Stick with me. I haven’t lost my mind.

What precipitated that headline is news that Elon Musk has – finally – moved to block Russia’s use of Starlink technology in its war against Ukraine. His decision apparently came after Russian drones equipped with Starlink antennas struck a civilian passenger train in northern Ukraine near Kharkiv in late January. One train car was hit by a Russian drone, and three others hit close to the train, apparently in an attempt to derail it. Five people were killed with an unknown number of wounded. There were 155 civilians traveling on the train at the time of the strike.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s defense minister, contacted Starlink after the train strike and asked the company to find a way to disable the technology so that Russia cannot use Starlink to guide its drones in attacks on Ukraine. In the past, Russia has used the excuse that many of its drones that have struck civilian structures such as apartment buildings and businesses in Ukraine missed their military targets by mistake. Ukraine’s defense minister pointed out to executives from Space-X that Russia’s Starlink-guided drones hit a moving train filled with civilians, so that had to be Russia’s target.

On February 1, Musk posted on X, “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked. Let us know if more needs to be done.” Musk had apparently ordered that Starlink terminals operated by Russians be disabled by restricting use of the technology using geo-fencing and registration tools that block terminals not registered with Starlink. Russia has captured some Starlink terminals and antennas from Ukrainian forces and acquired contraband Starlink sets on the black market.

Starlink has been an essential battlefield tool for Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Space-X donated about 3,500 terminals to Ukraine early in the war. After that, Starlink terminals and antennas were paid for by USAID, and then the Pentagon picked up the funding for both the terminals and the monthly fees to operate them. Poland and other NATO countries have pitched in with funding for Ukraine’s Starlink access. Poland remains one of the largest funders for Ukraine’s Starlink services, paying the subscription fees for more than 20,000 terminals it provided.

Ukraine uses the technology for communications between rear areas and the front lines and has employed Starlink for its own surveillance and attack drones, as well as some remote-controlled resupply vehicles on the ground. Starlink-connected drones with video have been used by Ukraine to adjust artillery. When Russia began using pirated Starlink technology, Ukraine pleaded with Space-X to find a way to block Russia’s use of its terminals and antennas.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that armed Russian drones cost about $500 to $800 to build, and the Starlink connections and equipment cost another $300 to $500, according to Ukrainian estimates. Starlink-connected drones are much more difficult to jam by Ukraine because they are satellite linked. Russia has been using Starlink-connected drones across the entire 600-mile front line of the war. Russia has also been bombarding Kyiv and other Ukrainian population centers using Starlink-connected drones. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported in late January that Russian BM-35 strike drones equipped with Starlink had a 500-kilometer range, making them capable of hitting targets all the way from the Russian border to areas in eastern Ukraine near the Polish border.

The BM-35 Russian strike drone looks like this illustration from ISW:

It is easy to see how dangerous Russian access to Starlink became in the war.

That fact became evident not long after Musk ordered the denial of Russian access to Starlink. The effect on frontline Russian forces has been “catastrophic,” according to sources quoted by Forbes. Ukrainian sources told Forbes that “All command and control of the [Russian] troops has collapsed. Assault operations have been halted in many areas.” This has enabled Ukraine to move to bolster its defenses around Pokrovsk, because Russian drones using Starlink can no longer target Ukrainian vehicles resupplying troops along the front lines. Reports from Ukraine say that its forces have made gains in the south near Kherson because of the blockage of Russia’s access to Starlink.

The New York Times reports that Russian forces have been “scrambling” to replace Starlink. Russia does not have its own equivalent technology, leaving its military to fall back on “ground internet, fiber-optic cables, Wi-Fi bridges and extenders that forces used before relying on Starlink,” according to the Times.

Ukraine has had its own problems since the move by Starlink. Each terminal and antenna is registered separately with Starlink, sort of like our cable connections are registered and billed separately. You must have an account for the equipment to work. Ukraine quickly came up with a list of its authorized terminals and Starlink accounts, which Space-X added to what is now called the “white list” of accounts, but some Ukrainian devices have not been registered yet. Russian accounts and terminals have been dubbed “black” and are barred from use by Space-X.

The modern battlefield has become hugely reliant on technology. Advances in night-vision and satellite surveillance have changed everything for forces on the ground, which used to be “blind” at night and reliant on line-of-sight reconnaissance for movement of units. Satellite communications technology like Starlink kicked the entire military calculus of warfare up about ten notches. The U.S. military has had soldiers in Ukraine studying Ukraine’s drone manufacturing and tactics. It’s amazing to contemplate, but the U.S. is currently behind Ukraine in supply and use of battlefield drones, although the Pentagon is scrambling – there’s that word again – to catch up.

Meanwhile, both Russia and China are planning their own Space-X-style systems of low-orbit satellites, so they can catch up to what will surely be a mandatory system to fight the next war. They are behind for now, but within the next five to ten years, both countries are expected to field versions of their own satellite communications networks for military and civilian use.

I guess it will remain a mystery why Elon Musk did not bar Russian use of Starlink technology right from the start, since the entire system belongs to him, and he is the one who makes all the decisions about how Starlink is used and by whom.

But he’s done it now. Ukraine is breathing a huge sigh of relief. The Russian drones that attack front line troops and population centers will be less accurate from now on thanks to Elon Musk, who appears to have somehow come by – however imperfectly and probably temporarily – an actual conscience.

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Republicans continue to prove that they are unfit to govern, leading us down a path that will cost lives for decades to come, even as the legacy press continues to bend the knee in abject surrender.

When the regime falls, and it will, everyone has to be held accountable for selling out democracy to pad their fucking bank accounts.

Ogre Nation News Update!

2:40 - 12:48 The regime pays back half a billion in filthy fossil fuel donations by killing a crucial Obama-era EPA legal ruling. Enjoy all the extra pollution courtesy of the “both sides are just as bad!” crowd. gives a short history lesson about Love Canal.

12:49 - 22:38 Gallup obeys in advance and ends presidential approval polls because Trump’s numbers are in the shitter. CBS manages to go from bad to unbelievably worse all in the same week. The legacy press continues to fail us.

22:39 - 25:40 As we enter the third government shutdown of Trump’s second term in office, we see the results of electing people who despise the very concept of government.

25:41 - 31:41 You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream Because of Fucking ICE

31:42 - 35:52 We Live in the Stupidest Timeline - I give a little Ogre history lesson about Lysenkoism.

35:53 - 46:56 Headlines for Short Attention Spans

46:57 - 53:10 Self-care of the Week

Few forces have emerged from the MAGA new right as forcefully as pro-natalism. Pro-natalists aren’t a unified group — there are the tech bros who are happy to use IVF and surrogacy to create dozens of “perfect” children, and there are the traditionalists who want to ban IVF and push all women to marry at 22 — but they share a unified vision of a world in which radically raising (white) birth rates is a top priority. And they all understand that the only way to do that is to radically constrain women’s rights and opportunities.

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There are, of course, ways to gently increase birth rates through support for women and families; France, for example, has had some success through a combination of generous childcare policies, paid leave, and cash payments for each child. But so far, no country has seen the huge upticks that pro-natalists want. The countries with the highest birthrates tend to be those in which women have the fewest rights and opportunities. And as women gain more rights and opportunities, birth rates go down, while age of first marriage and first birth go up.

This is why there is such a concerted effort on the pro-natalist right to force or at least coerce women to marry in their 20s and get to reproducing. It’s why the strategy includes pushing women out of higher education, banning or highly limiting contraception and IVF, and legalizing workplace discrimination against women so that employers can favor bread-winning men.

But that, of course, is not enough. The pro-natalist right is also using public shaming to criticize and mock any woman whose life doesn’t run on their ideal course. The idea seems to be that the US is in need of an anti-feminist cultural shift in which women who marry and reproduce early and then stay home to raise their children are praised, while women to delay until they’re settled into their careers or until they find the right person are derided. It really does give away the whole game on the right’s views on women. It’s not motherhood or children they value; it’s compliance.

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Case in point: Prominent conservatives are angry about the fact that the number of children born to women over 40 is rising, as is the number of children born to single women over 40. These are still pretty small numbers: Only about 4% of all births are to women 40 and older, and it’s closer to 1% for births to single women 40 and over. And thanks to the incredible success of campaigns to decrease teen pregnancy via long-acting contraception (coupled with much lower rates of teenage sex), there are now more births to women 40 and over than there are to teenage girls.

One would think that this would make conservatives happy. Teen pregnancy has been a focus of the left and the right for decades, with the left promoting contraception and the right promoting abstinence. If the goal is more babies born to women who are ready to be mothers, then the pro-natalists should be glad to see that women who are nearing the end of their fertile years are deciding to have them. That is, sadly, not the case. The pro-natalists are incredibly disparaging of these women, and especially of the professionally successful women who choose to have children while single. They are what happens “when you perfected your career and one day wake up that biology is passing you by.” It is “just a cruel thing to do to a child on purpose.” It means a fatherless child and a love-less mother. It’s “immorality and selfishness.”

The solution? The absolutely ubiquitous and only right-wing solution, which the Heritage Foundation wants to take money away from poor single moms in order to pay for?

Get married in your late teens or early 20s. Start having babies right away. Have as many as you can. If you don’t, be socially shunned. See? Easy!

Except, of course, that women have free will.

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Knowing something is coming doesn’t mean it gets easier to accept. Death. Taxes. Stripping your autistic child of their rights and becoming their legal guardian into adulthood.

We started this process months ago because Jordan turns 18 in April. By the time Jordan was 13, though, we knew this was something that had to be done. We tried not to think about it much. We didn’t want to. Maybe Jordan would progress to the point where we wouldn’t have to do this? We knew that wasn’t going to happen, but a parent never stops hoping.

But time does what time does and with Jordan on the brink of becoming a legal adult, we have to go to court to take guardianship of our son.

Jordan may be physically 18, but he’s mentally about 7 or 8. He’s still embarrassed around girls. He still watched shows meant for little kids.1 He struggles with abstract concepts, and by “struggles,” I mean he cannot grasp most things he cannot see or touch. Why and How are almost completely beyond him. Jordan can ask “Why?”, and he does, constantly, but unless the answer is extremely basic, “Because Mommy said so” or “Because there are no more cookies,” he will not understand you. Answering a why or a how question is something Jordan simply cannot do most of the time.

Obviously, Jordan will not be able to make informed decisions about his medical care. Or anything else. Ever. He will always be a child trapped inside a man’s body.

That means we have to take the legal steps necessary to strip away his rights as an adult so we can continue to care for him. Is it a good thing we can do this? Yes. Is it necessary? Yes? Does it still feel like a crushing loss, almost as terrible as first learning Jordan was autistic when he was just two years old?

Fuck you, autism.

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By law, Jordan is required to have a legal advocate appointed. Basically, Jordan gets his own lawyer who will ensure we are not taking advantage of him. Guardianship is not just for autistic adults. It can, and generally is, also be for senior citizens no longer of sound mind. Conniving caretakers do all sorts of shady shit in these situations. The same with kids with an inheritance, I suppose. People are gross.

Still, the idea of having a lawyer come and “protect” Jordan from us, even as a legal formality, was nerve-wracking. We didn’t know who this person was or if they had any experience with autism. Some autistic kids “look” autistic. Many do not. If you’re unfamiliar with neurodivergent people, you wouldn’t necessarily understand what you’re looking at.

She came in and explained who she was and why she was there to Jordan. Jordan nodded and said “OK” whenever prompted, and I died a little inside each time. Jordan will, in fact, answer yes or no questions and respond to “OK?” even if he has no idea what you just said. It’s mimic behavior, and you have to know Jordan to know when he understands you or not. How he responds, the tone, and the strength of his voice are what you have to listen for.

I desperately wanted to tell the lawyer that, despite his answers, Jordan didn’t understand a single thing she was saying. It was too abstract. Going to court and giving mommy and daddy guardianship? That might as well have been in Latin to Jordan. But I couldn’t say anything at all because I was worried how that would sound coming from me, the parent looking to take away my son’s legal rights.

This is not a situation I was accustomed to. I have never worried about anyone anywhere doubting our commitment to Jordan’s welfare.

Once, when Jordan was maybe six or seven, he tripped on the Fourth of July and whacked his face on a table at an outdoor fireworks display. Jordan was clumsy when he was younger. Dangerously so. We had to watch him like a hawk climbing up and down stairs, until he was about five, something three-year-olds can do with ease. Fortunately, he did not fall down a flight of stairs, but after his spill, he did have a black eye and needed stitches on his forehead.

A few days later, Jordan was in summer school (or rather, Extended School Year for special needs kids), and a teacher who did not know us was alarmed by Jordan’s injuries. She was ready to call Child Protective Services when three of the paraprofessionals who did know us stopped her. They explained who we are and that there was zero chance we had hurt Jordan. You see, we had spent so much time in the school and around Jordan and his class, we were a known quantity. Jordan’s parents? Abusive? You must be joking.

But now I had to put the fate of my family in the hands of a total stranger and hope she didn’t mistake Jordan’s non-answers for actual comprehension.

After several minutes of yes and no questions, the lawyer finally FINALLY started asking more abstract questions, and there was no longer any doubt about Jordan’s capacity (or lack thereof) to care for himself.

Then we pivoted to questions about what Jordan’s day is like and how much self-care he’s capable of. He can shower, mostly, on his own. Go to the bathroom, brush his teeth with reminders, put on his clothes, etc. All good. Make his own food? No. Cross the street safely? Not at all. Take public transportation by himself? Not if we ever wanted to see him again.

In a contained environment, Jordan can take care of his most basic needs. Outside, he needs supervision. He cannot live on his own and will never be able to. That’s the totality of it.

It hurt so much to say that aloud. It was sticking a knife into my heart. It’s not that we haven’t had this discussion before, but this was stating it for the record. This was official. This was “real.” This was final.

Sure, if Jordan were struck by lightning tomorrow and woke up neurotypical, we could undo the guardianship. But that’s never going to fucking happen, is it? This is Jordan’s life now. He will never go to college. He will never get married. He will almost certainly never have a romantic partner (what seven-year-old goes on a date?). He will never live his life on his own terms. He will forever be the ward of someone else. For now, it will be his parents. Later, possibly his sister. Eventually, an assisted living facility.

We will have to make all of his decisions for him. Where he will live. Where he will work. What time he gets up and goes to bed. Very little will be in his control. As an eternal child, he won’t really care. But it’s still a tragedy. A life stolen by autism and I will be signing the paperwork in two weeks to make it legal and binding.

Fuck autism. Fuck autism forever.

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Fuck You, Autism

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I’m going to do some cheerleading tonight, and let me tell you right now that I am not ashamed of it.

Bruce Springsteen announced today that he and the E Street Band will begin a “Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour” in March through seventeen cities, making a total of twenty appearances. The tour follows the release of his first protest song in decades, “Streets of Minneapolis,” which he wrote and recorded following the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis last month.

The way Springsteen announced the E Street Band Tour was overtly political: “We are living through dark, disturbing and dangerous times, but do not despair — the cavalry is coming! Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band will be taking the stage this spring from Minneapolis to California to Texas to Washington, D.C. for the Land of Hope And Dreams American Tour. We will be rocking your town in celebration and in defense of America — American democracy, American freedom, our American Constitution and our sacred American dream — all of which are under attack by our wannabe king and his rogue government in Washington, D.C. Everyone, regardless of where you stand or what you believe in, is welcome — so come on out and join the United Free Republic of E Street Nation for an American spring of Rock ‘n’ Rebellion! I’ll see you there!”

The tour opens in Minneapolis on March 31 and closes on May 27 in Nationals Park in Washington D.C. Springsteen has been outspoken in his opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump, describing his administration “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous” on the first night of the band’s European tour last summer. He called on his European audience “to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”

Springsteen’s announcement comes on the heels of the wonderfully inclusive Super Bowl halftime show by Bad Bunny that drove the MAGA right-wing faithful to distraction and mania on February 8. It also follows the announced closure of the Kennedy Center in Washington, supposedly for “repairs and renovation,” but everyone knows the real reason was the cancellation of musical, dance, and theater performances after Trump pasted his name above that of John F. Kennedy on the center.

Springsteen has drawn a line under a fact of life in this country that has not been adequately acknowledged. The creative community in the United States, from literature, art, dance, theater, classical music, jazz, rock and roll, blues, rhythm and blues, rap, and pop is dominated if not wholly owned by people of the Left. Country is the only form of popular music that is dominated by the Right, with more than a few performers endorsing Trump during his election campaign in 2024. Every other president who has occupied the White House in recent times, including Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, were able to call upon performers from various parts of the arts community to appear at the White House, and nobody refused to appear at the Kennedy Center over the past several decades.

No prominent performers appeared at the White House in Trump’s first term in office. This time around, the people Trump was able to get to perform to celebrate his inauguration were Carrie Underwood, Kid Rock, the Village People, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Lee Greenwood, Billy Ray Cyrus, and the Liberty University Praise Choir. No prominent performer appeared at the White House last year.

During Barack Obama’s term, many prominent artists appeared at the White House, including Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Mick Jagger, who appeared in celebration of Black History Month in 2012 alongside B.B. King and Jeff Beck. Bob Dylan appeared in 2010 as part of a White House celebration of the Civil Rights Movement.

The appearances of major talents at the White House in years past has been taken for granted. Of course, performers such as Dylan and B.B. King and many, many others including famous opera singers and jazz musicians would appear at the White House! It was the people’s house, and it was an honor to be invited to entertain presidents and their guests. That came to a screeching halt in Trump’s first term, and the absence of talent from the White House has continued in his second term.

Springsteen appears unafraid that his overt criticism of Trump will affect his standing with his fans and the public at large. The rest of the music community should take note. Think about what could happen during this year leading up to the midterm elections if performers joined Springsteen and the E Street Band on the road, taking a pro-democracy, anti-Trump and anti-ICE message to arenas and theaters around the country. They wouldn’t have to endorse individual candidates or even raise money for the Democratic Party. All they would have to do is go out on stage and tell audiences where they stand: Trump’s authoritarianism NO, democracy and freedom YES.

Springsteen’s stand also follows the outrageous act of censorship by CBS and the FCC of Stephen Colbert following his announcement that he would have Texas senate candidate James Talarico on his show last night.

This shit will not stand if the arts community stands up and stands together. They’re afraid of Bad Bunny. They’re afraid of Bruce Springsteen. They’re afraid of Stephen Colbert. They’re afraid of Jimmy Kimmel. They’re afraid of The View. They’re afraid of anybody who is not afraid of them.

They would be flattened with fear if other popular music acts stood up and took a stand alongside Colbert and Springsteen and Kimmel and Bad Bunny. They can try to censor individual performers, like they did with Colbert yesterday. But he put his interview with Talarico online where millions of viewers, far more than his CBS audience, saw it.

There is strength in numbers. There is strength in talent. Put both together, and we can turn these assholes and their hate inside out with their jealousy and anger. We have something they don’t – belief in what this country stands for and the willingness to stand up and sing out against Trump’s oppression.

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Since Trump’s re-ascendance to the White House, the reactionary conservative movement has become the most aggressive and unfettered it has been in my lifetime. And they are getting very, very clear on what they think an acceptable life looks like for women: Settle for any man who decides he wants you; don’t go to college; marry early; have as many babies as possible; quit your job (or don’t pursue one in the first place) to stay home full time and depend financially on your husband; shoulder the blame if you wind up married to a jerk; wind up impoverished if you divorce; and face social condemnation if you fail to follow the Trad Wife script. Contraception should be illegal or at least hard to get; same for IVF and other fertility treatments. The reactionary conservatives of the New Right are not simply pro-natalists who want lots of babies; they are people who want to impose a strictly patriarchal model of the family on all of us, which has certain kinds of women having babies, and other women punished for deviating. And that requires giving men greater rights and freedoms, while allowing women fewer.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a plan they wrote down and published.

Last month, the Heritage Foundation published Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years. Think of it as Project 2275, a detailed plan that is mostly about how America can spend the next two and a half centuries undoing the feminist progress we’ve made. And it’s not just Heritage: Some of the most prominent thinkers (“thinkers”) of the New Right are obsessed with increasing (white) birthrates, and the curtailments of women’s freedoms that would be required to get reproduction to where they want it (infinite). Many of these “thinkers” are terminally online brain-rotted misogynists, but they have heavy sway over the terminally online brain-rotted men currently running the US government (if they’re asking Claude how to invade Venezuela and capture Maduro, they’re definitely turning to Bronze Age Pervert for his thoughts about women’s rights).

The tech bro-natalist right may be in favor of things like IVF and commercial surrogacy, but the broader right is not; they believe — not wrongly — that the only way to get women having an average of three-plus babies apiece or more is to subjugate them. Or, perhaps, this is backwards: They’ve long wanted to subjugate women for the sake of it, and this new birthrate discourse has given them a new argument in favor of an old cause.

The rhetoric on the right has gotten so extreme that even Meghan McCain has spoken out about it:

…to which the conservative response was, “actually, it’s better to shame women.” Here’s Katie Miller, wife to Stephen Miller (who by the way got married at 28, when her husband was 34; not exactly a “young” marriage):

Katie Miller is right that if you focus on settling, you can probably find someone to marry at any age. Maybe that’s how she wound up married to Stephen Miller.

The fundamental problem with the conservative life script for women is that when women have choices, we don’t tend to the follow the conservative life script. For any of you reading who are under the age of, say, 45: How old were you when you met your partner, if you have a partner? (I was 30). If you’re over 45, think of the younger people you know: how old were they when they met their partner? Overwhelmingly, the Americans who marry are meeting their spouses in their late 20s and into their 30s (and beyond). The average age of first marriage for an American woman is a touch older than 28, and for men it’s 30. These couples have largely not been together since they were 16 and simply chose to wait a decade-plus to wed. It took them a while to find the right person — and to become a person who felt mature enough and themselves enough to tie themselves to another for life.

This is a good thing, if what you care about is happiness and human flourishing. It is a bad thing if all you care about is women doing their maximal reproductive and wifely duties. And the only real way to force women to do their maximal reproductive and wifely duties is to, well, force them.

I am not exaggerating when I say that the forces of the New Right want to use the full force of the state to impose a national patriarchy. I read through the Heritage Foundation’s plan to save America by saving marriage. Here is the plan, in Heritage’s own words, with a little translation from me. They are explicit: Have fewer women go to college; push women to marry and start having babies when they’re very young; ban same-sex marriage; ban IVF; limit contraception access; strip basic rights even to physical safety from children; penalize single mothers; and impose conservative Christianity as a national religion.

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On Curtailing Women’s Rights:

• “the state and federal governments should recognize the natural differences between men and women. They should also preserve this distinction between the sexes in law against attempts to replace it with tendentious and subjective concepts, such as ‘gender identity.’”

  • What that means: The law should discriminate against women. Heritage leaders have said this repeatedly. They recently hired Scott Yenor, who says professional women are “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome,” and that “the heroic feminine prioritizes motherhood and wifeliness and celebrates the men who make it possible.” He advocates for the end of anti-discrimination laws and says it should be possible for companies to legally “support traditional family life by hiring only male heads of households, or by paying a family wage.” And “governments should be allowed to prepare men for leadership and responsible provision, while preparing women for domestic management and family care.”

• “Instead of celebrating the nuanced expressions of femininity, the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s commanded a crusade that promoted sexual, financial, and familial ‘freedom’ for women. Women were encouraged to “liberate” themselves from a patriarchal culture that insisted they stay at home and raise a family.”

  • What that means: Sexual, financial, and familial “freedom” for women is bad. Liberation from a patriarchal culture is bad.

• “Fertility rates tend to be higher in less-developed countries, but as nations industrialize, several factors conspire to reduce birth rates. These include the proliferation of birth control, more prospects for women to receive higher education and work outside the home, the delayed financial independence of young adults, and the government’s role in old-age Social Security.”

  • What that means: The Heritage Foundation is looking to limit birth control, higher education for women, work for women, and Social Security.

• “Today’s adults may favor autonomy and personal development over raising children more than earlier generations did. Thus, greater opportunity cost rather than greater actual cost may be a better explanation.”

  • What that means: I actually think they’re right on this, but what they aren’t explicitly saying is that there are greater opportunity costs for women today than there were in past years. Men have always been able to have children, rely on women to raise them, and still pursue fulfilling work, hobbies, friendship, and travel. Women, on the other hand, once gained significant social status by having children, and now see the other things they love — work, hobbies, friendship, travel, autonomy, and so on — threatened if they reproduce. The Heritage plan is not to make it easier for women to be fully-formed human beings and mothers. The plan is to make it harder for women to be fully-formed human beings so that motherhood will be their own path to personal fulfillment.

• “Often, dating app users who are marriage minded suffer from what sociologist Brad Wilcox describes as the ‘soulmate myth,’ which he defines as ‘the idea that marriage is primarily about feeling an intensely emotional connection with the one that makes you happy and fulfilled.’ This contrasts with the historic understanding of marriage as being centered on a shared life of duty and virtue. The same idea can be captured in three words that are emblematic of the dating scene today—fear of ‘settling.’”

  • What that means: It is frivolous to try to find someone with whom you feel you have a unique and profound connection. Instead, you should marry out of a sense of duty. You should settle. Or at least women should.

On Curtailing Contraception and Banning IVF:

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