Men and Women
The Hill reports that there is footage of a female Democrat describing Capitol Hill girls' room chatter, wherein a female Republican suggested the whole health-care package could have been resolved if they just sent the boys home and let the women handle taking care of the family. The statement was received with bipartisan applause and a general accord that women know more about caring for their own.
I really don't see a scandal here - my better half is an angel when I'm sick, whereas I'm reduced to asking if she can stop being sick long enough to remind me where we keep the medicine and heating pad. I'm actually delightfully surprised that ladies of both parties still make jokes about men in the bathroom! That's encouraging.
The episode reminds me of perhaps the most controversial passage in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, wherein he mentions, as a defense of the traditional role of men as the head of the house, that women are too willing to abandon justice in the defense of their families. Women, Lewis observes, harbor an "intense family patriotism" and are the trustees of the family's interests, whereas the function of the husband is to moderate the family's "foreign policy" so as to protect other people from this natural preference of the wife.
The "intense family patriotism" that you and C.S. Lewis discuss is true . . . and exactly why the Republican woman in the Capitol restroom is--though amusing--intensely wrong.
These imperious schoolmarms ought to read Aristophanes' The Assemblywomen to see what they're really asking for.
Kudos to the Greeks for reminding us that human nature (including natural differences) does not change.
Though I will remind JQA (and Aristophanes, C.S. Lewis and any and all other comers) of two things: first, patriotism that is worthy of the name has a rational as well as an irrational foundation and the trick is to tease out the difference; and, second, a good woman who understands her nature is the best judge of when (and when not) to take a man's corrective. That's because a good woman, in addition to understanding her own nature, will also understand that man's (i.e., male) nature inclines him to another kind of imperiousness . . . and so there's the rub. Good men need good women and vice versa. Ruling is not so easy, nor as natural, as anyone might think.