This article from Femen, the feminist protest group, just came across HotAir’s Headlines section:

For the past five years now, we here at the international women’s movement Femen have been waging an active campaign of resistance to the patriarchy in various corners of the world…

The most obvious illustration of the patriarchy is Islamic theocracy, a symbiosis of political and religious dictatorship…

At the heart of Islamism lies the enslavement of women based on control over their sexuality…

I hereby both promise and threaten to deploy an entire network of Femen activists in Arab countries. We will hound Islamic leaders across the globe, subjecting them to desolating criticism. We intend to hound spiritual leaders who are personally responsible for mistreating women…

Femen stands for “democracy, atheism, and sexuality” (per the article), and famously protested Vladimir Putin a couple of weeks ago (video here).

I do NOT endorse everything they believe or do[1], but what’s interesting here is the phenomenon of a left-wing protest group realizing that Islamism is a major threat to the freedom that they seek to live out, and declaring their intention to confront Islamism. We see that occasionally, but not often enough. Some other leftists go for safer targets (such as Christians who, in reality, pose no great threat to them).

These women may be in for some rough times, if they carry out their declaration. While not necessarily endorsing all that they do, let’s give them some credit for their new-found insight, and wish them health and safety! (more…)

Dan has written a few good posts already about Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as both someone who should be viewed as a “feminist icon,” and as a woman who who rose to power “by dint of her own striving,” in the words of Meryl Streep.  In the second post, Dan asked a rhetorical question about the reception of strong, conservative women in politics: “Why is it that certain conservative leaders, particularly women who capture the public imagination, endure this ‘special hatred and ridicule’?”

Dan’s question reminded me of something I saw at the Daily Caller.   On Geraldo Rivera’s radio program yesterday, Ann Coulter claimed that, according to sources allegedly close to Thatcher,  Lady Thatcher wanted to meet with Sarah Palin to give her advice about presenting herself more effectively:

“One thing that I know, because I know people who know her, is when Sarah Palin first burst on the scene, she wanted to have a meeting with Palin, because she saw raw political talent, but wanted to teach Sarah Palin to do what she did,” Coulter said. “I just know it from friends of hers — to teach [Palin] to speak proper English. Sarah Palin did not meet with her. And just a year or two ago, when Sarah Palin was promoting some reality show or something, she went to England and she announced to the press that she was planning on dropping by to see Lady Thatcher. And Lady Thatcher put out the word that she would not be available.”

I have no clue as to the reliability of Coulter’s sources in this instance or the veracity of those reports, but regardless of whether the story is true or whether it is merely apocryphal, it does serve to illustrate some key differences among Thatcher, Palin, and the political environment that exists in the U.S. today as opposed to that that existed in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.

There should be no doubt that the left in Britain hated Thatcher as much as the left in America hates Palin–and has ever since she lambasted Obama in her convention speech in September 2008.  But despite that similarity and the fact that both Palin and Thatcher are strong, outspoken conservative women, it strikes me as a sort of revisionist history to suggest, as Coulter implicitly does, that Palin’s situation today might have taken a very different course had she met with Thatcher when she “first burst on the scene,” whenever, exactly, that was.

Thatcher rose to prominence in Britain over many years in the British House of Commons, a branch of parliament known for its particularly rowdy and confrontational style of debate and discussion.  Thatcher did well in that environment and successfully managed to become the head of her party there.  Thatcher’s history of rising to power through parliament bears some similarities to the manner in which Palin rose to become governor of Alaska and to take on the entrenched interests of her own party.

But the similarities end there.  The crucial difference is that Thatcher’s rise to power occurred on a broader political stage than Palin’s did, and given the short timeframe in which Palin went from being a governor to being a national figure, it should be evident that she had few opportunities to shape the counter-narrative that the media and the left started putting out about her shortly after she “burst on the scene.”

Short of advising her not to do an interview with Katie Couric, I can’t imagine what Lady Thatcher could have said or done to help Palin navigate the treacherous waters of the 2008 presidential campaign, and that was especially the case as long as Palin’s fate was tied to that of John McCain, one of the most conciliatory candidates I have ever seen run for the presidency.

After the campaign ended, Margaret Thatcher might have been able to help Palin gain a little more polish, perhaps, but I doubt that would have done anything to change the situation in which Palin found herself, with lawsuit after lawsuit filed against her in Alaska, until she ultimately decided to resign as governor in July 2009.  Although the media’s harsh attacks on Palin greatly damaged her image with a large segment of the public at large, I would argue that Palin’s decision to step down as governor had more of an impact on dampening enthusiasm for her as a candidate for the presidency in 2012 among many conservatives.

Palin’s story is still being written.  Whether or not she decides to run for elective office again remains to be seen.  While I have no doubt that Margaret Thatcher could have given her some excellent advice and guidance, it also seems rather like wishful thinking to suggest that Palin’s political fortunes would be dramatically different today had she met with Thatcher many years ago.

Update: Nile Gardner first reported that the Thatcher-Palin story was a hoax when he wrote about it in 2011.  (Hat Tip: Professor Jacobson.)  Of course, as The Right Scoop asks, that makes one wonder what Coulter is trying to accomplish by repeating it.

Via Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt, caught this in Meryl Streep’s statement about the passing of perhaps the greatest woman of the last century:

But to me [Margaret Thatcher] was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. To have come up, legitimately,  through the ranks of the British political system, class bound and gender phobic as it was, in the time that she did and the way that she did, was a formidable achievement. To have won it, not  because she inherited position as the daughter of a great man, or the widow of an important man, but by dint of her own striving. To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas- wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now-without corruption- I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle. To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable.

Emphasis added.

Why is it that certain conservative leaders, particularly women who capture the public imagination, endure this “special hatred and ridicule”?

Notable that Ms. Streep has grown to admire Mrs. Thatcher even as she hints at her own disagreement with the Iron Lady’s policies.  Would it that there were more like her, individuals able to admire their ideological adversaries.

It seemed that any time in the past twenty-one years someone offered a critique of Hillary Clinton, her defenders, more often than not, would, without addressing the particular points of the critique, retort that we were threatened by strong women.  Many would not change their tune even as we reminded them how highly we regarded and how much we praised the greatest British Prime Minister since Churchill, Margaret Thatcher.

And unlike Mrs. Clinton, Lady Thatcher made it entirely on her own, without having hitched her star to a prominent politician.

This strong British woman truly earned — and then commanded — the respect of men, on both sides of the Atlantic.  And one wonders why so few feminists, interested in seeing women succeed in professions once dominated by men, didn’t hold Lady Thatcher in higher esteem.  From the 1970s onward, nearly every leading conservative, including the most prominent American conservative of the last century, adored this leader who just happened to be a woman.

Margaret Thatcher proved that conservatives have always looked up to women who showed their strength in the public square.

If you believe a woman can do the job as good as (if not better than) a man, you need only study Lady Thatcher’s life story.

Rest in peace, Iron Lady! A giant has fallen.

RELATED: Muscular Feminism: Margaret Thatcher didn’t just talk. She did things.

UPDATE:  Kudos to the Huffington Post for featuring images of the friendship between two giants of freedom.

Congratulations to Neoneocon, rising from Conservative Blogress Diva Regent to take on the tiara as Grande Conservative Blogress Diva 2012/13.

Joining her in her court will be Sarah Hoyt, as Conservative Blogress Diva Regent and Bookworm as Conservative Blogress Diva in Waiting.

Through the power of her prose and the wisdom of her words, each woman has demonstrated wit, intelligence, strength and confidence enough to command the respect of conservative men–and is thus a diva, as we define one.

May they continue to serve in loyal opposition to a failed presidency  – and to demonstrate that despite the debacle of last November, certain smart and savvy conservative women remain confident about our vision for the country and committed to articulate ideas for real reform.

As I am vacationing with my family, I don’t expect to have too much time to blog this week, so encourage you all to visit the sites of the various blogress divas and vote in the contest, with the ballot below the jump.

Bear in mind that in addition to bestowing the Ethel, for the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva, we  will also be electing the Conservative Blogress Regent, also known as the Agnes (or Endora) and the Conservative Blogress in Waiting or Lucy, each named for a conservative or Republican diva.

• Amy Alkon
• Ann Althouse
• Bookworm
• Tammy Bruce
• Nice Deb
• Emily
• Sarah Hoyt
• Joy McCann
• Michelle Malkin
• neoneocon
• Sara Noble
• Jennifer Rubin
• Dr. Helen Smith
• Sister Toldjah
• Villainous Company (more…)

You may vote once per day.

With apologies for the failure to get to this until today, I hereby announce the nominees for the 2012/13 Grand Conservative Blogress Diva.  Bear in mind that we consider a diva to be a strong, confident woman who commands the respect of men.

And a conservative blogress diva need not be conservative herself, but must command the respect of conservative men.  And I think you’ll agree that the ladies on this list do just that.  And without further ado, here are the 14 nominees for Grand Conservative Blogress Diva with links to their blogs:

• Amy Alkon
• Ann Althouse
• Bookworm
• Tammy Bruce
• Nice Deb
• Emily
• Sarah Hoyt
• Joy McCann
• Michelle Malkin
• neoneocon
• Sara Noble
• Jennifer Rubin
• Dr. Helen Smith
• Sister Toldjah
• Villainous Company

(more…)

Our committee is now tabulating the submissions for the 2012/13 Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Competition. We have received nominations from across the rightosphere for that strong, confident blogress who, by her style and her substance, commands the respect of men.

As in past years, we will be electing not just the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva, also known as the Ethel in honor of the greatest Republican diva of the Twentieth Century, but also a runner-up, the Conservative Blogress Diva Regent, also known as the Agnes or Endora, in honor of another staunchly Republican diva.  If need be, we may honor also elect the Conservative Diva in Waiting, also known as the Lucy in honor of another great Republican of the last century.

Potential nominees include such divas, er, bloggresses, as:

• Ann Althouse
• Bookworm
• Tammy Bruce
• Nice Deb
• Emily
• Sarah Hoyt
• Joy McCann
• Michelle Malkin
• neonecon
• Sara Noble
• Jennifer Rubin
• Dr. Helen Smith
• Villainous Company

Please feel free to nominate one of the above divas in the comments section or via e-mail.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to hold the competition last year for the most coveted honor in the right-o-sphere, the title, Grande Conservative Blogress Diva.  As you know we here at GayPatriot define a diva as “a strong, confident woman who commands the respect of men.”

“A conservative blogress diva”, we noted in 2009, “need not be conservative  per se; all she must do command the respect (or have otherwise earned the admiration) of gay conservatives.”  In 2006, I observed that some nominees are

are libertarian. And others, while more centrist, distinguish themselves by their iconoclasm and the manner in which they take on the silliness of certain leftists — and conservative pretenders, i.e., those who, in the words of one of our nominees, “drive . . . liberals nuts.”

Please indicate those blogresses, whom you feel, meet the criteria for Grande Conservative Blogress Diva.

All nominees are, by their very nomination, blogress divas, but only one can wear the coveted tiara belonging to the Ethel, as we call the winner, honoring of the greatest Republican diva of all time.

We will honor the runner-up or runners-up, as the case may be, as Conservative Blogress Diva Regent, also known as the Agnes or Endora in honor of another staunchly Republican diva.

Potential nominees include such divas, er, bloggresses, as:

• Ann Althouse
• Bookworm
• Sarah Hoyt
• Joy McCann
• Michelle Malkin
• neonecon
• Sara Noble
• Jennifer Rubin
• Dr. Helen Smith

Please feel free to nominate one of the above divas in the comments section or via e-mail.  The committee will meet sometime in the next week and present a list of official nominees sometime after our Meatless Mondays steak dinner next Monday.

Or maybe it’s just (the appearance of) government by photo-op.

Athena explains:

The president’s inviting Mitt Romney for lunch is a small thing but a brilliant move. It makes Mr. Obama look big, gracious. It implies the weakened, battered former GOP nominee is the leader of the Republican Party—and if the other party has to have a leader, the weakened, battered one is the one you want.

Mr. Romney is not the leader of the party; he left no footprints in the sand. . . . .

To the extent the GOP has an elected face, it is that of Speaker John Boehner. And he is precisely the man with whom Mr. Obama should be having friendly lunches. In fact, the meal with Mitt just may be a clever attempt to obscure the fact that the president isn’t really meeting with those with whom he’s supposed to be thrashing out the fiscal cliff.

It’s Peggy.  Read the whole thing.

The title is a paraphrase from an interview the fetching Stephen Green conducted with writer Sarah Hoyt:

BTW, I recently had the chance to read an advance copy of her book A Few Good Men, to be released next March 5 (it’s not too early to pre-order though) and it is fast-paced and well worth your time, with a theme and story elements certain to appeal to gay patriots.

On this the 193rd anniversary of the birth of the greatest English novelist, let me offer, in slightly modified form, the tribute I have offered in years past.  It is also the 116th anniversary of the birth of my late, beloved Aunt Ruth.  In her life, that great lady embodied the qualities of a heroine of an Eliot novels.

A few years back in anticipation of Eliot’s birthday, I watched the BBC version of Silas Marner, perhaps her most accessible novel.  The story got to me as the book always does.  It’s odd I who love books so much and am moved cry so little when I read (yet tear up frequently when watching movies).  Wwhenever I hear the story of the lonely weaver of Raveloe, however, whether in print, via the spoken word (i.e., book on tape/CD) or on screen, I am always touched, always lose it, so to speak it.

Ben Kingsley’s Silas plea to keep an apparently orphaned child who had strayed into his home, “It’s a lone thing; I’m a lone thing. . . . It’s come to me,” is the plea of every human being who has ever felt cut off from his fellows.  Indeed, that line in quintessetially George Eliot who so understood human loneliness and recognized our need for the companionship of our fellows.

And how meaningful that companionship can we find it.  Or how powerful the presence of someone who listens to our concerns and manifests sympathy for our plight.

George Eliot so delighted in the effect of a child on an adult with an open heart:

She [that child] was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep–only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky–before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway. (more…)

“Is your soul weary of all these polls?” asks Ann Althouse in a blog post this afternoon, “Do you somehow know something in your subjective, intuitive guts that is never measured in Mr. Silver’s algorithm?”  She seems to be among a small, but perhaps growing consensus of bloggers and pundits to wonder if their “gut hunch” may be a more reliable predictor of tomorrow’s outcome than the polls.

She quotes G.K. Chesteron to suggest that by emphasizing “‘objective’ political facts”, we strain “the soul and significance of politics.”

And perhaps that’s one reason I’m such a fan of Peggy Noonan.  That Athena of pundtiry.  This morning, she asked questions in a similar vein to those Althouse asked:

Who knows what to make of the weighting of the polls and the assumptions as to who will vote? Who knows the depth and breadth of each party’s turnout efforts? Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.

(Just read the whole thing.)  Peggy took account of things not as clear cut as polling data, of yard signs and enthusiasm. She talked about how confident Romney looks on the campaign trail — and about the crowds he draws.  And how his supporters react to his appearance.

By contrast, she finds that Obama seems “ tired and wan, showing up through sheer self discipline.”

Other observers have offered similar reactions.

As the candidates hit the campaign’s home stretch, Romney does seem more upbeat, more optimistic than Obama.  And that could make all the difference.

Our reader Kyle Raccio alerted us to a story perhaps indicating a preference cascade toward Mitt Romney. Gigi Georges, a long-time aide to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, has announced her support for Mitt Romney.

For most of her life, George said she has been “an active Democrat” and is “proud to have worked for President Bill Clinton and then-Senator Hillary Clinton“:

. . . during that time, I saw firsthand what can be accomplished by strong, bipartisan leadership. I know what it means to work across the aisle on issues that are important to the American people. And that’s why I am supporting Mitt Romney. Governor Romney has a plan to restore the prosperity this country deserves and expects. He will work with people of good will no matter what their party, and he will pursue the policies that are in the best interest of our country, no matter who proposes them. That’s what President Obama promised to do four years ago. But like so many of his promises, bipartisan cooperation is just another one he has broken. We can’t have four more years of failed policies and two parties that can’t work together. We need the change Mitt Romney is offering.

Prominent Democratic woman backs Mitt Romney. Wonder if this is a sign that others might follow — or might already be souring on their fellow partisan.

Writing yesterday about his travels in Ohio, Stacy McCain reports attending an event featuring Ann Romney and asks:

Have you seen any stories in the mainstream media about how enormously popular Ann Romney is? Do the TV networks report about how she’s always mobbed by autograph-seekers after her speeches? And if not, why not?

All good questions not just because of Mrs. Romney’s poise, but also because the woman born as Ann Davies obviously had a profound impact on the life of her husband.

He has overcome numerous hurdles during long slog of this campaign, faced tough question from a hostile media and has been the target of perhaps the most expensive TV attack ad campaign in the history of American politics and still managed to come across as a calm and collected leader in three debates and on the campaign trail.

And perhaps, Mitt Romney’s strong — and long-lasting — marriage to his high school sweetheart helps account for his ability to persevere.  As I wrote just a few weeks ago, he likely “wouldn’t have turned out as well as he did without” Ann’s influence.

Before he seriously started wooing Ann, Mitt Romney was an unruly adolescent.  Almost from the outset of their courtship, he became a more focused adult, committed to building a business and concerned about those in his community.

Ann has helped Mitt become a better person.  And let’s hope she is able to help him become a great president.

NB:  Image via ABCNews.

Blogress Ann Althouse who, in 2008, thought Obama “was the better bet, compared to the GOP alternative” recently transcribed this video she watched on Instapundit featuring the sage diva, Camille Paglia, a woman who not just backed, but also contributed to, Barack Obama four years ago:

Not least: I consider him, now, one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it’s going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races.

Read the whole thing. Now, I’m going to watch the video.

UPDATE:  Just watched the video and it’s well worth your time.  Love what she says early on about art.  She’s spot on.  Spot on.  Segment quoted above is just before 12 minute mark.

NB:  In the original version of this post, I neglected to include the name of the person whose remarks Althouse had transcribed.

Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally explains.

H/t: Reader Kurt in a comment. McSally, running in Arizona’s 2nd district “is the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, and first to command a fighter squadron in combat in United States history.” She “retired from the United States Air Force as a colonel in 2010.” Hey, I have a nephew in the Air Force.  I think he’d want me to support a woman like Martha.

By clicking here, you can too!

ADDENDUM:  Contrast the Republican woman in the video above with the Democrat shown here.

Last night, caught the end of Greta Van Susteren’s interview with former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her commentary (at 7:57 below) about what Democrats call the “war on women”:

Those, she said “who talk about a war on women are not just engaging in hyperbole, I think it’s far worse than that, it’s condemning people who are going to be reasonable and who are going to take into account the views of those with whom they disagree.”