On my list of intended posts is a response to some comment-section speculation about why folks would spend so much time opposing same-sex marriage — or any other aspect of the "gay rights" movement, for that matter. The insinuation is that the interest is peculiar unless there's some hidden motivation of the sort in which Freudians specialize.
One consequence of that sort of thinking relates to the defense of the mainstream media and academics as "objective": those taking liberal views, since they're obviously correct, can assess things objectively, while those taking opposing views must have dark ulterior motives. The analysis of experts, scholars, and writers who disagree with the Objective Assessment must be tainted. Similarly, those who support same-sex marriage can do so through plain logic, but those who oppose have twisted hearts distorting their thoughts.
Personally, that sort of linkage is what has pulled me ever more deeply into the same-sex marriage debate. It draws on the essences of so many aspects of humanity and human society.
As I suggested, I'm still giving thought to the difference of essences when it comes to motivation to argue against gay causes. For the moment, however, I just wanted to marvel at the impossibility of handling the same-sex marriage debate apart from broader arguments about the functioning (and proper functions) of our society.
In a post on Anchor Rising, I posited that human nature creates a marketplace that incorporates every aspect of society, from economics to familial culture to religion. Liberal welfare policies ignore this marketplace and the interaction of culture and economics, leading to quick-fix solutions (taking money to give money) that exacerbate the problem they seek to resolve.
It's a quick fix to raise the income bar to public assistance for childcare (for example) in order to help two-income families and divorcées. Unfortunately, it also raises the income level at which families have financial incentive for both spouses to work. The market dynamics of workforce size then push salaries toward half the natural level of household incomes, increasing the necessity of two-income families. The daily life created under these circumstances strains relationships and serves to undermine the unity of the family, increasing divorces.
Now apply this environment to the same-sex marriage debate. One of the "conservative" arguments for same-sex marriage is that there will no longer be any need for "marriage-lite" designations that are intended for homosexuals but that wind up being available to heterosexuals. Change the definition of marriage such that homosexuals can marry, and heterosexuals will lose the option of alternative designations with less cultural weight.
The gamble is that the same sort of cultural barrier that keeps opposite-sex acquaintances from getting married will keep same-sex friends from getting married. If possible, I think that would entail an undesirable cultural suspicion of close friendships that mirror marriage in some respects (e.g., cohabitation) — just look at the new eye that modern society brings to the historical practice of sharing a bed. Given the vastness of heterosexuals' majority, however, I don't think preservation of marriage via full sexualization of same-sex relationships likely, and it is made even less so by the solidifying economic norm of the two-income family.
Consequently, the availability of same-sex marriage will be exploited by same-sex acquaintances. Two men or women who've had their expectations of marriage shattered already will be particularly prone to redefine the institution to fit their own purposes. That leaves only those other relationships that would continue to be barred from marriage (say, for example, single-parent plus adult child households), and they have all the claims of mutual care and support that homosexuals do, thus deserving the quick fix of marriage rights.
The latest Notes & Commentary essay by Maureen Mullarkey is "An American in Paris; Another on Long Island," reviewing John Dubrow at Lori Bookstein Fine Arts and Jane Freilicher at Tibor de Nagy.
Shortly after 9/11 — back when the discussion was still the amount of harm "U.S. sanctions" were doing to the people of Iraq — the urge to call local late-morning radio talk host Steve Kass in order to respond to another caller's comments proved too strong to resist.
Kass and I agreed that Saddam Hussein was the problem, but when I answered "get him out of there" to some question or other, Kass's response was, "Well..." A little over three year's later, and not only has that nigh unmentionable solution come to pass, but Iraq has moved on to the next step: elections.
With all of the shameful efforts among some in the West to wear down our resolve, it's easy to lose sight of reality in the political fog. Sometimes we reach moments, such as the victory and then elections in Afghanistan and the military victory in Iraq, that revive our belief that our nation is moving forward with the steps that need to be taken to address the linked threats of terrorism and Islamofascism.
The elections in Iraq today offered another such moment, and although we can be sure that the naysayers and anti-American zealots will continue in their efforts to foment an exhausting negativity, we can be very proud indeed of our countrymen who've risked so much to make the world a better place for all of us, of those leaders who've continued doing what's right even when it might not be what's easy, and of the Iraqis, themselves, for standing with us by standing up for themselves.
Over on Anchor Rising, I've marked the occasion by republishing a column of mine from December 2001 calling for Saddam Hussein's removal. A view that was then extreme has proven predictive, and I, for one, do not question that the world is better for it.
"What's gotten into you?" asked John's voice. "Stop it! I've got you."
She stopped punching at him and gasped out, "Alex," pant pant, "just attacked me."
John looked over her shoulder and, seeing nothing there, suggested, "We'd best get back to the house for the time being."
After a bit of quick walking, John told her, "When Nathaniel departed last Autumn, he told me that if a man should come and be unwilling or unable to choose his own name, then I should call him 'Alex' if it suited him."
"Hmm?" asked D., who hadn't been listening; she had been too occupied casting glances all around, trying to see everything at once and imagining that there was a flicker of a shadow behind every tree.
John, having either not heard or not cared to hear her, went on, "In the midst of January, late at night, a rapping came at the front door, making me jump because I had been reading an eerie book by candle light." He paused to consider, "What was it that I was reading? Hmm. Well, it must have been Poe. Or was it Brown? No, it was definitely Poe, but which story I cannot recall. Whatever it was that had gotten my hairs on end, I was still a little apprehensive when I walked through the entrance vestibule to answer the door. Standing on the porch, all hunched over and shivering from the icy rain that was falling, was a young man, looking as if he had been badly beaten. He didn't speak, but I fed him and gave him a change of clothes and led him to sleep in the room nearest mine on the southern side of the house.
"He didn't say much throughout the following weeks, and generally in an odd nonsense slang when he did speak. After a while it seemed apparent that he wasn't going to name himself, so I started calling him Alex to no objections. Strange lad, Alex. I hardly ever see him during the day, but he appears most evenings to play the piano, which, by the way, he tunes himself. Pianists are generally mild in temperament, and it is very pleasant to have music while I read at night, so when next I see him, I'll ascertain what it was that possessed him this morning. I'm sure there's a perfectly plausible expla..."
"That's not good enough," D. interrupted. "I want you to stop your babbling and get my keys back right away and then walk me to my car. He wouldn't even have them if you hadn't snuck in last night with this stupid dress!"
"Excuse me?"
"This dress! The one that you put on the desk in my room last night while I slept!"
"I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about. I read in the solarium for a while last night after you went to your room, and then I went to my own bed. Besides, I heard you turn the lock, and I haven't another key."
"Then how do you suppose this dress was there instead of my own clothes this morning?"
"How am I to know? I slept directly through the night, and there's no way Alex could have done it, because there is, as I've said, only the one key. Perhaps it was the work of a phantasm," John suggested, with a slight gleam of intrigue in his eyes.
Now the anger pulsed in D.'s temples, and in her exasperation, she had nearly forgotten the danger she might be in. "What? Forget it. I'm not going to listen to any more of this shit! I'm going to go lock myself in that room, and you are going to go find that psycho and get my car keys!" They had just pushed through the bushes into the grassy yard of the house, and D. stormed up the first step to the porch. "Come get me when you've got them." She stopped in front of the entrance and turned to face John, "And get my shoes back while you're at it!" Slamming the door behind her, D. stomped to her room and locked the door behind her, throwing the key on the bed.
She paced circles, looking at the dirt and grass stains all over the white dress reflected in the mirror when she passed that, glaring at the entangled branches and budding leaves through the window when she came to that. Conducting herself thus for nearly an hour, D. heard a tentative knocking at the door.
"You better have my keys!" she announced, but there was no answer. Placing her palms on the wood, she called out, "John?"
Still receiving no answer, she pressed her ear against the door and fancied she heard a like breathing sound. She started to shake as she looked through the klootch hole, this being a very old-type lock. She saw nothing but the top of the willow and the doors, all closed, on the other side of the house. Then suddenly, a green glaz sprung to the other side of the hole. She fell back.
"Go away! You better leave me alone!" There was a smecking like chuckle from the balcony. "I mean it," she warned. Now there came a scraping as of glass on wood. She started to cry, "Leave me alone!"
Just then the front door could be heard shutting. There was a shuffling of feet from outside her room. A moment later, John knocked at the door, "I can't descry him anywhere."
Through her tears she managed to creech, "He was just here."
"Oh," said John, "did he give you your keys?"
Almost laughing, she told him that Alex had only come to the door. "Maybe I can catch him then," John said and sauntered off.
After another long period of time, John's voice called from outside the room, "I can't find him. I'm sure that he's only playing around and that I'll be able to get your keys when he comes back, for supper most likely. Would you like to come out and have some breakfast? It's almost eleven o'clock."
D., who had skirted backwards to the wall across from the door raised her head from her knees and told him that she was very happy where she was, thank you very much.
"Then would you like me to bring you something?"
"OK."
"Do you want eggs and toast?"
"No," grimacing at the thought of instant egg.
"Then perhaps a sandwich?"
"That's fine," she said, and then added, "and some water, please."
John acknowledged and went downstairs to prepare the meal. He returned with a knock and said, "Open up, I've got your aliment."
D. was in the midst of standing when it occurred to her that it was very possible, if not likely, that John and Alex were in cahoots. "Why don't you just leave it outside the door," she suggested.
"Oh please, dear! You don't think that Alex and I are in league against you, do you?"
"How do I know you're not?"
"All right, fine. I'll just leave it here. If you need anything else just cry out. You may need to open the door, a smidgen at least, for me to hear you." And with this she could clearly hear John's exaggerated footsteps moving toward the front stairs.
She rose and picked the key up from the bed. Placing her ear to the door and looking through the keyhole, she satisfied herself that there was nobody outside her room and cautiously opened the door, seized the plate and glass that were waiting for her, and made sure she was securely locked in.
She considered the food, smelling it and tasting for strange flavors in every bite. The sandwich was only peanut butter and jelly, and the bread was a bit stale around the edges, but as she was more hungry than she had thought, it was a calming relief to eat something. When she finished, she placed the dishes on the desk and lay down in bed.
Wondering how best to proceed from here, she drifted off to sleep.
D. awoke with a bit of sun in her eyes, so she knew it had to be sometime in the middle of the afternoon. She wiped a little crust from her eyes and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. After a moment of head clearing, she tried to call out to John, but a glop of phlegm prevented her from making ample sound. Encouraged by her dreamless nap, she went to the door and opened it enough to fit her head.
The weather had turned quite fine, and the smells of early Spring had drifted into the courtyard. Sticking her head out and glancing up and down the second floor landings, she noticed John sitting in a plush but worn chair on the opposite side of the tree from the piano. She called his name a bit more unobstructedly, and he looked up from a book he had been reading.
"Have you gotten my keys?" she asked, having to raise her voice to compete with the sound of birds.
"No, Alex hasn't been by yet. Why don't you come down for a cup of tea?"
With no reason to trust him, D. just asked John what time it was.
"I think it's about three o'clock. Are you going to stay up there all afternoon?"
"At least until you get my keys."
"Have it your way. Would you like something to peet?" he queried.
Perhaps she misheard, but something in that last word brought suspicion slinking up her throat and through to her eyes, "What did you say?"
"Drink. Would you like a drink?"
She glanced up and down the hallway again, thinking that perhaps she was being tricked, "No thank you, I'm fine, really."
"Well, if you've no desire for company and have resolved to spend the entire day, and perchance another night, in that room, would you like a book?"
She thought about this for a moment. "Yes, please."
"What would you like to read?"
"I don't know. What have you got?"
"Miss, there's quite an extensive library here. Why don't you just come down and look for yourself. I'm not going to hurt you."
Looking right and then left again, she stepped out to the railing, but a strange sort of rustling of the willow frightened her back to the doorway, "Why don't you just grab one and throw it up here?"
John, appearing somewhat perturbed, strode to the far bookshelf, looked for a moment, and grabbed a book. D. checked the landing again and stepped out. Up came a formulaic romance novel, and back into her room went D., again locking the door behind her.
Night has come once more. John brings the woman another sandwich and some more water, feeling unsettlingly like a prison warden as he leaves the food and a bellboy as he takes the dishes that she has left on the floor outside of her room. He returns to his place in the ballroom, and D. slyly cracks open the door and snatches the food. Her fingers, in nervous picking, have shed the six fake nails that were left after her tromp through the forest.
While she munches on the sandwich, of the same flavor as the last, she jumps at a tapping on the window pane. Silly woman! It is no more than a twig on a branch on a tree, undulating to and fro with the wind. She rises and glides to the window to check the lock and to close the curtain.
Two green eyes watch her by the light of the moon as she pauses to look out into the darkness. She closes the curtain. Alex lingers for a moment and then strolls away into the night, whistling the first movement of a symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus (number 40 in g-minor) and twirling something shiny around his finger.
The moon glitters against the keys. The branches continue their swaying in time to the melody. The wind shushes still through the branches.
Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, better brace himself for litigation:
"What we're doing today is older than scripture: Love thy neighbor," the governor told the audience yesterday, according to the Associated Press. "It's what Jesus said when he gave his Sermon on the Mount: 'Do unto others what you would have others do unto you."'
As the refrain so often goes: what right do the executive and legislative branches of the Illinois government have to force their religious views on the people of that state? Surely the letter from the ACLU is already in the mail.
Well, perhaps a letter of congratulations. According to Bryan Preston, the ACLU supports this legislation, which:
... adds "sexual orientation" to the state law that bars discrimination based on race, religion and similar traits in areas such as jobs and housing.... the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Carol Ronen, D-Chicago, is on record stating it should be applied to churches, meaning they would not be allowed, for example, to reject a job applicant who practices homosexual behavior.
Ronen said: "If that is their goal, to discriminate against gay people, this law wouldn't allow them to do that. But I don't believe that's what the Catholic Church wants or stands for."
As the governor apparently knows, one of the First Amendment's penumbrae covers the establishment of religious views when it involves turning scripture back on the people who actually believe in it. Most Christians would have others do unto them reasonable measures to turn them away from sin. Well, the government of Illinois is only too happy to oblige.
(via Lane Core's weekly Blogworthies)
Late last night, I found myself lamenting that my current financial circumstances have dulled the shine of my recent successes on the writing front. There's a hint of disappointment in the feeling of mere hope where there might otherwise have been elation. (Of course, let's not forget that there might otherwise have been despair, as well.)
Then it occurred to me: January's bills would not all have been paid had it not been for my writing! I've no reason to expect another month in the foreseeable future with the same magnitude of success in this area, but still... just the thought that such a thing is possible raises mere hope securely to the level of tempered optimism.
I've been at the writing thing for years, but I've no illusion that I'd be making any progress were it not for you who read Dust in the Light. For that I'm more grateful than I've words to express.
Mark Miller asks what my post regarding that Washington Post article about (in my words) "gay men paying for children to be created using their own sperm, donated/purchased eggs, and female fetus-carrying units (known colloquially as 'surrogate mothers')" has to do with same-sex marriage. It's a good question, inasmuch as the very lengthy comment-section discussion centered around that tangential issue, but that has more to do with the ongoing discussion among us all than my comments themselves. The sentence just after my summary of the WaPo article begins thus: "Put aside the gay aspect."
Mark instructs me that my question about the created children "needs to be evenly applied to both gay and straight persons," asking:
Would he write the same if the man in question were heterosexual? If it were a single woman?
Although I imagine the extreme circumstances requiring two hired women — one for eggs and one for womb — will be more common among homosexuals, rereading what I wrote, it seems to me that only an unfounded presumption of bigotry would lead Mark to ask such questions. In fact, I ended the post with a quotation from a single mother:
I started off as a single mother by choice, and I don't think my child suffered for it.... I'm a believer in nontraditional families. I think families come in all shapes and sizes.
To which my response was: "I, I, I, I."
Mark goes on to suggest that "the pursuit of a legal solution to [people having children for selfish reasons] is akin to putting a cap on income and savings because 'greed' is a bad thing" — a thinly veiled allusion to hypocrisy on my part, it would seem. The fact that I at no time suggested a legal solution points to a problem that those with traditional views often encounter: What we say sometimes seems less important than what we should say according to the box that our opponents put us in.
Still perplexed by the fact that folks now apparently think it indicates corruption for unabashed advocates of particular causes to simultaneously further their ends through writing and consulting, I'm merely going to offer the suggestion that writers, even pure bloggers, ought to be very careful about how much ground they put between themselves and the accused. First the details of the two latest incidents to spark the trend, as provided by Eric Boehlert of Salon:
... HHS had paid syndicated columnist and marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher $21,000 to write brochures and essays and to brief government employees on the president's marriage initiative. ...... [Michael] McManus, who could not be reached for comment, was paid approximately $10,000 for his work as a subcontractor to the Lewin Group, a health care consultancy hired by HHS to implement the Community Healthy Marriage Initiative, which encourages communities to combat divorce through education and counseling. McManus provided training during two-day conferences in Chattanooga, Tenn., and also made presentations at HHS-sponsored conferences.
We can argue about the appropriate degree of disclaimers that opinion writers — opinion writers — must make about consulting work, speaking gigs, and organizational picnics either within or appended to related columns. Kate O'Beirne thinks that, by disclosing her work, Gallagher "wouldn't have looked conflicted, she would have looked even more credentialed as a recognized expert on marriage." Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber think, in the words of the latter, that "failing to disclose you're being paid to push a 'product,' with taxpayer's money, is the problem, especially when readers value your opinion and 'independent' viewpoint."
Although the columns were not the "products" for which either Gallagher or McManus were paid, that's a worthwhile sentiment. But I encourage those who share Malkin and Barber's reaction to consider this aspect of the Salon piece very carefully:
Responding to the latest revelation, Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at HHS, announced Thursday that HHS would institute a new policy that forbids the agency from hiring any outside expert or consultant who has any working affiliation with the media. ..."We live in a complicated world and people wear many different hats," he says. "People who have expertise might also be writing columns. The line has become increasingly blurred between who's a member of the media and who is not. Thirty years ago if you were a columnist, then you were a full-time employee of a newspaper. Columnists today are different."
Those lines are indeed blurring. In fact, it is increasingly the case that one can be a "columnist" without actually writing a "column." A few controversies down the road, and experts who wish to be eligible for government contracts will be well advised to abstain from blogging.
That wouldn't represent a tremendous loss to society (yet), although it would surely diminish one of the most beneficially revolutionary aspects of the blogosphere. What it illustrates, however, is that, as with the new HHS policy, public experts are being corralled back behind their closed office doors. That's not a step toward the open contextualization of experts' and writers' work that has become increasingly desirable.
At least for we on the right, who've only recently begun to find ways around a mainstream media that has largely shut us out, unblurring those lines would be a step backwards. Folks such as Gallagher and McManus will still be able to take government jobs, they'll still be able to promote their causes, but when it comes to regularly reaching a mainstream audience, they'll have to be filtered through the ink of professional journalists.
That's not the only retrenchment lurking between the lines of the Salon piece:
The problem springs from the failure of both Gallagher and McManus to disclose their government payments when writing about the Bush proposals. But one HHS critic says another dynamic has led to the controversy, and a blurring of ethical and journalistic lines: Horn and HHS are hiring advocates -- not scholars -- from the pro-marriage movement. "They're ideological sympathizers who propagandize," says Tim Casey, attorney for Legal Momentum, a women's rights organization. He describes McManus as being a member of the "extreme religious right."
Cutting through various pretensions, the essential difference between experts who are "advocates" and experts who are "scholars" is that scholars remain "objective" nonparticipants, while advocates draw on what they've learned about important topics and work to apply it. As with journalism, exposing the deceit of "objectivity" has been one of the successes of the growing ethos that has — perhaps taken to an extreme — tripped up Gallagher and McManus.
Indeed, many of us have rightly argued that it is better to have our experts and our columnists completely open about what it is they advocate, and without regard to payments from the government, there has been absolutely no question about what that means in the cases of Gallagher and McManus. I happen to agree that somebody who has worked, for pay or gratis, for a group or on a policy ought to note as much when writing about that group or that policy.
But while conservatives argue at that specific level, everybody else is rushing right past it, as the Nashua Telegraph proves in an editorial to which Malkin links:
[Armstrong] Williams and Gallagher, if they prefer government service, could quit their jobs as commentator and columnists, and start up their own advocacy agency on behalf of federal programs.
In Gallagher's case, she's already such an advocate, and nobody who pays any attention can fail to know that. We all suffer — in my opinion — if we return to the day of the ostensible purity of the "independent commentator" and the "objective" scholar. So let's be careful about how much we concede in our rush to insist on footnotes.
ADDENDUM:
Marriage Debate Blog has an interesting roundup of commentary.
Michelle Malkin reports that baby Jordan Trimarchi received a heart. As she notes, we should remember in our prayers the baby who, by loss of life, had a heart to give. But we should also accompany that remembrance with hope that Jordan will live his life in awareness of that to which he owes it.
The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "Battles & Wars," by Zona Douthit.
Since it's Friday and I'm behind on things generally, I thought it worth offering a reminder about Anchor Rising, where readers will always find substantive posts. If you really don't want to click over, you can peruse the automated list of Anchor Rising posts in the left-hand column here and see if anything catches your interest.
I'm putting off high dudgeon regarding the latest on the terrorism-related interrogation front, but an email that Jonah Goldberg paraphrases makes me wonder how far from any sense of real life the entire debate has drifted:
One reader argued that we should be bothered by any attempt to separate a man from his God. How would you feel, he asked, if American soldiers were forced to witness a crucifix being desecrated or a Torah being destroyed?
As Goldberg suggests, it's an interesting question. I'd suggest that it's one that American Christians are universally qualified as experts to answer. Well, having subjected myself to such torture afresh, I'd suggest that if we're going to become so concerned about the religious sensibilities of potential enemies of our country, then we'd best abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.
The record-setting comment discussion to my "Parenthood: All About Me!" post has taken various turns across the SSM-debate landscape. In doing so, it has exposed a very interesting consideration. Michael, of Third of the Month, wrote the following, while explaining why restriction by gender, alone among the criteria for marriage, is "arbitrary and capricious":
Marriage may be "about procreation", it may be "about love", but in practice it is about extending and forming and joining families (and if it's not then what is it about??). And by restricting my choices of viable partners to women, because I cannot have a unitive relationship with one, you are in essence barring me from marriage.
Further discussion has clarified that Michael isn't talking simply about the physical, ahem, uniting, but rather — although he hasn't used the term — a more spiritual unity between spouses. Now, I'm in no way suggesting that marriage — or any form of intimate relationship — doesn't or shouldn't aspire to and work toward this spiritual level of oneness, but it's clearly not a provable quality in a relationship. In part for that very reason, it's also a blatantly "religious" notion.
The claim that Michael has now made explicit, but that has always underlain the rhetoric from his side of the debate, appears to be that the law must acknowledge this supernatural quality of homosexual relationships. Not doing so, in fact, represents discrimination, because the legal marriages into which Michael is already permitted to enter could not be "unitive." Yet, it is simultaneously out of bounds for the government to acknowledge most citizens' belief that the important unitive quality with which marriage must align is the unique physical and spiritual connection manifest in opposite-sex, procreative marriages.
The Family Institute of Connecticut notes an interesting development on the same-sex marriage front in that state:
Even Rep. Staples and the Courant are beginning to realize that Love Makes a Family is an extremist organization. But they should not be surprised by LMF's position. It follows naturally from the group's misreading of Connecticut public opinion on same-sex "marriage." Pro same-sex "marriage" legislators and the Courant are aghast at LMF's "all or nothing" push for same-sex "marriage" because they are slightly more tethered to reality. LMF, on the other hand, may really believe its own spin about the fictional "Planet Connecticut," a land where an "enlightened" majority favors same-sex "marriage."If so, Connecticut's pro same-sex "marriage" media establishment bears some of the blame. Today's Courant piece, for instance, uncritically touts a UConn poll purporting to show that a majority of state residents favor civil unions and a plurality favors same-sex "marriage."
LMF's ardent persistence continues the lesson that the various rebel civil servants around the country imparted when they shrugged at the law and began handing out marriage licenses: the prudent and practical among same-sex marriage's supporters aren't really spokesmen for their cause. This applies to their ability to fairly negotiate (for lack of a more appropriate term) at each stage of the society-wide debate, and it applies to the amount that the other side ought to take them as representative.
The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "The Rider," by Gary Bolstridge.
Multiple angles of the following spin from Pamela Madsen, executive director and founder of the American Fertility Association, "an advocacy group for fertility patients," is head-thrashingly hard to swallow:
Isn't it a travesty that American couples are forced to leave our great nation because only 14 or so states require insurance companies to treat infertility? Less-developed countries, nations struggling with war, understand the importance of family. What does it say about the value we put on families and children?
But I'll leave aside the implication of requiring — by law — anybody who offers insurance to cover particular services or treatments in order to hone in on this morally contemptible attempt at a social guilt trip:
Less-developed countries, nations struggling with war, understand the importance of family. What does it say about the value we put on families and children?
The specific context is a trend toward Americans' seeking in vitro fertilization treatments to other countries to cut expenses:
... help came through a call to Dr. Sanford Rosenberg, a fertility specialist in Richmond, Va., who had started a program capitalizing on lower medical costs overseas. By using an egg donor from Romania and having the eggs fertilized in Bucharest and shipped back to the United States, the Butuceanus cut their costs to $18,000, including enough fertilized eggs for repeated efforts. ...The vast majority of Americans who are infertile look for help close to home. A small number, though - no one keeps an official count - are seeking help in places like South Africa, Israel, Italy, Germany and Canada, where the costs can be much lower, becoming in essence fertility tourists.
The New York Times article by Felicia Lee from which I've drawn the above quotations emphasizes countries that make Madsen's "struggling with war" comment a little inapt, but "places like" is an extremely open phrase. As difficult as it may be for many in our secular culture, take both sides of the long-running debate between progressives and traditionalists seriously for a moment: What relevance does the fact that 44.5% of Romania's population lives below the poverty line have?
One particularly compelling moral thicket with any IVF that involves egg donors is the treatment of women as egg farms. That women should not be dehumanized in service of the procedure is almost universally understood, and in the United States, it would hardly be unreasonable to suggest that women's dominion over their own bodies has pushed public opinion over the line to legality. There remains something, well, creepy about taking advantage of poverty or the less devastating financial need of young college students to acquire their eggs, but most Americans will understand their right to consent.
Now move this moral balance to Romania, where trafficking in women is widespread and "children in Bucharest are easy prey for child prostitution tourists." Among those willing to sell entire women, separating their eggs is merely maximizing profits. Under poverty so crushing that children must turn to selling sexual favors, the ability to freely consent to egg donation cannot so easily be taken for granted.
Ms. Madsen would surely qualify her statement, if asked, and one must always be wary of extrapolating views from short quotations placed in a specific context in newspaper reports. Nonetheless, to step on such people in order to fling advocacy rhetoric concerning the value that Americans "put on families and children" raises questions about the value that the advocates place on such moral considerations as human dignity.
I've been working on something that's left my head spinning. Perhaps it'll clear in time for me to get in some substantive posts tonight.
I know nothing about this, but Cindy Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation emailed me the following:
Pacific Legal Foundation is awarding $9,500 in its Sixth Annual Program for Judicial Awareness Writing Competition. This year's competition includes three essay questions, regarding the applicability of the Supreme Court's "rough proportionality" takings standard; whether the GDF Realty Investments v. Norton decision can be reconciled with the Court's modern Commerce Clause jurisprudence; and whether the concept of "regulatory givings" is consistent with the purpose and function of the Takings Clause.
Any interested, eligible readers can find more information here.
The Redwood Review poem of the week is "Oxidation," by Gary Bolstridge.
I have no way of knowing how many people are reading A Whispering Through the Branches as it rolls out each week. (Although, I certainly welcome feedback of any kind.) However, with the beginning of Chapter 3, we've hit a bit of a milestone, justifying an administrative note.
In one of those tough decisions that authors must make, I chose artistic structure over what might be considered ideal pacing. I tried to mitigate this problem, but there's no denying that Chapter 2 makes for the most difficult reading in the book. It's all downhill — in the bicycle sense, not the aging sense — from Chapter 3 on.
So, if you haven't been reading Whispering and would like to do (or might be so kind as to consider doing) so, allow me to offer a partial table of contents so far:
Author's Note for Blog Serialization
A Whispering Through the Branches
Preface
The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Skydivin" by Rosin Coven. "Feels like I'm skydivin every single moment of my life." Yup, that sounds about right.
"Skydivin" Rosin Coven, Arthouse Rock
Stream (HiFi) 
Download
from Menagerie
I thought folks might like to know that discussion has continued, and expanded, on the "Parenthood: All About Me!" post. (And Smmtheory and I are outnumbered!)
Something in a recent Catherine Seipp piece sounded familiar:
Still, there are talented writers working on unsuccessful shows as well as hits. So what goes wrong?"Promising shows are cancelled immediately if they don't get good numbers," a TV writer friend, who's currently employed on a successful network drama, griped to me when I asked about this, "never getting the chance to find their voice and audience, as Cheers, Hill Street Blues did under [former NBC programming chief] Brandon Tartikoff, largely because he was in last place then and had little to lose. Sadly, these days even a last-place network has itchy trigger fingers, so thick is the fear in the business today."
Back in the feudalistic days of the 1990s, a common complaint among musicians — famous and anonymous alike — was executives' lack of willingness to allow, let alone help, an artist to develop, slowly building an audience and defining a personal style. Instead, the complaint went, to get into the business often required a built-in following, and to stay in the business required the avoidance of sales lulls during periods of artistic experimentation.
Then came the Internet to stir up the business model. From the musician's point of view, the Internet provides a way to build that necessary following and perhaps to circumvent the industry altogether, depending on priorities. From the audience's point of view, the Internet provides a means to explore beyond the big-budget packaging, as well as to circumvent, legally and illegally, the exorbitant prices to acquire the desired material of artists who aren't sufficiently compelling to justify whole album purchases. If artists are going to attract listeners online, in part through free samples, and if fans are going to insist on being persuaded to spend money by the music that the artist makes available, then the need for the various stages of middlemen diminishes.
In light of their differing sales models, the television industry is, if anything, more vulnerable to the technology and ethos of the Internet. The music business requires purchases, tickets, and attendance, requiring physical activity on both sides of the transaction. The television business requires nothing more than continued habitual usage of a living room fixture; revenue comes through advertising or, at most deliberate, through subscription.
Now imagine a world in which the initial viral marketing of South Park had involved URLs, instead of bootleg videos, being passed from dorm room to dorm room.
As somebody who's fiddled with video blogging (vlogging), I'd suggest that the TV folks aren't as immune to the flattening effects of the Internet as they may think. With lower costs for disk space and bandwidth, as well as production software that's mostly already on the market for reasonable prices, as well as the business models developing around blogging, online television shows are probably inevitable. First among amateurs, then malcontents, then mainstream writers et al. frustrated with the business. The threat doesn't end there, though.
Among the most intriguing developments that I've noticed in my five years of editing high-tech market research has been the efforts of such players as Microsoft to get computer content onto the family television set. Whether wireless or through cables, television is only streaming video, after all. Why not use similar technology for various applications, most significantly Web access? The same result is progressing from the other direction, as well, with a desire to make movies and television "clickable" to enhance the content and to open up a channel for related sales. (Like a Desperate Housewive's blouse? Click on her and order one.)
As the technology advances, viewers will be able to watch streaming online content right on the very same televisions that they use for big budget schlock. Furthermore, the big companies may help to transform the feel of television viewing toward that of Web browsing.
This future may — or may not — be distant, but the suits would be well advised to make a cultural asset of their ability to open space for talented people to develop their art now, while that remains only one of the advantages that their money can buy.
Embittering personal experience has kept a story that's already old by blog standards among my bookmarks. Patrick Sweeney quotes from the AP summary of the circumstances:
A group of parents and parishioners are accusing the Orange County diocese of violating church doctrine by allowing a gay couple to enroll their children in a Catholic school.The group has demanded that Saint John the Baptist School in Costa Mesa accept only families that pledge to abide by Catholic teachings. That would likely bar the men's two adopted boys from attending the school's kindergarten because of church opposition to relationships and adoption by same-sex couples.
School officials have rejected the group's demands and issued a new policy stating that a family's background "does not constitute an absolute obstacle to enrollment in the school."
Commenter John B. makes the best argument in the boys' favor:
Has anyone stopped to think that a Catholic education might be a vehicle to convincing this child that the homosexual marriage of his/her parents is morally wrong? Maybe it will even convince the parents (but I doubt it). The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways.Maybe a Catholic education and a set of morals might be just what this child needs now in his/her life.
I'll say, first of all, that this isn't one of those topics upon which people far removed from the situation can offer vehement conclusions. Inasmuch as the superintendent of diocese schools in this case is apparently a priest, the situation there seems to be somewhat better than my experience. In the system in which I taught for a brief time, the education wing of the diocese is more a loosely affiliated group, and as I painfully learned, the guiding principles are far more corporate than Christian.
Indeed, at least in the pre–high school grades, the teachers have no particular training in religion, often opting to fit in the religion lessons where they can, if they can. They've got no basis to answer any difficult questions that the children might have, and they have neither the background nor the diocese support versus the parents to be firm while teaching doctrines that might raise objections. (Lesson one for the unaware middle school teacher: divorce is a third rail.)
None of this is meant as an attack on the teachers, or even the administrators. The problem is that the schools are run more or less as public schools, but with prayer and far fewer resources. In this context, the question arises to rebut John B.: But are those boys, and their parents' apparent set of morals, what the other children need? The balance, as I've said, must be made at the more local level.
On the larger issue of Catholic schools' character, I'm probably not alone among blogosphere Catholics in thinking that they need to be stronger in their religious content. I'd go so far as to add the weight of market forces to this demand. High schools appear to be a different matter, but the lower schools — again, to my experience — lack the elite draw. Owing to a blend of Christian responsibility and a need to fill classrooms to the maximum, the children admitted are often those who've had difficulty in public schools, for one reason or another.
Without the strict codes of the parochial schools of yore, however, these students don't even come close to gaining in religious structure what they lost in taxpayer-funded services. Sometimes I've wondered whether the schools aren't continuing to subsist on the remembered impressions of parents and grandparents of what Catholic school was like when they were children. Neither the illusion nor the calculation can long remain.
Similarly the teachers. Pitiful pay is one thing within the context of a church community. The picture begins to change when they must keep pace with public procedures for certification and maintenance thereof that become law under at least the tacit assumption that public schools assist teachers in meeting the requirements. It changes further still when they are not treated as ends in themselves, but as potential sparks for lawsuits of one kind or another, to be cut loose at the first hint of trouble.
I'm drifting a bit — venting — but the point is that Catholic schools, at least in some cases, have traded away their character, whether absorbing the character of their well-to-do clients or emulating the better-financed public schools. If particular schools conduct themselves as fully Catholic institutions, take them or leave them, then I'd be persuaded that they can venture to admit those children who are in heightened, and sensitive, need of a Christian influence on their lives.
But in the environment that I describe, few teachers are going to present the Church's disagreement with the lifestyle of a given student's parents. Furthermore, schools that have faltered too far may find themselves, in seeking to accommodate such children, being pulled toward what the secular culture wishes they were, rather than what they ought to be.
Will Kenyon, born on October 26, 2004, in Iowa, sadly lost the struggle for life.
But in New York, Jordan Trimarchi, born January 18, 2005, still has a shot — if a child within a four to seven hour radius donates a heart.
Prayers for all. The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
In response to my post earlier today, Michael Triplett has endeavored to explain why his race-related opinions with respect to adoption are not racist — at least not in a bad way. I'm with him right up to here:
So, if it is "racist" to assert we should not create barriers for African Americans to adopt and that African American children would benefit from being raised by parents who have the same cultural experience, then I guess I am a racist.
The term of art, here, is "cultural experience." Contrary to the phrase's implications, culture is a learned thing; we are born into, not with, a culture. At least when we're talking about babies, therefore, the adoptees are cultureless, and one would expect them for the most part to share the "cultural experience" of their parents no matter the color of their skin. Used by those who think they've got the dark Other's best interests in mind, however, "cultural experience" is simply an empty term meant to make "race" mean more than the superficial collection of physical attributes that it ought to be. It's that indefinable something that once justified segregation. It's racism.
Now, I've already admitted that I don't have a problem with adoptive parents' seeking children with whom they share a maximum of physical attributes. Similarity increases the ease with which parents and children can see themselves in each other; it probably postpones difficult questions until the children are older; and, yes, among a species prone to notice differences and enlist generalities, it ensures a similarity of experience.
All of this only means that appearance, including race, ought to be a factor available for consideration (most especially from the parents-to-be). Triplett, however, places this consideration not just above the central family characteristic of marriage, but so far above it that a preference for married adoptive parents counts as a barrier to racial allocation.
This is where broad differences of worldview come into play. Failing to hold marriage up in the case of adoption diminishes the overall cultural preference for it. Without going in search of statistics, it seems reasonable to suggest that married couples are more likely to adopt — especially to adopt for the right reasons. If that is so, then not giving preference to married couples contributes to a dismissive view of marriage among blacks and, therefore, decreases the number of them looking to adopt.
Furthermore, intending "to attract African American parents," Triplett reinforces the "cultural experience" that leads to the disproportion of black children available for adoption. With this same aversion to creating "barriers" playing out in every aspect of American life, the very people who most need social guidance toward better lives are left loose to continue making poor decisions.
ADDENDUM:
Just to head off an obvious objection, a word on Triplett's and my differing emphases for the relevance of "experience." In Triplett's usage, "cultural experience" refers to a "cultural and race background" — background being something from the past, handed-down baggage that one must carry as a defining quality. In my usage, "similarity of experience" refers to the present, most palpably in others' reactions to a given person; for example, a father and his visually similar adopted child will have comparable interactions with the same stranger.
In the former view, the origin of the difference — in some sense, "the blame" — resides intrinsically in the individual. In the latter view, it resides in the mutable attitudes of third parties. Perhaps it's a subtle distinction, but it makes a significant difference in how our society will move toward the future, and it makes a profound difference in how parents will raise their children and address shared and unshared experiences.
As one would expect, John Hawkins's second interview with Victor Davis Hanson is thought-provoking. Moreover, the greatest quality that VDH exudes is, as always, clarity. In comparison to my meandering post about the foolish debate over troop levels, for example, VDH cuts right to the point and then moves on:
That's why this whole inside the beltway acrimony is so disturbing. The real discussion should be not how many troops you have but what is exactly the mission of these troops? What are they going to do and what are they not going to do? I think they should have been from Day 1 going after --- in really an offensive mode --- the people in the Sunni Triangle as they did with this wonderful operation that we saw the last couple of months in Fallujah. That should have been done earlier.
Another instance of the one-two punch of clarity and conclusion involves Europe:
When it comes to [Americans' view of] Europe I think left, right, liberal, conservative, there's almost this schadenfreude; it's almost like, well, you people are utopian and your 21st century humanists, you settle it because we in America believe it's a lose-lose situation for us. That's a dangerous situation because it may be in our national interest to intervene but no president will be able to galvanize public opinion to do that.
His prescription for immigration sounds just about impossible, from our current perspective, but it bears repeating, because he's absolutely correct:
... no more of that 1960's ideology of separatism and hatred. We can't tolerate it......We have (to prepare to meet them) with social censor from everybody because we do not want to go down the path of Rwanda or the Balkans. (We should have) one language, one culture, many races --- and that'll send a message as well to potential illegal immigrants that if you come to the U.S., you no longer get a drivers' license (and) speak Spanish in an apartheid community. No, if you come to the U.S., you're going to have to do it legally and you're going to have to learn English immediately in an immersion program and you're not going to get any special weight whatsoever for being Mexican. You'll be treated like an Italian or a Greek or a Korean or Punjabi.There's not going to be any guilt, affirmative action, victimization culture just because you crossed the border illegally and that can’t be done by government alone. That has to be changed in our own minds and hearts and the left is going to have to accept that just like the right is going to have to accept an employer cannot count on non-union cheap wages in perpetuity. It's just not going to happen.
And speaking of letting the '60s ideology slip into history, there's his view of Vietnam — just a few hundred words that every high school student learning about that era ought to be required to read and (preferably) research. Be sure to read it, yourself.
Michael Triplett is incredulous that I see racism in his views on adoption. As much as I dislike overuse of the R word, I don't know how else to categorize such sentiments as this:
Those involved in adoption and foster care have lamented the lack of African American homes to place children, who are disproportionately African American. The barriers to such homes includes economic requirements that eliminate many African American households. The addition of a marriage preference would add an even larger barrier since it could eliminate even more possible placements.Is it racism to suggest that we should not create unneccesary barriers for African American children into African American homes???
What else can you call the view that even more important than their having married parents is for black children to be with their own kind?
James Glassman has put together an interesting assessment of conservatives' percentage of control of some of the nation's most powerful institutions:
At the Capitol, the procession’s starting point, Republicans hold a 10-seat majority in the Senate and a solid grasp, for the 10th year in a row, on the House. The majority of governors, including those of the four largest states, are Republican, and the GOP controls most state legislatures.Most significantly, Americans, by a 3 to 2 margin, identify themselves as conservatives rather than liberals.
The American left — liberalism, collectivism, statism, New Dealism (call it what you want) — remains firmly in charge of most powerful U.S. institutions. Here is a brief review of 10 of them, along with my rough estimate, by percentage, of conservative influence.
Blogs haven't yet made the cut, by the way.
(via Patrick Sweeney)
The latest Notes & Commentary essay by Maureen Mullarkey is "Provocations," reviewing Jack Levine at DC Moore Gallery, Vincent Smith at Alexandre Gallery, Robert Bauer's drawings at Forum Gallery.
D. woke frightened and sat bolt-upright supported by her arms, one of which had not yet awakened and so buckled. As she lay on her side, her heart beat like crazy, and she panted at the scattered remains of her nightmare. She had always believed that dreams should be taken flippantly, if not altogether dismissively, but of these dreams of hers she did not know what to make.
She had begun the evening, as it seemed, naked in a white world, though wrapped in silvery cellophane with malenky little flowers trapped between her skin and the plastic. Writhing and gasping for breath, she got only the smallest sniff of pollen, and this got her to sneezing. With each sneeze and then gasp combination the wrap around her head loosened, dropping off in little slivers. The piece that covered her ears fell away, and she could hear a single piano all around, and she was very pleased and proud and feeling intelligent-like to be able to give a name to the music, though she had to admit that it was one of the more famous works by one of the more famous composers — the first movement of Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata (Opus 13 in c-minor, although this she did not know), very dark and passionate. In her wrapped-up dream, and wrapped in sheets on her bed, she flopped like a fish on the deck of some very cushy cushy like ship until two very soft doves came to rest on her ears, and these were really the mattress on the left and pillow on the right. All peaceful now, she rolled over and the birds flap flap flapped away, letting in the music. But this time it was all nice and calm, being the beautiful second movement.
Out of the white around her, which she realized was only a thick thick fogiwog, came walking statues of men in the height of ancient Roman fashion, followed by a man she knew, though she could not recall ever seeing a picture of him, was P. B. Shelley, the poet, with long dainty scissors in his dainty hands. Off with the cellophane, and under was a real sharpy evening gown, and on with the dance! A twirling and a dipping in a slow sleepy two step, and then a faster but still sohlenumkuous waltz. When the movement ended, Peebee stepped back and clapped and like bowed as if to say, "Thank you for the dance, my lovely."
Then the music was very sad but skorry, or quick, and D. saw that her gown was now all grazzy and ripped, and her not looking much like a princess, but more like a peasant. Just then the piano started to swell and grow-like, and this seemed as if it was meant to introduce an army of little fairies without wings, who all linked arms to dance a jig around her feet. Suddenly, the fairies or elves made to grab at her, so she just stepped real easy over them and started to run. Another crash of the piano is what finally woke her up.
But the piano was still going on with its song, and she was quite sure now that she was awake, so she snatched up an ample white robe that was lying on a chair at the foot of her bed. She tugged on the door, but it wouldn't open until she unlocked it with the key that she had left in the hole.
Out on the balcony, she noticed that the light that came into the courtyard was that colorless white or gray dim twilight before dawn comes with its flaming ball. A thin ground mist lay above the grass like dust on a carpet and twirled about the maroon-slacks-covered legs of a young man at the piano under the willow, his longish hair swinging here and there in front of his eyes in time with the music. Just then, from the perpendicular side of the courtyard, on the balcony outside his room, John shouted down through the empty willow at the pianist:
"Alex! Damn it, there are people sleeping up here!"
Alex, as was apparently his given name, looked up, not at John, which would have required a standing and a ceasing of the playing, but at D. Something in his eyes, all radiant green like puddles of leaky antifreeze, sent little lizards running up her spine as he played the final downward scale and chord.
Jumping up, he knocked loose the mast, and the lid of the piano slammed shut with a loud Crash! As he disappeared into the ballroom, D. noticed that his shirt was all chalky and frilly like a pirate's. John shrugged his shoulders in a silent guffaw and went back into his room. D. returned to hers puzzled, turning the key in the door behind her.
She tightened her robe and lay on the bed without any inclination toward sleep. Very strange was all this, indeed! A piano player up and stroking away before the sun was full on the horizon. An old man who promised fires and food delivering only brandy, fake eggs, and stale toast the night before. But the room to which he had led her once his persistent talking had begun to obviously drain her of consciousness was pleasant enough, when finally she was taken to it.
She sat up and looked around. The walls were covered with an old and peeling patterned paper that had faded to a dull pink. Opposite the entrance was a window, draped with an ancient dark green curtain, looking out into a gnarling mesh of branches, the closest of which had grown so near that a strong wind might send it crashing into the room. There were no closets nor wardrobes nor dressers. Aside from the bed and chair against the eastern wall, a free-standing mirror and a desk touching the western were the only furnishings. On the desk, thrust into an ornate silver candelabra, was the candle with which John had guided her the night before.
Next to the candle was a neatly folded white dress that D. had not noticed before, though she was sure that she could not have missed it. In fact, she was positive that she had thrown her own clothes, which had actually dried before she had had the opportunity to ask for new ones, on that exact spot. But she had locked the door. Yes, she had just unlocked it to get out. Well, John would have a key, I'm sure, she thought, and another shiver shook at the thought of him standing over her while she slept.
"That's it. I'm out of here," she said out loud, springing from the bed.
The dress was of an out-dated fashion, but was very pretty nonetheless. Not too frilly, but with a lovely cut: the kind of getup people are only looking for excuses to wear. She slipped it over her head and shoulders. Looking in the mirror, D. thought that she now looked fit, in style and era, to dance with Shelley in the Spring English country side.
Forgetting for a moment her predicament, she giggled to herself and was about to invite her reflection to the ball when she got the strong feeling that somebody was watching her from behind and thought she saw but the slightest of shadows in the glass. She spun and found herself alone, but her desire to leave the place at once became a desperate need, and she fled the room.
Padding quietly past John's room — she had not wanted to take the iron staircases for fear of bumping into that Alex fellow — she made her way as quietly as possible down the front stairs, across the entrance hall, and out the creechy protesting front door.
Outside, the cool air slid its fingers under her dress and up her legs indecent-like and the skin goosed up all over her body. Crossing the damp dewy lawn, she cursed having no shoes for her feet, but pushed on through the bushes from which she had emerged the night before. Once out of sight of the house, and in the new world of like trees all lonely and lovely and naked, she listened to hear the shoom of the stream, but heard it not. She glanced around and picked a way that looked right and started off in a rapid march.
As she walked, the forest around her began to make strange sounds, and she told herself it was just the trees and the earth and the wee-little animals all waking up and rubbing their woodsy eyes and nothing to get all poogly about. But when the thicket thickened so did her fear do the same, and she imagined she heard first a swish swish swish from the left, and then a quick swoosh swoosh swoosh from the right. Not wanting to lose her composure, but not really caring if she did, being all on her oddy knocky and all (she hoped), she started to run, keeping a very careful glaz on the ground for roots and such, but not really noticing the little branches and twigs that were whipping at her bare arms.
Soon came a gurgle gurgle that would be the treacle of the creek. She quickened her step in that direction, and all around her was like a whispering of like filthy slovos, as she fancied, though it was only windy shushing. But then, with the treacle becoming more like a quiet roar, she heard sure the cracking of a breaking branch and faltered. Whipping her head to and fro, she turned and ran contrary to the sound.
The shushing of the wind began forming slow and slurred and breathy words, all around like coming from the air itself, though none with which she was familiar with.
Just my mind hearing nonsense that isn't really there. Probably the wind, she thought, but ran a bit faster.
"Ohhhhbollshhygrooodieeeshorrrorshhowwlusssciousssglorrieee."
These were starting to sound like words she might know, some of them, so she knew she wasn't verily by her lonesome. Through the greening brown vesches and mist, she saw a twinkling of glass, and there was her car. She made for it real skorry, but from behind came a chumble chumble and a ringaling. Turning, she saw that Alex veck holding out her keys and making them glitter and clang by twirling the ring about his finger.
"What's it going to be then, eh?" he asked, like leering like.
But answer not did she, just by dashing off sidelong only responded. From behind, a little smeck and then the sound of chasing footsteps. And then a voice singing gromky-like, almost shouting at the peak of its goloss, and this melody she knew to be of the same composer as the sonata, but this time his Ninth Symphony:
Freude, shöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
A branch or rock scraped at her ankle and she stumbled anxiously.
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
The goloss stopped, and hope of hopes maybe so the singer did, but then, and closer still, started up again, so she thought maybe his hands were near touching her shoulders and clawing at her trailing skirt in time to the melody:
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Panting, gasping, veering right, then leftward D. cut suddenly.
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
And then there was like a leaping sound and crash, Alex was on her back, and her face down in the cold dirt. Laughing, he forced her over and like straddled her with his knees, all the time humming the tune of poor Ludwig Van who never did anything to anybody but give them music. He rip rip razrez skvatted tearing like at her dress. She slipping and slithering. Up went his arm to tolchock her hard on the litso. She twisted and pushed and kicked and clawed and pushed and kicked.
"Oh my merzky yarbles!" he shouted, falling over and like grabbing at his crotch, and she was free and running.
She ran and ran until she hadn't heard anything for some time but the bushes and branches bouncing into their natural places behind her and was turning her head to look back when she hit hard into grasping arms.
Joe Gandelman, linked on Instapundit, points to a Washington Post article, about reaction to the inaugural address and some response from the White House, and asks:
Did Lincoln's, JFK's, FDR's, Ronald Reagan's, Dwight Eisenhowers, Bill Clinton's advisors have to do this?
I'd wager that similar pieces could be found (albeit lacking this revolutionary Internet thing to take the spin and run with it), but I'll leave it to others to answer the historical question. In fact, I'll add my own question to willing researchers' list: Did Lincoln, JFK, FDR, Reagan, Eisenhower, and Clinton face a media environment in which one of the country's by-far most significant newspapers would actually print a sentence such as the following?
In the 21-minute speech, Bush mentioned neither Iraq nor terrorism but defined what he called a generations-long struggle to encourage democracy to make America safe from terrorist attack.
One hears the echo of that clamorous parsing whereby Bush was found to have somehow conveyed that attack from Iraq was "imminent" even as he argued that we shouldn't wait until attack was imminent. Now, apparently, that wily Texan can somehow fail to mention terrorism even as he defines a policy "to make America safe from terrorist attack."
I may be predisposed to side with the President, here, but it seems a bit harsh to decry "a failure of... clear communication of a message," in Gandelman's words, when advisors find it necessary to explain that statements do not mean the opposite of what they say.
Well, I can certainly relate to this:
There is a saying that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. The converse is also true. If God wants to make you laugh, he will tell you his plans for you. On April 4, 1999, at the Easter Vigil, I was received into the Catholic Church. Just a couple of years before that, if a prophet had told me that I would rejoice on entering the Church or that tears would stream down my cheeks as I went to my first confession, I would have told him that he was gravely mistaken.I was at the apogee of my conservatism based on Randian positivism. To me, radical selfishness was the highest virtue. The pinnacle of individualism and being a self-made man were my highest ideals. The natural virtues helped to modify this idealistic positivism toward how I related with others, but it was not enough. My nose had long before achieved orbit as I looked down at those poor superstitious mortals who still believed in hunter-gatherer myths such as God.
Thus begins Jeff Miller's "conversion story." I find such pieces always worth reading — familiar and inspiring.
D.C. lawyer and author Lee Waltzer had an interesting exchange with Maggie Gallagher on Marriage Debate last week on the topic of preference for married couples in adoption (read down from here). In the midst of the back-and-forth, Waltzer made a statement that resonates oddly:
I think one thing that you ignore in these discussions is how much our concepts of parenting and parenthood are indeed social constructs. The way we raise children, and relate to them, today is much different from a century or two ago, let alone across cultures. There are plenty of mothers out there who do not ascribe to "traditional" concepts of motherhood, and the same goes for fathers and fatherhood -- this is a good thing actually. It's only a few decades back that fathers had very little to do with raising children whereas today, it is socially expected for fathers to be involved.
The post in which this generalization appears begins with the minimization of a belief that isn't appreciably different:
There are some situations where a child would definitely benefit from having a mom AND a dad.
Is it a good thing that paternal involvement is expected, or are there only "some situations" in which a father is even necessary? My sense is that there's more to this juxtaposition than I've managed to unravel, but even at first glance, it demands clarification.
Rational conservatives have no illusion that parenting and parenthood cannot be constructed in various ways, but that fact tells us nothing about what the various results will be — or even which results we ought to prefer. Since mutable social constructs affect us all — guiding most especially those without the background to comprehend or the resources to accommodate permutations — it behooves us to avoid justifying effects that are merely acceptable by citing contradictory effects that are desirable.
In other words, it may be the case (although I'm not entirely convinced) that fathers of old were significantly less involved in their children's lives. It may also be the case (although I'm far from convinced) that some children experience only limited harm for having lacked fathers altogether. However, when judging differences between the here-and-now and "a century or two ago, let alone across cultures," we must consider the possibility that fathers who there-and-then would have been inadequately involved are now simply gone, and that change has wrought only incremental increases among the class of fathers who were already involved.
Change is not always "a good thing actually."
A recent George Will column makes points advisedly incorporated in the discussion about balancing the market and the government:
Three decades ago sociologist Daniel Bell postulated the "cultural contradictions of capitalism.'' He meant that capitalism, by its success, subverts its cultural prerequisites. At first, capitalism depended on a Protestant asceticism -- thrift, deferral of gratification, industriousness. But capitalism produces wealth, and a shift from production to consumption -- the marketing of hedonism -- as the economy's motor. The banishment of asceticism by acquisitiveness means the systematic inflammation of appetites and the undermining of stern capitalist virtues. ...Market forces, including the gales of globalization, prod capitalist entities, in their pursuit of efficiencies necessary for survival, to shed pensions. This heightens the entire public's sense of insecurity. But the welfare state exists to assuage insecurities. So this dynamic of capitalism draws the economy deeper into regulation, overruling market forces that make possible capitalism's rational allocation of wealth and opportunity. Hence capitalism's dynamism, a virtue which entails insecurity, reduces capitalism's virtues.
We place a great deal of weight on comfort and security in our society, and our doing so speaks well of us as a people. Nonetheless, in succeeding in our intentions, we're losing a sense of hardship's value. Even as I strive to claw my way out of them, I can see how my own financial difficulties have been to my benefit in other, more-important ways than laying a foundation for economic gain. Assuming my family and its members survive the strain, I've no doubt I'll one day look back on this time as having been for the best.
Apart from general principles, Will's column is particularly relevant to the discussion on Dust in the Light because it deals with the U.S. government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures companies pension programs:
The PBGC is taking over the pilots' pension plan of United and will soon have all of US Airways' pensions, just as in recent years it took over many from the steel industry. Three other airlines are in bankruptcy court to dissolve imprudent labor contracts. No legacy airline can compete with another that has dumped its pension burdens in the government's lap.
Seeking to protect workers who've invested their lives in organizations that could cease to exist before retirees do, the government has simultaneously protected companies from their own imprudent commitments (and unions from their inclination to push for them). It's probable that there are limitations that mitigate matters somewhat, but from the public's point of view, it appears that companies have essentially negotiated a public benefit.
I've no justification for differing with Will's suggestion that the "PBGC probably is necessary." The difficulties of balance, however, illustrate just how many angles must be considered when attempting to soften that cold, hard marketplace.
In addressing David Fried's couching of the same-sex marriage debate in terms of employment benefits, I focused on the perceived "unfairness" to other relationship types that would still be barred from marriage (e.g., son and mother). But what about relationship types that aren't barred from marriage by law? Keep this sentence from Fried in mind for what follows:
If marriage is available to all, then it is perfectly permissible to discriminate against those who choose not to formalize their relationships.
So, in a land of pre-nups and no-fault divorce, what keeps couples who can legally marry — roommates, friends, business partners — from doing so to procure benefits? I suppose some do (the storyline is particularly prominent in the context of immigration), but it certainly isn't common. Why? Because our culture still holds the male-female relationship in suspicion of romance. One wouldn't have to look long within the pop culture for evidence that this is true, but the evidence probably lies even more handily among the things we all just know.
Opposite-sex marital fraud lies behind high cultural barriers. Thousands of years of social development just tell us that it's wrong. Consequently, even if such marriages of convenience are entered, only with difficulty will the couple's acquaintances construct an impression of the marriage that doesn't align it as much as possible with what marriage simply means beyond its definition.
Approaching from another angle, non-romantic opposite-sex relationships are already suspect. Male-female roommates live under the expectation of "sexual tension," and even where it is truly absent, the presumption of it requires them to be deliberate in the way in which they present themselves. Entering into fraudulent marriage purely for benefits would surely overwhelm all assurances that the marriage doesn't mean anything.
With the introduction of same-sex marriage, however, only two apparent possibilities exist: either the marriages will not have the cultural barriers to fraud, or all same-sex relationships must become held in suspicion of romance. With the first possibility, marriage would become merely a way to extend to a roommate or friend benefits that otherwise would seem to go to waste. The second possibility involves nothing less than the deterioration of deep friendship as a relationship type.
Given the disproportion of heterosexuals to homosexuals, I suspect that the former would prevail. And as I suggested in the comment section the last time I wrote along these lines, I just don't see any stigma sticking to buddy marriages and divorces. Their meaning and purpose would be clear: to formalize non-romantic relationships for material gain.
Via Michelle Malkin, we find the following paragraph from Jihad Watch:
The Armanious family had inspired several Muslims to convert to Christianity — or thought they had. These converts were actually practicing taqiyya, or religious deception, pretending to be friends of these Christians in order to strengthen themselves against them, as in Qur'an 3:28: "Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful -- he that does this has nothing to hope for from Allah -- except in self-defense."
The striking thing is that Muslims have a word to describe such deceit. As with so much in Islam, however, taqiyya is so mired in spin and sectarianism that well-meaning Westerners can be placated, even as extremists use the language of war. Reading the definition page for "taqiyya" on AnsweringIslam, a site for "Christian-Muslim Dialogue," one gets the sense that the practice of religious deception is restricted to Shi'a Muslims and is used only defensively and in extreme circumstances — "only when one fears for one's life, the lives of one's family members, or for the preservation of the faith." Look elsewhere, and it appears that the "preservation of the faith" clause stretches quite easily.
Cliff May has a Scripps Howard piece discussing "how effectively our enemies have learned to meld actions, words and images into weapons." In this, he includes such things as lies about Jews' culpability for everything and anything and the demoralizing images of hostages being beheaded. It would seem that there's another aspect, though, that turns the various subtexts of religious words into disorienting cover.
I don't wish to drive away a new reader — particularly one with whom I've fundamental disagreements, but who seems willing to engage in straightforward discussion — and I hope I will not do so with this post. Be that as it may, Norm (aka "reality based") has left a comment that lends itself to an analysis that is worth sharing on the main blog. You may read the post and the appended conversation at that link, but I've culled out the text here:
The reason that I believe the government is a better entity [than "the market"] to make such decisions is because I believe in democracy - in government of the people, by the people and for the people. In other words, I believe that we the people should make decisions about such things ( and yes, the media is the topic at hand here, but I am personally more concerned about the other issues I mentioned) - and I believe that in a democracy, the government is the means through which the people decide such things.We the people, speaking and acting through our elected representitives, can consider more factors when making such decisions than does "the market". The only factor in the impersonal decisions of the market is money. ...
I am not nearly as angry and sad about the possibility of children hearing a "dirty" word or seeing an exposed breast. I am angry and sad about the millions of children growing up in poverty, even though they live in the richest country in the world. I am angry and sad about the children who can't afford to see a doctor or a dentist or even to have enough food to eat. I am angry and sad that a great "Christian" president would call ketchup a vegetable in order to spend less money on school lunches for children who don't have access to adequate nutrition. I am angry and sad that we always seem to find the money to build more prisons, yet we are so miserly with the money that we spend on schools. ...
Access to food and medical care are life and death issues, access to quality education is a life determining issue; I just don't see that swear words or exposed breasts are anywhere close on that scale of importance.
And again: if you are so offended by such things (as I am by other aspects of popular media) I challenge you to kick the habit, kill your television. There are far better forms of entertainment, and far more accurate sources of information available. If that is an unthinkable thought for you, ask yourself why. Is there the slightest chance that you are addicted to TV? Are you like one of those smokers who "could quit anytime you want to?" Prove it to yourself; unplug it for a week and see what happens.
I'm going to skip through the myriad differences on specific policies to get to a point that ought to come quickly to mind to anybody who's read much conservative debate: "the market" is precisely "we the people" making decisions. In capitalism, those decisions are expressed in terms of money; in democracy, they are expressed in terms of votes (well, money too, but leave that aside).
A healthy society will determine which of the two systems — or what other system, or what combination — ought to resolve particular problems. The market does disproportionately weight the wealthy, but the government disproportionately weights those with political infrastructure and, especially in pure democracy, those willing to manipulate the ignorant. In short, neither the government nor the market is always the answer, in whole or in part.
Now look at Norm's actual handling of specific issues. Initially, it appears that he wishes to use the government (votes) to help those at a disadvantage in the market (money). But then he laments that we the people, acting through our elected representatives to consider more factors than the market does, enact policies involving prisons and schools with which he disagrees.
(I'll pause on a specific issue just long enough to note that calling our education spending "miserly" is simply erroneous. With this issue, the flaws of government clearly require a market-based correction, albeit not a total one.)
Ultimately, it appears that Norm understands — and approves of — the principles of market-based society. Wherever he places objectionable entertainment on the scale of social importance, Norm's preference for making public decisions via government ought to dictate a government solution to the problem. And yet, his solution in that respect is a market-based one.
My Northern New Jerseyian mother sent along a paper clipping of a piece from the Bergen Record titled "Bustling blogosphere gets hype, not readers." (That link requires free registration, but Jeff Goldstein has reprinted the whole thing.) The headline goes a bit beyond staff writer Brian Kladko's take, but the article is still a typical mainstream media minimization of blogs:
If you're not keeping a blog, or at least reading them, you're hopelessly behind the times, right?Well, don't panic. A survey released Sunday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 62 percent of Internet users don't really know what blogs are.
The survey reveals that blogs, as interesting as they may be to journalists, have yet to capture the imagination - or the eyeballs - of the general public.
Presumably as a representative of "the general public," Kladko quotes a local pastor as finding blogs to be "a waste of time" compared with the "insightful commentary" of ye olde media. (A mystery of journalism: how and why do they find such apparently random people?) Mining the article for data, however, one finds that the number of "men on the street" who would give a different answer hardly justifies the suggestion that this "growing diversion" is not attracting readers:
The percentage of Internet users who say they read blogs - short for "Web logs" - jumped from 17 percent in February to 27 percent in November. And the percentage of users who have created blogs rose from 5 percent to 7 percent.Technorati, a search engine company devoted to blogs, estimates there are more than 5 million blogs on the Web - three times the number in February. ... The Pew survey found that 12 percent of Internet users have posted comments or other material on other users' blogs.
Accepting all of these numbers and mixing in population data (assumed constant), we can calculate back the number of Internet users as 71.4 million and the number of blog readers as 19.3 million, or 6.6% of the population. For a little perspective, the popular vote in the 2004 presidential election totaled 117.9 million, and Bush led by only 3.3 million.
Yes, more people have blogs than decided the popular vote victory. Assuming all bloggers are readers, about three times as many people just read blogs as write them. And the readers are increasing more rapidly than the writers. At what point does this become a more significant activity than a diversion for journalists?
John Hawkins of Right Wing News currently lists Dust in the Light as his 27th favorite blog. To be honest, I find these sorts of lists among the most encouraging. Various rankings are nice to climb, of course, but they don't really define what the ranking means. Personal lists, by contrast, are explicit statements of interest.
I haven't mentioned this lately, if ever, but except inasmuch as I don't update it every week as I intend, my blogroll is always in the order in which I try to make my rounds. Since its purpose is as a reading list for a blogger, however, quality isn't the only consideration. I also try to mix things up with respect to both content and pace — in part for my own enjoyment and in part to ensure variety.
So, stripping out the non-blogs, here is my top 40 (listed, when possible, using the blogger's name rather than the site's). My largest regret, blogwise, is that time constraints usually preclude my reaching the end of even this list, despite my desire to read beyond it so as to raise up blogs that my day is poorer for having not included.
Citing Richard Clarke, of all people, John Derbyshire argues as follows:
In Clarke's prognostication, Al Qaeda launches a second wave of terrorist attacks on our home soil -- Las Vegas, theme parks, malls, big-city subways, cyberspace, etc. All this triggers a big withdrawal from Iraq. "The army was needed in the subways." Our Iraq effort dwindles to defense of some watchful enclaves. "Our goal now is just to prevent Iraq from becoming a series of terrorist training camps. If the new Iraqi army can't keep the peace among the factions, that's its problem."If there is a new wave of terrorist attacks on our home ground, I think public opinion will indeed force something like this -- not Euro-style appeasement, but a retreat to a more defensive posture, with much less talk about "bringing democracy" and "helping the Iraqis" (and others).
This underestimates both Americans' tenacity and their intuitive understanding of how problems must be addressed. Without illusion that my inclinations are exactly those of my countrymen, I'd suggest that the slogan that would build after a second wave of terrorist attacks on our soil would be akin to the title of this post: "Leave Me a Gun and Go Get the Bastards."
Appeasement is only the full expression of a trait to which the bulk of Americans simply haven't succumbed, and that only lies as shallow waters for most of the rest: dependency. Americans aren't afraid to fend for themselves if need be. (Considering Derb's recent writings thereon, an interesting angle for further thought would be how this relates to different brands of Christianity.)
Subsequently in the Corner, Jonah Goldberg touched on the aspect of a second wave that Americans would intuitively understand:
Adams' warning about not going abroad in search of monsters to slay is not on point. The monsters came to us. The monsters are still coming to us. In a world which is much smaller and in which our economic interests (and citizens) are everywhere "abroad" really doesn't mean the same thing anymore.I too hope there's a lot of realism under the rhetoric, but I for one am persuaded by the logic of the "drain the swamps" analogy.
The closeness of "over there" is the key point. It was one thing to concentrate on defending the home front when repelling the enemy meant sending them back overseas, not easily to return. But just as "'abroad' really doesn't mean the same thing" when it comes to our actions elsewhere, it doesn't mean the same thing in reference to the home base of our attackers. Far more likely, therefore, than Americans' yielding to liberals' siren call to close tightly our eyes and keep beneath the blankets would be increasing awareness that the comforts of modern life and the niceties of modern society must be put aside for a time.
The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "A The Bronwyn Tale," by Andrew McNabb.
Just so's you know: I do write about things not related to marriage. Honestly! There've just been a lot of interesting points reported/written/said on that front, lately. It doesn't help that some of the other posts in my queue, so to speak, will require more time to consider and write than I currently have to spare.
Massachusetts lawyer David Fried spends about 400 words spinning a tapestry in which allowing same-sex marriage permits more discrimination against the unmarried, and his argument is worth addressing seriously... until he ends with the following parenthetical quip:
I think that this is exactly what will happen--and I'm in favor of it (if only because, as a straight divorced guy, I don't see why gay people should be exempt from the general misery!)
Here's a statistic I'd like to see: the percentage of heterosexual same-sex marriage supporters who have been divorced. I bet it would be very disproportionately high.
In Fried's case, I don't see how he could better have highlighted that his entire post fails to take seriously the purpose that traditionalists claim for marriage. Fried ignores the justifying intention of the discrimination in order to deliver his clever explanation for maximization of it.
One point that we who oppose same-sex marriage have made again and again is that allowing an expanded circle of relationships into the marital definition dilutes it from within. If, as Fried puts it, allowing same sex-marriage will make it "both permissible and a good idea to discriminate against those who claim societal recognition for their relationships