Does Father still know best? Did he ever?

My dad has been gone for more than 28 years, but I would be hard put to fault him on any economic decisions he made. He presided (officially) over raising 6 kids to maturity and was able at the end to turn over the farm, on which he may still have owed some money, to my two brothers, one of whom still owns it. Now, my mother was pretty smart and seldom complained of the difficulty of keeping us fed and bringing some beauty into our lives. Precisely when women became eligible to vote, she voted, probably for Harding, but one has to understand, down on the farm, we believed in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Republican party, which we were taught was full of hard-headed businessmen. who knew what was best for us. One of the most valuable things we learned in the second half of the 20th century was that women are much smarter than we had thought. I am confident that all of my sisters have been full and equal participants in their family decisions. One can doubt the wisdom of having six children in one family, but four of those were conceived in the euphoria following victory in World War II.

Now, from the perspective of a man who will soon score fourscore years, I say we must concentrate this century's efforts on educating our females equally with the males; both need to learn that numbers can be much more usefull than simply keeping score in a football game, and that there are superstition-free ways in which the sciences work. They should learn that babies are animals with extremely trainable brains and that no matter where they were born, they are entitled to air that is pure enough for their survival, and that no matter in what nation they are born, they deserve the resources of this earth sufficient for their survival. Climate change must be seen as an obstacle to civilized society and headed off asap,