What's in a name? Take 2.

His name is not "Barry."

His name is not "Bo or B.O."

His name is not "Bozo."

His name is Barrack Hussein Obama.

You would do well to address him as President Obama, or Mr. President, or POTUS (President of the United States) if you're tweeting. I don't care if you don't like his policies, or even the man himself, but if you cannot muster respect for the man, then respect the office.

I do not know the president as a person, so I can't say whether or not I like him on a personal level. I could most likely have a beer with him. Our conversation would probably involve him saying a lot of nothing - because he's a politician and they're good at that - and me saying a lot of nothing - out of respect and my desire not to get at all heated.

I do know that there are very few policy decisions he has made that I approve of. I do know that I do not like his philosophy and politics, and believe that his are the politics that undermine our good. That does not give me the right to attack him on a personal level, even if it be only in the realm of caricaturizing his name.

It shames me sometimes to hold company with others of conservative mind-set, for the simple reason that during ALL 8 YEARS of the Bush administration we were fighting this name calling, and now what happens when we don't like the sitting president? We turn around and do the same damn thing.

I don't care if President Obama is a Muslim, or has been a Muslim, or has an appreciation for Islam in general, or whatever the Islamic Charge-de-jour is.

At this point, I don't care if the birth certificate is a hoax. The governor of Hawaii said it's the real deal, and let's be honest, the man only has one year left in office.

What concerns me about our sitting president is that he is a left-wing pro-abortion socialist, and I fear that his policies - while of good intent - are going to do more harm than good.

Ad hominem (to the man) attacks are considered fallacies because even if the assertion be true, it does not affect the validity of the person's argument. We are losing the culture war to relativistic socialism, and that is the front on which we must face him, and all who share his political persuasion.

Calling him names does nothing but demean ourselves.

If you can't use reason and history to assault his political and philosophical convictions, don't say anything at all.

Modes of Knowledge

I've been thinking (dangerous, I know), and I have come to the conclusion that much more important than the separation of church and state (which is poorly misunderstood at best anyway), we need the separation of Theology, Philosophy, and Science.

Before you turn me over to the inquisition, here me out. After I've explained myself, if I'm in error, correct me.

Here are three primary disciplines for the acquisition of knowledge and the literal meanings of their root words:

Theology

Words, Sayings, and Reasoning about God

Philosophy

Love of Wisdom

Science

Knowledge

For the sake of clarity, let me plainly state that truth is the goal and end of all three disciplines, and therefore their ends are God, ultimately. Moreover, as Aquinas makes plain, truth is truth, and cannot contradict truth. Therefore, if a truth is discovered via philosophy, it cannot and will not be contradicted by science. Science will not be contradicted by theology, nor by divine revelation, if it has achieved a truth. This understanding is very important.

The problem (and I believe the source of most if not all 'contradictions') is that these three disciplines seek to answer three different questions. 'Contradictions' crop up when we attempt to apply a discipline to a question it was not intended to answer. As a side note, this is why we need to return to a more balanced education system. When all you have is a calculator, the whole world begins to look like a math problem.

So, what questions are being asked? How are they being asked? Why are they being asked?

Exactly.

Let me start with philosophy; everything else has. When we approach a thing, often the first question that comes to mind is, "What on God's green earth is that thing?" I argue that this may be the most important question to be asked. How and why flow from what, and so there we start.

Philsophy, then, is the means by which we determine what a thing is. What is its kind, shape, and measure? There are many theories about the 'what,' what is reality, what are good and evil, what is a human person. But every philosophical theory does seek to answer this question. Ask a deontologist what is right, and he will tell you it is duty. Ask an aristotilean what is reality, and she will tell you form, matter, cause, and end. Ask Kant, he'll tell you it is imperative. Every philosophy starts with what a thing is.

But then, this makes sense, does it not? When in the woods and something approaches, how do you know if you are safe or not? You investigate what type of thing it is. Is it a person, or an animal. If it's an animal, is it a doe, a bear, a wolf? Knowing that it is a doe, one knows that it is proper of a doe to eat plants, not people, and so you are safe, so long as you don't spook it and get trampled.

So from that what, we move to the how, and to the sciences. Some may argue that science answers what, but what it answers is modality, not essence. By that I mean, when we ask what a thing is, intrinsically, what is the heart of the thing, part of the answer is of course what it is made of, its material cause. But while the material causes is indeed a part of the 'what' of a thing, the study of the material is a study of how it is. How does the human body work? That it does we know from observation, but how... That is the purview of science.

Science deals with the physical realm, with probabilities and inductions. Whereas previously we were concerned with the truth of the essence, we are now concerned with the truth of the cause and the matter. What conditions and events trigger something to happen, and how do we recreate it or stop it. Science opens marvelous vistas into the workings of everything from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the largest super-galactic cluster. It tells us of the intricacy of our biology, vulnerability opposed by resilience. It is the clock-maker instructing us in the mechanisms that drive the time, strike, and chime.

But it doesn't tell us why these things happen.

Theology answers why because theology seeks to know the heart of the maker. Knowing what a thing is, knowing how it is and how it works, can clue us into its purpose and its end. However - especially concerning humanity - all the science and all the philosophy in the world doesn't tell us why we're here. And since all creation is ordered to our good, and through us to God, the same goes for everything else.

It is theology which tells us of a God who, for no reason but that he willed it, created us that we might be happy with him. Our purpose and finality are God, to love him and be happy with him forever in heaven, and that is a truth we only discover when we listen to what God tells us of himself.

The fullness of theology - recall, Words, Sayings, and Reasonings about God - comes when we are in touch with the Word of God, the only-begotten second person of the trinity. Jesus doesn't tell us about the complexities of sub-atomic structure, but he is praised by it. The Word Made Flesh never explained to us how the Trinity is the prime mover, but he is glorified in Aristotle and Aquinas.

It seems that all good things come in threes. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; Mother, Father, Baby Within; Past, Present, and Future; Scripture, Tradition, and Faith; Philosophy, Science, and Theology. The most stable platform is the tripod, and when we forget that and ignore a leg, we find ourselves destabilized, unbalanced.

All three are important. All three are necessary. All three must be understood and used for what they are, insofar as they are what they are - tools for the acquisition of the truth, modalities of knowledge.

A Thought Experiment

I saw the Atheists & Agnostics Society set up outside the Hub the other day, and it sparked me. I understand questioning the veracity of various religions, being turned off by televangelists and "faith healers" and psychics, and even doubting the existence of God. However, I have come to the opinion that in this society where we have replaced worship of God with the worship of Man and Science, we have become pseudo-philosophical at best when it comes to the issue of God.

In deifying reason, we have ceased to become adequately familiar with it, and with it, wisdom.

So I invite you to walk a little while with me, let me pose some mental pictures for you, see what you think.

Supposition 1: The two vitally human acts are knowing and loving.

Allow me to clarify some terms so that we're clear as to exactly what I'm saying here.

First, Aristotle identified three "levels" of life: Plant, Animal, Human. Things like digestion, respiration in the lungs, sleeping, these are things we share with plants. Movement, instincts, direct sensory faculties (the 5 sense), these we share with animalia. There is a 3rd level, something which sets us apart from plantae & animalia, which is our humanity, our human vitality.

Second, by knowing, I mean acts of intellection, reasoning, cognitive processes which go beyond even what we see in the animal world. Humans, not animals, built the Model T and the World Wide Web.

Third, by loving, I don't mean the mere emotion of love (powerful as it may be), but rather the act of will which is a choice, decision, or act. It is not mere intellect, and not merely following through from the fruit of reason, but rather the way in which a human is able to take the input of intellect, memory, and instinct, and make a choice. As an example, take amusement parks. Roller coasters are thrilling because against reason & instinct, we make an act of will to conquer the height (and our fear) for the sake of conquering it.

So, then, what I mean in supposition 1 is simply that what sets us apart from the rest of life, what makes us human, or is at least specially human, is our capacity to know, intellect and reason, and our capacity to love, choose, and decide.

For the duration of this post I will refer to the intellect and will, the mind and heart, or knowing and loving as faculties, and the degree to which we have formed our faculties as our capability. Our current capability is not necessarily indicative of what our actual capacity for these acts of intellection and will are.

Also, for the time being, I don't care where these faculties come from. For all I care, they could simply be advanced brain chemistry. Their mechanism is not important to this foray.

Supposition 2: To comprehend a thing fully, one's intellectual capacity must be greater than the thing being thought of.

What is 2 + 2? 4, of course. There is no doubt in your mind as to the truth of the statement, "2 + 2 = 4." If you had to describe why this were the case, you could explain that you understand the concepts of 2, 4, addition, and equality. What I am positing is that your intellect is greater than any of those concepts, and is therefore able to fully encompass them.

In a sense, one could say that your intellect is capable of arithmetic, certainly has a capacity for intellect. Your intellect is greater than arithmetic, encompasses it, is able to see it for what it is.

How about calculus? What is the integral with respect to x of 3x^2 dx, from 0 to 5? It's 125 of course. However, while at one point in my life (i.e. at the end of AP Calculus, when I scored a 5/5 on the AP test), I could have rattled that off. Now, I had to look it up (though I was able to understand why it was 125).

So, the intellect can be formed, can grow, and can mature. My capability may or may not be indicative of my capacity. I have a capacity for calculus, but I have been lazy in my mathematics, and am no longer fully capable of it as I was. However, since I have the capacity, I am capable of understanding calculus, encompassing it with my intellect.

Supposition 3: Humans, insofar as they are physical, are finite beings.

This should pretty much go without saying. We are born at a particular time, and we die at another particular time. Observationally, therefore, there is a finite span of time within which we live. We live in a finite material universe, essentially a part of it. We grow - sometimes by steps, and sometimes by leaps and bounds - but always it is a finite progression. We are not infinite.

Supposition 4: If God exists as he is typically understood philosophically - omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent - then he is "bigger" than us.

Of course, by bigger than us, I also mean bigger than our intellects. A truly infinite God - for that matter anything truly infinite - must by necessity be beyond the capacity (not just the capability) of any finite intellect. That must therefore mean that he is truly beyond our total comprehension. We can know things about him, but full understanding is not possible, not by our own power.

Conclusion: We've got it all wrong about God.

It's truth time. We need to be honest. I'm not just looking at atheists and agnostics here, I'm looking at Christians, Jews, Muslims, and everyone else who is talking about God in the sense presented above.

Too often we are looking for a God we can understand. We are looking for a concept that fits in a nice little box in our heads, that we can "wrap our heads around."

We don't want to be shocked.

We don't want to be challenged.

We don't want to be anything less than the highest thing in the universe.

If our criteria for rejection of God is that we cannot understand Him, then we have misunderstood the essential truth of Who it is we are looking for.

The Fifth Joyful Mystery

Him Whom Thou Didst Find in the Temple
The Finding in the Temple

We come at last to the final mystery of the Joyful chaplet, which is one that can suffer from many of the same tendencies as the previous mystery. It is one of those after-Christmas mysteries, and it sometimes gets difficult to focus after the emotional high of the Nativity. All sorts of songs have been written about the birth of Christ, but how many about the finding in the temple?

Let us remind ourselves of the events upon which we are meditating in this decade. Take a moment to read the passage starting at Luke 2:41.

A first thought is this: we're not talking going to the mall and losing track of your kid for a little bit. Mary and Joseph didn't realize that Jesus was not in the caravan until a full day's travel away from Jerusalem, after which they returned (another day), and spent three days looking for Him.

5 days.

I can only imagine the fear and anxiety. This is their beloved son. This is the Son of God. He's been missing for 5 days...

I wonder, was Mary anxious that she had somehow imagined it all? After all, this child was to be the Messiah, which couldn't very well happen if he was gone. I suspect not, but she does say that she was anxious, and all mothers tend to be concerned for the well being of their children, no matter how capable they are, or such has been my observation and experience.

As for Joseph, these events are the source of both his 7^th Joy and his 7^th sorrow in the traditional prayer. As many have expounded on the prayer, how great the sorrow at having lost the Christ, and yet how great the joy at finding Him again, safe, in the temple, conversing with the rabbis.

Yet I can't help but wonder that maybe there was an 8th sorrow here for Joseph also. Upon expressing their anxiety to Jesus, he replies, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

Should not His father's house been their family home in Nazareth, where Jesus was learning Joseph's trade?

But what they did not realize is that Jesus was telling them that He must be in His Father's house. The temple is His home, because He truly is God.

The verse that occurs to me is Isaiah 55:6, "Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near." Jesus tells us that He must be in His Father's house. The temple. While, as the Psalmist says in the 24^th Psalm, "The earth is the LORD'S and all it holds, the world and those who live there," there is a special presence of God in His temple.

Much like the sacraments, God is not bound to His temple, but His temple is surely bound to Him, and we have assurance from Him that He is present in His Holy temple.

But even more than that, as Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians (6:19a): "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God." Our own bodies are to be temples of God. Our hearts are to be where Christ is found. If our heart is the Father's house, then does not Christ assure us that He will dwell therein?

Does He not tell us that if our body is the temple of the God (for the Holy Spirit IS God), that He will be present, speaking the Word of Truth in our hearts, communicating Himself in us?

Almighty Father,
Send your Son into our hearts,
And make them temples of the Holy Spirit,
That where we are, you may be found.
Bind us to yourself, and remain with us always.
This we ask in the name of your Son,
Who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
One God,
Forever and Ever.
Amen.

De Metaphysicam Aristotelis

I think that one of the greatest poverties of our modern education is that we have taught ourselves that what is new is better than what is old, simply because it is new. And yet, one of the best ways to understand reality was expounded upon over 2000 years ago, by a Greek man named Αριστοτλε (Aristotle). Specifically, today, I am speaking of the "four causes" of Aristotle.

These four causes are:

1. Formal
2. Material
3. Efficient
4. Final

We're going to work through these today as a sort of groundwork for some other thoughts coming up. Let us begin, shall we?

It is important to keep in mind that we're not thinking of "cause" the way we normally would in English. We will brush the English definitions, but with the exception of the efficient cause, we're in somewhat foreign territory. As we go through these, it may be helpful to think of these causes as answers to questions about the nature of a thing.

---

The Formal Cause

The formal cause answers the question, "What form does it follow?" or, "What type of thing is it?" For example, let's take your grandpa's rocking chair. Let's say it's a Lay-Z-Boy, or equivalent. Well then, the formal cause is "furniture," or "chair," or perhaps, "rocking chair."

The Material Cause

The material cause answers the question: "What is it made of?" Keeping with the example from the last section, one could say that the material causes of this chair could be considered to be wood, metal, fabric, padding, the components of the chair.

The Efficient Cause

This cause is the one most cognate with the English word. The efficient cause is that which brings about the object, the chain of events which caused it to be. The efficient causes of this chair might include the laborer or machine which crafted it, the order for it from the showroom, things of that nature.

The Final Cause

Finally we come to the final cause, also know as the teleological cause (from the Greek Τελοσ - end). This answers the question, "What is it meant for?" In the case of our grandfather's rocking chair, the simple answer would be "for sitting," a more complex answer might be, "for providing a place to rest." Any final cause of a thing, however, is its purpose, what it is meant for.

---

As another example, let's take me. My formal causes include "human" and "male." My material cause is an embodied soul or an ensouled body, so a soul, flesh, bone, blood, et cetera. My efficient causes are my parents, and their parents, and their parents. Lastly, my final cause is God, that is to say, since we know that we were created to live in union with God, and that God is our end, God is our final cause, our finality, our purpose.

Now, I did say that the word "cause" here is not being used in the sense we normally associate with it; however, these usages do share a certain sense with their common cousin. Specifically, there is a sense of contingency - that the caused (that which is under investigation) depends upon the cause(s) for its existence. That is to say, the caused is contingent on the cause.

But what does that mean?

Basically, if you take a cause away, you take the thing away. Let's say there's no such thing as flesh and blood, no such thing as a soul. What am I then made of? I cannot exist because what I'm made of doesn't exist.

Take away my parents meeting, marrying and having me, I don't exist.

Take away such a thing as humanity, then I can't even be human, I am formless.

Take away my end, and while I may exist, I exist to no end. I am pointless.

We may begin to see here the dangerous game we play when we attempt to remove God from the equation. He is our proper (and only true & fruitful) end. Our lives are literally meaningless if not for him.

We will discuss more of the ramifications of this worldview in later posts, and will also be coming back to these ideas.

De Experientiam

I seem to be seeing more and more things recently which point me to the conclusion that we are losing touch with reality.

As I sit here composing my dirge to reality, I am playing Angry Birds HD Free on my iPad. Now, if I were to actually set up such a situation where I truly launched birds of varying colors at helpless pigs poised over their destruction, I would most certainly leave me daughter without a father for a protracted period of time. And yet, this little arcade game of Avian-Procine Bellicosity is one of the most popular - and most well known - apps for the various i-devices.

But it's not real, so it's okay. Problem, Angry Birds playing PETAns?

Even as I write this post, I am not actually writing. I am hitting keys laid out in an arbitrary pattern; little bits of plastic which trigger electrical impulses that are sent through a myriad of busses and buffers (and even through the air via Bluetooth), to cause little variations of the brightness of pixels in my screen. The thoughts are real, and the light shining in my face is real, but are the words real?

How real is virtual reality?

Don't get me wrong, I love computers. Well, more accurately I have a love-hate relationship with the blasted machines. Suffice it to say that at present, my livelihood - and by extension my family's - is dependent on my facility with them, and the programming thereof.

Still, doesn't it frighten you at least a little bit how much of our lives, our civilization, is dependent on electrical representations of 1s and 0s whizzing through wires (and the air)? Just sayin'

But in all seriousness, I pose the following question: In a world with increasing dependence on computers and other electronic technology, do we know what is real? Do we know how to interact with reality? How real is virtual reality?

Some of you may be wondering what bee got in my bonnet, what the efficient cause of this thought chain is.

To put it briefly, I fear that we are being trained to reason in the wrong direction.

For a culture which prides itself on being scientific - that is, observing reality and then deriving theories to explain it - we seem to thing that we can somehow start from the theories, to learn all there is to know from books, and then to develop our theories of society and governance without actually looking at reality.

I see by the glazed look in your eyes that I'm getting a little hypothetical. Let me exemplify.

1. Item 1: I have recently been embrangled in a Facebook conversation (will I never learn?) in which one of the chief points of debate is the place and nature of experience, and knowledge gained thereof.
   
   
2. Item 2: Whilst berating my... discussion... partner for not recognizing experience and its importance, I have managed to spectacularly fail at truly experiencing him through his posts so as to actually understand what he's trying to say, filtering them instead through how I would interpret them, and how wrong he must be. I'll give you two guesses how well that's gone, and the first doesn't count...
   
   
3. Item 3: I have come upon one of the most well reasoned criticisms of the Post-Conciliar liturgy that I have yet heard - it is not the organic development it was meant to be, but rather was written theoretically, torn by those exploring theories of the ancient masses (i.e. before 300 A.D.), and those dissatisfied by the Church/Mass and wanting to make it bound ahead. So instead of the well reasoned and thought out Vernacular Mass that we are receiving this Advent, we received a Mass which was unfortunately a source of great confusion and sadness for many people. Many more knowledgeable than I have placed this at the foot of starting with theory and not reality.
   
   

So what's with this love affair with experience? Des Cartes put that to bed, didn't he? Cogito ergo sum and all that - I think, (and a thing that thinks exists), therefore I am. He claims that he was able to develop everything from there, but... Things fall apart.

The Cartesian essays which are often fodder for introductory philosophy classes follow his rejection of all things he's ever know to have fooled him as unreliable. He therefore relies solely on reason and seeks to build himself back up from there.

The thing is, reason still remains unproven. He trusts it because it has never failed him, but his memory has, and maybe it is now? How does he know that he is remembering correctly? Perhaps he has simply forgotten all of the times when reason failed?

Our senses tell us that what is attained by reason tends to match what we perceive in the external world. Our reason tells us things and reveals patterns about our observations. They work together, but are not the same thing.

Furthermore, even if we allowed the assumption that reason always works, that only means that reason is self consistent. It is a way that appears to describe the universe, but the maniac says the same thing about his theory that everyone is out to get him, and is able to put forth a quite consistent logic that adequately describes the events that are agreed to happen. To see an example read the chapter, "The Maniac" in G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy.

Now, I know, you're probably saying, "Well of course reason is self consistent, otherwise it wouldn't be very reasonable, would it? And isn't that a point in its favor?" Well, yes, it would be, except that self-consistency is not sufficient to prove a thing, by reason's own standards.

No, this doesn't disprove reason, and I'm not trying to do any such thing. However, reason is itself not sufficient, and even if it were sufficient in itself, it is unable to make the leap between the ego and the external world.

As obvious as it may sound, it takes an experience of the outside world to know that there is an outside world.

I guess the main point I'm trying to make is that we should always favor the real over the virtual, and seek the reality, the real things, the real people. Reality is good, it's a good place to live. There is value in academics and the abstract, in stories and fictional novels, but to paraphrase Morgan Freeman, we are not human doings, we are human beings.

My challenge to you this day is to experience your reality. Experience the air you are breathing. Experience the reality of other people present to you, with you. Touch reality, hold on and don't let go.

I suppose it's about time to wrap this post up. What I hope you take away from this is that while reason is a powerful tool, it is just that, a tool. It is a filter by which we undersand our experiences, but we must have those experiences. Experience reality today, you will be better for it.

Where Have All the Good Men Gone?

It's official.

Men. Are. Pigs.

I know this gets screamed all the time by all different types, but in a number of cases, it is really and truly true.

Well, no, that's not quite true. To say that a man is a pig is a contradiction. We have become all too fond of denominating an adult male by use of the term "Man," but the truth of the matter is that it is not that simple. It is, unfortunately, not automatic.

Better to say that many who we call men are in fact not, but merely boys trapped in an adult body without the faculties necessary to have achieved the noble title of "Man."

Some of you may recognize the image above as from an ad campaign by Trojan™ condoms, which basically implied that a man was a pig unless he carried Trojan™ condoms on his person. This is because, of course, it's okay to intend to have sex with a woman you just met, after both of you have become mildly to extremely inebriated, so long as you have "protection."

Of course.

The only protection needed in those circumstances is a bottle of mace. Or a shotgun.

The astute observer will by this point have noted that that campaign is not exactly recent, and that there must be another impetus for this particular post, and they would be right. Because they are astute. Why don't we get together and call ourselves an institute?

Sorry, Paul Simon makes me happy.

I recently had to pull out the "It's time to stop the rape jokes, they're not funny" card in a group of personages who will remain more or less anonymous. This is, unfortunately, not the first time I have had to pull out this card with this group. The time before, one of the males in question made the assertion that another person was "raping" him, because they were on a team together and he had been told to take care of some administrative work for the team.

After he had repeated his protestation several times, to the effect of, "Seriously, what you're doing right now is basically raping me," I quite simply told him that that was not funny, and that it was time for him to stop. He didn't understand, protested that it's just a joke, to which I simply replied that I know too many women who have been raped to make any such joke funny. It is not funny. You should stop.

He kept asking me why I was getting angry with him, to which I replied that I am not - and I wasn't, really, any more than I would be angry with a puppy that hasn't been house trained, though the pressure was indeed building - and eventually had to resort to interrupting him every time he opened his mouth with, "<Name>, let's drop this. This conversation is over. Drop it."

Bad enough, but unfortunately not as bad as this afternoon.

The discussion of several of these personages, the young male involved in the above encounter included, drifted to their current respective stocks of alcohol, and the uses thereof, which then led to this aforementioned young male expounding upon his technique for hooking up with freshmen:

So, basically, this is how I hit on them <approaches another guy to use as an example, putting his arms around the other's shoulders>, and then I say, "Let's go back to my place, I've got a hot tub," but then by the time we get there, I don't have a hot tub, but it doesn't matter, because she's forgotten why she came in the first place, so she thinks she just came with me for everything else.

After making it clear to him in no uncertain terms what I thought of that, he defended himself, saying that he was getting drunk too, and those girls made the decision to go to that party and get drunk. Others of the young males defended him in this, blaming these young ladies, because obviously these males in question wouldn't be doing this if these girls weren't showing up at these parties drunk.

No. No. No. No, No, NO, NO!!!!!!!

Even granting that these young ladies are making poor choices, I allowed, do you not see your own hand in building this situation? Do you not see how you are enabling this? If you recognize it as not good, then why are you being a part of it? If she is that drunk, she is too drunk to give consent. If she is that drunk you cannot assume consent.

At some point during this conversation I told the young initiator of this line of discussion, "So basically, as the father of a daughter, you're the type of man I'll be coming after with a shotgun."

They agreed, but continued to defend themselves. After all, it is my responsibility to not raise a slut for a daughter, they said, also referencing Chris Rock: "Daddies, it's your job to keep your daughters off the pole."

And you know what, they are absolutely right, it is absolutely my responsibility to raise a daughter who has too much self worth to even interact with this type of cretin.

But what about the daughters who had no fathers, or whose fathers were abusive <insert appropriate sentiment here />? You acknowledge that their "daddy issues" are a brokenness, but more over say that it makes them fair game?

You are not men. Not even boys, because boys at least have some innocence. You are predators. You prey on the weak who you should be defending, defending them even against themselves.

You claim that it is not your fault while you objectify women, making it clear that the type of woman you want to be with is one who is hot and puts out. Are you truly so blind to your part in this? Let those with eyes see.

It used to be that courage, honor, valor, integrity, these were the things that made you a man.

It seems that to today's society, what makes a man is the condom.