Was Jennifer Levitz able to find no one to offer a contrasting view for her Providence Journal article, "Doubts about the war hit home"? It wouldn't even have had to be somebody local; after all, she devoted 208 words to Virginia anti-war protester Larry Syverson.
It wouldn't be appropriate to fault grieving or just worried families for their sentiments, and Levitz only quotes some of those in the article regarding other people's reactions. But there's a growing storyline in the mainstream press:
The doubts about the Bush administration's steering of the war in Iraq are rising, according to experts who study public opinion, as April ends with the highest number of U.S. casualties in a month. Tomorrow marks one year since President Bush stood on an aircraft carrier and declared the mission accomplished. ...People in the United States are making up their minds on how they view the war in Iraq, she said yesterday in an interview. ...
Americans are comparing those wartime sights with what they are hearing from the administration -- that the electricity is back in Iraq, and schools are open, and that only small parts of the country are unstable. ...
[Kathleen Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania] said that when the public starts asking itself these questions, "you have the potential" for an attitude shift.
A little research would show that the media has been proclaiming shifts in attitudes and doubts about the war all along, but frankly, the whole thing is too nauseating to investigate in depth. Levitz's entire piece offers not a single statement from anybody — family or "expert," local or national — declaring pride and the understanding that the job must be finished.
By way of contrast, in John Mulligan's "Historians, soldiers hesitant to call Iraq another Vietnam," we get this:
WHEN CRITICS of the war look at these problems, they see shades of Vietnam: a misplaced American confidence in its economic and military might and a refusal to take into account the cultural and political realities of a foreign country.Further, the war's critics find echoes of Vietnam in the Bush administration's changing emphasis in its rationale for war. Before the invasion, Mr. Bush and his team stressed the "gathering" threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to international terrorism.
Since the post-invasion failure to turn up evidence of such weapons, Mr. Bush has stressed the promise that Iraq holds "to change the world and make America more secure" by becoming a beacon of democracy.
"WE'RE FACING a quagmire in Iraq, just as we faced a quagmire in Vietnam," Kennedy said in a television interview after his April 5 speech. "We didn't understand what we were getting ourselves into in Vietnam. We didn't understand what we were doing in Iraq. We had misrepresentations about what we were able to do militarily in Vietnam. I think we are finding that out in Iraq as well. . . .
Suggestions that Iraq and Vietnam don't equate get a "but still"; statements that Americans are anxious about war (as well they should be) get unwavering reinforcement. We can only hope that Americans don't allow the media's assessment to be self-fulfilling spin. Every loss is lamentable. Every casualty is deserving of prayers and tears. But we cannot afford to forget that each one saves unknowable masses in the future... if we hold strong.
The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "Battles & Wars," by Zona Douthit.
Again and again, I've run into the palpable lack of alternative media in Rhode Island, and the periodic emails that I get from area conservatives expressing isolation confirm that venues don't exist for them to coordinate and encourage each other. I realize the likelihood that folks in the national conservative establishment may be inclined to write off Rhode Island as a lost cause, but I really don't think it would take much by way of effort and funds to begin to rectify this problem. (And I can't help but see the potentialof significance, at least, to the fact that the President chose a Rhode Island girl's letter for his SOTU and that the teacher of the year was a Rhode Islander.)
So, with the understanding that bloggers can't really know who's in their audience, I thought I'd post a little feeler to see if anybody's got any ideas about how to find support for an incipient movement — foundations to contact and such. As it happens, my circumstances and skill set lend themselves to the task at hand, and a little push might go a long way.
Back in September, I mentioned the U.K. youth trend of "sex texters" — kids sending text messages to arrange rendezvous. One might think that mobile phone companies would prefer to disassociate themselves from stories with titles like "Huge rise in sex diseases." To the contrary, Marty McKeever notes that at least one such company seems to have decided that the profits will be greater taking the opposite tack:
In scenes reminiscent of Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally, Christina [Aguilera] arches her back and screams. She was paid a reported $1million for four hours' work. The singer simulates sex in the ad for Virgin Mobile which is so risque it won't be shown in America.
Marty puts the increasing... ahem... textual behavior in context of larger trends in England, such as gang activity, particularly involving sexual assault. Perhaps I'm overtired, but I can't help but think that limitless text messaging is a great way to pass along limericks:
In Britain, the phone comp'ny, Virgin
Will shrug off the crimes it is urgin'
To just make a buck
It'll teach kids to huck
And turn clueless par'nts into sturgeon
The editorial pages are easily the best part of the Providence Journal — often presenting a refreshing bit of ideological balance to the rest of the paper. From a generalized, external view, much of the credit for this seems to belong to Robert Whitcomb, who ended a recent column with this sentiment:
But then, you see remarkably few people reading both The Nation and The National Review. Too anxiety-provoking. We want the soothing voices of the amen chorus.The number of true loners is low in politics and political commentary. We need a lot more of them.
A penchant for balanced reading may be an occupational benefit for an opinion-page editor, but Whitcomb comes a bit too close to that sort of equivalence that presumes each side must be inherently wrong, as evidenced by the disagreement of the other. Are tax cuts good policy or not? Is embryonic stem-cell research moral or not? Yes or no?
Of course, particulars exist that require hammering, both for individual issues and broad platforms. However, the fact that large batches of issues seem to break according to a handful of underlying worldviews does not mean that any two worldviews are equally valid. Preferring the bulk of one's reading to be analysis from people who share a certain number of one's premises is not prima facie indication of anxiety-aversion or unoriginality. Political labels can be seen as a useful shorthand for some of those premises, not necessarily as a substitute for actual consideration. For a conservative, reading The Nation is to find one's self constantly arguing first principles, whereas reading National Review allows a depth of exploration enabled by the ability to take fundamental points for granted.
In this context, it's interesting that the Projo should publish, three days after Mr. Whitcomb's lament of the middleman, a piece by Jerry Landay that would not be out of place in The Nation:
THE FEDERAL ELECTION Commission is considering a proposal -- pushed aggressively by the Bush re-election campaign -- that would curb spending on federal elections by a handful of Democratic advocacy organizations. They are referred to as "527" groups, under the Internal Revenue Service provisions granting them tax exemptions. Republicans accuse the groups, including America Coming Together and MoveOn, of being little more than a shadow arm of the Democratic Party.Yet Republican agitprop groups, also tax-exempt, have been politically active for years. This little-known political machine is in fact unparalleled in American political history, and it augments the official Bush campaign. It contains some 350 right-wing activist organizations, highly coordinated, adeptly led and well funded, by private foundations, corporations and individuals.
Landay provides a perfect example of the reason that my reading of "the other side" generally occurs within a preexisting investigation. His claims are founded in layer upon layer of intricately tilted and selectively tinted background, liberally peppered with unsubstantiated, unexplained fear-mongering like: "Reinforced by this unofficial apparatus, the Republicans dominating the three branches of the federal government thwart constitutional checks and balances."
With every last clause in the piece, one will agree or disagree, and to explain disagreement requires ever-expanding subtlety and research. Consider Landay's reference to 350 organizations. To answer his claim, one would have to figure out to what, exactly, he's referring. Does he include every single organization that supports some arguably conservative policy? Those he does name certainly aren't explicitly Republican. More specifically, he does nothing but assert that "Bush campaigns to empower the ideological agenda of the apparatus, and the apparatus, in turn, campaigns for Bush."
It is odd that Landay, as one whom Google shows to be unusually interested in this topic, shows no indication that he's aware of the disenchantment with the administration among its conservative base. Except for the tax cuts and the war, the "cohort" has had many reasons for disappointment in a President so ostensibly beholden to them. William F. Buckley phrased the matter well last July:
What happened to President Bush? He is, incidentally, everywhere criticized abroad, and, now, by Democratic presidential candidates, as autocratic, domineering. How to account for his passivity in most matters of legislative, to say nothing of judicial, consequence? He fought hard for his tax bill and, of course, for his nominees to the courts of appeal. But on most other matters, it is as if he did not exist. The Supreme Court has pronounced itself arbiter of all serious questions having to do with states' rights. The president was manifestly pleased that the Court took over the whole affirmative-action problem, and he confessed himself "pleased" that the Court acknowledged the utility and the pleasures of diversity.
Amazingly, Landay cites an organization concerned with ending affirmative action as among the organizations with a sort of Bush quid pro quo. More broadly, he defines the "ideological platform" of the "affiliated organizations" as one that the President has done precious little to further. And even were the President more concerned with "the care and feeding of American conservatives," as WFB puts it, Landay glosses over the fact that every such organization he mention is ideological and issue-oriented, not specifically political.
For all his claims against their activities, these groups are doing exactly what our Constitution was designed to encourage. They are exercising rights of free association, free speech, and freedom to petition the government to shape policies that they believe to be important. Landay makes dark insinuations about a "shadow government," but in a democracy, that's exactly what the people are supposed to be, and 350 organizations spanning decades and espousing the beliefs of at least one-half of Americans represent a lot of people.
So what of the comparison to the "527" groups? Well, take a look at the home pages of the two that Landay mentions: MoveOn and ACT. This statement from ACT summarizes what you'll see (emphasis added):
America Coming Together-we are the foot soldiers of the progressive movement. We are dedicated to defeating George W. Bush, electing progressives at all levels of government, and mobilizing millions of people to register and vote around the critical issues facing our country.
After taking a moment to ponder what it might mean, exactly, to "vote around issues," take a look at the home page of the Heritage Foundation, which Landay calls "the senior component of the [conservative] apparatus." Policy suggestions. Analysis. Research. All of the other groups have much the same, and although I may have missed it, I didn't see a single streaming-video anti-Kerry ad.
To splash some big numbers in his column, Landay cites the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the goal of which (based on a quick review of its Web site) appears to be to battle conservative organizations and promote progressive non-profits. Apparently, dominating "state, local and national politics" and tilting "American governance, economics, education, media and law rightward" isn't all that expensive, relatively:
NCRP finds that $253 million flowed between 1999 and 2001 alone to these 350 organizations, from 79 private grant-making organizations.The Heritage Foundation, the senior component of the apparatus, was the lead recipient, at $25 million.
So, the Cabal of 350 split $84 million among themselves annually, for an average of $240,000 each. That's a little less than MoveOn.org raised in five days of 1999, a year in which it raised at least $13 million. In just the first quarter of this year, MoveOn raised almost $7 million, all of it apparently going toward political activism — in contrast to the broader activities of such groups as the Heritage Foundation. According to CNN, in a piece from January 2004:
In November, billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his business partner, Peter Lewis, pledged a $5 million matching grant -- a dollar for every two raised by MoveOn members -- to create a $15 million advertising campaign to defeat President Bush.
Turning back to Landay and those conservative groups funded by scheming plutocrats, we find more numbers from a liberal activist:
Rob Stein, a Washington researcher who lectures on this apparatus, estimates that since 1972 a total of $2.5 billion to $3 billion has flowed to its leading 43 affiliates. He terms these "the cohort, an incubator of right-wing ideological policies that constitute the Bush administration's agenda."
Get out the calculators. Accepting the high end of that surely-not-conservative range, the average one among the Band of 43 saw annual money "flow" of $2 million. In the world of big-money politics, that's just about enough to fund some research and publish some analysis that nobody need be compelled to heed. And indeed, it isn't activism per se, but rhetoric, that Stein mentions in the next paragraph:
The cohort, he says, is "a potent, never-ending source of intellectual content, laying down the slogans, myths, and buzz words" -- such as the myth of the liberal media -- "that have helped shift public opinion rightward."
So there you have it. This "shadow government" consists essentially of Americans thinking, writing, and speaking about the direction that they'd like our nation to go. For Landay, conservatives' simply having the audacity to make their presence known is "counterrevolutionary and anti-constitutional" in such a way as to "thwart constitutional checks and balances."
Stein's ridiculous characterization of the liberal media as a "myth" serves to remind us of that the multibillion-dollar industry's activities. One can argue that the mainstream media as well as universities and lawyers' groups are only aligned with the Democrats as a matter of policy preference, but that's the exact same coordination on which Landay builds his argument against conservative groups. I'd like to see a tally of the funds going toward liberal research, rhetoric, and activism over the last 30 years. Writing out the total, alone, would take up a few newspaper column inches.
As I said toward the beginning of this post, rebutting these columns from those on the other side is a time-consuming business. There are myriad facets, as well as interwoven threads of self-interest and unacknowledged connections. Especially when dealing with somebody of Mr. Landay's experience... and inside view:
Jerry M. Landay, of Bristol, a former CBS-News correspondent, is an occasional contributor.
Watch out for those "myths," Mr. Whitcomb. They may be fairytales.
The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "Hogmaney (New Year's Eve)," by Christine L. Mullen.
I wound up scrapping an entire post last night when I realized that I was too tired to coherently say anything more profound than "read this." This blogging thing isn't as carefree and overeasy as some might assume, at least once an audience begins to form.
For one thing, people's willingness to devote time to one's work imparts a certain degree of responsibility to be worthy of their attention. For another, the traffic stats are addictive. I've said before that blogging was the Internet app. that finally snagged me in a way that none of the other time-drains have been able to do. In large part, it's the feeling of virtual success.
There is real hope and promise in writing online, however. It just takes effort — as does any endeavor, online or off.
Anyway, thank you for feeding my addiction. I'll try to remain worthy.
Matt Abbott passes along a description of a scene from the abortion march that makes one think digital video cameras might be a valuable tool in the struggle to overturn Roe v. Wade:
The best way I can explain what I witnessed at today's so-called March for Women's Lives is to reference the movie, The Exorcist. When the possessed child, Regan, is confronted by priests who have come to expel the evil spirit from her, she reacts in shockingly vulgar, profane ways.That is how thousands of 'pro-choice' demonstrators reacted to the presence of a lone priest blessing and praying for them along the March route.
One form of possession appears arise through callous self-righteousness in defense of evil.
(via Jeff Miller)
Let's see. WMDs? Check. Terrorists? Check. Afghanistan? Check. Iraq? Check. Coverage? Well...
At least one of the al-Qaida plotters arrested in Jordan earlier this month as part of a weapons of mass destruction plot that Jordanian officials say could have killed 80,000 people revealed on Monday that he was trained in Iraq before the U.S. invaded in March 2003.In a confession broadcast on Jordanian television, the unnamed WMD conspirator revealed: "In Iraq, I started training in explosives and poisons. I gave my complete obedience to [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi," the al-Qaida WMD specialist whose base of operations was in Iraq.
Excerpts from the WMD conspirator's confession broadcast by ABC's "Nightline" late Monday show that the WMD plot was planned and trained for in Iraq more than a year before the U.S. invasion, with the terror suspect admitting, "After the fall of Afghanistan, I met Zarqawi again in Iraq."
I guess the papers had to leave room for that poll.
Bill of INDC Journal offers some absolutely hilarious photo-rich coverage of a protest of some sort in Washington:
I could barely contain my glee as I drew upon the swarm. This was no minor gathering of a select few common moonbats, rather a cornucopia of various genera, species and subspecies. I had struck scientific gold, and was assaulted by a whirling mix of color ...... sound ...
... and smell, as I plunged head-first into their midst!
Something that the 29-year-old teacher daughter in the family profiled for the Washington Post's example of Blue Staters says is indeed typical, and therefore merits mention:
But later, after church, out for breakfast, the three of them talk about how deeply they disagree, not only with what the priest said but with what Pope John Paul II said the day before, that same-sex unions "degrade" what marriage is supposed to be."I don't believe he would have said that," Maryanne says, referring not to the priest or the pope but to Jesus.
"They were 12 men hanging around together," Heather says, thinking of the disciples and a statistic she saw as she prepared to be a teacher. "Hmm. It's 10 percent of any class. Do the math."
It ought to be remembered that this is one statement drawn from a longer conversation, probably without summarization's being the only reason for its publication. Still, within Maryanne's limited point, exaggerated numbers (or at least the highest that anybody serious has been willing to put forward), provided, no doubt, by the education establishment, are applied in a way that not only offers nothing by way of insight into the historical figures in question, but presumes the speaker's view. It takes as an unstated given that the only reason to oppose SSM is a lack of familiarity and the resulting bigotry.
Even if a homosexual likely exists in any group of 10 (rather than any group of 35), assuming that the orientation necessarily dictated a position on same-sex marriage is ludicrous. For one thing, if Christ is God, then He knows homosexuals personally no matter how rare they are. For another, the disciples' conception of sexuality would have been much different, given their historical placement. For yet another, they certainly weren't interested in the pursuit of self-fulfillment in this world.
But most of all, Ms. Maryanne grants, without giving indication that she's aware of doing so, the underlying argument of SSM advocates: that the institution of marriage is less a family structure than an acknowledgement of emotional connection and sexual intimacy. The question is what Jesus would have suggested marriage should be — how its public practice would have fit within His larger teachings.
That's certainly a matter of legitimate debate. But Maryanne's explication (as presented) doesn't address it, nor does she argue what we should believe marriage should be and why. Instead, she uses a dubious statistical claim to dismiss the statements of her Church; that is the basis for her dissent from it in the second most prominent newspaper in the United States.
Thus do many liberals respond to the basic question at hand — What is marriage? — by declaring, "It is what I believe it to be, and you're a bigot if you disagree."
ADDENDUM:
In the comments section to this post, Jeremiah Lewis responds well to a line above that I didn't take the extra time to hone, but should have. Noting my mention of the disciples' interest in "the pursuit of self-fulfillment in this world," Jeremiah writes:
Their limited understanding of Jesus' mission led to disagreements as to how they should act with each other. Their squabbling over who would sit at the right and left of Jesus seems more like an argument about who was more important/worthy on earth - it was this very earthly fulfillment that they were after for which Jesus rebuked them.
I agree with this, and I shouldn't have come so close to denying the human impulses of the disciples; those very foibles constitute a large component of Christian theology. The mud through which I attempted to wade too swiftly was between the personal perspective of the individual disciples and their relevance to statements that Jesus would or would not have made. Maybe I just tripped on the difficulty of imagining one of the 12, having dropped everything to follow the Son of God, arguing that he ought to be able to procure the Social Security benefits of a homosexual spouse.
Looking up the passage to which Jeremiah refers (I think) — almost identical in Matthew and Mark — I note that it was well chosen, based on the specific relevance of Jesus' answer to a modern debate weighing individual desire and liberty against a social institution. From Mark:
You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
By now, most people who will read them have taken in the Washington Post comparison of a Red State household and a Blue State household. The parallels are, to put it mildly, problematic.
Rich Tucker, to whom Lane Core links, notes that the media elite "sees liberals as normal people, and conservatives as some strange species from somewhere 'out there'":
This seems like a whitewash. If the paper could find a "typical" red state voter who fit all the stereotypical traits, it ought to have been able to find a "typical" blue stater who did, as well. Maybe a limousine liberal from the Upper East Side ("How could George W. Bush have been elected? Nobody I know voted for him!") Or an anti-war activist who marches for every cause that comes down the pike (there must have been at least one such liberal here in D.C. for the pro-abortion rally this past weekend...)
Instead, as Michael Graham puts it, the liberal piece introduces "a straight, white, blue-collar, never-divorced Catholic couple with two happy, straight adult children... and who don't even drink." I forget who said it, but this brings to mind a comment about Al Gore, that despite his paean to families "joined at the heart," he has a traditional family and, presumably, understands that it provides the optimal structure for raising children and pursuing real happiness as an adult.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the two Wapo pieces is the difference in underlying narrative: journalist David Finkel first accompanies Red Stater Britton Stein through his morning Internet rounds for the conservative talk of the day. We hear a story about the parents' playing a practical joke on their children. Then, we head off to church and hear about community and being "like-minded people." For the closing scene, Finkel follows the Red State father out of the house, leaving the family behind, to go out drinking at Hooters with buddies. (That's the photo accompanying the story online.) Finkel ticks off the rounds, and the suspicous reader can only imagine him, sitting in that bar, anticipating the material to come. Oh well. The dads stopped at four, still articulate, if a little uncareful with their tales about planned-community life.
The Blue State family is introduced — in contrast to the preceding story — as a family: "the Harrison family." The online picture? "Tom and Maryanne Harrison and their daughter, Heather, walk from church to Sunday breakfast in their San Francisco neighborhood." We get anecdotes of handing out dollars to homeless children and realizing — gosh darn it — it just isn't enough: "beyond that one man were dozens of homeless people in the neighborhood, thousands in the city, millions in the country." A job so big, only a big government can accomplish it.
We find out that the empathetic man of the house learned tolerance listening to the stories of fellow participants in a month-long detox program. (Conservatives might suggest that only for a liberal could the lesson of a struggle with alcoholism be the importance of striving for "tolerance toward whatever a person wants to do, even if he wouldn't necessarily do it himself.") For this article, we find out that — believe it or not — the wife has a life and biography as well, one of compassionate activism. The daughter is preparing to be married; the son proposes to a woman during the period of his family's interviews with Finkel.
Apart from these differences of presentation, one could argue endlessly about whether the two families are truly typical of the groups that they are meant to represent. Personally, I find the problem to be that the Harrisons are typical, while the Steins are emblematic. Finkel could easily have found more-emblematic liberals; he could also have found more-typical conservatives. Finkel could have provided more individual and family background for the Steins, and he could have spent more time discussing the environment of the Harrisons. Beyond the problems of San Francisco, is it any less the case that they live among "like-minded people"? If not, how then are they comparably typical?
Because of this imbalance, and because it was such a sure bet, I wasn't going to comment on the series... until I saw Sheila Lennon's take on the Steins:
This town sounds to me like the past, a past I wanted desperately to explore beyond, in the '60s ...Britton Stein, the father of the family and main subject of the piece, is a churchgoing, Drudge-reading, junk-food eating, Fox News watcher.
During the fourth round of beers at Hooter's, he and his friends get to the core of Sugar Land...
This could be Thornton Wilder, writing in 1938. It could be Our Town.
I'm awfully glad it's not mine.
In conformity, they hope to find safety. To me, it sounds like condo hell, living by the rules of the crankiest co-owner.
I want the wild sprouts, the signs of life. I want copper-colored roses and unapproved plants. Spring's dandelions turn my lawn to a field of yellow, with the purple tops of bugleweed following suit. After they're gone, we mow.
I've got news for Ms. Lennon: even here in her home state of Rhode Island — which is pushing out everybody but the rich and the poor — there is "condo hell." Just try to put the wrong-colored shed in my brother-in-law's neighborhood. Similarly, there are, no doubt, Drudge readers who don't keep a meticulous lawn. Even ignoring her presumptions about the relationship between neighborhoods and the politics of the people who inhabit them, I find it worth a chuckle that Lennon includes the following, casually, within her ode to the free-spirited block:
On trash night in my neighborhood, on the curb you can see what everyone's tossing out, and an informal recycling program swings into action.
What is entailed in the garbage inspection and "informal recycling program," I don't know, but such details would have certainly helped Finkel, had he wished to offer a balanced comparison, to offset this:
"The first time I put my trash out, I put it by the curb, and my neighbor came out and said, 'We don't curb our trash here in Sugar Land.' " Lannom says, laughing. "I had some cinch bugs in my front yard or something, my neighbor says, 'Craig, I want to talk to you about your brown patch.' ""It's so predictable here," Stein says.
Sides of a coin.
The Redwood Review poem of the week is "Safe at Home, September 11, 2001," by me.
At a certain point, one moves into the frame of mind that long stretches of enspiriting weather are inconceivable. That life is mostly clouds and rain, with brief interludes of blue skies merely for contrast and temporary respite.
That's not the case, of course. Summer comes. Somehow.
ADDENDUM:
For a while, some distant hue has been lingering in the direction from which the weather comes. It's been difficult to tell whether it's blue or the darker gray of inclement weather. More and more, though, it's looking like a break in the clouds, rather than a deepening of them.
ADDENDUM II:
It was blue. The sun is shining — as it always is beyond the clouds.
Well, my early-morning promise that the blog would be full o' posts today worked out to be more like "full o' post." Sorry 'bout that. It isn't spin (entirely) to explain that I made the call, this morning, to give the Scandinavian marriage numbers time that I might otherwise have devoted to less-comprehensive posts.
By the way, I've a few emails and blog comments on my To Do list for tomorrow, so if you haven't heard from me, you may yet. If late tomorrow hasn't brought response, don't be shy about clearing your virtual throat, so to speak.
For three full weeks, I've held on to Andrew Sullivan's "fisking" of Shelby Steele. To be honest, I had intended to let it slide, at first — not knowing much about Mr. Steele, and believing that the form and style of fisking plays to Sullivan's weaknesses, not his strengths. Fisking his efforts, in turn, is more work than it seems worth. So, rather than reread the thing and offer a polished rebuttal, I thought I'd just (essentially) post the notes that I made a few weeks ago in response to the piece and some related entries on his blog.
If one reads broadly from Sullivan's marriage library, a tacit underscore becomes apparent that seems to hold for many other advocates for SSM: he wants marriage just to be another choice. Homosexuals can live the free, libertine lifestyle, or they can marry. No stigma or objective preference is intended to attach to either. However, for the broader society, marriage is meant to create expectation.
The nature of straight relationships is such that the wilder, multifarious practices that even the "conservative" Sullivan has been known to laud would be detrimental to society. Heterosexuals simply cannot afford to make marriage just another option. A strong cultural expectation of marriage is most important for those whose behavior makes marriage preferable even though it mightn't be what they would choose in a void. A couple whose members thoroughly commit to each other purely as a matter of choice — considering that commitment to be absolutely binding (as Sullivan believes all marriages should be) — are in no need of a public institution, or at least the "spouses" need it less. To get to the point, marriage isn't meant to be a choice, strictly speaking, because those who would choose it don't require incentive, and the real benefit of marriage isn't the perks, but the familial structure for children.
Sullivan flips the emphasis, saying that some straight marriages are childless, so homosexuals' natural childlessness isn't a factor. But he's wrong to disconnect marriage from procreation in such a way. Even leaving aside that the connection still exists in fact, it must continue to exist in principle. Both marriage and procreation may not be individually connected with sex, but it is crucial that they remain connected with each other.
This statement is sure to elicit guffaws from SSM supporters, but marriage is less about whether two heterosexuals do procreate than that, barring relatively uncommon problems, they can. Much has been made of the truism that birth control has disconnected sex from childbirth. However, in terms relative to choices of lifestyle, even birth control does not open the promiscuous "choice" that marriage is meant to foreclose. Most forms of contraception require some degree of control over the circumstances of the sex. With multiple partners, particularly for men, it becomes exponentially more difficult to ensure effectiveness.
Even so, Sullivan might argue, marriage is ultimately about family, and "marriage discrimination" drives wedges into families. It has been my reading experience that Sullivan usually means this to refer to the homosexual adults and their parents and siblings. Most dramatic, in this line, is his periodic reference to figures who oppose same-sex marriage, but who have gay sons and daughters:
When "pro-family" types talk about wedge issues, they don't often concede that one of their wedges is to split families apart. And part of the point of civil marriage for gays is to bring families back together.
It's truly dissonant for a self-proclaimed libertarian to be pushing the concept that government action can confer legitimacy on offsprings' lifestyles in the eyes of their parents — particularly when this is an area in which the libertarian view would actually be correct. To the extent that families' wounds related to homosexuality aren't healed, a marriage ceremony that comes "close enough" to meeting the parents' thwarted visions of their children's futures will be of limited value. Legal accoutrements will be of even less. On the other end, families not currently divided over the issue will not find themselves more not divided because of a government stamp.
Beyond all the policy judgments made at a distance, I wonder if Sullivan, sitting at his computer, staring aimlessly out the window, ever meditates on why parents would work against the immediate interests of their own children. Yeah, there are certain to be instances of parents' lashing out and/or harboring some unspoken hope that preventing the institutional normalization of gay relationships will push their children back toward more-normal lives. But couldn't it be, just maybe, that they believe — also or instead — that the issue is important enough to merit resisting the pull of personal accord?
Kathryn Jean Lopez spent some time observing the tone and temper of the latest pro-abortion rally:
Though the "pro-choice" caricature of a pro-lifer is of a hater — killers of abortionists, oppressors of women — that elitist conventional wisdom (which was very much part of the march on Sunday) ought to be reconsidered. One close look at what went on both on and around the Mall this weekend would be a healthy baby step in that direction.
To be sure, I frequent circles and sources of information that would highlight such things, but it has seemed that even the staunchly pro-life are a bit astonished at the rhetoric of the other side. The "March for Women's Lives" seems to have been only the latest example of what being on the unanticipatedly pressured side of a cultural turn can do to fundamentally untenable worldview. "Those !@#$ haters must die for their lack of compassion!" This must seep out into the culture and help to shape the views of those not devoted to either side.
Some of the statements are bizarre on their surface and increasingly disturbing with the unraveling of each layer of subtext. Do "Menapausal Women Nostalgic for Choice" lament that they can no longer become pregnant because it removes the privilege of killing the resulting children? Was it a condition of Maxine Waters's birth that she be condemned to walking the Earth preaching that others not make the Devil's deal of parenthood?
Patrick Sweeney has a picture of a sign — apparently not excessive by comparison — drawing on the jaw-droppingly unengageable fanaticism of the "anti-war" protests. "Mr. Bush Had Your Mother Chose Abortion More Than 800 American Soldiers And Over 10,000 Iraqi Civilians Would Be Alive Today! Abortion Saves Lives." Patrick makes an astute comment:
Now projecting the personhood of President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, Attorney General Ashcroft, etc. into the unborn child is a bizarre admission of the murderous intent that unites the culture of death with opposition to the Republican party. A celebration of their power to bring death to the unborn. A earnest desire to be free to kill whomever they wish.
Whatever initially drove the abortion movement, it has now become an assertion of power over life and death. And one can't help but believe the quivering fury and tone of political desperation to be the mark of the functional insanity of compounded sin and error. Michael Williams, investigating some of the names from the march, notes the predominance of older women. This is a gray crowd, and people for whom a change of heart would require admission to having killed children and/or helped to facilitate others' ability to do so. As Michael suggests, it is a movement for which defeat could mean retrospective alignment with the threads of evil throughout human history:
Future generations will look back on the 40 million babies killed over the past 30 years -- in America alone -- with disgust and revulsion. A quarter of my generation: dismembered and discarded. And people have the nerve to worry about spotted owls?
We must have compassion for these people, though, because the choice that they currently face is between wrenching contrition and spiraling hatred. Ms. Lopez writes:
One of the women gathered with Silent No More, Lynn Hurley, told me that she had had an abortion in 1971 when she was in college. She knows the pain of abortion and says, "I hurt for the [women marching] who hurt, who have been through abortions themselves. They're probably in denial." She said, "I'm hoping women might see our signs and be touched by them."
For those individual women, we should hope so. But in the long run, more objective good may be accomplished by the signs and slogans of the other side — as people see them and recoil, frightened.
Its absense was palpable, so I won't flatter myself that it was in response to me that Darren Spedale added, to his piece about Scandinavian marriage, some of the hard data that I faulted him for leaving out. Now that we've got some objective numbers to address, it would seem that he's continued to be selective in those that he presents, sometimes attempting to spin the statistics past the breaking point. To start with the mild:
In 1989, at the outset of the partnership law's existence, there were 6.0 heterosexual marriages per 1,000 persons in Denmark, according to Danmarks Statistik, the national statistical organization. By the mid-1990's that number had climbed to 6.8 marriages per 1,000 population, or an increase of just over 10% from 1990. As of 2002, the latest year for which statistics are available, the number of marriages per 1,000 population has increased to 6.93.
What's new is the extension out to 2002. The mildly conspicuous omission is the degree of fluctuation during this time. Furthermore, as I offered for perspective last time, with miniscule native population growth, increases in the per-1,000 marriage rate aren't as significant as they would be in a nation with a more rapidly expanding total population. These are both relatively nitpicking points; that becomes less the case with Spedale's newly offered information about divorce:
Furthermore, the number of heterosexual divorces in 1989 stood at 2.95 per 1,000 population. By the mid-1990's, it was at 2.4 per 1,000, or an approximate 12% decrease in the number of divorces. While that number has increased in recent years to slightly below pre-gay marriage levels (2.72 in 2001 and 2.85 in 2002), the fact that the number of divorces fell during the years following the passage of gay marriage in Denmark demonstrate that heterosexual couples didn't abandon the institution when it was opened up to gays and lesbians, as many on the right predicted.
Admittedly, I wasn't paying attention back then, but I still have no idea who those people "on the right" were who predicted an immediate exodus of straights from the institution of marriage; that sounds a lot like the strawmen being thrown into the current debate. Nonetheless, there is a limited sense — but significant to Spedale's analysis — in which that prediction was realized.
Spedale is correct that the divorce rate in 2002 was "slightly below pre-gay marriage levels" — 2.81 in 1987 and 2.87 in 1988. However, the only data he provides is for 1989, the year SSM was introduced, when the rate was 2.95 per 1,000 of the population. What's especially interesting about this is that, as the by-month data shows, the 435 divorce increase from 1988 to 1989 is more than covered by a surge in November 1989 — the month after the first same-sex marriage. That month, divorces increased by 553 from October and were 479 above the average for the year.
That isn't a factor that I'd bother to include, unprovoked, in my own analysis, but it is interesting that, in using data to mitigate the recent increase in the divorce rate, it may very well be that Spedale relies upon the very phenomenon that he intends to dismiss. (The line graph that the statistics Web site provides for this data shows that the jump was much more than any seasonal boost that might have played a role.)
Spedale goes beyond all of these subtleties, as significant as they may be, when he tries to justify his claim that "divorce rates among gay and lesbian couples is so much lower than rates of divorce among their heterosexual counterparts":
In January of 2004, there were approximately 2468 gay and lesbian couples, or 4936 individuals, in registered partnerships in Denmark, according to Danmarks Statistik. Danmarks Statistik also records 1169 individuals as divorced from these partnerships. (The organization does not carry statistics on the annual number of same-sex divorces.) This means that, at a minimum, 585 same-sex couples have divorced since the gay marriage came into being 15 years ago. This would equate to a divorce rate of approximately 19% of all same-sex couples.However, to be fair, we must assume that a percentage of such 'divorcees' have remarried, taking themselves out of this pool. Nevertheless, even if we assume that 50% of all divorced same-sex couples have remarried in this period of time (unlikely, but possible), then we would calculate that a total of approximately 26% of all same-sex marriages have ended in divorce. Compared to the divorce rate for heterosexual married couples in Denmark, which in 2002 was 41% (or to the U.S. rate, which is closer to 50%), gay and lesbian marriages are indeed more stable than those of heterosexual couples.
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out Spedale's math here. The problem, I ultimately concluded, is that he doesn't "assume that 50%" of divorced homosexuals remarried. That would mean that the same number of same-sex couples had remarried as were still divorced, for a total of 1,170 couples, or 32% of all same-sex marriages. Instead, he got the 26% by multiplying 585 by 1.5, which actually ends up assuming that one-quarter of divorcees remarried. Even 32%, though, is obviously less than 41%; unfortunately, the two percentages measure the divorce rate in incomparable ways. Spedale got the 41% by dividing the number of opposite-sex divorces in 2002 by the number of new marriages in that year. That's a very different measure than the number who have ever been married or divorced.
Before I homogenize the data, I should confess that I have no idea where Spedale got 4,936 SSM individuals in 2004. According to my source, which I believe is his, the number should be 5,577. Thus, his 19% divorce rate should be 17.3%, and his adjusted 26% divorce rate should be 23.9%. From Spedale's perspective, that's even better. Still, applying the same calculations to the numbers of heterosexuals married and divorced as of 2004 (2,154,117 and 405,198), the corresponding divorce rates are 15.8% and 22.0%. Whatever these numbers show, it certainly isn't that "gay and lesbian marriages are indeed more stable than those of heterosexual couples."
And cut the numbers however we may, it is still ridiculous to declare the door closed. We'll see which way Scandinavian marriage and family statistics go, and I can only guess that, deep down, Spedale realizes that it doesn't look good for the argument that he's attempting to make.
The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Manic" by Joe Parillo and Christine Harrington.
"Manic" Joe Parillo, Jazz
Stream (HiFi) 
from Sand Box
Sorry about the light posting yesterday and last night. I had been wrapping up my work around 9:30 p.m., with plans for multiple posts, when an old friend called. Well, he's one of those pals with whom conversations can wend along for unseen hours, so by the time we found a comfortable place to hang up, I just went to bed.
Today, this page should be full o' posts... once the daughter heads to grandma's house in the late morning.
Bruce Carroll applies reason (and reasonableness) to the cause of acquiring marriage rights for his fellow homosexuals. The first step is to admit why the landscape is as it currently is:
But it wasn't the "religious right" or President Bush who started this round of the culture war. It was us.The battle was clearly started by gay activists who adopted the tactic of challenging marriage laws across the country. The battle was joined, of course, by the conservatives now pushing for a federal constitutional amendment.
But we need to step up and admit that the responsibility of the gay marriage debate, good or bad, is squarely on the shoulders and the consciences of the so-called leaders of the Human Rights Campaign, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, Log Cabin Republicans and their ilk.
The accusation that the President was sparking an election-year controversy over a passive gay marriage movement in a cynical ploy to divide the nation for political gain has been among the more bizarre and transparent feints of SSM advocates. And even supporters of SSM, such as Eugene Volokh, through whom I found Carroll's piece, have suggested that the attempt at a legal coup has set back what had already been (in their view) a probable outcome anyway. That, in turn, relates to another of the more bizarre rhetorical ploys of SSM advocates — that the FMA is an attempt to block something that's culturally inevitable while it is still politically possible to do so.
However, the obvious strategy under those circumstances — disavowing all efforts to force the goal prematurely — requires acknowledging something that many gay activists are loath to admit. The most striking idea that Carroll voices is not the dissent from others who share his cause, but this simple bit of honesty (emphasis added):
I told them that while there was a gay-marrying frenzy breaking out in San Francisco, Oregon, and New Paltz, N.Y., most Americans were not at a place to accept this change.
Of course, I'm outside of Carroll's crowd, but it seems to me that he steps right over a gulf between his casual admission that SSM is something new and the polemical demand that it be seen as a right inherent in the concept of marriage. As it happens, I agree with Carroll's suggestion, even apart from any given policy goal:
What is needed is a fundamental and, most importantly, mature awareness campaign across the country about what it is to be a gay or lesbian American today. We all need to be willing to come out of our closets — proverbial or not — and let our friends, family and work colleagues know who we are.Let them know that we pay our taxes just like them. Let them know we experience the ups and downs of daily life just like them. Let them know that we want the same financial, job and relationship security that they enjoy. Let them know that we want to be as tolerant of their long-standing religious beliefs as we want them to be tolerant of ours.
Among my most cherished relationships — some short-lived, some lasting — have been those in which the other person was willing to speak candidly about his or her starkly contrasting experiences and the lessons drawn therefrom. Whether the difference is one of gender, race, or sexuality, sincere discussions that are free of sardonic postures and insecure masks engender an appreciation of shared humanity. And I've found my life and worldview greatly enriched by such conversations.
However, contrary to what Carroll might hope, such empathy won't necessarily translate into agreement on particular issues. Seeing a matter from the perspective of those most affected by it often reinforces the conclusions that had been made at a distance. If somebody else is fully human, well, that same person is only human.
To some of those to whom Carroll directs his advice, the idea that there's anything that merits respect in our view, on the opposing side, will be as odd as the notion that we could possibly hold our beliefs without hating them. Perhaps some SSM advocates realize, whether consciously or deep down, that we on the outside don't hate them, in which case it might be conceivable that we're right.
For this reason, although it represents a risk in more ways than one, I'd say a "mature awareness campaign" that puts our beliefs, preconceptions, and conclusions on the table is good advice for traditionalists, as well.
Paul Cella has written a must-read post about depravity and the First Amendment. It's too good to pull out quotes, but here's a little flavor and a point worth independent consideration:
In short, the class of people that still, even at this late date in the progress of egalitarian leveling, retains a considerable bulk of the political power in this country — that is, traditional families with children — got a good look at what awaits their children from the entertainment industry, and reacted as sober citizens of a republic do to brazen depravity. The revelation could not be undone by all the silver-tongued rhetoric about the First Amendment in the world. Clear-headed parents will not be argued into enslaving their children to vice. A predator is not beheld with equanimity by the prey. ...The faction that captures through some beguiling sophistry the legislation of the country, and removes a large and crucial issue from consideration by placing it above the public debate, has subverted the Constitution; and made of itself the nation's illegitimate Legislator. It is not that free speech should be obliterated, but rather that its lineaments should be subject, like every other issue between men of good faith, to the deliberation and scrutiny of the Republic — as, indeed, it has usually been — with the attendant imperfections and errancy of any activity of men here below.
(via Craig Henry)
Jeff Miller offers yet another example that Canada continues to slip into surreality:
Homeschooling parents in a Canadian province have been ordered to stop using religious-based materials or other "unofficial" resources when they teach their children at home. ...The British Columbia Education Ministry insists the order is merely a "clarification" of the rules it laid out in September 2002, which said distance-education students had to follow the same rules as regular students. ...
With regard to faith-based resources, it stated: "Districts must ensure that students are not using religious materials or resources as part of the educational program and that parents are not being reimbursed for using religious materials or resources with students."
Doesn't this seem like exactly the sort of outcome that would be dismissed, if predicted beforehand, into the "don't be ridiculous you paranoid religious nut" category? What has apparently happened is that the Langley school district created a program to enable it to continue collecting per-student funding of $5,408 by offering homeschooling parents about $600 (or about 11% of the money attached to their children) and a provincial certificate upon graduation.
Only in an environment of bureaucratic greed and secular fundamentalism is such a statement as this possible:
"If a district receives full funding for a student, the student is not being home-schooled," the [British Columbia Education Ministry ] stated.
Fair enough. How about sending the full $5,408 directly to the home-schools?
The title of this post is a line from Rev. William Murdoch, director the New England Province for the Anglican Communion Network, with which Providence Journal religion writer Richard Dujardin ended a piece about Rhode Island Episcopalian parishes seeking a link to the Anglican Communion other than the U.S. Episcopalian Church. One-third of Rhode Island (Rhode Island!) parishes are apparently interested. That minority in Rhode Island is, however, part of a global majority:
"We are at a situation where 31 of the world's 38 Anglican primates already declared themselves out of communion with the U.S. Episcopal Church," said the Rev. Canon Jonathan Ostman, rector of St. John the Evangelist Church, in Newport.
As a Rhode Islander, I'm mostly happy to find evidence of good sense among my fellow citizens:
Geoffrey Milner, a member of St. Mary's Church in Warwick, nearly broke down in tears, saying that he was doing this for the sake of the children, recognizing that for them to attain eternal life they must be given the armor of truth, not the "nice feel-good stuff" that is not going to save them."This is only the tip of the iceberg," said the Rev. Mark Galloway, rector of the host church and the only priest in the entire delegation of priests and lay deputies from New England to vote against Robinson's ordination at the General Convention last summer in Minneapolis.
Since the convention, he said, he's been berated and labeled a bigot, even though he and his wife have a homosexual friend they once took into their home and he has welcomed homosexuals into his church. It is gotten to the point, he said, where the marginalization of those opposed to the latest cultural trends has become a fait accompli.
As a Roman Catholic, I'd say that this is just further evidence that the most significant divide in Christendom cuts across denominations. Only time will tell if these trends represent a stage on the way toward a small-c catholic Church, as chunks of every individual Church fall into the roiling sea of the secular culture's ideological demands.
Lane Core has been keeping an eye on politics, generally, and John Kerry specifically. For posterity's sake, he's ensured that Kerry's 1971 Vietnam testimony is available as a clean and readable PDF. (Note: that link goes to an html page.)
I'm starting to wonder how the Internet is affecting the behavior of future John Kerrys. Statements can no longer be made with the understanding that they'll disappear into niches of the country, requiring effort to find them. Demand for content can just about disappear for 30 years, but interested parties will still be able to access it as if it had been posted the week before.
In a comment to a post on Tuesday, reader Fitz asks:
I would submit - concerning the general flow of this conversation - that the gay "marriage" battle is really the last battle in the culture war.By that I mean - to lose this engagement is to answer many of the questions we struggle with.
To lose this battle is to presuppose a disengagement with the culture at large. This will dispirit the troops concerning coming battles over the "right" to die, legalized prostitution, abortion, educational implementation of the liberal agenda, etc.
Furthermore - losing this battle will cement the idea of permissible judicial supremacy over our most important moral battles. This will encourage our robed masters and their new class supporter's - giving them carte blanche to implement their agenda further (really, who will oppose them after this huge defeat).
In many ways they have already won - The lack of outrage amongst the legal elites in calling biology and reproduction "No rational basis" is indicative of their supremacy amongst the ruling class.
My question to you Mr. Katz is - Do you disagree with my thesis? and if the answer is No, then why are you (and the rest of us) not throwing all our efforts behind opposing this latest front? (or are you?)
The first thing to note is that I spend more time than I have to spare discussing, researching, thinking, and writing about same sex marriage. And that, ultimately, is where I've assessed that I can personally do the most good. I can't answer for others in their own judgments about how much to do and in what way. Whatever the case for any particular individual, it must be said that it ain't easy to take a stand. I'm pretty sure I've lost some friends and professional good will as a result of mine. But that's how it goes.
Be my personal sacrifices what they may, taking incrementally broader views leave plenty of room for hope no matter the outcome with this issue. Over the past half-decade or so, folks have been starting to wake up to what has been lost in our culture's rush from traditional principles and practices — and to the need to defend it. The fight over same-sex marriage, in that context, is a battle at the turning point.
If traditionalists lose it, it may prove to have been a parting victory for the abating zeitgeist — a final bit of havoc wreaked by the defeated ethos. Recovery will be more difficult as a result, but not impossible. An optimist might suggest that, given the nature of the trend that we, for our part, are encouraging, the extra work might ultimately be for the good.
In its legal aspect, defeat needn't mean that the judiciary will not face ever-increasing hostilities in its bids for power. The fact of the matter is that the citizenry hasn't really begun to push back against the robed oligarchs. As that poll of Evangelicals illustrates (properly read — ahem), many people who oppose changing the definition of marriage do not fully appreciate the forces at play. Furthermore, SSM advocates such as Andrew Sullivan have devoted a sizable portion of their efforts to declaring that nothing in the law or legal system will nationalize SSM if the people don't want it. Their reactions when they are proven wrong (as I suspect they know they will be), and just the fact of their being proven wrong, will help to cut through the obfuscations that loosen the judiciary's leash, such as carefully spun federalist rhetoric.
Abortion, by way of comparison, came during a completely different era, legally and culturally. It may very well be that the two issues, if SSM is nationalized by the courts, bookend the period of people's tolerance for this sort of behavior from that branch. For one thing, a much broader segment of society was implicated in Roe v. Wade, particularly as time went on. After-the-fact resistance to same-sex marriage will not force citizens to face the question of whether they murdered their offspring, or advocated for the ability of others to do so.
In its cultural aspect, the war is not lost because there are other theaters in which to fight it. Fitz gets to the real variable, however, when he mentions morale. We ought to hold out hope, should this legal battle be lost, that it is possible to use the caused turbulence to strengthen other aspects of marriage. A successful reaffirmation of the lifetime commitment and of monogamy in the culture and (preferably) in the law would limit the ill effects of same-sex marriage, and might even provide an opening for society to transform the social understanding of homosexuality.
The outcome, under any circumstances, is far from certain. Still, we can take comfort in the observation that these things run in cycles. As I've stated before, such principles as those crystallized in traditional marriage seem to have a way of coming around again, even if it must occur after our society as currently constituted collapses.
And even if this is the last cycle... well, I'm a Christian believer, and therefore, even pessimism about particulars can be a source of optimism.
Well, for anybody who's curious, my little fundraising venture brought in a grand total of $0.00. That's fine; I just like to rattle my cup occasionally to see what happens, and my readership still isn't on the level at which other bloggers seem to start earning money. It might be wise, nonetheless, for me to raise my threshold for such extensive posts as the one on Scandinavian marriage.
But...
I just paid my weekly bills, and thanks to the check to Uncle Sam earlier this month, I'm $25 short for the month. I figure I've got about $5 of spare change in my coffee can. If you'd like to help me make up the difference please do. If not, hey, I understand. Times're rough all around, as they say.
ADDENDUM (04/25/04 12:05 a.m.):
Before I head off to bed, I want to post a quick thank you to the two people who've helped me cover this month's deficit, even leaving the coffee can free of all but a very light skim. Notes of profuse thanks will go out tomorrow, but I thought it important to avoid encouraging further donations on false pretenses.
Bills are relentless, of course, and I'm still a long way from avoiding the fees incurred by dipping below the monthly minimum for my bank account, so further contributions would still be extremely welcome. But the bills can be paid, and for that, I'm beyond grateful.
I'll do my best to keep my budget balanced, henceforth.
Joseph D'Hippolito quotes, in the Jerusalem Post, Civilita Cattolica vice-director and political commentator, Fr. Michele Simone:
For Simone, invading Iraq "lent support to the impression that the West... intends a new colonization of Islamic countries, aimed at taking control of their oil, on the pretext of wanting to bring 'democracy'... without realizing that, at least for Islamic fundamentalism, 'democracy' takes the sovereignty away from Allah and transfers it to the 'people,' which for a Muslim believer is an act of 'impiety.' "
Joseph's article focuses on an "intellectual schizophrenia" within the Catholic Church, but the same struggle plays out across Western society. The difficulties that the West is having concocting an approach to the Islamic world may be, in large part, the result of people's tendencies to see among others what they see among themselves and to believe that others are behaving as they, themselves, would behave.
To the extent that those in the Middle East believe the West is bent on dictatorial rule, it is because that is the regime under which they have lived. Similarly, those who have been such rulers, believe that we seek to take over their dominion for our own benefit, just as they would like to conquer the West for their own. If democracy "takes the sovereignty away from Allah," it does so by taking power from Allah's self-appointed spokesmen.
On our end, folks who encourage a soft approach for handling the Middle East believe that blather about universal equivalence and respect for differences, by which the Western elite has conquered its own masses, will wend its way into the struggle with Islamic society. At best, this strategy would require centuries of sitting through low-grade casualties; with the advent of technologies to murder thousands and millions of people at a time, the "at worst" is much more likely.
Luckily, the wall of blather had already been proving ill suited to the United States, which was beginning to push back against the pressure of creeping socialism even before 9/11. Belief in absolute truths, if maintained, is proof against artificial enclosure. Unfortunately, the elite view has overtaken many of those who are meant to be the caretakers of our Truth. In a broad view, it is the stark choice between possible responses that radical Islam presents to the West — precisely along lines of internecine discord — that makes our decision of such critical importance.
Religious leaders should be resolute in a belief that God's sovereignty exists through "the people" — and impressions be damned. Unfortunately, the West has already been using a pretext of democracy — involving its form but not its substance — to chip away at this sovereignty in the name of material wealth and physical comforts (symbolized, if you like, in oil).
As for the struggle across cultures, sometimes the only way that understanding can bridge a barrier of mutual incomprehension is for one side to act. Think of a dog with a thorn in its paw; only after the stranger holds it down and removes the thorn will it realize the good intentions. That outcome is much preferable, all around, to the opposite intention of shared pain.
In addition to posting a touching statement by John McCain, Marc Comtois writes:
[Pat Tillman's] death is no more tragic than the hundreds of others, but his is an example of someone who had it all, but gave it up to serve his country. He is only one example of those who fight for us.
The reminder is well taken and important to make. However, a compatible point that I haven't seen made is that it's probable that Tillman played, for the average enlistee, the same role that stars play for the average American, when a real or perceived connection exists. Although their decision to serve their country requires no additional objective or social validation, that somebody leaves a privileged life behind in order to stand at their side surely helps to validate that decision on a personal level.
It may be his name and his face that will be seen everywhere for the next few weeks, but it is no less all of the rest of our bearers of freedom whom we honor.
Wondering why the media seems more inclined to remember Vietnam than 9/11, Patrick Sweeney asks:
al Qaeda has not been crushed. If we think this is Vietnam, then when the last building in New York or Washington is encircled by terrorists as the American embassy was encircled in Saigon -- where are WE going to fly off to in the helicopter?
It's a good question. Although it's not universally applicable, I can't shake the feeling that many in the media and a large segment of the population just refuse to believe that terrorists could strike again. Sometimes it seems they don't really believe that they've struck before.
It's hard to understand why anybody would oppose socialized, government-run, universal healthcare when Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) puts it like this:
At the crux of any meaningful health-care reform must be a commitment from the government to act in the best interest of its citizens. A national template for this type of coverage already exists: the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). It manages health insurance for more than 8 million federal employees, retirees and dependents. This program, composed of private insurance carriers, is administered by the federal government, which assumes responsibility for approving or disapproving carriers, negotiating benefit and rate changes, and auditing carriers' operations under the law.With administrative costs of less than 1 percent (compared with private-sector costs that can reach 30 percent), and a below-average annual premium increase, the government can offer a wide variety of choices and protections to its employees.
The system is funded by the taxpayers.
On second thought, how anybody can conclude from the political system and healthcare situation in Rhode Island that what is needed is further regulation and a government-run healthcare monopoly is beyond me. For some reason, this style of thinking seems to be related to that which believes that a system managing healthcare for 2.8% of the population — paid for by the other 97.2% — could simply be expanded to cover everybody.
Hey, if everybody's going to pay for everybody's healthcare, why not just insist that everybody pays for their own? That 1% (or whatever) administrative fee must be a powerful policy incentive...
So Sheila Lennon has a survey on her Providence Journal blog, asking the following question:
The Bush Administration has banned news coverage of dead soldiers' homecomings at all military bases. The administration argues that this is done out of respect for those killed. Critics say it's an attempt to downplay the deaths of those killed. What do you think?
Unsurprisingly, the responses are running 74% to 22% against the policy. What is surprising is that I had to go out of my way to find out the running results. You have to be a registered user to take the survey, and every time I attempted to log in, I was rerouted to the sign-in form. Earlier this morning, thinking that it must have been a glitch, I decided to try again later.
Well, later came, and the rerouting continued, so I thought I'd try reregistering with another email address. And whataya know... it worked. Moreover, my original email address works for other content. So, unless I'm experiencing some weird technical quirk, I am blocked from taking Ms. Lennon's survey. It's true that there's also a comment feature, but it's anonymous, and comes with the disclaimer that "Comments will be previewed before posting." Not that I'd have said anything that might be considered a right-wing parallel to this (not out of place) comment, published at 10:02:56 today:
Bush is a draft-dodging lying moron and should resign immediately taking his greedy cabinet with him. We can hold a special election in a heartbeat and get us out of this mess he made in Iraq.
My being banned is especially curious, considering the subject of the survey. I wonder what the two commenters who've called the no-photo policy censorship would say.
ADDENDUM:
Just two quick responses to specific comments that have been left. One person says, "'Disagree' is just not strong enough....Show Americans the consequences of war - the 'good' and the 'bad.'" I could hardly agree more. Along with the running, front-page tallies of fatalities and terrorist attacks, the media should be investigating all of the personal interest pieces that would give citizens a sense of the good that is being accomplished in Iraq, despite the hardships.
Another commenter, believing the homecomings should be shown, correctly reminds everybody, "These are people, not numbers." Of course, they aren't flag-draped boxes, either.
The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "A The Bronwyn Tale," by Andrew McNabb.
The legalization of same-sex marriage does not of itself cause some cosmic shift in people's attitudes about marriage. The day after the ink dries on legislation or a judicial ruling, divorce lawyers' phones won't ring off the hook and unmarried couples won't give birth to vast broods. However, the legalization of same-sex marriage is a definitive marker — the bottom line of how a society defines marriage and its purposes.
Therefore, it necessarily arrives as part of a progression, not as a bolt from the cultural blue. This is not to say that the "yes" vote doesn't bring a significant shift; accepting marriages between two men or two women establishes a manifest illustration that, whatever the essence of marriage is, it doesn't follow from the unique complement of man and woman.
Beyond the intangibles of gender difference, couples of opposite sex can uniquely be the biological parents of shared children. Tying those parents to those children is a crucial social objective. And to the degree to which denial of marriage's role in this objective is codified into law — establishing rights and privileges for others — it removes marriage as a mechanism to achieve it.
This biological and psychological reality holds no matter the culture in question. Therefore, it would be a waste of time to argue with Andrew Sullivan's assertion that "the legal and cultural norms around coupling and family are very, very different in Scandinavia than in the U.S." Even letting slide his perennial attempts to use that region as a model and example in his advocacy for SSM in the United States, one can suggest that damage to the institution of marriage would only be more profoundly harmful on our shores, where (Sullivan admits) "civil marriage remains... the privileged organizing unit for coupling and rearing children."
However, Sullivan cannot be ignored in his attempts to argue that one area of difference is that Scandinavian citizens can achieve the familial benefits of marriage without entering into the institution per se. He quotes from correspondence with researcher Darren Spedale:
Couples in Scandinavia who have chosen to spend their lives together without a marriage certificate often plan for an otherwise traditional family structure, including children. Thus, the 'out-of-wedlock births' that Kurtz refers to in Scandinavia are children who are wanted by their parents... Probably the most telling proof of this is the incredibly low number of Scandinavian children available for adoption each year. In Denmark, for example, only about 25 Danish children are available for adoption each year in the entire country. ... Kurtz's claim that 'rising rates of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births stand as proxy for rising rates of family dissolution' is therefore misleading.
Perhaps I'm not alone in finding it suspicious that Spedale seeks to replace cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births with adoption as a bellwether of family dissolution. Low numbers of children put up for adoption are to be expected in societies in which parents who would be willing to remove their children from their lives can kill them before they're born. As I highlighted in a post with extensive graphs on these matters, between approximately 11% (Netherlands) and 26% (Sweden) of all children conceived in the region were aborted in 2000. This was up from rates in the same bookend countries of approximately 2% and 16% in 1970.
More to the point, however, Spedale presumes too much in implying that "family dissolution" requires that all parties, including the children, go their separate ways:
The only thing that such statistics demonstrate is a continuing shift in the Scandinavian countries to permanent relationships of families in a traditional family structure (i.e., with children), who don't hold a marriage license. Kurtz fails to prove any connection whatsoever between unmarried couples and family dissolution.
Certainly, a problem faces Mr. Kurtz in that cohabiting families are a bit more difficult to track. For one thing, without the expectation that parents will be married, divorce rates and statistics about whether children live with their own parents cannot easily be combined. Examining statistics of Danish childrens' households, it is heartening that 74.8% of children still lived with their own mothers and fathers in 2001, even if that was down from 75.9% in 1991. The picture begins to tint, however, when one notes that the number of children living with a single mother was up 11% over that period.
Raw numbers of children are tricky for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they can go up in every category, leaving one to compare rates of increase for small and large numbers alike. The number of children living with their own parents, for example, was up 5%, or 41,569 kids, while the number of children living with their recoupled mothers was up 18%, or 13,203 kids. All in all, those 41,569 additional children living with their own parents compares with 28,763 additional children whose original families dissolved.
Secondly, raw numbers of children are skewed by the tendency of traditional families to be larger. To understand this dynamic, consider the data by household type, which is a bit more worrying. In 2001, for homes with one child, unmarried parents (combining all registered partnerships, "consensual unions," and cohabiting couples) amounted to 40.6% the number of married households, while single parent households (either mother or father) amounted to 49.2% of the number of married households. So the total one-child households that didn't involve marriage was 89.8% the size of the total households that did. For homes with two children, the unmarried total was 23.7% the size of married, and the single parent total was 19.2% — meaning that marriage-less households were 42.9% the total for married. For homes with three or more children, the numbers are 16.4% and 13.9%, generating a total no-marriage to marriage ratio of 30.3%.
For a visual sense of what this means, consider the following graphic. The solid bars are the actual numbers in each category for 2001.
Note not only that there are more married two-child households than one-child, but also that the distance increases as described above. The outlined boxes give some historical perspective, as the relevant numbers for 1991. It isn't clear that the trend is of families with children remaining the same, only dispensing with the marital formality, as Spedale suggests. If that were the case, losses in the married category would be made up more directly in the unmarried couple category.
Although there may have been some degree of this in the '90s, comparing the percentage change of the total numbers suggests that the arrangement could be culturally and individually fleeting. Larger families are likely to be older, with a cultural view formed during an earlier period, meaning that the parents absorbed the meaning of marriage, even if they don't have a license. Moreover, larger unmarried families would seem likely to include more reshuffled children, because (for one thing) large nuclear families began earlier in the trend away from marriage.
In the following figure, the solid bars represent the difference that you see in the first figure — the change from 1991 to 2001.
Looking just at the solid columns, you can see that marriage is decreasing among one-child households, but leveling off then increasing for additional children. However, the other family types are increasing at a faster rate. Most disturbing of all are the outlined boxes, which show the percentage change in total households from 1991 to 2004. Single-parent households are by far the most rapidly expanding group for families with multiple children.
What it looks like to me is that there's a reason that it's widely accepted among sociologists that cohabitation isn't stable. Those who are serious will get married; those who are not will separate. And unfortunately, the rate of the latter is increasing more than the rate of the former. Combined with the fact that individual children are ever-more-likely to live without both of their biological parents, and Sullivan would seem to be ill advised to count on the "social conservatism" of Scandinavians. This is especially true when it is considered that, as I showed in the context of births and abortions, Denmark is the most-improving nation in the region.
Sullivan shifts his discussion to Norway (link in original):
It's also true that in the period Kurtz is concerned about the number of marriages in Norway increased by almost 25 percent from 20,161 in 1993 to 26,425 in 1999. How does that square with the "death of marriage"?
Let's get fairness out of the way first: for some reason, Sullivan added the data for marriages abroad to a total that already included them, so the actual numbers are 18,741 and 23,456, which represents an increase of just over 25%. I've no reason to quibble with that, as I believe there's a very real chance that the public battle over same-sex marriage gives the whole institution a temporary boost, because people are considering what marriage means, overall and for themselves. What's peculiar is that Sullivan (or somebody) had to dig to get the table that ends at 1999, and I'm not sure why he believes that Kurtz is only "concerned about" that period.
The latest table goes all the way to 2002, when there were 24,069 marriages. I'm not sufficiently familiar with what's going on in that country to know why it's so, but the marriage numbers have been volatile this decade, up to 25,356 in 2000 and down to 22,967 in 2001. That blip was in large part due to fluctuations in the number of church weddings, which might be consistent with my boost hypothesis. However, the 2002 increase was more evenly divided between religious and civil. Whatever the case, one can discern how susceptible the relatively tiny totals are to distortion of trends by the fact that one could pick five-year gaps during which marriages increased by 25% or by 0%.
One more bit of numerical flimflammery that's worth noting involves this from Spedale:
This solemn approach towards, and respect for, entering into the institution of marriage also explains why divorce rates among gay and lesbian couples is so much lower than rates of divorce among their heterosexual counterparts.
Sullivan emphasizes the point, writing, "Yes, you read that right." But who knows what we're reading; Spedale offers no numbers, let alone a source for numbers. So let's use the numbers that Sullivan's Norway source provides. Although there's no corresponding table, the main report about divorces and separation notes that there were 44 same-sex divorces and 77 same-sex separations in 2002. Since I wasn't able to find any historical data, let's be generous and assume that 2002 was the first year during which Norwegian same-sex couples divorced. Thus, we'll compare the 44 divorces to the 1,412 same-sex partnerships that had been contracted in the previous decade.
This source calculates the heterosexual "divorce rate" per 1,000 married women. In Norway for 2002, it was 11.9. Calculating the per-1,000 number for same-sex divorces, we get 31.2, which is two-and-a-half times the divorce rate of heterosexual marriages. And, remember, this assumes that there had never been a same-sex divorce in Norway before that year. If 44 same-sex couples had divorced every year for the past ten, there would only have been 972 of them by that point, and their divorce rate would be 45.3.
But more than all of the number games, what bothers me about Sullivan's latest spin is this:
Between 1994 and 1999, there were a total of five registered same-sex partnerships in the county Kurtz cites. Kurtz wants to explain the shift in that county's heterosexual conduct by citing a mere ten people?
Variations of this statement have been made — and rebutted — so many times over the past year that I'm beginning to think those who make it don't really listen for an answer. It isn't the actual number of same-sex marriages that creates an issue; those who say it hurts my marriage not at all if two homosexuals marry are correct. At the same time, those 10 folks in that county, even the 1,412 folks in all of Norway, didn't change the law all on their own. What preceded their marriages was a final push of the socially understood meaning and purpose of marriage to the point at which gender became irrelevant. The effects will take decades to play out, and none yet can claim definitive conclusions. But frankly, the numbers don't give much reason for optimism — certainly not enough to emulate the policy here across the pond.
ADDENDUM:
Apparently, I wasn't alone in thinking Spedale's appeal to low adoption rates to be suspicious. Here's Eve Tushnet:
Low rates of babies placed for adoption = strong family culture??? Has Spedale ever spent any time in an American inner city? Many, many American communities have exceptionally low marriage rates and a strong stigma against placing your baby for adoption. Those are the families of "fatherless America," not models of marriageless bliss.
ADDENDUM II:
Sullivan has linked to Spedale's full response to Kurtz. To cut to the chase, I'm not impressed. The great bulk of its content is advocacy fluff (e.g., about "respect" and "tolerance"), a strange belief that SSM must be working because the politicians would have modified or removed it otherwise, and snide remarks about how Spedale actually conducted dozens of interviews, whereas Kurtz mostly studied numbers covering entire populations.
In fact, numbers are sparse and selectively applied in Spedale's lengthy essay. We learn that, in 1996, "before the registered partnership law was introduced, approximately 50% of heterosexual couples in Iceland with children were already living together as permanent partners without a marriage certificate." We get the adoption number cited above. And then we get this:
In 1990, at the outset of the partnership law's existence, there were 6.1 heterosexual marriages per 1,000 persons in Denmark. By the mid-1990's (1996), that number had climbed to 6.8 marriages per 1,000 population, or an increase of just over 10% from 1990.Furthermore, the number of heterosexual divorces in 1990 stood at 2.7 per 1,000 population. By the mid-1990's, it was at 2.4 per 1,000, or an approximate 12% decrease in the number of divorces.
What's peculiar, here, is that Spedale opens his essay proclaiming that "15 years after the first of these countries (Denmark) legalized gay marriage in the form of registered partnerships, the results are in." He ends suggesting that this "15-year history with gay marriage" allows us to "close the door on Stanley Kurtz's supposed argument that gay marriage in Scandinavia has had a negative impact on the institution of marriage." If that's the case, why offer only data from the first six of those fifteen years?
See for yourself why. Since 1996, this marriage rate per 1,000 has fluctuated back down to 6.5 (1997), up to 7.2 (2000), and in 2002 rested at 6.9. (Incidentally, between 1996 and 2002, Denmark's population increased only 2.2%, or 117,327 people, 79,572 of whom were immigrants not canceled out by emigrants. That leaves native population growth of only 37,755, if I'm not missing anything.)
More importantly, and less mixed up with other factors, is the trend in divorce. It's true that the number of divorces decreased from 13,731 in 1990 to 12,776 in 1996. However, they've since increased steadily each year, and in 2002, there were 15,304. That's 2.85 per 1,000 of the total population — up 5.6% from 1990's 2.7, and up 18.8% from 1996's 2.4.
Sorry Darren, I don't think the door can be close just yet. What's the hurry?
ADDENDUM III:
Spedale has added some statistical meat to his essay. I've addressed it here.
The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "How to Pet a Cat," by Lori Dillman.
Sheila Lennon directs readers' attention to establishment-media editor Tom Mangan's thoughts about the photo of flag-draped coffins printed by the Seattle Times (emphasis in original):
So, yeah, it's a storytelling photo. But what's the story? That we're shipping our dead home by airplane? Everybody who cares already knows that. That our soldiers have been dying in a war? Given the hornet's nest they're serving in, it could be argued that the biggest news is not how many are dead, but how many are still alive. ...There's another story here that isn't so high-minded. It's about how we go with a photo like that because we have it and we're reasonably certain nobody else does. And because we know the authorities don't want us to publish it. The Pentagon/White House have forbidden us from taking pictures of coffins arriving home from the war, which instantly puts the thought in my head, "I'm running the first good flag-draped coffin pic I get, just to show those bastards they can't tell me what pictures I put in my paper." ...
This will always happen, it's the nature of the business. Still, I think people will respect us a lot more if we dump the pieties and just tell 'em: "look, it was a great scoop, and you'd have done the same if you'd been in my shoes." Otherwise we sound like politicians making the usual empty pronouncements.
Even with such forthright explanations, however, the press will still give the impression of rebellious teenagers — who happen to have very prominent podiums from which to stick it to the "authorities." The media's problem, in this respect, requires a much more fundamental, institutional change. In short, they would have to address the fact that very few people actually believe them when they say they run with such images to "honor the fallen."
Part of the solution might be to do a better job of respecting enlisted men and women — and the class from which they come — while they're still alive.
ADDENDUM:
Just a little disclaimer, here: I don't feel that the pieces of Mangan's post that I quoted give an accurate feel for the subtleties of what he's saying. I didn't lose much, but for a basis to react in more than just the specific way that I've done here, you should read the whole thing.
Too late, when prudence craves alliance with
Those who claim support to be contingent,
We find, as oft we do from restive kith:
Though they face our foes, they're retromingent.
[Why should only Derbyshire get to play?]
Orisinal's latest game is the best to have been posted on the site in a while. It takes a moment to get the idea, but then it's addictive.
(Hint: you have to enclose only like-colored bug thingies within a shape. They will merge, and when there's only one of each color, the level is finished.)
ADDENDUM:
Unfortunately, there aren't very many levels, so the game ends a bit too quickly once you get the knack. Thereafter, motivation for playing is entirely score-related, something that's never appealed to me. Forget score! I want a goal. That's what made Orisinal's three best games so far — The Amazing Dare-Dozen, The Runaway Train, and The Bottom of the Sea — so much more compelling than the rest, all of which are aesthetically pleasing.
One day I'll learn how to make these things... one day.
Without much comment, Andrew Sullivan notes that evangelicals are questioning the accuracy of that PBS poll that found only moderate enthusiasm for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as man-woman. From the American Family Association:
The poll was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research in recent weeks for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and U.S. News & World Report. The results of the poll, which were widely publicized, indicated that by a margin of 52 to 41 percent, Evangelicals prefer to leave the issue of same-sex marriage up to the states rather than amend the U.S. Constitution.The fact that a New York Times poll in March said 59 percent of the general population supports a Federal Marriage Amendment caused many to question the polling group's definition of "Evangelical."
Russell Moore, a senior officials at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says the survey is off target because the authors assumed self-professing Evangelicals are true Evangelicals. He tells Baptist Press that incredibly, 45 percent of those so-called Evangelicals in the survey disagreed with the statement that "only born-again Christians go to heaven."
More than any question of who does or does not have a right to the moniker "Evangelical," this disparity was caused by differences in the actual questions. Once again, here is the question that garnered the controversial response rate (I even took the time to let Acrobat kick in to double-check the PDF):
Should the U.S. Constitution be amended to ban gay marriage, or is it enough to pr
