Well, you have me totally confused here, Troy. We have all learned a lot

from this forum, but we certainly must have much more to learn.

"Patriarchy" is well defined, even it is not so clear in our Webster's

Dictionary, so how you can even believe "patriarchy is ... largely

hypothetical, in my opinion". Countries which call themselves patriarchal

(in their own language usually) are proud of that fact, and there is

nothing hypothetical in that fact. Some of the statistical evidence of

Japan's social and economic stability has been presented. Either you

didn't see it, didn't believe it, or don't believe there is a relationship

between "patriarchy" and "family stability" if you still believe that

patriarchy in Japan is hypothetical. I don't know the Japanese word for

patriarchy, but they do consider themselves to be a patriarchy and they do

consider us to be a matriarchy (and I do agree with these 126 million

people as wholeheartedly as I disagree with you that patriarchy is

hypothetical).

There is a huge difference between these two cultures, and in fact when the

differences are presented to some people, they say: "But these are

different *cultures*--you can't compare the two". The very point is that

they ARE different cultures, that the difference is as simple and basic as

the difference between "patriarchy vs. matriarchy", and we MUST compare

them because their construct works and ours obviously doesn't.

Are you saying that you believe our system works, in spite of what the

statistics say? Are you saying that you don't believe that Japan is a

patriarchy? Are you saying that you think we are a patriarchy? Are you

saying that you don't believe the difference between Japan and the US

represented by the statistics? Are you saying that you don't believe that

the difference in the statistics between the two countries is because of

the differences between patriarchy and matriarchy? I am not being

disrespectful or argumentative to tell you that I can't imagine what you

mean by "hypothetical".

You say we have had no "revolutionary change", but there are at least 3

crucial ones that we have discussed so far:

1) Almost a century and a half after the Constitution was written women

got the right to vote (1920).

2) Almost 2 centuries after the Constitution was written the "equal

protection" clause was applied to women (1961).

3) Shortly after that, women became the majority voter (1965).

We were by all definitions and acts a patriarchy prior to 1920. By all

definitions and statistics we became a matriarchy at least as early as

1965. Within that 45 year period a transition took place which we cannot

view as anything but "revolutionary change", and a WAG is that the American

Patriarchy formally ended in 1961. That was the time that all the social

and economic statistics hit the knee of their curves--all to the worse,

none to the better. There is nothing hypothetical here.

You say "I don't see us saying to change much structure, but I do see us

wanting to change behavior", and I disagree here. There was no change in

the behavior of the American people which led to the most revolutionary of

the above changes--the application of the term "equal protection" to women.

Rather, it was in violation of the will and religions of the American

people, as evidenced by the spirit and intent of the Fourteenth Amendment,

a century of tradition and consistent court rulings, Biblical history, and

Congressional legislation.

The Supreme Court unilaterally reversed the application of "equal

protection", to the benefit only of lawyers and nobody else, particularly

women. It was as revolutionary a change as we've ever had, and it was by

that that the behavior of people was forced to change for the worse.

Equivalently, we can't change behavior unless we change the "structure"--to

get behavior back on track.

We placed our crown jewels in the supposedly capable hands of the Supreme Court, and they squashed them.

Modified Monday, July 13, 2009