Sense and sensitivity, by Jonah Goldberg

A few years ago, one of my sisters-in-law came to town with two of her kids, a boy and a girl. Over ice cream the adults in the group asked these great kids what they'd do if they found a treasure chest full of gold. My nephew pondered. Then he said, "A gun." Then, more pondering. "No, wait. A sword would be good, too. Maybe I'd get a gun and sword."

We then asked my niece the same question. She immediately replied, "A cheerleader uniform and a grown-up makeup kit." She didn't need to revisit the question. She was positive.

Now, a certain kind of feminist might say that such sentiments reflected the deep-seated cultural biases that force little kids to assume "gender roles." True, society helps shape the people we become. But knowing the environment these kids come from, it simply strains believability that nature wasn't a bigger culprit than nurture. Science backs all of this up, of course. Studies show that if you give a little boy a Barbie doll, he's more likely to pretend it's a shapely gun or knife.

In fact, outside a handful of ideologues, I don't think I've met anybody who doesn't think there's something to the idea that boys and girls are different, not just anatomically but in more significant ways. Obviously, this doesn't mean that there aren't boys who are more "feminine" than some girls and some girls who aren't more "masculine" than some boys, whatever those terms may mean. Indeed, the inability of people to speak clearly about such things is often the source of most disagreements. One need only look at Larry Summers, the Harvard president now on his umpteenth apology for saying what he believed to be true based upon a giant pile of data. Although one could say that Summers' real "crime" was speaking "too clearly."

What's particularly interesting is that even most self-described feminists believe there's an essential femaleness that is different from maleness. Over a decade ago, the feminist flibbertyjibbit Naomi Wolfe - who, recall, advised Al Gore to dress like an alpha male - had condemned U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick because she wrote in "a voice so Olympian, so neck-up and uninflected by the experiences of the female body, that the subtle message received by young female writers is: to enter public voice, one must abide by the no-uterus rule." Ah, yes, Ms. Kirkpatrick's analysis of totalitarianism would have been much improved if she'd been more cognizant of her status as a utero-American.

In fact, there are whole branches of feminism that are based upon the assumption that women are sufficiently different that "diversity" - the topmost good in the left's pyramid of virtue - cannot be served unless women are in the room. A recent spat between Michael Kinsley, the editor of the Los Angeles Times op-ed page, and the feminist legal activist Susan Estrich is a case in point. Ms. Estrich argued - in a hysterical manner befitting such an argument - that Mr. Kinsley must run more editorials from women because women provide a unique perspective men cannot. I ask you to compare this essentialism with the sentiments that got Summers in Dutch with the ladies.

I think this gets to the heart of what's really going on here. Few women, feminist or not, truly believe there is no objective difference between men and women, though there's obviously a lot of room to disagree on the nature of those differences. But some women - and fellow-traveling males - are perfectly happy to use the charge of sexism or "insensitivity" to get what they want. The great thing about insensitivity is that it's basically defined as whatever hurts the feelings of women who claim to have their feelings hurt. This allows them to turn on and off their moral outrage depending upon their agenda. So, if getting a case of the vapors over what Larry Summers says shakes the money tree, great. If conservative men can be gelded and conservative women bullied as "gender traitors" by a little feminist weepiness, wahoo!

Conversely, even if it means suggesting women are less than fully informed, rational beings, feminists are perfectly willing to get upset if their agenda is derailed. Just this week the Department of Education announced that colleges and universities can ask female students if they want their school to launch a new women's sport. If the female students say they're not interested, the school doesn't have to launch a new athletic program. Feminists think this is outrageous because Clinton-era rules mandated that the only way a school could absolutely prove it was in compliance with "Title IX" was to implement a rigid gender quota system for collegiate athletics, even if few women wanted to participate. Feminists say that surveying women's attitudes is unfair because women aren't capable of understanding their own interests. A more inconvenient reality is that, in general, women tend to be less interested in participating in varsity sports than men.

We are honest enough to admit we need Big Government for some things. Not for the things the Left wants and needs. So that doesn't make us hypocrites. It would only make us hypocrites if we espoused the same agenda the other side does and then lied to the voters about it.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

We separate power among various levels and departments and institutions of government for a reason. Power is divided not only between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches, but between federal, state, and local power centers as well, but for a reason.

And that reason is the recognition that any branch or institution or power center can go off the track, and when that happens your only recourse is another branch or institution or power center. The tension is not a flaw, its the way its intended to be.

If the federal government goes off the track, you hope state law can provide a barrier. If state officials abuse their power, you hope that the feds can step in somehow. If the congress has gone insane, you pray for a judge with courage and grit to face them down, and if the judges have run amok, you hope to find governors and congressmen willing to take them on.

Its not either-or, its a recognition that any branch can go wrong. Any branch at some time may have to step forward and assert its limited authority to rein in another branch or public official.

If the judges have decided to rebel against the other branches of government, the other branches may have to confront them. Next time it may be an out of control governor, and the shoe will be on the other foot. It will not be hypocrisy to demand an opposite action at that time.

Yes, pro-life Republicans who have been campaigning for decades to have states set their own policies on abortion, the death penalty and civil rights are suddenly cheering Congress' rush to open the federal courts to a whole new stampede of right-to-die cases. Sure, there's an inconsistency here, and this exercise may come back to bite the right in years to come.

Except that it is a right-to-live case. Almost noone is saying that Terri doesn't have the right to die if that is her wish. Or that she doesn't have the right to withhold medical treatment if she is already dying. But her wishes and her state of health are the legal issue, and there are probably not many other cases like hers, certainly not a stampede.

The worst case scenario is that state laws allowing the right-to-die based on hearsay about wishes and ambiguous medical testimony will be allowed a federal hearing, and I don't think that would be a bad thing.

I agree and the FL legal system has not gone insane but lost some of its bearings on the right-to-die with poor laws defining a feeding tube as medical intervention and an overly broad application of that law prohibiting food and water, with a tube or not, in this particular case. It is not the end of the world except for this poor woman, but overturning Greer won't be the end of the world either.

Congress may not have had to step in except for the fact that Terri had only a couple of weeks left and there was no time for error. When states are allowed the right to kill innocent people who gave no written choice, Congress MUST step in.

"It's simply government doing one of it's essential functions - protecting life."

As Reagan put it long ago in a Reason Magazine interview:

REASON: Governor, could you give us some examples of what you would consider to be proper functions of government?

REAGAN: Well, the first and most important thing is that government exists to protect us from each other. Government exists, of course, for the defense of the nation, and for the defense of the rights of the individual.

http://reason.com/7507/int_reagan.shtml

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