I came to the Beltway yesterday to moderate a panel for the Claremont Institute on love, marriage, and all the most intimate and fundamental issues. It was a good break away from Michigan exit polls and South Carolina predictions and an important one. On the panel were Elayne Bennett, head of the Best Friends Foundation, an angel of the inner-city and American culture, who spends her days getting the best out of young people – showing them that there is an alternative to hooking up, giving them the gift of self-respect. Jennifer Marshall, from the Heritage Foundation, was there as well, crunching numbers and talking, among other things, about the struggles of twenty and thirty and fortysomething women who want to be married in a culture not always conducive to it, the subject of her book, Now and Not Yet. Carol Platt Liebau, author of Prude, meanwhile, has a great big-picture sense of where we’ve been, are, and are going – and how to get beyond feminism’s mistakes. It was an excellent, constructive, lively, smart conversation with three wonderful, clear-thinking gals. The folks at Claremont — this was the brainchild of the D.C. branch of Claremont, Seth Leibsohn, who produces Bill Bennett’s radio show, and Secretary Bennett. There are plans for a transcript an audio, and I’ll link when the time comes. In the meantime, there are books and a great organization to check out.