FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Battle of the Sexes rages on.  "Democratic Party policies, failures, and condescension are what drove young men away."  Barstool conservatism.  "The Democratic Party has convinced many young males that it hates them."  South Park conservatism.  "The Democratic Party has been in thrall to a cultural vibe that is maximally off-putting to young dudes."  Thanks, feminism.  "Suggesting all young men are predators in waiting is destructive."

The Gods of the Copybook Headings limp up to explain it once more.  "When you have women who have been trained not to like men, to consider babies immoral, who get their emotional fix from work and friends, and who feel that they have endless choices...well, a genuine, imperfect man, one who forgets to put the toilet seat down, belches after he drinks a soda, and smells rank after a day of physical labor...doesn’t stand a chance."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  You were misled.

2.  Become ungovernable.  "She heard from at least one mom that some boys got the tampons wet to see how many they could stick to the ceiling, adding she wouldn’t be surprised if they’re 'clogging up the toilets with them, too.'"

3.  The left defends its tools and persecutes its enemies.

4.  It is hard to argue that the Department of Education has had a beneficial effect on education.

5.  What connects the two?  "Set the phenomenon of 'intellectual curiosity' on one side of a chart. Then write down 'Columbia’s Departments of Middle East and Palestine Studies.'"

6.  Corona tyranny.  "Half your neighbours would be willing to string along with it all over again."

7.  You can only push people so far.  "Reasonable men and women must do unreasonable things, and it’s usually unreasonable men and women who push them to do them."

8.  The devil always wins.  "Those who promote arbitrary power tend to imagine they are the only ones who will wield it."

9.  Academia delenda est.  "You cannot raise a fist of defiance to the government with one hand, while having the other hand held out to demand federal money. It is the attitude of the petulant, entitled adolescent."

10.  America's industrial base is not collapsing.

11.  It's Lent.  "Democrats' path out of the wilderness begins with two ancient but still wholly relevant disciplines: repentance and confession."

12.  Democrats have much to be repentant about.  "The excesses and overreaches of liberalism have already pushed most right-leaning libertarians into the MAGA camp, and that trend won’t change. Indeed, much of the male-focused blogosphere is more right-leaning libertarian than actual conservative, yet they’ve all found a home in the Republican Party."

13.  Project much?  "A radical ideology known as the Dark Enlightenment is fueling a billionaire-led movement to gut our government, erase democratic norms, and install a technocratic elite in their place."

14.  The best thing for government to do is to go away.  "The housing crisis wasn’t created by a lack of federal action—it was created by decades of misguided federal interventions, restrictive local zoning, and incentives that favor large-scale developers and institutional investors over everyday citizens.  Expecting Washington to fix the problems Washington helped create isn’t optimism."

15.  We have not had a serious president in this century.  "The work of government is serious business. The American public deserves serious people at the helm."

16.  Federal funding is censorship per se.  "Stop federal funding of colleges and universities."

17.  Leave those tax hells behind.  "People are leaving these kind of states for places where they [don't] feel the heavy breath of government on them…. It's not that hard for Democrats to understand this, but they don't."

18.  Deconstruct norms at your peril.  "Sending topless videos doesn’t exactly scream read my dissertation."