Review of Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War

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A book review I submitted to Amazon today. Another plan to save the world. Such plans, of course, never work. The book is nonetheless worth reading as an assessment of where we are.

As you know, I believe the world’s problems are mostly a matter of evolution, and slow, undependable and unsteerable evolution is the only way out.

Graham

Wonderfully witty, sarcastic and on target.  Would benefit from an international perspective.

Who is Peachy Keenan? She does not tell you exactly. It is a pseudonym. However, she is busy enough with interviews that a lot of people must know. In the book she drops hints.

She is the great-granddaughter of immigrants from the Russian Empire, who must've come in the major waves of Jewish immigration around the turn of the 20^th century. Three generations in America turned them secular and atheistic.   She nonetheless retains enough Jewish culture that the book is sprinkled with Yiddish expressions.

She says she is Gen X, by my arithmetic born around 1976. Her father was a good provider but not much involved in her life.  Her Southern California Boomer parents divorced as she was growing up.

She attended an Ivy League college, surrounded by people with similar backgrounds.  She says that although she came from a more affluent background and avoided the hookup culture, Tom Wolfe's 2004 novel I am Charlotte Simmons describes her college surroundings.

During her 20s she lacked direction. Despite the conservative bent inherited from her parents, she participated in the dating scene of turn-of-the-century America, eventually concluding it was vacuous and looking for something more. 

In her late 20s she met her husband, now the father of her four or five children, and committed wholeheartedly to a monogamous marriage. Hence the domestic extremist. She greatly credits her mother-in-law, the indomitable mother of a large Mediterranean family with giving her strength to cope with three in diapers early in marriage – and have yet more.

The book is autobiographical – her life's experience and observations broadened into a social critique. This review is also somewhat autobiographical. In brief, this reviewer was raised in Berkeley, had three early millennial children who suffered from every malaise Peachy describes, divorced and formed a second family of three in the former Soviet Union. Now on with the review!

The greatest strength of the book is Part One: What They Took From You -  Almost Everything. 

The theme of the book is that women achieve satisfaction in life by fulfilling their biological role – bearing and raising children and serving as the anchor of the family. The first 11 chapters – capitalized in the paragraphs below – explain how.

Fleeting Fertility describes the mismatch between a woman's best childbearing years and the demands of career and income. By the time modern woman is in a position to have children, she has only time for one or two.

The woman's Role in society it used to be respected. Now "just a housewife" is a pejorative. The girlboss types, with their fancy condos and expensive vacations, sneer condescendingly at a woman who has nothing more to show in life than children.

There used to be only two sexes, and Gender was something that applied to Latin nouns. A woman was a woman, and knew who she was.

Women had and appreciated feminine Virtues, such as chastity, modesty, and fidelity. Today's culture depreciates those and celebrates the women who best emulate men.

As part of the plan, such women depreciate Men, turning them into soy boys. Hollywood stars proudly let their young sons participate in drag shows. Schools diagnose exuberant boys as having ADHD when it is really just testosterone.

A woman instinctively wants A Soul Mate, a man who is strong enough to protect her and wise enough to make decisions for the entire family. The entire thrust of the past three quarters century has been to emasculate men and celebrate women who can do it all.

Peachy laments the Unborn Children, especially the cryogenically frozen embryos that will go to the medical waste dumpster instead of ever being born.

There is a multi-front war on Maternal Instinct. A woman's priorities are now supposed to be (1) career success, (2) personal happiness and fulfillment, and perhaps (3) children. Peachy has no kind words to say for daycare or companies that encourage women to return to work weeks after giving birth.

A woman's Real Job should be being a woman – fulfilling the role that only the female, the XX chromosome partner, is capable of filling in each of nature's 10 million species. Including the human being.

Parental Authority has been usurped by government in the form of child welfare agencies, schools, public health officials and others. Parents are no longer allowed to make the most basic decisions for their children, including sometimes what gender they will be when they grow up.

Finally, the above regimes have stripped both men and women of Happiness. While happiness has never been prevalent in any civilization, the social scientists who attempt to measure it universally conclude that this is the least happy age since I have been asking the question.

There are some parameters missing from Peachy's equation. She could not have gotten the book published if she had discussed factors such as multiculturalism, intelligence and evolution. In this reviewer's opinion they all contribute to the problems that Peachy describes, and the fact that discussing them is verboten will prevent her and everybody else from coming up with viable solutions in modern America. Family life works better in places like Uruguay, Argentina and Poland. It would be worth researching why that is.

Part Two of the book is an action plan entitled: The Battle Plan: How to Take It Back Introduction: A Mostly Peaceful Movement.  Her chapter titles are:  A Domestic Extremist's Origin Story , Become an Anti-Feminist , Explore Promiscuous Monogamy , Cultivate a Marriage Mindset , Have More Than Two Kids , Lean In—to Parenthood , Respect Domestic Life , Have Faith, Reclaim Your Parental Authority, Live Happily Ever After.

These are the things a woman should do if she recognizes the problem. Peachy is realistic about the likelihood of a majority of women figuring out that they have been cozened into abandoning the chance for real satisfaction in life in return for worthless baubles like BMWs and the hollow promise of a comfortable life. She tells you she is no good at math and doesn't even pretend to project how many people might respond to her plea. Enough to save the United States? Doesn't seem likely.

I'll add some insights as a guy rearing a second family overseas. It is far easier to raise kids in an atmosphere in which most people share your values. When your neighbors, the vendors in the market, and the old ladies on the bus are all thrilled to see your kids, it makes for a welcoming environment. When the kids can bicycle or take the bus instead of being strapped into car seats, they develop a knowledge of the world and self-confidence. When the daycare workers are intelligent, come from the same culture as the kids, and feel a need to pass that culture on, you don't need to worry so much about dropping your kids off. When non-unionized teachers don't fear losing their jobs for offending the reigning dogmas with regard to race and gender, and can focus simply on teaching, they can do an adequate job.

Peachy writes "We are now living through an age where parents are threatened for refusing to “affirm” their own child’s new gender—by local bureaucrats who hate them. Parents are losing custody of their children for not using the pronouns their teacher taught them to use. The American public education system, along with its enthusiastic employees, has undergone a silent transition—into Groomer Ed. It is quickly asserting total authority over your children, and there is no one left to stop it. The Department of Re-Education has plans for your family." Yes! This was true 25 years go.

Elsewhere she writes "A former math teacher at the progressive and expensive private Grace Church High School was one of the first to blow the whistle on the insanity. In an interview, Paul Rossi told the truth about what was really going on: “They’re trying to carve out an intimacy with the child where they can foster a certain view of the world sheltered from what the parent thinks—and even turning the child against the parent and against the parents’ values.”  Yes! Expensive schools are no defense.  Happened to my children in Episcopal schools in the 90s.

A parent in America has to be on guard full-time against this kind of nonsense. Fortunately, there remain backwaters such as mine in which teachers still consider teaching the subject matter to be their primary mission.

Peachy addresses in a superficial way the fact that children are coerced into pharmaceutical treatments: "The secret is out: degenerates are in charge of all the public schools and pretty much everything else these days. The best thing about COVID was that it revealed this truth—and awakened a sleeping giant. Millions of outraged parents suddenly woke up to the reality that their school hated them and their kids. They endured a year or more of learning-free “remote school” because teachers didn’t want to be exposed to germ-riddled young disease vectors. They forced little kids to wear masks, even outside, for over a year. They demanded that kids receive experimental vaccines—for an illness that barely affects them."

She is outraged at government coercion. Unlike Children's Health Defense and other such organizations, she does not even ask the question as to how much the coercive measures damage the children's health. I fear for Peachy's own children. Living in the United States, especially California, it may be hard for them to avoid medical mandates.

That concludes a five-star review. The best part of the book is the first part – describing the problem. The delight in reading it comes from Peachy's acute sense of humor and wonderful way with words.