What Is the Amazonian Trap?

Strong families include marriage and children, and strong families strengthen communities, states, and nations. However, young women are turning away from love and marriage, according to an article by Maria Baer and Brad Wilcox in the Deseret News.

Maria is a journalist and co-host of the “Breakpoint This Week” podcast with The Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Brad Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and senior fellow of the Institute for Family Studies.

Legend has it that the Amazons, the warrior women of Greek mythology, built a civilization on a single premise: Women could build a world of their own without men.

The Amazons kept no husbands. They raised only daughters, sending their sons away, and they even cauterized their breasts so nothing would get in the way of their ability to fight. The legend reflects a fantasy that has appealed to different times, places and people: that a woman becomes strongest not by pairing with a man but by providing for and protecting herself — often with the support of some strong sisters.

Millennia later, many young American women are embracing this Amazonian strategy of detachment from men, minus the sword and the horse. They’re doing it by deleting dating apps, posting “boy sober” TikToks, enjoying Sunday brunches spent with just female friends, and hardening their conviction that men are more trouble than they’re worth.

Young women say they are put off by men who toy with their bodies and emotions, and those who seem stuck in “limbo between adolescence and adulthood,” dubbed child-men. They are discouraged by mainstream media depictions of men as emotionally and socially stunted, as well as those presented by influencers who get clicks by painting men and marriage in the worst possible light.

In short, growing numbers of young women are being tempted by heteropessimism.

This pessimism is reflected in young women’s declining faith in love and marriage. Only 24% of women 18–29 believe “married mothers are ultimately happier than other women,” far lower than any other group. High school girls’ hopes for marriage are also retreating: In 2010, more than 80% expected to marry; now it’s just 67%.

Dating tells the same story: We’re in a “dating recession.” Pew found 39% of single women under 40 aren’t even looking for a relationship at all, and our own research at the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute shows more than 80% of eligible women in their 20s and 30s aren’t dating anyone seriously. A growing number of young women seem content — or resigned to — going through life without a man.

We understand the appeal of the Amazonian strategy. But the apostles of women going their own way — like the Hollywood actress feted in The New York Times for declaring herself “choicefully single, happily, gloriously single” — miss something crucial: For all too many, this path leads not to liberation, but to a more anxious, lonely and unhappy life. Unmarried, childless women in their 20s and 30s are nearly three times more likely to be unhappy with their lives compared to married mothers the same age (25-39), according to the General Social Survey. Heteropessimism really is a trap.

Perhaps that explains why so many hurting women in their 30s are showing up for help at the office of Suzanne Venker, an author and life coach who recently discussed the pattern with Chris Williamson on his “Modern Wisdom” podcast. These 30-something women are coming to Venker desperate to start or sustain a good family life but with no idea how to do so. Most spent their 20s building the scaffolding of independence — careers, savings, status — exactly as second-wave feminism had scripted, while dating and family sat on the back burner.

By the time they feel “ready” in their 30s, the switch doesn’t flip on command. Many found it hard to find a good man given that the pool in their immediate circles had shrunk; others found unanticipated difficulty in pivoting from a life focused on career and travel to marriage and young kids; still others found getting pregnant difficult or impossible, especially if they were in their late 30s. The Amazonian detachment they leaned into in their 20s, it turns out, does not reverse itself just because a woman decides she’s finally ready for a family.

Venker now has a project “to help younger women avoid the pitfalls” that she sees in her older clients. She offers three guideposts:

First, if you find a good guy, be open to marrying “youngish” (mid to late 20s, broadly defined). The husband hunt gets harder after 30, and today’s dating market isn’t doing anyone any favors. Women looking to make a smarter choice should be open to playing the odds early, starting with the biggest poll some of them will ever encounter: college. This also widens the window for building a family….

Second, she recommends dating with intention. “There’s just so much pretending going on” in modern dating, Venker say, and her fix is blunt: “Just get it out on the table in the first three dates” in terms of what you’re looking for in life and love – in terms of family, career and whether or not you and your partner are aiming for something more casual or committed.

If family matters to you, figure out if the man you’re sitting across from on a dinner date is marriage material. This includes sizing up a man’s character and his professional possibilities – not his wealth, but his reliability as a provider….

She points to a telling gap in public opinion: 71% of Americans believe a man should be able to provide for his family while only 32% say the same of women….

Third, Venker says women who are particularly family-minded should choose a career that complements their future family dreams rather than competes with them. In college, for instance, this means picking a major “that works well with the kind of life you want to have down the line,” flexible enough to be “done part-time or from home,” rather than choosing an expensive degree that locks in a decade or more of debt just as her priorities start to shift….

This strategy isn’t for every woman, but her point is that those who want to prioritize family would be wise to aim for careers with built-in flexibility – nursing and teaching are classic examples, financial advising and consulting are newer ones – that allow for part-time or freelance work and make it easier to combine work and motherhood.

In essence, Venker is asking young women to do what might seem unthinkable: plan for a future they’re not sure they’ll want, because they’re immersed in a culture that prizes Amazonian detachment. In this culture, to date with marriage in mind, and to choose a career with a future family in mind, is to swim upstream….

However regressive some commentators find it, most women end up being ambitious for family life, even as many are also ambitious for rich intellectual and professional ones too. And the women who build families with men in marriage are among the happiest in the country….

 

Why Does Pioneer Day Mark a Low Point in Religious Freedom in America?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is that religious freedom applies to all religions and even those people who have no religion. However, it has not always been applied equally.

On September 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed, and nine states ratified it by June 21, 1788, making it the law of the land. All thirteen states ratified the Constitution by May 29, 1790.

The Bill of Rights – meaning the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution – was written and proposed in 1789; it was ratified on December 15, 1791. The Bill of Rights was created to protect the individual rights of each American as well as to limit the power of the federal government.

Yet, the Mormon Pioneers were not protected when their religious freedom was threatened.

In fact, the Mormon Pioneers chose to leave the United States because they were persecuted for their religion.

Pioneer Day – July 24^th – is an annual commemoration of the day when the first pioneer wagons entered the Salt Lake Valley (Utah) on July 24, 1847. “Days of ‘47” is a huge celebration held in Utah annually.

Latter-day Saints are not the only people who have been persecuted for their religious beliefs, but early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endured their persecution righteously. The persecution began with Joseph Smith and increased as the Church of Jesus Christ grew. The Latter-day Saints were threatened, raped, murdered, suffered property damage, and more – first in Kirtland, Ohio (1831-1838) and in Missouri (1831-1839) and then in the Nauvoo, Illinois, area (1839-1847).

Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum Smith were assassinated at Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844, and the main body of the Church fled to the Great Basin in 1846-1847. They understood that they had no religious freedom in the United States, so they went to the unsettled western area of North America searching for religious freedom and safety.

However, their safety was short lived.  After the Mexican-American War, the Great Basin area became part of the United States. Federal laws soon threatened religious beliefs as laws against the practice of plural marriage infringed on religious freedom.

Polygamous husbands and fathers were fined and imprisoned. To escape the law, many families went into hiding or again left the United States. Those who left created settlements in Mexico and Canada where they could continue to practice plural marriage.

The members who stayed in the Great Basin continued to be persecuted. Antipolygamy laws disincorporated the Church, allowing Church property to be confiscated.

With the temples being threatened and the work of eternity being stopped, President Wilford Woodruff took the matter to the Lord. Under inspiration from God, President Woodruff wrote and signed the 1890 manifesto that ended plural marriage. Anti-Mormon persecution declined but did not end. Persecution continues to this day by individuals and other religious organizations. However, the United States government has finally recognized that Latter-day Saints have religious freedom.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from the days of Joseph Smith to the present day, fights for religious freedom for all people. Earlier this year, the First Presidency called for a Church-wide fast for religious freedom to be held on July 6, 2026. I was one of millions of members of the Church of Jesus Christ who fasted and prayed to thank God for religious liberty and to plead with God to protect religious freedom for all people.

 

 

Articles of Faith: What Do Latter-day Saints Believe About the Godhead 6?

Article of Faith 1

We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ,

                                and in the Holy Ghost.

This is the sixth and last article on the Godhead in my series on the Articles of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The past few weeks, I discussed the character of God the Father or Elohim, and last week I discussed Jesus Christ or Jehovah. Since Jesus Christ taught that His disciples “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9), we can know that He has the same character traits as His Father.

Through latter-day revelation, we know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ each have a physical body made of flesh and bone, but the Holy Ghost is a spirit personage. Doctrine and Covenants 130:22-23 teaches as follows:

22 The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

23 A man may receive the Holy Ghost, and it may descend upon him and not tarry with him.

My essay for this week will use the words of Elder Bruce R. McConkie to explain clearly who the Holy Ghost is.

There are several ways in which the labors and ministry and status of “God the third,” who is the Holy Ghost, are separate from the other members of the Godhead. Chief among them are these:

1. He is a personage of spirit.

The Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bones, while “the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.” That is, he is a spirit person, a spirit entity, a spirit man. He is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Lord. Why this difference between him and the other two members of the Godhead? With reference to his status as “a personage of Spirit,” the scripture says: “Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.” (D&C 130:22.) That is to say, according to the eternal laws ordained by the Father, there are certain separate and distinct things to be done by a spirit member of the Godhead. He is to dwell, figuratively, in the faithful, and he is to speak to their spirits in a special and particular way, which he can do because he himself is a spirit.

2. He is the Testator, Revelator, Comforter.

The Holy Ghost is God’s minister; he is appointed to teach and testify, to bear witness of the Father and the Son, and to reveal all needful things to men. As the Testator, he bequeaths salvation, through an eternal testament, to the heirs of God. The Holy Ghost is a Revelator. Almost always the first great revelation received by any person is a testimony of the truth and divinity of the Lord’s work on earth. “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” (Moroni 10:5.) He is the Comforter. Those who enjoy his companionship find their whole souls are filled with comfort and joy. And the very reason men are commanded to repent and be baptized is so they “may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that [they] may stand spotless before [the Lord] at the last day.” (3 Nephi 27:20.)

 3. He uses the light of Christ in his ministry.

The light of Christ (also called the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of the Lord) is a light, a power, and an influence that proceeds forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space. It is the agency of God’s power and the law by which all things are governed. It is also the agency used by the Holy Ghost to manifest truth and dispense spiritual gifts to many people at one and the same time. For instance, it is as though the Holy Ghost, who is a personage of spirit, was broadcasting all truth throughout the whole universe all the time, using the light of Christ as the agency by which the message is delivered. But only those who attune their souls to the Holy Spirit receive the available revelation. It is in this way that the person of the Holy Ghost makes his influence felt in the heart of every righteous person at one and the same time. (Bruce R. McConkie, A New Witness for the Articles of Faith [1985], 69-70)

What Is the Voter ID Act?

It is now in the latter part of July and moving closer to mid-terms and November. Congress has not yet passed a bill to require U.S. citizenship to register to vote and picture identification to vote. In their article published at The Daily Signal, Don Palmer and Elizabeth Schlueter discussed a proposal to improve election identity. 

Voter ID Act (HR 9368) was sponsored by Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis. [and] passed the Committee on House Administration June 24. It was attached to the Stop Insider Trading Act (HR 7008) as an amendment and will be heard in the House Rules Committee. This is a crucial step toward authorizing consideration of the Voter ID Act for final passage on the House floor….

The bill requires voters to show photo ID when casting a ballot in a federal election, creates a grant program to provide valid IDs for voters who cannot afford them, and allows voters who forget their ID on election Day to cast provisional ballots – all measures that have proven effective in the states….

The Voter ID Act offers five options for valid photo ID: driver’s license, state-issued identification card with a photo and expiration date, U.S. passport, military ID, and tribal ID….

Americans are accustomed to providing photo ID for other important transactions, and the Voter ID Act makes provisions for voters who struggle to obtain a qualifying ID before Election Day. Requiring a valid ID at the polls ensures that our ballots are as well-protected as our booze – seems like common sense. Even the Olive Garden never-ending Pasta Pass requires photo ID!

The authors shared several examples of voter fraud from across the nation that are gathered in The Heritage Foundation’s Voter Fraud Database.

For instance, last September, Louisiana used the SAVE database and identified 390 noncitizens on its voter rolls; 70 of them had illegally voted in at least one election. The state recently brought charges against one of the illegal voters and anticipates more such cases.

Given that 22 states are not using SAVE or attempting to establish an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to do so, one can only guess at how many noncitizens are on other states’ voter rolls….

As we head into midterms, legislators should take the commonsense route and establish federal means of enforcing current election statutes by passing the Voter ID Act if it arrives on the House floor. Americans deserve to know that only legitimate voters are casting ballots come November.

 

Who Is John Solomon?

My VIP for this week is John Solomon, an investigative journalist. According to an article by Greg Hughes published at The Daily Signal, Solomon has “been involved in politics in some way for 38 years” but spent most of his journalist career in the mainstream media. 

Hughes wrote, “His resume boasts 20 years with The Associated Press, stints at The Washington Post, collaboration with ‘60 Minutes,’ and a senior position at The Hill.” Hughes continued, “He was highly regarded by his peers and received many awards for his investigative work, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the Society of Professional Journalist National Investigative Award. However, things changed after “the election of [Donald] Trump, [when] he became an outcast among these same peers.” Hughes claims that Sullivan’s “sins” was digging “into the legitimacy of the Russia collusion narrative and the Mueller investigation.”

Solomon’s commitment to truth had not changed. He had always had a consistent approach – which included questioning the government’s behavior, no matter who was in power. But any attempt to give Trump – the trespasser, the usurper – a fair shake in the press was deemed to be the ultimate betrayal.

In time, Solomon’s trailblazing investigative work has been vindicated. He founded Just The News in 2020 after it became clear that authentic investigative journalism was no longer welcomed within his profession.

Solomon is an investigative journalist. Today, he is widely considered a right-wing voice, but only because he stayed true to his profession while that profession turned into a leftist ideological camp.

It seems that CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, tasked with trying to restore some semblance of objective journalism to the network, understands Solomon’s work. He was recently interviewed on the network.

The interview would appall members of the regime media. In it, he shared facts that have been ignored and censored, meaning they had never been heard by most of the American public before.

I trust the reporting of John Solomon. His “Just the News” is honest. He reports news as it is and not what he would like it to be. His investigations and reporting were instrumental in breaking the Russian collusion narrative and getting to the bottom of the Mueller investigation.

 

Should Americans Worry About Democratic Socialists Winning Elections?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns socialism and “the recent rise in democratic socialists winning primary elections.” In an article published at the Deseret News, opinion editor Jay Evensen wrote the following: 

I’ve been around long enough to see how most long-term political plans eventually crack and disintegrate under the harsh heat of reality. So, I try not to get too worked up over the recent rise in democratic socialist winning primary elections, or over the movement’s supposed aims, which sound closer to Marx than to Jefferson or Madison.

But those who hope a post-Trump future might revert to the calmer political days of our youth may be disappointed. The far left seems to be on the rise to compete with the far right.

And while that rise is still small, if politicians don’t stem the fearsome rise in the national debt, a possible economic collapse and the chaos it could cause might bolster all kinds of radical ideologies….

Democracy has a way of taking the sharp edges off radical ideologies, eventually. The MAGA movement benefited from a charismatic leader, which the far left currently lacks.

A Gallup poll last year found a majority of Americans still feel favorably toward capitalism, but support is waning.

As I said, that trend could accelerate if the economy collapses under the weight of the national debt and its annual interest payments, which already exceed the nation’s military budget.

Samuel J. Abrams (professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a scholar with the Sutherland Institute) agreed with Evensen in his column for Deseret News. “… Evensen is right not to panic [about] the recent string of democratic socialist primary victories nationwide.” Why young Americans are turning to socialism | Opinion – Deseret News

This is all true, but there is a deeper story that must be told as to why these radical ideologies have begun to win and why these politicians have been able to organize so effectively. It begins with the question of why so many young Americans are drawn to them.

The answer can be found in a book published a quarter century ago by a late mentor of mine – Seymour Martin Lipset. Writing with Gary Marks, Lipset wrote “It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States” and asked why America, alone among industrial democracies, never developed a serious socialist movement.

The socialists trying to reshape the Democratic Party

The answers Lipset and Marks offered were partly structural – our two-party system and winner-take-all elections punished third parties – but they were also, crucially, experiential. So many Americans lived capitalism’s promise and positive realities.

America’s workforce saw real mobility for themselves and their children and an individualist, antistatist creed ran deep. Moreover, Americans were formidable joiners – as observed by Alexis de Tocqueville decades earlier – and they were deeply embedded in churches, lodges, unions, clubs and neighborhood associations that gave them belonging, status and voice without any need for a revolutionary party to supply it.

Lipset and Marks argued that socialism did not fail in the United States because Americans read the right rebuttals to Marx. Rather, it failed because the conditions present nationwide never let it take hold. This points to the uncomfortable truth of 2026: Almost every immunity Lipset and Marks identified in their book has now degraded – particularly for young adults.

A misunderstanding of market economics

Start with young Americans’ lived experience of markets and capitalism. In cities where socialism has gained political traction – Chicago, Seattle, New York and San Francisco – many younger Americans are living through soaring housing costs, shrinking opportunities and dysfunctional markets. Their frustrations are real.

This mistake is not in recognizing the problems but in misidentifying their causes. Too often, however, they are seeing the consequences of regulation, restrictive zoning and poor governance as if they were failures of capitalism itself.

That confusion is hardly surprising. Most young Americans have never been taught how markets create prosperity. Significant numbers graduate from college without taking a single economics course….

A lack of strong social structures

Moving beyond economic systems, Lipset and Marks would point to the recent real decline of associational life as a major cause of socialism’s ascent. Theorists from Alexis de Tocqueville and Edmund Burke to Robert Nisbet and Richard John Neuhaus have long marveled at Americans’ art of association. Lipset understood that these institutions kept radicalism marginal by meeting fundamental human needs for fellowship, purpose and recognition.

Those institutions have been hollowed out, and young adults are the loneliest Americans on record. They may be digitally connected and habitually online, but few join congregations, civic clubs, scouting or recreational leagues. They are not merely under-informed; so many younger Americans are isolated, under-formed, unattached and without a social core….

What can be done?

If we consider this framing, it radically changes how we think about this so-called socialist surge. If the problem were socialism as an ideology itself, the answer would be rebuttal with more op-eds, more education and public-focused work, and more warnings about Venezuela and countless failed states. But reason and evidence alone do not persuade or work on people whose initial attraction was rooted less in ideas than belonging.

If the problem is formation – and that certainly appears to be the case – the real answer is to rebuild what once formed young Americans into confident, connected participants in a free society.

That means teaching economics so that graduates understand scarcity, trade-offs, incentives and the astonishing record of market economies, along with their real failures. It also means rebuilding our social associations where young people find the belonging they now seek in ideological movements like the DSA….

Finally, I should note that Lipset’s title contained a quiet warning that his admirers sometimes miss. Socialism didn’t happen here in the past tense because a particular America existed: prosperous, mobile, religious, fraternal and thick with institutions that formed citizens and demonstrated capitalism’s promise in daily life. That America was not an accident, and its immunities are not permanent as we see now – our nation’s immunities to socialism were built and then regularly reaffirmed.

Evensen is right that we need not fear the socialists. What we should fear and then fix is the loneliness and disconnection as well as the ignorance that make socialism feel like an answer for so many young people. Restore formation, purpose, community, and belonging and this socialist impulse will fade the way of every American socialist movement before it did.

  

Why Should We Discover What Is in Scriptures?

My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to 2 Kings 16-25 and a lesson titled “He Trusted in the Lord God of Israel.” The lesson was introduced by the following information. 

Despite the prophet Elisha’s powerful ministry, the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel did not repent. Eventually, the Assyrian Empire conquered and scattered the ten tribes of Israel. Meanwhile, the Southern Kingdom of Judah wasn’t doing much better: idolatry was also widespread there.

Amid all this spiritual decay, the scriptures mention two kings of Judah who, for a time, turned their people back to the Lord. One was Hezekiah. During his reign, the Assyrians conquered much of Judah. But Hezekiah and his people showed faith in the Lord, who saved Jerusalem in a miraculous way. Later, after another period of apostasy, Josiah became king. Inspired in part by a rediscovery of the book of the law of Moses, Josiah brought reforms that revived the religious life of his people.

Like Israel and Judah, we all make both good and bad choices. When we sense that our lives need some reforms, we can take encouragement from these two bright spots in the dark years of Judah’s history. Perhaps the examples of Hezekiah and Josiah can inspire us to “trust in the Lord our God” (2 Kings 18:22).).

The scripture block teaches several principles, including (1) I can stay true to the Lord when my faith is challenged (2 Kings 18-19); (2) All things are in the Lord’s hands (2 Kings 19:20-37); (3) The scriptures can turn my heart to the Lord (2 Kings 21-23); (4) A covenant is a whole-souled commitment between me and the Lord. This essay will discuss principle #3 about scriptures helping us to turn our hearts to God.

Josiah was only eight years old when he became King of Judah. He followed a long line of wicked kings, but he was righteous. Eighteen years later, renovations were being completed on the temple, and the book of the law was found in the wall of the temple. King Josiah read the words in the book of the law and was concerned about what he read.

The book of the law told Josiah that the Lord would destroy Judah just as Israel had been destroyed. Josiah gathered the prophets, priests, and people and read the words of the book of the law to them. He called them to repentance.

President Spencer W. Kimball called the story of King Josiah “one of the finest stories in all of the scriptures” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 62). 

When the book of the law was read to Josiah, he “rent his clothes” and wept before the Lord.

“Great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us,” he said, “because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.” (2 Kings 22:13.)

The king then read the book before all the people, and at that time they all made a covenant to obey all the Lord’s commandments “with all their heart and all their soul.” (2 Kings 23:3.) Then Josiah proceeded to clean up the kingdom of Judah, removing all the idols, the groves, the high places, and all the abominations that had accumulated during the reign of his fathers, defiling the land and its people. …

“And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.” [2 Kings 23:25.]

I feel strongly that we must all of us return to the scriptures just as King Josiah did and let them work mightily within us, impelling us to an unwavering determination to serve the Lord.

Josiah had the law of Moses only. In our scriptures we have the gospel of Jesus Christ in its fulness; and if a taste is sweet, in fulness there is joy.

The Lord is not trifling with us when he gives us these things, for “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” Luke 12:48.) Access to these things means responsibility for them. We must study the scriptures according to the Lord’s commandment (see 3 Ne. 23:1-5); and we must let them govern our lives and the lives of our children.