SAS war hero jailed for keeping trophy pistol given to him by Iraqi Army

The UK Telegraph reports.

Excerpt:

An SAS soldier has been jailed for possessing a “war trophy” pistol presented to him by the Iraqi Army for outstanding service.

Sgt Danny Nightingale, a special forces sniper who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military detention by a court martial last week.

His sentence was described last night as the “betrayal of a war hero”, made worse because it was handed down in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

Sgt Nightingale had planned to fight the charge of illegally possessing the 9mm Glock.

But his lawyer said he pleaded guilty after being warned that he could otherwise face a five-year sentence.

The soldier had hoped for leniency given the circumstances. At the court martial, even the prosecution described him as a serviceman of exemplary character, who had served his country for 17 years, 11 in the special forces.

The court was told that he returned to Britain in a hurry after two friends were killed in Iraq, leaving his equipment — including the pistol — to be packed up by colleagues.

It accepted evidence from expert witnesses that he suffered severe memory loss due to a brain injury.

Judge Advocate Alistair McGrigor, presiding over the court martial, could have spared the soldier prison by passing a suspended sentence. Instead he handed down the custodial term.

Sgt Nightingale and his family chose to waive the anonymity usually given to members of the special forces.

His wife, Sally, said her husband’s sentence was a “disgrace”. She called him a “hero who had been betrayed”. She said she and the couple’s two daughters, aged two and five, faced losing their home after his Army pay was stopped.

The soldier’s former commanding officer and politicians have called for the sentence to be overturned.

Lt Col Richard Williams, who won a Military Cross in Afghanistan in 2001 and was Sgt Nightingale’s commanding officer in Iraq, said the sentence “clearly needed to be overturned immediately”.

He said: “His military career has been ruined and his wife and children face being evicted from their home — this is a total betrayal of a man who dedicated his life to the service of his country.”

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative MP for Newark and a former infantry officer, said he planned to take up the case with the Defence Secretary. Simon McKay, Sgt Nightingale’s lawyer, said: “On Remembrance Sunday, when the nation remembers its war heroes, my client — one of their number — is in a prison cell.

“I consider the sentence to be excessive and the basis of the guilty plea unsafe. It is a gross miscarriage of justice and grounds of appeal are already being prepared.”

In 2007, Sgt Nightingale was serving in Iraq as a member of Task Force Black, a covert counter-terrorist unit that conducted operations under orders to capture and kill members of al-Qaeda.

He also helped train members of a secret counter-terrorist force called the Apostles. At the end of the training he was presented with the Glock, which he planned to donate to his regiment as a war trophy.

The Special Air Service is the absolute best counter-terrorism unit in the world. Better than the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, better than the U.S. Navy SEALS, better than the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Operations Group. This is no way to treat a member of the SAS.

There is more compassion for the criminal in the UK than for the law-abiding person. But why is that? I believe it’s because the UK has become dominated at every level by women, because of feminism. Women don’t like the sound of guns, and they don’t like people to own guns, even if they are ex-military or ex-police. Women just don’t value men who use strength and arms to do the right thing – strength and force makes them uncomfortable. Women tend to want to suppress moral judgments because they don’t want anyone, even burglars and criminals, to feel bad. Women like compassion. Women like tolerance. Women think that if every belief is true and all points of view are equally correct. They want to minimize disagreements and violence. They are uncomfortable with men using force because that makes evil people feel bad. That’s why they have these ridiculous anti-male laws.

Feminism seeks to abolish the special roles played by men, like protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. The policies of the UK government are designed to block men from filling those roles. Handguns were banned in 1997 and men who defend their families and homes are regularly prosecuted by the UK government. Tax rates are extremely high the more you earn, making it harder for a man to support a family on one income while his wife stays home with the children to raise them. Out-of-wedlock birth is facilitated through state-run health care and single-mother welfare payments, so that women can raise fatherless children with ease.  The antipathy against strong men reflected in laws and policies is probably one of the reasons why men shy away from marriage. Why take on a commitment like that when you cannot even defend your family from evil?

Filed under: News, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Arms, Compassion, Country, Emotions, Family, Feelings, Feminism, Feminist, Gun Ban, Handgun Ban, Harriet Harman, Hero, Honor, Iraq, Labor Party, Labour Party, Leader, Male, Marriage, Masculinity, Medal, Men, Military Cross, Moral Relativism, Postmodernism, Protector, Provider, Role, SAS, Soldier, Special Air Service, Special Forces, Task Force Black, UK, Universalism, War, War Hero

Dennis Prager offers the best concise analysis of the effects of feminism ever

Dennis Prager has summarized many of my viewpoints on this blog in a tiny, tiny little article. He calls it “Four Legacies of Feminism“.

Read the whole glorious thing and bask in its wisdom!

Full text:

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s feminist magnum opus, The Feminine Mystique, we can have a perspective on feminism that was largely unavailable heretofore.

And that perspective doesn’t make feminism look good. Yes, women have more opportunities to achieve career success; they are now members of most Jewish and Christian clergy; women’s college sports teams are given huge amounts of money; and there are far more women in political positions of power. But the prices paid for these changes — four in particular — have been great, and outweigh the gains for women, let alone for men and for society.

1) The first was the feminist message to young women to have sex just as men do. There is no reason for them to lead a different sexual life than men, they were told. Just as men can have sex with any woman solely for the sake of physical pleasure, so, too, women ought to enjoy sex with any man just for the fun of it. The notion that the nature of women is to hope for at least the possibility of a long-term commitment from a man they sleep with has been dismissed as sexist nonsense.

As a result, vast numbers of young American women had, and continue to have, what are called “hookups”; and for some of them it is quite possible that no psychological or emotional price has been paid. But the majority of women who are promiscuous do pay prices. One is depression. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat recently summarized an academic study on the subject: “A young woman’s likelihood of depression rose steadily as her number of partners climbed and the present stability of her sex life diminished.”

Long before this study, I had learned from women callers to my radio show (an hour each week — the “Male-Female Hour” — is devoted to very honest discussion of sexual and other man-woman issues) that not only did female promiscuity coincide with depression, it also often had lasting effects on women’s ability to enjoy sex. Many married women told me that in order to have a normal sexual relationship with their husband, they had to work through the negative aftereffects of early promiscuity — not trusting men, feeling used, seeing sex as unrelated to love, and disdaining their husband’s sexual overtures. And many said they still couldn’t have a normal sex life with their husband.

2) The second awful legacy of feminism has been the belief among women that they could and should postpone marriage until they developed their careers. Only then should they seriously consider looking for a husband. Thus, the decade or more during which women have the best chance to attract men is spent being preoccupied with developing a career. Again, I cite woman callers to my radio show over the past 20 years who have sadly looked back at what they now, at age 40, regard as 20 wasted years. Sure, these frequently bright and talented women have a fine career. But most women are not programmed to prefer a great career to a great man and a family. They feel they were sold a bill of goods at college and by the media. And they were. It turns out that most women without a man do worse in life than fish without bicycles.

3) The third sad feminist legacy is that so many women — and men — have bought the notion that women should work outside the home that for the first time in American history, and perhaps world history, vast numbers of children are not primarily raised by their mothers or even by an extended family member. Instead they are raised for a significant part of their childhood by nannies and by workers at daycare centers. Whatever feminists may say about their only advocating choices, everyone knows the truth: Feminism regards work outside the home as more elevating, honorable, and personally productive than full-time mothering and making a home.

4) And the fourth awful legacy of feminism has been the demasculinization of men. For all of higher civilization’s recorded history, becoming a man was defined overwhelmingly as taking responsibility for a family. That notion — indeed the notion of masculinity itself — is regarded by feminism as the worst of sins: patriarchy.

Men need a role, or they become, as the title of George Gilder’s classic book on single men describes them: Naked Nomads. In little more than a generation, feminism has obliterated roles. If you wonder why so many men choose not to get married, the answer lies in large part in the contemporary devaluation of the husband and of the father — of men as men, in other words. Most men want to be honored in some way — as a husband, a father, a provider, as an accomplished something; they don’t want merely to be “equal partners” with a wife.

In sum, thanks to feminism, very many women slept with too many men for their own happiness; postponed marriage too long to find the right man to marry; are having hired hands do much of the raising of their children; and find they are dating boy-men because manly men are so rare.

Feminism exemplifies the truth of the saying, “Be careful what you wish for — you may get it.”

I wish I could add something to this, but I can’t because every time I think of something to add, he says it in the next sentence.

If you like this short essay, then this medium essay arguing against feminism authored by Barbara Kay would be nice follow-up.

It might be worth forwarding these articles along to your friends. And I highly recommend books on male-female relationships and roles by George Gilder, especially “Men and Marriage“.

Filed under: Commentary, Career, Child, Children, Day Care, Daycare, Demasculinization, Dennis Prager, Divorce, Family, Father, Feminism, Feminist, Fertility, Home, Hook-Up, Hookup, Husband, IVF, Marriage, Masculinity, Men, Mother, No-Fault Divorce, Parent, Postpone, Premarital Sex, Promiscuity, Role, Roles, Sex, Sex Roles, Single-Motherhood, Wife, Women

What’s the best way to get men back into the church?

Here’s a conversation I had with a pastor and his wife on Tuesday night. I anonymized the names. The rest is verbatim.

I’d like one of our atheist commenters like Sandwiches for Sale or Jerry to comment on this pastor and his wife.

I was mean, but I hope not TOO mean. This sort of thing really pushes my buttons, as you might expect. I tried really hard to stay calm and focused, but I could have done a lot better. I apologize to my readers for being a bit abrasive and over the top at times. I hope my language is not to harsh or disrespectful.

I think we really need to work about encouraging Christians to see a relationship with God through Christ as being… a relationship. And in a relationship, both sides are aware of the different character of the other person, and they make adjustments. It’s not a good idea to project our emotions and intuitions onto the other person and to think that our goals are their goals. It may be that we have to perform actions to hold up our end of the relationship, and that we may need to study in advance in order to know what to do and to achieve those goals effectively.

—-

Pastor:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/04/opinion/bennett-men-in-trouble/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Why men are in trouble – CNN.com

For the first time in history women today are better educated, more ambitious, and arguably more successful than men, says William Bennett.

Pastor: Wow, even the secular media is figuring this out! Come on men! Man UP!

WK: Pastor, consider that the problem is not with men, but with an increasingly feminized society that has undermined the traditional male roles and marginalized men in the education system, the church, etc.. Not to mention misandry in the media. The denigration of men is everywhere, which undermines their ability to lead on moral and spiritual issues. Even high taxes and social programs rob men of their ability to have authority from their roles as providers.

WK: Consider just one example: no-fault divorce and single mother welfare has caused many, many young men to be raised in fatherless homes, and then they go on to attend public schools where 80%+ of the teachers are female, and the curriculum is set by females. The church is very much focused on singing and avoids apologetics. Where exactly are these men supposed to get male role models? As a society, we have become uncomfortable with men exercising authority on moral and theological issues. Denigrating men in the media, dumbing them down in femininized schools, taxing their income and replacing fathers with welfareare not going to help us to produce manly men. The opposition to apologetics in the church doesn’t help either – if we can’t talk about truth and evidence, then men stop caring about God.

Look:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-01-026-f

This is a complicated issue, and you need to read a lot more about it before engaging in man blaming. If men aren’t doing well in school, ask yourself WHAT CHANGED.

Touchstone Archives: Missing Fathers of the Church
http://www.touchstonemag.com
You may have noticed that, in general, men are not as interested in religion a…
See More

Pastor: Winter…Men have to Man up.

Pastor’s Wife: Women have to step up because the MEN are not

Pastor’s Wife: I thank God I have a husband who prays for me and respects me as a wife, a woman, and a daughter of THE KING. I thank God my husband knows “headship”

WK: Wow, Pastor. Your avalanche of facts and evidence is astounding. Your voluminous, erudite catch-phrase really refutes all of the concerns I raised. I stand corrected. </sarc>

Pastor: Why are Men not attending church?

Pastor: or do you actually go there?

WK: Because the church is totally feminized. There is no emphasis on anything that men like, like apologetics or practical application to areas of knowledge like economics or politics. It’s dominated by frilly God-talk, prayers, emotions and pop authors like Joyce Meyer and Max Lucado. People are not being challenged to grow.

Pastor: So you dont go? Maybe if men went there and made changes and protest the situation instead of ARMCHAIRING it might make a difference?

Pastor: ??

WK: Please don’t engage in ad hominem. Stick to the public evidence.

Pastor: Well?

Pastor: Sorry your honor

Pastor: Have you thought that the feminizing the you alledge (with public record) could be alleviated if men took back the church?

Pastor: Winter you say Ad Hominem? //// Wow, Pastor. Your avalanche of facts and evidence is astounding. Your voluminous, erudite catch-phrase really refutes all of the concerns I raised. I stand corrected. </sarc>///What the heck?

WK: Pastor… you don’t know anything about this issue. It’s pointless to discuss it with you since you are not in command of any facts.

Pastor: So why are you?

Pastor: wow

Pastor’s Wife: Gee, wonder how many times a Christian man is going to infer my husband is stupid?

Pastor’s Wife: I pray for you…

WK: I listed about a half-dozen factors, and made one argument supported by evidence from the Touchstone Magazine article. I.e – I argued that the fatherlessness was a cause of declining religiosity, I cited the Touchstone article, then I argued that public policies like no-fault divorce and single mother welfare increase fatherlessness.

Pastor’s Wife: What about Jesus?

Pastor: I have actually EXPERIENCED my position.

WK: So far, I’ve heard nothing in response. And that’s because only one side has facts. The other side has God-talk and “I’ll pray for you”. That’s not an argument. That’s not evidence.

Pastor: Neither have I

Pastor’s Wife: ?”I AM the way the truth and the life…”….those are TRUTH from Jesus a true man and our Savior

Pastor: What are you doing about this Winter?

Pastor’s Wife: Facts and figures I care to have none, when I have a Savior that over the world has won!

WK: Again, we want to have a discussion about the public policy question, we don’t want to make the issue about my character. The issue in question is… how do we get men to lead in the Christian life.

Pastor: You know I didn’t say YOU were armchairing this but I was not supplied with any evidence that you really are wanting to change the “feminization”

Pastor’s Wife: Usually the very thing we complain about is the very thing that God has called us to go and change

Pastor: Well I see the charaacter issue going both ways here

Pastor: want to start over?

Pastor: ?//// how do we get men to lead in the Christian life.//// Well we as men need to have a deep relationship with our Father. How does that sound?

WK: There are several ideologies now present in the church that discourage men from taking an active role. I know you know these. Postmodernism and moral relativism would be two of them. Those need to be refuted. But to really get men to engage, we have to think about what men are like, and what men like that is present in Christianity. For example, apologetics. Men like competition, problem solving and conflict. We need to get them exposed to different points of view, and allow them to ask questions and to debate. That means lots of learning and discussion about science, history, logic and morality. Men also like using facts and evidence when they argue. You can see it in the sermons of Mark Driscoll, and the Sunday School classes of Wayne Grudem (Essentials) and William Lane Craig (Defenders). Men like to argue about moral obligations and moral standards, and they like to use evidence. Lastly, men like politics and current events.

Church needs to be made safer for men to show their knowledge, and to debate the issues of the day in the open, without worrying about being shushed for making people feel bad. That means allowing men to discuss things like what laws strengthen and weaken marriage and the role of the father in the home, what education policies strengthen and reinforce parental authority, what fiscal policies encourage personal responsibility and liberty, what foreign policy is best for creating peace and protecting the weak from evil. Practical Christianity. Men should be good at pro-life debating and pro-marriage debating, and using public facts and arguments – not by quoting the Bible. (Although they get their view from the Bible, that’s not how you talk to non-Christians – with Christianese)

WK: Here’s a good article that features one of my favorite theologians/apologists, Mrs. Nancy Pearcey:
http://www.biola.edu/news/biolamag/articles/06spring/feminization.cfm

I really recommend her book “Total Truth”.

Pastor’s Wife: How about men who love Christ and have a close relationship with Him , for out of that relationship comes all ministry etc. We need to LOVE Christ and honor Him as well as allow Him to speak into our lives and let him lead HIS BRIDE

Pastor: Look Winter, I agree to a point. However I think that Politics / knowledge can and is taught in the church. You sound like a lawyer. Why not go to a church and do as you profess. My apologies if you are already. The church is a house of prayer, not a courtroom!

WK: Pastor’s wife, you talk about Christ. Do you think that it would be loving to Christ to study history and to be able to make a defense of his resurrection to non-Christians? A defense that doesn’t assume that the Bible is inerrant? As Peter did in Acts 2, and as Peter urged us to be ready to do in 1 Peter 3:15?

If you agree that defending the resurrection when it is called into question by non-Christians, who do not accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God, would be an effective way to love Jesus in a practical way, please explain to me how you would encourage others to go about doing that? Do you think that men would like to see a debate on that topic, or on the topic of God’s existence, in the church, and would God be honored by having church people know how to defend his existence, and the resurrection of his son, using public, testable evidence and sound logical arguments? Would that be a way to love God?

Pastor: Apologetics (which I like doing) has it’s place. You are sounding like a Pharisee!

WK: Again with the insults. Why should I be surprised?

Pastor: Well you are sounding like a Pharisee!

Pastor: Tell me how you are not sounding like one.

WK: Do you think that name-calling is an appropriate response to my specific concerns?

Pastor: in this case

Pastor: i call you on something and you call it name calling

Pastor: I offer a solution…Men go to church… do you?

Pastor’s Wife: Debate and displays of knowledge of historical events can be done in any local gym or community center.(or perhaps a Sunday school session with those topics of interest) Our Father’s house is a place of prayer and worship, to give ministry to our God in worship and in community with the saints.

WK: Do you think that William Lane Craig is a Pharisee because he goes and does 2 M.As and 2 Ph.Ds, studies the issues in depth and writes a lot of books on the existence of God and the resurrection, and then debates Christopher Hitchens in front of 5000 people at Biola University? Is that being a Pharisee? Defending God’s existence and the resurrection of Jesus in front of thousands of people because you first accepted the message of 1 Pet 3:15? Is it being a Pharisee to do what the Bible says (be ready to give a defense)? Is it being a Pharisee to meet non-Christians were they are and to use effective means to refute them?

Pastor: You can “idolize” apologetics. I worry sometimes about that

Pastor’s Wife: Jesus Himself through His Holy Spirit defends the resurrection. It is God who saves not man…God through His Holy Spirit

WK: Ok, again with the name calling.

(later in another thread)

Pastor: Wintery you are a wimp

Pastor: Wintery? I see your interest is Chivalry? LOL

Filed under: Commentary, Anti-Intellectualism, Apologetics, Chivalry, Church, Emotivism, Feminism, Feminized Church, Fideism, Intuitions, Irrationality, Liberalism, Masculinity, Nancy Pearcey, Pastor, Pluralism, Postmodernism, Seminary, Sex Differences, Theological Liberalism, Universalism

How do you persuade people to get married for the good of the children?

Here is an interesting interview with David Popenoe from CBC News. (H/T Andrea)

Excerpt:

AB: I’m wondering though if marriage is indispensable. I’ll quote you back to yourself if you don’t mind:

‘Although there are many caring and responsible non-resident fathers, the alarmingly simple fact is that men are much less likely to stay close to their children when they are not married to their children’s mother.’

Now in Quebec for instance, the last 2001 census, some 30 per cent of couples are living common law. Are we talking about a father’s presence in the hosuehold or are we talking about a father’s presence in the household while he’s formally married to the children’s mother?

DP: You know the problem with the cohabitation alternative, is that the break-up rate is so high. Even in Sweden, where cohabitation is as established a solution as it is in Quebec, the break-up rate of families with children who are just cohabiting is twice what it is for married couples. Sure they can raise children, but the likelihood of that child not living with two parents goes way up.

AB: So what do we do about this? Do we compell people to marriage? Do we offer disincentives to those couples? Do we return to the era when a child born out of wedlock is illegitimate? How do we persuade people who believe that they’re in the social vanguard, socially progressive, living without benefit of matrimony, that they ought to get married?

DP: It’s a hard question, and probably none of the things that you suggest does anybody want to do. But the first step is to realize that the decline of marriage is harmful for children. And then we have to look at culture and what’s causing the decline. After all, most cohabiting couples eventually get married.

I think it’s a question of putting children first. I don’t see any other way of bringing marriage back. But I do think marriage is very important for children even though it may be an inconvenience for a lot of adults. Incidentally, studies in the United States and other countries show that people who are married are much happier than people who are living apart or living single. And of course those are generalizations…

Does anyone have any ideas about how solve this problem?

I think that the problem of fatherlessness can be lessened with the right policies – tax incentives, the repeal of no-fault divorce, family court reform, domestic violence reform, the enactment of shared parenting laws, etc. And maybe churches could be more effective at applying Christianity to the areas of marriage and parenting so that at least Christians will understand what they are supposed to be doing with their spouses and children. For example, churches could work harder at convincing parents that they should focus more on raising the next generation of scholars, scientists and ADF lawyers.

But I think that people need to understand that feminism is the real problem here. If men are not going to be given a special role in the home, and if wives are going to compete with husband for the provider role by earning about the same or more as the man, and if judges are going to be overturning groundings on behalf of child-plaintiffs, then men are going to disengage from marriage and parenting. Until we as a society understand that men and women are fundamentally different, and that males need SPECIAL encouragement and respect for deciding to get married and to become fathers, then fatherlessness is going to remain a huge problem.

Consider this essay by Stephen Goldberg about men, marriage and family. (H/T Mysterious C)

Excerpt:

FEMINIST “theories” deny the physiological roots of maleness and femaleness. In doing this they persuade the contemporary woman not merely that she can have it all (an eventuality impossible for those with male physiologies to believe about themselves), but that marriage can ignore crucial differences between males and females, differences that (if acknowledged at all) are incorrectly alleged to be “merely cultural” and, therefore, amenable to elimination.

Most wives of fifty years ago understood that men were just men, and that men cannot be expected or socialized to be anything else. This made the marriage agreement a realistic one that was not inherently enraging to the woman (in the way it is when there is a pretense that men are simply less lumpy women who could just as easily accept an “egalitarian” role).

The woman of the contemporary ideology–unlike all the women of all other societies that have ever existed-no longer recognizes this. When wives have expectations of an “equality” that demands not merely equal reward for different behavior, but equal reward for the same behavior, marriage as an institution is in trouble, and would be even were there not numerous other forces tending toward this end. (There is, to be sure, a range of possibilities in practical terms; the treatment of women in the United States is different from that in Saudi Arabia. But the core statistical male-female differences of cognition, temperament, and behavior are the same everywhere: no society–and only a feminist sub-culture in ours—claims to believe that women could be as aggressive as men or men as nurturing as women; no society fails to associate dominance and crime with males or familial stability and child care with females.)

Similarly, the conflicting demands of feminine attractiveness and the maternal disposition, on the one hand, and success in the public arena, on the other, have generated a feminist psycho-social view of the world as protective armor. For example, it is received wisdom among the more feminist-oriented career women that men are threatened by female success, and there is no doubt a great deal of truth to this. Unexpected competition from former allies always causes anxiety, even if the new competitors do not add to the competition one faces.

But the deep cause of the feminist emphasis on this male anxiety is the realization that even those men who are not threatened by female success are not especially drawn to it. While the perimeters of conceptions of femininity vary from time to time and culture to culture, the core behavior that defines the feminine and attracts males everywhere and at all times does not much vary. And dominant behavior is not a vital component of this femininity. Women through the ages knew that males are drawn to the feminine and that characteristics not disproportionately associated with the female elicit, at best, a male lack of interest.

But women through the ages were not told that they had to exhibit these male characteristics. Contemporary women are told that their status will, to a great extent, be determined by their ability to mimic qualities associated with the male, and women know that these are, at best, qualities that do nothing to attract males. Males have never faced an analogous conflict because women everywhere have–for reasons rooted in female physiology–been drawn to men who exhibit dominance. Despite contemporary values claiming the desirability of males with a female portion of sensitivity and nurturance, the actual behavior of even those women who give lip-service encouragement to men who claim to agree casts serious doubt on the attractiveness to women of such men. The change in the attitude of each sex toward the other is at the heart of the matter. As women have come to have less use for men, and have refused to grant their husbands the special position both sexes once took for granted, men have come to have less use for women. Both look for satisfaction on an occupational playing field on which, statistically speaking, men as a sex cannot lose and women as a sex cannot win.

Steven Goldberg was the Chair of Sociology at City College, City University of New York from 1970 to 2005.

Filed under: Commentary, Christianity, David Popenoe, Family, Father, Fatherlessness, Feminism, Male, Manoshere, Marriage, Masculinity, Men, Parenting, Policy, Social Studies, Sociology, Steven Goldberg, Vocation

Husband sacrifices his life to save his pregnant wife

Story here on AOLNews.

Excerpt:

“It breaks my heart and it also fills me with gratefulness,” a weeping Erin Wood, 31, told NBC’s “Today” show this morning. “If it would have been a head-on crash, we both would have been killed and our baby,” she said.

Brian Wood, 33, was pronounced dead at the scene Sept. 3 after an oncoming SUV careened across the center line on Whidbey Island in Washington state, and hurtled over the roof of Wood’s 2004 Suburban. His wife was in the passenger seat. The North Vancouver, B.C., couple’s first child is due in early November.

Her husband of five years slammed on the brakes and swerved hard to the right, ensuring that he would take the brunt of the impact, his wife said. She had been dozing and woke to see the Chevy Blazer racing toward them. She suffered a banged head and a black eye, which was still visible today, but is otherwise fine. The unborn baby boy was unharmed, she said.

The man was actually the lead game designer for a famous and highly-regarded game called “Company of Heroes”, which deals with the heroic actions of soldiers during World War 2. The game was well-known for the heavy emphasis on heroism and character. The expansion to the original game was called “Tales of Valor”.

And what about the cause of the car accident?

Excerpt:

Jordyn B. Weichert, the driver of the Blazer, was charged Friday with causing the three deaths and injuries while driving in a reckless manner under the influence of drugs.

Court papers filed Thursday also say that heroin, cocaine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia and a .25-caliber handgun were found in the Blazer after the crash.

According to court documents, the crash happened after Weichert decided to take off her sweater as she was driving north along the two-lane highway in a 55-mph zone.

Weichert’s front-seat passenger, Samantha R. Bowling, 22, of Oak Harbor, held the steering wheel while Weichert removed the article of clothing, court documents show.

During the maneuver, Bowling lost control of the Blazer. It swerved across the centerline, then back into its own lane as Bowling over-corrected, then back across the centerline, crashing into the Subaru, the State Patrol said.

The impact instantly killed the driver of the Subaru, Brian R. Wood, 33, of Vancouver, B.C., and injured his wife, Erin E. Wood, 31, who is seven months pregnant.

Also killed were two young men, Jacob D. Quistorf, 25, and Francis C. Malloy, 26, of Oak Harbor, who were riding in the back seat of the Blazer.

Weichert, Bowling and Malloy were all ejected from the Blazer in the crash. Quistorf was wearing a seatbelt but was killed by the impact.

Bowling suffered a fractured pelvis and Erin Wood sustained head injuries. She is recovering and her baby will survive.

Bowling also faces a possible vehicular homicide charge when she is released from the hospital, the State Patrol said.

[...]Troopers who responded to the crash said they could smell the odor of marijuana around the Blazer when they first arrived at the scene.

Weichert also told troopers she had smoked marijuana earlier in the day, according to charging documents.

I posted this because I think it is really scary how a good person just traveling to visit family can have their life snuffed out by punk kids looking for a good time. And I also wanted to remind everyone what men are really like when they’re good.

UPDATE: In a related story, you can learn about the soldier who won a Medal of Honor in Afghanistan, read this story and watch this video. The Medal of Honor is the most difficult decoration to earn in the US Armed Forces. I’m a huge fan of Medal of Honor recipients, and I’ve read many of their stories like Butch O’Hare and Audie Murphy. Most people who win the Medal of Honor die doing so – a living recipient is very very rare. Reading their stories is sad, because there is usually a sad ending. But this one has a happy ending.

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