The column this week actually came out well. I figured it was time to introduce a classic bully’s taunt into these fast paced cyber-times.

Here’s an excerpt:

Given that we don’t believe in equality here at Social Matter, it’s easy for us to know where we stand. But what of the hoped-for allies to whom she is speaking?

There used to be an insult which boys used to use against one another — ‘momma’s boy’ — to taunt a kid thought to be weak, coddled, and dominated by his mother. In more contemporary times, we call men dominated by their wives ‘whipped.’ Why do men feel this almost instinctual need to heap shame their fellows for deferring to women? Is this just cruelty for the sake of it, or is there some moral purpose behind the taunts?

There are some clues in history as to why it’s useful for men to toughen themselves up. For one, war, crime, famine, economic depression, tyranny, and disorder are ever-present, cyclically recurring problems. The only way to return chaos to order is through the use of power. And men are the more powerful, emotionally resilient, and physically strong sex, regardless of all the technological fantasies that people might have about gap-closing.

Male allies make their weakness, their willingness to be dominated, their eagerness to defer, into a sign of holiness. Their weakness stops being a source of shame to them, and becomes a source of glowing pride.

Go on over now and read it.

Here’s this week’s column concerning why modern people tend to want to avoid the burden of upholding culture.

This bit was inspired by all the reading of Roger Scruton that I’ve been doing recently. Multiculturalism in particular is a sort of low-effort cop-out for Western elites. By saying that other cultures have as much or more value than their own, they can slink away from their obligations to uphold it.

This is also an area in which libertarians in particular tend to go wrong. The only way that you could ever conceivably maintain a low-tax, high-capitalism country is with low taxes, high property rights, and high cultural obligations. When the leading segments stop ‘paying in’ to the same culture that made the civilization possible, everything begins to unravel, and the conditions that made the civilization possible in the first place evaporates.

There’s a lot in this episode. If you’ve been wondering what I sound like, here’s your chance to find out.

At the time of this writing, I haven’t had time to listen to the entire final cut yet.

Thanks again to Nick B. Steves and Surviving Babel for being such gracious hosts. You might not realize if you’ve never been involved in radio or podcasting how much work goes into making these things come out well. SB puts in hours of editing for each episode, and the two of them do a lot of research and preparation in advance.

We talked a lot about the American power structure, its history, the historic primacy of literacy, and our legalistic roots.

The show’s getting better with each episode, and there are some big names (!) on the docket for the next few episodes.

You can also grab them all for free on iTunes.