Part-Time Pundit

Column : “Is Manliness a Virtue?”

This column has actually been up awhile but I was at a conference in DC and had the most insane travel experience getting there andback (stranded over night both ways, spent one night in the terminal at Detroit… etc). I never got around to posting my latest column at the DI, here it is:

Column: Manliness: Is it really a virtue?
John Bambanek

Posted: 6/23/06

I just celebrated my first Father’s Day as a father this year. That single day, once a year, is the solitary break from the typical societal hammering of fathers and men in general.

Take a look on any television show that features a father. Usually the father is a bumbling boob struggling to keep up with his much more intelligent wife. There exists not one single show that depicts an involved and intelligent father.

While Miller Lite commercials and puerile shows like “The Man Show” celebrate what they consider manliness - what they are really celebrating is boyishness.

This boyishness has been enshrined into the gold standard of male sexual expression by feminism.
Feminism, at least the branch typically described as feminism, holds two lies as truth: The first is that all men are basically as mature as a typical seventh grader, or more coarsely, they think only with their penis.

The second is that women can achieve fulfillment and happiness by imitating these “men”. The problem is that neither of the above are true.

What has happened is that by holding up seventh-grade sexuality as the model to be imitated, many of the boys emulate what has been expected of them. It became socially acceptable for “men” to bound from bed to bed.
With this, along came date rape, objectification of women and the decline of any real commitment in marriage. The reason abstinence education “doesn’t work” isn’t because of abstinence. It is because in every direction society is telling boys to sleep with anything that walks.

This is most decidedly what manliness is not. Despite the claims of the “adult” entertainment industry, manhood is not glorified penis-idolatry. I enjoy meat and beer as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t make me a man.

Manhood involves responsibility, taking on not only the responsibility of a job, but of raising children. Real men are directly involved in their children’s lives and don’t relegate the duties of parenting to woman.

Manhood involves being able to relate to a woman as a human person, not as a collection of a preferred set of genitalia. Real men can realize that women have intelligence and talents that are useful outside the home. They leave pornography to the boys.

They live lives with a purpose. While boys are running around looking for ways to amuse themselves, men are at the very least providing for their families.

More often, they are pursuing some noble end. The Founding Fathers were men. Hugh Hefner is a boy.

They love their wives. By love, I mean completely and for reasons going far beyond sexual gratification.

They don’t view marriage as a relationship where they are recipients of benefits, but as a relationship where they invest their heart and soul into the woman they love, who in turn invests her heart and soul back.

Manhood should not be confused with boyishness and at least one day a year society seems to know the difference. Manliness is a virtue and a pillar of any good society and it is about time we stopped idolizing boyishness.

June 29th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | DailyIllini | 2 comments

Wictory Wednesday Presents Senator George Allen

This week Wictory Wednesday is supporting the reelection of Senator George Allen of Virginia. Sen. Allen has been a consistent supporter of conservative values in the Senate, earning a place in the ranks of the American Conservative Union’s Best and Brightest.

Sen. Allen is a supporter of fiscal conservativism and introduced legislations to require a balanced budget. He also supported a law that would dock congressmen’s paychecks if they failed to produce a budget by October 1st. The idea that legislators should be penalized for failure to do the few things they must do is one that should be whole-heartedly supported.

While Senator Allen does support accountability for school systems and supporting programs that succeed, support for school choice is notably lacking. There is no better accountability than allowing people to leave failing schools, taking tax dollars with them.

Illegal immigration is an issue many legislators are running away from while Senator Allen has the courage to take a stand. He understands what should be common-sense, immigrating legally is a good thing, immigrating illegally is a bad thing. It is obvious that decades of not enforcing immigration law hasn’t worked and perhaps it’s time we give law and order a chance. We don’t need to demean the people who came here while the government basically said it wouldn’t enforce the law, but that doesn’t mean blanket amnesty… or for that matter, lavishing rewards on illegal immigrants.

Lastly, while it has become chic for members of Congress to suggest it’s time to surrender to America’s enemies and to proclaim that America is the cause of every world problem, Senator Allen understands that no victory came through surrender. The war on terror and Iraq are difficult problems that lesser men run away from by planting their heads in the sand. Winning the War in Iraq takes time and with plans for troop reductions under way, it’s clear that “stay the course” is not only a strategy, but a strategy that’s working.

Please considering donating to Sen. Allen’s reelection campaign or volunteering your time.

This has been a production of the Wictory Wednesday blogburst. If you would like to join Wictory Wednesday, please see this post or contact John Bambenek at jcb (dot) blog [at] gmail {dot} com. The following sites are members of the Wictory Wednesday team:

June 28th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | National, Politics, Wictory Wednesday | no comments

Rush Limbaugh found with Viagara, Left Triumphant

Apparently CBS in Florida reported that Rush Limbaugh was detained by customs… they found Viagara, and I’m sure the lefty blogs are triumphant and they’ll be spouting dick jokes for weeks.

What a wonderful bottom-dwelling media we have.

June 26th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Around the US | no comments

Wictory Wednesday Presents Diana Irey for Congress

This week Wictory Wednesday presents Diana Irey for US Congress. Diana is running against ex-Marine Rep. John Murtha from Pennsylvania who needs no explanation as to why he should be replaced. This race began as what seemed to be an uneventful race against an incumbent who not only didn’t expect competition, but is planning on making a run to become House Minority Leader.

Diana Irey served for ten years as commissioner of Washington County and served on a number of boards and commissions bring jobs and fiscal discipline to the local government. She supports not only lower taxes but lower government spending. While Murtha’s campaign seems to revolve around nothing else but the Iraq War (albeit an important issues), Irey is approaching running for office with a variety of stances on issues including supporting victory in Iraq and treating soldiers with respect, not as criminals.

Most importantly Diana is not a beltway bureaucrat and has served only in local offices until now. She will not only bring a local perspective to a seat that is held by an individual more concerned with his own national profile, she will support balanced budgets and intelligent policy-making to a Congress that has shown itself to be free with the money entrusted to it.

Please consider supporting the campaign of Diana Irey for the House of Representatives for the 12th District of Pennsylvania.

This has been a production of the Wictory Wednesday blogburst. If you would like to join Wictory Wednesday, please see this post or contact John Bambenek at jcb (dot) blog [at] gmail {dot} com. The following sites are members of the Wictory Wednesday team:

June 20th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | National, Politics, Wictory Wednesday | one comment

Catholic Carnival - Corpus Christi Edition

Here’s this week’s Catholic Carnival, a weekly roundup of self-submitted posts from Catholic bloggers.

Reflections

Harrison Ayre at Witness to Hope presents Reflections on the Problem of Evil. “The Problem of Evil is one of the greatest problems that have ever plagued theologians and philosophers. How do we reconcile evil with a Good and Loving God?”
Audrey Yii at My Journey presents Being Too ‘Salty’. “Jesus said Christians are called to be salts of the world. But how ’salty’ should we be? This post is about my personal experience when I’ve added too much ’salt’.”
Tom Reagan presents Maturing in a View of Jesus Through the Rosary. This is Part II in Tom’s 3-part series Maturing in a View of Jesus, a View of Mary, and a View of Ourselves Through the Rosary. Part I is about maturing in a view of Mary, and Part III will be about maturing in a view of ourselves.

Elena LaVictoire at My Domestic Church presents A Teachable Spirit. “I post a lot about the difficulties of the Titus 2 responsibility and how it is difficult to live out that command. It is my opinion, that a great deal of that comes from an unteachable spirit in many young women today. I came across two examples of this in blogs by first time moms this week. ”

Jay at Living Catholicism presents Want a Better Marriage? Marriage Encounter is for You. “My wife and I just attended a Marriage Encounter weekend and these are my thoughts on why you should attend with your spouse.”
A Penitent Blogger presents Dark Accusations and Hard Questions, a reflection on our need to be diligent as servants of a just and merciful God”

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Leo Wong at Diary of a City Parishioner presents The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ with thoughts on the Real Presence.

Kevin Miller at HMS Blog presents The Sum of All Sacrifices, a reflection on the Mass readings for Corpus Christi, focusing on what sort of sacrifice the Eucharist is.

Father’s Day

Christine at Ramblings of a GOP Soccer Mom presents National Review Roundup on Dads discussing how important fathers are.

Other Uncategorized Stuff

Herbery Ely at HerbEly presents Book Review: Just War, Lasting Peace: What Christian Traditions can Teach Us. This book is the result of a one-day invitational forum on the applicability of the Just War tradition to the modern world. Herb recommends the book but wishes that it had given more background on 1) the decline of war over the past twenty five years; 2) von Clausewitz’s famous dictum about war being the continuation of politics; and 3) the context of turning the other cheek. He provides links to additional resources.

Rob at Crusader of Justice presents Summer Reading List on eight books with a Catholic theme to them that he really enjoyer many of them from his first year at Franciscan.

BarbaraSzyskiewicz at SFO Mom presents An Open Letter to Woman’s Day Magazineon why one Catholic mom cannot, in good conscience, continue to
subscribe to this mainstream magazine.

Humor

cehwiedel at Kicking Over My Traces presents Bill Mauldin Collection

June 20th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Blogging, Carnivals, Religion | 3 comments

A New Direction for America… Backwards.

Today, after months of waiting, the Democrats have come up with an agenda for 2006. First, some noticeably missing items.

Iraq. For as much as the Democrats continue to criticize the President’s mishandling of the war, the peace, or whatever you want to call it, their direction does not highlight any meaningful alternative. How do they believe a free and secure Iraq should be created? Well, if Murtha has his way, apparently by surrendering to Al Qaeda.

National security. Apparently terrorism is not a problem because the polar ice caps are melting. Perhaps we were mistaken, it wasn’t planes that flew into the World Trade Center on 9/11, it was chunks of ice from the North Pole. So while they are ignoring national security, they’re stumping for Gore’s movie.

Immigration. Millions of immigrants took to the streets in protest in recent months. Millions more legal residents have also made their views known. No matter where you stand, this is one of the most charged and important issues on the minds of the people, and on this issue the Democrats are silent.

Moving on to some of the core items of the Democrats platform from items that simply haven’t been on the public radar to making current problems worse…

Raising minimum wage. Despite the fact that every time the minimum wage has been raised unemployment has gone up; they believe that having no job is better than being paid some less than some arbitrary number. There are more intelligent ways to get people earning enough to provide for their families, raising the minimum wage isn’t one of them. There is a finite amount of money in circulation, those wage increases need to be paid for somehow. It ends up being either lay offs, cut benefits, higher prices (and cost of living), or a combination of all three.

Price gouging. Who isn’t against price gouging? However, for as much as that legal term has been thrown around, there has not been any evidence provided to support that it is happening. After about two years of hearing that companies are breaking the law to stick it to Joe Consumer, I’d expect that someone would be able to prove it to nail their ass to the wall for it. However, after two years of complaining they haven’t found any evidence, it is doubtful that giving them a majority will accomplish anything except more hearings with legislators bloviating on TV so it looks like they are “doing something”.

Fiscal responsibility. One of the most appealing parts of the platform is restoring fiscal responsibility, however, the likely way of doing this will be to increase income to the treasury, not reducing spending. One of the key items to pay attention is that they specifically reference the fiscal discipline of the 90s… i.e. when Congress was run by Republicans. Cutting taxes is one thing, you have to cut spending along with it. At least on this point the Democrats are intellectually honest. They’ll at least raise taxes to pay for their spending. If we want to talk about fiscal responsibility, let’s start with earmark reform.

Slash student loan costs. This is pandering at its worst because student loans are almost essentially free. I know, because I have them. My wife’s student loans are consolidated for an APR of 1.65%. In other words, I could take the money, put it in a savings account, and use the interest to pay off the loan and still turn a profit on the loan. I know students who take student loans for the express purpose of using that money and investing it earning 8%+. Student loans are an incredible deal. Inflation is about 3%, which makes those loans essentially trivial interest. The only thing that could be done to make those loans cheaper would be to pay students interest for taking them out.

Stop tax giveaways for outsourcing. If by tax-giveaways you mean that other countries don’t tax the crap out of companies like we do, than you’re right. However, how exactly are you going to start taxing companies that aren’t in the US? Tariffs? Bring the entire world under the United States tax structure? No one is paying businesses to leave the US and outsource, it’s simply far cheaper to hire labor overseas in some industries.

Stop wasteful subsidies, Support stem-cell research. These two items are directly at odds. If there are wasteful subsidies, by all means eliminate them. However, funding stem-cell research (particularly embryonic which is what they are talking about) is in itself a wasteful subsidy. Adult stem cell research is curing people, it works. Private money is coming in hand over fist for adult stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research does not work, which is why they have no investors and need a handout. While it might give the Democrats yet another chance to kill millions more babies and start treating people less as human beings and more as crops to be cultivated for parts, it remains that this science doesn’t work.

The Democratic platform here doesn’t address most of the issues important to Americans. The three top issues are Iraq, gas prices, and immigration for Congress. Health care is low on the list. Social security is absent. Stem cell research is absent. The minimum wage is absent.

Once again, we’re faced with a party unwilling to tackle the big issues that Americans care about. It would be nice in 2006 to have a real choice between candidates, and it looks like the Democratic party has deprived us once again.

June 16th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | National, Politics | one comment

DI Column Up: Cashing In / How to Become an Illegal Immigrant

You can read it here, or quoted below:

During last semester’s immigration protests in Champaign, the migrant community wanted to be accepted as Americans and treated as equals. The United States Senate has gone well above and beyond anything they asked for.

The Senate bill will not only grant amnesty, it will actually reward immigrants for braving the desert illegally. Far from being treated as the equals of Americans or legal immigrants, the package offered to them surpasses even the rights and privileges enjoyed by citizens who have lived here for decades.

First, under the bill, illegal immigrants will need to pay three out of the last five years of back taxes to the government. Or, to put it another way, every illegal immigrant gets a two-year break from paying taxes.

Second, the bill would require that they are paid the “prevailing wage” (much higher than minimum wage) for agricultural work. Also, they are granted job protection measures in federal law far beyond what is available to normal Americans and legal immigrants who can be fired for any reason or no reason at all.

Third, they can be paid Social Security benefits based on their employment in the United States while using forged Social Security numbers. With 40 million people having used the Social Security number 000-00-0000, it is clear this measure will generate massive fraud and accelerate the bankruptcy of Social Security.

Many pundits have complained that the proposal to lavish money on illegal immigrants is pandering at its worst. However, instead of complaining about legislators trying to buy new voters, there is a far better solution to this congressional excess. Become an illegal immigrant, too.

Here’s how: Take a vacation to Mexico and stop by a U.S. embassy there. Renounce your citizenship and give them your passport. Then travel back to the United States using your driver’s license or birth certificate. Congratulations, you are now an illegal immigrant - your La Raza membership card is in the mail.

To take advantage of the two-year tax holiday, return to your job and get a new W-4. In box 7, write “exempt.” Do the same for your Illinois W-4. This will stop all tax withholding from your paycheck. Alternatively, get your employer to pay you on a 1099, which has no tax or other withholding. Stop filing tax returns.

Then apply for the amnesty program which will require you to pay back taxes for three of the last five years (which you’ve already paid). You have now legally evaded taxes for two years.

Now, as an illegal immigrant from Mexico, you can demand affirmative action to get into grad school ahead of those equally qualified (or even a little more qualified). Out-of-state students take note; you can now demand in-state tuition.

Some might say this is cheating the system. I say it is demanding your fair share. The defining image of this nation is an outstretched hand waiting to be paid. It’s time we all cash in on the entitlement culture before the government’s checks start to bounce.

June 16th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | DailyIllini, Immigration | 2 comments