is- does involving women in the workforce overcome the smaller number of children being generated? There is clearly an economic advantage to having women work that offsets the lower child bearing rate?
Coming from a large Catholic family where my mom had to start working outside of the house when I was around 14, I can confidently say we turned out just as well, if not better, than my friends and peers who grew up in much smaller families and where the mom didn’t work at all.
My mom made sacrifices for all of us, she didn’t get a cellphone until 2014, I can assure you, you can have a strong, tight bond, with your children even with a dozen kids, even with the mom working several jobs to support the family, it’s just the willingness to help your kids.
So I think 3 kids is still on the too small side for good parenting, those numbers could be bumped up.
Having kids also feels very much like a class privilege today, things are more expensive than ever
Not going to act like I know the finances of children, since I’m not married, but we were broke growing up. My dad was lying about working and was cheating on her for 10+ years and we almost lost the house several times due this. She worked hard, and she and us made sacrifices. Mind you, my youngest sister was 6 during 2008, so so this isn’t ancient history. You just need to be willing to make sacrifices, find cheap fun that isn’t bad for you, and you’ll be fine.
Several of my siblings are married and have kids, one just had her third kid and her husband is just working in the oil fields. Make sacrifices, work hard, and you can have kids. I see plenty of larger families(4-6 kids) at my church. I think people just don’t want kids because the media has pushed not having kids or having only one or two for years.
Well, Upright, in my part of the country we don't have a lot of the first, not many of the second who speak English, and very few of the third (except for druggies from Cali). So the nannying is often done by college girls, or (in a case I know) by a young woman whose husband was still in school whilst she was not. One does what one can with what is available. I nannied my own damn kids. And I thank God that three of my daughters in law do the same, with joy. Sadly, the fourth is stuck with punishing student loans and has to work, so now I am nannying a grandson. For free. So it isn't cool or legit.