Recognizing Real Choices

Well, she's not leaving the Democrat party but she's mad about their contempt for at-homes moms and their husbands. Ms. Flanagan grew up in Berkeley, so she's made amazing strides. She's written a book, in the style of Erma Bombeck, that paid tribute to her mom, (my mom was a fan too, I remember reading Bombeck when I was a kid) and all the liberal reviewers assume she's a Republican and hold her in contempt. Caitlin Flanagan in Time, via RCP:

When did I sign up to be the beaten wife of the Democratic Party?

Here's why they're after me: I have made a lifestyle choice that they can't stand, and I'm not cowering in the closet because of it. I'm out, and I'm proud. I am a happy member of an exceedingly "traditional" family. I'm in charge of the house and the kids, my husband is in charge of the finances and the car maintenance, and we all go to church every Sunday. This month Little, Brown published a collection of my essays about family life called To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife.

That's what feminists think of at-home moms, that we are being abused. Ms. Flanagan hadn't written about politics before, but she is now, and she has this message for the Democrat elite on their attitude to her choice and on why they've been serially losing elections: "It's the contempt stupid!"

But of course Democrat elites don't just have contempt for at-home moms, they have contempt for all the rest of us as well. George Will had this to say marking the passing of the Harvard economist and liberal icon, John Kenneth Galbraith:

His book The Affluent Society, published in 1958, was a milestone on liberalism's transformation into a doctrine of condescension. And into a minority persuasion.

The premise was that people were easily manipulated, whether by advertising, or by politicians. Stung by Dwight Eisenhower's victory over Adlai Stevenson in the presidential stakes, liberals came up with the explanation of the "bland leading the bland". Will goes on:

Intellectuals, that herd of independent minds, were, as usual, in lock step as they deplored ''conformity".....

Galbraith brought to the anti-conformity chorus a special verve in depicting Americans as manipulable as clay. Americans were what modern liberalism relishes -- victims, to be treated as wards of a government run by liberals. It never seemed to occur to Galbraith and like-minded liberals that ordinary Americans might resent that depiction and express their resentment with their votes.

And apparently NOW (If you haven't heard of it, it's the National Organization for Women) is finally now a little worried about having dissed at-home moms too much. (Perhaps their decline in membership over the years to irrelevancy is starting to get through to them.) Their president recently wrote a letter to the MSM networks calling for positive programming and peace in the mommy wars, but as usual advocates big government solutions. Here's Carrie L. Lukas, of the Independent Women's Forum:

Peace in the Mommy Wars begins with government neutrality. Instead of funding programs or providing tax incentives, policymakers should free women to follow their own preferences. Lower, flatter taxes, for instance, would benefit all mothers. The after-tax pay of stay-at-homers' spouses would increase. Working moms would also have more money to purchase childcare or cut back on hours.

NOW says it wants society to respect women's choices, whether to stay-at-home or to work. It should start by advocating freedom, not social engineering.

Carrie Lukas, as it so happens, has a book out of her own. It' s called, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism."