Pajama Pundits

Ace of Spades comments on President Bush's speech to the Joint Armed Forces Officers' Wives' group:

Appeasement, appeasement, appeasement. It's what the left offers. It's all it offers. If we would only make ourselves more amenable to those who would murder us, maybe they'll stop being so angry.

Do any lefty speakers at Vagina Day rallies ever suggest that a battered woman ought to just "try to be nicer" the man smacking him around, maybe put out a little more, maybe make dinner a little tastier, in order to defuse his wrath?

I don't think they do.

(note: I'm waiting for clarification if that should read "to the man smacking them around", but proceding on the assumption it should.)

My first thought was in agreement. Of course they don't! As I thought about it more I realized that there is considerable common ground in advice to battered women and the way that some would like to handle terrorists.

Remember how John Kerry's instinct of "Where's my gun" and "This is war" on September 11, 2001 devolved into "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance" via controlling terrorism through law-enforcement techniques.

That is analogous to the restraining order method of reducing domestic violence. Maybe it can even be strained to comparing the takedown of BCCI to financial punishment of the abuser in a divorce court.

Re-reading Matt Bai's column today, I've got to think that had Kerry been able to turn "The war on terror is not a clash of civilizations. It is a clash of civilization against chaos, of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future." into a plan, he would have won the election.

But I digress... back to domestic violence. After the restraining order, the battered wife is advised to withdraw. Run and hide. If she has an instinct to defend herself, it is quickly smothered. Especially if that instinct involves arming herself and fighting back.

The cognitive dissonance here is not with the pacifists. Where would a battered wife receive the advice that Ace mocks? The most likely source is her church.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the more "fundamental" a church is, the more likely this is the advice the woman will get. If her husband attends the same church, I think it's even more likely. Wives are to submit to the will of the husband.

Just how far apart are the far right and the far left? The left will not allow her to arm and defend herself, the right promotes the "Christian" value of submission, and the middle is... where? Is there any political ideology other than Libertarian which is willing to give to women, married or single, the full right to self-defense, including arming herself?

(Side note: Quell is a synonym for appease. That kind of appeasement would work.)

At this time four years ago, I sat, stood, paced the living room near the television set, trying to focus on the photos and read the scrolling updates through seemingly endless tears... tears which return uncontrollably at the memory.

The Jawa Report has a caption contest with no winners today. It's fitting, because remembering what we felt, what we thought that day is a testament to who we are and what is important to us.

I'd just returned from a vacation and I was asleep. Sometime before 10 am (CDT), the phone rang. It was my sister in the UK. She answered my hello with "What the hell's going on there?" I said tentatively, "um... nothing I know of." She told me to turn on the television.

How long we talked, I don't remember. We were on the phone when the first photos of the south tower getting hit were shown. We were still connected when the Pentagon was hit, when the news of the crash of Flight 93 was aired, when the towers collapsed.

We correctly surmised that Flight 93 was an intentional crash (sis is a pilot and air traffic controller). That day, today, and for the rest of my life, the Americans who fought back on that plane are my biggest heroes.

We decided that the President was likely headed for Barksdale AFB. I found it somewhat disturbing that we so easily narrowed his possible destinations down to three, with our first choice being the one he used. It shouldn't be that easy to figure out.

I was home alone, my husband working out of town and my children grown and on their own. I wanted to talk to them. I told my sister we'd talk more later. I could not control the tears... how many of you know that many women express anger with tears as well as sadness?

My youngest was in school at W&M. She reported that many of her classmates were from the DC area and worried about parents who worked in or near the Pentagon. My oldest, four months out of the Army was talking about re-enlisting, but anxious because she hadn't been able to contact her husband who was still active duty.

He was in his car in a part of the country where cell phones didn't work, listening to tapes, and, for a short time, blissfully unaware of how his country had changed.

My son in Michigan was, like me, glued to a television set.

My husband and his co-workers were getting sketchy reports from family members like me calling them with the news.

What I felt was a need to be close to my family and an ever increasing anger that anyone would... could do such horrible things. It was five days before I felt fear. Five days of silence. We live under the approach path for the regional airport. The silence was deafening.

On Sunday, I heard aircraft, but not the ones I was used to hearing. Not the ones I now realized I liked hearing. These weren't commercial. These weren't Barksdale's B52s, which are a fairly common sight. Fighters in the sky above my house? Despite all the talk on TV, it took seeing T38s to make me realize that my country was preparing to go to war and to shatter the surreal bubble of denial I'd been in.

A forceful response was necessary. Flowers, memorials, waving the flag, and mourning the dead would not suffice. Symbolism would not suffice.

It was suddenly obvious from the beginning that this was an attack on the world, on Western Civilization, on progress, on modernization, on capitalism. On Freedom.

Naively, because of the demonstrations of caring, support, and solidarity I was seeing on TV, I thought the rest of the world realized this too. After all, hadn't innocent citizens of almost every country in the world died that day?

Wouldn't the world react in large just like I was reacting individually? Wouldn't sadness, anger, and fear turn to steely resolve to rid the planet of this cultural pus?

In the past four years, my naivete has melted somewhat. I'm still an optimist. I still think good will triumph over evil in the end. The fear is gone, the sadness, anger, and resolve remain.

Take a gander at these two posts from yeah, right, whatever: I Could Have Told You That and Honoring Last Requests.

Totally unrelated topics? Not to me. I find both to be on the topic of "Celebrating Life".

First, the information about twins is just plain fascinating. What mother, exhausted at the end of the day from keeping up with one child, does not sit in awe of mothers of twins? It would appear that what every parent learns the first day of their child's life - that each one is uniquely wonderful - might be realized by parents of twins perhaps a day or two later.

What a celebration of the wonder of life to discuss our differences, genetic and otherwise.

Then there's the discussion of the ritual celebration of a life after it has ended. I hope my funeral is as joyful as my grandmother's was. She was 96, and the saddest note of the eulogy was the recognition of how much she would have enjoyed her funeral - all her children, grand children, great-grandchildren, great-great grandchildren, and great-great-great grandchildren gathered to celebrate her life.

It's a shame we didn't ALL get together while she was alive, even though the majority did celebrate her 95th birthday with her.

Althouse and AmbivaBlog are in sync today.

My preferred solution would be a massive influx of cash so I could hire someone to deal with housework and the disorder of my stuff for me. I like to think I'm making progress (like having sorted all the family photographs), but that's a sort of delusion, which is why I can relate better to AmbivaBlog's take on the issue.

I first saw this song 20 years ago in an old book of folk songs. Though we don't wear bonnets and we now have an array of poisons and (better) traps to deal with critters, has the essential experience changed all that much?

HOUSEWIFE'S LAMENT

One day I was walking, I heard a complaining
And saw an old woman the picture of gloom
She gazed at the mud on her doorstep ('twas raining)
And this was her song as she wielded her broom

CHORUS:
Life is a trial and love is a trouble
Beauty will fade and riches will flee
Pleasures they dwindle and prices they double
And nothing is as I would wish it to be.

There's too much of worriment goes to a bonnet
There's too much of ironing goes to a shirt
There's nothing that pays for the time you waste on it
There's nothing that last us but trouble and dirt.

CHORUS

In March it is mud, it is slush in December
The midsummer breezes are loaded with dust
In fall the leaves litter, in muddy September
The wall paper rots and the candlesticks rust

CHORUS

There are worms on the cherries and slugs on the roses
And ants in the sugar and mice in the pies
The rubbish of spiders no mortal supposes
And ravaging roaches and damaging flies

CHORUS

It's sweeping at six and it's dusting at seven
It's victuals at eight and it's dishes at nine
It's potting and panning form ten to eleven
We scarce break our fast till we plan how to dine

CHORUS

With grease and with grime from corner to center
Forever at war and forever alert
No rest for a day lest the enemy enter
I spend my whole life in struggle with dirt

CHORUS

Last night in my dreams I was stationed forever
On a far distant isle in the midst of the sea
My one chance of life was a ceaseless endeavor
To sweep off the waves as they swept over me

Alas! Twas no dream; ahead I behold it
I see I am helpless my fate to avert
She lay down her broom, her apron she folded
She lay down and died and was buried in dirt.

The Political Compass test asks for one's level of agreement or disagreement with this statement:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea.

I always check "agree" as an answer. I don't strongly agree, because I'm aware of the background and consequences of this quote. But, I still think that as an ideal, it is a good one.

It is demeaning to expect less than someone is capable of. It is also demeaning to suggest that capability is pre-determined and unchangeable. The danger is that a level of contribution be demanded by someone or something outside the individual.

It is callous to think that needs should not be met. Since varying capabilities and varying needs are inherent in being human, social adjustments for those whose needs outweigh their capability to meet them is the alternative to methods such as eugenics.

So, I believe the statement expresses a fundamentally good idea. Being human, we'll always have the capacity to take one of those and twist it into something resembling evil.