Abused Women

Dennis Prager is correct about 85% of the time. One of his famous lines is that the Left appeals to emotions and the Right appeals to reason. Here is an example of that which I viewed on a local channel this Sunday morning.

A nurse from Hennepin County Hospital downtown (she must be an emergency room nurse) in 2012 founded a worthy cause of raising donated, brand new pajamas and underwear for women and their children when they escape from the abuser with just the clothes on their backs.

It is a womens' issue and the reporter showed an exercise class being conducted out at the band shelter on the east beach of Lake Harriet. Women are attending the exercise class and bring their  donated clothing items with them. It is a charity, donation-raising event, and it is helpful as far as it goes. The piece ended with the founding nurse being interviewed, and commenting that society needs to talk more and more about this issue and address it. Every liberal in Minneapolis walked away from the television patting themselves on the back about how compassionate they are, how superior they are, and how elevated is their reform efforts to help women held down by society and by men. That is the emotional side of the equation.

But there is no moral equivalency between feeling good and self-righteous but ultimately ineffective (Has abuse of women, percentage wise, gone down at all in Hennepin County since 2012? I do not know, but my guess is that it may even have gone up with wage stagnation among wage-earners.) and solving the problem of abused women. As a logical conservative, I look at the problem, sympathize with the feel-good but feckless reformers and speculate about how we get move the needle towards a declined in the number of cases of abused women. Let me take a stab at it.

Let me draw from Mavellonialist philosophy. First of all, every woman is a human being, an individual deserving to be treated with dignity and respect. But charity begins at home. If we would raise our girls under egoist ethics, they would be inculcated with the concepts that they are beautiful and must esteem themselves. They would be trained to be brave and assertive, and insist that all male friends, suitors and potential life mates treat them with kindness and respect as equals.

That insistence and bedrock understanding is the cement that binds the relationship. Any incidence if physical, emotional, psychological or sexual abuse of her or her children will be met promptly each time and every time with complete shutting down of any level of attack by the inclined abuser. If she needs to end the relationship, call the police, use judo on him, or shoot him dead as a last resort to save her life, she will do what she has to do early and every time to stop him from refusing to act always as a courteous gentleman.

Just think of the feisty response and intolerance of being further abused by the fictional character sung about in that country song Gunpowder And Lead by Miranda Lambert.

In a future society of individuating supercitizens, most citizens will live by the rubric that one abuses none and accepts abuse from none. One resepcts the dignity and worth of all others, and insist that all respect one's dignity and worth. One dominates no other, and allows no others to dominate one.

This ethic will train men not to be abusers and will train women never to tolerate abuse. Then, there should be far fewer fleeing women and children running to the emergency rooms, escaping with their very lives. That is where a logical approach to the mess may provide real solutions, not just feel-good, stop-gap solutions.