The lesson of the American catastrophe that Boot and Brooks helped to deepen and prolong is that Americans can't advance democracy in countries like Afghanistan, were so many are openly revolted by our presence, if we can't even nurture it here at home.
The main qualities required to look after young babies – meticulous preparation and packing of baby-care equipment, a lack of squeamishness, mental resilience, even nurturing – don't now seem to me intrinsically feminine.
Is even nurture an outgrowth of nature, then?
Of course, Amy Bishop was not just a woman — she was also an academic, and a related question is whether warning signs were overlooked because some degree of eccentricity is accepted, even nurtured, in a university setting.
And no one politician, not even the President, can remedy the collective insensitivity that we have nurtured and which could become the key to our undoing.
"Entourage" nurtured the fantasy that some bonds are so precious that nothing, not even fame, money and sex, can tear them asunder.
In "Muslims Nurture Sense of Self on Campus" (news article, Nov. 3), a young college student is quoted as saying: "I am Muslim first, not even American Muslim.
"This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy".
We haven't even been able to nurture full democracy in modern, bustling Kuwait, where women still cannot vote, or in Saudi Arabia, which is more egalitarian -- neither men nor women can vote.
Unlike baby dolls, Barbie did not teach nurturing.
