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| Mutti, Anna, Rocky, Carey Gardens, Red Hill, Canberra, September 2025 |
Mutti was born on this day in New Zealand in 1921, and so, by the magic of arithmetic, is today 104. My goodness me!
Not enough candles for a cake, so my pressie was a pot of flowers, chocolates and a card. She's then taken to birthday luncheon.
I rang her this morning, wishing birthday greetings. I asked her a question that had a point. Which point I didn't tell her for I didn't want to steer her answer. Which I was pretty sure I knew anyway:
The question: "You were a mother and a wife. You looked after the home and the family. Were you happy with this, or did you regret that you hadn't had a separate career?"
Her answer, the one I was pretty sure I knew anyway was: "I was happy doing what I did. I thought about perhaps I might have done something of my own, a separate career, but not too often, as I was quite happy following your father around the world, and looking after you lot."
She knew, she added, the "modern" thing of women wanting their own careers, and that was fine. But she'd been happy with her life.
Why was I asking her this, on her 104th??
Because just recently, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder, someone, an Occasional Reader (OR) -- perhaps a Very Occasional Reader -- of this blog, had tackled me with:
"Your hero pushes the line that women must stay at home and not have careers. He hates women.”
… and I jump in with: "Woah! You're straw-manning! First he's not my hero. I don't share his views on a number of things. Second, I've followed some of his university debates, which are fun and where he shows himself to be the opposite of the horrid views on the Left of him [which got him murdered]. He shows himself to be a fine, decent and caring man. He doesn't push the Traditional Family thing. He just says that that's his own view, shared by his wife. “But what you do is up to you.". And that's what's debated. He's all about debate. "When debate and discussion stops, violence begins", he has said repeatedly. Oh… sad prescience.
Afterwards, I wondered, was I right to call that rhetorical trick, the opening salvo of "Your hero says...", was I correct to call it "Straw Manning"?
I asked Grok if I was right calling it a “Straw Man”. Grok agreed:
This rhetorical tactic is most closely aligned with a straw man argument.The attacker misrepresents your position by falsely attributing a belief to you (e.g., claiming someone is "your hero" when you only admire them). They then attack this exaggerated or fabricated position rather than your actual stance. By framing the person as "your hero," they set up an easier target to discredit, implying you fully endorse everything that person says or does, which may not be true.
Aside: The use of the Straw Man argument is very common on the Left. Perhaps I’m unfair to the Left in saying that, though that's the way it seems to me and to my own bias. I believe the Left often use the Straw Man argument, in part because they believe the worst of the Right, and they put that "worst thing" into words. Those words being the Straw Man.
Like Cathy Newman's infamous, repeated statements in her interview with Jordan Peterson: "So what you're saying is....", then inserting the most extreme version of what Peterson had just said. [His answer usually being: "No... what I actually said was...].
Back to the Traditional Family issue. Consider this. That for pretty much the whole of my life, since the 1960s anyway, the push has been the Feminist Push. According to which women need not stay at home, need not be home makers, women must go out in society, they must have their own careers. That if this means no family, so be it; if it means no husband, so be it; if it means no kids, so be it. That's been the whole narrative, everywhere and everyhow. So if there's a Charlie Kirk saying something nice about the Traditional Family, isn't that just a tiny bit of push back? And not one in any case, that he ever insisted others follow. Hence my "straw man" characterisation.
To be clear, I've always been on the side of women going out and making their own careers. On the side of the Feminist Push. That's been the case of all the women in my life. I support it. But I can also understand, and support, those who want to have the Traditional Family.
Think about it: What Charlie did was to expand women’s rights! Not only do you have all the career opportunities as a modern feminist; you also have the opportunity to be a wife and a mother, and to be so unapologetically. That’s an expansion, not a diminution. That’s my argument, anyway.
After all, that's what our Mutti did. For 104 years. And which satisfied and enriched her life.
As she has fortified and enriched all our lives with her intrepid character, her loving spirit.
Which we celebrate today.
Happy Birthday, Traditional Mutti!
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ADDED: At our friend Marilyn’s place, birthday luncheon, “Happy Birthday to Mutti!”… And a big thanks to Marilyn for a yummy luncheon of prawns, new asparagus and BBQ lamb blackstrap. Which Mutti, bless her, wolfed down. By all accounts!
