I am idiot, hear me roar
In an article advising Michelle Obama to be an in-your-face activist as First Lady, a writer named Leslie Morgan Steiner provides strong evidence for the forbidden belief (forbidden everywhere but at VFR) that there is in women a marked tendency to vanity and frivolousness, and that the more empowered women become, the stronger that tendency becomes, and therefore that women should not, as a general rule, play any leading role in politics.
You can see my articles on this subject here, here, and here.
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Mack writes:
Steiner writes:
I had to chomp my tongue when Anna Perez, the first African-American to serve as a first lady’s press secretary, offered Michelle Obama the following advice on-air: “Follow Barbara Bush’s rule and never, ever make your husband expend one iota of political capital cleaning up after you.”
Steiner presumes that Michelle Obama was also “elected” when her husband secured electoral victory and thus has a (feminist) mandate to be an activist, primarily for black women. She goes on to explain that her technically unelected status gives her the advantage of not being impeachable!
Steiner’s article really got me steamed—to suggest that a first lady should take part in activism AT THE EXPENSE OF HER HUSBAND’S PRESIDENCY is just about the most asinine suggestion I can imagine—in contrast to Perez’s comparatively sage advice.
Mack writes:
Actually the articles you link to are some of the very first ones that got me interested in what you had to say about a year or so ago.
I find your views on this matter interesting yet hard to understand from the perspective that I’m not familiar with any findings which make a causal connection between women’s equity and any measurable detriment to society, and thus don’t know of any purely rational argument in favor of institutionalizing limitations on the rights of women.
(I do however agree that the possibility of limiting the franchise to net taxpayers might be a good idea)
I can sort of get the formulation that ‘traditional’ gender roles apparently worked well in the past and should be maintained—yet the forces that truly prevail in our nation—economics and the market—have been what primarily has driven the expansion of the role of women in society by enhancing wage competition—just as introducing any group into the available labor pool will.
Any attempt to significantly change the role of women in our society will likely also result in an economic disadvantage with regard to labor markets.
I suppose my views are essentially liberal on this issue—if that’s what advocating a pure meritocracy amounts to.
LA replies:
Well, is the fact that political rights for women means that the society inevitably becomes more and more socialistic a measurable detriment?
You write:
“yet the forces that truly prevail in our nation—economics and the market—have been what primarily has driven the expansion of the role of women in society by enhancing wage competition”
By the same token you could say that “the forces that truly prevail in our nation—economics and the market—have been what primarily has driven the expansion of immigration and the transformation of America into a Hispanic, non-European country.”
If economics and the market must be the deciding forces, we might as well get rid of the nation state altogether, since the economists tell us that dividing the global market into arbitrary nations inhibits economic activity.
Japan is universally seen as a successful nation economically, with the second largest economy on earth. Yet the Japanese do not reduce their idea of the national good to what is measurable. They are a particular nation and culture, and they intend to preserve it, even at the cost of economic difficulties, for example, finding ways to increase productivity without immigration. The point is, their guiding and controlling value is not the measurable, but the overall good and preservation of their society.
November 27
Tommy writes:
“…that there is in women a marked tendency to vanity and frivolousness, and that the more empowered women become, the stronger that tendency becomes, and therefore that women should not, as a general rule, play any leading role in politics.”
You sound like Schopenhauer!
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 25, 2008 01:56 PM | Send