I don’t have a lot in common with liberals. They see government as the solution to every problem: I see government as the problem. Therefore, I watched with some trepidation as the president-elect assembled a team of “experts,” who will be whispering in his ear, guiding his every move for the next few years.
It was tantamount to watching a 2-year-old stack blocks. You know that ragged tower is going to crumble, but how high will it go before it falls? Which block will be the tipping point and how many will be left standing in the end?
To my amazement, Obama’s tower of blocks didn’t tilt as far left as I had expected. Some of his blocks sat straight on this otherwise wobbly tower.
In fact, the face one of those blocks, Larry Summers, the man he picked to head the White House’s National Economic Council, gave me a chuckle simply because it has caused the extreme left so much aguish.
On many levels, I love this guy! His penchant for big government is disquieting, but Summers also believes in the free market. He’s a pragmatist and won’t advocate for raising taxes in a down economy, so, if Obama takes Summer’s advice, there should be an opportunity for a recovery.
The thing I appreciate most about Summers is that he is a truth teller, even when the truth goes against the left’s credo. That is why angry bra-burning feminists, those dowdy man haters in “sensible” shoes, ganged up on him a few years ago and had him axed as the president of Harvard.
What ticked them off? Summers dared to state the obvious: Men and women are different. Furthermore, he went on to suggest that this innate difference between the sexes might help to explain why relatively few women reach the top echelon in engineering and science in academia.
However, this was not the only reason Summers gave for the gender gap in these fields. He offered three primary reasons with devotion to one’s career at the very top of his list. Summers noted that one must put in 80 hours per week to climb this elite ladder, and fewer mothers than fathers are willing to make this sacrifice.
To support his claim that the innate difference between the sexes does contribute to the disparity, he presented high school math test scores showing that, although boys and girls have similar average test scores, there is a disproportionate number of boys at each end of the spectrum.
There really were no surprises in the material he presented. Boys tend to have more behavioral problems and more problems focusing. However, the boys who do focus tend to outscore girls in math and science tests, not only in this country but in every other country.
Does this mean that boys are smarter than girls? No, but we are different physically and emotionally. Girls traditionally outscore boys in reading and language tests. Also, more girls than boys are going to college and earning advance degrees. However, once a woman marries, she is more likely to sacrifice success at work for her family. She is more likely to choose a job that offers an easy entrance and exit and work less hours. She prefers a job with pleasant working conditions so that she isn’t used up at the end of the day.
Radial feminists may not like these facts, but they are real. By the grace of God, women in American are still free to make these choices.
The politically correct term for this disparity in the workforce is “under-represented,” but are we? To say women are under-represented in these jobs would imply that, though we may be equally qualified, there is some sinister force at work to keep us down.
The revelations offered by Summers should be good news for women. If you have ability in math and science and are willing to put in the work and the time, you, too, can be a tenured professor in engineering and science at a prestigious university, run an aerospace company or go to the moon.
Summers did say he believes that discrimination plays a role in the disparity in these fields, but he believes that discrimination is a less decisive factor than the others. This is why he is hated by the feminists who promote the myth that men and women are interchangeable fungibles. They thought they had buried him once and for all, but Barack Obama had other plans, and it irks them.
Long live Larry Summers! May his voice of reason be heard early and often in the Obama administration.
