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SPIRITUAL LAWS FOR MARRIAGE

The purpose of this book is to explain the spiritual laws that govern the relations between men and women. The cultural war we are in is about marriage and family. Many people think there are many ways for people to organize their marriages and families. The truth is that there are divine laws that are just as precise as physical laws. No person can deny the law of gravity. It is a universal principle and there are no exceptions of some people being able to walk off a cliff and not falling to harm. The 20th century has experimented with feminism that denies the truth that men and women are different and have different roles. Actions have consequences. Because so many have violated the divine laws of marriage there has been so much suffering. There is a general understanding that our ancestors in the 19th century and before were confused about sex and love. They were prudes, everyone thinks, who were not as advanced as us moderns. It is true that we have learned many things. America paid a heavy price in the Civil War because of slavery. Dentists of today have little to do with dentists a hundred years ago. But when it comes to the relationship of men and women, we have gone from as dramatic shift from believing the earth is round to that it is flat. It is tragic beyond words that feminism has become the ruling ideology and the traditional family is seen as being equal to slavery. No one thinks that the 19th Amendment that gave women the vote is any different than the 15th that gave black men the right to vote. When it comes to men/women relationships the Victorian times were the "good old days."

Andrew Wilson edited a book called World Scripture, A Comparative Anthology Of Sacred Texts (You can read the entire book at http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/books/world%2Ds/ws%2D02%2D00.htm) that gives quotes from different religions on various topics. He introduces quotes from sacred texts of religions saying that there is a motif in all good religions that teaches the truth that there are spiritual laws as well as physical laws. He writes:

"In addition to a vision of holiness or perfection for the individual, all religions recognize that individuals are nurtured and in turn give of themselves within the context of family and community. To participate in the family, fulfilling the roles of parent and child, husband and wife, grandparent, cousin, etc., is, many would say, essential to being human. The same can be said of the social roles and responsibilities which people undertake as they constitute communities, nations, and even the family of all humankind."

On the topic of "Husband And Wife" he says, "The horizontal axis of family life is manifested primarily in the mutual love between husband and wife. The bond of marriage is regarded as divinely ordained in most religious traditions. As such, it carries with it the promise of God's blessing, and should be full of love and joy.

"But love is not merely a matter of unfettered emotion. Subsequent passages spell out some of the responsibilities of marriage for both the husband and wife. The husband should honor his wife, never oppress or mistreat her, and always be faithful--and the wife should do likewise. The scriptures of all religions also distinguish between roles of the husband and wife: the husband protects and supports his wife, the head of the household yet deferring to his wife in domestic affairs. The wife is obedient to her husband, serves him with kindness, and takes primary responsibility for raising the children. While of late these traditional roles have been questioned, they have served to strengthen the bonds of family through every generation. Finally, we include several passages on the subject of the good wife."

"Modern Western constitutional governments, as well, are founded on the Judeo-Christian principle that government should be subservient to certain universal laws (e.g., human rights and social duties).

"In the case of the United States, the Constitution came into existence prior to the establishment of a government and forms the legal basis for its authority. A constitution is venerated as a statement of the highest principles of government; and a proper constitution is neither produced by a government to codify its policies nor easily amended by the people to express the will of the majority. Furthermore, modern constitutions contain articles which declare that certain human rights are inalienable and God-given. Governments cannot disregard the rights of the people because those rights are not the government's to grant; enshrined in a constitution, they come from a higher Law.

"Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because God has given the one more strength than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in the husband's absence what God would have them guard.

The following is some of the quotes on marriage and family showing that religions for thousands of years have taught that men lead and women follow, that men work outside the home women inside the home. This is what the Victorians called "separate spheres."

 

All religions recognize a transcendent Law, Truth, or Principle which governs the universe and human affairs.

... all these religious viewpoints share a respect for the Law which human beings violate at their peril. The universe is fundamentally moral, an expression of the workings of a divine Principle or natural law in both the realms of nature and of human affairs. Hence human morality is not relative, not explicable as the result of social and cultural conditioning alone. Morality and ethics are rooted in the way things are (ontology); they are as enduring as the laws of physics.

Sun Myung Moon says (9-30-79), "God moves according to universal law. Universal law does not work for the sake of oneself, but for the public good. Universal law embodies the spirit of sacrifice and service towards others."

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Christianity. Bible, John 1.1-4

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What are "the things which men consider right"? Kindness on the part of the father, and filial duty on that of the son; gentleness on the part of the elder brother, and obedience on that of the younger; righteousness on the part of the husband, and submission on that of the wife; kindness on the part of elders, and deference on that of juniors; with benevolence on the part of the ruler, and loyalty on that of the minister;--these ten are the things which men consider to be right.

Confucianism. Book of Ritual 7.2.19

 

 

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because God has given the one more strength than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in the husband's absence what God would have them guard.

Islam. Qur'an 4.34

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Islam. Qur'an 4.34

In the family women's appropriate place is within; men's, without. When men and women keep their proper places they act in accord with Heaven's great norm. Among the members of the family are the dignified master and mistress whom we term father and mother. When father, mother, sons, elder and younger brothers all act in a manner suited to their various positions within the family, when husbands play their proper role and wives are truly wifely, the way of that family runs straight. It is by the proper regulation of each family that the whole world is stabilized.

Confucianism. I Ching 37: The Family

The whole future of the race depends upon its attitude toward children; and a race which specializes in women for "menial purposes" or which believes that the contest of the sexes in the spheres of business and politics is a worthier endeavor than the creation of tomorrow's generation, is a race which is dying.

Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard, Science of Survival

You wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the Word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behavior. Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you.

Christianity. Bible, 1 Peter 3.1-6

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, the he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Christianity. Bible, Ephesians 5.21-33

The husband who wedded her with sacred texts always gives happiness to his wife, both in season or out of season.

Though he may be destitute of virtue, or seek his pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly revered as a god by a faithful wife.

Women need perform no sacrifice, no vow, no fast; if she obeys her husband, she will for that reason alone be exalted in heaven.

A faithful wife, who desires to dwell after death with her husband, must never do anything that might displease him who took her hand, whether he be alive or dead....

She who, controlling her thoughts, words, and deeds, never slights her lord, resides after death with her husband in heaven, and is called a virtuous wife.

Hinduism. Laws of Manu 5.153-65

All things enduring, calm, and pure in heart, She bear obedience to her husband's word, from anger free-- Call that wife a handmaid!

Buddhism. Anguttara Nikaya iv.91, Sujata Sutta

A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant, she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and tasks for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp does not go out at night. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle...

She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her, "Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all." Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.

Judaism and Christianity. Bible, Proverbs 31.10-31

In Sex in the World's Religions Geoffrey Parrinder writes about the Koran saying, "... women were regarded as furrows or cultivated land. The metaphor of the furrow would be a development of the primitive notion of coition as the sowing of the seed, 'Your women are like furrows to you, so come to your tillage as you wish.'"

The most published book in the world is the Bible. It begins in Genesis by saying that the husband is to "rule" over his wife. It ends by St. Paul saying the same thing. These common sense ideas were abandoned in the 20th century because people felt they were false and not modern and sophisticated. One of the most famous feminists in the 20th century is Betty Friedan. In her book, the Feminine Mystique she has a chapter titled "A NEW LIFE PLAN FOR WOMEN in which she writes,".. the only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is ... the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession."

Women, she says, must, "... break out of their comfortable concentration camp" and "reach beyond biology, beyond the narrow walls of home, to help shape the future. "So much for the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. She says, "break out of the housewife trap and truly find fulfillment as mothers and wives by fulfilling their own unique possibilities as a separate human being."

Engels wrote in The Origin of the Family that women must leave the home. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in 1848 that women need the vote, they need power. The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848 saying its goal was to destroy the traditional family.

The historian Carl Degler says vote did not hurt family.

The Antis said it would. They fought feminism and socialism that goes hand in hand. The deaf and blind Helen Keller was a household name in America at the turn of the century. Unfortunately, she was not inspiring when it came to the family and politics. She was a feminist. She said, "I am a militant suffragette because I believe suffrage will lead to socialism, and to me socialism is the real cause." As we will see, feminism and the liberal, big government go hand in hand.

Laura Doyle has a bestseller The Surrendered Wife. There is a backlash against feminism's hatred of patriarchy. Mona Charen says women do not have men. Degler's book quotes suffragists saying the home is the unit of society, not the individual. On the cover of People magazine is Tom Cruse and Nicole Kidman who are superstars getting a divorce. Doyle is inside the issue with a picture of women in support groups.

Wilson says religions say men head of house. 19th amendment was the death nell for the family. The 20th century has been the worst century. The battle of sexes and battle between nations is the worst ever because of socialism and feminism.

There are many books about the joy and sense of the traditional family such as Me? Obey Him? and Fascinating Womanhood.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Thomas Jefferson said,"American women have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all other, and the art to cultivate it beyond all other."

When Mona Charen was a college student she wrote an article in the National Review (March 23, 1984) titled "The Feminist Mistake" saying that because of women's "adherence to the feminist mistake, women are making both themselves and men miserable."

"For support, I cite my female friends. They range in age in from 24 to 35. All are bright, attractive and privileged. Heiresses of the movement, they are ... lawyers, journalists, professors, and producers. The number whose emotional lives are wholesome and fulfilling could be counted on a pitchfork."

"... let's take a closer look at the price of victory" of the women's movement. "In dispensing its spoils, women's lib has given my generation high incomes, our own cigarette, the option of single parenthood, rape crisis centers, personal lines of credit, free love, and female gynecologists. In return, it has effectively robbed us of one thing upon which the happiness of most women rests -- men."

ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS (ANTIS)

Carl Degler in his book At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present says this about the Antis: "The reason why women, alone of all social groups, organized against their own political emancipation is that many women perceived in the suffrage a threat to the family, a threat so severe that the vote did not seem worth the possible cost." These women feared "that bestowing the ballot upon women would force an alteration in the traditional family. Underlying the anti-suffrage arguments was the fundamental assumption that the natures of women and men are different."

"'You cannot dodge the fact women have work in the world that men cannot do, and it is equally true that men have work that women cannot do,'contended Ann Watkins in 1912. 'Neither man nor woman is superior or inferior to the other; the two are just different, positive and negative, two great manifestations of a still greater force.'"

"A Brooklyn anti-suffrage group made the argument ... that the 'household, not the individual in the unit of the State, and the vast majority of women are represented by household suffrage."  

BETTY FRIEDAN

In 1963 Betty Friedan wrote a best-seller that revolutionized America and the world. In the following excerpts from her book we see her hatred of the trend America was in for women to have many children after marrying early and being a happy homemaker. The quotes from magazines she gives are wonderful. Friedan gives all the feminist clichés such as women not fulfilling their potential and Victorian women had sexual hang-ups.

A male humorist joked in Harper's Bazaar (July, 1960) that the problem could be solved by taking away woman's right to vote. ("In the pre-19th Amendment era, the American woman was placid, sheltered and sure of her role in American society. She left all the political decisions to her husband and he, in turn, left all the family decisions to her. Today a woman has to make both the family and the political decisions, and it's too much for her.")

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The Happy Housewife Heroine

Why have so many American wives suffered this nameless aching dissatisfaction for so many years, each one thinking she was alone? "I've got tears in my eyes with sheer relief that my own inner turmoil is shared with other women," a young Connecticut mother wrote me when I first began to put this problem into words. A woman from a town in Ohio wrote: "The times when I felt that the only answer was to consult a psychiatrist, times of anger, bitterness and general frustration too numerous to even mention, I had no idea that hundreds of other women were feeling the same way. I felt so completely alone." A Houston, Texas, housewife wrote: "It has been the feeling of being almost alone with my problem that has made it so hard. I thank God for my family, home and the chance to care for them, but my life couldn't stop there. It is an awakening to know that I'm not an oddity and can stop being ashamed of wanting something more."

That painful guilty silence, and that tremendous relief when a feeling is finally out in the open, are familiar psychological signs. What need, what part of themselves, could so many women today be repressing? In this age after Freud, sex is immediately suspect. But this new stirring in women does not seem to be sex; it is, in fact, much harder for women to talk about than sex. Could there be another need, a part of themselves they have buried as deeply as the Victorian women buried sex?

If there is, a woman might not know what it was, any more than the Victorian woman knew she had sexual needs. The image of a good woman by which Victorian ladies lived simply left out sex. Does the image by which modern American women live also leave something out, the proud and public image of the high-school girl going steady, the college girl in love, the suburban housewife with an up-and-coming husband and a station wagon full of children? This image -- created by the women's magazines, by advertisements, television, movies, novels, columns and books by experts on marriage and the family, child psychology, sexual adjustment and by the popularizers of sociology and psychoanalysis -- shapes women's lives today and mirrors their dreams. It may give a clue to the problem that has no name, as a dream gives a clue to a wish unnamed by the dreamer. In the mind's ear, a geiger counter clicks when the image shows too sharp a discrepancy from reality. A geiger counter clicked in my own inner ear when I could not fit the quiet desperation of so many women into the picture of the modern American housewife that I myself was helping to create, writing for the women's magazines. What is missing from the image which shapes the American woman's pursuit of fulfillment as a wife and mother? What is missing from the image that mirrors and creates the identity of women in America today?

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As I listened to them, a German phrase echoed in my mind --"Kinder, Kuche, Kirche," the slogan by which the Nazis decreed that women must once again be confined to their biological role. But this was not Nazi Germany. This was America. The whole world lies open to American women. Why, then, does the image deny the world? Why does it limit women to "one passion, one role, one occupation?" Not long ago, women dreamed and fought for equality, their own place in the world. What happened to their dreams; when did women decide to give up the world and go back home?

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In the spectacular Christmas i956 issue of Life, devoted in full to the "new" American woman, we see, not as women's-magazine villain, but as documentary fact, the typical "career woman -- that fatal error that feminism propagated"-- seeking "help" from a psychiatrist. She is bright, well-educated, ambitious, attractive; she makes about the same money as her husband; but she is pictured here as "frustrated," so "masculinized" by her career that her castrated, impotent, passive husband is indifferent to her sexually. He refuses to take responsibility and drowns his destroyed masculinity in alcoholism.

Then there is the discontented suburban wife who raises hell at the PTA; morbidly depressed, she destroys her children and dominates her husband whom she envies for going out into the business world. "The wife, having worked before marriage, or at least having been educated for some kind of intellectual work, finds herself in the lamentable position of being 'just a housewife.' . . . In her disgruntlement she can work as much damage on the lives of her husband and children (and her own life) as if she were a career woman, and indeed, sometimes more."

And finally, in bright and smiling contrast, are the new house-wife-mothers, who cherish their "differentness," their "unique femininity,' the "receptivity and passivity implicit in their sexual nature." Devoted to their own beauty and their ability to bear and nurture children, they are "feminine women, with truly feminine attitudes, admired by men for their miraculous, God-given, sensationally unique ability to wear skirts, with all the implications of that fact." Rejoicing in "the reappearance of the old-fashioned three-to-five-child family in an astonishing quarter, the upper- and upper-middle class suburbs," Life says:

Here, among women who might be best qualified for "careers," there is an increasing emphasis on the nurturing and homemaking values. One might guess . . . that because these women are better informed and more mature than the average, they have been the first to comprehend the penalties of "feminism" and to react against them .... Styles in ideas as well as in dress and decoration tend to seep down from such places to the broader population .... This is the counter-trend which may eventually demolish the dominant and disruptive trend and make marriage what it should be: a true partnership in which . . . men are men, women are women, and both are quietly, pleasantly, securely confident of which they are -- and absolutely delighted to find themselves married to someone of the opposite sex.

Look glowed at about the same time (October 16, 1956):

The American woman is winning the battle of the sexes. Like a teenager, she is growing up and confounding her critics .... No longer a psychological immigrant to man's world, she works, rather casually, as a third of the U. S. labor force, less towards a "big career" than as a way of filling a hope chest or buying a new home freezer. She gracefully concedes the top jobs to men. This wondrous creature also marries younger than ever, bears more babies and looks and acts far more feminine than the "emancipated" girl of the 1920's or even '30's. Steelworker's wife and Junior Leaguer alike do their own housework .... Today, if she makes an old-fashioned choice and lovingly tends a garden and a bumper crop of children, she rates louder hosannas than ever before.

In the new America, fact is more important than fiction. The documentary Life and Look images of real women who devote their lives to children and home are played back as the ideal, the way women should be: this is powerful stuff, not to be shrugged off like the heroines of women's magazine fiction. When a mystique is strong, it makes its own fiction of fact. It feeds on the very facts which might contradict it, and seeps into every corner of the culture, bemusing even the social critics.

Adlai Stevenson, in a commencement address at Smith College in 1955, reprinted in Woman's Home Companion (September, 1955), dismissed the desire of educated women to play their own political part in "the crises of the age." Modern woman's participation in politics is through her role as wife and mother, said the spokesman of democratic liberalism: "Women, especially educated women, have a unique opportunity to influence us, man and boy." The only problem is woman's failure to appreciate that her true part in the political crisis is as wife and mother.

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Once immersed in the very pressing and particular problems of domesticity, many women feel frustrated and far apart from the great issues and stirring debate for which their education has given them understanding and relish. Once they wrote poetry. Now it's the laundry list. Once they discussed art and philosophy until late in the night. Now they are so tired they fall asleep as soon as the dishes are finished. There is, often, a sense of contraction, of closing horizons and lost opportunities. They had hoped to play their part in the crises of the age. But what they do is wash the diapers.

The point is that whether we talk of Africa, Islam or Asia, women "never had it so good" as you. In short, far from the vocation of marriage and motherhood leading you away from the great issues of our day, it brings you back to their very center and places upon you an infinitely deeper and more intimate responsibility than that borne by the majority of those who hit the headlines and make the news and live in such a turmoil of great issues that they end by being totally unable to distinguish which issues are really great.

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Woman's political job is to "inspire in her home a vision of the meaning of life and freedom . . . to help her husband find values that will give purpose to his specialized daily chores . . . to teach her children the uniqueness of each individual human being."

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This assignment for you, as wives and mothers, you can do in the living room with a baby in your lap or in the kitchen with a can opener in your hand. If you're clever, maybe you can even practice your saving arts on that unsuspecting man while he's watching television. I think there is much you can do about our crisis in the humble role of housewife. I could wish you no better vocation than that.

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Thus the logic of the feminine mystique redefined the very nature of woman's problem. When woman was seen as a human being of limitless human potential, equal to man, anything that kept her from realizing her full potential was a problem to be solved: barriers to higher education and political participation, discrimination or prejudice in law or morality. But now that woman is seen only in terms of her sexual role, the barriers to the realization of her full potential, the prejudices which deny her full participation in the world, are no longer problems. The only problems now are those that might disturb her adjustment as a housewife. So career is a problem, education is a problem, political interest, even the very admission of women's intelligence and individuality is a problem. And finally there is the problem that has no name, a vague undefined wish for "something more" than washing dishes, ironing, punishing and praising the children. In the women's magazines, it is solved either by dyeing one's hair blonde or by having another baby. "Remember, when we were all children, how we all planned to 'be something?'" says a young housewife in the Ladies' Home Journal (February, 1960). Boasting that she has worn out six copies of Dr. Spock's baby-care book in seven years, she cries, "I'm lucky! Lucky! I'M SO GLAD TO BE A WOMAN!"

Friedan says the following about Freud's relationship with his wife. Freud made many mistakes and has hurt the 20th century overall, but in this instance he is right in his attitude about the traditional family.

Freud's letters to Martha, his future wife, written during the four years of their engagement (1882-1886) have the fond, patronizing sound of Torvald in A Doll's House, scolding Nora for her pretenses at being human. Freud was beginning to probe the secrets of the human brain in the laboratory at Vienna; Martha was to wait, his "sweet child," in her mother's custody for four years, until he could come and fetch her. From these letters one can see that to him her identity was defined as child-housewife, even when she was no longer a child and not yet a housewife.

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Tables and chairs, beds, mirrors, a clock to remind the happy couple of the passage of time, an armchair for an hour's pleasant daydreaming, carpets to help the housewife keep the floors clean, linen tied with pretty ribbons in the cupboard and dresses of the latest fashion and hats with artificial flowers, pictures on the wall, glasses for everyday and others for wine and festive occasions, plates and dishes . . . and the sewing table and the cozy lamp, and everything must be kept in good order or else the housewife who has divided her heart into little bits, one for each piece of furniture, will begin to fret. And this object must bear witness to the serious work that holds the household together, and that object, to a feeling for beauty, to dear friends one likes to remember, to cities one has visited, to hours one wants to recall .... Are we to hang our hearts on such little things? Yes, and without hesitation ....

I know, after all, how sweet you are, how you can turn a house into a paradise, how you will share in my interests, how gay yet painstaking you will be. I will let you rule the house as much as you wish, and you will reward me with your sweet love and by rising above all those weaknesses for which women are so often despised. As far as my activities allow, we shall read together what we want to learn, and I will initiate you into things which could not interest a girl as long as she is unfamiliar with her future companion and his occupation . . .

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On July 5, 1885, he scolds her for continuing to visit Elise, a friend who evidently is less than demure in her regard for men:

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What is the good of your feeling that you are now so mature that this relationship can't do you any harm? . . . You are far too soft, and this is something I have got to correct, for what one of us does will also be charged to the other's account. You are my precious little woman and even if you make a mistake, you are none the less so .... But you know all this, my sweet child . . .

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The Victorian mixture of chivalry and condescension which is found in Freud's scientific theories about women is explicit in a letter he wrote on November 5, 1883, deriding John Smart Mills' views on "female emancipation and the woman's question altogether.''

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In his whole presentation, it never emerges that women are different beings -- we will not say lesser, rather the opposite -- from men. 'He finds the suppression of women an analogy to that of Negroes. Any girl, even without a suffrage or legal competence, whose hand a man kisses and for whose love he is prepared to dare all, could have set him right. It is really a stillborn thought to send women into the struggle for existence exactly as man. If, for instance, I imagined my gentle sweet girl as a competitor, it would only end in my telling her, as I did seventeen months ago, that I am fond of her and that I implore her to withdraw from the strife into the calm, uncompetitive activity of my home. It is possible that changes in upbringing may suppress all a woman's tender attributes, needful of protection and yet so victorious, and that she can then earn a livelihood like men. It is also possible that in such an event one would not be justified in mourning the passing away of the most delightful thing the world can offer us -- our ideal of womanhood. I believe that all reforming action in law and education would break down in front of the fact that, long before the age at which a man can earn a position in society, Nature has determined woman's destiny through beauty, charm, and sweetness. Law and custom have much to give women that has been withheld from them, but the position of women will surely be what it is: in youth an adored darling and in mature years a loved wife?

1920  

Every historian in the world says that 1920 was one of the greatest turning points in history. Everything changed after World War I. And the suffering and murder since then has been the worst in all of human history.

Covey explains, as many are beginning to see, that it was, in many ways better before 1920. He studied the success literature of America's past 200 years and discovered that before WWI, America had a deeper sense of right and wrong and it had what he correctly calls a "character" ethic. After WWI America "shifted" to a"superficial" "personality" ethic. He says Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is "representative" of what he calls the first 150 years of America before it went downhill in the last 50 years. The distance between the marriages and lifestyle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is like the difference between day and night. The Founding Fathers were not feminist/socialists like people are today. They were far wiser than people living in the 20th century. At a dinner honoring American Nobel Prize winners, President Kennedy said: "This is the most extraordinary collection of talent ... that has ever been gathered together at the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Covey says people used to be more into true values. He lists a few of these values. One he doesn't mention is the one most associated with Ben Franklin, the virtue of thrift. I write about thrift in my chapter called "Prosperity." Was it better in the "good old days?" Scientifically or externally it is better in a dentist's office of today than in one a hundred years ago. Driving in an air conditioned car down the interstate is easier than what the pioneers had to experience on wagon trains. However, internally and socially, Covey says it was better in the past and we need to restore the old fashioned values this century has thrown out that were the building blocks our ancestors used to build America. He never says in his book what his deepest values are. He chooses things that no one can argue with. They are good, but his"7 Habits" do not get to the core of life. Truly effective people will live by the values I teach in this book. Covey is a devout Mormon and shares some of the values I teach in this book, such as the value of patriarchy. I know this because I read his books that he wrote for his church. If Covey had written his core values in 7 Habits it would never have become a best-seller. I assume Covey is trying to reach as wide an audience as he can with some of his truth rather than not reach anyone outside his church. I don't know. I do know that I have no interest in spoon-feeding truth.

140 years

 Covey says there is a great divide between America's first 150 years and succeeding 50 years. These figures are wrong. 1776 to 1920 is 144 years which rounds off to 140 years. 1920 to 1990 is 70 years. These are principled numbers. There is also a 70 year period before 1920.

1848

The year 1848 was a year of revolutions and Satan inspired his champions to write his deadly ideas. They taught feminism -- Satan's ideology of antifamily. He focuses on destroying the family. God focuses on building it -- especially extended families living in loving communities. Satan focuses on individualism and small families, like the nuclear families of today. There is strength in numbers. Satan hates wagon trains; he likes lonely wagons. God was working to prepare a safe world for the Messiah to come to by inspiring the traditional family as taught in the Bible. Satan disparages and attacks the Bible as being outdated, not relevant, not hip, not cool, not modern and advanced. UC sisters write against the Biblical family pattern as all feminists do. Satan worked through Karl Marx and Friedreich Engels who published The Communist Manifesto in 1848.

Unknown to them, Satan worked through Elizabeth Cady Stanton who published the diabolical Seneca Falls Declaration in New York the same year with the radical idea that women should get the vote and join men in decisions of war and peace in government. Government looked exciting to these women. They were bored in their homes, and Satan turned their idealism and restlessness to the man's realm. These were the mustard seeds of Satan that grew in 70 years until it was the biggest tree in the world and now everyone lives under its shade. In just 70 years their ideas went from being seen as laughable and dangerous to being mainstream thought. Satan beat God in the war of ideologies. Today everyone is a feminist. Today everyone believes women should vote.

There was a three year period before Seneca Falls of women being influenced by a famous writer, Margaret Fuller. She was a single woman who wrote a best-seller in 1845 titled, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. She wrote, "I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do no think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this fact has led to excessive devotion, which has cooled loved, degraded marriage and prevented either sex from being what it should be to itself or the other ... That her hand may be given with dignity, she must be able to stand alone." This is pure Satan. He spoke through her powerfully.

Have Cake and Eat It Too

Horace Greeley hired Fuller to write for him. He wrote in his Memoirs about her saying she was not logical in her feminism. She wanted her cake and eat it too. She and Greeley would argue about the concept of women being equal and also being chivalrous. A modern day equivalent would be Laura Doyle who in her best-seller wants to be business woman by day and traditional object by night. Fuller seemed outrageous when she said women could be sea captains if they wanted to. Greeley writes, "while she demanded absolute equality for Woman, she exacted a deference and courtesy from men to women, as women, which was entirely inconsistent with that requirement. In my view, the equalizing theory can be enforced only by ignoring the habitual discrimination of men and women, as forming separate classes, and regarding all alike as simply persons, -- as human beings. So long as a lady shall deem herself in need of some gentleman's arm to conduct her properly out of a dining or ball-room, -- so long as she shall consider it dangerous or unbecoming to walk half a mile alone by night, -- I cannot see how the 'Woman's Rights' theory is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction. In this view Margaret did not at all concur, and the diversity was the incitement to much perfectly good-natured, but nevertheless sharpish sparring between us. Whenever she said or did anything implying the usual demand of Woman on the courtesy and protection of Manhood, I was apt, before complying, to look her in the face and exclaim with marked emphasis, -- quoting from her 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century,' -- 'Let them be sea-captains if they will!' Of course, this was given and received as raillery, but it did not tend to ripen our intimacy or quicken my esteem into admiration."

Suffragists vs. Antisuffragists (Antis)

For seventy years the suffragists and antisuffragists (or Antis as they were called then) fought an intense cultural war until the suffragists were victorious in getting men to pass the nineteenth amendment in 1920 that gave women the right to vote.

Focus on the family vs. focus on the individual

The antisuffragists tried their best to teach the rebellious suffragists that getting the vote would turn America from being centered on the family to being centered on the individual and those individuals would center on big government. They constantly taught that men are the head of the house who speak for the family with one voice. Recently a feminist wrote of this argument of the Antis saying,"Women who thus invaded the masculine sphere would forfeit their right to chivalry, that mode of male behavior which ennobled society. Such activity would also encourage that specious independence of woman slyly advocated by supporters of free love and socialism. ... To comprehend the horror [the author is sarcastic but the results have been horrible] with which the Antis contemplated these possibilities, it is necessary to understand their belief that the unit of society was not the individual but the family. A man voted not for himself alone but for all the members of his family, as their political representative. Social stability depended upon the existence of many tightly knit families, each of which was, in the antisuffragist view, a state in miniature." Father often speaks of the rampant "free love" in America.

Father, like the Antis, teaches that families are little countries. He says, "The nation is basically a collection of families in which all the generations are included. Each extended family symbolizes one small country....the man (is) the 'president' of his family, which is a micro-country."

Feminist suffragists were Cain; Antisuffragists were Abel. God's champions are the women who fought the suffragists. Satan's champions are the suffragists who fought to leave the home. Today we have women who do not want to care for grandparents in their home. They put them in nursing homes. To Father this is the most vivid example of how American women have become godless. Father often criticizes American sisters for not seeing things vertically. They can't see that grandparents are vertically higher than them. And they can't see that men are vertically higher and need to be treated with tact. American women have created a nightmare matriarchy in the home and no matter how much Father denounces it, nothing seems to change. I'm writing this book to help him get his absolute antifeminist message across.

Vertical vs. Horizontal

This century is horizontal. Father's imagery in his speeches is difficult for Americans to understand. Americans rarely see things vertically. They don't see grandparents vertically. They don't see men vertically. Feminism rules and says men are just jerks. As one popular bestseller is titled, Men Are Just Desserts. Unfortunately for many men this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To fill the void women are leaving the home in an exodus. They feel they don't need men to take care of them. They want to be independent, not dependent on men. They want to compete and dominate men in the workplace. When there seems to be a problem in society, the solution is more feminism. Problem: rape in the military. Solution: Ellen Goodman will fire off a national newspaper column and millions will be indoctrinated that we need to get more women leading men in the military, and we need many more women to join the military. It makes as much sense as saying an alcoholic should work in a liquor store. Then when he falls off the wagon he should work more hours. Ellen is walking hand in hand with Satan down his road that is a vicious cycle downward. And UC sisters are holding his other hand.


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