This review of the movie Margaret Sanger first appeared in Humanities, September/October 1998, and deserves a wide audience. The original movie review article was entitled, Margaret Sanger's "Deeds of Terrible Virtue." The PBS 90 minute film was funded in part with $750,000 of your taxes. The movie is not available on Netflix. This digital is all that remains from your 3/4 million.

Margaret Sanger's "Deeds of Terrible Virtue" By Rachel Galvin

"It is only rebel woman, when she gets out of the habits imposed on her by bourgeois convention, who can do some deed of terrible virtue."

- The Woman Rebel

"I would strike out -- I would scream from the housetops. I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter what it should cost. I would be heard," wrote Margaret Sanger after one of her patients died of a self-induced abortion in 1913. Sanger did make the world listen to her, as she fought for half a century to legalize birth control and improve conditions for women.

Margaret Sanger, a new ninety-minute historical documentary, recreates the world of Margaret Sanger. The story of her life touches on the main social and scientific currents that sparked a sexual revolution and electrified American society out of its waning Victorian Age. Co-produced by independent filmmakers Bruce Alfred and Karen Thomas, the film delves into the complexities of Sanger's personal life and explores her many shifts in social and political alliances as she strove to legitimize contraception. "Margaret Sanger lived in a time that was propelling people to make change," says Alfred, who also directed the film. "She was one of those people who wanted to make her own change, and went about doing it in her own way." The documentary combines original footage, photographs, period music, on-camera interviews, and dramatic readings by Blair Brown, Derek Jacobi, Matthew Broderick, and others, to present a vivid portrait of this determined woman.

Sanger emerges as a complex, contradictory human being with enormous drive and vision, rather than merely the single- dimensional "saint" or "heretic" she has been labeled. "Margaret Sanger remains a lightning rod for controversy," says Alfred. "Some have made her the poster child for everything that's wrong with birth control. This film, however, does not try to prove a point or a point of view. We're looking at the woman as part of history, and the person she was in the times in which she lived -- she didn't work in a vacuum."

Born Margaret Louise Higgins on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York, Sanger was the sixth of eleven children. Her mother, a devout Irish Catholic, was pregnant eighteen times in twenty- two years. Her health was always fragile because of tuberculosis compounded by many pregnancies.

"Always say what you mean. And always think for yourself," Sanger's father, Michael Higgins, taught her. A political radical, Higgins gave Sanger books about strong women and told her stories of Helen of Troy, Ruth, Cleopatra, and Poppaea, supplying her with what she later called "ammunition about the historical background of the importance of women."

Sanger wished to become a doctor, but because medical school was too expensive, she enrolled in a rigorous nursing training program. Her studies were interrupted twice -- once temporarily, by the onset of tuberculosis, and the second time permanently, by her marriage in 1902 to William Sanger, a socialist and aspiring artist.

By 1910, the Sangers had three children and were living in New York City. Mrs. Sanger had fought against tuberculosis and twice survived doctors' predictions of her imminent death.

"Deep in my soul, I couldn't suppress my own dissatisfaction. After my long ordeal with disease it seemed to me this quiet withdrawal into tame domesticity was bordering on spiritual stagnation," Sanger wrote. To ease the family financial situation, she became a midwife/nurse and worked with immigrants on the Lower East Side. There she witnessed the conditions that workers, reformers, and intellectuals were fighting to change: low wages, extreme poverty, homeless or abandoned children, and inaccessible health care.

Because of the scarcity of birth control and the strain each additional child placed on already desperate families, women often attempted home abortions by using sharp objects or homemade remedies. Alexander Sanger, Sanger's grandson and a birth control activist, explains: "The most popular methods were folk remedies such as laxatives and quinine, douches, and cocoa butter solutions. Many douching solutions, such as Lysol, contained caustic chemicals that caused irritation or burns."

"Pregnancy was a chronic condition among the women of this class," Margaret Sanger said. "Suggestions as to what to do for a girl who was 'in trouble' or a married woman who was 'caught' passed from mouth to mouth -- herb teas, turpentine, steaming, rolling downstairs, inserting slippery elm, knitting needles, shoe-hooks." She frequently nursed women whose cheap abortions caused severe bleeding or death. "The menace of another pregnancy hung like a sword over nearly every woman I met," she said.

Birth control was not an option for the women Sanger treated. The Comstock Law, mirrored by "little Comstock Laws" in many states, prohibited the mailing or advertisement of "any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception." Anthony Comstock, the law's designer, was determined to outlaw "Satan's Traps": contraception and other "obscene" materials.

Before she focused her energies on advocating birth control, Sanger got a taste of political agitation through the labor movement. In 1912, she joined the International Workers of the World, which was leading textile mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to strike for higher wages. The next spring, Sanger testified before Congress about the strike and made national headlines. She applied her experiences with the labor movement and the media to her own concerns about reaching women in need of health and contraception information. Sanger began writing a column in The Call, a socialist newspaper. "What Every Girl Should Know" dealt openly with all manner of sexual issues and was quickly banned under the Comstock laws for discussing venereal disease -- deemed obscene subject matter. Challenging Anthony Comstock attracted publicity and earned Sanger support from free speech advocates; eventually she was allowed to resume writing for The Call.

When one of her patients died of a self-induced abortion in 1913, Sanger left her nursing career. "It was like an illumination....There was only one thing to be done: call out, start the alarm, set the heather on fire! Awaken the womanhood of America to free the motherhood of the world!" Sanger wrote. "I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception. They have every right to know about their own bodies."

Sanger decided that a socialist revolution was not the most effective way to improve conditions for women. Esther Katz, director of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University, says in the film that Sanger was impressed by Emma Goldman's theory that to "liberate women from repeated pregnancy was to liberate them from poverty.Women and children [carry] the heaviest burden of our ruthless economic system," wrote Emma Goldman in 1900, "It [is] a mockery to expect them to wait until the social revolution in order to right justice."

Inspired by Goldman's Mother Earth, Sanger began her own newspaper, The Woman Rebel, in 1914. The Woman Rebel's motto read, "NO GODS. NO MASTERS," and each issue proclaimed, "A Woman's Duty: To look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes; to have an ideal; to speak and act in defiance of convention." Written for working-class women, the paper promised to delineate precisely how to avoid conception through "birth control," a term Sanger and Otto Bobsein coined to avoid the fashionable circumlocutions of "family limitation" and "voluntary motherhood."

After six monthly issues of The Woman Rebel, Sanger was indicted for obscenity.

Instead of facing trial and a potential thirty-year prison sentence, she fled the country. Without pausing to bid her children or her estranged husband goodbye, she took a train to Canada, assumed the alias of Bertha Watson, and obtained a visa for England, where she lived for a year.

In 1915, the attention of the American public refocused on Sanger and her cause. Within weeks of each other, Anthony Comstock died and Sanger's husband was sentenced to a thirty-day prison sentence for handing out one of Margaret's pamphlets. Realizing the opportunity for publicity, Margaret returned to the U.S. to stand trial.

As she prepared for her trial, Sanger was devastated by the death of her four-year-old daughter.

[Other accounts portray Margaret Sanger as a rather indifferent mother.]

When Sanger had a publicity photo taken of herself with her two sons, the demure portrait of a mother in mourning garnered public sympathy and provided an excuse for the government, which was already wary of bringing further publicity to sex theories and birth control, to drop its charges against Sanger.

Determined to continue disseminating birth control information, Sanger went on a speaking tour of the country. She shrewdly tailored her lectures to her audience: to working-class women she spoke about disparity in access to birth control; to middle- class women she argued for women's rights; and to all she denounced the medical profession for holding back information about contraception and called for doctors to join her cause.

Wherever Sanger spoke, she provoked controversy and debate. "Anyone who talked about sex in public was breaking a taboo," explains historian Nancy Cott in the film. "While reliable birth control was welcomed by some, others saw it as throwing a tremendous wrench into the social structure."

Sanger opened the first American birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, on October 16, 1916. The clinic was staffed by Sanger, her sister Ethyl Byrne, a registered nurse, and two other women; no doctors would involve themselves in her enterprise. The clinic was in direct violation of laws prohibiting the distribution of contraception by anyone outside the medical profession and for any purpose other than disease prevention.

In the clinic's ten days of operation, several hundred women received counseling, information on how to prevent pregnancy, and condoms and pessaries (as diaphragms were called). Women came from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and stood in lines that wound around the block. On October 26, the vice squad raided the clinic, arresting Sanger and the women working with her. The women were tried and sentenced to thirty days in prison. Following the example of the British Suffragists, Byrne went on a hunger strike. Her brutal force-feeding made front-page headlines even during the escalating hostilities of World War I.

From 1916 onward, the Catholic Church made a concerted effort to thwart Sanger's campaign. Catholic groups shut down Sanger's speeches, got her detained for handing out copies of Family Limitation, and in 1919 American bishops wrote a joint pastoral letter explicitly prohibiting contraception. In Washington, D.C., the Catholic Church set up an office to organize church members and lobby politicians.

Some of the opposition backfired. Sanger planned a meeting in the New York City Town Hall in November 1921 to address the question "Birth Control: Is It Moral?" Before the meeting began, New York City policemen closed down the building and arrested Sanger. The shutdown had been orchestrated by Archbishop Patrick Hayes, which outraged free speech activists, the media, and the American Civil Liberties Union. The New Republic wrote that the incident was "socially insane. . . . The last resort of authoritarianism."

The commotion over the Town Hall meeting provided optimal advertising for Sanger. When the rescheduled meeting finally took place, three thousand people had to be turned away at the door because of limited space.

Sanger frequently reinvented her image, aligning herself with socialists, sex theorists, lobbyists, eugenicists, international birth control advocates, feminists, and suffragists, harnessing the momentum of these movements to drive her fight for contraception forward.

Although the women's movement seemed a natural partner for Sanger's cause, her approach differed radically from that of her feminist and suffragist contemporaries. The women's movement maintained that sex needed to be subjugated and that equality was dependent upon the diminishing of the importance of sex, so that women could escape the role of "sex slave." Birth control was anathema even to conflicting factions within the movement: some thinkers denounced marriage and sex entirely, in favor of pursuing a career; others regarded motherhood as the highest vocation and concluded that birth control insulted their femininity.

Once women won the right to vote in August 1920, the movement lost its cohesion, and the legalization of birth control did not provide an appealing cause to rally around. Carrie Chapman Catt, a Suffragist leader, sounded a Victorian note when she told Sanger, "Your reform is too narrow to appeal to me and too sordid."

"The American woman, in my estimation, is sound asleep," Sanger wrote in a fury. "Suffrage was won too easily and too early in this country."

Unable to sway the women's movement to her cause, Sanger turned to the most powerful advocacy group of her time: the eugenicists. The documentary deals with this shift in strategy objectively, neither justifying nor condemning it. "Sanger was always looking for a vehicle to propel her cause forward," Alfred says. "Sanger had what we call the 'PR know-how' to get her cause linked with bigger issues that would keep it in the public view."

Eugenic theory posited that the human race would be improved "by encouraging high reproductive rates in classes deemed socially desirable...and by discouraging reproduction amongst the undesirables." Racists exploited these quasi-scientific theories for several decades, culminating in the eugenic rationale of the German fascist movement in the early 1930s. But even as early as the 1920s, the United States had passed forced sterilization laws in twenty states, eugenics was taught in universities, and many leading reformers and thinkers were advocates of eugenics.

Margaret Sanger promoted access to birth control for all women, regardless of class, arguing that women should be able to restrict their family size voluntarily. Eager to make use of the popularity of eugenics, she wrote The Pivot of Civilization in 1922, in which she espoused decreasing the birth rate of "mentally and physically defective" people. Linking birth control to eugenics shifted Sanger's movement from what David Kennedy, author of Birth Control in America, calls a "radical program of social disruption" to a "conservative program of social control."

After having lived apart for six years, Margaret and William Sanger finally divorced in 1921. In 1922, Sanger made an advantageous marriage to James Henry Noah Slee, the millionaire manufacturer of Three-in-One Oil. With his help, she smuggled diaphragms into the United States, and for a time Slee used one of his factories to produce spermicidal jelly.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932, Sanger intensified her lobbying in Washington, convinced that she would succeed if she concentrated on integrating birth control into New Deal programs. She argued that birth control would reduce the relief rolls and alleviate the economic devastation of the Depression by allowing married women to work.

Sanger and her lobbyists worked for six legislative sessions without results. "Men are men and senators are cowards," Sanger declared.

Her lawyer, Morris Ernst, counseled Sanger to direct her efforts not toward changing the law, but rather toward reinterpreting the ban on the importation of contraception. In 1932, she began a test case. Four years later, Judge Augustus Hand ruled that doctors could prescribe birth control not only to prevent disease, but for the "general well-being" of their patients.

The test case succeeded primarily because Sanger managed to disassociate birth control from obscenity and ally it with science and medicine.

The two groups Sanger had created, the American Birth Control League and the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, were fused into the Birth Control Federation of America in 1942, with Sanger as honorary chairman. Sanger was appalled when the organization chose to discard "birth control," the term she had popularized, and renamed itself Planned Parenthood, judging "birth control" too controversial.

Sanger saw birth control reform as an international movement. In her first trip to Japan in 1922, she had met birth control activist Shidzue Kato. The two remained lifelong friends and colleagues, and together they established the first birth control clinic outside the West. Sanger was hailed as a savior by Japan, a country ridden with poverty, unemployment, and overpopulation. She became the first foreign woman to address the Japanese national legislature in 1954.

Sanger traveled to India in 1935 and met with Mahatma Gandhi. Although Gandhi was not swayed by Sanger's views and maintained that his followers must "transcend carnal lust," Sanger's lecture tour inspired the opening of birth control clinics throughout India. When Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru declared in 1959 that $10 million would go to family planning in India, Sanger was at his side.

Sanger was convinced that an oral contraceptive could be developed "that could be taken like aspirin." With money supplied by Suffragist leader and longtime friend Katharine McCormick, Sanger funded the research of Gregory Goodwin Pincus, a geneticist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology. When Pincus unveiled the Pill in 1959, he called it the "product of [Sanger's] pioneering resolution."

"Modern woman is at last free as a man is free," author and Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce proclaimed upon the release of the Pill, "to dispose of her own body, to earn her living, to pursue the improvement of her mind, to try a successful career."

Having survived several heart attacks by 1965, Sanger was in very weak health and dependent on painkillers, sleeping pills, and alcohol when she received the news that her lifelong mission was achieved: The Supreme Court had ruled in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut that "the use of contraception is a constitutional right." Friends propped [Margaret] Sanger up in her bed, and she celebrated by drinking champagne through a straw.

Margaret Sanger died on September 6, 1966, and was buried in Fishkill, NY, beside Noah Slee. Upon her death, H.G. Wells declared, "When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine."

Rachel Galvin is a writer in Austin, Texas.

Cobblestone Films received $750,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to produce Margaret Sanger, which will air on PBS on October 12.

Humanities, September-October 1998, Volume 19/Number 5

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Thank you (foot)notes,

See other posts at Margaret Sanger.

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Your Business Blogger(R) advises clients and business-owning students. Two of the biggest challenges they mention is staff compliance (obedience) and proper action in the absence of direction (initiative).

"How can I get them to do a better job?" managers ask. "How do the big companies get things done?"

I am not so sure that managers at larger enterprises do much better than their small company brethren. We all have challenges.

Especially in customer service.

What's missing?

I bought a new German car some twenty years ago and have put over 750,000 kilometers -- well over 500,000 miles-- on this marvel of Teutonic kraftsmanship.

The (very large) auto company awards an award to such high mileage drivers and their well-loved machines.

I got a 500K award a few years ago and just received my 750K award, suitable for framing and nifty grill medallion.

But I noticed something missing from my prestigious pronouncement.

The Award passed through a number of hands. And a Big Manager at the very large auto company signed it. No little expense was expended in the handling and packaging and shipping to Your Proud Business Professor.

He didn't see what wasn't there.

My Name.

If they can't get my name on a silly certificate, how do I know they can build a car?

All that work and the staff at the very large auto company succeeded in making me think twice about ever spending six-figures on German engineering.

The simplest attention to detail will win and retain customers. Especially when the customer's name is on the line.

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

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Thank you (foot)notes,

See An Anniversary

In May of 1987 Your Business Blogger(R) bought a new car from American Service Center in Arlington, Virginia from former Redskin football player Joe Tereshinski.

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The Joy of Sports; End Zones, Bases, Baskets, Balls, and the Consecration of the American Spirit, By Michael Novak, was published in 1976 by Basic Books, Inc..

Michael Novak

"A journalist snapped:..."How could an allegedly mature man squander time watching pros claw at each other for pay, or give a d@mn whether Notre Dame beats Alabama?" p. xii

"The basic reality of all human life is play, games, sport; these are the realities form which the basic metaphors for all that is important in the rest of life are drawn. Work, politics, and history are the illusory, misleading, false world." p. xii

"Being, beauty, truth, excellence, transcendence--these words, grown in the soil of play, wither in the sand of work. Art, prayer, worship, love, civilization: these thrive in the field of play." p. xii

Play belongs to the Kingdom of Ends,
work to the Kingdom of Means.

Barbarians play in order to work;
the civilized work in order to play. p. xii

"Not that football satisfies everything. It doesn't offer much guidance in how to understand a woman." p.xv

Novak quotes Vergil, "Of armaments and men I sing,"

"...If war is the teacher men have turned to in order to learn teamwork, discipline, coolness under fire, respect for contingency and fate, football is my moral equivalent of war." p. xv

Novak quotes Herbert Hoover, "Next to religion, baseball has furnished a greater impact on American life than any other institution." p. 1.

Novak quotes Jacques Barzun, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." p.1.

Athletic achievement, like the achievements of the heroes and gods of Greece, is the momentary attainment of perfect form--as though there were, hidden away from mortal eyes, a perfect way to execute a play, and suddenly a player or a team has found it and sneaked a demonstration down to earth. A great play is a revelation. The curtains of ordinary life part, and perfection flashes for an instant before the eye. p.5.

Novak continues transcendent,

To keep cool, to handle hundreds of details and call exactly the plays that work, to fights one's way through opposition to do what one wills to do, against odds, against probabilities--these are to practice a very high art, to achieve a few moments of beauty that will delight the memory of those who watched, or listened, or read, for all their lives. What we mean by "[sports] legend" is what we mean by "art": the reaching of a form, a perfection, which ordinarily the flesh masks, a form eternal in its beauty. It is as though muscle and nerves and spirit and comrades were working together as flawlessly as God once imagined human beings might. p.16-17

"Sports are religious in the sense that they are organized institutions, disciplines, and liturgies; and also in the snese that they teach religious qualities of heart and soul...they recreate symbols of cosmic struggle, in which human survival and moral courage are not assured." p. 21

The Alert Reader will recognize Novak's metaphor,

Suppose you are an anthropologist from Mars. You come suddenly upon some wild, adolescent tribes living in territories called the "United States of America." You try to understand their way of life, but their society does not make sense to you. Flying over the land in a rocket, you notice great ovals near every city. You descend and observe. You learn that an oval is called a "stadium." it is used, roughly, once a week in certain seasons. Weekly, regularly, millions of citizens stream into these concrete doughnuts, pay handsomely, are alternately hushed and awed and outraged and screaming mad. (They demand from time to time that certain sacrificial personages be "killed.") You see that the figures in the rituals have trained themselves superbly for their performances, The combatants are dedicated. So are the dancers and musicians in tribal dress who occupy the arena before, during, and after the combat. p. 29.

"Religions are built upon ascesis, a word that derives from the disciplines Greek athletes imposed upon themselves to give their wills an instincts command of their bodies; the word was borrowed by Christian monks and hermits." p. 29 Hence "ascetic."

"Sports are the high point of civilization--along with the arts, but more powerfully than the arts..." p. 42.

"The heart of human reality is courage, honesty, freedom, community, excellence: the heart is sports." p. 42"

I have never met a person who disliked sports...who did not at the same time seem to me deficient in humanity. I don't mean only that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, or Jill a dull ms. I mean that a quality of sensitivity, an organ of perception, an access to certain significant truths appear to be missing. Such persons seem to me a danger to civilization. I do not, on the whole, like to work with them. In their presence, I find myself on guard, often unconsciously. I expect from them a certain softness of mind, from their not having known a sufficient number of defeats. Unless they have compensated for it elsewhere, I anticipate that they will underestimate the practice and discipline required for execution, or the role of chance and Fate in human outcomes. I expect them to have a view of the world far too rational and mechanical. p. 44.

Novak provides a definition of unit cohesion in sports which is also critical to the armed service--and may explain why Congress routinely denies allowing homosexuals to serve in the military,

Millions of men look back nostalgically on their days in active athletics precisely because they experience there, as at few other points in their lives, a quality of tenderness, a stream of caring and concern from and toward others, suh as would make the most ardent imaginers of the androgynous ideal envious. Male bonding one of the most paradoxical forms of human tenderness: harsh, hazing, sweet, gentle, abrupt, soft. Blows are exchanged. Pretenses are painfully lanced. The form of compliment is, often as not, an insult. There is daily, hourly probing as to whether one can take it as well as dish it out. It is a sweet preparation for a world less rational, less liberal, than childhood dreams imagine. Among men, sports help to form a brotherhood for which, alas, sisterhood has no similar equivalent, and which is a highly human imperative to invent. p. 46.

Novak invokes a Biblical analogy, to take away the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, "For gentleness of demeanor, I will take the athlete eight times out of ten. For hardness of heart, I have learned to fear the man who has always hated sports." p. 46.

"There is no rage like that of the pacifist insisting on nonviolence..." p. 85

Novak quotes William Phillips, "Pro football is the opium of the intellectuals..." p. 88.

Novak cites Hegel where human life is a butcher's bench. p. 89.

"In the United States...the essence of the symbolic form of football is liberation: breaking away, running for daylight, escaping containment." p. 93.

Sports provide roots, "The human spirit needs roots, because the pretense of infinity...The human body cannot bear infinity." p. 146.

"To win, one must defeat both the other team and Fate." p. 149

"The most satisfying element in sports is spirit. Other elements being equal, the more spirited team will win." p. 149.

"Half the pleasure of football is the contest between wit and brawn." p. 149.

"The great [athletes] attempt what the good ones let go by." p. 150.

"If I had to give one single reason for my love of sports it would be this: I love the test of the human spirit." p. 150.

"Coaches and scouts seek out desire. Athletes with lesser talents but great desire are better fitted for actual contests than men [and women!] of vast ability but psychological reluctance." p. 155.

"In sports, dynasties rise and fall. No one dares to be too arrogant too long. Hubris and nemesis..." p. 158.

We are equal in the eyes of the Creator. But not to each other,

Each athlete in every sport discovers very early that others, in this way or that, are his superior. Each finds what he can do best. Each picks his level. Each labors to learn all that he has talent, endurance, and will to learn. Each must, sooner or later, cease pretending to be what he is not, cannot be, and rejoice in playing up to the limit given him. Life is not equal. God is no egalitarian. Prowess varies with every individual. p. 159.

"Each sport is for most a teacher of humility and reconciliation." p. 159

"None of us [kids on sandlot-neighborhood-sports] played in college. We had had our day, met our limits,"

Yet I would be astonished if [my childhood sports friends] and all the millions of others like us didn't still watch...Namath, Unitas, and all the Sunday heroes with exquisite pleasure, admiration, and beauty-scorched memory. What we wished to do, strove for--what do I mean? still strive for, still emulate--they do as gracefully as gods. We were for a season gods, or at least boys with dreams; we still are. We went to our limits, as they go to theirs; and if theirs exceed ours, we regard them not with envy but in brotherly participation. p. 161

"I relate this memory [of succeeding in sports at some level] indulge these dreams, only to indicate the pleasure that recognition of limits brings.p. 162."

"A great rival is a great gift. How can one extend oneself into fresh heights if there is no on to force higher? An artist of any sort who has no peers suffers from the lack. Great peers make one greater than on could become in solitude." p. 162.

Novak quotes Albert Camus, "Sport was the main occupation of all of us, and continued to be mine for a long time. That is where I had my only lessons in ethics." p. 172.

Novak quotes Billy Graham, "There are probably more really committed Christians in sports, both collegiate and professional, than in any other occupation in America." p. 172.

Novak quotes Maurice B. Mitchell, in College & University Business (1973),

Not enough young men and women who come to a university have ever had a punch in the nose, not enough have ever had a black eye, not enough have ever been involved in contact sports or personal physical combat...I think it would be good for us if we had some of those participant activities where everybody gains a sense of his own physical feelings--what it feels like to hurt a little, what it feels like to get bumped, what it feels like to be able to run faster, or to get caught, or to lose. p. 174.

Novak quotes Red Smith,

I had a bartender friend in Philadelphia years ago, a devoted baseball fan, who told me, and he said this with tears in his eyes, that the most beautiful thing in the world, more beautiful than any blond, more beautiful than a mountain lake at sunset, was bases filled, two out, three and two on the hitter and everybody moving with the pitch.

Novak quotes Isaac D. Balbus, in The Nation (1973), "If the link between sports and "maleness" is as deep as I think it is, it is not surprising that homosexual or bi-sexual men are probably less caught up in sports than the average male heterosexual." p. 180.

Novak quotes Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975),

[There is] a new female recognition (something men have always known) that there are important lessons to be learned from sports competition, among them that winning is the result of hard, sustained, serious training, cool, clever strategy that includes the use of tricks and bluffs, and a positive mind-set that puts all reflex systems on "go." This knowledge, and the chance to put it in practice, is precisely what women have been conditioned to abjure. p. 182.

"In her work ...at Arizona State University, Doloris K. Suddarth discovered striking differences in personality traits between male and female athletes...The male[s]...were high in ego strength, somewhat reserved, dominant, adventurous, tough minded, likinig group action, self-sufficient, relaxed, and unfrustrated...The female[s] ...were lower in ego tender-minded, zestful, liking group action, group dependent, tense, and frustrated." p. 192

Novak quotes Doloris K. Suddarth, "Many traits expected of the successful athlete by coaches and sports psychologists are in direct conflict with traits associated with females by parents, teachers, and peers." She reportedly contends that a woman athlete has, in effect, a split personality. "On the field she needs an athletic personality; in the social situation, she cannot be successful without a complete reversal of traits." p. 192.

If we were to design a new game there should be , "A certain degree of "violence"--of hard physical challenge, of being hurt and taking pain..." p. 198.

"The spirit of play is the invention of rules. At the heart of play is love for the finite, the limited, the bounded. "Out-of-bounds" is the primal cry of play. The description of a fixed universe is the first and indispensable step of every free act. For human beings are embodied spirits." p. 224.

"Perhaps what one learns best in sports are habits of discipline and poise under fire. Having faced often the prospect of the death that comes comes through defeat, one tends not to panic when things go badly." p. 227.

Novak reminds us that athletes are different from non-athletes,

Those who have not known the rigors of competitive team athletics do not easily find other social and institutional frameworks in which such skills in self-knowledge may be experienced and perfected. That is why there is a special comradeship among former athletes, a bond of thrust within which athletes understand one another swiftly and with few words. And why there is a silent tension between athletes, who have known these fires, and nonathletes, or anti-athletes, who have not. The latter seem not to live as gracefully with defeat, humiliation, or self-betrayal, they seem less conscious of their own complicity in weakness--in other words, with their own sense of being sinners. They pretend more. They have been defeated less. p. 228

Is it better to listen or to watch? Novak explains,

The ear, not the eye is the organ of human fact. And also of thought. The ear is personal (it carries tone and "voice"), holistic, stimulative. The eye distances, makes flat, kills, tames. To hear a great mind lecture is to have access to his though--and to his heart and seat of judgment--that reading his books does not supply. The liturgy of the churches, is, wisely, centered on the spoken Word. So ought the liturgies of sport to be...The eye is the most superficial sense. Television, the medium of the eye, cheapens us. p. 251.

"The politicization of almost everything is a form of totalitarianism. The preservation of parts of life not drawn up into politics and work is essential for the human spirit." p. 278.

"There are not many activities that can unite janitors, cafeteria workers, sophomores, and Nobel Prizes winners in common pleasure." p.292.

"Like the other fruits of civilizations, sports are not productive; they are expressions of liberty." p. 299.

Novak quotes Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1: "If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work."

Novak predicts the challenges basketball standout LeBron James faced as he left Cleveland,

We are expected to sympathize with Larry Csonka when he abandons the Miami Dolphins for the World Football League and $3 million. "I have to think of my family," hes says. His family was not starving. If ballplayers cannot say no to money, if they will take the highest offer they can get and move away accordingly, they invite contempt. What they do is understandable enough, but wrong. It flies in the face of the rootedness and the fan's identification with them which gives their professional inner power. If they think so little of their profession, why shouldn't fans? p. 306

"The British are an older, wiser culture, given to a certain matter-of-fact toughness and pragmatic amorality." p. 310.

"Baseball without cunning, trickery, and pressing for advantage would scarcely be a contest. Our sports are lively with the sense of evil. The evil in them is to be certain, ritualized, controlled, and channeled." p. 312.

'How many men can a girl have before she becomes "that kind of girl"? Lou Grant of the Mary Tyler Moore show has an answer: "Six." p. 318 Novak was doing numbers on the correct number of professional sports teams. The analogy works in the original.

"Sports for women should be more realistically encouraged, and new sports invented." p. 334. Women did not crew competitively at the time Novak was researching a literature review. Rowing and collegiate crew are popular competitions for women today."

"Sports are not merely entertainment, but are rooted in the necessities and the aspirations of the human spirit...Sports do provide entertainment, but of a special and profound sort." p. 338.

"Aristotle once said that young men cannot understand ethics or metaphysics until they reach the age of fifty."

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Thank you (foot)notes,

Hannah Ruth Yoest, Student Athlete, Curriculum Vita

Posted at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jesse Brown
Secretary of Veterans Affairs My friend and mentor Jesse Brown died on 15 August 2002.

I'm not sure I thanked him enough while he lived.

So I try to acknowledge him every August since he passed.

He died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. But, for the Hand of Divine Providence, he should have died decades earlier in Vietnam.

He survived and devoted his life to service to others and mentoring goofs like Your Business Blogger(R).

And he accomplished much in the federal government -- in what he did. And didn't do.

The combat wounded Marine was able to do two things few bureaucrats have been able to do:

Close a government facility, and

Say No to President Clinton.

Jesse Brown managed to do something many government watchdogs felt impossible: As Secretary of Veteran's Affairs, he worked with veterans' lobbies and closed out-dated or non-performing Veterans' Administration medical facilities.

These days when a government building or base needs to be closed, a special commission is set up to spread the guilt and minimize finger pointing.

Jesse Brown closed government buildings. Unbelievable. And he was a Democrat.

But an even bigger achievement was his ability to refuse Bill Clinton. Over lunch Secretary Brown told me the story of how he tactfully, adroitly rebuffed the chief of staff and the president's "requests" to cut the VA budget.

Jesse Brown did not succumb to Clinton's charms and other lies challenges.

As Jesse Brown tells the story, the chief of staff, Leon Panetta, I believe, called Jesse and instructed him to initiate and implement a sizable cut in his budget--and then take the ensuing political heat, sparing the president any collateral damage from Veterans' groups.

Brown declined.

So Panetta then puts Clinton on the phone to work his charm...

[Your Business Blogger(R) once worked with a beautiful young woman from Arkansas -- a rock-ribbed conservative -- who met Bill Clinton.

"It was the strangest thing," she said. "He ignored the whole rest of the room, looked deep into my eyes and asked for my vote."

Your Business Blogger(R) didn't move. It wasn't too hard to see where this was going. "What did you say?" I asked.

She said, "I told him 'yes.' It was like he hypnotized me. I said yes..."

She wouldn't be the last.]

...Panetta knowing that no one could resist Bill Clinton; no one could say 'no.'

So Bill and Jesse had an extended conversation and Clinton oozes and slides all all-round the topic -- but never makes a direct statement; never a suggestion; never a directive.

The President was simply smarmy and Jesse was un-seduced.

"Great talking with you Jesse," said Clinton.

"Great talking with you Mr. President," said Brown. And White House Signal signed off.

Jesse might well have been the only man to say "No" to Clinton.

Except for maybe Obama...

Jesse Brown was only 58 when he died.

He was wounded by enemy sniper fire in Vietnam leaving his right arm and hand partially paralyzed. This never slowed him down. People who knew Jesse always extended a left hand for a hand shake in greeting. His right wasn't serviceable.

I once asked him when he was at the pinnacle of his career what drove him to work so hard. Money, I thought; status, celebrity? No. "I just want to help my friends," he said.

His passion for service helped him become the Veteran's Affairs Secretary for Bill Clinton.

And yet he helped me, a nobody who worked for a Republican, a Republican governor.

Jesse is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, not far from my dad. Two warriors to whom I owe so much.

Semper Fidelis.

###

Three Duties of a Mentor
In Memoriam: Jesse Brown
Job Interview: 3 Questions for Your Prospective Boss

Follow us on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Both President Obama and Secretary Brown called Chicago 'home.' The VA Medical Center in Chicago is named after Jesse Brown.

Posted at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Manliness, by Harvey C. Mansfield, from Harvard was published by Yale University Press in 2006.

Harvey C. Mansfield, Ph.D.

Professor Mansfield is best known for awarding two grades at Harvard: The gentleman's 'A' and the actual unrecorded grade earned by the student, which was sometimes, [gasp!] a 'C.' I didn't know his middle initial was really 'C.' I thought students called him Harvey 'C' Mansfield as an digg on his giving out so many sub-A grades...

Mansfield begins, "Thumos is a quality of spiritness...than induces humans, and especially manly men, to risk their lives to save lives." p. xi.

"I do not make it my business to lament the decline of the gentleman in our day...If you want to know what a gentleman is, look up Squire Allworthy in Fielding's Tom Jones." p. xii.

Mansfield reminds of real gender differences, "that spitting [is done] by male athletes on television (not done by female athletes)..." p. xii.

"The gentleman, as opposed to a cad or a lout, does not take advantage of those weaker than himself, especially women." p. 5.

"Although he is expected to take the initiative--since in the relations of men and women someone at some point always has to make the risky first move--he allows time for choice or second thoughts by the woman and does not proceed if he is not wanted." p. 5.

"We now believe it is safer to rely on the law rather than an ideal." p. 5.

"Betty Friedan, the founder of American feminism, wrote of "the problem that has no name," by which she meant the boredom of the suburban housewife...But...we have lost the name we used to have for what mainly resists gender neutrality, which is manliness." p. 9.

"Jane Mansbridge's classic study, Why We Lost the ERA (1986), concludes that a constitutional amendment was perhaps unnecessary, that its aims could be accomplished through legislative and judicial interpretation--and this seems to have been correct." p. 10.

"Women on their own are not ruthless enough." p. 12.

"As the Moor Boadbil was being expelled from Alhambra in Spain, he turned around to gaze at it and heaved one last sigh, whereupon his mother said, "You do well to weep as a woman over what you could not defend as a man." p. 12.

"Manliness is...Two things,

The confidence of manly men and
Their ability to command.

The confidence of a manly man gives him independence of others. p. 16.

"John Wayne is still every American's idea of manliness." p. 17.

"We are attracted to the manly man because he imparts some of his confidence to everyone else." p. 18.

"The Greek word for manliness, andreia, is also the word the Greeks used for courage, the virtue concerned with controlling fear." p.18.

"Another view of manliness, more negative than it appears, can be found in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, at the end, in Mark Antony's tribute to Brutus. The speech ends, "His life was gentle, and the elements so mix'd in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, 'This was a man.'"" p. 19.

"A manliness, too, that seeks glory in risk and cannot abide the rational life of peace and security" p. 21.

Mansfield quotes a woman, "The problem is that men need to feel important." "Exactly!" says Mansfield. p. 21.

"The definition of manliness--confidence in the face of risk..." p. 23

"Men seek risk, women security..." p. 23

"Men are still more promiscuous than women, despite what the gender-neutral society says. "I don't pay them to come over...I pay them to leave," said the actor regarding the prostitutes he patronizes. p. 28.

Can women ever really act like men? "I can see how a dominating person could make use of the ability to seem caring, but how could a caring person be dominating without ceasing to be caring?" p. 31.

"What does John Wayne or Theodore Roosevelt show us about manliness in its completeness? A manly man is nothing if not an individual, one who sets himself apart, who is concerned with the honor rather than survival of his individual being. Or, better to say, he finds his survival only in his honor." p. 37.

Is testosterone chemical poisoning?

That male's willful will, too, is not just a concept, an airy, bodiless wish with nothing behind it. It has been found to have a chemical basis in the hormonal differences between men and women: me have much more testosterone. The political scientist Andrew Sullivan, who suffers from a condition requiring him to inject himself with testosterone, has written a graphic account of the leap in vigorous spiritedness that results. While it lasts he becomes a living, strutting stereotype.

"Other animal species seek to survive; humans want to survive with honor." p. 60.

Assertiveness training for women, "aims to teach them to make their own case, a habit one takes for granted in men,"

If that's so, it's no wonder that men have dominated business and politics. With or without training in moderation, men were just doing what comes naturally. But if women don't take steps to reduce their assertiveness deficit, will they succeed as well as men in the formally manly occupations? Perhaps their true policy is to assert themselves as women and not try to become artificial men, but that policy requires a certain distance from manly assertiveness. p. 68.

"Dr. Samuel Johnson...thought it ridiculous for a woman to assert herself [from Boswell's Life of Johnson] "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." p. 69.

"But "formidable women," as we call them, do exist. Expelled members of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet might think they had met one of them." p. 69.

"To get to that seat [of authority] you have to compete, and in a competition there are losers--usually more of them than winners. To assert yourself you must take the risk of losing." p. 69.

"Today's women want power, but they are not so eager to accept the risk that goes with seeking power. p. 69.

Today's woman thinks she can have wisdom and power together: wisdom without modesty, power without risk." p. 70.

"Facing risk is a feature of manliness that goes with holding power. More than most women, indeed, more than most men, the manly man accepts--nay, welcomes--a risky situation. He is not looking for the life of Riley." p. 70.

"Each woman wants security, but one finds it in her husband, the other in the government. p. 78.

"The most dramatic statement of manliness would be the one where the man is the source of all meaning, where nothing else has meaning unless the man supplies it. That is the condition of nihilism--a state in which nothing in itself has meaning; meaning has to be furnished by a human being, the sole source of meaning." p. 82. The Alert Reader is reminded that this is the center of the abortion debate: the unborn child has a 'right to life' -- not protected in the Founding Documents -- but granted at the discretion of the mother.

"Darwin was not a nihilist, but he prepared his generation and later generations for nihilism."

His theory of evolution not only denied the eternity of the species but also undermined all eternities, all permanence of meaning. And looming behind Darwin was the greater figure of Nietzsche. Nietzsche declared, and spread the news like a counter apostle, "God is dead." By this he meant all ideals, everything transcendent or spiritual, as well as God in any religion. p. 83.

"Poets do not believe in, or do not offer for belief, an order in the world, a cosmos." p. 85.

"Since the gods are capricious and human excellence is not rewarded, each of us is thrown back on himself." p. 85

"Teddy Roosevelt ...was not a disciple of William James... [who might be the] "educated men of weak fibre" whom Roosevelt was pleased to excoriate." p. 91.

"Girls do not need to make an effort to become women. Boys need to wrench themselves from their friends and their gangs, perhaps in a formal rite. The Jewish boy in his Bar Mitzvah says "now I am a man." p. 92.

Teddy Roosevelt, "invented the phrase "lunatic fringe..."" p 94.

"Manliness wants risk, not comfort and convenience." p. 94.

Teddy Roosevelt also coined "weasel words." p. 95.

"The American founders made an executive power strong enough to stand up to popular opinion and to withstand the temptation to seek popularity, but progressives like Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson made the president into a "leader" -- that is, on occasion a follower-- of public opinion. p.97.

"In real life today manly knowledge enables a man, not to be Tarzan, but to act effectively in an emergency and to fix things and solve problems without professional help." p. 102.

Mansfield quotes Nietzsche, "The true man wants two things, danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything." p. 116.

"When you first hear of Darwin's theory you might wonder about the moral consequences:

will this mean that human beings, since they are no better than brute, will be encouraged to forget morality and behave like brutes? The answer is worse than you suppose. It is that human beings may think it their moral duty to behave like brutes. Nietzsche foresaw this very when he said, "Man would rather will nothingness than not will." That is, of course, a statement about human nature and its perverseness. It implies that the low and the high are permanent elements in man and that if the low does not serve the high, the high will serve the low. p. 121.

"In the 1970's manly nihilism came to American women...Is had come indirectly through Simone de Beuvoir...What interested these women in Nietzsche was the nihilism he proclaimed as fact--God is dead--and the possibility of creating a new order in its place." p. 122.

"Nihilism...the disappearance of nature..." p. 122.

"What was womanly in the woman's movement? It was in the manner of this accomplishment...done by "raising consciousness," a new method of political promotion borrowed from business psychology...Working through language, they just asked men and other women why it is natural to use "he" instead of "she" to refer, for example, to a doctor...This was enough; no heavy argumentation was required." p. 123.

"In order to be free of men, these women wanted to change morality and deny nature. No longer were women destined through reproduction and child rearing to serve the common good and the future of the species. Women could be as irresponsible as men and leave those vital matters to someone else." p. 123.

Mansfield quotes American Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "nature has made the mother the guardian of the child." p. 125.

"Beauvoir is much more radical; she shares the desire but as far as possible rejects all compromise...Her book ends with a quotation from Karl Marx affirming the brotherhood of men and women in the new realm of liberty in the communist utopia." p. 132.

"Beauvoir argues that women should not esteem motherhood as much as they have...greater sexual liberty...[is] a good thing, and that abortions should not be reluctantly or regretted." p. 132.

Mansfield quotes Beauvoir, "One is not born, but becomes, a woman." p. 133.

"The strangest feature of [Beauvoir's] The Second Sex is its almost complete failure to discuss women's jobs and its almost total preoccupation with another way of escaping the family--sex." p. 135.

"Marx admitted [sex roles] would have to go." p. 137

"Neither Marx nor Nietzsche had any use for morality, especially sexual morality..." p. 138.

"However diverse, all feminism today is looking for ways to keep women independent of men." p. 140.

"Germaine Greer [The Female Eunuch] sprinkles her text with highlighted quotations from Mary Wollstonecraft, whom she admires, but none of them have to do with the chastity Wollstonecraft so insisted on." p. 141.

"[Shulamith] Firestone [The Dialectic of Sex], a deep thinker, quotes Beauvoir in order to argue that women's reproductive biology, and not the social construction of patriarchy, is the cause of women's oppression." p. 142.

"Becoming manlike is a strange way of proving you are independent of men (ladylike would seem to be a better way). p. 145.

"This is why I have called feminism "nihilism." It says that being a woman is nothing definite and that the duty of women is to advance that nothingness as a cause." p. 147.

"Consciousness is a word used by Marx." p. 150.

"The mightiest woman of our time, Margaret Thatcher, is no model for feminists, partly because of her conservative opinions, of course, but also because her renowned insensitivity makes them uneasy. Feminists prefer to seek out and confer recognition on unnoticed women from the past; they favor obscure authors rather than great names like Jane Austen and Edith Wharton..." p. 152.

Friedan's [The Feminine Mystique] starts with the "problem with no name." But it turns out to have a name, boredom." p. 152.

"Friedan does not dwell on sex. She wants to answer the voice within women that says, "I want something more than my husband and my children and my home." This "something more" proves to be a job, or rather, "creative work of her own." Creative work enables a woman to sense her freedom or her, says Friedan..." p. 153.

"Men who want to play with their lives as if they were supermen...have always had to face women as their critics. The trouble with feminist women is that they don't have wives to teach them sense." p. 154.

"Naomi Wolf...The Beauty Myth (1991)...developed Friedan's notion of the feminine mystique. Beauty is a myth foisted on women by men." p. 154.

"Is it nonsense to think that turmoil in one's sex life is independence?" p. 156.

Mansfield indirectly references the "heart of stone" that abortion brings to women,

"Control over one's body" is a phrase often used to claim the right of abortion, an act that frees a woman from the troubles of giving birth and child rearing but does not save her from regret or from the risk of becoming callous if she should get in the habit of preferring her convenience to other, more valuable things. Autonomy sounds good when it is claimed for the sake of nobility, much less so when it is for convenience. To insist on keeping the right of abortion absolutely intact, with no concessions to reasonable doubt, betrays the presence of moralism in those rail against that fault when they confront the other side of the debate. p. 156.

"[Feminism] wants transcendence for the sake of independence, and the trouble is that the two are inconsistent. Independence means that you are satisfied with yourself; transcendence means that you are not...And the gender-neutral society does not know whether to ignore the sexual difference (independence) or abolish it (transcendence). p . 161.

"Americans were ready to give justice for women--the liberal of equality--and did not much care that the advocates for women spoke more of power than justice, more of sex than career, more of autonomy than happiness." p. 164.

"In liberalism there are love of liberty and desire for security. The two are linked because they are necessary for each other. Nobody wants liberty without security, which is chaos ("the war of all against all," said Thomas Hobbes), and nobody wants security without liberty, which is slavery." p. 165.

"Desire for security...might prompt you to settle for slavery as better than death; it is therefore always calculated in terms of self-interest, and it is risk-averse." p. 166.

"The gender-neutral society is not friendly toward risky activity, even on behalf of liberty, that might give advantage to manly men as risk-takers and thus upset the balance of the sexes..." p. 166

"Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a kind of liberal, though we would not recognize him as such today because he was opposed to self-government and favored monarchy." p. 166

"Hobbes has the mentality of a lawyer or an insurance agent, always focused on the unlikely and the unexpected." p. 169.

"Hobbes deserves the mantle no one has yet awarded him of having created the sensitive male. For the sensitive male is one who follows Hobbes's advice to lay down his right." p. 173.

Mansfield predates but explains the brilliance and success of the conservative TEA Party movement,

Machiavelli had said that men in society are divided into two "humors," a princely one that craves domination and a popular one that does not wish to be commanded. [John] Locke selects the popular one that does not wish to be commanded. Locke selects the popular humor to characterize the behavior of a free people. He wants government to be sustained not by the virtues it promotes (as did Plato and Aristotle), nor by principles of subjection (as Hobbes), but by hostility to government. Government is to be obeyed in a spirit of unfriendly regard, the very spirit that makes government difficult to sustain...[W]hy not appeal to a healthy dislike of dominion in order to counter the desire on the part of "princes" to dominate? p.177.

"In the Two Treatises of Government (1690), still the greatest philosophical statement of the liberalism by which we live, Locke lays down constitutional forms...[where] "Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't." p. 178.

"Yet when morality comes to be realized, nature returns to accompany, and nag at, a priori rationality...Women, Kant says, are unfit for citizenship, having be implanted by nature with fearfulness designed to keep the womb safe, so that they need the protection of males. This does not mean women must be submissive, only that they must be modest. With their modesty women can manage the excessive, idealized desire of males in order to govern them." p. 182.

"The only true humanity, according to Beauvoir, so far exclusively male, is to transcend the given or the natural or the "immanent" in a manner I have called nihilist because it accepts no guide but will to power. In the feminist society there are no social roles. Roles would be replaced by individual identities...that...would pass over to the...temporary desires..." p.192.

"A woman's "docility" is not meekness but actually her means of conquest. It is actually women's weakness that compels them to establish an indirect rule of manipulation over men. When women try to resemble men, they will be mastered by men." p. 195.

Feminists who follow French revolutionary Rousseau, "are caught in suspense between their desire not be women, a sex they consider subordinate, and their desire to promote the advantage of women so as to stop being subordinate." p. 198.

"A definition of manliness as confidence and competence in the face of risk." p. 216.

"Machiavelli remarks that "very rarely do men know how to be altogether wicked or altogether good."" p. 225.

"The manly or courageous person...takes responsibility in a risky situation." p. 226.

"A word of warning, too, should be delivered to the feminists who are too busy with their own careers to have time to criticize manly men and want to give over that task to psychologists with their "anger management." The many irresponsible thinkers of modern times are divided, roughly, into those who expect too much reform and those who have given up on reform." p. 226.

"The...test of art [fo balancing conflicting expectations] is producing results." p. 226.

Professor Mansfield describes, "three ways of transcending sex differences: repressing the difference between male and female...ignoring the difference...and respecting difference." p. 228.

"Respecting [sex differences] is most in accord with our nature, but then we have seen that nature does not prescribe exactly how she is to be respected." p. 228.

Mansfield doesn't really want to give out "pointers on how to live," but gives us hints anyway, fortunately, "I could tell young women not to disparage motherhood in the hearing of a man they want to attract. If you do, you will make a man think his mother is being disparaged and he will compare you to her--just what you want to avoid." p. 229.

"I could tell young men that women want to be taken seriously almost as much as they want to be loved. To take women seriously you must first take yourself seriously and after that ask them what they think..." p. 229

Manliness is not a self-help book, Mansfield writes, "My book is for thinkers...to get us to address the problem of manliness." p. 229

"The actions of the Islamic fascists are proof enough that despite our civilization there remain barbaric cutthroats waiting to assault us...we need not just to imagine the moral equivalent of war but to wage a real war. Here is a useful employment for manliness." p 230.

"The first modern thinker, Machiavelli, began from the observation that the world in his time suffered from "ambitious idleness." p. 230.

Mansfield defines the politically liberal mindset, "[Machiavelli] saw correctly that anyone who wants to do good will end up yearning for much more good than is possible in this world [as compared to the next world in eternity]." p. 230.

"Machiavelli tried to simplify manliness so as to make it more effective. Manliness henceforth would be occupied with making humans more powerful rather than making them better. Machiavelli called this "prudence," but I have to say it was not wisdom. Wisdom lies in recognizing our need for perfection as much as for power." p. 231.

"Thus we have replaced the manly man with the bourgeois, a character who has several faces, none of them manly. One...professional..[is] gender neutrality. A professional is formed by uniform education and judged by objective criteria, not tested by manly deeds." p. 232.

"One professional can be substituted for another, and a woman can take the place of a man...Professionals treat each other with "professional courtesy" but never chivalry." p. 232.

"Politicians who do what they think right are manly; those who do what you think right are unmanly." P. 233.

"Edmund Burke laments over the imprisonment of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution, that no one was man enough to avenge her: "But the age of chivalry is gone. That the age of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."" p. 233.

"Manliness must prove itself and do so before an audience. It seeks to be theatrical, welcomes drama, and wants your attention. Rational control prefers routine and doesn't like getting excited...Manliness favors war, likes risk, and admires heroes...(no one needs or responds to an incentive to be manly)...Manliness likes to show off and wants to be appreciated...It is generous but judgmental." p. 234.

"Affirmative action is manly if you do it for yourself, otherwise not. Commerce is unmanly, yet there is manliness in the spirit of commercial enterprise, so that Tocqueville can say that "Americans put a sort of heroism into there manner of doing commerce." The Yankee clipper ships he was speaking of in 1835 went to China and back in order to sell a pound of tea for one penny less than the competition--heroes and mercenaries at the same time." p. 234.

"The popularity of sports testify to the inevitability of manliness..." p. 234.

Mansfield's favor word is "assert." p. 234.

"Manliness is never selfless..." p. 235.

"Tocqueville feared the gradual construction of a new democratic despotism, an "immense tutelary power" over people that "would take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living."" p. 235.

"Can it be an accident that the first atheist regimes in human history were the first totalitarian regimes?" p. 237.

"So if you were to ask Tocqueville...to what he attributes the prosperity and force of the American people, he would answer that "it is the superiority of its women." p. 237.

"The gender-neutral society... was accomplished by feminism...What should we think of feminism? Feminism is the culmination of rational control by abolishing the sex differences, facilitating the management of human beings by removing the grand source of irrational insistence, manliness. Women are of course liberated but so are men. Women lose their hindrances, men their inhibitions..." p. 238.

Mansfield quotes Plato's Laws, "The Athenian Stranger makes a passing reference to "bitter, women's raging" that differs from men's anger in its implied recognition of vulnerability." p. 240.

Professor Mansfield discusses feminism,

Women are misled by feminism into mistaking themselves. They are told they have no weaknesses because they have no essence, no definition; hence they have no limitations. Women can do anything, young women are foolishly assured. They are also told to see their strength as weakness. To be prudent, cautious, modest, persuasive, undemanding, unselfish is unworthy of...what? An assertive male? An autonomous entity? Feminism has no understanding of womanhood; it leaves women without a guide and even tries to convince them that they need no guide." p. 240 emphasis added.

What womanhood should be in our society I leave to a new feminism less fascinated with manliness than the feminism we have had. The radical feminism I have discussed is not what most women believe or practice, but it is the only feminism there is. Another better feminism might begin from the idea that women, as many of them say, "want it all." They want a career and they want to be women too. They don't want to be defined, and they do. The challenge to a new feminism is to make sense of those two desires and unite them." p. 241

Professor Mansfield closes, "To protect women's careers we need a gender-neutral state...

but the gender-neutral society gives no respect to the liberal distinction between state and society or between public and private...It makes women think that they are unfaithful to the cause of women if they do not behave like men...Women should be free to enter on careers but no compelled--yet they should also be expected to be women. And men should be expected, not merely free, to be manly. A free society cannot survive if we are so free that nothing is expected of us. emphasis added p. 244

Notes

"For women holding office, the gender gap in political opinion in much wider than in the electorate. Successful ambition in women makes them more womanish in the sense of representing women's views." p. 254.

Mansfield cites Democracy in America, "Tocqueville's American woman is both knowing and modest, however; "she has pure morals rather than a chaste mind." p. 259.

"Charlotte Gilman's Herland, which is a community held together by a religion of motherhood. To a male visitor, a woman of Herland asks with honor: "Destroy the unborn--!' she said in a hard whisper. 'Do men do that in your country?" Gilman, Herland, 66, 69-70." p. 259.

"Beauvoir's chapter "The Mother" begins with nine pages on abortion (Second Sex, 484-93); later she says provocatively, "When woman suffocates in a dull gynaeceum--brothel or middle-class home" (603); and the reader comes upon nothing about women's responsibility for morality but rather finds remarks like this: "marriage is directly correlated with prostitution" (555)." p. 260.

"In Donald Symon's words: "Among all peoples, copulation is considered to be essentially a service or favor that women render to men, and not vice versa." This is the last of the seven sex differences that he finds in all societies. Evolution of Human Sexuality, 27-28." p. 261.

"Greer, Female Eunuch, 156-57; Greer in her saucy way hopes that in the future "children might grow up without the burden of gratitude for the gift of life which they never asked for." In her own case, she says that as children, "we could see that our mothers blackmailed us with self-sacrifice" (249, 157). But don't we owe gratitude for gifts we don't ask for? For the gift of life that makes it possible to ask for things?" p. 261.

"In cases of sexual encounter women are liable (1) to become pregnant, (2) to suffer more from sexually transmitted disease, and (3) to feel more emotional hurt afterwards." p. 262.

"All men by nature desire to know" is the opening sentence of Aristotle's Metaphysics." p. 263.

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Thank you (foot)notes,

See Margaret Sanger

Posted at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blessed Are The Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood, by Bob Marshall and Chuck Donovan represents one of the best scholarly works on Planned Parenthood. Forewards by Dr. Benard Nathanson and John Cardinal O'Connor; published by Ignatius Press in 1991.

Robert "Bob" Marshall

Chapter One, Margaret Sanger: The Founding Mother, the founder of Planned Parenthood frames the book. "Her magazine the Woman Rebel [has] "No Gods, No Masters," below the masthead...[and] claimed the right to 'be lazy...an unmarried mother ...to create...to destroy...to love.'" p. 7.

"Sanger published such articles as "Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics" (June 1920)..." p. 9. The purpose appeared, as Sanger writes, to be "To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds..." p. 9.

"Human sexuality would increasingly fall under the sphere of medicine rather than morals, although it would soon be clear that the criterion of health was often little more than a convenient cover for hedonism." p. 12.

Margaret Sanger wrote Gamble, a eugenics activist and an heir to the Proctor & Gamble fortune, on December 10, 1939,

While the "Colored Negroes" do respect white doctors, more trust would ensue with black physicians. She wrote that: "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." p. 18.

All that is needed to succeed is "a clever bit of machination to persuade them to commit race suicide.." Marshall quotes Dorothy B. Ferebee addressing Planned Parenthood's minority outreach efforts. p. 19.

"Abortion and sterilization on request should be certainly be introduced before family size by coercion is attempted." [emphasis added] by Marshall quoting Alan Guttmacher. p 39.

Chuck Donovan

Marshall and Donovan quote the founder of Planned Parenthood, "Sex was a natural part of life," Sanger wrote, "I had always known where babies came from. My mother never discussed sex with us," p. 58.

The "theme of Sanger's thought is pervasive in Planned Parenthood's history: liberality in all things sexual save procreation." p. 59.

Planned Parenthood was relentless in the "aggressive merchandising of...abortion to children." p. 65.

"Margaret Sanger believed in the inutility of a state-by-state strategy for legal change..." p. 113. Sanger did not hold for an incremental approach for changing American values.

"The collaboration between the sex industry's most polished marketeers and the leadership of the sex-education movement occurred first on the level of principle: If to some feminists the objectification of women is offensive, to the harbingers of sexual freedom it is not." p. 124.

"Margaret Sanger, the sixth child in a family of eleven...was baptized a Catholic. Her father was an apostate Catholic...described as "free-thinking." Biographer Madeline Gray has written that Sanger sought "poise and surcease for her recurrent depression through astrology, numerology, sex, religious cults..." attended seances; and was a member of the Rosicrucian Society...Sanger believed she had undergone numerous reincarnations usually as a member of the social elite. One such nether-world inquiry placed Sanger...as the daughter of an emperor of Atlantis..." p. 131

"For Sanger the proper attitude toward her critics was difficult to distinguish from personal vilification, character assassination, and old-fashioned bigotry. Sanger, a constant fellow-traveller with anti-Catholics..." p. 133.

"Sam Saloman...who worked at the U.S. Government Printing Office, pointed out...

Appearing before congressional committees...its propagandists [for sexual freedom] appear as the benign, motherly type of women...

Before sex radicals, they appear as sophisticated women, demanding sex equality for women and men...demanding also that society safeguard sex from the inevitable consequences of indulgence...

Mrs. Sanger...was asked to join a group of 30 sex radicals in a symposium on sex...This is her conception of the new morality..."what they consider 'morality' we consider 'moral imbecility'...our morality is an 'ethics of the dust'...It is not a morality concerned with...absolute rights and wrongs, with unhealthy lingering interests in virginity and chastity...but...solve these problems with instruments of intelligence, insight, and honesty." emphasis added p. 141.

The Catholic Church was on to Margaret Sanger early, "Archbishop Murray, sensing that Sanger's real goal included abortion...likening [Planned Parenthood] to the Dillinger mob. Both groups, he said, were "organizing to commit murder."" p. 143.

"[M]any nonclerical Protestants and Catholics could see through to the real goal of Planned Parenthood, namely abortion on demand and all that entailed." p. 145.

Not only was Margaret Sanger better at marketing than the Catholic Church, but also better at organizing, "The string of Catholic successes in isolating Planned Parenthood from community support was stopped, largely due to Planned Parenthood's persistent efforts at coalition building." p. 157. "Aided by careful Planned Parenthood affiliate intelligence work in identifying sympathetic or friendly Catholics." p. 162.

"Justice Felix Frankfurter, neither Catholic nor conservative..." rejected the health exception needed for contraceptives. P. 167.

"[Justice William O.] Douglas reached for the novel insight the Court would use repeatedly of the next few decades to strike down state statues affecting family life: "Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees, that help give them life and substance...various guarantees create zones of privacy." p. 168. (There is no evidence Justice William O. Douglas was drunk when he wrote this decision.)

"Justice Potter Stewart dissented [from Douglas on 'penumbras formed by emanations'] noting, "With all deference, I can find no such general right of privacy in the Bill of Rights, in any other part of the Constitution or in any case ever before decided by this Court."" p. 168.

"The Oath of Hippocrates...embodied a "Natural Law" ethic compatible with orthodox Jewish and Christian thought and practice." P. 175.

"Alan Guttmacher himself said in 1971 that it was a decided advantage for Planned Parenthood not to be tied down by a venerated document like the U.S. Constitution or the constraints of the outdated Hippocratic Oath which forbade doctors from performing abortions or assisting suicide." p. 175.

"In 1866 the American Medical Association decided to issue a brief but comprehensive statement on abortion...Horatio R. Stone, obstetrics and medical jurisprudence and a leading antiabortionist of his day [wrote] "The Criminality and Physical Evils of Forced Abortions,"...quoted Percivil's Medical Ethics to the effect that "to extinguish the first spark of life is a crime of the same nature both against our Maker and society, as to destroy an infant, a child, or a man."'p. 175.

"In addition, Storer cited a statement from 1653 that decried the putting to death of a being "in the shop of nature," i.e., the womb, as "a thing deserving all hate and detestation." With the full support of his colleagues, Storer declared that all "physicians have now arrived at the unanimous opinion that the foetus in utero is alive from the very moment of conception..." p. 176.

"The Academy of Pediatrics also opposed the Reagan administration's efforts to mandate nondiscriminatory treatment of handicapped newborn infants." p. 177.

"Dr. Leo Alexander, an official medical expert at the Nuremberg Trials of German physician-executioners of Nazi atrocities, has stated: "Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. It started with the acceptance of the attitude...that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived." p. 178.

"To retain the logical symmetry a physician is disposed to apply to his trade, it follows that the unwanted child must become the medical equivalent of a disease process...Mary Calderone...in the 1960's... lamented that: "...we are still unable to put babies in the class of dangerous epidemics, even though this is the exact truth."" p. 182.

"Planned Parent's own journal has stated that pregnancy "may be defined as a disease...[and]...treated by evacuation of the uterine contents." p. 182.

"Medical relativism...[is an]...acceptable goal of "health care"...Dr. J. Robert Willson of Temple University...stated: "We have to stop thinking in terms of individual patients and change our direction...the individual patient is expendable in the general scheme of things, particularly if the infection [that the patient] acquires is sterilizing but not lethal."...Medical Director of [Planned Parenthood] Mary Calderone...said, "It thrilled me to hear a clinician like Dr. Willson talk in terms of public health applications as I, a public health person, would not have dared talk, particularly in this assembly." p.183.

Marshall and Donovan quote Shakespeare,

King Lear: Hear, Nature, hear...Suspend thy purpose...To make the creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up her organs of increase. (Shakespeare, King Lear, act 1, scene 4) p. 221.

"And research has shown that adolescents who believe themselves less responsible to parents, society, or God are more likely to indulge in premarital intercourse." p. 231.

"It becomes easy to see why Planned Parenthood's president [at that time] Faye Wattelton believes "it is a mistake to enter into debates on questions of morality." Minimizing the guilt that accompanies the departure from the moral order is also a convenient way to dull one's conscience." p. 231.

"In 1971, Dr. George Langmyhr, Planned Parenthood medical director at the time acknowledged that, "...Planned Parenthood [has] accepted ...the necessity of abortion as an integral part of any complete ...family planning program." p 239.

"When the topic of abortion came up, Sanger's flair for the dramatic helped her draw a line just where her particular audience wanted it. This line was different for each new audience, a testimony to her ability to adapt her ...crusade to the needs of the moment." p. 239.

"[Margaret Sanger] had a long record of support for hygienic abortion performed by "competent" personnel. In March 1914 in a publication call The Woman Rebel, Sanger hinted at approval of abortion. She suggested that feminists would "claim the right to be lazy...an unmarried mother...to create...to destroy..."" p. 240.

So how does Planned Parenthood understand public law? In 1921 in a "conference in New York City sponsored by Sanger's nascent Planned Parenthood group...Dr. Andre Tridon said, "...breaking the law is not a crime, but a public duty." p. 241.

"A model abortion law was proposed at a May 1959 meeting of the American Law Institute (ALI). The model law allowed abortion until the twenty-sixth week of pregnancy if the doctor believed that the mother's physical or mental health would be gravely impaired; if the child would be born with grave mental physical handicap...Judge Learned Hand [was a member of ALI and] Hand's wife was a member of Sanger's Birth Control League, and his daughter Mrs. Robert Ferguson, later became president of [Planned Parenthood] from 1953 to 1956. Judge Hand complained to Guttmacher that the ALI proposal was "too d@mned conservative.""p. 247.

"This Planned Parenthood-spawned ALI proposal added some interesting nuances to the meaning of "health." First was the provision that if the child was not healthy, he could be put to death. Second, the child--and this was not explained--was held capable of causing the mother's mental health to deteriorate, and therefore he could be killed." p. 247.

Marshall and Donovan quote "Dr. Bernard Nathanson, former abortion provider and now an ardent pro-lifer..."How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal?...5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year...I confess that i knew the figures were totally false...The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated..."" p. 250.

"One..."benefit," according to Guttmacher, was that "24 [percent] of the abortions in New York City were done on black women, who form 18 [percent] of the total population." p. 257.

In the Restated Certificate of Incorporation of [Planned Parenthood] in New York, March 3, 1972, "changed its charter to "provide leadership in making effective means of voluntary fertility including...abortion and sterilization, available and accessible to all...This...should lay to rest any notion that [Planned Parenthood] was merely pro-choice and not pro-abortion" p. 259.

"Abortion as a "Medical Matter" Adolph Hitler wrote in his infamous tract Mein Kampf, "The great masses of the people...will more easily fall victims to a great lie than a small one."...Because the physician is called upon to use techniques and instruments as tools to implement the abortion decision, abortion has been mistakenly thought by some to be simply a medical matter...But to conclude that abortion is purely a "medical matter" is like saying war is purely a military matter and that therefore only generals should decide...or that capital punishment is simply a concern of electrical engineers." p.272.

"A doctor who preforms elective abortions is not acting as a healer. In short, he is not practicing medicine; he is merely a biological technician who seeks to bring about the death of the human fetus (a Latin term for "offspring"). p. 273.

As far back as 1859 the AMA understood the marketing of abortion where the baby is ignored, "A law which has maternal health as its sole or main concern is not likely to be worded in such a way that the human status of the foetus be given human rights protected by law." p. 273.

"A 1970 editorial form California Medicine presaged the now partially completed slide away from the traditional sanctity of life ethic:

Since the old ethic has not been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death...this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary..." p. 274.

"Margaret Sanger...had as one of [her] major goals the elimination of live births of those, and among those deemed inferior. [T]he cure for these evils is "proper breeding on a scientific basis." p. 275.

The eugenicist Laughlin cited Justice Holmes' words:

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime...society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccinations is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes...Three generations of imbeciles are enough. p. 277.

"Mrs. Alva Myrdal...said that Sweden only wanted those children who were wanted by their parents." p. 279.

Planned Parenthood has always been expert in marketing. "Borrowing sales techniques of striking while the iron is hot, social workers who identified women with possibly inferior offspring were told that "if the patient is in her 14th week or more, while you have the patient there, call in the referral immediately...Presumably delaying the testing too much longer would make the abortion of a possibly less than perfect child a bit messier than usual." p. 287.

Planned Parenthood emphasizes the mother at the expense of the unborn baby and the humanity of the baby is ignored. "James Hoffman, a public health nutritionist employed by South Carolina [in]... 1983 observ[ed] that the more able the educator is at personifying the fetus, the better the mother will eat. "It seems very inconsistent to me to treat the fetus like a baby when one is interested in feeding him/her, bu to depersonify the fetus when the baby is 'unwanted' or has a genetic defect."" p. 288.

"This policy of semantic gymnastics, successfully carried out over a period of decades, included efforts to redefine nearly every term in the lexicon of human reproduction: pregnancy, conception, abortion, and human being or person." p.291.

At a Planned Parenthood symposium, "Bent Boving, a Swedish fertility researcher...said..."to destroy an established pregnancy could depend on something so simple as a prudent habit of speech." p. 292.

"...Planned Parenthood's redefinition ...[of] the claim that no one really knows when human life begins. Yet...in 1933...Dr. Alan Guttmacher [said] "We of today know that man...starts life as an embryo within the body of the female; and that the embryo is formed from the fusion of two single cells,,,This all seems so simple..." p. 295.

"However, after [Guttmacher] conversion to the "pro-choice" view [his] past knowledge seemed to vanish...And ...in 1973 [he wrote] Does human life begin before or with the union of the gametes...? I, for one, confess I do not know." p. 295.

"This view had its origins more in attitudes than knowledge..." p. 295.

"Dr. Sally Faith Dorfman ...has noted that during an abortion, "a compassionate and sensitive sonographer should remember to turn the screen away from the plane of view. Staff too may find themselves increasing disturbed by the repeated visual impact of an aspect of their work that they need to partially deny in order to continue..." p. 297.

"Gaining public acceptance for the French abortion pill, RU-486, is in part a matter of contriving and using acceptable euphemisms." p. 301.

"Notice that when Planned Parenthood uses the "wanted baby" phrase, that such babies have rights. Unwanted babies have no rights and are morally equivalent to disposable property. But under the wanted baby scheme, where do rights come from? From being wanted, of course. But who is it that does the "wanting" that results in the conferring of rights? Not the father, nor a couple seeking to adopt. No, it is the pregnant woman alone who gets to confer rights.

Planned Parenthood could never use the phrase, "Every child a valuable child," because that would implicitly recognize the intrinsic worth of the child irrespective of whether the father, mother, etc., "wanted" the baby." p. 310

"As a nation we were once respected and admired for our ideals; now, after the...sexual revolt, we are merely envied for our machines." p. 316.

"Planned Parenthood sees certain children as a social disease or an epidemic. Barrenness is considered an affliction in Scripture...Planned Parenthood opposes even a twenty-four-hour abortion waiting period..." p. 317.

"Professor Harold J. Laski hinted hinted at some of the ultimate goals his ideological [pro-abortion] kindred had in mind. Laski wrote to Justice Holmes, after the Supreme Court decision upholding Virginia's law sterilizing Carrie Buck against her will, advocating "steriliz[ing] all the unfit, among whom I include all fundamentalists." p. 320.

"Those so at war with the order of creation eventually come to propound contradictions without the slightest awareness of doing so. Luke Lee, in a publication funded by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)...and the U.S. State Department would write:

But if a state can justify restrictions on the number of spouses on human rights grounds, it can similarly justify restrictions of the number of children each couple can have...[and] can it not be argued that "in allowing children that are born to live a higher quality of life," compulsory sterilization may be considered as "reaffirming an individual's right to procreate"?

Mandatory sterilization means freedom to reproduce. Up is down, good is evil, hatred is love. Big Brother, in George Orwell's totalitarian novel, 1984, longed for this state of affairs. We have it now. What is to be done?" p. 320.

"French philosopher Etienne Gilson once said that "philosophy always buries its undertakers." Applying this adage to the present situation, we might say that the Planned Parenthood movement in all its social manifestations is its own best funeral director. It believes in death, it inflicts death; let this movement have what it has given others." p. 321.

Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, A pregnant single woman ("Roe") challenged the constitutionality of a Texas statue forbidding abortion....Norma McCorvey, an astrology devotee...had already given birth...claimed that she had been raped, but much later acknowledged she had not been raped." p. 328.

In Roe, "The Court need not "resolve the difficult question of when life begins" because "those trained in medicine, philosophy, and theology" were "unable to arrive at any consensus." p. 329.

In "1981...[the courts decided that a twenty-four-hour waiting period and...a...parental consent provision were both constitutional." p. 333.

Harris v. McRae, June 30, 1980, A lower court judge, "Dooling had asserted that, with respect to abortion, the courts, not Congress, had the power over the treasury because "poverty is a medical condition." As it is known, "The Hyde Amendment was upheld." This case was argued at the Supreme Court by legal counsel of Americans United for Life.

"The Roe v. Wade decision did not state that a woman had a right to an abortion per se...The "fundamental" right to privacy, which the Court ostensibly found in the Constitution, is surely one of the more curious constitutional rights. For example, it is the only constitutional right that must be secured by a licensed physician in good standing (Connecticut v. Menillo [1975]). p. 339.

"The Court in Roe and Menillo did not rule on the alleged privacy right of a woman to abort herself. So it can be said that, in fact, what the Court did create through its own-conferred legislative powers was not a privacy right of abortion for the pregnant woman, but a right immunizing licensed physicians against state prosecution for aborting women." p. 339.

"Planned Parenthood Abortion Workshop--Business Principles inside the Killing Center; A "health clinic" that kills 50 percent of its patients at the request of the other 50 percent reduces to absurdity the profession and practice of medicine. But in a permissive, hedonist, neglectful society, the fondness--indeed, the need for euphemisms designates these killing centers as "family planning" clinics." p.345.

"Potential [abortionist] entrepreneurs were told that if they had a large clientele they would "...be taking in a large, large volume of cold, hard cash" -- and that the money would have to be dealt with sensibly." p. 345. A cash business is the easiest on which to evade taxes.

"Costs could be kept down in several ways [in an abortion center]..."clean" [surgical] techniques were [substituted for] "sterile" ones in order to satisfy Planned Parenthood's standards." Planned Parenthood abortion workshop, 1973, p. 346

Marshall and Donovan close their outstanding book with direction from Planned Parenthood on abortion and money, "Though it hardly needed to be mentioned [during the abortion business seminar] it was dutifully pointed out that "[t]he cashier's desk is the last stop for the patient before she leaves the center." Patients are urged, management suggested, to bring a certified check, traveler's check, or money order. Medicaid patients were served if they presented their Medicaid cards." p. 347

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Thank you (foot)notes,

Full Disclosure: Charmaine Yoest used to work for Chuck Donovan. The Honorable Robert Marshall is a state delegate in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Posted at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Business 111 Principles of Supervision I, syllabus
Description

BUS 111 - Principles of Supervision I

John Wesley Yoest, Jr. (Jack)
Adjunct Professor of Management Science, Technology and Business

Principles of Supervision 1 (Lecture)

Mondays and Wednesdays
11:30 am to 12:45 pm
August 23 to December 13, 2010

Classroom location to be announced

Main Campus:
Northern Virginia Community College
3001 North Beauregard Street
Alexandria, VA 22311

NVCC phone: 703 845-6200
Fax: 703-845-6009
Jack@Yoest.org
or,
JYoest@NVCC.edu
Cell: 202.215.2434

Education:
M.B.A., George Mason University
B.S., Old Dominion University
Graduate Course Work, Oxford University

1) Principles of Supervision 1:

Prerequisites: Each student must be able to:

1) Read and write English fluently. A satisfactory placement score for ENG 111 is strongly recommended, and

2) Have the desire to understand the work of the first line supervisor.

Course Objectives:

Teaches the fundamentals of supervision, including the primary responsibilities of the supervisor. Introduces factors relating to the work of supervisor and subordinates. Covers aspects of leadership, job management, work improvement, training and orientation, performance evaluation, and effective employee/ supervisor relationships.

When you do well in this course, you will be able to:

1. Understand the operating roles of the supervisor.
2. Formulate objectives, make action plans, and assign tasks.
3. Understand motivation and effective leadership.
4. Set standards and evaluate performance.
5. Recognize the need for training and organize on-the-job training as appropriate.
6. Understand techniques for communicating, managing conflict, and administering discipline.

This course teaches the principles, skills, and techniques necessary to manage resources at the operational or front-line level. This course is introductory in that it assumes no previous managerial knowledge or experience.

Text: Supervision; Concepts & Skill-Building, 7th edition; Samuel C. Certo; McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2010.

2) Academic Requirements:

Homework: There will be reading assignments from the text for every class.

Find a friend: Exchange contact information with at least three class members to keep current on any missed classes. This is a course requirement for points. Your Business Professor is not the student's first point of contact for gathering routine information.

Establish a domain & social media name. The student will reserve and claim a URL address, for example: www.yoest.com. This is a course requirement for points toward final grade.

Quizzes: Expect a short quiz in the first ten minutes of every class period. Questions may be very short answer, or fill-in-the-blank.

Class Participation: The Student is expected to volunteer and help move the class discussions.

Supervision in Current Events: To be presented in person and turned in on paper. Details below.

Examinations: There will be a Mid-Term and Final Exam; multiple choice and short answer. The Final Exam will be given on 13 December, the last day of class. The Final will be comprehensive.

3) Attendance:

Regular attendance of this course is expected. Failure to do so could have an adverse effect on the student's course grade. Any class material and assignments missed are the student's responsibility. Success will depend upon showing up.

Attendance will be taken at each class. Attendance at scheduled tests and presentations is mandatory. No make-ups will be given -- there are no exceptions from Your Business Professor.

If a student misses the first two weeks of class s/he will be dropped from the class.

Canceled Classes: If class is canceled for any reason, the student is still responsible for the material due. Any quiz on that material might be given at the next class, in addition to the regularly scheduled quiz.

Supervision Current Events Presentations will not be accepted late and must be delivered in person.

Special Needs and Accommodations--Please address with the instructor any special problems or needs at the beginning of the semester/session. If the student is seeking accommodations based on disability, then s/he should provide a disability data sheet, which can be obtained from the Counselor for Special Needs.

In the event of an emergency cancellation of class, please check Blackboard for further instructions.

Excessive absences, as defined in the college catalog, could result in the student receiving the grade 'F' for the course.

The Successful Student will devote two hours of class preparation for each hour of class room instruction.

The student will be asked to grade the effectiveness of each test.

Withdrawals: Any student can withdraw from this course without academic penalty under certain conditions. Initiation of the withdrawal is the student's responsibility and the grade of 'W' will be awarded.

Last day to drop with tuition refund or change to audit (Census Date) is ______________.

The last day for withdrawal, without academic penalty, for this semester/session is _______________.

Beyond this date dropping a course or failure to attend will result in the grade of 'F' except under mitigating circumstances. Documentation of these circumstances is required AND a grade of 'W' implies that the student was making satisfactory progress (passing) in the course at the time of the withdrawal.

Campus classes are closed by division, day or evening. Sometimes day classes will meet and evening classes will be canceled or vice versa. The evening division starts with 4:30 p.m. classes.

4) Testing and Grading:

Normally this instructor will assign only the grades of A, B, C, D, or F. Special grades such as W, I, and R will be assigned only in those circumstances prescribed in the college catalog.

The grade of X (audit) must be initiated by the student and will be assigned only when the student has attended class regularly. Failure to do so will result in the instructor issuing the grade of 'F'.

Course Grading System:

A = 90-100
B = 80-89
C = 70-79
D = 60-69
F = 0-59

Grade Point Allocation:

Exams: Two each, 15 points each; 30 points total
Quizzes: Fifteen (15) @ 2 points each; 30 points total
Supervision Current Events Presentation: 20 points
Class Participation 10
Text Book: 1 points
Exchange contact info: 1
Claim Domain Name: 1
Claim Facebook/Twitter Name: 1
Extra Credit as assigned: 6
Total = 100 points/percent

Class Participation: This will be a subjective measure at the discretion of the instructor. Even with the grade structure following, making your voice heard and preparedness are important - they could make the difference in a borderline grade. The only way to begin to earn Class Participation points is to show up.

Supervision Current Event:

Each student will be required to give a brief five minute oral presentation on a supervision related current-event newspaper article. This current-event/internet assignment will be turned in with student notes.

This presentation should be organized:

1) Provide the source of the article.

2) Deliver a brief overview of the topic, and, most important,

3) Your opinion/reaction to the article.

At the beginning of the presentation you will turn in a print-out of the article, being sure to include the newspaper source, date, and website.

Supervision Current Event grading scale:

2 -- Choice of article

4 -- Follow Directions

4 -- Organization

4 -- Overview/Reaction/Opinion

4 -- Presentation

2 -- Turn In

=

20 Total Points

Cheating. The following will be considered cheating in this course:

1. The giving or receiving of aid on any graded assignments or test without specific permission of this instructor.
2. The use of any material on a graded assignment or test other than those authorized by this instructor.
3. Talking or discussion of any kind during a graded test without specific permission of this instructor.

5) Notes and suggestions and hints:

Check the course catalog first for questions.

Be sure to log onto Blackboard to follow assignments and current grade.

Expect to be asked to contribute to each class session.

Do not text-message during class.

When Your Business Professor says "Tomorrow" he means the next class meeting - not the next day.

It is normal and customary to wait for any late Professor for 20 minutes.

Draft Your Own Reference Letter.

Additional information and public speaking helps.

Job Search Tips

Refer your friends to take this business class.

Attention to Detail: No points or credit will be awarded for any project that does not have the student's name on the work.

BUS 111 Semester Outline; There will be thirty (30) class sessions over sixteen (16) weeks.

COURSE OUTLINE

August 23
Introduction and Expectations

August 25
Ch. 1 What is a Supervisor?

August 30
Ch. 2 Ensuring High Quality

Sept 1
Ch. 3 Groups

September 6
No Class Labor Day

September 8
Ch. 4 Ethics
Ch. 5 Managing Diversity

September 13
Ch. 6 Goals

September 15
Ch. 7 Organizing

September 20
Ch. 8 Leadership

September 22
Ch. 9 Problem Solving

September 27
Exam Review

September 29
Mid-Term Exam____________________________________

October 4
Ch. 10 Communication

October 6
Ch. 10 Con't

October 11
No Class

October 13
Ch. 11 Motivating

October 18
Ch. 11 Con't

October 20
Ch. 12 Problem Employees

October 25
Ch. 12 Con't

October 27
Supervision Current Event DUE; Presentation

November 1
Presentations Con't

November 3
Ch. 13 Managing Time

November 8
Ch. 13 Con't

November 10
Ch. 14 Leadership

November 15
Ch. 14 Con't

November 17
Ch. 15 Selecting Employees

November 22
Ch. 15 Con't

November 24
No Class

November 29
Management Training class suggested reading:
Do You Have An Incompetent Manager? From The Washington Post

December 1
Ch. 16 Appraising Performance

December 6
Ch. 16 Con't

December 8
Exam review

December 13
Final Exam ______________________________________

If the student would like his/her graded final exam returned, please submit a stamped-self-addressed-envelope to Your Business Professor before the examination on December 13.
***
Jack Yoest

John Wesley (Jack) Yoest Jr., is a senior business mentor in high-technology, medicine, non-profit and new media consulting. His expertise is in management training and development, operations, sales, and marketing. He has worked with clients in across the USA, India and East Asia.

Mr. Yoest is an adjunct professor of management in the Science, Technology and Business Division of the Northern Virginia Community College. He is also the president of Management Training of DC, LLC.

He has been published by Scripps-Howard, National Review Online, The Business Monthly, The Women's Quarterly and other outlets. He was a columnist for Small Business Trends, and was a finalist in the annual 2006 Weblog Awards in the Best Business Blog category for Reasoned Audacity which covers the intersection of business, culture and politics. The blog has grown to receive over a million unique visitors in five years.

Mr. Yoest served as a gubernatorial appointee in the Commonwealth of Virginia. During his tenure in state government, he acted as the Chief Technology Officer for the Secretary of Health and Human Resources where he was responsible for the successful Year 2000 (Y2K) conversion for the 16,000-employee unit. He also served as the Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Resources, acting as the Chief Operating Officer of the $5 billion budget.

Prior to this post, Mr. Yoest managed entrepreneurial, start-up ventures, which included medical device companies, high technology, software manufacturers, and business consulting companies. His experience includes managing the transfer of patented biotechnology from the National Institutes of Health to his client, which enabled the company to raise $25 million in venture capital funding.

He served as Vice President of Certified Marketing Services International, an ISO 9000 business-consulting firm, where he assisted international companies in human resource certification.

And he also served as President of Computer Applications Development and Integration (CADI), the premier provider of software solutions for the criminal justice market. During his tenure, Mr. Yoest negotiated a strategic partnership with Behring Diagnostics, a $300 million division of Hoechst Celanese, the company's largest contract.

Mr. Yoest served as a manager with Menlo Care, a medical device manufacturer. While at Menlo, Mr. Yoest was a part of the team that moved sales from zero to over $12 million that resulted in a buy-out by a medical division of Johnson & Johnson.

Mr. Yoest is a former Captain in the United States Army having served in Combat Arms. He earned an MBA from George Mason University and completed graduate work in the International Operations Management Program at Oxford University.

He has been active on a number of Boards and competes in 26.2-mile marathon runs.

Mr. Yoest and his wife, Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D., who is president and CEO of a public interest law firm, live in the Washington, DC area with their five children.
***

Be sure to grade Your Business Professor at www.RateMyProfessors.com Key word search 'Yoest.'

Consider these other exciting Business Division courses:

ACC 211 Accounting
BUS 165 Small Business Management
AST 107 Editing and Proofreading
BUS 200 Principles of Management
AST 236 Software Applications or IST 117
BUS 241-1 Business Law I and II
BUS 280 International Business
BUS 100 Introduction to Business
FIN 215 Financial Management
BUS 125 Applied Business Math
ITE 115 Intro to Computer Applications and Concepts

Last day to drop with tuition refund or change to audit (Census Date): September 9, 2010.

Last day to withdraw without grade penalty: November 1, 2010.

Also linked on Management Training of DC, LLC.

See Real Management Training.

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Thank you (foot)notes,

This introductory management course is offered through the Northern Virginia Community College

Posted at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D.,
Happy Warrior; Winsome Argument Charmaine appeared on FOX today, Friday 16 July to debate against tax payer funding for abortion.

Charmaine taped this morning and the piece aired throughout the day. (Normally, ProLife talent should not tape - liberal media will use editorial-editing to win a debate. But FOX is, well, fair and balanced.)

Please let us know what you think.

Why you should watch.

No, not to check out Charmaine's new hair cut and make-up. FOX in DC is expanding their make-up room next to the green room and the surface preparation was a bit rushed.

No. A viewer -- especially those leaning toward abortion -- should watch to learn why the ProLife position is winning in America; where 51 percent now self identify with Life.

Why?

Three reasons:

1) A compelling argument.
2) A winsome argument.
3) A healthy argument.

A compelling argument. Every picture tells a story, as Rod Stewart would say and every gif-jpg file is worth a thousand words. The science of the sono-gram has shifted the debate from the mother to the child. 85 percent of women who see Baby's First Picture choose to let the baby live.

This is why Cecile Richards at Planned Parenthood fights this scientific advancement. Too much information would change a woman's choice. Science has not been good for abortion.

ProChoiceGal tweets "fetuses are humans. However, that doesn't mean that pregnant women shouldn't get basic human rights." Re: abortion choice. Which brings us to,

Charmaine and Senator Orrin Hatch
A winsome argument. We in the Pro-Life movement are in the persuasion business. The Alert Reader knows that Your Business Blogger(R) teaches Sales and Marketing at the local college and has researched and taught how Pro-Life sells.

Over the years, we have shaken hands with nearly every pro-choice leader from Betty Friedan to Gloria Steinem to Margaret Sanger's grandson, Alexander Sanger. They were not the happy people as one might expect and did not advance a positive, enjoyable debate. They do not smile. (Steinem has now married; I think she may have smiled since the honeymoon.) That's why Charmaine's Pro-Life message is selling so well: She smiles. A Happy Warrior. Who Wins.

The unfortunate Twitterer MsFetus makes as bitter a presentation as Eleanor Smeal (understand the subjective evaluation-not the person: the presentation). The first rule in debating is "whoever shouts or goes ad hominem loses." The pro-abortion advocates are reduced to cussing in Caps Lock. They have lost.

UK Pro-Choice QueenCatherinex tweets, "In my personal opinion I wouldn't call a zygote, embryo, then fetus a baby. So it's not a case of dehumanising, it's biology." No, it's not biology--it's marketing: See your Baby; the Baby lives. Word descriptors-pictures are powerful.

Finally, the picture of health,

A healthy argument. Charmaine runs Americans United for Life, a public interest law firm. Her team of legal eagles has noted that the debate has moved from Roe v Wade. The Burger court wrote that the state has a compelling interest in the baby in the third trimester, but this was soon superseded by the health of the mother "exceptions." Subsequent rulings have now asserted that abortion must remain legal on the "reliance" interpretation, where the mother's financial health must be preserved as well as the perceived physical well-being.

(Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D., as a case study, would refute this. She didn't need abortion to become a President and CEO.)

But we have come back full circle to the mother's health. Science is now telling us that abortion is a crushing psychological burden where women are now stating--in public--that they now regret.

Studies also demonstrate that abortion removes protections allowing women to have a higher risk of breast cancer.

Women are regretting and re-thinking thinking their abortions. Harms to women will be the next foundation in the future of the abortion debate.

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Thank you (foot)notes,

Watch Charmaine's Expert Testimony to the Judiciary Committee on the Kagan Nomination

Watch Charmaine's Expert Testimony to the Judiciary Committee on the Sotomayor Nomination

Posted at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charmaine will be appearing on FOX today, Friday 16 July to debate against tax payer funding for abortion.

The tax and abort position will be argued by National Partnership for Women and Family.

Charmaine Yoest

Charmaine taped this morning and the piece will be aired throughout the day. (Normally, ProLife talent should not tape - liberal media will use editorial-editing to win a debate. But FOX is, well, fair and balanced.)

Please let us know what you think.

Why you should watch.

No, not to check out Charmaine's new hair cut and make-up. FOX in DC is expanding their make-up room next to the green room and the surface preparation was a bit rushed.

No. A viewer -- especially those leaning toward abortion -- should watch to learn why the ProLife position is winning in America; where 51 percent now self identify with Life.

Why?

Three reasons:

1) A compelling argument.

2) A winsome argument.

3) A healthy argument.

A compelling argument. Every picture tells a story, as Rod Stewart would say and every gif file is worth a thousand words. The science of the sono-gram has shifted the debate from the mother to the child. 85 percent of women who see Baby's First Picture choose to let the baby live. This is why Cecile Richards at Planned Parenthood fights this scientific advancement. Too much information would change a woman's choice. Science has not been good for abortion.

ProChoiceGal tweets "fetuses are humans. However, that doesn't mean that pregnant women shouldn't get basic human rights." Re: abortion choice. Which brings us to,

Charmaine and Senator Orrin Hatch
A winsome argument. We in the Pro-Life movement are in the persuasion business. The Alert Reader knows that Your Business Blogger(R) teaches Sales and Marketing at the local college. Pro-Life sells. Over the years, we have shaken hands with nearly every pro-choice leader from Betty Friedan to Gloria Steinem to Margaret Sanger's grandson, Alexander Sanger. They were not happy people as one might expect and did not advance a positive, enjoyable debate. They do not smile. (Steinem has now married; I think she may have smiled since the honeymoon.) That's why Charmaine's Pro-Life message is selling so well: She smiles.

The unfortunate Twitterer MsFetus makes as bitter a presentation as Eleanor Smeal (understand the subjective evaluation-not the person: the presentation). The first rule in debating is "whoever shouts or goes ad hominem loses." The pro-abortion advocates are reduced to cussing in Caps Lock. They have lost.

UK Pro-Choice QueenCatherinex tweets, "In my personal opinion I wouldn't call a zygote, embryo, then fetus a baby. So it's not a case of dehumanising, it's biology." No, it's not biology--it's marketing: See your Baby; the Baby lives. Word pictures are powerful.

Finally, the picture of health,

A healthy argument. Charmaine runs Americans United for Life, a public interest law firm. Her team of legal eagles knows well that the debate has moved from Roe v Wade. The Burger court wrote that the state has a compelling interest in the baby in the third trimester, but this was soon superseded by the health of the mother "exceptions." Subsequent rulings have now asserted that abortion must remain legal on the "reliance" interpretation, where the mother's financial health must be preserved as well as the perceived physical well-being.

(Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D., as a case study, would refute this. She didn't need abortion to become a President and CEO.)

But we have come back to the mother's health. Science is now telling us that abortion is a crushing psychological burden where women are now stating--in public--that they regret.

New studies demonstrate that abortion removes protections making women at higher risk of breast cancer.

Women are regretting and re-thinking thinking their abortions. Harms to women will be the next foundation in the future of the abortion debate.

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Thank you (foot)notes,

Watch Charmaine's Expert Testimony to the Judiciary Committee on the Kagan Nomination

Watch Charmaine's Expert Testimony to the Judiciary Committee on the Sotomayor Nomination

Posted at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D.Charmaine will be giving expert testimony in the Kagan hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The link to her written testimony is here.

Following is the Americans United for Life press release.

Contact: Matthew Faraci
202-556-1994
press@aul.org

YOEST TO TESTIFY TOMORROW IN KAGAN HEARINGS: AMERICANS
DO NOT WANT AGENDA-DRIVEN JUDGES

WASHINGTON, D.C. - (06/30/2010) - Americans United for Life President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest will add her voice to the distinguished panel of experts testifying on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, calling on the Senate to reject another agenda-driven justice. When she testifies on July 1st, it will be the second time since 2009 that Dr. Yoest has been invited to illustrate concerns with a nominee to the nation's high court.

What: Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life, to give testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court.

When: July 1st - afternoon - exact time to be determined.

Where: Hart Senate Office Building, Hearing Room 216

To read Dr. Yoest's written testimony as submitted to the Committee, click here. For analysis of Kagan's political and legal record, go to www.aul.org. And contact the AUL media office for interviews and analysis of the impact of this highly political nominee.

Charmaine's tesitmony at the
Sotomayor hearingsAlert Readers know that this is not Charmaine's first rodeo. She has delivered congressional testimony on a number of occasions - most recently in the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

Please watch and leave us a comment on Facebook or email.

Charmaine on an earlier interview
on agenda driven judges

Join Fight FOCA

###

Thank you (foot)notes:

What Makes An Expert Witness?: The 5 C's; Charmaine Giving Testimony At The Sotomayor Hearings.

Americans United for Life (AUL) is a nonprofit, public-interest law and policy organization whose vision is a nation in which everyone is welcomed in life and protected in law. The first national pro-life organization in America, AUL has been committed to defending human life through vigorous judicial, legislative, and educational efforts at both the federal and state levels since 1971.

AUL's legal team has been involved in every pro-life case before the U.S. Supreme Court including the successful defense of the Hyde Amendment. AUL also publishes Defending Life, the most comprehensive state-by-state legal guide of its kind, which is distributed annually to legislators across the nation.

Recently, Americans United for Life detailed the facts on taxpayer-funding of abortion during the debate over federal health care legislation, provided legal assistance to states working to opt out of abortion provisions created by federal health care law, and has played a major role in educating policymakers on the record of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

Posted at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D., President & CEO, Americans United for Life will be sworn in to provide expert testimony on the Kagan nomination. Charmaine is scheduled to testify sometime this Thursday.

In 44 Politics and Policy in Obama's Washington, By Garance Franke-Ruta published,

Kagan hearings witness list released

The Senate Judiciary Committee has announced the witness list for Elena Kagan's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which are scheduled to begin Monday at 12:30 p.m.

American Bar Association Witnesses
Kim Askew, Chair of Standing Committee
William J. Kayatta, Jr., First Circuit Representative

Majority Witnesses
Professor Robert C. Clark, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Austin Wakeman Scott Professor of Law, and former Dean, Harvard Law School
Justice Fernande "Nan" Duffly, Associate Justice, Massachusetts Court of Appeals, on behalf of the National Association of Women Judges
Greg Garre, Partner, Lathan & Watkins, former Solicitor General of the United States
Jennifer Gibbins, Executive Director, Prince William Soundkeeper
Professor Jack Goldsmith, Professor of Law, Harvard University
Marcia Greenberger, Founder and Co-President, National Women's Law Center
Jack Gross, plaintiff, Gross v. FBL Financial Services Inc.
Lilly Ledbetter, plaintiff, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire
Professor Ronald Sullivan, Edward R. Johnston Lecturer on Law, Director of the Criminal Justice Institute, Harvard law School
Kurt White, President, Harvard Law Armed Forces Association


Charmaine Yoest meets with Senator Orrin Hatch

Minority Witnesses
Robert Alt, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, The Heritage Foundation
Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, United States Army (ret.)
Capt. Pete Hegseth, Army National Guard
Commissioner Peter Kirsanow, Benesch Law Firm
David Kopel, Esq., Research Director, Independence Institute
Colonel Thomas N. Moe, United States Air Force (ret.)
David Norcross, Esq., Blank Rome
William J. Olson, Esq., William J. Olson, P.C.
Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
Stephen Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History, Northwestern University School of Law
Ronald Rotunda, The Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Chapman University School of Law
Ed Whelan, President, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President & CEO, Americans United for Life
Capt. Flagg Youngblood, United States Army

June 25, 2010; 5:26 PM ET

###

Thank you (foot)notes:

Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest

Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.

Posted at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a guest post by John, The Dude. It was my Father's Day gift. Better than a tie.

Two points:

1) His self-confidence and self-esteem does not surprise anyone, and

2) John is the only teenager in our neighborhood who knows how to handle a lawnmower, leaf-blower and edger.

Somehow the two are related.

I can't sleep. It is the night before my big tryout and I cannot sleep. I have thrown and hit today, so I feel exhausted. Yet I cannot find the comfort of sleep. My mind keeps racing! Baseball, it is all I can think about. Will I do well? Will I make it? What if, what if, what if? I can't sleep.

Yorktown High School has a peculiar policy on certain sports, which allows 8th graders to try out for Freshmen/JV teams. Since Arlington Middle Schools don't offer certain sports like baseball or football, Yorktown allows 8th graders to participate in High School sports. JV baseball has the highest competition. Over 60 people try out for a team that might take 22. Generally, the JV team takes one, maybe two eighth graders. My odds of making it were slim at best.

Despite the odds, I began my preparation for the tryouts with complete dedication. I got cut from the Middle School basketball team. So instead of dribbling and shooting lay-ups I took ground balls and hit soft-toss. I began in early November. Six days a week for the next five months I practiced baseball. Anything and everything: if it involved a baseball, I practiced it. My dad and I developed a little motto: "A little bit every day, makes you better and better, in every way." It might sound a little corny; but it worked for me.

When it began to snow, I took practice indoors. This was not easy to do at all. My dad would toss ground balls to me inside our living room! I can't even count how many lamps, glasses and cups we broke that winter. Eventually my mom kicked me out of the house. Determined to get better, I threw the baseball with my dad in the snow. My neighbors thought we were crazy. But I was on a mission.

The largest thing that kept me going through these tough practices was my dad. Every day he would remind me to do some drills. Some days I felt awful. I didn't want to practice, or I was just plain tired. My dad didn't want to hear any of that nonsense. Rain or shine, feeling good or bad, we found some way to keep working.

I got sick after practicing out in the rain and cold. It was just a little coughing and sneezing, but I felt really bad. All I wanted to do was sit in bed and sleep. I remember getting in bed with chicken noodle soup, and feeling like I never wanted to get out ever again. Instead of going out and doing the drills, my dad brought the drills to me. I sat in bed and tossed the baseball against the wall. I did this for hours. When I couldn't run and jump, I practiced my hand quickness. Just simply tossing the ball around in my glove. It might seem a little silly and repetitive, but I've seen countless routine plays messed up by a bad glove to hand transition.

Basics are the most fundamental parts of baseball. That's what I practiced the most. I didn't practice the diving plays in the outfield, or the ridiculous backhand catches. I practiced fielding ground balls and catching easy pop-ups. Those simple, easy fundamentals will make you a great player. With time, those ESPN highlight tape plays will appear, but if you can't field a normal ground ball, I realized I'd never become great. Or even make the team.

Without even realizing it, February came around. I kept getting better and better, stronger and faster. But on Valentine's Day, it all turned around. My mom was diagnosed with cancer on February 14. This was only a few short weeks before my tryout. The pain and devastation I felt when I was told nearly ruined me. For the first time, I did not want to keep on practicing. I felt weak and destroyed. But my parents were still there for me.

My mom sat with me and talked with me. I was certainly sad and I couldn't imagine the thought of her losing her hair. She told me not to worry. She said she would be fine. The biggest thing she said to me however, was that she wanted me to keep on practicing, and to make the JV team. . . for her.

The very next day, you can imagine I was working as hard as ever. I ran, I hit, I ran even more. I did not stop. I could not afford to be cut. I threw every single day with my dad. On Sundays, we went to the track to run. The intensity picked up, until the day before the tryout.

The Sunday before the tryout my dad talked with me. The tryout was in less than 24 hours. I remember it so clearly in my mind. My dad told me he was proud of me. He told me he loved me and always would. But he looked pained. He told me that today was the last day he could be my coach. I almost cried because I knew it was true. I had grown up. I was trying out for High School Baseball. My dad said he couldn't keep up with me, and that whether or not I made the cut, I had grown up beyond his level of expertise. He said we could still do drills and such, but today was the last day. At that moment, I knew I was ready.

I shined my cleats, I oiled my glove, and I bought loads of sunflower seeds. I stashed my glove underneath my bed for good luck, and I laid out all of my gear in my room. I had all of my sets of baseball pants with belts set out in a row, with baseball shirts corresponding to each. You know what they say: An ounce of appearance is worth a pound of performance. In order to play your best, you have to look the best.

The week of tryouts that ensued flew by me in such a flash. To be honest, I can't tell you a single thing that happened that week. All I knew was that I was competing for a spot, and I would try my hardest to show that I deserved it. And so I did. I competed. The week flew by me right before my eyes. I saw some of my closest friends get cut from the team. There were now 15 8th graders, and only two would make it. I was very sad, but I only strove harder.

The second to the last day was killer. We worked outside in the batting cages, and we ran quite a few miles. After doing the running for about an hour, everyone was dead tired. Every single person was sweating profusely. But instead of letting us take a break, we went down to the track, and ran even more. I logged so many laps at the track prior to the tryouts. Even though I was pretty much dead, I found a way to keep afloat. Did the coaches notice my hustle? Would my stamina hold? I could only hope and wait for the answer.

Sooner or later, there were only a few select people left. There were about 30 people left trying out for the team. All 30 were good enough to play in All-Stars. 15 of the 30 were 8th graders; only two would make it. While 10 or 11 of the other 15 Freshmen and Sophomores would make it. Most of them were my best friends. But the last day of tryouts had finally come. I would soon know if my hard work would pay off.

The last tryout was at an indoor training facility. I was excited because all of my practicing had been indoors. Indeed, I played quite well that last day. But was it good enough? We hit in batting cages, we took ground balls, we did everything for about two hours. Finally, the coach called us in. The moment of truth had finally come.

The first thing I remember was being in a room with the 30 players and the coach. The coach asked for all the returning JV players to leave the room. They left the room and waited outside. To this day, I do not think my heart has pounded as hard as it did then. I was quite literally shaking, from the anxiety. The coach was being slow and careful. He looked around, deliberately making eye contact with every player.

He then called a few names and asked them to join the others who had left: . . . Young, Mellin, Fallon, Herold, Marshall, Yoest. I did not even know what to think. I left the room with the players and walked outside. . . to the smiling and happy faces of our new teammates.

High fives were exchanged, and everyone was just happy. I made the team! I could hardly believe it. All my hard work had finally reached fruition. I was officially a member of the JV squad. Everyone laughed and joked about "initiations," but that is a whole different story.

I'll never forget making JV baseball as an 8th grader. It was hard. But I loved every second of the preparation, the toil and the reward. I went home and told my folks. I think my mom cried she was so happy. During the tryouts she had gone through surgery, and her future was looking bright. My dad was so proud of me he didn't know what to say.

I go to bed happy, yet nervous. Will I play well during the season, if I play at all? Will the coach like me? What if he changes his mind? What if, what if, what if? I can't sleep...

Posted at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wonder Crew, The Untold Story of a Coach, Navy Rowing, and Olympic Immortality, written by Susan Saint Sing published in 2008 is the story of Coach Richard Glendon at the Naval Academy winning the Olympic Gold Medal in 1920 in crew.

The tale is set, "In a time when when admirals thanked rowing coaches for helping to win world wars." p. 6.

Sing quotes Admiral Cyde Whitlock King, 1920 Navy stroke man,

Of all sports, I think rowing is the greatest...because it is a man's game in every sense of the word." p. 21

Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in the USA as well as the oldest international collegiate sport in the world. It uses an eight-oared shell that is some 58' long, weights 200 pounds, with a top speed of 18 knots. To power the small boat, Coach Glendon, "Was in pursuit of the ancient, elusive arete, the ancient Greek pinnacle of perfection, strength in grace of physical, mental and spiritual balance." p. 22.

Glendon was building team, not nine individuals,

It wasn't just a matter of who among them was the best. The individuals were less important than the whole - the [Naval Academy] brigade was the focus, not any one standout. No war was ever won with only one man. Though a brigade would follow the leader of one, that one needed a brigade to follow him. So, too, in rowing. The fundamental question was always "How did the crew look? And the crew was not just each man in seat; it was eight men rowing as one. The boat and the crew at large were a unit, the gestalt was the final equation, not the individual parts. In rowing truly the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Author Sing further explains rowing and Coach Glendon's philosophy,

A good man on a rowing machine, in training on land or in a weight room, might not help a boat go fast. p. 26

The rowers respected Coach Glendon, "He was the orderer of their chaos." p. 26.

Appearances matter. Sing quotes Glendon, "You can tell a good oarsman sometimes just by the way he sits up straight in the shell." p. 82.

A crew will pull some 200 strokes over a 2,000 meter course. "The shell capable of accelerating to 18 knots generates the most horsepower of any human-powered watercraft." p. 88.

Sing quotes Brad Brinegar, from Dartmouth, p. 115,

The oarsman is not a man alone. If his crew is to suceed he must become perfectly synchronized with the other men in the boat. Sometimes, for thirty or forty strokes--more if the crew is really good and well matched--all men in the boat will move together. Every move the stroke makes will be mirrored by the men behind him. all the catches will hit hard and clean...when that happens the boat begins the lift up off the water, air bubbles running under the bow, and there is an exhileration like nothing else I have ever experienced...literally like flying.

The personalities of each seat position are reviewed,

Bow should be neat and easy with his movements, above all a good waterman.
Two [seat] is ditto, but slightly heavier and stronger.
Three, four, and five the most powerful available.
Six seat should be a cleaver oarsman as well as being powerful, and of course...reliable.
Seven should be the most finished oar in the boat.
Stroke (eight) is the most difficult man to find, as he must combine so many qualities, but first and foremost he must be a man of the right personality, a real leader who will not be discouraged by adversity. His weight is immaterial. p. 162.

"A clean boat is a fast boat!" p. 187.

The 1920 USA Men's Olympic crew was a barrier breaking performance, "Akin to what philosopher Michael Novak describes as the power of athletic achievement in revealing moments of perfect form." p. 218.

"Rowing is not a game, it is much more akin to riding, skating, or dancing, or any other form of locomotion developed into an art." Gilbert C. Bourne, A Textbook on Oarsmanship, p. 71

Chester Nimitz was the Fleet Admiral of the American Navy in the Pacific in WWII. He commanded over two million men, 5,000 ships and 20,000 aircraft. p. 23. Nimitz had said, "Dick Glendon, by what he put into successive generations of Navy midshipmen, undoubtedly helped us win the naval battles of World War I and World War II." p. 242

Susan Saint Sing includes among the photographs a picture that hung in Coach Richard Glendon's house. It shows Admiral Chester Nimitz signing the Japanese surrender documents on the deck of the USS Missouri ending WWII. It is inscribed, "To Dick Glendon with best wishes and warmest regards."

The photograph is signed, "Nimitz--Fleet Admiral, stroke 1905." It is not clear of which Nimitz might be more proud: 'Admiral' or 'stroke.'

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