NotSoThoreau

In Ponca City, Oklahoma, there is this statue tribute to pioneer women:
(The link can be found here: link)

These were women that left everything they had, to move to a new part of the country and give their families a better life. In some cases, these women became property owners in their own names. They were a major reason for the Western states granting voting rights to women long before the Eastern states got around to it.

And this is how the current adminstration sees women: Life of Julia Is this honestly what happened to the offspring of those courageous women? Are women too incompetent to live their lives without some government official taking care of them? Good thing those earlier women didn’t consider children as something they needed to be protected against. (And let’s just set aside for a minute how anyone can consider living on $12000 a year from Social Security “comfortable”. Julia needs what she can grow in that garden to live on, provided the Government lets her keep it.) More Americans now need food stamps. Fewer Americans have jobs. Are we truly so much more unhealthy now that all we can think about is finding ways to pay for doctors? Sarah Bush Johnston educated Abraham Lincoln on her own. She did not have a degree and there was no Department of Education telling her how to do it. There are few politicians today capable of matching Lincoln’s eloquence.

I don’t think that women have somehow gotten less capable over the years. I have seen, in my own lifetime, contraceptives go from being prescribed only to married women to being openly sold in grocery stores. We sometimes forget how far we have come, in our demands for even more. And while we have been so worried about the government in our bedroom, we seem to have ignored their intrusion into every aspect of our lives. In short, we are less free today. When you look to the government for protection and services, you give up your ability to run your own life. We are the children of strong, strong women. Don’t let them tell you that you are weak.