Sunday, December 18, 2005
 
Memo from the Academy
It's supposed to be an op-ed about gender feminism run amok, but Lionel Tiger (seriously) proffers the following metaphor which reflects ill on its creator:
    Into this acrimonious climate has whispered a breath of spring air in winter--an extraordinary document that may have surprising impact because of its severe countercultural implications and its almost sweet innocence of purpose. In early November, the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men issued its first report (www.nh.gov/csm). The commission was proposed in a 1999 bill by state Rep. David Bickford. The House passed the bill, awarding a budget of $69,561. But months later, the state Senate stripped away funding. The commission was finally established in 2002. According to its report, the Senate's effort to defund it reflects "the inaction of good people who apparently have been led to believe that legislative activity designed to primarily benefit men is somehow not appropriate politically, financially, or otherwise."

    To the contrary, the commission's report frontally accepts that there are intrinsic differences in how men and women cope with health, education, responsibility and violence. It concludes that social policies must not begin by denying differences. If you're running a zoo, know the real nature of your guests. This applies nationally, not only in New Hampshire.
Social policymakers, probably the government and its intelligentsia friends, are running the zoo. That makes you, gentle citizen, an animal for them to cage in Byzantine programs and Gordian knots of regulation.


 
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."