WHICH IS WHY CONSERVATIVES SHOULD BE SO EXCITED...:

We conservatives reject the progressive view that it's impossible to go back, given that we now live in a more advanced stage of History. History isn't simply a tale of either progress or of decline and fall, and who each of us is isn't completely determined by his or her Historical situation. It's just not true that the sophisticated understanding of who women are these days is simply an advance over the alleged prejudices of the past.

Our understanding of who we all are has become too "Historical" or even "existential" or not properly natural or personal. Our sophisticates mistakenly think each of us can define the mystery of his or her personal existence--personal identity--without regard to the purposes and limits he or she been given through his or her embodiment, through birth, genuinely relational life, and death.

But it's also true that we can see, in justice, that our high-tech society has opened possibilities for largely unprecedented personal development for women. We add that it's difficult--much more difficult than progressives and liberals acknowledge--to reconcile personal fulfillment through work with the more relational forms of free personal fulfillment as a parent. It's hard to properly honor "voluntary caregiving" in a society that's, more than ever, a meritocracy based on productivity. But that's the challenge that's been given us, and we conservatives pride ourselves in facing up to it. We think that both love and work--even contemplation and charity--should animate every personal life.

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