In George Clooney’s mind the history of Hollywood is a history of political courage where entertainment types lead the fight against forces of oppression. It should come as no surprise that Clooney’s self-congratulatory reconstruction of his industry’s past is as fanciful as the sets where he pretends to be persons whose insight and life experiences far surpass his own.
Race was the first topic that sprang to Clooney’s mind when he invoked Tinseltown’s glorious history. Yet Hollywood was hardly in the forefront when it came to the struggle for civil rights. Giving an Oscar to Hattie McDaniel in 1940 for playing a stereotypical “Mammy” in “Gone With the Wind” hardly qualifies as a civil rights breakthrough.
Indeed, minstrelish Stepin Fetchit stereotypes remained common, even during the 50’s and 60’s. One need only recall Amos ’n Andy or Jack Benny’s butler, Rochester, to bring to mind on-camera roles that make most folks today wince with embarrassment.
On the other hand, when it comes to dangers from abroad, show-people have a sordid record of consorting with the enemy. Lillian Hellman’s script for “Mission to Moscow,” for example, not only glorified a Soviet system that doomed millions to starvation, it even justified Stalin’s horrific purges.
This unwillingness to confront political thuggery didn’t improve during the Cold War. Serious portraits of Soviet repression, a la Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago,” are almost non-existent. Instead, Hollywood regularly put forward sympathetic portraits of a regime that was responsible for more innocent deaths than Nazi Germany. At the same time, anti-Communists were routinely vilified as deranged demagogues.
Today, Hollywood’s deeply engrained cowardice is exhibited by its consistent unwillingness to be honest about the source of global terror. A classic example of this spinelessness took place when moviemakers replaced the nuclear-armed jihadists in Tom Clancy’s book, “The Sum of All Fears,” with a gaggle of neo-Nazis.
Currently Clooney’s chums have created a piece of celluloid trash, “V for Vendetta,” that features a swashbuckling terrorist whose violence is directed against a fascistic, semi-Christian British government. A massive subway blast that takes out the buildings of Parliament to the strains of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” serves as its predictable climax. Needless to say, this romantic bomber, “V,” is the movie’s hero.
Meanwhile, the only references to Islam in this film are sympathetic. Indeed, there is even an allusion to the government’s framing some “religious extremists” for a devastating plague of its own making.
The advantage of fingering Christians and deranged conservatives as the true source of terror is that the “creative community” isn’t put in danger—like the murdered Theo van Gogh or the London commuters whose deaths in last year’s subway bombings prompted the delayed release of “V.”
So much for courage. Clooneyites can’t even face the truth when it explodes in their face.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Friday, April 07, 2006
HATING DR. LAURA
Hating Dr. Laura is a prerequisite for Americans shaped by the country’s me-first culture. For them, kicking around the popular radio host is almost as much fun as abusing the President. But what exactly do they hate?
First, they hate the way Dr. Laura holds people responsible for their own choices—even ones made when they were young and stupid. Especially irksome is that irritating observation frequently put to disgruntled wives: “You picked him.”
They hate the way the nation’s designated nag rejects convenient “I don’t know” answers and expects callers to face up to facts they’d rather forget.
They hate it when she downplays the importance of feelings and places moral obligation on a higher plain than emotion.
They hate how Dr. Laura badmouths “psychobabble” and demands that callers say what they really mean when they talk about “dealing with” their “issues.”
They hate it when Dr. Laura makes people feel bad about doing bad things.
They hate it when she turns the expectations table and asks dissatisfied female callers, “How would you like to come home to you every day?”—a query inevitably followed by an extended period of silence.
They hate it when the daily dispenser of hardcore compassion responds to “It’s so hard” whiners with the callous retort, “So what?”
They hate it when Dr. Laura answers “How do I…” questions with straightforward replies: “How do I get over the pain?” “It takes time.” “How do I stop being a complainer?” “Stop complaining.”
They hate Dr. Laura for destroying the illusion that there’s an easy way to do difficult things—for not pretending that a pill or a slick technique can undo messes and avoid hurt feelings.
They hate it when the petulant moralist employs the term “slut” or labels callers “selfish” and tells them to think about others—as if she were qualified to judge someone’s “personal value system.”
They hate the fact that Dr. Laura disparages popular ideas about “venting” and “confrontation”—concepts endorsed on TV shows where problems are resolved after shouting matches that last less than five minutes.
They hate it when she uses the term “shack-up” for relationships where couples don’t pledge to stay together “in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live”—as if their unwillingness to publicly express their commitment to each other implies a lack of commitment.
They hate it when the impertinent shrinklette exclaims, “At least a prostitute gets paid!”
They hate the fact that Dr. Laura puts the lives of children above the sex lives of adults—and that she has the audacity to suggest staying together for the sake of the kids.
They hate it when she looks at custody arrangements through the eyes of children and asks parents to imagine how their offspring feel about being shuffled back and forth and “crammed”—not “blended”—into his, hers, and ours families.
They hate that Dr. Laura dismisses the adult-centered excuse, “Kids adapt,” and has the gall to say that mothers who don’t want to raise their children shouldn’t have them.
They especially hate it when she condenses current legal reasoning on the subject of abortion into a simple, morally indefensible proposition: “If she wants it, it’s a baby. If she doesn’t, it’s not.”
They hate when she says “Hoooah”—as if soldiers make the world a better place.
And they hate it when she says, “Do the right thing,”—as if most actions aren’t gloriously gray.
Most of all they hate it when, having turned off the radio in disgust, a barely perceptible but persistent voice keeps whispering in their ears: “You know, don’t you, that what Dr. Laura just said, is right?”
First, they hate the way Dr. Laura holds people responsible for their own choices—even ones made when they were young and stupid. Especially irksome is that irritating observation frequently put to disgruntled wives: “You picked him.”
They hate the way the nation’s designated nag rejects convenient “I don’t know” answers and expects callers to face up to facts they’d rather forget.
They hate it when she downplays the importance of feelings and places moral obligation on a higher plain than emotion.
They hate how Dr. Laura badmouths “psychobabble” and demands that callers say what they really mean when they talk about “dealing with” their “issues.”
They hate it when Dr. Laura makes people feel bad about doing bad things.
They hate it when she turns the expectations table and asks dissatisfied female callers, “How would you like to come home to you every day?”—a query inevitably followed by an extended period of silence.
They hate it when the daily dispenser of hardcore compassion responds to “It’s so hard” whiners with the callous retort, “So what?”
They hate it when Dr. Laura answers “How do I…” questions with straightforward replies: “How do I get over the pain?” “It takes time.” “How do I stop being a complainer?” “Stop complaining.”
They hate Dr. Laura for destroying the illusion that there’s an easy way to do difficult things—for not pretending that a pill or a slick technique can undo messes and avoid hurt feelings.
They hate it when the petulant moralist employs the term “slut” or labels callers “selfish” and tells them to think about others—as if she were qualified to judge someone’s “personal value system.”
They hate the fact that Dr. Laura disparages popular ideas about “venting” and “confrontation”—concepts endorsed on TV shows where problems are resolved after shouting matches that last less than five minutes.
They hate it when she uses the term “shack-up” for relationships where couples don’t pledge to stay together “in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live”—as if their unwillingness to publicly express their commitment to each other implies a lack of commitment.
They hate it when the impertinent shrinklette exclaims, “At least a prostitute gets paid!”
They hate the fact that Dr. Laura puts the lives of children above the sex lives of adults—and that she has the audacity to suggest staying together for the sake of the kids.
They hate it when she looks at custody arrangements through the eyes of children and asks parents to imagine how their offspring feel about being shuffled back and forth and “crammed”—not “blended”—into his, hers, and ours families.
They hate that Dr. Laura dismisses the adult-centered excuse, “Kids adapt,” and has the gall to say that mothers who don’t want to raise their children shouldn’t have them.
They especially hate it when she condenses current legal reasoning on the subject of abortion into a simple, morally indefensible proposition: “If she wants it, it’s a baby. If she doesn’t, it’s not.”
They hate when she says “Hoooah”—as if soldiers make the world a better place.
And they hate it when she says, “Do the right thing,”—as if most actions aren’t gloriously gray.
Most of all they hate it when, having turned off the radio in disgust, a barely perceptible but persistent voice keeps whispering in their ears: “You know, don’t you, that what Dr. Laura just said, is right?”
Saturday, April 01, 2006
AN EXTENDED ESSAY ON GAY MARRIAGE
“Why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry?” Nowadays, the question has a prima facie persuasiveness that’s akin to the popular rhetorical challenge, “Who’s to say what’s right and wrong?” Another trait these queries share is the likelihood that persons confronting them will be reduced to stammering incoherence. The main reason for this detour into dementia isn’t that opponents of gay marriage are idiots. It is rather that the case against same-sex unions requires more strenuous philosophical lifting than the case for it.
Rhetorical Challenges
Proponents of this radical domestic innovation possess a pocketful of bumper sticker appeals--including the aforementioned “Who’s to say” argument. “It’s not fair” and “It’s discrimination” are two other easily developed themes. Then there’s the protest that people who “love each other” should be encouraged, not discouraged, to commit themselves to their male-female, male-male, or female-female partners. Why, after all, should heterosexuals who decry the social damage caused by divorce be in the business of discouraging commitment among homosexual couples? Finally, there is that familiar prosecutorial inquiry, “How does it hurt you if someone else marries a person of the same sex?” Several decades earlier Phil Donahue and his talk-show pals touted sexual license by employing similar questions: “Why would you stand in the way of someone’s happiness?” So much is presupposed in these “beating-your-wife” challenges that no simple reply is possible.
Glibly articulated sound bites work well in mass media. By contrast, when one is obliged to defend an institution that has never been challenged and ideas that have almost always been taken for granted, the speaker faces a daunting task. Quickly! Why must women marry men? Who is hurt if you let people marry whomever they want? Who made you the marriage czar?
When Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, explored the nature of justice, his arguments rested on assumptions that he shared with his interlocutors. In Book One of this extended dialogue, the impetuous Thrasymachus, after having been argued into a corner by his verbal sparring partner, rashly asserts that justice is bad and injustice good. This novel perspective, Socrates declares, makes his own task much more difficult. Most persons take for granted that justice is good and argue over its proper definition. Socrates, however, is now forced to demonstrate for his auditors something more fundamental--the superiority of justice to injustice.
Defending male-female marriage is akin to defending the value of justice over injustice. It’s seldom done, and the issues are so basic that people are inclined to fall silent. Certainly, no simple slogan serves as an adequate defense of this previously unquestioned proposition. Replying that “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” isn’t compelling--especially when addressing secular audiences inclined to equate religious faith with stupidity.
As Socrates was forced to ponder the essence of justice and injustice in response to Thrasymachus’ assertion, so advocates for the traditional definition of marriage are faced with the task of explaining to short-attention-span Americans plausible reasons why male-female unions ought to remain the norm. Those explanations, however condensed, must include an analysis of the essential nature of marriage.
Marriage: Procreation and Commitment
Marriage is a institution that ties procreation to commitment. This newly-minted but long-presupposed definition should constitute the heart of any defense of traditional marriage. For centuries marriage has revolved around pledges of loyalty made by husbands and wives to each other. “In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer” are words familiar to all Americans. Until recently the phrase “as long as you both shall live” was part of most wedding ceremonies. These vows of commitment aren’t important simply as expressions of the love that two individuals have for each other. They are also significant because marriages are consummated, and those sexual unions produce babies. Marriage, therefore, not only links two people to vows of commitment, it also links commitment to family.
Not all marriages result in children, but marriages aren’t complete--according to law and language--apart from consummation. And acts of consummation produce, for most couples, the children that Roman Catholic theology has rightly linked to acts of intercourse. Indeed, this link between consummation and reproduction is so pronounced that husbands and wives go to considerable contraceptive lengths to frustrate it. With same-sex couples the situation is reversed--and more so. Not only are biological offspring never a result of sexual intimacy, the acquisition of children is an arduous process fraught with legal hurdles. No matter how committed the parties, same-sex unions can never be linked, via consummation, to the creation of a family.
Heretofore, marriage has provided a framework, rooted in vows of commitment, for the raising of children. Though imperfectly realized, that ideal has served to sublimate--to place within the bounds of exalted purpose--mere acts of propagation. Absent this larger framework, intercourse tends to assume the raw visage of animalian instinct. C. S. Lewis once observed that a single man’s desires, freely indulged, would soon suffice to populate a small village.(1) Traditional marriage restrains such impulses because it sets forth the expectation that father and mother will provide a home for the fruit of their passion.
Same-sex marriage, by its very nature, dismisses this link between marriage and propagation. Few heterosexual unions remain childless. All same-sex unions are barren. This biological fact of life renders the term “shotgun wedding” meaningless as regards an entire class of persons--individuals who say their marriages are based on the same principles as everyone else. Though hardly a happy image, this coercive practice (based on whatever stigma still attends out-of-wedlock birth) bears further witness, alongside the term “illegitimate,” to the essential link between marriage and children.
Should marriage be forced to accommodate same-sex commitments, it is hard to believe that this revised institution will continue to be viewed as the ideal framework for raising the offspring that same-sex couples cannot, by themselves, produce. Marital unions will likely focus even more exclusively on the feelings that two people have for each other--and even less on the children that one class of married pairs can, and another can’t, produce. This intensified focus on feelings will expedite the delinkage of sex, marriage, and family that began in the 60’s with the era of convenient birth control. Such marriages, lacking the substantive bond between feelings and family, are destined to be as short-lived as nuptials sealed with a vow to be faithful “as long as we both shall love.”(2)
For some time it has been fashionable to disparage couples who look to maternity as a way to save their marriages. The problem with this desperate logic, however, isn’t that it’s totally benighted. Instead, this reasoning puts the child at the wrong end of the marital relationship--as glue to mend what is already broken. Ideally, children are mutually desired centers of affection that serve to strengthen existing bonds. The spilled-milk approach to parenthood recognizes, only belatedly, the ephemeral nature of feelings not tied to something as tangible and enduring as “our baby.”
Marriage and Child-Rearing
It is hard to fathom the intellectual obstinacy needed to deny what seems a prima facie argument on behalf of male-female marriage—namely, that children are best raised within two-parent, male-female homes. Yet individuals frequently cite a handful of limited and ambiguous studies in order to “prove” the opposite of what nature and common sense would suggest.(3)
What is incontrovertible, however, even within the dubious world of social science, is that children raised by two parents (who, as of now, “happen to be” male and female) are more successful on measures of social, emotional, and educational welfare than children lacking one or the other parent due to divorce or abandonment. What I think is equally plain is that a definition of marriage that ignores male-female consummation, and thus the link between marriage and family, will open the door (or rather, the floodgates) to a view of sexual relations that ignores children altogether.
Same-sex unions need not worry about having and educating offspring--a fact that clearly contributes to the short-term character of most homosexual pairings.(4) Until recently opposite sex couples were obliged by society to worry about such matters. Under a regime of same-sex marriage, men and women will doubtless think less about these duties than they do today. After all, so goes the self-interested logic, if “studies prove” that kids are OK with same-sex guardians, why shouldn’t they be OK in less controversial domestic arrangements that also fall short of a presumably-discredited ideal?
Some homosexual advocates agree that, optimally, children should have two, married, male-female parents. They concede that it makes sense to prefer intimate role models of maleness, femaleness, and male-female domestic relations. But they deny that same-sex marriage undermines this ideal. This optimistic assessment seems implausible given the positive public attention already received by gay couples--and even gay singles--who go to great lengths to birth or adopt children. On the contrary, what seems to be emerging is a view of marriage that ignores not only the connection between marriage, procreation, and child-rearing but also the link between male-female parents and domestic training. This is precisely the scenario suggested by relevant statistics following the institution of gay marriage in Scandanavian countries.
In Sweden, where gay unions were made legal in 1994, marriage rates hit an historic low in 1997.(5) Meanwhile, out-of-wedlock births in 2001 rose to a record high of 55%. In Norway, where elites foisted gay marriage upon a reluctant country in 1993, illegitimate births rose from 39% to 50% by the end of the decade. Finally, in Denmark, which provided for gay unions in 1989, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for first-born children has increased to 60%--a figure that indicates a growing wall of separation between marriage and procreation in the minds of young Danes.
These numbers provide convincing evidence that under a regime of same-sex marriage even more children than today will be raised in homes that have no intimate male-female model. We should not pretend, for the sake of tolerance, that such homes are “just as good,” psychologically speaking, as homes where children see mothers and fathers interacting almost every day. Children who grow up in fatherless or motherless homes know that something is missing. If it is missing because of an accident, that’s tragic. If it is missing due to divorce, that’s regrettable. But if it is missing by design, then that situation is a socially sanctioned form of child abuse.
People might argue, based on the preceding observation, that same-sex marriage should be legal just as divorce and single-parenthood are permitted. This comparison is misleading. The latter circumstances are not (at least not yet) viewed as ideals to be celebrated. Instead, they are concessions to weakness and occasions for grief. The same-sex equivalency argument would transform all these domestic arrangements into joyous states mirroring a bride-groom wedding. Only minds untouched by divorce, clouded by the rigors of single parenthood, or blinded by ideology could seriously entertain such an empirically unwarranted equation.
Furthermore, children actually reared within same-sex households are not only deprived of male-female domestic models, they are also deprived of a family within which reproductive desire is channeled into a framework of familial affection. After all, no homosexual union, within or without marriage, has reproductive significance. Consequently, children raised in these environments will almost certainly be less prepared for male-female relationships, less likely to view those relationships in the context of a family, and more likely to indulge the variety of impulses that constitute the erotic profile of most humans.
The Fish or Fowl Myth
Over the last two decades we have been given to understand that each person is “straight” or “gay” in the same way that people are born with blue or brown eyes. Sit-coms (today’s preferred propaganda tool) assert this notion with a repetitive vengeance. Yet no body of evidence comes close to confirming this dogma. Meanwhile evidence for the malleability of sexual expression is right before our eyes--yet ignored in the name of political correctness.
It is now fashionable for Hollywood types (as with Jerry Springer guests) to declare themselves “bisexual”--a term that raises huge problems for devotees of the I’m-just-that-way school of thought. Also increasingly prevalent are stories about “gay” celebrities who later link up with members of the opposite sex. Ellen DeGeneres’ one-time partner, Anne Heche, is a prominent example. Diversity of this stripe leads individuals who embrace the fish or fowl dogma in disconcerting directions.
Is bisexuality genetic? If so, are bisexuals condemned by their chemistry to be promiscuous? Are threesomes and groups the next “progressive” innovations? How does “being who I am, sexually” differ from sheer indulgence of whatever erotic urges happen to emerge from regions just south of the navel? Is self-restraint always verboten--or only sometimes? And how is one to know which impulses are “me” and which are gratuitous?
People more intent on being non-judgmental than on providing guidance for the next generation aren’t inclined to ponder these questions. They would rather blindly embrace what is politically palatable--that children’s sexual habits are inflexibly set--than confront the “lesbian chic” experimentation that now pervades college life. Cognitive dissonance is resolved by denying or ignoring the evidence at hand.
Here’s the bottom line of this train of thought. The popular idea that boys and girls aren’t affected by their sexual environment is clearly a myth. Even a recent study conducted by researchers sympathetic to the gay agenda now says as much. These sociologists admit, gingerly, what was previously denied because most folks would have found the conclusions highly objectionable. Today, however, in a society where “gay marriage” is promoted on a par with “straight marriage,” the aversion to homosexuality has been so minimized that the air-brushed truth can be told. Children raised by homosexual partners “seem to grow up to be more open to homeoerotic relations.”(6)
Sex-Ed and Gay-Marriage
What is true for children raised in same-sex households is true to a lesser extent for all children--boys and girls who may soon be forced by avant garde health teachers to ask themselves at the age of ten just which sex they think about marrying. That’s a perverse load to put on kids who have yet to reach puberty. Only ideological zealots, moral ostriches, and confirmed couch potatoes could possibly think a “freedom” of this sort is anything but an invitation to social chaos.
Progressive views of sex have taken us from an illegitimacy rate of 4% in 1950 to 33% today--and from under 20% to almost 70% among blacks. The idea that legitimizing homosexual marriage will stanch or reverse that trend requires a degree of self-deception that borders on the psychotic. Adolescents invited to explore their sexual identity will not sit quietly in the corner until they choose A or B-- especially not when “bisexual” or “polymorphous” are among the options that a society bereft moral backbone is putting on the table.
At a meeting of very tolerant church folks, I was discussing, as politely as possible, some of the off-putting and dangerous practices that are erotic norms among male homosexuals. [I invite readers to peruse the NARTH website.(7)] The general reaction ranged from denial to disbelief. One commentator went so far as to assert that homosexual sex and gay marriage had nothing to do with each other--an assertion equivalent to denying that consummation is linked to marriage. Most of these people seemed to believe that same-sex intercourse involves no greater medical risks than heterosexual relations and that only a geographical accident caused AIDS to be vastly more prevalent among America’s homosexuals than among heterosexuals.
If putative adults are abysmally ignorant of the nature and medical consequences of male homosexuality, how much more are their media-molded children kept in the dark about the dangers of acts that constitute an open invitation to disease and death. The portraits that children constantly see and hear in the media falsely portray gay sex as a benign variation of heterosexual relations. About nothing are same-sex proponents so deceptive as the normal erotic practices of homosexuals. Any culture that puts a seal of approval on gay marriage is as much as inviting its children to engage in forms of sexual expression that are both sterile and dangerous--practices that have no natural connection to the creation of a family.
Arguing for Armageddon
The philosopher Edmund Burke would sympathize with those who face the task of painting a plausible portrait of a hypothetical future. There are so many subtle interconnections that one can hardly imagine the impact of even minor changes. Despite the assurances of pundits whose views are assiduously attuned to tenor of the Times, a change of the magnitude now contemplated will surely have enormous consequences--consequences that may dwarf even the devastating effects of the sixties sexual revolution.
Bumper-stickers can proclaim the onset of Armageddon, but they cannot make an argument for it. It is incumbent upon defenders of traditional marriage, therefore, to ponder realistically and rationally, the shape of a culture that has rejected one of history’s most fundamental assumptions--an assumption rooted in the reproductive facts of life.
Marriage has been at the heart of our rise from savagery to civilization. I do not think that future generations will bless us for severing its already damaged root--the one linking propagation to commitment.
(1) Mere Christianity, Book III, Ch. 5, “Sexual Morality.”
(2) William Bennett relates the story of a couple who pledged to stay together “as long as we both shall love.” His suggestion for a wedding gift was paper plates.
(3) The tenuous and even contradictory nature of these very limited studies can be seen in Charlotte Patterson’s highly tendentious article summarizing studies prior to 1992, “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,” Child Development, V. 63, 1992.
(4) McWhirter and Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1984). Gay authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen observed, “Alas, it turns out that, on this point, public myth is supported by fact. There is more promiscuity among gays...than among straights.” Even among committed partners, they observe, “the cheating ratio, given enough time, approaches 100%.” Cf. After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's (Doubleday, 1989).
(5) All Scandanavian figures come from Stanley Kurtz, “Beyond Gay Marriage,” The Weekly Standard, August 4, 2003.
(6) Stacey and Biblarz, American Sociological Review, 2001.
(7) National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, John R. Diggs Jr., “The Health Risks of Gay Sex.” Cf. also R.S. Hogg, et al., International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 26, No. 3, 657-661. “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.”
Rhetorical Challenges
Proponents of this radical domestic innovation possess a pocketful of bumper sticker appeals--including the aforementioned “Who’s to say” argument. “It’s not fair” and “It’s discrimination” are two other easily developed themes. Then there’s the protest that people who “love each other” should be encouraged, not discouraged, to commit themselves to their male-female, male-male, or female-female partners. Why, after all, should heterosexuals who decry the social damage caused by divorce be in the business of discouraging commitment among homosexual couples? Finally, there is that familiar prosecutorial inquiry, “How does it hurt you if someone else marries a person of the same sex?” Several decades earlier Phil Donahue and his talk-show pals touted sexual license by employing similar questions: “Why would you stand in the way of someone’s happiness?” So much is presupposed in these “beating-your-wife” challenges that no simple reply is possible.
Glibly articulated sound bites work well in mass media. By contrast, when one is obliged to defend an institution that has never been challenged and ideas that have almost always been taken for granted, the speaker faces a daunting task. Quickly! Why must women marry men? Who is hurt if you let people marry whomever they want? Who made you the marriage czar?
When Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, explored the nature of justice, his arguments rested on assumptions that he shared with his interlocutors. In Book One of this extended dialogue, the impetuous Thrasymachus, after having been argued into a corner by his verbal sparring partner, rashly asserts that justice is bad and injustice good. This novel perspective, Socrates declares, makes his own task much more difficult. Most persons take for granted that justice is good and argue over its proper definition. Socrates, however, is now forced to demonstrate for his auditors something more fundamental--the superiority of justice to injustice.
Defending male-female marriage is akin to defending the value of justice over injustice. It’s seldom done, and the issues are so basic that people are inclined to fall silent. Certainly, no simple slogan serves as an adequate defense of this previously unquestioned proposition. Replying that “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” isn’t compelling--especially when addressing secular audiences inclined to equate religious faith with stupidity.
As Socrates was forced to ponder the essence of justice and injustice in response to Thrasymachus’ assertion, so advocates for the traditional definition of marriage are faced with the task of explaining to short-attention-span Americans plausible reasons why male-female unions ought to remain the norm. Those explanations, however condensed, must include an analysis of the essential nature of marriage.
Marriage: Procreation and Commitment
Marriage is a institution that ties procreation to commitment. This newly-minted but long-presupposed definition should constitute the heart of any defense of traditional marriage. For centuries marriage has revolved around pledges of loyalty made by husbands and wives to each other. “In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer” are words familiar to all Americans. Until recently the phrase “as long as you both shall live” was part of most wedding ceremonies. These vows of commitment aren’t important simply as expressions of the love that two individuals have for each other. They are also significant because marriages are consummated, and those sexual unions produce babies. Marriage, therefore, not only links two people to vows of commitment, it also links commitment to family.
Not all marriages result in children, but marriages aren’t complete--according to law and language--apart from consummation. And acts of consummation produce, for most couples, the children that Roman Catholic theology has rightly linked to acts of intercourse. Indeed, this link between consummation and reproduction is so pronounced that husbands and wives go to considerable contraceptive lengths to frustrate it. With same-sex couples the situation is reversed--and more so. Not only are biological offspring never a result of sexual intimacy, the acquisition of children is an arduous process fraught with legal hurdles. No matter how committed the parties, same-sex unions can never be linked, via consummation, to the creation of a family.
Heretofore, marriage has provided a framework, rooted in vows of commitment, for the raising of children. Though imperfectly realized, that ideal has served to sublimate--to place within the bounds of exalted purpose--mere acts of propagation. Absent this larger framework, intercourse tends to assume the raw visage of animalian instinct. C. S. Lewis once observed that a single man’s desires, freely indulged, would soon suffice to populate a small village.(1) Traditional marriage restrains such impulses because it sets forth the expectation that father and mother will provide a home for the fruit of their passion.
Same-sex marriage, by its very nature, dismisses this link between marriage and propagation. Few heterosexual unions remain childless. All same-sex unions are barren. This biological fact of life renders the term “shotgun wedding” meaningless as regards an entire class of persons--individuals who say their marriages are based on the same principles as everyone else. Though hardly a happy image, this coercive practice (based on whatever stigma still attends out-of-wedlock birth) bears further witness, alongside the term “illegitimate,” to the essential link between marriage and children.
Should marriage be forced to accommodate same-sex commitments, it is hard to believe that this revised institution will continue to be viewed as the ideal framework for raising the offspring that same-sex couples cannot, by themselves, produce. Marital unions will likely focus even more exclusively on the feelings that two people have for each other--and even less on the children that one class of married pairs can, and another can’t, produce. This intensified focus on feelings will expedite the delinkage of sex, marriage, and family that began in the 60’s with the era of convenient birth control. Such marriages, lacking the substantive bond between feelings and family, are destined to be as short-lived as nuptials sealed with a vow to be faithful “as long as we both shall love.”(2)
For some time it has been fashionable to disparage couples who look to maternity as a way to save their marriages. The problem with this desperate logic, however, isn’t that it’s totally benighted. Instead, this reasoning puts the child at the wrong end of the marital relationship--as glue to mend what is already broken. Ideally, children are mutually desired centers of affection that serve to strengthen existing bonds. The spilled-milk approach to parenthood recognizes, only belatedly, the ephemeral nature of feelings not tied to something as tangible and enduring as “our baby.”
Marriage and Child-Rearing
It is hard to fathom the intellectual obstinacy needed to deny what seems a prima facie argument on behalf of male-female marriage—namely, that children are best raised within two-parent, male-female homes. Yet individuals frequently cite a handful of limited and ambiguous studies in order to “prove” the opposite of what nature and common sense would suggest.(3)
What is incontrovertible, however, even within the dubious world of social science, is that children raised by two parents (who, as of now, “happen to be” male and female) are more successful on measures of social, emotional, and educational welfare than children lacking one or the other parent due to divorce or abandonment. What I think is equally plain is that a definition of marriage that ignores male-female consummation, and thus the link between marriage and family, will open the door (or rather, the floodgates) to a view of sexual relations that ignores children altogether.
Same-sex unions need not worry about having and educating offspring--a fact that clearly contributes to the short-term character of most homosexual pairings.(4) Until recently opposite sex couples were obliged by society to worry about such matters. Under a regime of same-sex marriage, men and women will doubtless think less about these duties than they do today. After all, so goes the self-interested logic, if “studies prove” that kids are OK with same-sex guardians, why shouldn’t they be OK in less controversial domestic arrangements that also fall short of a presumably-discredited ideal?
Some homosexual advocates agree that, optimally, children should have two, married, male-female parents. They concede that it makes sense to prefer intimate role models of maleness, femaleness, and male-female domestic relations. But they deny that same-sex marriage undermines this ideal. This optimistic assessment seems implausible given the positive public attention already received by gay couples--and even gay singles--who go to great lengths to birth or adopt children. On the contrary, what seems to be emerging is a view of marriage that ignores not only the connection between marriage, procreation, and child-rearing but also the link between male-female parents and domestic training. This is precisely the scenario suggested by relevant statistics following the institution of gay marriage in Scandanavian countries.
In Sweden, where gay unions were made legal in 1994, marriage rates hit an historic low in 1997.(5) Meanwhile, out-of-wedlock births in 2001 rose to a record high of 55%. In Norway, where elites foisted gay marriage upon a reluctant country in 1993, illegitimate births rose from 39% to 50% by the end of the decade. Finally, in Denmark, which provided for gay unions in 1989, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for first-born children has increased to 60%--a figure that indicates a growing wall of separation between marriage and procreation in the minds of young Danes.
These numbers provide convincing evidence that under a regime of same-sex marriage even more children than today will be raised in homes that have no intimate male-female model. We should not pretend, for the sake of tolerance, that such homes are “just as good,” psychologically speaking, as homes where children see mothers and fathers interacting almost every day. Children who grow up in fatherless or motherless homes know that something is missing. If it is missing because of an accident, that’s tragic. If it is missing due to divorce, that’s regrettable. But if it is missing by design, then that situation is a socially sanctioned form of child abuse.
People might argue, based on the preceding observation, that same-sex marriage should be legal just as divorce and single-parenthood are permitted. This comparison is misleading. The latter circumstances are not (at least not yet) viewed as ideals to be celebrated. Instead, they are concessions to weakness and occasions for grief. The same-sex equivalency argument would transform all these domestic arrangements into joyous states mirroring a bride-groom wedding. Only minds untouched by divorce, clouded by the rigors of single parenthood, or blinded by ideology could seriously entertain such an empirically unwarranted equation.
Furthermore, children actually reared within same-sex households are not only deprived of male-female domestic models, they are also deprived of a family within which reproductive desire is channeled into a framework of familial affection. After all, no homosexual union, within or without marriage, has reproductive significance. Consequently, children raised in these environments will almost certainly be less prepared for male-female relationships, less likely to view those relationships in the context of a family, and more likely to indulge the variety of impulses that constitute the erotic profile of most humans.
The Fish or Fowl Myth
Over the last two decades we have been given to understand that each person is “straight” or “gay” in the same way that people are born with blue or brown eyes. Sit-coms (today’s preferred propaganda tool) assert this notion with a repetitive vengeance. Yet no body of evidence comes close to confirming this dogma. Meanwhile evidence for the malleability of sexual expression is right before our eyes--yet ignored in the name of political correctness.
It is now fashionable for Hollywood types (as with Jerry Springer guests) to declare themselves “bisexual”--a term that raises huge problems for devotees of the I’m-just-that-way school of thought. Also increasingly prevalent are stories about “gay” celebrities who later link up with members of the opposite sex. Ellen DeGeneres’ one-time partner, Anne Heche, is a prominent example. Diversity of this stripe leads individuals who embrace the fish or fowl dogma in disconcerting directions.
Is bisexuality genetic? If so, are bisexuals condemned by their chemistry to be promiscuous? Are threesomes and groups the next “progressive” innovations? How does “being who I am, sexually” differ from sheer indulgence of whatever erotic urges happen to emerge from regions just south of the navel? Is self-restraint always verboten--or only sometimes? And how is one to know which impulses are “me” and which are gratuitous?
People more intent on being non-judgmental than on providing guidance for the next generation aren’t inclined to ponder these questions. They would rather blindly embrace what is politically palatable--that children’s sexual habits are inflexibly set--than confront the “lesbian chic” experimentation that now pervades college life. Cognitive dissonance is resolved by denying or ignoring the evidence at hand.
Here’s the bottom line of this train of thought. The popular idea that boys and girls aren’t affected by their sexual environment is clearly a myth. Even a recent study conducted by researchers sympathetic to the gay agenda now says as much. These sociologists admit, gingerly, what was previously denied because most folks would have found the conclusions highly objectionable. Today, however, in a society where “gay marriage” is promoted on a par with “straight marriage,” the aversion to homosexuality has been so minimized that the air-brushed truth can be told. Children raised by homosexual partners “seem to grow up to be more open to homeoerotic relations.”(6)
Sex-Ed and Gay-Marriage
What is true for children raised in same-sex households is true to a lesser extent for all children--boys and girls who may soon be forced by avant garde health teachers to ask themselves at the age of ten just which sex they think about marrying. That’s a perverse load to put on kids who have yet to reach puberty. Only ideological zealots, moral ostriches, and confirmed couch potatoes could possibly think a “freedom” of this sort is anything but an invitation to social chaos.
Progressive views of sex have taken us from an illegitimacy rate of 4% in 1950 to 33% today--and from under 20% to almost 70% among blacks. The idea that legitimizing homosexual marriage will stanch or reverse that trend requires a degree of self-deception that borders on the psychotic. Adolescents invited to explore their sexual identity will not sit quietly in the corner until they choose A or B-- especially not when “bisexual” or “polymorphous” are among the options that a society bereft moral backbone is putting on the table.
At a meeting of very tolerant church folks, I was discussing, as politely as possible, some of the off-putting and dangerous practices that are erotic norms among male homosexuals. [I invite readers to peruse the NARTH website.(7)] The general reaction ranged from denial to disbelief. One commentator went so far as to assert that homosexual sex and gay marriage had nothing to do with each other--an assertion equivalent to denying that consummation is linked to marriage. Most of these people seemed to believe that same-sex intercourse involves no greater medical risks than heterosexual relations and that only a geographical accident caused AIDS to be vastly more prevalent among America’s homosexuals than among heterosexuals.
If putative adults are abysmally ignorant of the nature and medical consequences of male homosexuality, how much more are their media-molded children kept in the dark about the dangers of acts that constitute an open invitation to disease and death. The portraits that children constantly see and hear in the media falsely portray gay sex as a benign variation of heterosexual relations. About nothing are same-sex proponents so deceptive as the normal erotic practices of homosexuals. Any culture that puts a seal of approval on gay marriage is as much as inviting its children to engage in forms of sexual expression that are both sterile and dangerous--practices that have no natural connection to the creation of a family.
Arguing for Armageddon
The philosopher Edmund Burke would sympathize with those who face the task of painting a plausible portrait of a hypothetical future. There are so many subtle interconnections that one can hardly imagine the impact of even minor changes. Despite the assurances of pundits whose views are assiduously attuned to tenor of the Times, a change of the magnitude now contemplated will surely have enormous consequences--consequences that may dwarf even the devastating effects of the sixties sexual revolution.
Bumper-stickers can proclaim the onset of Armageddon, but they cannot make an argument for it. It is incumbent upon defenders of traditional marriage, therefore, to ponder realistically and rationally, the shape of a culture that has rejected one of history’s most fundamental assumptions--an assumption rooted in the reproductive facts of life.
Marriage has been at the heart of our rise from savagery to civilization. I do not think that future generations will bless us for severing its already damaged root--the one linking propagation to commitment.
(1) Mere Christianity, Book III, Ch. 5, “Sexual Morality.”
(2) William Bennett relates the story of a couple who pledged to stay together “as long as we both shall love.” His suggestion for a wedding gift was paper plates.
(3) The tenuous and even contradictory nature of these very limited studies can be seen in Charlotte Patterson’s highly tendentious article summarizing studies prior to 1992, “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,” Child Development, V. 63, 1992.
(4) McWhirter and Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1984). Gay authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen observed, “Alas, it turns out that, on this point, public myth is supported by fact. There is more promiscuity among gays...than among straights.” Even among committed partners, they observe, “the cheating ratio, given enough time, approaches 100%.” Cf. After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's (Doubleday, 1989).
(5) All Scandanavian figures come from Stanley Kurtz, “Beyond Gay Marriage,” The Weekly Standard, August 4, 2003.
(6) Stacey and Biblarz, American Sociological Review, 2001.
(7) National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, John R. Diggs Jr., “The Health Risks of Gay Sex.” Cf. also R.S. Hogg, et al., International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 26, No. 3, 657-661. “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.”
Friday, March 24, 2006
MAKING "MEN WITHOUT CHESTS"
“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” Thus ends America’s Declaration of Independence—a document that cost most of its fifty-six signers dearly in terms of blood and treasure.
Elite opinion today finds such statements of commitment undiplomatic and imprudent—quaint relics from a bygone era when goals other than comfort and self-fulfillment stood at the apex of human aspiration.
In similar fashion contemporary commentators view military service as a barbaric enterprise pursued by individuals with few employment options and limited intellectual firepower. What does it profit someone, they reason, to risk life and limb for the sake of ideals that are subject to deconstruction and ridicule by the likes of themselves? Instead of throwing it all away, these dupes could have pursued a Lexus-load of pleasurable alternatives.
Put succinctly, among the secular literati courage is a virtue that has fallen out of fashion. In its place stand avant-garde cynicism, rhetorical cleverness, and a passion for artistic refinement. Maureen Dowd is their cup of tea, not General Patton.
This shift is understandable. After all, if life has no higher purpose, if ideals are only tarted up neuroses, if patriotism is a mendacious veil for narrow economic interests —then no reasonable person would give up a chance for happiness, short as it may be, for a vocation whose risks are great and whose rewards are largely intangible.
Moreover, most men and women aren’t going to forfeit their lives for the sake of a society that fervently proclaims the necessity of doing your own thing. Nor will they practice self-denial within a culture whose primary philosophical images are those of randomness, materialism, and ultimate extinction.
Over half a century ago C. S. Lewis criticized academics whose disdain for martial endeavors resulted in curricula designed to produce “men without chests” —i.e. persons lacking those noble sentiments associated with, among other traits, bravery and self-sacrifice. Since that time the intellectual landscape has shifted more dramatically in favor of those who “laugh at virtue” and mock patriotism.
When I look at the clash of civilizations that is taking place today, I wonder how long the West can continue to draw on accounts that, in intellectual circles, have long been closed. The phrase “sacred honor” is more likely to produce a guffaw among the pen-wielding set than to promote a series of sacrificial acts. As for “Divine Providence,” this idea has been dismissed by smarter-than-thous—for the sake of human autonomy.
Unfortunately, freedom without a moral context amounts to little more than self-indulgence. And self-indulgence isn’t a medium within which courage thrives.
A decadent culture, it appears, sows the seeds of its own destruction.
Elite opinion today finds such statements of commitment undiplomatic and imprudent—quaint relics from a bygone era when goals other than comfort and self-fulfillment stood at the apex of human aspiration.
In similar fashion contemporary commentators view military service as a barbaric enterprise pursued by individuals with few employment options and limited intellectual firepower. What does it profit someone, they reason, to risk life and limb for the sake of ideals that are subject to deconstruction and ridicule by the likes of themselves? Instead of throwing it all away, these dupes could have pursued a Lexus-load of pleasurable alternatives.
Put succinctly, among the secular literati courage is a virtue that has fallen out of fashion. In its place stand avant-garde cynicism, rhetorical cleverness, and a passion for artistic refinement. Maureen Dowd is their cup of tea, not General Patton.
This shift is understandable. After all, if life has no higher purpose, if ideals are only tarted up neuroses, if patriotism is a mendacious veil for narrow economic interests —then no reasonable person would give up a chance for happiness, short as it may be, for a vocation whose risks are great and whose rewards are largely intangible.
Moreover, most men and women aren’t going to forfeit their lives for the sake of a society that fervently proclaims the necessity of doing your own thing. Nor will they practice self-denial within a culture whose primary philosophical images are those of randomness, materialism, and ultimate extinction.
Over half a century ago C. S. Lewis criticized academics whose disdain for martial endeavors resulted in curricula designed to produce “men without chests” —i.e. persons lacking those noble sentiments associated with, among other traits, bravery and self-sacrifice. Since that time the intellectual landscape has shifted more dramatically in favor of those who “laugh at virtue” and mock patriotism.
When I look at the clash of civilizations that is taking place today, I wonder how long the West can continue to draw on accounts that, in intellectual circles, have long been closed. The phrase “sacred honor” is more likely to produce a guffaw among the pen-wielding set than to promote a series of sacrificial acts. As for “Divine Providence,” this idea has been dismissed by smarter-than-thous—for the sake of human autonomy.
Unfortunately, freedom without a moral context amounts to little more than self-indulgence. And self-indulgence isn’t a medium within which courage thrives.
A decadent culture, it appears, sows the seeds of its own destruction.
Friday, March 10, 2006
A LEFTIST GEOGRAPHY SERMON
Anyone who hasn’t heard the screed that a tenth-grade geography teacher in Aurora, Colorado, recently inflicted on his students ought to visit a website (like Michelle Malkin’s) and take a listen.
The “lesson” becomes a tirade—or more aptly, a jeremiad. Capitalism is transformed into an institutional Satan, Hitlerian traits are ascribed to George W. Bush, and America becomes the focus of evil in the modern world. Apocalyptic certitude permeates this rant presumably designed to get students to think critically about the nation’s foreign policy.
As a two-decade veteran of secondary education, I can assure readers that Mr. Jay Bennish isn’t alone. The only question is how many high school teachers go as far as he does when it comes to indoctrination. What is beyond reasonable dispute is that a very large number of individuals who graduate from schools of education share Bennish’s cookie-cutter political faith and regularly regurgitate that dogma to their captive audiences.
What Bennish’s sermon makes perfectly clear is the extent to which ideology, emotion, faith, and fundamental notions of good and evil permeate political thought. Moreover, the missionary enterprises of left-wing ideologues like Bennish are almost always more extensive, divisive, and offensive than any speech that the Supremes ever deemed an unconstitutional entanglement of the state in matters religious.
As numerous metaphors in the prior paragraphs suggest, no clear line of demarcation separates political conviction and religious faith. And if that is true, then a whole series of decisions that have come down from the Court in the last four decades are based on an untenable premise. That premise places religious speech in a completely different category from political speech and demands that the former be minimized or eliminated from public institutions.
Anyone who has pondered a Soviet May-Day parade, replete with iconic representations of the communist Trinity (Marx, Lenin, and, prior to his excommunication, Stalin) knows that true believers marched under the red flag with the same all-encompassing devotion that characterizes the most committed Christians, Jews, or Muslims. A similar spirit is observable at political meetings on college campuses.
The bottom line of this train of thought isn’t that religious rants should be permitted in public schools alongside political harangues. Instead, because political and religious discourse share fundamental characteristics, the same rules should govern both types of speech. Neither religious nor political discourse should be one-sided and arrogantly disrespectful of dissenting perspectives. Nor should a public school teacher ever take advantage of his or her position to cram a belief system down the throats of students.
As things stand now, however, the Court pretends that political philosophy is somehow less divisive, more rational, and less constitutionally restricted than statements that are traditionally connected to a religious tradition. In this way it leaves open the legal door to geography courses that are more dogmatic than a catechism class.
The “lesson” becomes a tirade—or more aptly, a jeremiad. Capitalism is transformed into an institutional Satan, Hitlerian traits are ascribed to George W. Bush, and America becomes the focus of evil in the modern world. Apocalyptic certitude permeates this rant presumably designed to get students to think critically about the nation’s foreign policy.
As a two-decade veteran of secondary education, I can assure readers that Mr. Jay Bennish isn’t alone. The only question is how many high school teachers go as far as he does when it comes to indoctrination. What is beyond reasonable dispute is that a very large number of individuals who graduate from schools of education share Bennish’s cookie-cutter political faith and regularly regurgitate that dogma to their captive audiences.
What Bennish’s sermon makes perfectly clear is the extent to which ideology, emotion, faith, and fundamental notions of good and evil permeate political thought. Moreover, the missionary enterprises of left-wing ideologues like Bennish are almost always more extensive, divisive, and offensive than any speech that the Supremes ever deemed an unconstitutional entanglement of the state in matters religious.
As numerous metaphors in the prior paragraphs suggest, no clear line of demarcation separates political conviction and religious faith. And if that is true, then a whole series of decisions that have come down from the Court in the last four decades are based on an untenable premise. That premise places religious speech in a completely different category from political speech and demands that the former be minimized or eliminated from public institutions.
Anyone who has pondered a Soviet May-Day parade, replete with iconic representations of the communist Trinity (Marx, Lenin, and, prior to his excommunication, Stalin) knows that true believers marched under the red flag with the same all-encompassing devotion that characterizes the most committed Christians, Jews, or Muslims. A similar spirit is observable at political meetings on college campuses.
The bottom line of this train of thought isn’t that religious rants should be permitted in public schools alongside political harangues. Instead, because political and religious discourse share fundamental characteristics, the same rules should govern both types of speech. Neither religious nor political discourse should be one-sided and arrogantly disrespectful of dissenting perspectives. Nor should a public school teacher ever take advantage of his or her position to cram a belief system down the throats of students.
As things stand now, however, the Court pretends that political philosophy is somehow less divisive, more rational, and less constitutionally restricted than statements that are traditionally connected to a religious tradition. In this way it leaves open the legal door to geography courses that are more dogmatic than a catechism class.
Friday, March 03, 2006
ON HOMOSEXUALITY, MARRIAGE, AND JUDGMENT
(The following is a slightly edited response to a question about homosexuality, same-sex marriage, sin, and the afterlife. I republish it here because I think the ideas are important and because I doubt that many folks peruse the "comments" section--where the original response is located.)
First of all I think it is important to say, as C. S. Lewis did in his popular book, Mere Christianity, that religious folks tend to focus inordinate attention on sexual flaws or faults but that their scriptures emphasize spiritual shortcomings—pride, selfishness, lust for power, heartlessness, etc. That comment is appropriately followed by the confession that immorality of this, and of the sexual variety, permeates all lives—including my own. We are all, to varying degrees, enmeshed in immorality.
Secondly, I think of most actions as being on a continuum or scale that terminates, at its apex, in an ideal. Nobody achieves the ideal, but it exists as the goal toward which individuals and societies strive and by which they judge their own moral circumstances. In my estimation (a view endorsed by the Judeo-Christian historical tradition) the “ideal” domestic relationship is a male-female marriage. And marriage, in my view, is an institution whose primary function is the creation of a loving, stable union of husband and wife within which children are raised.
Over the last half-century, however, marriage has been progressively redefined by feelings of affection. The inevitable consequence of that redefinition has been to undermine the child-rearing aspect of marriage. When heterosexual marriage is defined in this manner, there appears to be little to distinguish it from same-sex unions. But when one focuses on sexual fidelity for the sake of a family, it becomes clear that what applies to almost all heterosexual unions does not apply at all (biologically) when it comes to same-sex unions.
In concrete terms, however, not everyone is so constituted (or emotionally arranged as a result of social interaction) as to realize the ideal of marriage. In addition, some persons may be able to achieve non-marital ideals by virtue of the “gift of celibacy.” What I find positively destructive, however, is the insistence on making feelings of affection the basis for understanding marriage—and thus relegating sexual activity and reproduction to activities that, outside of marriage, are still ok. I think it is inevitable that the institutionalization of same-sex marriage will further lessen this vital linkage (since reproduction, by definition, is not part of same-sex intercourse).
On a more individual note, a rather unbiased study, done at a Vancouver hospital and published in 1997 in the Oxford University International Journal of Epidemiology, came up with these conclusions: “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.”
This conclusion coincides with others that are available to persons who want to discuss, honestly, the health impact of same-sex intercourse. Unfortunately, our society isn’t interested (in this and numerous other subjects) in having an honest discussion. Instead, vilification of individuals who don’t toe the line that social elites favor is the order of the day.
Do my observations and this medical data mean that same-sex intercourse is “immoral”? I think it indicates that it, like sex outside of marriage, doesn’t live up to the “ideal.” The same is true, I would assert, of my divorced state of affairs. Yet I don't justify myself by saying (as intellectuals like Constance Ahrons do) that “good divorces” are plentiful and that children aren’t regularly damaged by marital breakups. I don’t exhibit the ideal, but I try to do the best that I can under the circumstances. And, I continue to honor, rather than undermine, the ideal.
What I find most depressing is the tendency that all of us have to disparage ideals for the sake of justifying our own actions. When divorce began to be popular, intellectuals quickly began to declare that single parents could raise children just as well as a married couple and that “quality time” was all that mattered. People yearning to justify themselves ate it up. But it wasn’t true. (Patrick Moynihan discussed this topic a bit in his well-known essay, “Defining Deviancy Down.”) I think the same things are being said now about raising children in two-adult homes where the sex of the adults is inconsequential.
As to your question about the afterlife, I have only the inclination to believe that, if there is something like rewards and punishments, we will be judged by one who will be more merciful and understanding than myself. (And I say this with the thought that I myself am inclined to be understanding, seeing as I am acutely aware of my own faults.) In short, doing pretty well, given one’s circumstances, is what I tend to expect of folks—not perfection. I can’t see how a perfect judge would be less understanding.
First of all I think it is important to say, as C. S. Lewis did in his popular book, Mere Christianity, that religious folks tend to focus inordinate attention on sexual flaws or faults but that their scriptures emphasize spiritual shortcomings—pride, selfishness, lust for power, heartlessness, etc. That comment is appropriately followed by the confession that immorality of this, and of the sexual variety, permeates all lives—including my own. We are all, to varying degrees, enmeshed in immorality.
Secondly, I think of most actions as being on a continuum or scale that terminates, at its apex, in an ideal. Nobody achieves the ideal, but it exists as the goal toward which individuals and societies strive and by which they judge their own moral circumstances. In my estimation (a view endorsed by the Judeo-Christian historical tradition) the “ideal” domestic relationship is a male-female marriage. And marriage, in my view, is an institution whose primary function is the creation of a loving, stable union of husband and wife within which children are raised.
Over the last half-century, however, marriage has been progressively redefined by feelings of affection. The inevitable consequence of that redefinition has been to undermine the child-rearing aspect of marriage. When heterosexual marriage is defined in this manner, there appears to be little to distinguish it from same-sex unions. But when one focuses on sexual fidelity for the sake of a family, it becomes clear that what applies to almost all heterosexual unions does not apply at all (biologically) when it comes to same-sex unions.
In concrete terms, however, not everyone is so constituted (or emotionally arranged as a result of social interaction) as to realize the ideal of marriage. In addition, some persons may be able to achieve non-marital ideals by virtue of the “gift of celibacy.” What I find positively destructive, however, is the insistence on making feelings of affection the basis for understanding marriage—and thus relegating sexual activity and reproduction to activities that, outside of marriage, are still ok. I think it is inevitable that the institutionalization of same-sex marriage will further lessen this vital linkage (since reproduction, by definition, is not part of same-sex intercourse).
On a more individual note, a rather unbiased study, done at a Vancouver hospital and published in 1997 in the Oxford University International Journal of Epidemiology, came up with these conclusions: “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.”
This conclusion coincides with others that are available to persons who want to discuss, honestly, the health impact of same-sex intercourse. Unfortunately, our society isn’t interested (in this and numerous other subjects) in having an honest discussion. Instead, vilification of individuals who don’t toe the line that social elites favor is the order of the day.
Do my observations and this medical data mean that same-sex intercourse is “immoral”? I think it indicates that it, like sex outside of marriage, doesn’t live up to the “ideal.” The same is true, I would assert, of my divorced state of affairs. Yet I don't justify myself by saying (as intellectuals like Constance Ahrons do) that “good divorces” are plentiful and that children aren’t regularly damaged by marital breakups. I don’t exhibit the ideal, but I try to do the best that I can under the circumstances. And, I continue to honor, rather than undermine, the ideal.
What I find most depressing is the tendency that all of us have to disparage ideals for the sake of justifying our own actions. When divorce began to be popular, intellectuals quickly began to declare that single parents could raise children just as well as a married couple and that “quality time” was all that mattered. People yearning to justify themselves ate it up. But it wasn’t true. (Patrick Moynihan discussed this topic a bit in his well-known essay, “Defining Deviancy Down.”) I think the same things are being said now about raising children in two-adult homes where the sex of the adults is inconsequential.
As to your question about the afterlife, I have only the inclination to believe that, if there is something like rewards and punishments, we will be judged by one who will be more merciful and understanding than myself. (And I say this with the thought that I myself am inclined to be understanding, seeing as I am acutely aware of my own faults.) In short, doing pretty well, given one’s circumstances, is what I tend to expect of folks—not perfection. I can’t see how a perfect judge would be less understanding.
DECODING THE "CYCLE OF VIOLENCE"
In recent decades the phrase “cycle of violence” has become popular among academics and politically active celebrities. These words are typically employed when speaking about groups that blow up wedding parties and behead civilian hostages. By contrast, in these same intellectual circles the term “evil” is reserved for corporate executives and Presidents of the wrong political party—that is, for verbal targets who don’t fire back with live ammunition.
The phrase “cycle of violence” has several advantages. First, it transforms discrete acts of murder, retribution, or self-defense into an impersonal pattern. Rather than talking about particular persons who are guilty of specific crimes, this popular phrase encourages us to focus on a revolving door of mayhem in which hapless victims have been “caught up.”
(In similar fashion, individuals who promote cultural depravity are hidden behind “pendulum swings” that invisibly move public taste from the pole labeled Bing Crosby and “Leave It To Beaver” to one named “Two and a Half Men” and Eminem.)
The phrase “cycle of violence” thus excludes from one’s imagination the idea that certain groups and individuals might have greater responsibility than others for initiating or exacerbating hostilities. Messy details about what groups believe and how they talk about their opponents are shunted to the side.
Moreover, the proper solution to a “cycle of violence” is simple. Just intervene at any point in the flow of events to break the historical momentum. According to this paradigm, a tranquil equilibrium will automatically emerge once “the cycle” has been stopped. By picturing circumstances in this way one achieves a certain moral equivalence. Names disappear as attention is focused on a malevolent maelstrom that transcends human responsibility.
Several years ago a similar point of view was employed (in similar circles) when the arms race between America and the Soviet Union was discussed. If the U.S. unilaterally froze its weapon production, then the “cycle” would be broken and harmony would emerge. A more infantile version of this idea was promoted under the Sleep-In for Peace label.
In short, “cycle of violence” language excuses us from the task of distinguishing between force used to counter evil and violence employed to propagate evil. Indeed, it mindlessly places the actions of law enforcement officers and gang members in the same category. Most of all, this phrase makes it unnecessary to resist evil or even to take it seriously.
Almost half a century ago Hannah Arendt, speaking of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, observed that sophisticated opinion wished only to condemn trends “so general that distinctions [could] no longer be made.” I imagine that she would find today’s “cycle of violence” crowd (a group that includes “Munich” producer Steven Spielberg) as morally confused as the intellectuals she took to task.
The phrase “cycle of violence” has several advantages. First, it transforms discrete acts of murder, retribution, or self-defense into an impersonal pattern. Rather than talking about particular persons who are guilty of specific crimes, this popular phrase encourages us to focus on a revolving door of mayhem in which hapless victims have been “caught up.”
(In similar fashion, individuals who promote cultural depravity are hidden behind “pendulum swings” that invisibly move public taste from the pole labeled Bing Crosby and “Leave It To Beaver” to one named “Two and a Half Men” and Eminem.)
The phrase “cycle of violence” thus excludes from one’s imagination the idea that certain groups and individuals might have greater responsibility than others for initiating or exacerbating hostilities. Messy details about what groups believe and how they talk about their opponents are shunted to the side.
Moreover, the proper solution to a “cycle of violence” is simple. Just intervene at any point in the flow of events to break the historical momentum. According to this paradigm, a tranquil equilibrium will automatically emerge once “the cycle” has been stopped. By picturing circumstances in this way one achieves a certain moral equivalence. Names disappear as attention is focused on a malevolent maelstrom that transcends human responsibility.
Several years ago a similar point of view was employed (in similar circles) when the arms race between America and the Soviet Union was discussed. If the U.S. unilaterally froze its weapon production, then the “cycle” would be broken and harmony would emerge. A more infantile version of this idea was promoted under the Sleep-In for Peace label.
In short, “cycle of violence” language excuses us from the task of distinguishing between force used to counter evil and violence employed to propagate evil. Indeed, it mindlessly places the actions of law enforcement officers and gang members in the same category. Most of all, this phrase makes it unnecessary to resist evil or even to take it seriously.
Almost half a century ago Hannah Arendt, speaking of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, observed that sophisticated opinion wished only to condemn trends “so general that distinctions [could] no longer be made.” I imagine that she would find today’s “cycle of violence” crowd (a group that includes “Munich” producer Steven Spielberg) as morally confused as the intellectuals she took to task.
Friday, February 10, 2006
EUROPE'S RIGHT TO BLASPHEME
Is free speech the principle that divides courageous Europeans from Muslim protestors who have torched buildings in Damascus and Beirut because of a handful of cartoonish depictions of the prophet Muhammad? Is Europe the continent where freedom to speak one’s mind reigns supreme while Arab nations exhibit rabid intolerance for opinions that don’t conform to their cultural status quo? Well, not entirely.
According to European newspapers, freedom of the press was the sole issue that motivated their reprinting the (relatively mild) caricatures of Muhammad that were published last fall in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. It appears, however, that Europe’s devotion to free speech only applies to persons who embrace the deeply-held cultural convictions of post-modern Europe.
This conclusion is borne out by the verdict recently handed down by a French court against Christian Vanneste, a member of France’s parliament who dared to declare that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality.” For this breach of secular dogma Vanneste was fined 3,000 euro and ordered to pay the same amount in damages to the three gay organizations that took him to court. In addition, Vanneste had to pay for the verdict’s publication in Le Monde and two other French publications.
This judgment, designed to squelch debate about a critical moral issue, mirrors a case in Sweden where a Pentecostal minister was found guilty of making critical remarks about same-sex intercourse—a conviction that was subsequently overturned.
It is hard to think of Europe as a bastion of free speech when the mere expression of ideas that contradict elite opinion is subject to legal sanction. The real difference, it seems, between European sophisticates and Muslim protesters is that they have different beliefs about what one can and cannot say—and different ways of enforcing their respective creeds.
The German newspaper Die Welt argued in an editorial that a “right to blaspheme” exists in the West—a declaration about as impressive, given the state of European religiosity, as a Saudi journalist touting the “right” to venerate Muhammad in the desert kingdom.
More to the point, I think, is the comment in France Soir that the offending cartoons were published to show that “religious dogma” has no place in a secular society. This unguarded comment coincides with a statement issued by a Muslim official in Germany: “It was done not to defend freedom of the press but to spite the Muslims.”
What secular Europe is really grappling with isn’t how far freedom of the press extends. The same editors who are agonizing over the publication of these cartoons wouldn’t give a second thought about printing offensive parodies of Christian themes. Their real problem is how to deal with a group that doesn’t take blasphemy lightly—with believers who are eager to fight back with bombs and swords.
The Danish paper that initially published the “blasphemous” cartoons has already apologized for giving offense to Muslims—though they apologized while asserting their right to act as they did. A contrition-sated defense of press freedom was also proffered by the Prime Minister of Denmark.
More dramatic backpedaling took place at France Soir, where the paper’s owner fired his managing editor “as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual.” In the middle of this sensitivity orgy Bill Clinton was moved to throw in his two cents worth by labeling as “appalling…these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.”
It’s pretty clear that European secularists (like their soulmate, the ex-President) aren’t prepared to risk death for the sacred “right to blaspheme.” When it comes to facing real danger, cowardly decadence is their cup of tea—and freedom of speech an expediency to be invoked when skewering opponents who don’t pose a clear and present danger.
America’s Declaration of Independence concludes with these words: “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
To the 56 patriots who signed this document, faith in a greater power buttressed their courage and shaped their understanding of honor. To individuals for whom the word “Providence” is a risible delusion, sacrificing everything for the “right to blaspheme” must seem like an act of stupidity.
In this judgment they are certainly correct.
According to European newspapers, freedom of the press was the sole issue that motivated their reprinting the (relatively mild) caricatures of Muhammad that were published last fall in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. It appears, however, that Europe’s devotion to free speech only applies to persons who embrace the deeply-held cultural convictions of post-modern Europe.
This conclusion is borne out by the verdict recently handed down by a French court against Christian Vanneste, a member of France’s parliament who dared to declare that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality.” For this breach of secular dogma Vanneste was fined 3,000 euro and ordered to pay the same amount in damages to the three gay organizations that took him to court. In addition, Vanneste had to pay for the verdict’s publication in Le Monde and two other French publications.
This judgment, designed to squelch debate about a critical moral issue, mirrors a case in Sweden where a Pentecostal minister was found guilty of making critical remarks about same-sex intercourse—a conviction that was subsequently overturned.
It is hard to think of Europe as a bastion of free speech when the mere expression of ideas that contradict elite opinion is subject to legal sanction. The real difference, it seems, between European sophisticates and Muslim protesters is that they have different beliefs about what one can and cannot say—and different ways of enforcing their respective creeds.
The German newspaper Die Welt argued in an editorial that a “right to blaspheme” exists in the West—a declaration about as impressive, given the state of European religiosity, as a Saudi journalist touting the “right” to venerate Muhammad in the desert kingdom.
More to the point, I think, is the comment in France Soir that the offending cartoons were published to show that “religious dogma” has no place in a secular society. This unguarded comment coincides with a statement issued by a Muslim official in Germany: “It was done not to defend freedom of the press but to spite the Muslims.”
What secular Europe is really grappling with isn’t how far freedom of the press extends. The same editors who are agonizing over the publication of these cartoons wouldn’t give a second thought about printing offensive parodies of Christian themes. Their real problem is how to deal with a group that doesn’t take blasphemy lightly—with believers who are eager to fight back with bombs and swords.
The Danish paper that initially published the “blasphemous” cartoons has already apologized for giving offense to Muslims—though they apologized while asserting their right to act as they did. A contrition-sated defense of press freedom was also proffered by the Prime Minister of Denmark.
More dramatic backpedaling took place at France Soir, where the paper’s owner fired his managing editor “as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual.” In the middle of this sensitivity orgy Bill Clinton was moved to throw in his two cents worth by labeling as “appalling…these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.”
It’s pretty clear that European secularists (like their soulmate, the ex-President) aren’t prepared to risk death for the sacred “right to blaspheme.” When it comes to facing real danger, cowardly decadence is their cup of tea—and freedom of speech an expediency to be invoked when skewering opponents who don’t pose a clear and present danger.
America’s Declaration of Independence concludes with these words: “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
To the 56 patriots who signed this document, faith in a greater power buttressed their courage and shaped their understanding of honor. To individuals for whom the word “Providence” is a risible delusion, sacrificing everything for the “right to blaspheme” must seem like an act of stupidity.
In this judgment they are certainly correct.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
HOWARD STERN AND THE WAR ON CIVILITY
“We played dildo golf. We played wheel of sex. We are the last of a dying breed. This is a big moment. We broke every rule known to radio and mankind. The government says, ‘Clean up your act.’ We say, ‘Never.’”
These were Howard Stern’s words as he said goodbye to the public airwaves and hello to the broadcasting possibilities of satellite communication. No longer bound by FCC rules about decency and the public interest, Stern is now free to plumb new depths of depravity for his fans—moving from flatulence, nudity, and pubescent discourse on mammalian emissions to really hardcore stuff—perhaps advanced bestiality and snuff sex.
To hear Stern denounce the regulatory restrictions under which he labored, one would think that former FCC Chairman Michael Powell was a reincarnation of Cotton Mather—if not Torquemada. In actual fact, the number of official no-nos are so few and so threadbare that a large part of the shock jock’s cachet arose from his ability to expose the absurdity of remaining rules. After all, why should one stop at seven unspeakable words when the principle of temperance in public discourse is mocked with every utterance that escapes Stern’s mouth—statements broadcast to millions of Americans whose moral imaginations have been shaped by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and Roman Polanski.
Indeed, Stern’s only Mephistophelean virtue is that he illustrates, time and again, that our society isn’t really serious about the limits it sets on public communications. The pitiful restrictions we retain only foster the illusion that the pit of depravity into which we have leapt comes equipped with a plain of reasonable decadence that will, eventually, halt our decent into the abyss. Quite unintentionally, Stern has shown that broadcast prohibitions are window dressing. He has broken them all—proudly and profitably.
Now Stern must search for new taboos to violate in order to perpetuate the popular myth that there is something praiseworthy about someone who will say anything and do anything that doesn’t land him in prison, in the hospital, in the morgue, or—and this last point stands above the rest—in a cheap apartment without an audience. Since Stern doesn’t have Powell to kick around anymore, he must violate broader cultural norms in order to demonstrate for the paying public his disdain for civilized boundaries. Cannibalism and incest are topics that may be ripe for exploitation by the “King of all Media.” It should be worth noting whether Stern’s fans will balk at such “courageous” iconoclasm.
Aficionados of urbane decadence have long spoken about the process whereby counter-cultural activities become mainstream. They note that it took a while before an un-hip society finally accepted Elvis’ twisting hips, just as it took a few decades before Hugh Hefner could plausibly present himself (on Larry King) as an enlightened reformer of “sexual-social mores.” The unspoken premise behind all these observations has been that mainstream behavior is morally inconsequential.
Now Stern is receiving the same treatment. Recently, a TV ad began airing in which a husband fawns over his wife’s telecommunication gift to him—a device that provides access to Stern’s satellite feed. Add to this commercial the amount of smiley-face news coverage that was given to Stern’s career move, and the conclusion is unavoidable: Howard is mainstream--no big deal.
On the other hand, it should be obvious to any thoughtful person that mainstream behavior isn’t always innocuous. Slavery is a clear case in point. It is also obvious to all but a few bi-coastal celebrities that a society devoid of rules is a world where life, in Thomas Hobbes’ famous words, becomes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The naïve faith exhibited by Stern’s fans, who equate fraternity pranks with the obliteration of civilized boundaries, will be severely tested when their boy has to market delinquency without the aid of an official fall guy. Envelope-pushing won’t seem so jolly if listeners begin to sense that their imagined safety net is incompatible with Stern’s universal moral solvent. The “war of all against all” isn’t an entertaining prospect—not even for the severely depraved.
One can hope that Stern is the last of a dying breed. As things stand now, however, he is only the most conspicuous representative of a culture on the precipice of self-destruction.
These were Howard Stern’s words as he said goodbye to the public airwaves and hello to the broadcasting possibilities of satellite communication. No longer bound by FCC rules about decency and the public interest, Stern is now free to plumb new depths of depravity for his fans—moving from flatulence, nudity, and pubescent discourse on mammalian emissions to really hardcore stuff—perhaps advanced bestiality and snuff sex.
To hear Stern denounce the regulatory restrictions under which he labored, one would think that former FCC Chairman Michael Powell was a reincarnation of Cotton Mather—if not Torquemada. In actual fact, the number of official no-nos are so few and so threadbare that a large part of the shock jock’s cachet arose from his ability to expose the absurdity of remaining rules. After all, why should one stop at seven unspeakable words when the principle of temperance in public discourse is mocked with every utterance that escapes Stern’s mouth—statements broadcast to millions of Americans whose moral imaginations have been shaped by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and Roman Polanski.
Indeed, Stern’s only Mephistophelean virtue is that he illustrates, time and again, that our society isn’t really serious about the limits it sets on public communications. The pitiful restrictions we retain only foster the illusion that the pit of depravity into which we have leapt comes equipped with a plain of reasonable decadence that will, eventually, halt our decent into the abyss. Quite unintentionally, Stern has shown that broadcast prohibitions are window dressing. He has broken them all—proudly and profitably.
Now Stern must search for new taboos to violate in order to perpetuate the popular myth that there is something praiseworthy about someone who will say anything and do anything that doesn’t land him in prison, in the hospital, in the morgue, or—and this last point stands above the rest—in a cheap apartment without an audience. Since Stern doesn’t have Powell to kick around anymore, he must violate broader cultural norms in order to demonstrate for the paying public his disdain for civilized boundaries. Cannibalism and incest are topics that may be ripe for exploitation by the “King of all Media.” It should be worth noting whether Stern’s fans will balk at such “courageous” iconoclasm.
Aficionados of urbane decadence have long spoken about the process whereby counter-cultural activities become mainstream. They note that it took a while before an un-hip society finally accepted Elvis’ twisting hips, just as it took a few decades before Hugh Hefner could plausibly present himself (on Larry King) as an enlightened reformer of “sexual-social mores.” The unspoken premise behind all these observations has been that mainstream behavior is morally inconsequential.
Now Stern is receiving the same treatment. Recently, a TV ad began airing in which a husband fawns over his wife’s telecommunication gift to him—a device that provides access to Stern’s satellite feed. Add to this commercial the amount of smiley-face news coverage that was given to Stern’s career move, and the conclusion is unavoidable: Howard is mainstream--no big deal.
On the other hand, it should be obvious to any thoughtful person that mainstream behavior isn’t always innocuous. Slavery is a clear case in point. It is also obvious to all but a few bi-coastal celebrities that a society devoid of rules is a world where life, in Thomas Hobbes’ famous words, becomes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The naïve faith exhibited by Stern’s fans, who equate fraternity pranks with the obliteration of civilized boundaries, will be severely tested when their boy has to market delinquency without the aid of an official fall guy. Envelope-pushing won’t seem so jolly if listeners begin to sense that their imagined safety net is incompatible with Stern’s universal moral solvent. The “war of all against all” isn’t an entertaining prospect—not even for the severely depraved.
One can hope that Stern is the last of a dying breed. As things stand now, however, he is only the most conspicuous representative of a culture on the precipice of self-destruction.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
WILL AMERICA SURVIVE?
As another year begins, a grim question haunts me: Will America survive?
I read the contemptuous remarks of jihadist critics and cringe. The cogency of barbs directed toward a decadent culture seems palpable. The burning of thousands of autos in France by “disaffected youths” presages the future of a culture dedicated to the proposition that life is a random development within a universe destined for oblivion.
The only thought that prevents despair is my recognition that two countries exist side by side within this nation. And the answer to the question about survival depends on which of the two ultimately prevails.
On the one hand, there is the America that believes its rights to life and liberty are gifts of a benevolent Creator—an America that embraces the motto “In God We Trust” not as a creed to be forced on non-believers but as a humble affirmation of goodness that transcends the vagaries of human ambition and weakness.
There is the America where family life is revered and wedding vows are taken with due solemnity. In this America children are cherished as blessings to whom parents owe their best efforts and from whom they receive the reward of enduring affection.
There is the America that proclaims the equality of all its citizens before the law based on the belief that each person bears a divine imprint. In this society individuals are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
There is the America of honest labor, diligence, and industry—the country whose bounty rests on the pillars of self-control, law, education, and institutions that inspire in workers the confidence that they will receive the due fruits of their labor.
There is America the grateful, America the generous, America the sacrificial—the nation that produces brave men and women in uniform and proudly salutes them. This America flies the flag with respect and bears the heavy burdens that must be borne to insure the survival and success of liberty.
On the other hand, there is the America whose creed revolves around the popular anthem “Do your own thing.” This country exports to the world countless scenes of soulless sensuality. In this America life is reduced to a frenzied pursuit of glittering trinkets and serial highs that end, ideally, in a quick and painless dissolution of sentience.
In this America government is viewed as the black-robed guarantor of the right to be as nasty as you wanna be—as the champion of those who wish to be offensive, but not to be offended. This is the America that views vulgarity as a sign of sophistication—that takes pride in flaunting its depravity and in showing contempt for traditional virtues.
This is the America where innocence is derided and children are reduced to an exploitable demographic—the America where selfishness is equated with rationality and patriotism is mocked as the folly of chumps. This is the America where women who parent their own kids are viewed as losers or traitors to their sex.
In this America well over a million fetuses are aborted every year, and an Ivy League professor speaks glibly of killing defective newborns. In this America hip parents smile smugly as corporate pimps transform their daughters into miniature streetwalkers and their sons into baggy-pant gangsta dudes.
This is the America that calls moral emptiness “tolerance” and uses the word “trust” to describe parental neglect. In this America moral fervor is expended on fashionable causes that don’t inconvenience laidback lifestyles—not on the development of character. .
This is the America of Tinseltown and Madison Avenue—of easy sex, entertainment, and ennui. This is the America that blames a few corporate and political scapegoats for self-inflicted wounds and touts entitlements as the cure-all drug for a late-night congregation that worships its gut and reviles righteousness.
The latter America, I am confident, will not survive and does not deserve to survive. 300 years of toil and principled sacrifice have not been endured for the sake of a society that sings debauched hymns to the gods of self-indulgence. The only question is whether that moribund society will drag the other America along with it into the dustbin of history.
I read the contemptuous remarks of jihadist critics and cringe. The cogency of barbs directed toward a decadent culture seems palpable. The burning of thousands of autos in France by “disaffected youths” presages the future of a culture dedicated to the proposition that life is a random development within a universe destined for oblivion.
The only thought that prevents despair is my recognition that two countries exist side by side within this nation. And the answer to the question about survival depends on which of the two ultimately prevails.
On the one hand, there is the America that believes its rights to life and liberty are gifts of a benevolent Creator—an America that embraces the motto “In God We Trust” not as a creed to be forced on non-believers but as a humble affirmation of goodness that transcends the vagaries of human ambition and weakness.
There is the America where family life is revered and wedding vows are taken with due solemnity. In this America children are cherished as blessings to whom parents owe their best efforts and from whom they receive the reward of enduring affection.
There is the America that proclaims the equality of all its citizens before the law based on the belief that each person bears a divine imprint. In this society individuals are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
There is the America of honest labor, diligence, and industry—the country whose bounty rests on the pillars of self-control, law, education, and institutions that inspire in workers the confidence that they will receive the due fruits of their labor.
There is America the grateful, America the generous, America the sacrificial—the nation that produces brave men and women in uniform and proudly salutes them. This America flies the flag with respect and bears the heavy burdens that must be borne to insure the survival and success of liberty.
On the other hand, there is the America whose creed revolves around the popular anthem “Do your own thing.” This country exports to the world countless scenes of soulless sensuality. In this America life is reduced to a frenzied pursuit of glittering trinkets and serial highs that end, ideally, in a quick and painless dissolution of sentience.
In this America government is viewed as the black-robed guarantor of the right to be as nasty as you wanna be—as the champion of those who wish to be offensive, but not to be offended. This is the America that views vulgarity as a sign of sophistication—that takes pride in flaunting its depravity and in showing contempt for traditional virtues.
This is the America where innocence is derided and children are reduced to an exploitable demographic—the America where selfishness is equated with rationality and patriotism is mocked as the folly of chumps. This is the America where women who parent their own kids are viewed as losers or traitors to their sex.
In this America well over a million fetuses are aborted every year, and an Ivy League professor speaks glibly of killing defective newborns. In this America hip parents smile smugly as corporate pimps transform their daughters into miniature streetwalkers and their sons into baggy-pant gangsta dudes.
This is the America that calls moral emptiness “tolerance” and uses the word “trust” to describe parental neglect. In this America moral fervor is expended on fashionable causes that don’t inconvenience laidback lifestyles—not on the development of character. .
This is the America of Tinseltown and Madison Avenue—of easy sex, entertainment, and ennui. This is the America that blames a few corporate and political scapegoats for self-inflicted wounds and touts entitlements as the cure-all drug for a late-night congregation that worships its gut and reviles righteousness.
The latter America, I am confident, will not survive and does not deserve to survive. 300 years of toil and principled sacrifice have not been endured for the sake of a society that sings debauched hymns to the gods of self-indulgence. The only question is whether that moribund society will drag the other America along with it into the dustbin of history.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
BOREDOM AND CONSUMPTION
When did "borrr-ring" become the universal term of disdain for all that young people find not easily attainable? The answer is when these same young people began to be fed a steady diet of "entertainment" so that their relationship to the world was defined as that of a critic to a theatrical performance. For recent generations deprived of economic hardship, the world has become a stage upon which a series of actors strut their stuff in order to obtain the audience's approval.
I can't ever remember employing the word "boring" as a youngster, and I don't think my recollection is the product of nostalgic fantasy. Sure, certain tasks were unpleasant and tedious, but the idea that tedium was avoidable, or even particularly bad, was not part of the world within which I was raised. "It has to be done" was a common statement concerning such tasks--sometimes even, "It's good for you."
With the prodigious expansion of an adolescent market in the sixties and seventies, a huge cohort of commercial marketeers began pandering to adolescent and pre-pubescent desires. The unreasonableness of these desires did not matter to this new generation of merchants who embraced the profitable idea that "ethics are up to the individual"--an idea that conveniently absolved them of moral responsibility. What mattered was how their target audience felt and that these immature and fanciful adolescent feelings could be manipulated for monetary ends. Advertisers thus said whatever adolescents wanted them to say in order to please these fledgling consumers and to sell products.
Consequently, just as the target audience wished, advertised solutions to problems became "quick and easy." Responsibilities and desires conveniently melted together while discipline and sacrifice were relegated to the status of poor market motivators. "Let me entertain you" became the constant refrain of record companies, tv shows, and innumerable products that did not march under the other commercially feasible banner: "You need this to get what you want."
Increasingly kids (and even adults) who were bombarded with the emotional nonsense emanating from their own spleens, began to take these messages to heart--among them the equation of importance and fun. What didn't excite was, so said advertisers, presumptively unworthy. The fault was not in oneself--perish such an unmarketable thought--but in the activity or its manner of presentation. After all, the consumer and his feelings were always right. As a consequence of such messages, it became necessary to avoid or to misrepresent projects that failed to get emotional juices stirring quickly: reading Tolstoy, practicing the piano, or visiting Aunt Harriet in the hospital.
The irony of this concession to fantasy was that it effectively alientated consumers from life's most rewarding activities--activites that almost invariably arrive in packages labelled "difficult" and "boring." The double irony was that it succeeded in creating a huge crop of couch-potatoes caught in the banality of consumption and enslaved to the winds of fashion--persons whose identity was reduced to the biological process of assimilation. What could be more boring!
Thus, thanks to the continuous pandering of mass marketeers, an unavoidable biological function took on the status of an honored class. Laws and policies began to be judged largely in terms of how they impacted this elite but all-inclusive group. Any proposal which harmed "consumers" was deemed oppressive. Moreover, in order to protect the rights of this special set of citizens, television stations began to employ "consumer advocates" who possessed, by virtue of their title, the moral status of Robin Hood. Throughout the nation publications sprang up to guide consumers into the paths of mercantile happiness. Meanwhile, a "Consumer Price Index" kept members of this prestigious group abreast of the consumptive activity they could reasonably expect to indulge in.
Nowadays, "Born to Shop" has become a common declaration shamelessly attached to license plates. Similarly, "You, the consumer" has become the favorite salutation of media-priests who breathlessly anticipate the size of that annual consumptive orgy celebrating the birth of the mendicant from Galilee--an orgy upon which so much of our nation's economic welfare rests. Not citizens, neighbors, or homo sapiens are we--but "consumers."
The country's singular focus on the production and consumption of goods has seldom been captured more poignantly than in the following passage penned, ironically, by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith:
"In the autumn of 1954, during the Congressional elections of that year, the Republicans replied to Democratic attacks on their stewardship by arguing that this was the second best year in history. It was not, in all respects, a happy defense. Many promptly said that second best was not good enough--certainly not for Americans. But no person in either party showed the slightest disposition to challenge the standard by which it was decided that one year was better than another. Nor was it felt that any explanation was required. No one would be so eccentric as to suppose that second best meant second best in the progress of the arts and the sciences. No one would assume that it referred to health, education, or the battle against juvenile delinquency. There was no suggestion that a better or poorer year was one in which the chances for survival amidst the radioactive furniture of the world had increased or diminished. . . . [N]o one was moved to suppose that the year in question was the second best as measured by the number of people who had found enduring spiritual solace. Second best could mean only one thing--that the production of goods and services was the second highest in history."
Our language, our bumper stickers, and our most cherished indices all indicate that consumption is now considered the golden road to happiness. The more elaborate and stylish our cars, homes, clothes, meals, and amusements--the happier we believe we will be. This obsession reflects the apotheosis of the alimentary --making a god of our gullets.
Titles show us what we think of ourselves, and the term "consumer" conjures up no image so clearly as an obese epicure stuffing his mouth with food--a human disposal system that devours everything within reach of its black esophageal hole. But are we, in truth, homo consumerus? Will we fulfill our natures and achieve bliss by sating our appetites for material goods and amusements? I don't think so.
Consumers are conspicuous by their absence from the list of those we have enshrined in our collective memory for future generations to honor and emulate. Our hearts and history testify, even if advertisers proclaim the opposite, that a life devoted to consumption is base--that the pursuit of things befits humans about as well as a cage is suitable for a golden eagle. The disgust we feel after weeks of self-indulgence (or two consecutive hours of televised drivel) is a feeble, bourgeois echo of the profound ennui that enervated the decadent nobility of Imperial Rome.
Birds are creatures of flight, dolphins ply the seas, and humans are such by virtue of their capacity to think, to act, to love, and to express in symbols the nature of their experience. Humans are human because they can choose to act in accord with the deepest intuitions of what is good, beautiful, and true or they can choose to remain in a yawning, consumptive darkness.
I can't ever remember employing the word "boring" as a youngster, and I don't think my recollection is the product of nostalgic fantasy. Sure, certain tasks were unpleasant and tedious, but the idea that tedium was avoidable, or even particularly bad, was not part of the world within which I was raised. "It has to be done" was a common statement concerning such tasks--sometimes even, "It's good for you."
With the prodigious expansion of an adolescent market in the sixties and seventies, a huge cohort of commercial marketeers began pandering to adolescent and pre-pubescent desires. The unreasonableness of these desires did not matter to this new generation of merchants who embraced the profitable idea that "ethics are up to the individual"--an idea that conveniently absolved them of moral responsibility. What mattered was how their target audience felt and that these immature and fanciful adolescent feelings could be manipulated for monetary ends. Advertisers thus said whatever adolescents wanted them to say in order to please these fledgling consumers and to sell products.
Consequently, just as the target audience wished, advertised solutions to problems became "quick and easy." Responsibilities and desires conveniently melted together while discipline and sacrifice were relegated to the status of poor market motivators. "Let me entertain you" became the constant refrain of record companies, tv shows, and innumerable products that did not march under the other commercially feasible banner: "You need this to get what you want."
Increasingly kids (and even adults) who were bombarded with the emotional nonsense emanating from their own spleens, began to take these messages to heart--among them the equation of importance and fun. What didn't excite was, so said advertisers, presumptively unworthy. The fault was not in oneself--perish such an unmarketable thought--but in the activity or its manner of presentation. After all, the consumer and his feelings were always right. As a consequence of such messages, it became necessary to avoid or to misrepresent projects that failed to get emotional juices stirring quickly: reading Tolstoy, practicing the piano, or visiting Aunt Harriet in the hospital.
The irony of this concession to fantasy was that it effectively alientated consumers from life's most rewarding activities--activites that almost invariably arrive in packages labelled "difficult" and "boring." The double irony was that it succeeded in creating a huge crop of couch-potatoes caught in the banality of consumption and enslaved to the winds of fashion--persons whose identity was reduced to the biological process of assimilation. What could be more boring!
Thus, thanks to the continuous pandering of mass marketeers, an unavoidable biological function took on the status of an honored class. Laws and policies began to be judged largely in terms of how they impacted this elite but all-inclusive group. Any proposal which harmed "consumers" was deemed oppressive. Moreover, in order to protect the rights of this special set of citizens, television stations began to employ "consumer advocates" who possessed, by virtue of their title, the moral status of Robin Hood. Throughout the nation publications sprang up to guide consumers into the paths of mercantile happiness. Meanwhile, a "Consumer Price Index" kept members of this prestigious group abreast of the consumptive activity they could reasonably expect to indulge in.
Nowadays, "Born to Shop" has become a common declaration shamelessly attached to license plates. Similarly, "You, the consumer" has become the favorite salutation of media-priests who breathlessly anticipate the size of that annual consumptive orgy celebrating the birth of the mendicant from Galilee--an orgy upon which so much of our nation's economic welfare rests. Not citizens, neighbors, or homo sapiens are we--but "consumers."
The country's singular focus on the production and consumption of goods has seldom been captured more poignantly than in the following passage penned, ironically, by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith:
"In the autumn of 1954, during the Congressional elections of that year, the Republicans replied to Democratic attacks on their stewardship by arguing that this was the second best year in history. It was not, in all respects, a happy defense. Many promptly said that second best was not good enough--certainly not for Americans. But no person in either party showed the slightest disposition to challenge the standard by which it was decided that one year was better than another. Nor was it felt that any explanation was required. No one would be so eccentric as to suppose that second best meant second best in the progress of the arts and the sciences. No one would assume that it referred to health, education, or the battle against juvenile delinquency. There was no suggestion that a better or poorer year was one in which the chances for survival amidst the radioactive furniture of the world had increased or diminished. . . . [N]o one was moved to suppose that the year in question was the second best as measured by the number of people who had found enduring spiritual solace. Second best could mean only one thing--that the production of goods and services was the second highest in history."
Our language, our bumper stickers, and our most cherished indices all indicate that consumption is now considered the golden road to happiness. The more elaborate and stylish our cars, homes, clothes, meals, and amusements--the happier we believe we will be. This obsession reflects the apotheosis of the alimentary --making a god of our gullets.
Titles show us what we think of ourselves, and the term "consumer" conjures up no image so clearly as an obese epicure stuffing his mouth with food--a human disposal system that devours everything within reach of its black esophageal hole. But are we, in truth, homo consumerus? Will we fulfill our natures and achieve bliss by sating our appetites for material goods and amusements? I don't think so.
Consumers are conspicuous by their absence from the list of those we have enshrined in our collective memory for future generations to honor and emulate. Our hearts and history testify, even if advertisers proclaim the opposite, that a life devoted to consumption is base--that the pursuit of things befits humans about as well as a cage is suitable for a golden eagle. The disgust we feel after weeks of self-indulgence (or two consecutive hours of televised drivel) is a feeble, bourgeois echo of the profound ennui that enervated the decadent nobility of Imperial Rome.
Birds are creatures of flight, dolphins ply the seas, and humans are such by virtue of their capacity to think, to act, to love, and to express in symbols the nature of their experience. Humans are human because they can choose to act in accord with the deepest intuitions of what is good, beautiful, and true or they can choose to remain in a yawning, consumptive darkness.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
SPADER v MADISON: A TALE OF TWO JAMESES
"If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue." --James Madison
James Madison never met James Spader. More precisely, he never met Spader’s metrosexual character, Alan Shore—the silver-tongued lawyer from ABC’s “Boston Legal” who almost makes Phil Donahue look macho. Shore is the political mouthpiece of writer-producer David Kelley. As such, he performs the dramatic task of bashing the Bush Administration and corporate villains via eccentric and riveting courtroom soliloquies. One week the target is farm-spawned salmon, the next week the war in Iraq, and regularly the apocalyptic effects of global warming.
The utter rectitude of Shore’s public causes are never in doubt. Any fool can see where the truth lies and can see that opposing counsel represents the forces of greed and stupidity. This clarity, of course, arises from the fact that a single advocate creates all the arguments.
Accordingly, Shore comes off as Mr. Smith, Atticus Finch, and Oliver Stone’s Jim Garrison all rolled into one. Indeed, in Kelley’s managed courtroom, if Shore ever got in a legal skirmish over Mother Teresa’s legacy, the deceased nun would come off looking like a money-hustling tart whose atavistic faith was the bane of Calcutta. (Perhaps religiophobe Christopher Hitchens could be a script consultant for that episode.)
But what of Alan Shore the individual? What kind of person is he?
The answer is that Spader’s character is a skirt-chasing boor whose hyperactive legal briefs are constantly getting him in Dutch with associates—a man whose disdain for the proprieties of everyday life matches his inability to establish enduring relationships. This emotional transience was illustrated in one episode by Shore’s taking up “permanent” residence in a hotel. Put bluntly, Alan Shore is Bill Clinton without the political veneer.
This utter disjuncture between the public and private spheres of a single life would puzzle Madison, who saw public virtue as an outgrowth of personal moral rectitude—the former being impossible without the latter. Yet the separation of individual character and public policy stands at the heart of David Kelley’s dramatic agitprop.
Far from being ignored, personal morality is ridiculed in Kelley’s legal fantasyland where ministers come off as hypocritical lechers and their congregations consist of busybodies, homicidal prudes, or deacons who have sexual relations with cows. This is a convenient strategy since it makes the foibles of Kelley’s legal hero seem trivial by comparison. Alan Shore’s decadence is at least sincere and above board.
It should come as no surprise that this schizophrenic portrait mirrors the way Tinseltown itself touts political dogma over personal rectitude. As is the case with their ideological stand ins at the law firm of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt, political correctness provides a convenient form of absolution for self-indulgence. Instead of engaging in the rigors of penance and parenthood, all it takes to boost one’s moral standing is the perpetual public recitation of a PC rosary.
It’s a pleasant script, but it doesn’t comport with the reality Madison described. Salvation doesn’t come from above—from Washington. Nor will enlightened social policies emerge from debauched individuals who ridicule the very notion of personal virtue. A staged world where public welfare is divorced from private rectitude bears as much likeness to the actual world as Boston Legal does to the true practice of law.
James Madison never met James Spader. More precisely, he never met Spader’s metrosexual character, Alan Shore—the silver-tongued lawyer from ABC’s “Boston Legal” who almost makes Phil Donahue look macho. Shore is the political mouthpiece of writer-producer David Kelley. As such, he performs the dramatic task of bashing the Bush Administration and corporate villains via eccentric and riveting courtroom soliloquies. One week the target is farm-spawned salmon, the next week the war in Iraq, and regularly the apocalyptic effects of global warming.
The utter rectitude of Shore’s public causes are never in doubt. Any fool can see where the truth lies and can see that opposing counsel represents the forces of greed and stupidity. This clarity, of course, arises from the fact that a single advocate creates all the arguments.
Accordingly, Shore comes off as Mr. Smith, Atticus Finch, and Oliver Stone’s Jim Garrison all rolled into one. Indeed, in Kelley’s managed courtroom, if Shore ever got in a legal skirmish over Mother Teresa’s legacy, the deceased nun would come off looking like a money-hustling tart whose atavistic faith was the bane of Calcutta. (Perhaps religiophobe Christopher Hitchens could be a script consultant for that episode.)
But what of Alan Shore the individual? What kind of person is he?
The answer is that Spader’s character is a skirt-chasing boor whose hyperactive legal briefs are constantly getting him in Dutch with associates—a man whose disdain for the proprieties of everyday life matches his inability to establish enduring relationships. This emotional transience was illustrated in one episode by Shore’s taking up “permanent” residence in a hotel. Put bluntly, Alan Shore is Bill Clinton without the political veneer.
This utter disjuncture between the public and private spheres of a single life would puzzle Madison, who saw public virtue as an outgrowth of personal moral rectitude—the former being impossible without the latter. Yet the separation of individual character and public policy stands at the heart of David Kelley’s dramatic agitprop.
Far from being ignored, personal morality is ridiculed in Kelley’s legal fantasyland where ministers come off as hypocritical lechers and their congregations consist of busybodies, homicidal prudes, or deacons who have sexual relations with cows. This is a convenient strategy since it makes the foibles of Kelley’s legal hero seem trivial by comparison. Alan Shore’s decadence is at least sincere and above board.
It should come as no surprise that this schizophrenic portrait mirrors the way Tinseltown itself touts political dogma over personal rectitude. As is the case with their ideological stand ins at the law firm of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt, political correctness provides a convenient form of absolution for self-indulgence. Instead of engaging in the rigors of penance and parenthood, all it takes to boost one’s moral standing is the perpetual public recitation of a PC rosary.
It’s a pleasant script, but it doesn’t comport with the reality Madison described. Salvation doesn’t come from above—from Washington. Nor will enlightened social policies emerge from debauched individuals who ridicule the very notion of personal virtue. A staged world where public welfare is divorced from private rectitude bears as much likeness to the actual world as Boston Legal does to the true practice of law.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY by Byron York
One wonders if it would be possible for a journalist on the left wing of the political spectrum to write a book describing the role of prominent conservatives in the 2004 Presidential election using the same tone employed by National Review’s White House correspondent, Byron York. Judging from the rhetoric calmly catalogued in The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, many a leftist author would have difficulty avoiding lurid references to Adolf Hitler or the Spanish Inquisition when portraying prominent players on the Right. There’s no telling what epithets might fly if that same correspondent were dealing with a Republican financier who had just spent 27 million dollars to buy a Presidential election--an unprecedented figure that, even in inflation-adjusted terms, dwarfs W. Clement Stone's 2 million dollar contribution to Richard Nixon in 1972.
Fortunately for our imaginary scrivener, George Soros was on his side--a partisan fact that seems to erase concerns about big-money’s corrupting political influence. Soros is, indeed, the name that pervades York’s level-headed account of movers and shakers who established a clutch of organizations intent on defeating George W. Bush in 2004. But the Hungarian-born billionaire wasn’t alone in funding this loosely-coordinated infrastructure that answered Slate magazine’s prayer for a left-wing version of Hillary’s hypothetical cabal from the right. As York notes, money from only four sources totaled more than the 75 million dollars in federal funds that was given to each of the two major campaigns. Besides Soros, this quartet included Soros friend and Progressive Insurance chairman, Peter Lewis ($24,000,000), Hollywood magnate Stephen Bing ($14,000,000), plus Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Sandler, the founders of Golden West Financial Corporation who chipped in an additional $13,000,000. Not surprisingly, Herb and Marion were also friends of George S.
According to York, a total of 230 million dollars was donated to supposedly non-partisan 527 organizations on the Left--almost two and a half times the sum raised by Republican counterparts. The most lavishly funded of these 527’s, America Coming Together, took in $200 million in 2003 and 2004--one-tenth of it supplied by Soros. In analyzing this cash cow, York notes the absurdity of ACT’s election-year declaration that 98% of its funds were being spent on activities other than partisan Presidential politics--an accounting fantasy rooted in ACT’s dual role as a Political Action Committee to which strict donation limits apply. Similar duplicity characterized John Podesta’s think tank, The Center for American Progress--an institution whose “scholarly” endeavors amounted to a series of political hit pieces directed at the President.
Besides focusing on dollar figures and campaign finance laws, York offers insights into the political and intellectual milieu of emergent power-brokers--starting with Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the couple who founded MoveOn.Org when their anger over Bill Clinton’s possible impeachment was echoed by fellow-diners at a Chinese restaurant near Berkeley. The tendency to confuse the views of like-minded associates with mainstream America frequently plagued these aspiring operatives. This myopia doubtless contributed to Blades’s June, 2004, assertion that Kerry would not only win the upcoming election--but win in a landslide.
More intriguing is York’s tantalizing portrait of George Soros--a man whose wealth and influence far exceed his capacity to articulate a theory that links market bubbles to the rise and fall of empires. No one, it seems, finds Soros’s paradigm comprehensible--much less persuasive. As for the multi-billionaire’s view of 9/11, like Blades and Boyd, the key to Soros’s response is greater sensitivity: “...the Bush administration must realize we have to be concerned about the reactions of others.” In sum, York’s sketch suggests a man who, being the object of countless solicitations, vastly overestimates his philosophical assets.
York’s analysis of another “conspirator,” Michael Moore, is largely devoted to the filmmaker’s bogus claim of Red-state success. According to York, the following facts about Fahrenheit 9/11 went unreported in 2004: The movie underperformed significantly in Red-state markets; only eight cities accounted for 44% of box-office receipts; of those eight cities, only one lay outside of Blue-state America--Toronto. Indeed, York notes that the movie was popular throughout Canada--a region which accounted for considerably more of the film’s take than it did of John Kerry’s electoral vote total. Amid discussions of Moore’s audience, York employs a few pages to debunk misrepresentations in the “documentary” itself.
Al Franken is the best known of lesser media lights that York discusses in a chapter devoted to Air America. This radio arm of the elect-Kerry cabal initially aimed at a centrist audience--but like its hypersensitive star, didn’t follow through on the blueprint. A final chapter inspects the fever-swamp inhabited by NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller. While Miller’s theocratic fantasy, A Patriot Act, was, at best, a fringe cultural event, its over-the-top terminology has become common in post-election Democrat rhetoric. Even Tim Russert now feels free to use the T-word in his Meet the Press interrogations.
York’s conclusions about The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy are a mixed bag. Obviously, the (tongue-partly-in-cheek) conspiracy failed in its primary mission, to defeat the President--but it failed by only 3 million votes. Moreover, most of these new organizations were founded shortly after the disastrous (for the Left) 2002 Congressional elections. Thus, future efforts are likely to become more efficient and less inclined to mistake choir-preaching for effective outreach. Of course a huge amount (pun intended) depends on the political whims of George Soros and company--without whose funds many of these organizations would never have seen the light of day.In brief, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy is a hugely informative work that puts in perspective the meetings, the minds, and, above all, the money involved in a massive effort to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. The enduring institutional legacies of that effort betoken future campaigns whose dynamics and results might not be described with such admirable equipoise by Mr. York.
Fortunately for our imaginary scrivener, George Soros was on his side--a partisan fact that seems to erase concerns about big-money’s corrupting political influence. Soros is, indeed, the name that pervades York’s level-headed account of movers and shakers who established a clutch of organizations intent on defeating George W. Bush in 2004. But the Hungarian-born billionaire wasn’t alone in funding this loosely-coordinated infrastructure that answered Slate magazine’s prayer for a left-wing version of Hillary’s hypothetical cabal from the right. As York notes, money from only four sources totaled more than the 75 million dollars in federal funds that was given to each of the two major campaigns. Besides Soros, this quartet included Soros friend and Progressive Insurance chairman, Peter Lewis ($24,000,000), Hollywood magnate Stephen Bing ($14,000,000), plus Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Sandler, the founders of Golden West Financial Corporation who chipped in an additional $13,000,000. Not surprisingly, Herb and Marion were also friends of George S.
According to York, a total of 230 million dollars was donated to supposedly non-partisan 527 organizations on the Left--almost two and a half times the sum raised by Republican counterparts. The most lavishly funded of these 527’s, America Coming Together, took in $200 million in 2003 and 2004--one-tenth of it supplied by Soros. In analyzing this cash cow, York notes the absurdity of ACT’s election-year declaration that 98% of its funds were being spent on activities other than partisan Presidential politics--an accounting fantasy rooted in ACT’s dual role as a Political Action Committee to which strict donation limits apply. Similar duplicity characterized John Podesta’s think tank, The Center for American Progress--an institution whose “scholarly” endeavors amounted to a series of political hit pieces directed at the President.
Besides focusing on dollar figures and campaign finance laws, York offers insights into the political and intellectual milieu of emergent power-brokers--starting with Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the couple who founded MoveOn.Org when their anger over Bill Clinton’s possible impeachment was echoed by fellow-diners at a Chinese restaurant near Berkeley. The tendency to confuse the views of like-minded associates with mainstream America frequently plagued these aspiring operatives. This myopia doubtless contributed to Blades’s June, 2004, assertion that Kerry would not only win the upcoming election--but win in a landslide.
More intriguing is York’s tantalizing portrait of George Soros--a man whose wealth and influence far exceed his capacity to articulate a theory that links market bubbles to the rise and fall of empires. No one, it seems, finds Soros’s paradigm comprehensible--much less persuasive. As for the multi-billionaire’s view of 9/11, like Blades and Boyd, the key to Soros’s response is greater sensitivity: “...the Bush administration must realize we have to be concerned about the reactions of others.” In sum, York’s sketch suggests a man who, being the object of countless solicitations, vastly overestimates his philosophical assets.
York’s analysis of another “conspirator,” Michael Moore, is largely devoted to the filmmaker’s bogus claim of Red-state success. According to York, the following facts about Fahrenheit 9/11 went unreported in 2004: The movie underperformed significantly in Red-state markets; only eight cities accounted for 44% of box-office receipts; of those eight cities, only one lay outside of Blue-state America--Toronto. Indeed, York notes that the movie was popular throughout Canada--a region which accounted for considerably more of the film’s take than it did of John Kerry’s electoral vote total. Amid discussions of Moore’s audience, York employs a few pages to debunk misrepresentations in the “documentary” itself.
Al Franken is the best known of lesser media lights that York discusses in a chapter devoted to Air America. This radio arm of the elect-Kerry cabal initially aimed at a centrist audience--but like its hypersensitive star, didn’t follow through on the blueprint. A final chapter inspects the fever-swamp inhabited by NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller. While Miller’s theocratic fantasy, A Patriot Act, was, at best, a fringe cultural event, its over-the-top terminology has become common in post-election Democrat rhetoric. Even Tim Russert now feels free to use the T-word in his Meet the Press interrogations.
York’s conclusions about The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy are a mixed bag. Obviously, the (tongue-partly-in-cheek) conspiracy failed in its primary mission, to defeat the President--but it failed by only 3 million votes. Moreover, most of these new organizations were founded shortly after the disastrous (for the Left) 2002 Congressional elections. Thus, future efforts are likely to become more efficient and less inclined to mistake choir-preaching for effective outreach. Of course a huge amount (pun intended) depends on the political whims of George Soros and company--without whose funds many of these organizations would never have seen the light of day.In brief, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy is a hugely informative work that puts in perspective the meetings, the minds, and, above all, the money involved in a massive effort to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. The enduring institutional legacies of that effort betoken future campaigns whose dynamics and results might not be described with such admirable equipoise by Mr. York.
Monday, November 07, 2005
OUTLINE FOR A GOOD SOCIETY
What kind of society would you like to see, positively? It’s a thought-provoking question posed by someone who was commenting on my blog and saw that criticism outweighed constructive suggestions. So taking up this challenge, allow me to outline my vision of that shining city set on a hill.
First and foremost, I yearn for a country where the mavens of mass communication take their social responsibility seriously—where music makers, television big wigs, and movie moguls treat their product as they would if they lived among the families that consume their offerings. The depravity that characterizes productions distributed to anonymous consumers could not withstand the shame that would accompany daily encounters with mothers, fathers, and kids who live across the street.
I dream of a nation where integrity is honored more than celebrity—a land where commencement addresses are given overwhelmingly by individuals of exceptional character, not by entertainers who lack significant moral or intellectual credentials.
I wish for a society where scandal and notoriety are shameful burdens, not precursors to a profitable book deal. I seek a society where kindness and duty are habitually emphasized —where respect is an attitude earned based on exemplary behavior, not a cocky demand for deference rooted in physical intimidation.
I long for a community that exhibits profound gratitude for its blessings and that realizes its vast bounty rests on an inherited foundation of discipline and religious conviction—a country that knows its greatest challenges arise from frenetic acquisitiveness and a lust for power, not the much-proclaimed scarcity of resources.
I wish for an America where thankfulness is an attitude more deeply engrained than a sense of entitlement—a land where “thank you” replaces “where’s mine” as the base line of popular sentiment. And I wish for governments whose size and priorities mirror this attitude of self-reliance and gratitude.
I long for a country that cherishes visual and aural beauty—that embraces silence and meditation as food for the spirit. I long for an environment that nourishes the better angels of our nature rather than constantly feeding the monsters of rebellion and instant gratification.
I seek a society where sex isn’t a recreational sport—where the union of two people means the union of spirits under a canopy of sacredness. I yearn for the day when children aren’t reduced to inconvenient burdens—a day when “the best interests of the child” is the parental norm, not a vacuous legal phrase.
I wish for a nation in which taking responsibility is the presumptive attitude—a nation where blaming parents and society for failure is a proposition greeted with suspicion. And I wish for leaders who embrace the idea that diligence will be rewarded and who reject the enervating idea that malevolent political forces make personal virtue pointless.
I long for a country where the mantra “Graduate, work, marry” replaces the clichéd and self-defeating chants of victim groups.
I wish for news professionals who treat their task as a public trust—who prize perspective over sensationalism. I seek journalists who present information with dignity—not like disaster-hawking carnival barkers.
I look for schools where teachers can enforce meaningful standards of dress and deportment without legal hectoring—standards that mirror those promulgated at home.
I wish for a public square that honors the religious parts of our heritage alongside ideas that originate from other sources.
I long for a country where childhood innocence is protected and vile language is viewed as a sign of degeneracy. I seek a nation where gangsta rap has become a risible musical genre.
I want a video lineup where Jack Paar is the late-night norm, not Leno or Letterman.
I want a land where parents and media moguls are largely on the same page—both emphasizing the importance of courage, moral integrity, and temperance.
I long for a society where “We stand on the shoulders of giants” is again a common aphorism—a society where character counts for more than fashion and where wisdom is honored more than pushing the envelope.
I want to live in a community where free expression doesn’t mean being vulgar with impunity and where free speech actually contributes to the state of the union.
I wish to live in a country where benevolence trumps cynicism, where family devotion minimizes alienation, and where inner peace outweighs the restless pursuit of fame and fortune.
Note that my terms are not absolutist. I do not look for a utopia—a world where poverty, isolation, pain, and obscenity are abolished. I seek, instead, a society that does more good than harm—a community that, on the whole, lifts us up instead of dragging us down.
Unfortunately, I do not see the will or the insight among the people or their leaders that would permit much progress toward these goals. Inertia from the mindless pursuit of power and sensual pleasure and wealth continues to push us toward the precipice. If I had to bet, I’d put my chips on the latter scenario.
First and foremost, I yearn for a country where the mavens of mass communication take their social responsibility seriously—where music makers, television big wigs, and movie moguls treat their product as they would if they lived among the families that consume their offerings. The depravity that characterizes productions distributed to anonymous consumers could not withstand the shame that would accompany daily encounters with mothers, fathers, and kids who live across the street.
I dream of a nation where integrity is honored more than celebrity—a land where commencement addresses are given overwhelmingly by individuals of exceptional character, not by entertainers who lack significant moral or intellectual credentials.
I wish for a society where scandal and notoriety are shameful burdens, not precursors to a profitable book deal. I seek a society where kindness and duty are habitually emphasized —where respect is an attitude earned based on exemplary behavior, not a cocky demand for deference rooted in physical intimidation.
I long for a community that exhibits profound gratitude for its blessings and that realizes its vast bounty rests on an inherited foundation of discipline and religious conviction—a country that knows its greatest challenges arise from frenetic acquisitiveness and a lust for power, not the much-proclaimed scarcity of resources.
I wish for an America where thankfulness is an attitude more deeply engrained than a sense of entitlement—a land where “thank you” replaces “where’s mine” as the base line of popular sentiment. And I wish for governments whose size and priorities mirror this attitude of self-reliance and gratitude.
I long for a country that cherishes visual and aural beauty—that embraces silence and meditation as food for the spirit. I long for an environment that nourishes the better angels of our nature rather than constantly feeding the monsters of rebellion and instant gratification.
I seek a society where sex isn’t a recreational sport—where the union of two people means the union of spirits under a canopy of sacredness. I yearn for the day when children aren’t reduced to inconvenient burdens—a day when “the best interests of the child” is the parental norm, not a vacuous legal phrase.
I wish for a nation in which taking responsibility is the presumptive attitude—a nation where blaming parents and society for failure is a proposition greeted with suspicion. And I wish for leaders who embrace the idea that diligence will be rewarded and who reject the enervating idea that malevolent political forces make personal virtue pointless.
I long for a country where the mantra “Graduate, work, marry” replaces the clichéd and self-defeating chants of victim groups.
I wish for news professionals who treat their task as a public trust—who prize perspective over sensationalism. I seek journalists who present information with dignity—not like disaster-hawking carnival barkers.
I look for schools where teachers can enforce meaningful standards of dress and deportment without legal hectoring—standards that mirror those promulgated at home.
I wish for a public square that honors the religious parts of our heritage alongside ideas that originate from other sources.
I long for a country where childhood innocence is protected and vile language is viewed as a sign of degeneracy. I seek a nation where gangsta rap has become a risible musical genre.
I want a video lineup where Jack Paar is the late-night norm, not Leno or Letterman.
I want a land where parents and media moguls are largely on the same page—both emphasizing the importance of courage, moral integrity, and temperance.
I long for a society where “We stand on the shoulders of giants” is again a common aphorism—a society where character counts for more than fashion and where wisdom is honored more than pushing the envelope.
I want to live in a community where free expression doesn’t mean being vulgar with impunity and where free speech actually contributes to the state of the union.
I wish to live in a country where benevolence trumps cynicism, where family devotion minimizes alienation, and where inner peace outweighs the restless pursuit of fame and fortune.
Note that my terms are not absolutist. I do not look for a utopia—a world where poverty, isolation, pain, and obscenity are abolished. I seek, instead, a society that does more good than harm—a community that, on the whole, lifts us up instead of dragging us down.
Unfortunately, I do not see the will or the insight among the people or their leaders that would permit much progress toward these goals. Inertia from the mindless pursuit of power and sensual pleasure and wealth continues to push us toward the precipice. If I had to bet, I’d put my chips on the latter scenario.
Monday, October 31, 2005
"THE GREAT RAID" AND HEROISM
“The Great Raid” portrays an America that no longer exists. More precisely, the cinematic recreation of the operation that rescued over 500 POWs from their Japanese captors in the Philippines presents a nation where military service and heroism were sincerely honored--a country where flag-waving patriotism was a sentiment that didn’t require a litany of lawyerly qualifications to fend off accusations of ethnocentricity. That attitude now characterizes only a subset of the population.
Triumphs of courage and military planning such as are celebrated in “The Great Raid” have doubtless occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years. But they are largely ignored by the mainstream media--or buried beneath an avalanche of criticism focused on strategic and diplomatic blunders. Faux “tributes to the fallen” replace reports that pay homage to heroism within a specific mission. Such commemorative moments rip acts of sacrifice from their military context in order to utilize that blood for political ends that most of the fallen would despise.
The unstated subtext of these honor-segments is that no military mission is really worth dying for. Why else would these “tributes” omit significant reference to the objectives for which these soldiers gave the last full measure of devotion? Why else would gripping stories of individual and unit heroism be shunned? Why else would like-minded groups protest government offers to engrave on cemetery markers the name of the fallen warrior’s military operation? The implication is clear: Promising lives were wasted in battles where, in Matthew Arnold’s words, “ignorant armies clash by night.”
Well-coifed journalists, actors, and scribblers are, of course, passionately devoted to worthy causes--but their causes are devoid of serious risk. Indeed, almost all translate into career enhancements. Only actors who praise martial achievements are likely to suffer reprisals within an industry whose grandees regularly belittle acts of heroism as moronic or delusional. Friends of the Earth, by contrast, need not fear incoming fire from petrol interests who favor drilling in ANWR. Nor are anti-tobacco militants endangered by foes who produce Philip Morris’s nicotine delivery systems. And animal rights activists stand in far less danger of physical harm than their adversaries who trade in furs or employ critters in medical tests.
By contrast, enemies in “The Great Raid” are real, powerful, and brutal. Engaging in combat with these foes required more than a savvy PR agent or a simplistic slogan. It required courage, training, and a willingness to risk everything for the sake of comrades and country. Moreover, the country in which these dedicated soldiers lived acknowledged these facts and didn’t transform monstrous enemy acts into occasions for sympathetic psychoanalysis.
Today’s armchair generals are unwilling to come to grips with this basic fact: Heroism is necessary for the survival of a democratic and just society. Consequently, they also fail to recognize that our foes are frequently implacable and powerful. They cherish, instead, the illusion that withdrawal, subsidies, apologies, and diplomacy can make dangerous people go away--that political correctness can substitute for courage. They have no understanding of what the commander of the Cabanatuan raid said to his troops before setting out on their mission--words about deeds that would define their understanding of themselves for the rest of their lives.
Perhaps these critics sense within themselves the absence of the stuff it takes to face death while accomplishing a great task. That deficiency is no crime. The crime is failing to honor what distinguishes the courageous few from the rest of us and pretending that heroic sacrifice is a needless waste--pretending, in fact, that we who live soft lives devoid of danger are the true guardians of freedom. The crime is in not acknowledging greatness of spirit when it stares us in the face.
Triumphs of courage and military planning such as are celebrated in “The Great Raid” have doubtless occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years. But they are largely ignored by the mainstream media--or buried beneath an avalanche of criticism focused on strategic and diplomatic blunders. Faux “tributes to the fallen” replace reports that pay homage to heroism within a specific mission. Such commemorative moments rip acts of sacrifice from their military context in order to utilize that blood for political ends that most of the fallen would despise.
The unstated subtext of these honor-segments is that no military mission is really worth dying for. Why else would these “tributes” omit significant reference to the objectives for which these soldiers gave the last full measure of devotion? Why else would gripping stories of individual and unit heroism be shunned? Why else would like-minded groups protest government offers to engrave on cemetery markers the name of the fallen warrior’s military operation? The implication is clear: Promising lives were wasted in battles where, in Matthew Arnold’s words, “ignorant armies clash by night.”
Well-coifed journalists, actors, and scribblers are, of course, passionately devoted to worthy causes--but their causes are devoid of serious risk. Indeed, almost all translate into career enhancements. Only actors who praise martial achievements are likely to suffer reprisals within an industry whose grandees regularly belittle acts of heroism as moronic or delusional. Friends of the Earth, by contrast, need not fear incoming fire from petrol interests who favor drilling in ANWR. Nor are anti-tobacco militants endangered by foes who produce Philip Morris’s nicotine delivery systems. And animal rights activists stand in far less danger of physical harm than their adversaries who trade in furs or employ critters in medical tests.
By contrast, enemies in “The Great Raid” are real, powerful, and brutal. Engaging in combat with these foes required more than a savvy PR agent or a simplistic slogan. It required courage, training, and a willingness to risk everything for the sake of comrades and country. Moreover, the country in which these dedicated soldiers lived acknowledged these facts and didn’t transform monstrous enemy acts into occasions for sympathetic psychoanalysis.
Today’s armchair generals are unwilling to come to grips with this basic fact: Heroism is necessary for the survival of a democratic and just society. Consequently, they also fail to recognize that our foes are frequently implacable and powerful. They cherish, instead, the illusion that withdrawal, subsidies, apologies, and diplomacy can make dangerous people go away--that political correctness can substitute for courage. They have no understanding of what the commander of the Cabanatuan raid said to his troops before setting out on their mission--words about deeds that would define their understanding of themselves for the rest of their lives.
Perhaps these critics sense within themselves the absence of the stuff it takes to face death while accomplishing a great task. That deficiency is no crime. The crime is failing to honor what distinguishes the courageous few from the rest of us and pretending that heroic sacrifice is a needless waste--pretending, in fact, that we who live soft lives devoid of danger are the true guardians of freedom. The crime is in not acknowledging greatness of spirit when it stares us in the face.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
FREAKONOMICS--HIPSTERS DO ECON
John Kenneth Galbraith once said that economics had never quite been able to shed its “dismal science” label because it was never quite undeserved. Despite a devil-may-care approach, Freakonomics does little to improve the discipline’s tarnished image. Indeed, the book’s macabre, cost-benefit abortion ratios vie with Thomas Malthus’s starvation-population equation for primacy in the economics Hall of Shame.
Authored by University of Chicago pop-economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics revels in eccentricity and seldom misses a chance to surprise readers with brash comparisons that, on reflection, are less impressive than advertised. Its first chapter juxtaposes sumo wrestlers and school teachers but produces the hardly stunning conclusion that both groups contain persons willing to cheat when stakes are high. Elsewhere, Levitt and Dubner link the Ku Klux Klan with real estate agents by noting that both have access to inside information. The operative principle in these “Who’d a thunk it” pairings is that any two things are remarkably alike--provided the analyst disregards the ways they aren’t alike.
The most explosive correlation in this scatter-shot compendium is the one that links recent reductions in the crime-rate to the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973. By itself, this proposition isn’t stunning news since abortions occur disproportionately among demographic groups that produce more than their share of criminals. Thus, when those groups have fewer offspring, fewer criminals are the result. Put succinctly: more abortions, less crime. Freakonomics provides a cursory summary of statistical evidence to buttress the idea that some unspecified part of the recent drop in crime is due to the million-plus abortions performed annually in the U.S. since 1975. Booming incarceration rates and increased police numbers are two other factors the authors credit when explaining the recent crime bust.
Freakonomics stops short of putting a seal of approval on abortion as an effective crime-fighting technique--but just barely. The book repeatedly portrays women’s motives for receiving abortions in glowing terms. In an effusive eulogy to Roe v. Wade, Levitt and Dubner assert that “The Supreme Court gave voice to what mothers in Romania and Scandinavia ... had long known: when a woman does not want to have a child, she usually has good reason.” Later the authors expand this broad endorsement of motives and imply that most abortions have beneficial social consequences.
Not coincidentally, Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania is presented as the prime counter- example to America’s post-Roe, abortion-on-demand regime. The dictator’s abortion ban, it appears, produced a bumper crop of children more likely to engage in crime than their predecessors. Leaving aside the fact that, as usual, no details of this study are provided, one can’t help but wonder whether Communist Romania is the place where “other things being equal” comparisons are most prudently invoked.
Statements about abortion demographics provide a glaring example of scholarly lassitude. “One study,” the authors inform us, shows that these potential children would have been “50% more likely than average to live in poverty.” Another study says they would have been 60% more likely than average to grow up with one parent. Since these two factors, taken together, comprise the strongest predictors that children will have a criminal future, the authors offer the following conclusion to these widely-acknowledged premises: “...the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion also seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives.”
Confusion arises, first of all, because the preceding statement blurs the distinction between all women who receive abortions and the much smaller subgroup of poor, single women who undergo the procedure. More blatant is the distortion created by substituting a sentence of universal despair (“their children...would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives.”) for the possible criminality of some unstated fraction of these fetuses--certainly less than 20% of the high-risk cohort. Only blindered ideology, or a craven desire to mirror elite opinion, can explain this oversight that is repeated a second time (at least in spirit) at chapter’s end: “When the government gives a woman the opportunity to make a decision about abortion, she generally does a good job of figuring out if she is in a good position to raise the baby well.”
Even if one concedes that the crime-abortion link constitutes prima facie evidence of good decision-making, the authors present no evidence (and certainly no moral argument) to suggest that the overwhelming majority of women whose children would not become criminals did a “good job.” Perhaps this is the reason the elastic word “unhappy” was inserted into a statement whose precedents only concerned criminality. In any case, both summaries transform philosophically-grounded assessments of decisions made by a small fraction of women into empirically-buttressed validations of abortions had by all women.
The only thing positive about these acts of linguistic-statistical legerdemain is that they spare readers from being subjected to another utilitarian calculation that pits the potential happiness of 80 to 90% of aborted fetuses against the potential havoc wrought by the other 10 to 20%. This thought experiment would mirror one actually provided by the authors where a 100:1 fetus to human being ratio is employed to show abortion’s inutility as a serious murder-reduction strategy. (In this case a popular methodological observation is turned on its head. Insane means are used to attain a morally reasonable end.)
Amazingly, this allusive mixture of statistical data and careless rhetoric about the link between abortion and reduced crime rates takes place in scarcely more space than is devoted to the topic in this review. Curious readers are left to themselves to sift through a list of reference works that appear only at the back of the book and without extended annotation.
Ironically, Freakonomics says a good deal more about parenting than it does about abortion and crime. Not surprisingly, what it says is neither consistent nor compelling. At one point we are told that good parenting (what we do as opposed to what we are) doesn’t matter much (p.175). Elsewhere the authors assert that bad parenting “Clearly...matters a great deal” (p.153). Single-parent homes are said to be irrelevant when it comes to school performance (p.174), yet the same condition is dubbed a prime indicator of criminal behavior (p.138). On a related topic, data drawn from Chicago’s public schools are used to show that school choice, in itself, matters little (p.158). But a few pages later we are informed that the poor performance of blacks and their white classmates is caused by the abysmal quality of the schools they attend (p.165).
This lack of intellectual rigor is previewed in an introductory chapter where Levitt and Dubner assert that morality concerns the way people “would like the world to work”--as if wishes and moral obligations were the same thing. The authors then claim that economics, by contrast, deals with the way things “actually do work”--an assertion rooted either in disciplinary amnesia or, more likely, philosophical naiveté.
A dearth of moral gravitas is also communicated by observations such as the one that compares foot-soldiers in the crack cocaine “business” with “a McDonald’s burger flipper or a Wal-Mart shelfstocker.” Here and elsewhere an elitist disposition is evident--an attitude more interested in projecting an aura of trendy insouciance than in acknowledging the gulf that separates honest work from an occupation where the four-year chance of being killed is 25%. Of a piece with this cavalier attitude are the sleazy rumors that are casually dropped about CIA drug trafficking and More Guns, Less Crime author John Lott.
A final chapter devoted to children’s names provides more evidence that this book doesn’t take itself seriously. After concluding that names, in themselves, don’t impact a child’s future, a dozen more pages follow that contain comments about names that have been popular with upper and lower class parents--not, of course, that it really matters.
What Freakonomics highlights, more than anything, is an adolescent mentality that enjoys iconoclasm for its own sake. Investigations conducted in this frame of mind are relished more for their shock value than for any insight they provide into the human condition. Such an attitude breeds the careless rhetoric and cursory treatment that the authors exhibit when discussing the most sensitive issues. What Levitt and Dubner obviously don't appreciate is the price society pays for adopting a cost-benefit perspective that happily views forty million aborted fetuses as a successful crime-fighting effort.
Authored by University of Chicago pop-economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics revels in eccentricity and seldom misses a chance to surprise readers with brash comparisons that, on reflection, are less impressive than advertised. Its first chapter juxtaposes sumo wrestlers and school teachers but produces the hardly stunning conclusion that both groups contain persons willing to cheat when stakes are high. Elsewhere, Levitt and Dubner link the Ku Klux Klan with real estate agents by noting that both have access to inside information. The operative principle in these “Who’d a thunk it” pairings is that any two things are remarkably alike--provided the analyst disregards the ways they aren’t alike.
The most explosive correlation in this scatter-shot compendium is the one that links recent reductions in the crime-rate to the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973. By itself, this proposition isn’t stunning news since abortions occur disproportionately among demographic groups that produce more than their share of criminals. Thus, when those groups have fewer offspring, fewer criminals are the result. Put succinctly: more abortions, less crime. Freakonomics provides a cursory summary of statistical evidence to buttress the idea that some unspecified part of the recent drop in crime is due to the million-plus abortions performed annually in the U.S. since 1975. Booming incarceration rates and increased police numbers are two other factors the authors credit when explaining the recent crime bust.
Freakonomics stops short of putting a seal of approval on abortion as an effective crime-fighting technique--but just barely. The book repeatedly portrays women’s motives for receiving abortions in glowing terms. In an effusive eulogy to Roe v. Wade, Levitt and Dubner assert that “The Supreme Court gave voice to what mothers in Romania and Scandinavia ... had long known: when a woman does not want to have a child, she usually has good reason.” Later the authors expand this broad endorsement of motives and imply that most abortions have beneficial social consequences.
Not coincidentally, Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania is presented as the prime counter- example to America’s post-Roe, abortion-on-demand regime. The dictator’s abortion ban, it appears, produced a bumper crop of children more likely to engage in crime than their predecessors. Leaving aside the fact that, as usual, no details of this study are provided, one can’t help but wonder whether Communist Romania is the place where “other things being equal” comparisons are most prudently invoked.
Statements about abortion demographics provide a glaring example of scholarly lassitude. “One study,” the authors inform us, shows that these potential children would have been “50% more likely than average to live in poverty.” Another study says they would have been 60% more likely than average to grow up with one parent. Since these two factors, taken together, comprise the strongest predictors that children will have a criminal future, the authors offer the following conclusion to these widely-acknowledged premises: “...the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion also seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives.”
Confusion arises, first of all, because the preceding statement blurs the distinction between all women who receive abortions and the much smaller subgroup of poor, single women who undergo the procedure. More blatant is the distortion created by substituting a sentence of universal despair (“their children...would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives.”) for the possible criminality of some unstated fraction of these fetuses--certainly less than 20% of the high-risk cohort. Only blindered ideology, or a craven desire to mirror elite opinion, can explain this oversight that is repeated a second time (at least in spirit) at chapter’s end: “When the government gives a woman the opportunity to make a decision about abortion, she generally does a good job of figuring out if she is in a good position to raise the baby well.”
Even if one concedes that the crime-abortion link constitutes prima facie evidence of good decision-making, the authors present no evidence (and certainly no moral argument) to suggest that the overwhelming majority of women whose children would not become criminals did a “good job.” Perhaps this is the reason the elastic word “unhappy” was inserted into a statement whose precedents only concerned criminality. In any case, both summaries transform philosophically-grounded assessments of decisions made by a small fraction of women into empirically-buttressed validations of abortions had by all women.
The only thing positive about these acts of linguistic-statistical legerdemain is that they spare readers from being subjected to another utilitarian calculation that pits the potential happiness of 80 to 90% of aborted fetuses against the potential havoc wrought by the other 10 to 20%. This thought experiment would mirror one actually provided by the authors where a 100:1 fetus to human being ratio is employed to show abortion’s inutility as a serious murder-reduction strategy. (In this case a popular methodological observation is turned on its head. Insane means are used to attain a morally reasonable end.)
Amazingly, this allusive mixture of statistical data and careless rhetoric about the link between abortion and reduced crime rates takes place in scarcely more space than is devoted to the topic in this review. Curious readers are left to themselves to sift through a list of reference works that appear only at the back of the book and without extended annotation.
Ironically, Freakonomics says a good deal more about parenting than it does about abortion and crime. Not surprisingly, what it says is neither consistent nor compelling. At one point we are told that good parenting (what we do as opposed to what we are) doesn’t matter much (p.175). Elsewhere the authors assert that bad parenting “Clearly...matters a great deal” (p.153). Single-parent homes are said to be irrelevant when it comes to school performance (p.174), yet the same condition is dubbed a prime indicator of criminal behavior (p.138). On a related topic, data drawn from Chicago’s public schools are used to show that school choice, in itself, matters little (p.158). But a few pages later we are informed that the poor performance of blacks and their white classmates is caused by the abysmal quality of the schools they attend (p.165).
This lack of intellectual rigor is previewed in an introductory chapter where Levitt and Dubner assert that morality concerns the way people “would like the world to work”--as if wishes and moral obligations were the same thing. The authors then claim that economics, by contrast, deals with the way things “actually do work”--an assertion rooted either in disciplinary amnesia or, more likely, philosophical naiveté.
A dearth of moral gravitas is also communicated by observations such as the one that compares foot-soldiers in the crack cocaine “business” with “a McDonald’s burger flipper or a Wal-Mart shelfstocker.” Here and elsewhere an elitist disposition is evident--an attitude more interested in projecting an aura of trendy insouciance than in acknowledging the gulf that separates honest work from an occupation where the four-year chance of being killed is 25%. Of a piece with this cavalier attitude are the sleazy rumors that are casually dropped about CIA drug trafficking and More Guns, Less Crime author John Lott.
A final chapter devoted to children’s names provides more evidence that this book doesn’t take itself seriously. After concluding that names, in themselves, don’t impact a child’s future, a dozen more pages follow that contain comments about names that have been popular with upper and lower class parents--not, of course, that it really matters.
What Freakonomics highlights, more than anything, is an adolescent mentality that enjoys iconoclasm for its own sake. Investigations conducted in this frame of mind are relished more for their shock value than for any insight they provide into the human condition. Such an attitude breeds the careless rhetoric and cursory treatment that the authors exhibit when discussing the most sensitive issues. What Levitt and Dubner obviously don't appreciate is the price society pays for adopting a cost-benefit perspective that happily views forty million aborted fetuses as a successful crime-fighting effort.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
100 PEOPLE WHO ARE SCREWING UP AMERICA
Bernard Goldberg’s 100 PEOPLE WHO ARE SCREWING UP AMERICA provides a wealth of anecdotal evidence to bolster the belief that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket. From rappers to reporters, from shock jocks to political blowhards, the former CBS journalist offers a series of sketches about persons whose words and actions deserve special recognition in a cultural Hall of Shame.
Goldberg divides the landscape of contemporary destructiveness into a few large subdivisions--politicians, journalists, entertainers, businessmen, lawyers, and academics. Under the journalistic category, names of Goldberg’s former colleagues pop up frequently. Bill Moyers (34) and Dan Rather (12) are skewered for ideological bias, whereas Barbara Walters (46) and Diane Sawyer (56) are called on the carpet for their role in erasing the line between serious journalism and entertainment.
On the executive side, ABC’s David Westin (55) and NBC’s Neal Shapiro (54) are faulted for presiding over this merging of news and entertainment. Meanwhile, CBS news President Andrew Hayward (13) is excoriated for failing to take personal responsibility for Mary Mapes’s (14) “60 Minutes” hit-piece based on fraudulent National Guard documents that were obtained from an unstable Bush-hater. The most prominently vilified executive is publisher Arthur Sulzberger (2), whose legacy is that he turned the New York Times into a paper that now prints all the news that fits his bent.
Lesser journalistic lights like Ted Rall (15) and Jeff Danzinger (35) also make Goldberg’s list of cultural malefactors--the former for his despicable post-mortem editorial cartoon lampooning NFL player turned soldier, Pat Tillman, and the latter for a racist caricature of Condoleezza Rice.
On the political front Goldberg focuses most of his fire on leftist ideologues--but a smattering of right-wingers like David Duke (66) are also included in the mix. By my count, eight of the bottom twenty on Goldberg’s list are either Democrat pols like Howard Dean (20) and Al Gore (18) or operatives like People for the American Way lobbyist, Ralph Neas (10). That count, by the way, excludes the party’s chief financial backer in 2004, George Soros (19)--a man whose prominence arises not from deep policy insights but rather from very deep pockets. Another political sub-group includes “Racial Enforcers” like Al Sharpton (17) and Jesse Jackson (4).
When it comes to debased entertainment, Goldberg rounds up the usual suspects: Howard Stern (62), Jerry Springer (32), Maury Povich (31), and Eminem (58). Besides providing revoltingly specific examples of this bottomless vulgarity, the author also reveals the identity of a little-known figure who has provided much of the financial backing for the rap industry, Interscope’s Ted Field (57). Far from being a product of the ghetto, Mr. Field is a very white child of the sixties and heir to his father’s retail fortune. The younger Field has now made his own mark as the premier corrupter of American youngsters.
In addition to sleazemeisters, Goldberg notes the negative contributions that Hollywood types are making to political discourse. Because so many Tinseltown egos deserve recognition, the author lumps a number of “stars” like Janeane Garofalo and Alec Baldwin into three catch-all categories: The Dumb Celebrity (85), The Vicious Celebrity (84), and The Dumb and Vicious Celebrity (83). Of course some of the beautiful people spout inanities so frequently that they merit numbers of their own--like Barbra Streisand (91) and comedian turned talk-jock Al Franken (37).
Lawyers and corporate executives form other subgroups described as “American Jackels” and “White-Collar Thugs.” The legal grifter-in-chief is former tort lawyer, Senator, and Vice-presidential candidate John Edwards (16). Edwards’ pathetic courtroom channeling of a dead child is persuasive evidence of the way lawyers are fleecing the public rather than pursuing justice. The handsome North Carolinian’s pitch to a gullible jury secured a huge settlement apparently based on bogus notions that linked the mother’s C-section with her child’s cerebral palsy. On the other side of the bench, Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall (7), is given recognition for her redefinition of marriage by judicial fiat.
Enron President Ken Lay (45) and Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski (44) are prominent business executives on Goldberg’s top-100 list. The entry describing Koslowski’s birthday bash in Sardinia is one that economist Thorsten Veblen would have loved to employ as an example of conspicuous consumption. Other individuals singled out for their contributions to American decadence include Paul Eibler (43), President of the software corporation that gave us “Grand Theft Auto,” and Todd Goldman (97), an entrepreneur who has made good money selling shirts that insult boys.
Academia is another rich source of cultural pollutants. Indeed, ivory-tower dwellers constitute ten percent of Goldberg’s list. Ward Churchill (72), the faux Native American who used the term “little Eichmanns” to describe persons murdered in the Twin Towers, is the poster child for today’s America-bashers--folks whose most venerable icon is linguist-turned-naysayer, Noam Chomsky (11). Former University of Pennsylvania President, Sheldon Hackney (87), is among the spineless, politically correct administrators that Goldberg singles out for opprobrium. And in a more theoretical vein Princeton ethics professor Peter Singer (39) is cited for his avant-garde advocacy of infanticide.
Many of Goldberg’s names don’t fall clearly into any of the aforementioned categories but do serve to illustrate the rot that is consuming American culture. My personal “favorite” is Amy Richards (63), a thirty-four year old woman with academic and literary connections. She had been taking birth control pills but went off them because they made her "moody." In 2003 she became pregnant by her boyfriend of three years. Having a child out of wedlock wasn't a problem for Richards. The problem was that there wasn't just one baby-to-be in her womb. There were three--and three was just too many. The fearful scenario she envisioned for herself involved moving from Manhattan to Staten Island, shopping at Costco, and buying large jars of mayonnaise. Moreover, the multiple pregnancy would force here to forego her spring lecture income. Because she found this domestic script distasteful, she asked her obstetrician if she could "get rid of" one or two of the three fetuses in her womb.
It turns out that such a procedure is possible, and like all such acts it comes with a wonderfully clinical name--“selective reduction.” So selective reduction was the “choice” Amy Richards made. Since two of her three babies-to-be were twins and three days younger than the free-standing fetus, those two were the ones “selected” to receive shots of potassium chloride to the heart. The “successful” operation meant that Ms. Richards could raise her child by herself, stay in Manhattan, and lecture during the profitable spring months.
As a bonus, after the birth of her son, Ms. Richards put her writing talents to good use by composing an essay about her recent experience. The piece was called, "When One Is Enough," and was published in the Sunday New York Times Magazine on July 18, 2004. The article will doubtless be "interesting" reading for Richards' "non-selected" son. One can imagine the questions his mother's moral reasoning will one day prompt: "Why them and not me? What's all this talk about mayonnaise and Costco? Why tell the world about it?" To which questions the single answer is "Amy Richards."
Such is the country in which, by Goldberg’s calculus, Michael Moore ranks number one on the list of those who are leading us into a cultural abyss.
Goldberg divides the landscape of contemporary destructiveness into a few large subdivisions--politicians, journalists, entertainers, businessmen, lawyers, and academics. Under the journalistic category, names of Goldberg’s former colleagues pop up frequently. Bill Moyers (34) and Dan Rather (12) are skewered for ideological bias, whereas Barbara Walters (46) and Diane Sawyer (56) are called on the carpet for their role in erasing the line between serious journalism and entertainment.
On the executive side, ABC’s David Westin (55) and NBC’s Neal Shapiro (54) are faulted for presiding over this merging of news and entertainment. Meanwhile, CBS news President Andrew Hayward (13) is excoriated for failing to take personal responsibility for Mary Mapes’s (14) “60 Minutes” hit-piece based on fraudulent National Guard documents that were obtained from an unstable Bush-hater. The most prominently vilified executive is publisher Arthur Sulzberger (2), whose legacy is that he turned the New York Times into a paper that now prints all the news that fits his bent.
Lesser journalistic lights like Ted Rall (15) and Jeff Danzinger (35) also make Goldberg’s list of cultural malefactors--the former for his despicable post-mortem editorial cartoon lampooning NFL player turned soldier, Pat Tillman, and the latter for a racist caricature of Condoleezza Rice.
On the political front Goldberg focuses most of his fire on leftist ideologues--but a smattering of right-wingers like David Duke (66) are also included in the mix. By my count, eight of the bottom twenty on Goldberg’s list are either Democrat pols like Howard Dean (20) and Al Gore (18) or operatives like People for the American Way lobbyist, Ralph Neas (10). That count, by the way, excludes the party’s chief financial backer in 2004, George Soros (19)--a man whose prominence arises not from deep policy insights but rather from very deep pockets. Another political sub-group includes “Racial Enforcers” like Al Sharpton (17) and Jesse Jackson (4).
When it comes to debased entertainment, Goldberg rounds up the usual suspects: Howard Stern (62), Jerry Springer (32), Maury Povich (31), and Eminem (58). Besides providing revoltingly specific examples of this bottomless vulgarity, the author also reveals the identity of a little-known figure who has provided much of the financial backing for the rap industry, Interscope’s Ted Field (57). Far from being a product of the ghetto, Mr. Field is a very white child of the sixties and heir to his father’s retail fortune. The younger Field has now made his own mark as the premier corrupter of American youngsters.
In addition to sleazemeisters, Goldberg notes the negative contributions that Hollywood types are making to political discourse. Because so many Tinseltown egos deserve recognition, the author lumps a number of “stars” like Janeane Garofalo and Alec Baldwin into three catch-all categories: The Dumb Celebrity (85), The Vicious Celebrity (84), and The Dumb and Vicious Celebrity (83). Of course some of the beautiful people spout inanities so frequently that they merit numbers of their own--like Barbra Streisand (91) and comedian turned talk-jock Al Franken (37).
Lawyers and corporate executives form other subgroups described as “American Jackels” and “White-Collar Thugs.” The legal grifter-in-chief is former tort lawyer, Senator, and Vice-presidential candidate John Edwards (16). Edwards’ pathetic courtroom channeling of a dead child is persuasive evidence of the way lawyers are fleecing the public rather than pursuing justice. The handsome North Carolinian’s pitch to a gullible jury secured a huge settlement apparently based on bogus notions that linked the mother’s C-section with her child’s cerebral palsy. On the other side of the bench, Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall (7), is given recognition for her redefinition of marriage by judicial fiat.
Enron President Ken Lay (45) and Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski (44) are prominent business executives on Goldberg’s top-100 list. The entry describing Koslowski’s birthday bash in Sardinia is one that economist Thorsten Veblen would have loved to employ as an example of conspicuous consumption. Other individuals singled out for their contributions to American decadence include Paul Eibler (43), President of the software corporation that gave us “Grand Theft Auto,” and Todd Goldman (97), an entrepreneur who has made good money selling shirts that insult boys.
Academia is another rich source of cultural pollutants. Indeed, ivory-tower dwellers constitute ten percent of Goldberg’s list. Ward Churchill (72), the faux Native American who used the term “little Eichmanns” to describe persons murdered in the Twin Towers, is the poster child for today’s America-bashers--folks whose most venerable icon is linguist-turned-naysayer, Noam Chomsky (11). Former University of Pennsylvania President, Sheldon Hackney (87), is among the spineless, politically correct administrators that Goldberg singles out for opprobrium. And in a more theoretical vein Princeton ethics professor Peter Singer (39) is cited for his avant-garde advocacy of infanticide.
Many of Goldberg’s names don’t fall clearly into any of the aforementioned categories but do serve to illustrate the rot that is consuming American culture. My personal “favorite” is Amy Richards (63), a thirty-four year old woman with academic and literary connections. She had been taking birth control pills but went off them because they made her "moody." In 2003 she became pregnant by her boyfriend of three years. Having a child out of wedlock wasn't a problem for Richards. The problem was that there wasn't just one baby-to-be in her womb. There were three--and three was just too many. The fearful scenario she envisioned for herself involved moving from Manhattan to Staten Island, shopping at Costco, and buying large jars of mayonnaise. Moreover, the multiple pregnancy would force here to forego her spring lecture income. Because she found this domestic script distasteful, she asked her obstetrician if she could "get rid of" one or two of the three fetuses in her womb.
It turns out that such a procedure is possible, and like all such acts it comes with a wonderfully clinical name--“selective reduction.” So selective reduction was the “choice” Amy Richards made. Since two of her three babies-to-be were twins and three days younger than the free-standing fetus, those two were the ones “selected” to receive shots of potassium chloride to the heart. The “successful” operation meant that Ms. Richards could raise her child by herself, stay in Manhattan, and lecture during the profitable spring months.
As a bonus, after the birth of her son, Ms. Richards put her writing talents to good use by composing an essay about her recent experience. The piece was called, "When One Is Enough," and was published in the Sunday New York Times Magazine on July 18, 2004. The article will doubtless be "interesting" reading for Richards' "non-selected" son. One can imagine the questions his mother's moral reasoning will one day prompt: "Why them and not me? What's all this talk about mayonnaise and Costco? Why tell the world about it?" To which questions the single answer is "Amy Richards."
Such is the country in which, by Goldberg’s calculus, Michael Moore ranks number one on the list of those who are leading us into a cultural abyss.
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