We have to stop holding back before it’s too late.

Dr. Amanda Foreman should be a household name. In her excellent four-part BBC series ‘The Ascent of Woman,‘ she explains why our past has never been a straight line: “The status of women is a barometer of a society’s tolerance, fairness and openness.”

Dr. Foreman asks the big questions – Why did history become dominated by men? Why has nearly every society placed harsh limits on us? And why are we so vulnerable to the changing winds of politics, economics and religion?

The world has gone crazy, but I push myself to not let anything completely slide. The blog is especially vulnerable, it would be easy to get caught up in the daily scramble and lose touch with my webspace.

My developer Jay is a few years older than me, our kids go to school together. A peach of a man, he comes from a military family and at politics from the Other Side. We laugh about that quite a bit. We met a few years ago when my older son joined Scouts, the one year Jay was Scout Leader.

We live in the same subdivision, his son works at the grocery store up the street. I see him and his family around plenty, even for a small town. But we only got together professionally this past Winter. It was actually Hubs who put it together in conversation that Jay was moving into managing blogs, and I definitely have one.

Hug a conservative. We must beware of tribalism.

It’s the old story of the single-issue voter, red vs. blue, conservative vs. liberal.

It’s what causes the thought error that, because radical feminists and religious fundamentalists agree on the existence of biological dimorphism they must, in fact, be members of the same group.

Or that someone who is “Pro-LGBT” supports social programs or civil liberties.

As those on the Left are fighting to defeat corrupt Republicans, we must remember who it was that corrupted them.