Jean Bethke Elshtain

We are a society awash in exculpatory strategies. We’ve devised lots of fascinating ways to let ourselves or others off the hook: all one need do is think of recent, well-publicized trials to appreciate the truth of this. We Americans are at present being bombarded with sensationalistic tales . . . . Continue Reading »

Katie Roiphe is a brave woman. She counters the “Take Back the Night” ideology with what might be tagged “Take Back the Mind.” Specifically, she urges young women to think twice or three times about what they are being urged to endorse in the name of victim feminism. Is there . . . . Continue Reading »

Dear Nephew, my plutonic sprout, I am pleased as punch (spiked with Demon Rum, of course) at your recent success in instilling in young Missy Smith the conviction that she is “fat” and must starve herself into conformity with the popular image of an attractive young woman as looking exactly like . . . . Continue Reading »

You seem to have grasped the point about eviscerating distinctions of any serious content. I am delighted to witness the scenes of domestic discord, and you coached young Bud wonderfully in the donnybrook with Mother Smith. She seems rather shaken, fretting, as any good American must, about whether . . . . Continue Reading »

I trust it did not escape your notice that I have eliminated an affectionate diminutive in my greeting. I am just a bit annoyed that those undamned Smiths in Fremont, Nebraska—whom I have placed in your keeping—persist in tithing. You did succeed in staying Mr. Smith’s hand . . . . Continue Reading »

Dear Nephew, my hellborn one,Ah, how I delight in writing you as my esteemed Uncle, Screwtape, once instructed me, he of diabolical dishonor, now emeritus. He has well earned his current sojourn in a New York City establishment that goes by the pithy name, Sex. I fear, however, that Uncle may be . . . . Continue Reading »

As compiled by Jean Bethke Elshtain, she having discovered a mysterious virus in her computer one day as she worked on yet another piece on whither virtue . . . Dear Nephew, my little popinjay, My mood is nearly jaunty. Please don’t misunderstand. My dyspepsia and misanthropy are intact. But . . . . Continue Reading »

Look out: here comes Susan Faludi leading the Charge of the Lightweight Brigade! Her thesis is simplicity itself. Just in case the reader might not get it straight off, it is repeated in each and every chapter title—all fourteen of them. There is and has been a terrible backlash in this land . . . . Continue Reading »

On first reading of Culture Wars, James Hunter’s study of America’s social divisions, I was greatly impressed. On reading it again, I am still impressed, but there are points at which I wanted Hunter to go a bit further, to push home his central theme with a bit more fervor, and to . . . . Continue Reading »

When I was a sophomore in high school in Colorado in the late 1950s, I was required, as were all female students, to take a course in “home economics.” The home economics movement had emerged out of a progressivist desire to “scientize” a hitherto amateur activity. The complicated tasks of . . . . Continue Reading »