More Pictures from CPAC

Here are bloggers Northamericanpatriot and Wendy Sullivan of Rightgirl. I asked them to do something embarrassing to entertain my readers and all I got was Ms. Sullivan saying, "I'm Canadian, is that good enough?" I guess it will have to be. Northamericanpatriot has more pictures on her blog including Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter.







Here is yet another picture of Glenn being interviewed by NRAnews.com about his book.

Pictures from CPAC

There was a booth called Blogger Row at the conference--Here is Girl on the Right, Tom Bridge of Metroblogging DC, and Lashawn Barber.




Here is Glenn talking to C-Span about his upcoming book.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum

I just went to see Glenn do his book signing at CPAC where there were bloggers, journalists and reporters galore! From there, I went to the Holocaust Museum to look at the exhibits. As a psychologist, I found the exhibition on "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" the most interesting. The Nazi emphasis on health and fitness was certainly intriguing--while it sounds good in theory, it reminds me of why I feel upset with all the fitness gurus in this country with their propaganda that makes smokers seem like outlaws and those who eat at McDonald's one step away from a heart attack and lifelong reliance on the health insurance system. It is all about more government control--even to the point of telling people how to eat and exercise. Heck, I ate at McDonald's on the trip up and it was fairly healthy.

The National Socialist Party is an amazing representation to me of the worst characteristics of the authoritarian mixed with far left leaning propaganda. While the far left sometimes likens the right to Nazi's, it seems to me that Hitler also had traits of the left--I guess that's why they called it the National Socialist Party. One of the displays in the Deadly Medicine exhibit mentioned a quote from Hitler that I did not write down--but the gist was that the goal of the National Socialist Party was to have children as its top priority (in a 1938 speech, Hitler proclaimed the mother to be the most important citizen in his state) and that the selfishness of the individual was to be overlooked for the good of the collective society. Sounds very much like a form of socialism to me.

My question is, why do so many of the left tout Nazism as a creation of the right when there were so many traits of the left embedded in it's theology?

Update: Ed Driscoll has more.

Update II: Wow, these guys think I am calling them terrorists and Nazis. I didn't have that in mind at all--but it's interesting that they think I did. Can anybody say, guilty conscience?

Update III: Reader Ardsgaine in the comment section gives a lesson in logic to Tboggians:

All Nazis were socialists.

All socialists are leftists.

Therefore, all Nazis are leftists.

And she ended with the question, so why do the leftists call the right Nazis?

Now, if you had a basic philosophy class in college, you probably remember how this works. The statement "all Nazis are leftists" does not imply that all leftists are Nazis. It just means that some leftists are Nazis. It's the same as with "all horses are mammals." You can't flip it around and say that all mammals are horses. Got it? Or should I sketch you out a Venn diagram?

Travel Plans

I am heading to Washington D.C. today with Glenn to attend the CPAC conference. He will be there signing his book, An Army of Davids : How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths, at the conference on Friday. Blogging may be light for a few days or typical, depending on my access to a computer. I am taking my camera and will post some pictures from the conference if I can find some blogger celebrities or other points of interest.

In the meantime, take a look at an interesting interview at Right Wing News with Kate O'Beirne.

This is good news. But not good enough.

Podcast on ManHunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

We are interviewing James Swanson today, the author of a new book, Manhunt : The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. The narrative is so dramatic, it has been optioned into a movie with Harrison Ford playing Col. Everton Conger, the Civil War cavalryman who led the search for John Wilkes Booth. Word is still out for the part of Booth--but we're hoping for Johnny Depp or maybe Orlando Bloom.

If you are a Civil War buff or just interested in an intriguing tale of murder and mayhem about the chase and capture of Booth, listen to this fascinating podcast. Click here to listen or subscribe on iTunes. If you check out the front page of iTunes, you will see that the Glenn and Helen podcasts have been chosen as one of their featured podcasts. If you have not done so, please subscribe to help boost our ratings.

As always, any comments or suggestions are welcome.

The Nanny State Trap

Have you read the New York Times op-ed piece today regarding,"The Parent Trap" by the goddess of domestic dysfunction, Judith Warner?

We women have, in many very real ways, at long last made good on Ms. Friedan's dream that we would reach "our full human potential — by participating in the mainstream of society." But, for mothers in particular, at what cost? With what degree of exhaustion? And with what soul-numbing sacrifices made along the way?

The outside world has changed enormously for women in these past 40 years. But home life? Think about it. Who routinely unloads the dishwasher, puts away the laundry and picks up the socks in your house? Who earns the largest share of the money? Who calls the shots?

Is it my imagination or is the NYT's crowd stuck forever in a bad 1950's sitcom? And Ms. Warner's solution? More government control, of course:

Ms. Friedan said last year, "We are a backward nation when it comes to things like childcare and parental leave." That's just the beginning. We need universal preschool, more and better afterschool programs, and policies to promote part-time work options that don't force parents to forgo benefits, fair pay and career prospects.

If only the men of the world would keep working those 50-70 hour weeks without complaint, keep the dishes clean, do the laundry, and leave their wives to make most of the decisions like the smart ladies on today's tv sitcoms, the world would be a wonderful place. Oh, and throw in free daycare and a part-time job with full benefits for women and Oiula, problem solved. What a selfish view of the world Ms. Warner has and the worse part? If she can't control the men in her household, she will look to the government to step into that role.

We're Number 10!

The Glenn & Helen podcasts are now featured as new and notable on iTunes, and they're in the Top 10 for "talk radio" podcasts. If you've got iTunes, you can click on the link and it'll take you to the podcasts page. Also there is "Snapped," the Oxygen Channel TV show I used to consult for--there are video podcasts of the show if you want to take a look at women who kill.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up--week 6 is being hosted at the Why Homeschool Blog.

Cathy Young had an article yesterday in the Boston Globe on "The Lost Boys" as well as a post on the same topic at her blog. Many people tell me that this boy topic is getting "beaten to death" but at least it's getting some attention which might lead to further research and study into the area of boy's and men's high rates of suicide, etc.

Boys and Suicide

Did you know that 86% of all adolescent suicides in the U.S.are comitted by boys? And the real problem? Nobody gives a damn. A reporter at The San Franciso Chronicle is puzzled by this apathy as well:

It occurred to me that if 86 percent of adolescent suicides were girls, there would be a national commission to find out why. There'd be front-page stories and Oprah shows and nonprofit foundations throwing money at sociologists and psychologists to study female self-destruction. My feminist sisters and I would be asking, rightly, "What's wrong with a culture that drives girls, much more than boys, to take their own lives?"

So why aren't we asking what's wrong with a culture that drives boys, much more than girls, to take their own lives? Even in academia, where you can find studies on the most obscure topics, there is little research explaining why boys are disproportionately killing themselves. The Center for Adolescence at Stanford, a nationally recognized clearinghouse on teen behavior, has no one on its long roster of experts who can speak on the topic. Neither does the American Association of Suicidology, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention since 1968.

Unfortunately, the solution for this reporter to boy's suicide is to treat them more like girls or to tie their seeking help to what they can do for women:

If fathers say openly and repeatedly that acknowledging depression and sadness is not a sign of personal weakness but of superior judgment, if they say that getting help is their obligation as men so they can be good partners and providers, then maybe we have a chance at changing the centuries of hard-wiring that makes boys and men so much more violent than women -- whether toward others or toward themselves.

I am not exactly sure of all the complex psychological reasons that boys are taking their lives more now than in the past, but I do know that without studying the reasons for the increase, we will not be on our way to finding a solution.

Update: JW Wells has similar thoughts on males and suicide.

Update II: If suicide is just about men's natural predisposition of violence towards others or themselves, as some commenters and emailers stated, why do more women than men kill themselves in China?

Just Walk Away

Wow, I really admire people who can just walk away and quit the profession that they spent a good part of their life preparing for--I wish I had. I used to be one of those people who would persevere through anything, despite the unhappiness it caused me. Since my heart attack six years ago, I have cut down my private practice to one day a week--and those cases I take must really interest me in some way or give me a sense that I am making a difference for an individual or society. In my profession, I find it rare to feel that fulfilled. Many courts, agencies, attorneys etc. have an agenda or underlying objective for why they want a forensic evaluation--and it does not always mesh with the truth. For this reason and for many others, I rarely practice my field.

Have you ever dreamed of just quitting your day job, staying home to read your favorite books, write or just spend your time blogging? You know, you see all those ads that tell you how to be a full time blogger--anyone out there succeeding at this or wish they could?

"Stats" that Make the World Worse

I was listening to Kate O'Beirne, the author of Women Who Make the World Worse : and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports,on C-Span last night. Okay, so I don't agree with some of her points on why women should stay married even if unhappy, for the sake of children, blah blah blah. But she had a number of interesting things to say, including a discussion of how some feminists continue to exaggerate the extent to which women are abused and involved in domestic violence, etc. Yes, some women are being abused as are some men, but some feminists see fit to call psychological abuse and "controlling behavior" domestic violence--hell, this would make all of us victims (and perpetrators) of abuse at one time or another. This overexaggeration of what constitutes abuse as well as a distortion of the number of women who are physically abused has resulted in over a billion federal dollars being funneled to domestic violence causes as well as to the passing of sexist laws such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

One of O'Beirne's most salient points to the smirking journalist/interviewer on C-Span was that girls and women are being sold a bill of goods that there is danger lurking around every corner. How will this message help our girls and young women build the real confidence and assets they need to go into the working world as fully functioning adults if they resort to victimhood as a way of life? These messages of the lurking dangers for women are blatant at times, but in other ways are subtle enough to be excused, even by intelligent people.

For example, at the Volokh Conspiracy this week, Professor Eugene Volokh pointed out to an Oregon State University newspaper that it was not possible to have 2000 rapes a day, one every five minutes, as a press release and website from the Oregon State University Women's Center stated. Well...duh. It is admirable that Professor Volokh points out the problem to the women's center but they do little about it, as you can see, they did not even remove this lie -- I mean, "fact" -- from their Myths and Facts sheet. But in the comments section, Professor Volokh defends these distortions as a problem with numbers:

Here is commenter Smithy's take on the "mistake":

Typical leftist exaggeration from the unhinged feminist left. You can chalk it up to enumeracy -- I chalk it up to plain craziness.

And Professor Volokh's reply:

Smithy: It's not exaggeration; it's mathematical error. It's not "enumeracy"; it's "innumeracy." I know of no "craziness" that manifests itself as the inability or unwillingness to do arithmetic. There's little reason to think that the authors of the underlying web page or of the newspaper article are "unhinged." There's nothing inherently leftist in high estimates of the level of rape; conservatives should be and are concerned about rape, too. As my original post suggested, there's a debate among serious scholars about the true incidence of rape; the 2000 per day figure is not outlandish, though it is on the high end of the estimates.

I tend to agree with Smithy--although I will go a step further and say it is not craziness on the part of unhinged feminists--it is craftiness. There is a logic and the subtle art of propaganda in these feminists' statistics that scream "give me more funding for women's issues ASAP." Heck, this exaggeration of stats even sells books out of fear--In Gavin De Becker's,The Gift of Fear,he has a chapter on "Intimate Enemies" that reminds us that before our next breakfast, twelve women will be killed by domestic violence--man, that will really get you choking on your Cheerios. However, if we take a look at the tables by the Bureau of Justice, I am a little puzzled that so many women's lives are being cut short before I have had my first meal of the day. I counted 1193 women killed by intimates in all of 2002--if 12 were killed before breakfast that would mean 4380 women would be killed during that time period.

I guess all we can deduce from this is that feminists with agendas can't do math.