Sometimes I Feel Like a Fatherless Child

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing the whole of this report at Brussels Journal
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.


Fjordman sends a clip from his new post at Brussels Journal, where you can read the whole essay. The work draws from Diana West’s book, “The Death of the Grownup.”

The Fatherless Civilization

“I sometimes wonder whether the modern West, and Western Europe in particular, should be dubbed the Fatherless Civilization. Fathers have been turned into a caricature and there is a striking demonization of traditional male values. Any person attempting to enforce rules and authority, a traditional male preserve, is seen as a Fascist and ridiculed, starting with God the Father. We end up with a society of vague fathers who can be replaced at the whim of the mothers at any given moment. Even the mothers have largely abdicated, leaving the upbringing of children to schools, kindergartens and television. In fashion and lifestyle, mothers imitate their daughters, not vice versa.

The elaborate welfare state model in Western Europe is frequently labelled “the nanny state,” but perhaps it could also be named “the husband state.” Why? Well, in a traditional society, the role of men was to physically protect and financially provide for their women. In our modern society, part of this task has been “outsourced” to the state, which helps explain why women in general give disproportionate support to high taxation and pro-welfare state parties. According to anthropologist Lionel Tiger, the ancient unit of a mother, a child and a father has morphed from monogamy into “bureaugamy,” a mother, a child and a bureaucrat. The state has become a substitute husband. In fact, it doesn’t replace just the husband, it replaces the entire nuclear and extended family, raises the children and cares for the elderly…”

The rest is here.


For another aspect of West's book, see this Hot Air video interview of Diana West by Michelle Malkin.

Part Two of the Hot Air interview is here.


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