An increasingly impotent chattering class of credulous Chris Matthewses

"Palin isn't a feminist — not in the slightest," huffs card-carrying postmodern feminist Jessica Valenti of the blog Feministing, stumbling inadvertently onto the truth that will soon send her and her sob sisters tumbling into the dustbin of history: "What she calls 'the emerging conservative feminist identity' isn't a structural analysis of patriarchal norms. It's an empty rallying call to women who are disdainful of or apathetic to women's rights."

"Hitler despised Christianity for its weakness and admired Islam for its aggressiveness," writes Ipso Facto in the comments of William Kilpatrick's provocative but flawed FrontPage essay, "The Warrior Code vs. The Da Vinci Code," quoting Albert Speer:

Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking : 'You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?'"

Fast forward to today's Global War on Terror. "As it did in the seventh century, Islam is taking on the appearance of an unstoppable masculine force," writes Kilpatrick, arguing that an excess of "feminization" has eviscerated both Christianity and our nation's resolve. Try telling that to the Tea Partiers and fearless woman warriors like Sarah Palin, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Liz Cheney, for starters. It doesn't fly. First a few excerpts, and then our critique:

But in the West the masculine spirit looks more like a ghost. In The Suicide of Reason, Lee Harris puts the matter in stark biological terms: “While we in the West are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin, the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive, and ruthless.”

Sounds like Harris is talking war, but in reality his book is more about cultural conflict than armed conflict …

Of course, feminization is not just a problem for Christians, but also for the culture as a whole. If Islam is all about submission, Western culture, of late, seems to be all about submissiveness. Each day brings news of some abject accommodation to Islamic law or practices. The latest is the American Academy of Pediatrics’ decision (now apparently reversed) to sanction a less radical form of female genital cutting as a concession to Islamic cultural traditions.

It isn't "feminization" at all, but, rather, postmodern, identity-politics "feminism" — one of a cascade of unfortunate byproducts of the Gramscian march through the institutions — that has given us an increasingly impotent chattering class of credulous Chris Matthewses of both sexes, "pols, journos and 'thinkers'" who have "surrendered to an Islamist plot more effective than any Bali bomb," as Andrew Bolt so brilliantly explains in his must-read Melbourne Herald Sun column "How Hamas fooled the West." [h/t spot the dog on Twitter].

Related: "Is Sarah Palin Allowed To Call Herself A Feminist?" and our own post on Harvey Mansfield's discourse on manliness, "In spring a young man's fancy."

Update: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds!

Update II: "You nailed it perfectly, Sissy, with the Gramscian reference," says Jeff S. in the comments, echoing so much that we are forever flogging here:

It's all about the oppressor/oppressed relationship and identity politics: it's impossible to be a racist if you're black (they say), because by definition you're a member of the oppressed class. Likewise, by the lights of Marxist theorists like Jessica Valenti, Palin simply cannot be a feminist because she doesn't belong to the correct group in the correct relationship. The Gramscian Marxist connection can't be stressed enough — it seems to me to underlie vast stretches of liberal arts academia, and thus it leaches slowly but constantly into our everyday consciousness.

As we blogged quite awhile back in "The Tocquevillians strike back":

While America slept — or rather, while it was going about its business — Gramscian thinking, like sewage leaking out of a cracked drainpipe into the surrounding soil, has seeped into major sectors of our civil society — the law, foundations, universities and corporations among others. Fonte provides horrifying examples of how "major American social policy has come to be based not on Judeo-Christian precepts nor on Kantian-Enlightenment ethics, but on Gramscian and Hegelian-Marxist concepts of group power."

Fun Update III: Melissa Clouthier, first among equals at Liberty Pundits, names our post "read of the day":

Sissy Willis, who I am honored to have blogging with me.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Comments

[goomp]

The hope is that the impotent chatterer's will become aware of reality.

[Jeff S.]

You nailed it perfectly, Sissy, with the Gramscian reference. It's all about the oppressor/oppressed relationship and identity politics: it's impossible be a racist if you're black (they say), because by definition you're a member of the oppressed class. Likewise, by the lights of Marxist theorists like Jessica Valenti, Palin simply cannot be a feminist because she doesn't belong to the correct group in the correct relationship.

The Gramscian Marxist connection can't be stressed enough--it seems to me to underlie vast stretches of liberal arts academia, and thus it leaches slowly but constantly into our everyday consciousness.

[Sissy Willis]

I've quoted you in an update. Really, really good stuff!

[Robert Arvanitis]

No, we remember a more muscular Christianity

See: http://pix.motivatedphotos.com/2009/7/8/633826717793165705-JIHAD.jpg

[Teresa]

There is no reason for Sarah Palin to want any association with those who call themselves "feminists". It's quite apparent that she does not hate men and does not consider herself to be a victim. Both of these tenets are vital to being a feminist today.

Of course this makes her all the more loathsome to those who want to wring angst from women of the modern world. A brilliant, capable woman able to take on anyone (be it man or woman) with grace and articulate defense of her positions... she is poison to the victim mentality.

Today's feminist seeks to keep women subservient by constantly telling them they "can't succeed ever" because there is always a man in the way of their advancement, always a "glass ceiling".

Considering how many women have broken through that "ceiling", you'd think it would just fall down about now and stop being an issue. Guess it serves their purpose too beautifully to let it go. Heh.

[JadedByPolitics]

The bottom line for me a Conservative woman, liberal men are weak but Conservative men would DIE for their Country. So if Islam EVER thinks it is going to overtake America either internally or externally they have 42% of ALL Americans who self identify as Conservative to go through and of the 65M weapons registered in the United States of America I would bet that the MAJORITY are owned and operated by Conservatives...heh!

[Abraxas]

... Conservative men would DIE for their Country ...

More to the point - we will kill for her.