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I'm going to comment on Mother's Day for a couple of odd reasons, even thought I didn't originally intend to.
The first is this comment by Robert Reich for the day:
Robert Reich@RBReich·14h
Your Mother’s Day weekend reminder that the so-called “party of family values” has historically blocked:
-Paid family & medical leave
-Universal childcare
-Universal pre-K
-Expanded Child Tax Credit
-Programs to support reproductive health
Doesn’t sound very pro-family to me.
First I'll note that I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Reich. Reich is very far left, but his economic commentary, in my view, is generally pretty good. And like him, I'm greatly distressed over what Donald Trump is doing to the country.
Secondly, I really hate the writing convention of saying "this is your reminder". Did I ask for a reminder? If I didn't, that's really annoying. Reich also likes to state "I don't know who needs to know this" which suggest that nobody needs to know whatever he's going to tell us.
He should quit using both of those writing conventions.
Anyhow, like a far lefty, he's bought into the seas of blood position of the Democratic Party. "Programs to support reproductive health" is Orwellian speech for infanticide.
Reich is Jewish, which always makes me wonder how he can support a thesis that holds that infants in the womb, earlier than a certain number of weeks, aren't people. It's the exact same argument that resulted in the Holocaust. It's the exact same argument that expanded into eugenics based homicide in Nazi Germany, and which has advanced murder in the guise of "assisted suicide" in various Western Nations.
I'll be frank that I've never been a huge fan of Mothers Day or Father's Day which remind me, in some ways of the Alcohol and Old Lace episode of the Andy Griffith Show in which two elderly sisters were distilling moonshine for "holidays", of which there were an insane number of manufactured ones. But I really shouldn't be that way for Mother's Day. There are real reasons to honor motherhood and what it entails. But murdering infants isn't a good way to do it.
And there's no reason to pretend, no matter how much the left would like to, that the "my body, my choice" argument is a good one, or even a valid one. A fetus in the womb has a body and its choice i not likely to be murdered. And that body, genetically, is made up of the DNA of two people, not one. You don't get ot be a mother through a unilateral act of self will. Motherhood in some instances wasn't planned, of course, but then much of life is not and a massive murderous do over isn't every justified.
The other reason I chose to post is that somebody I know had been at a Vigil Mass in which the attending celebrant mentioned mothers, but largely, apparently, in the context how mother's support their men, which was pretty much apparently it. The celebrant was Indian (from India). I'm only noting this as its so easy to forgot for Americans, and probably Europeans, how we are actually a minority of the globes' population, and the culture view of other people may be very much not the one we hold.
That oddly enough occured on the same day, yesterday, in which I listed to a Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World episode on 1 Esdras, which is in some (all?) Orthodox Bibles, but not the Catholic Bible, which is itself larger than most Protestant Biles. In it, there's a debate between three Guards about what is the most powerful thing in the world. One Guard presents this, which references the prior two arguments that came before his.:
Then the third, who had spoken of women and truth (and this was Zerubbabel), began to speak: “Gentlemen, is not the king great, and are not men many, and is not wine strong? Who is it, then, who rules them or has the mastery over them? Is it not women? Women gave birth to the king and to every people that rules over sea and land. From women they came, and women brought up the very men who plant the vineyards from which comes wine. Women make men’s clothes; they bring men glory; men cannot exist without women. If men gather gold and silver or any other beautiful thing and then see a woman lovely in appearance and beauty, they let all those things go and gape at her and with open mouths stare at her, and all prefer her to gold or silver or any other beautiful thing. A man leaves his own father, who brought him up, and his own region and clings to his wife. With his wife he ends his days, with no thought of his father or his mother or his region. Therefore you must realize that women rule over you!
“Do you not labor and toil and bring everything and give it to women? A man takes his sword and goes out to travel and rob and steal and to sail the sea and rivers; he faces lions, and he walks in darkness, and when he steals and robs and plunders, he brings it back to the woman he loves. A man loves his wife more than his father or his mother. Many men have lost their minds because of women and have become slaves because of them. Many have perished or stumbled or sinned because of women. And now do you not believe me?
“Is not the king great in his authority? Do not all lands fear to touch him? Yet I have seen him with Apame, the king’s concubine, the daughter of the illustrious Bartacus; she would sit at the king’s right hand and take the crown from the king’s head and put it on her own and slap the king with her left hand. At this the king would gaze at her with mouth agape. If she smiles at him, he laughs; if she loses her temper with him, he flatters her, so that she may be reconciled to him. Gentlemen, why are not women strong, since they do such things?”
It is profound, and note how it came in an ear in which women, in most of the world, would have been regarded as second class citizens. I should note, however, that he went on to then discuss Truth, with that being the most powerful thing in the World.
While it likely shouldn't, that reminded me of Kipling's great poem, The Ballad of the King's Jest, which has this line:
Four things greater than all things are,—
Women and Horses and Power and War.
We spake of them all, but the last the most,
For I sought a word of a Russian post,
Of a shifty promise, an unsheathed sword
And a gray-coat guard on the Helmund ford.
Then Mahbub Ali lowered his eyes
In the fashion of one who is weaving lies.
Quoth he: “Of the Russians who can say?
“When the night is gathering all is gray.
“But we look that the gloom of the night shall die
“In the morning flush of a blood-red sky.
“Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise
“To warn a King of his enemies?
“We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,
“But no man knoweth the mind of the King.
“That unsought counsel is cursed of God
“Attesteth the story of Wali Dad.
It's interesting how Kipling put it, "Four things greater than all things are--Women and Horses and Power and War".
Well, have a Happy Mother's Day.
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