Barry:

I would like to respond, being a woman, a political pundit, and a history buff.
While several points you make are valid, I am much more optimistic than you. I
would like to share why.

First: Chivalry is not dead. In the Costa Concordia tragedy, the Hungarian who
died actually saved several children, before going back to try and retrieve his
violin (non-musicians may not appreciate how expensive and treasured a specific
instrument can me). This man was a hero; the fact the Captain was not should
not take away from this fact.

I am currently arranging for a presentation for my son's class from "Chivalry
Today". I can tell you that children still love the examples of the local
heroes, and long to hear stories of real valor. I am sure many parents, such as
myself, are encouraging these lessons.

Secondly: I agree that gender-equity feminists have really hurt women, society,
and the quality of life for many in Western society. However, I think much of
the root cause of our trevails is the fact "Big Government" has taken the place
of the "Pater Familias". In Italy (the country of Captain Coward), for example,
the restrictions of big government socialist program has lead to grown men being
unable to move out of their parents home and start their own family. The
government-imposed employment restrictions were probably a major reason this
obviously incompetent boob still had his prestigious job.

However, citizens are pushing back. Italy has its own Tea Party movement, and I
was privileged to speak at event in Florence. I have good hope this trend will
be thwarted.

Thirdly: I think it is the human condition that the oldest generation despairs
of the youngest. I can't imagine what the grandparents of
powedered-wig/tight-pant wearing young men would have thought. However, these
powedered-wig/tight-pant wearing heroes founded our cherished Republic.

I will mull over your comment a bit, as I might blog about it (with your kind
permission, of course).



--- In politicaltalk@yahoogroups.com, "Barry C. Jacobsen" <hyperbarry@...>
wrote:
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> Is chivalry dead?
> I am going to just be honest here, and say that I am sickened by men today.
They are mere shadows of men just two generations ago. The men today (military
service members, perhaps, excepted) aren't fit to carry the water of the
"Greatest Generation", my father's generation; much less the Knights of the Age
of Chivalry. Where are the Gary Coopers of the world?
> That men on this stricken ship elbowed women and children aside in their
frantic hurrey to scurry onto the life-rafts is just the most obvious
example... I see it every day in the way men treat their women; or any woman, or
the old, the young, or the infirm.
> Men today are just louts!
> But women have no one to blame but themselves! Its women, after all, that
raise men (often without men in the home). Its women who accept such behavior
and reward it by going out with and marrying such cretins... Were women to
demand that the men in their lives committ to them and family before mating,
more boys would have male role models in their lives. Were mothers to raise boys
to be gentleman with a sense of honor, they would grow up into men those mothers
could be proud of.
> But feminist politics and lack of male role models has left this generation of
men with no clue how to behave as MEN.... And when the ship is sinking, and no
one is there taking charge, wouldn't it be nice if this generation's males were
made of the same stern stuff the men aboard the Titanic were; when women and
children came first and the men went down with the ship?
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> That's my rant...Here is Rich Lowry's inciteful take on it!
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> ‘Dude, Where’s My Lifeboat?’
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> By Rich Lowry
> January 17, 2012 12:00 A.M.
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> When they make the movie about the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that
grounded off the coast of Tuscany, there won’t be romantic tales about its
captain. Italian authorities immediately arrested him on suspicions of
manslaughter and abandoning ship prematurely. He might have been the skipper of
the ill-fated vessel in all senses of the word. 
> A century ago this spring, as the Titanic entered its death throes and all its
lifeboats had been launched, Capt. Edward Smith told his crew: “Men, you have
done your full duty. You can do no more. Now it’s every man for himself.”
One witness recalled seeing him, probably washed overboard, clutching a child in
the water as the Titanic disappeared. A member of the crew always believed it
was Captain Smith’s voice he heard from the water after the Titanic was gone,
urging him and others on: “Good boys! Good lads!”
> “Every man for himself” is a phrase associated with the deadly Costa
Concordia disaster, but not as a last-minute expedient. It appears to have been
the natural order of things. In the words of one newspaper account, “An
Australian mother and her young daughter have described being pushed aside by
hysterical men as they tried to board lifeboats.” If the men of the Titanic
had lived to read such a thing, they would have recoiled in shame. The
Titanic’s crew surely would have thought the hysterics deserved to be shot on
sight �" and would have volunteered to perform the service.
> Women and children were given priority in theory, but not necessarily in
practice. The Australian mother said of the scene, “We just couldn’t believe
it �" especially the men, they were worse than the women.” Another woman
passenger agreed, “There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us
to get into the lifeboats.” Yet another, a grandmother, complained, “I was
standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking
the girls.”
> Guys aboard the Costa Concordia apparently made sure the age of chivalry was
good and dead by pushing it over and trampling on it in their heedless rush for
the exits. The grounded cruise ship has its heroes, of course, just as the
Titanic had its cowards. But the discipline of the Titanic’s crew and the
self-enforced chivalric ethic that prevailed among its men largely trumped the
natural urge toward panicked self-preservation.
> Women and children went first, and once the urgency of the situation became
clear, breaches weren’t tolerated. The crew fired warning shots to keep men
from rushing the lifeboats. In an instance Daniel Allen Butler recounts in his
book, “Unsinkable,” a male passenger trying to make it on one lifeboat was
rebuffed and then beaten for his offense.
> The survivor statistics tell the tale. More women from third class �" deep in
the bowels of the ship, where it was hard to escape and instructions were vague
or nonexistent �" survived than men from first class. Almost all of the women
from first class (97 percent) and second class (84 percent) made it. As Butler
notes, the men from first class who were lost stayed behind voluntarily, true to
their Edwardian ideals.
> They can look faintly ridiculous from our vantage point. Benjamin Guggenheim
changed into his evening clothes that night: “We’ve dressed in our best and
are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Whom would you rather have around
your wife or daughter, though, when there is only one slot left on the lifeboat?
Old Guggenheim in his white tie and tails, or the contemporary slob in his
Bermuda shorts and flip-flops?
> The Titanic went down, they say, to the strains of the hymn “Nearer, My God,
to Thee,” as the band courageously played on. It lent a final grace note to
the tragedy. Today, we don’t do grace notes. We’ve gone from “Women and
children, first,” to “Dude, where’s my lifeboat?” As the women of the
Costa Concordia can testify, that’s a long way down.
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