Luce Ladies: The Video

The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute is one of my favorite organizations, providing leadership training to conservative women. As they point out in the video, they offer paid internships in Washington, sponsor the monthly Conservative Women's Network luncheons in Washington, and help students bring speakers like Michelle Malkin, Star Parker, Amanda Carpenter, Bay Buchanan and Ann Coulter to college campuses.

I first learned about the Luce Ladies when Lisa De Pasquale (who is now CPAC director) was CBLPI program director and invited me to a CWN luncheon to hear Kate Obenshain speak. That RSVP was a no-brainer: "Let's see, a roomful of conservative women and a free lunch. Yeah, I'll be there."

Since then, I've gotten to know Michelle Easton and her staff, and always do what I can to promote the organization. (Including blogging about their annual calendar.) As a matter of fact, Kathleen McCann -- CBLPI's lecture director, who is interviewed in the video -- joined the Luce Ladies after I recommended she get in touch with them last year.

CBLPI works hard to provide role models, mentoring, education, and networking opportunities for young conservative women, both in Washington and on college campuses across the country. Liberal bias in academia has an especially heavy impact on women students, since feminist ideologues in women's studies programs promote the notion that all women are (or should be) "progressive."

Student activists trained by CBLPI push back against that message, making sure their fellow students hear about conservative ideas their professors never tell them about. Just in watching that 5-minute video, I saw the faces of CBLPI-trained students like Allison Aldrich who are really making a difference.

Little wonder, then, that the Left has taken notice of CBLPI's success. The Nation, America's leading liberal magazine, recently called the Luce Ladies "the conservative group to watch in the upcoming years."

You know you're doing something right when the Left starts warning people about how dangerous you are. So give the Left something to worry about: Support the Lucy Ladies.

Restoring hope for marriage

The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute is having a contest for college students to win a hope chest:

The prize (you guessed it--a fabulous, authentic, cedar-lined hope chest filled to the brim with fun, fancy and frivoulous items that any newlywed would would envy) not only celebrates marriage, but makes the man-hating feminists crazy!

Deadline is March 14, and you can read the details here. The prize will go to the student who signs up the most of her fellow students to receive the 2008 "Luce Ladies" calendar, featuring such conservative stars as Michelle Malkin:



Blogging at Wendy Shalit's "Modestly Yours" site, Princeton student Cassandra DeBenedetto writes:

CBLPI is encouraging women to set their sights (and hearts) on marriage instead of sex.
Common misconceptions about medieval marriage law and customs associate hope chests and dowries with women being devalued as property. In reality, these traditions carried with them no such degradation. Hope chests were simply used to store the hand-made goods and other items that a woman wished to bring to her future marriage. Essentially, a hope chest was part of her preparation for those first couple years of marriage, and, as the name suggests, symbolized her hope in marriage.

Very true, although I hope Miss DeBenedetto will see the error in her phrase "marriage instead of sex." It's not an either/or proposition. Sex is quite nearly essential to marriage. Setting your sights on marriage certainly doesn't mean you're not interested in sex; it just means waiting 'til you say "I do" before you ... well, before you do.

Perhaps Miss DeBenedetto would have said "marriage instead of promiscuity" or "marriage instead of fornication," but she probably didn't want to sound judgmental.

Me, I've got no such compunction. I'm a married father of six, my eldest child is an 18-year-old college sophomore, and I know I wouldn't want her whoring around like some of these girls do.

Being judgmental is part of a parent's job. And part of the problem affecting young people nowadays is that parents are failing at that job, because it's politically incorrect to speak the blunt truth about certain things.