Adapt or Be Irrelevant

A pitfall of conservatism is when a conservative fails to deal with the reality that things have changed.

I'm not bashing conservatives. Most people would probably classify me as a conservative if I described most of my political and social positions. Obvious exceptions you might have noticed if you've read other entries on this blog is that I warn most men not to marry and I think professional antiporn crusaders are misleading people for personal gain.

I recognize that the truth is the truth regardless of the culture or what is in fashion.

And a truth that conservatives need to deal with is that some things change and if you're going to be effective, you need to meet people where they are.

Let's bring this into the world, to where the rubber meets the road.

Example: State marriage licenses. They are issued to same-sex couples and that's not going to change, unless states cease issuing marriage licenses entirely. Most conservatives have conceded this. Some still appear to be devoting their resources to trying to reverse this shift.

Two talk radio hosts to which I listen via paid podcast subscription, both of whom I think do a lot of good for people, demonstrate the problem with not accepting change.

Dr. Laura, despite what people might think who only know her through what other people say, has always held some positions that go against conservative consensus.

However, she usually refuses to help callers who are cohabitating outside of legal marriage. She usually won't help them with the problem or concern that's coming up within their relationship as it is. Instead, she tells them to either move out or go to the courthouse and get married ASAP. Very few of the callers are going to do either, and dismissing them with that won't help them in their marriage (if they do marry) or interpersonal relationships with each other or others if they do move out from each other.

I am generally against "shacking up" myself. However, most people who marry these days lived together before they did, just like Dr. Laura and her late husband. It's perfectly valid for her to explain why she now opposes shacking up (as long as she doesn't rely on statistics in a misleading way), and she can still do that. But the callers, and a wide swatch of her audience, will benefit more if she deals with things as they are. There are several other examples I could cite when it comes to the Dr. Laura Program.

I don't know of anything more foundational to how Dennis Prager views life and talks/writes about life than the notion that men and women should marry and raise children together, and that it is man's lot in life to financially support a woman. He is so convinced of this he constantly urges men and women to order their life around this. If they aren't married now, they should be actively seeking to marry, including if they've been divorced multiple times. If the Lord Almighty were to part the clouds and boom from the skies with a command to someone walking alongside Dennis that they shouldn't marry, Dennis just might go atheist.

Even though he acknowledges the severe problems with family law and courts, he still urges people to subject themselves to them. He needs to accept that we no longer live in small farming villages on family farms our entire life and don't need to birth our own farm hands. Men and women can both thrive living "alone" or without marriage.

Antiporn crusaders write and talk like scientists who aren't in their tank can't research and network, and that people can't check things out for themselves now. Their claims from forty-plus years ago like porn rots brains and turns people into serial killers are easily debunked now, but they still try to use those scare tactics. Porn isn't going away.

Life has changed, and tactics and positions need to change with it, or someone becomes ineffective.

When To Involve Cops With Family

Your family member might be, or is, breaking the law, or is out of control with a mental breakdown or rage.

Do you call the the police?

That depends.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Your call will be recorded. Your location, name, voice, and what you say will be in the possession of a government agency and might be subject to release to the public.
• If police respond, they will be armed.
• If police respond, they might search you, your vehicle, your residence, etc.
• They might arrest someone, including you.
• They might end up using force, including deadly force.
• Assume everything will be audio and video recorded, but you won’t have access to the recordings, or they might be made public. 
• If the person cited or arrested is your spouse or dependent, that is going to have negative consequences and repercussions for you, including financial. 

Involving law enforcement should be a last resort, if any resort at all.

I thought about this when Dr. Laura told a caller to call the police on her husband, to get him stopped for potentially driving under the influence.

Nobody should drive impaired. The caller didn’t know for sure her husband was impaired. Dr. Laura certainly didn’t know. And it’s no skin off her nose if some caller ends up in a terrible situation. Her net worth is in the millions. She has no dependents. She can afford legal fees, fines, etc. Many of her callers can’t.

If someone is a danger to you, your children, or other dependents, it’s best to be financially and legally separated from them as well as physically. Involving the police when you’re still going to be legally connected is usually a very bad idea.

Of course, if you or someone else is facing imminent, serious harm or deadly violence, and you can’t get away or get the others away and can’t neutralize the aggressors yourself, an emergency call might be in order. But it has to be very serious.

I grew up with a respect for police and an optimistic view of police. But let’s think logically here. It’s a job. For any job, you’re beholden to your boss more than anyone else. You may think police work for you, but their boss is their chain of command. Law enforcement personnel are primarily there for the bidding of government; to enforce laws, not to be of service to you. It’s great if police have provided a service to you, but that’s not their primary goal.

People are flawed. Some are corrupt. Most people are looking out for their own interests. This includes cops.

Bullies, power trippers, sadists, sociopaths, and psychopaths exist. Nothing stops them from becoming cops.

You don’t know all laws. You can easily be breaking a law without even knowing it. Even if you aren’t, a cop has the ability to arrest you if they can fill out the paperwork. 

In general, cops, like any other job, are there for themselves, maybe for their family, too. For most jobs, someone being there for themselves isn’t a problem. But cops are armed, can take you to jail, and can initiate actions leading to your criminal prosecution, which can result in fines and prison sentences. They’re backed by unions, laws, policies, and courts. Some became cops because of family tradition. Some just needed a job. Some want power over others.

I imagine some originally got into law enforcement to help people. And sometimes cops perform heroic deeds. That doesn’t mean you should be quick to involve cops in a family matter.

You shouldn’t participate in crime nor enable it (assuming we’re not talking about unjust laws). You shouldn’t allow anyone to steal from you, threaten you, or assault you or innocent people, especially those for whom you have responsibility. Proactive protection and reactive defense are important. There are things you can do, such as getting away from the aggressor, or taking someone in for a psych hold, without being quick to involve cops.

Once cops are involved, there can be serious consequences, including for you. Involving cops should be the last resort.

Like so many other things, this less of a problem for free men; men who live alone and aren’t responsible for others. 

Be Thankful For Being Free

If' you're a Free Man, count that as one of the thing for which to be thankful as we Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day.

All over the country, men, many of whom are beaten dogs, are spending a day or multiple days with people they can't stand because they were foolish enough to marry, propose marriage, live with a woman, or be "in a relationship" with a woman. In addition, many of these men have even paid for flights, hotel rooms, and other expenses to facilitate this.

Don't let that happen to you!

If you're in the USA, you should have already taken evasive action. If you're not in the USA, take evasive action before the next holiday!

Be thankful for being a Free Man, and stay a Free Man, and help other men stay free.

Are you free? Are you a beaten dog? Or, are you still blissfully delusional in your marriage, relationship, or desire to be in one? Whichever is the case, feel free to comment below to tell us about it.

Will Dennis Prager Ever Do Something Constructive About Marriage Rates?

 

I don’t know of a more obsessed marriage seller who doesn’t directly make money off of weddings (as far as I know) than radio talk show host, author, and columnist Dennis Prager. 

When he’s hosting his radio show, it seems like more often than not, he’ll throw in at least a comment, if not a whole hour, trying to convince people to marry. A brief comment might be asserting men exist to be a walking ATM and butler for a woman (not the way he words it, but what he’s saying) or lamenting that younger generations don’t share his affection for marriage.

He’ll state the fact that more Americans under the age of 40 have never been married than ever before, in a way that makes it clear he expects his audience to take such news as shocking and tragic.

He has repeatedly said it’s better for a person to have married and divorced than have never married.

This obsession of his appears, based on his own words, to have its origin in him noticing as early as he could remember how husbands in his religious congregation got to wear a shawl. He cites that a common Jewish prayer for a newborn/infant is for them to someday marry. (When that prayer originated, marriage was almost a completely different thing than it is today.)

It’s to the point I suspect his support for religion is based on its encouragement of marriage, rather than his support for marriage emanating from his religious faith. He probably asks in his head in reaction to any bit of news, “Will this encourage or discourage marriage?”

He’s very proud that there are people who tell him they married because of his selling of marriage. Maybe they did? Or maybe they would have married otherwise. But he’ll never tell you if someone who said they married because of him later says it was the biggest mistake they ever made, if they’d even tell him. Statistically it’s almost a certainty that listeners who’ve bought into his marriage sales pitches have subsequently divorced.

But again, he doesn’t see divorcing as a problem. He sees marriage like a job. People are obligated to get a job, but they can leave a job or fire an employee who isn’t fulfilling their roles.

Other things people should keep in mind as he does his sales pitch:

• He’s been divorced twice. He doesn’t see the divorce the same way many of his devoutly religious listeners do.
• He doesn’t think people should avoid marrying someone with prior children (Dr. Laura constantly preaches against bringing your new lover around your minor children, and I agree with her)
• He thinks wives shouldn’t let mood be the sole factor in determining when they have sex with their husband; many people consider that advocating marital rape.
• He’s wealthy. He lives in one of the most expensive cities in the Los Angeles area. He has a national radio show. He’s a paid speaker and pitchman.
• He doesn’t eat home cooked (at his home) meals. Everything he eats wasn’t prepared by his current wife or a cook they hired; rather, it’s almost always from a restaurant. Very few of his listeners can live like that.
• He travels a lot, so it isn’t like he’s having to go home and deal with a spouse at home day in and day out.
• When he was growing up, his married father had a subscription to Playboy. This wasn’t a hidden thing. Dennis resolved not to marry a woman who couldn’t accept male sexual nature, which Dennis has made clear includes accepting that husbands enjoy looking at other women, whereas many of his listeners think that’s akin to adultery.
• Speaking of adultery, he doesn’t think cheating should automatically end the marriage (I agree, but many of his listeners don’t).

As with anyone else, Dennis telling people they should marry isn’t going to reverse the trend of a decrease in marriages. Dennis needs to have an eloquent marriage strike proponent on his program to address what’s really going on and why. Things have to change before the marriage rate will increase consistently again. Prager U doesn’t have a single video advocating for changes to family law; it has multiple videos trying to fool men into signing a terrible state contract.

Click the tags below for more context.  

Why Do Women Have Sex?

Despite what certain activists and college professors say, men and women are different, and some of the significant differences are inborn. So the answer to "Why do women have sex?" isn't the same as the answer to "Why do men have sex?" We have different reasons, and even the reasons that sound the same can be different when prioritization or emphasis is considered.

Each reason only applies to some women. Some women who have sex have many reasons to have sex, some only a few or one.

I'm not a woman. This list is based on what women have said and done, and what I know about biology and sociology. If you know additional reasons, especially if you're a woman, tell me in the comments and maybe they will be added (you can also mention in the comment whether or not you want the comment published). This list is in no particular order.