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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-style:italic'>> By which I presume he means to
assert that "American Indians" lacked moral standards or high
ideals. "Unique cultural sin" looks like the same old racism in
a new package. <o:p></o:p></span></font></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Their moral view of the world and their understanding of their role in
changing the world was not of the sort that I imagine would bring out the sin
of ‘hypocrisy’ as strong a concern—hypocrisy as we understand
it (and we borrow from our Christian heritage). <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-style:italic'>> When I look at historical
documents from the antebellum South I find it difficult to come to
the conclusion that its primary failing was being too darned
idealistic. And when we look past the Civil War through Jim Crow and the
rise of the lynch mob, respectability looks even less plausible as a key
note for the culture. You seem to be claiming that prior to the
Civil War, the moral climate of the South, despite slavery, was superior to
that of the North or the West, and that "respectability" is the
quality which elevated it.<o:p></o:p></span></font></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Because of were this discussion has gone, I’m willing to lump the
North and South together in comparison to our own; and I wouldn’t even
know where to begin if this comparison is going to be seriously challenged.
Regarding hypocrisy, I was simply responding to Keely’s argument. But of
course, hypocrisy is not the sin of “being too darned idealistic.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-style:italic'>> So maybe I'm just not getting
what "respectability" signifies, or how it can counterbalance the
gravity of slavery. <o:p></o:p></span></font></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Please note my argument from modern abortion and Kai’s argument
from classical culture. I don’t think ‘counterbalance’ is
the appropriate term.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-style:italic'>> Note that I'm not asserting
that the North was or is free from racism; the largest lynch mob ever
documented was far above the <st1:place w:st="on">Mason-Dixon Line</st1:place>. But I'm
missing a big step in the argument. Yes, the Civil War had multiple
causes. Yes, racism permeates the history of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> in every geographic
region. Yes, life is complex. But how do I get from there
to the notion that the antebellum South represents a moral <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">high point</st1:City></st1:place> from which we
have lamentably declined?<o:p></o:p></span></font></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I think these are important concessions, and I’m glad you have
pointed them out. But like I said, if it is going to be seriously maintained
that we have not seen a moral decline in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> over the last 100 years, then,
well, I guess I don’t know where I would begin. Perhaps then I’ll
just take the first thing that enters my head. I don’t think Leave It To
Beaver perfectly represents a Christian Ideal, but as illustration, it seems to
beat the schism, disrespect, autonomy, immorality, and instability of the
typical modern family.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Perhaps De Tocqueville can progressively help too:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Chapter IX<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=2 width="25%" align=center>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><br>
EDUCATION OF YOUNG WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-style:italic'>No free communities ever existed
without morals, and as I observed in the former part of this work, morals are
the work of woman. Consequently, whatever affects the condition of women, their
habits and their opinions, has great political importance in my eyes. </span></font></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=2 width="50%" align=center>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Among almost all Protestant nations young women are far more the
mistresses of their own actions than they are in Catholic countries. This
independence is still greater in Protestant countries like <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place>, which have retained or
acquired the right of self-government; freedom is then infused into the domestic
circle by political habits and by religious opinions. In the United States the
doctrines of Protestantism are combined with great political liberty and a most
democratic state of society, and nowhere are young women surrendered so early
or so completely to their own guidance. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Long before an American girl arrives at the marriageable age, her
emancipation from maternal control begins: she has scarcely ceased to be a
child when she already thinks for herself, speaks with freedom, and acts on her
own impulse. The great scene of the world is constantly open to her view, far
from seeking to conceal it from her, it is every day disclosed more completely
and she is taught to survey it with a firm and calm gaze. Thus the vices and
dangers of society are early revealed to her; as she sees them clearly, she
views them without illusion and braves them without fear, for she is full of
reliance on her own strength, and her confidence seems to be shared by all
around her. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>An American girl scarcely ever displays that virginal softness in the
midst of young desires or that innocent and ingenuous grace which usually
attend the European woman in the transition from girlhood to youth. It is rare
that an American woman, at any age displays childish timidity or ignorance. Like
the young women <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> she seeks to please,
but she knows precisely the cost of pleasing. If she does not abandon herself
to evil, at least she knows that it exists; and she is remarkable rather for
purity of manners than for chastity of mind. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I have been frequently surprised and almost frightened at the singular
address and happy boldness with which young women in America contrive to manage
their thoughts and their language amid all the difficulties of free
conversation; a philosopher would have stumbled at every step along the narrow
path which they trod without accident and without effort. It is easy, indeed,
to perceive that even amid the independence of early youth an American woman is
always mistress of herself; she indulges in all permitted pleasures without
yielding herself up to any of them, and her reason never allows the reins of
self-guidance to drop, though it often seems to hold them loosely. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>In <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">France</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
where traditions of every age are still so strangely mingled in the opinions
and tastes of the people, women commonly receive a reserved, retired, and
almost conventional education, as they did in aristocratic times; and then they
are suddenly abandoned without a guide and without assistance in the midst of
all the irregularities inseparable from democratic society. The Americans are
more consistent. They have found out that in a democracy the independence of
individuals cannot fail to be very great, youth premature, tastes
ill-restrained, customs fleeting, public opinion often unsettled and powerless,
paternal authority weak, and marital authority contested. Under these
circumstances, believing that they had little chance of repressing in woman the
most vehement passions of the human heart, they held that the surer way was to
teach her the art of combating those passions for herself. As they could not
prevent her virtue from being exposed to frequent danger, they determined that
she should know how best to defend it, and more reliance was placed on the free
vigor of her will than on safeguards which have been shaken or overthrown
Instead, then, of inculcating mistrust of herself, they constantly seek to
enhance her confidence in her own strength of character. As it is neither
possible nor desirable to keep a young woman in perpetual and complete ignorance,
they hasten to give her a precocious knowledge on all subjects. Far from hiding
the corruptions of the world from her, they prefer that she should see them at
once and train herself to shun them, and they hold it of more importance to
protect her conduct than to be over-scrupulous of the innocence of her
thoughts. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Although the Americans are a very religious people, they do not rely on
religion alone to defend the virtue of woman; they seek to arm her reason also.
In this respect they have followed the same method as in several others: they
first make vigorous efforts to cause individual independence to control itself,
and they do not call in the aid of religion until they have reached the utmost
limits of human strength. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I am aware that an education of this kind is not without danger; I am
sensible that it tends to invigorate the judgment at the expense of the
imagination and to make cold and virtuous women instead of affectionate wives
and agreeable companions to man. Society may be more tranquil and better
regulated, but domestic life has often fewer charms. These, however, are
secondary evils, which may be braved for the sake of higher interests. At the
stage at which we are now arrived, the choice is no longer left to us; a
democratic education is indispensable to protect women from the dangers with
which democratic institutions and manners surround them. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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