I was pleased that during the final New Hampshire debate John Edwards praised the sacrifices his father made to provide for him and his siblings. Edwards explained that his father, Wallace Edwards, had worked hard in a mill for 37 years, and the camera panned to Wallace as he sat in the audience.
Edwards has mentioned this on several occasions, and some say he’s using his dad as a prop. Regardless, it’s nice to see his dad and others in that generation of men given their due.
One of the greatest distortions of modern feminism is the way the sacrifices that tens of millions of men like Wallace Edwards made have been disregarded. I detailed this in my column Hate My Father? No Ma’am! (World Net Daily, 4/8/02), criticizing the “successful feminist re-writing of the pre-feminist past as a virtual dark ages where men lived like nobles and women were their serfs.” I wrote:
“Tens of millions of male blue collar workers–who put their bodies on the line in the coal mines and steel mills so their wives and children could live in safety and comfort–have been turned into oppressors. Their wives and children, for whom these men sacrificed so much, have been turned into their victims.
“Edited out of our history are the tragedies of millions of American men who were killed or maimed on what German socialist Rosa Luxemburg called the ‘battlefield of labor.’ The miners who died in cave-ins, explosions, or of black lung disease. The sailors and fisherman who died at sea. The oil refinery workers killed in explosions. The factory workers killed in industrial accidents. The construction workers who died carving train tracks and then highways through majestic mountain cliffs or the scorching desert. The construction workers who died building our bridges, dams, high rises, stadiums, and apartments.
“All of them have been forgotten, in part because there is no natural constituency which would like to remember them–the right generally does not dwell on yesterday’s struggling blue collar workers and heroic union men, and the left is beholden to the feminists, for whom any mention of men as special contributors or as victims is strictly forbidden.”
I would also add that it is equally obscene the way feminist family law movement portrays men who work long hours at stressful or dangerous jobs to support their families as men who are not “taking responsibility” for their kids by not being their kids’ primary caregivers.