Vindicated October 22, 2005 Lauren I’m thrilled to know that Focus on the Family recognizes the single mother as a valid and desirable head-of-household. Eat it, Leon R. Kass. Bastardy and James Dobson made my day.
sorry to ruin your day, but I don’t think that’s it. I believe it’s marketing to men, because, umm… men are the only ones who know the science stuff good enough to use the interweb. So they’re really saying “Look at your family, fellow man! you should focus on your family, fellow man. see? we’re all men, with our dicks and grunting and whatnot.” but I would be much happier if your interpretation were true.
No, it’s because Mr. Focus on the Family is off all day at his job and then partying with the boys afterward, leaving the wife to her proper role of doing 99.9% of the childrearing. I’ll take Lauren’s interpretation, though.
Eat it, Leon R. Kass Prolly for different specific reasons, but I second that sentiment. For instance: The causes of our malaise are numerous and complicated, but one of them is too frequently overlooked: the humanist project of Babel has been making a comeback. Ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century, when men like Bacon and Descartes called mankind to the conquest of nature for the relief of man’s estate, the cosmopolitan dream of the city of man has guided many of the best minds and hearts throughout the world. Science and technology are again in the ascendancy, defying political boundaries en route to a projected Human Empire over nature. God, it seems, forgot about the possibility that a new universal language could emerge, the language of symbolic mathematics, and its offspring, mathematical physics. It is algebra that all men understand without disagreement. It is Cartesian analytic geometry that enables the mind mentally to homogenize the entire world, to turn it into stuff for our manipulations. It is the language of Cartesian mathematics and method that has brought Babel back from oblivion. Whether we think of the heavenly city of the philosophes, or the post-historical age toward which Marxism points, or, more concretely, the imposing building of the United Nations that stands today in America’s first city; whether we look at the world-wide web and its Word Perfect, or the globalized economy, or the biomedical project to re-create human nature without its imperfections; or whether we confront the spread of the post-modern claim that all “truth” is of merely human creation—we see everywhere evidence of the revived Babylonian vision. Can our new Babel succeed? And can it escape—has it escaped?—the failings of success of its ancient prototype? What, for example, will it revere? Will its makers and its beneficiaries be hospitable to procreation and child rearing? Can it find genuine principles of justice and other non-artificial standards for human conduct? Will it be self-critical? Can it really overcome our estrangement, alienation, and despair? Anyone who reads the newspapers has grave reasons for doubt. The city is back, and so, too, is Sodom, babbling and dissipating away. Perhaps we ought to see the dream of Babel today, once again, from God’s point of view. Oh, just fuck off.
No, I think the man isn’t in the picture, because he’s the one taking the picture, as befits the strong protector and head of the household, and they’re all kneeling, looking up at him worshipfully.
If it is anything like my family pictures they are laughing at dad sprawled on the floor, after he set the timer on the camera then fell over his own feet dashing back.
Ooo, good catch, Bertson. After all, he probably is the one who bought the new-toy camera, as befits his manly salary.
Lauren, I like your interpretation. Bill from INDC (Hey, didn’t I already pay that?), it’s true that mathematics is universally true and universally comprehensible. That’s because “Mathenatics is the alphabet in which God has written the Universe” — Galileo Therefore, Leon Kass, in dismissing mathematics, is dissing God.
From the Focus on Family website: The role of the single parent is a task that frequently requires extra measures of courage, endurance and faith. We believe the Lord stands ready to help single parents meet the challenges they face, and we want to do our part, too. So FOF also thinks single parents are more noble. Why do you think they hate you?
We believe the Lord stands ready to help single parents…by finding you a new spouse as soon as fucking possible, so that you can continue to make more bablies and raise godly little proselytizers for Jesus. Amen.