I thought we'd see a torrent of Pajama Boy-style "talk about healthcare with your sweetie" ObamaCare propaganda for Valentine's Day, but if it's out there, the delivery and reception have been rather muted.
Instead, we've got Planned Parenthood making their customary effort to turn the day into a sex-ed/abortion seminar.
A condom in the traditional engagement box, instead of a ring? I can think of worse ways to illustrate the Left's wholesale destruction of Western culture. Writing at The Blaze, Penny Young Nance of Concerned Women for America relates another heartwarming message from Planned Parenthood, and offers a response:
This week, [Planned Parenthood president] Cecile Richards decided to hijack yet another holiday and make it about everything it isn???t. They did it for Christmas, and now they???re doing it for Valentine???s Day.
Taking feminism to its logical conclusion, Cecile declared that ???what women need for Valentine???s Day??? is abortion and birth control.
Listen up men, you thought dinner would be nice? Wrong. And that you would pay? Well, that???s just degrading, because in the eyes of the Left, what women ???need??? eliminates the need for a committed man in their lives or for anyone else besides them and Lena Dunham.
They will refuse to let you open the door, scoff when men offer a seat, and yet, at the end of the day, complain that there are no ???real men out there anymore.???
This was accompanied by some photos of ladies from the Concerned Women for America holding up their own "what women need for Valentine's Day" signs, which I won't spoil, so click the link above to see them.
This is perhaps an awkward moment for feminists to be pushing abortion extremism as the defining ideology of Valentine's Day, since the recently consecrated dashboard saint of their movement is busy running around Texas and trying to convince everyone she's a pro-lifer. Of course, no one on either side of the debate believes her, but it's still a significant sign of weakness in the abortion lobby that she feels compelled to say the words.
As Mallory Quigley, communications director of the Susan B. Anthony List, puts it: "She's only trying to give the appearance of softening her views without really changing her position. Such exceptions as Wendy Davis would allow for the 'health of the mother' would make the legislation meaningless. This is standard language for the abortion lobby, and you will notice that none of the pro-abortion groups so much as blinked at her statement."
Well, we'll just have to work harder to make them blink, won't we?
At the risk of sounding old-fashioned ("Conservative!" I say, in the same tone of voice Jack Sparrow uses to say "Pirate!" when accused of cheating at swordplay) if there's one day during the year that should be more about romantic love than just sex, and the efficient disposal of its consequences, Valentine's Day is it. Romance is an ideal, and what use are those, unless you hold them high every now and then?
Are we not supposed to strive for something higher, gentler, and more eternal than quick hook-ups without complications? I'm not asking that question rhetorically. I honestly wonder if the people who shape our culture believe love and fidelity hold a moral plane, or even a level of personal fulfillment, higher than satisfying our immediate urges.
Hard work has been done by the Left to separate people from the ideal of lifelong marriage and the nourishment of families. They want us to be alone with the State, our towering mother and lover, the only partner Barack Obama's fictional "Julia" character needed to live out her entire life and raise a child. We are in the end stage of a project to make us concede, one and for all, that restraint plays no role in romance, sex is an entirely biological process, and there's nothing special about men and women bonding to each other for life and taking care of their children. We're not (yet) supposed to hate that model of love and loyalty; we're just supposed to give it a polite round of unenthusiastic applause as one lifestyle choice among many, of no particular value. It certainly isn't supposed to be something young men, or especially young women, dream about any more. Their increasingly early sexualization gives them much less adolescent time for such fantasies.
Can't we have a day that's all about the magic, mystery, warmth, and anticipation that lead up to that first kiss of the evening... or the kiss that begins a lifetime together? Can't it be about what we hope for, as much as what we desire? I suppose things have gone so sour that old-fashioned notions of Valentine's Day now constitute a political statement, and the other side demands equal time in our social consciousness.
Not to be outdone, the sociopaths in the environmentalist movement like to use Valentine's Day as an opportunity to remind you that human procreation is an act of violence against the fragile Earth The Media Research Council has a sample of this twaddle: "Instead of the shopping mood, let's talk about getting in a different kind of mood. You know what I'm talking about. Saving the planet."
Not to be outdone, The New Republic delivered a shocking expose. You know what Valentine's Day cards are really made of? Global warming, that's what. "If your other half bought you a Valentine's card, be sure to say thanks for the 18.5 grams of CO2 it created," sneered the magazine's Twitter voice.
While Cupid tries to dodge through the flak bursts from these sourpusses and their eco-guilt artillery, let me ask them a question. If you're obsessing over the grams of CO2 released by packing a Hoops & Yoyo love ballad into a piece of stiff paper, why don't you call for the complete cessation of commercial air travel? One jumbo jet is going to blast out more CO2 than all the Valentine's Day cards in Christendom. If we're teetering on the verge of planetary immolation (or freezing, or whatever the witch doctors say is the big threat this week) then we shouldn't be indulging in such luxuries, should we?
Get serious and call for the end of an industry the human race got along with just fine until less than a century ago. We can keep aircraft for medical emergencies, military use, and of course the transportation needs of the Ruling Class - they need swift and luxurious travel, but the peons don't, not really. It's ridiculous to mess around with grams of carbon when the astounding number of aircraft soaring through our skies are dumping tons of it every day. Environmentalists and left-wing social planners think lowly citizens move around too much anyway. Taking our cheap commuter flights away would be an important step toward more effective lifestyle planning for the Little People.
But no, we get hassled over everything from hairspray to mash notes. The idea is to keep us in a constant state of guilt and fear, softening our resistance to command by getting us to concede, in a thousand little ways, that we don't really deserve the freedom we insist on, and that our traditions are thoughtless prejudices from the past we should jettison like so much ballast. Today is one of the days when I really love being old-fashioned.
