Women’s Work II
It is a feminist truism that women have always worked. By work is not meant so much the routine tasks of the household—the storage and preparation of food, the making and cleaning of clothing, and the household chores of sweeping, cleaning, and tending children—but the degraded and degrading concept of work as a job for which one is paid or even something one would not do except for money. Without accepting all the baggage that the modern use of the word “work” carries with it, we can certainly agree that in most societies some women have worked for money, sometimes outside the home. A few obvious distinctions, however, have to be made.
The first distinction is between ordinary and extraordinary practices. The fact that Mary and Elizabeth Tudor became Queens of England, for example, should not be used to suggest that 16th century English women routinely held political power, any more than the occasional woman artist in the Italian Renaissance would indicate that an average woman could expect to enter the technical professions. The human race is a strange and varied species. The mere existence of mathematical geniuses and psychopathic killers says little about the expectations of ordinary people.
A second distinction, one that overlaps the first, is between work that is done willingly and that which is done out of necessity. Impoverished women (and children) in 19th century England and New England worked long hours in factories, but it would be a bit much to expect such women to continue with such jobs if they married a husband who was capable of supporting them.
We are then left with ordinary work that women expected to undertake without resentment, and even here, a distinction can be made between work done by wives and mothers who had to work a full day, six days a week at least, taking care of the house and their children and work done by women who had not yet married or would never marry. While some women might choose the single state, others were forced into celibacy by economic circumstances or family pressures. Customs varied from place to place, time to time, and class to class. In some parts of rural Italy, early marriage was facilitated by the custom of co-residence with the husband’s family. In cities where a significant dowry was demanded, parents with many daughters might not be able to marry off all of them. In late Medieval/early Renaissance Florence, girls from well-to-do families entered convents, while poorer girls entered domestic service. Mutatis mutandis, poverty, dowries, and custom have in many societies resulted in delayed marriages, working spinsters, and celibacy.
There were more than a few servant girls in Florence, who did eventually get married, with or without assistance from their employers, and some of them, in doing their work, were able to pick up enough pin money to make their future marital state more comfortable. But while such work may have been done with a willing heart, there is little evidence to indicate that unmarried women did not prefer to stay home where they were protected by their menfolk. Necessity and necessity alone drove women into the workforce, and this is true even in the gentile class of England that did not attach too much disgrace to a young woman getting a post as governor. In the best circumstances, the governess was treated like a poor relation. When convenient she dined with the family and was treated with respect by everyone. They were not servants and may even have enjoyed the job. However, I know of no case of a rich young girl who voluntarily went out to work as a governess.
Married women never worked outside the home except under dire necessity. If the husband had a trade or shop, his wife might be expected to assist him, and if he died she might, if it was practicable, carry on the business either by herself or with a new husband. Among the poorer classes, she might take in piece-work or laundry or rent rooms in her house, but, if she had to work, she wanted to do it at home.
By the 18th century at least, some middle class women were pursuing professional interests as musicians, painters, or, especially as writers like Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Joanna Bailey, Jane Austen, and then the Brontes. The lady writer became one of the plagues of the 19th century--Poe had lots of fun tearing the works of Mrs. Sigourney and other female frauds to pieces. This aversion is permanently enshrined by the Mikado: "that singular anomaly, the lady novelist, I'm sure she won't be missed." Nonetheless, well-read and well-bred women of talent contributed greatly to English literature either out of the desire to do something good or, in many cases, because (like the Brontes or Trollope's mother) they needed the money. But, and here is the point, they did not leave their families and enter the workforce.
In sum, the feminist truism is basically as false as most aspects of feminism. When women did hard work outside the home, it was because they had to. They were the victims either of some terrible economic decline or of liberal capitalism's destruction of the social networks of Christendom. Many women who do servile and menial work today are in even worse condition, because they have internalized their servitude and are proud of clerking in a store or teaching violent hooligans in a public school. Yes, it has become much harder for a middle-class man to take care of his wife and children, and I do not at all dismiss the claims of economic hardship, but the first step toward sanity is to recognize that for a woman to do all but the highest work--as physician, scientist, scholar, poet--outside the context of the family is outside the norms of human history and to be permitted only in case of necessity. I am not talking about "turning back the clock" but of acknowledging the claims of reality--biological, historical, and moral.
Entries(RSS)
Dr. Fleming,
Thank you for part II. Our society would become a healthier place if more mothers would stay at home with their children. Since college is most likely the largest expense to a typical middle class family, maybe the end of the "college for all" fantasy could help women to stay at home. As you suggested in your article, I doubt all women today are driven by neccesity to work. If more families toned down their consumption of useless goods or lived in more modest houses, they would find they do not need two incomes.
Around 1983 the Washington Post ran an article praising the meeting at a restaurant of a group of feminists. As the feminists partied, down the Potomac sailed a garbage barge, manned by a woman. The feminists all cheered the woman, who didn't respond to them. This shows the reality of feminism: a few busybody termagents make a lot of money at foundations or activist groups deconstructing civilization, while real women are forced by poverty to pick up their garbage.
I knew a woman in the late 1960's who was forced to find work for economic survival. She had three children between the ages 10 and 14. It was during the summer and all the kids were home from school when she found her job. She cried an ocean as she drove away to her first day at work, not for herself or for lack of money, but for having to leave her children.
@ Bryan
That's a sad story. I do have to laugh at these young twits who put such an emphasis on having a career. The vast majority of men throughout history worked because they had to, not because it gave their lives "meaning" or other buzzwords like "independence." Which leads to the modern, albeit true accusation against feminists that they simply want to be men, without having Frankenstein-like surgery.
Work is a curse and punishment according to Genesis:
To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."
See Brian Robertson's "There's No Place Like Work"
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-10-048-b
Interesting article. In your future articles on this topic, I hope you will address the issue of feminine privileges. Some examples of this come to mind such as: 1)exemption from military service, 2)the courts mandating the support of their children, even if their husbands are not the father of the child, or if, as with the NBA, a prostitute stole some player's sperm, sold it to another woman who impregnated herself with it and then the court ordering that this player pay child support, 3) that even if a woman takes pregnancy leave, or stops working temporarily to have young children and raise them, she gets to be promoted into management positions on an equal basis as the men at Walmart, who have put in more time and labor than the woman have and the men don't get paternity leave, and 4) the idea that woman have the right to do with their bodies what they wish. By this idea I mean that a woman has the right to do with her body as she wishes sexually, that is they can have sex outside of marriage and get pregnant. But it the woman alone who makes the decision to use birth control or get an abortion. If she has the baby, then the father's income is expropriated for the next eighteen years. The father does not have the right to do what he wants to do with his body. The fruits of his labors taken from him by the woman's sole decision to have or not have the child. Men are also subject to military conscription. When I hear the call from women for equality, the equality they seem to mean is asymetical. I believe men's and women's conduct is bound by the laws of God and they should support their children, but our society is deforming the family into an unrecognizable entity.
Only an insane person can believe that it is a step forward to send women, especially women who are single mothers, off to war.
Only an insane person can believe that it is a step forward to send women, especially women who are single mothers, off to war.
Yes, what a rude awakening that of the endless variations in painting the Madonna and Child, we Americans had to be the first to paint her in camouflaged uniform, combat boots and walking towards desert wars away from her barren home and crying child.
"Can anything more be said about the debacle of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, beyond the fact that it demonstrates the immense power of the moral level of war? There are two observations I have not seen elsewhere.
First, the apparent breakdown in discipline among the MPs at Abu Ghraib may relate to the presence of women, and especially to the fact that the commander was a woman, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. The climate of "Political Correctness" (or, to give it its true name, cultural Marxism) that has infested and overwhelmed the American armed forces makes it almost impossible to discipline a woman – and risky for a man to attempt to do so.
Some years ago, I asked an Army friend, a sergeant major in the medics, how he disciplined the many women in his unit. He laughed and said, "We just let them do whatever they want." When I expressed astonishment, he replied, "Look, it just isn’t worth it. Anytime you discipline a woman, she may try to get even by accusing you of ‘sexual harassment.’ And since, as a man, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent, your whole career is on the line. So we let ‘em do whatever they want."
This unpleasant reality of life in America’s "PC" Army may have relevance to the roles of female MPs in what went on in Abu Ghraib. At General Karpinski’s level, the effect of the ideology of cultural Marxism, which defines women as "victims" and men as "oppressors," was undoubtedly more subtle. If one of her male subordinates, say a colonel, or a peer, or even a superior officer, had raised issues that might have damaged the career of "a senior Army woman," his career would immediately have been in jeopardy. He would probably have been "counseled," and his concerns quietly suppressed. Even now, when asked her present status by the Washington Post, General Karpinski replies, "I am still in the Army Reserves. I am still in command of the 800th Military Police Brigade." Under the rules of cultural Marxism, because she is a woman, she remains untouchable; any man in her situation would by now have been relieved of command, at the very least. What happens to an Army full of women when women may not be disciplined? Exactly what we have seen at Abu Ghraib." --William S. Lind, The Power of Weakness
So many knights in shining armor here is heartwarming, but your chivalry is badly misplaced.
I hit "submit" by accident. This was addressed to #6. Women in todays military is just a new guise for a very old thing. Essentially, they're camp followers. Only now they get to wear uniforms and draw a salary*. Some oppression.
*There's now as much sex occurring on Navy ships as in the back seats of cars.
While Dr. Fleming is correct to note the hardship one can experience as a middle class man working to support his wife and children, we should also note how dramatically "the necessities of life" have expanded in our modern society.
At a minimum, an enormous majority of folks - dare I say women - see multiple cars, annual vacations, regular and significant home renovations to already large houses and almost hebdomadal pilgrimages to the big box retailer to purchase the latest high-tech gizmos, gadgets and games for the kids as bare essentials.
Until we can curtail our insatiable lust for acquiring things, our task to more sanely orient our families and culture will be only be made more difficult.
I have many acquaintances who bemoan the two-spouse working household yet fail to recognize how our desires help make that scenario a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Harry,
This is an enormously important observation. A.N. Wilson who was one the more recent biographers for Hilaire Belloc, recently mentioned in a new introduction to Belloc's, 'Four Men' nobody living on a small farm outside London today could lead the life that Belloc defended so vigorously a century ago, unless he was a stockbroker or a politician. We have confused simplicity for poverty, poverty for destitution and working to live for living to work. T'is all in pieces now!!
Robert,
Which "Four Men" edition is that? Who published it?
Thank you,
John
John,
Here is a link for the book I am speaking about. I guess time slips away as it was published not recently but back in 1987 by 20th century classics. Like all truths,however, the comments in the introduction as well as the work itself, are rather timeless.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Men-Farrago-Twentieth-Classics/dp/0192814346
Jon l said:
"The vast majority of men throughout history worked because they had to, not because it gave their lives 'meaning' or other buzzwords like 'independence.'"
The Protestant work ethic, especially in early frontier America, might suggest otherwise, Jon. I see your point, however. There have rarely been acceptable alternatives to work for men.
In America's agrarian past, prosperity (generally speaking) necessitated a strong spiritual faith because pre-mechanized farming life had many risks and few safety nets. Work, therefore, had qualities beyond what it added to one's bank account.
I think modern feminists try to attach a secular version of this noble ideal to today's workplace. In the Protestant work ethic, however, ALL forms of hard and decent work were seen as spiritually enriching, no matter how menial. I think it's safe to say that spreading manure on a field or digging a ditch isn't the dream of most feminists.
The extent to which they sanctify menial jobs among women (inside or outside the home) is patronizing. It's usually an obligatory attempt at economic or social "inclusiveness."
The Protestant work ethic, especially in early frontier America, might suggest otherwise, Jon.
Not to turn this into a confessional debate, but I don't think that suggests otherwise at all. America is only one country, Protestantism has existed for less than five hundred years and moreover, what percentage of the world's population has ever been Protestant? I would argue that to the extent that Calvinism demands work for work's sake, its sociological program represents an aberration in human history. This is one of many insights into why true Calvinism has never attracted or produced aristocrats.
The kernel of truth in Jim's post is that pre-industrial work--high or low--played a very spiritual role in society because the roles intertwined and served one another and reinforced bonds of kinship. It was not so much that austerity necessitated spiritual faith, though, as it was that people a certain conception of society which we have lost.
In the Protestant work ethic, however, ALL forms of hard and decent work were seen as spiritually enriching, no matter how menial.
I don't think this is not really different from the "Catholic work ethic," because the key is charity, which elevates the work done.
It seems to me that in the past lay people lived their vocation more fully, if only because they had less "freedom."
NGPM, did Gaspard de Coligny and Jeanne d'Albret not qualify as true Calvinists?
NGPM and T. Chan,
I've always had a problem with the term "Protestant work ethic." I reject the notion that Catholics aren't as industrious as Protestants. I didn't coin the phrase, I think Max Weber did. America was largely Protestant before 1850, however, so in terms of my cultural heritage, the term is descriptive.
My intent was to refute the implication that work has little meaning for men outside of survival or a paycheck. It does.
Henry Ford's great fear was that his assembly line would take the passion and meaning out of a man's working life. He tried to alleviate this by raising pay to 5 dollars a day and insisting that his workers be morally upright when off the job. (It didn't work - there's a known outcome and a guaranteed result on the assembly line. One's faith is in the machinery. Not so on the American frontier.)
I think the feminist myth of an oppressed female populace straining to break the patriarchal bonds and answer phones all day has been proven quite absurd.
However, I wouldn't say there are too many women proud of or aching for servile or menial labor jobs. Most of the working dream for both sexes involves being part of the 'creative class' of those who have some measure of fame and influence. I've never met a woman (or a man) who wanted to fill in spreadsheets all day, even though that's invariably what many a college grad ends up doing. In any case though, women are by-and-large less interested in being housewives and having lots of children as they are in doing grunt work. This is true even in non-western cultures with hardly any feminist movement to speak of, like Japan.
It is true that rich women have never been interested in working in the past, but that's true today as well. Paris Hilton, to take one example, plays around on TV or in movies and I think even recorded an album, but none of it was remotely serious or looked to have been made by someone who had to worry about money. It's mainly the middle and upper middle class that make up the careerists.
On leaving the family to work, it strikes me that men have only been doing this for around a couple of centuries. Before the industrial revolution, cottage industries, farming, small village shops, etc. were the major economic activities, and neither parent was required to spend hours a day away from the home. I can imagine that being a housewife was more interesting and attractive if your husband wasn't absent all the time. Since that is basically impossible to return to at this point, what is to be done?
Finally, even as late as the 60s being a housewife was an attractive option as there being many other women in the neighborhood doing the same thing, so social interaction wasn't nearly as stunted as it is now. This informal network largely doesn't exist anymore, as everyone is at work, so being a housewife carries with it a certain measure of loneliness even when kids are around. Again, what is to be done?
@17, I don't get the sense that Calvin was ever endorsing "work for work’s sake", but rather for God's sake, as unto the Lord. To elevate the general view of daily work as being vocational (rather than merely to pay the bills, all the while resenting the situation and cursing the company store) is simply to echo Scripture. I happen to think that, if anything, it was very good of Calvin to suggest that there might be redemptive aspects to one's daily labor.
Mr. Van Oosbree correctly observed @5 that the work of man is cursed, but this curse has been softened by the incarnation of Christ. I think the main issue is that the widespread and sinful American obsession with mammon has brought about some evil sacrifices, including the diabolical idea that it is more important for women to make a lot of money than it is for them to enjoy the honor and protection due to them as mothers and managers of households. The tragic disappearance of moms who want to remain with their kids at home is outlined well by Dr. Fleming, but I do not think it is possible to assign the blame for that development to Calvin.
Gentlemen,
Every time the big subject or work arrives, I think the best that can be said on the subject from the American point of view (Catholics and Orthodox Protestants are more alike in the US than in any other country, to both the benfit and detriment of both, just look at the civil war, the temperance movement, abortion and all the rest --- puritans have influenced all of us for the worse and we have influenced each other for the better.)
Please read fully and slowly to the end. I hope it serves its purpose and says what really can't be said in prose about toil and work. One thing is for certain, the view of Karl Marx, that men live to work, is not a Christian view of man and never can be forever.
TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
Robert, that is a thing of beauty, and you're right, it captures the truth about work in a way that would be impossible in prose. I am far more inclined to be at home with my family and to be "working" on what matters to me than at my job 40 hours a week. Maybe that is why a lot of my time on the clock is taken up with reading Chronicles, often the next best thing to home.
I did not intend to post the poem twice.
"Like Ice, Once is nice, and should suffice."
Jim -- thank you for your additional reply. I do think that what is called the Protestant work ethic is simply the Christian work ethic, something that was inherited from pre-Reformation Christianity. Certainly that term has been used polemically to criticize those in southern European countries as being lazy. (One may think that they instead had a better understanding of balance and of what is important in life--work is not for its own sake but for the pursuit of higher things.)
T. Chan- Were the europeans and unions who pushed for 30 hour work weeks really traditonal catholics, or post war socialists?
Brian, are you not referring to post-Christian Europe? That said, I don't think a 30-hour work week isn't too much to ask for. As it has been said, one works to live. The entitlements, on the other hand...
Commenting on the feminist argument that women have always worked to justify their working outside the home in the modern age, I want to point out that women have always worked because it is in a woman’s nature to work. That she is not by nature an idle being. Even when there is no absolute necessity to work womankind finds work to do whether the purpose is to improve her standard of living, plan her pleasures, rule her domestics or meddle in the business of others. That she has always worked can no more be an argument for woman working outside the home then saying that man should wear high heels and a summer dress because man has always dressed.
It's the first time I have read so much moaning and whining about work. As a woman who has worked all her life - in and out of the house - alone and with others - I have enjoyed and relished every minute of it.
Ora et labora - with passion and devotion - is the way of the Christian.
I have never believed women incapable of rational thought, because I know too many brilliant and rational women, but Giuseppina would be a good exhibit if one wanted to make the case against women. In her eyes, historical and philosophical arguments become mere "moaning and whining," and against the universal and unanimous voice of history, she opposes the fact that she liked working outside the home. Well, what more is there to say, except that we hope she did not in her zeal for work leave children to fend for themselves. Ora et labora is the way of the monk, not of all Christians, and while Benedict's admonition can be translated into terms appropriate to everyday life, it requires a certain amount of qualification, for example, a married woman's primary and proper work is within the home attending to her husband and taking care of her children. To say anything else is to part company with the teachings of the Church.
#30 This comment illustrates everything wrong with Opus Dei. Notice I did not say that there is not alot right about Opus Dei but this comment, "Ora et labora – with passion and devotion – is the way of the Christian" sufffers from what Monsgr. Knox called, "enthusiasm" and is also false and heretical as hell.
There is alot of work done today that is simply not worth doing and should not be done. There is also a difference between work and prayer ,a big difference, and there is also a spiritual reality called the dark night of the soul or spiritual aridity, that may be full of devotion but no passion. Chaucer had the right emphasis on the different types of englishmen and pilgrims, saints and sinners. So rather than a theological argument, I would recommend Catholics to read Chaucer since it is the obvious things we can no longer see.
Women and children have always been considered cheap labor. Removing women from the home to divide family loyalty and create an "independent" tax payer was the long term strategy behind Women's Property Acts beginning in 1848. The industrial revolution's command and demand for labor brought us children and women labor in sweat shop factories. By reducing the living wages of family men, when the fiat money schemers had dumped the pumped economy, the densely populated cities of poor women and children after the bust was blamed on fathers and husbands. Thus, here come the Roosevelt. Teddy romped around America drumming up female support for a widower pension programme that eventually became the Maddoff scheme of all time, Social Security. Women ran to mothers' little helper, social security and social lady and family dissension was militantly on the rise. This led to no-fault divorce and the worlds largest transfer of wealth scheme, AFDC in 1975 followed by TANF in 83. The run on fiat printing presses was on. Ceaseless war, ceaseless welfare printed on worthless paper.
Marxists began by destroying the family in the late 19th century and they continue their scheme of world enslavement.
Don't ya love matriarchy?
#30 Ora et labora – with passion and devotion – is the way of the Christian
When it comes to submitting themselves in marriage, one to another, the feminist calls this domestic hell. When it comes to submitting themselves to an employer, it's passion and devotion.
The position a feminist takes when in passion and devotion is on her back. We call that a workin' gal, the oldest profession.
Is she paying taxes on that income quarterly? Does she pay her FICA? Did Obama give her health care for that disease, or is she just happy to see the long legged Mack Daddy?