More on the American family’s decline
While Americans mull over the passage of a gay marriage law in New York, the decline of the American family and the institution of marriage among heterosexuals—especially less-educated ones—continues, as chronicled in this recent Weekly Standard article by Mitch Pearlstein. Here are a few of the most interesting statistics found there:
The sheer numbers are staggering. In round terms, about 40 percent of all births in the United States are out of wedlock. That figure for the entire population conceals wide variation: Thirty percent of white children, 50 percent of Hispanic children, and 70 percent of African-American children are born to unmarried parents.
Those stark and terrible numbers describe not only the decline of marriage as a way (actually, the way) to raise children, but one full of economic consequences. The article points out that it has raised the amount of money we pay out in various forms of assistance and has widened the gap between the poorer and richer segments of society. The social and psychological consequences are no less dire.
There are some lacunae in the trend. One of them involves women with four-year college degrees; their rates of out-of-wedlock births still remain quite low, although they have risen:
In the early 1980s, only 2 percent of births to mothers with four-year college degrees were outside of marriage. For moderately educated mothers the figure was 13 percent, and for mothers who didn’t finish high school it was 33 percent. The recent figures on out-of-wedlock births for these three educational groups are much higher: 6 percent, 44 percent, and 54 percent respectively.
I am actually surprised that the figure among college graduates remains this low. Nevertheless, the statistics in general are sobering, and it’s difficult to believe that, once the marriage system is broken, it will ever be put back together again.
Pearlstein advocates training young men to counter the effects of father absence:
Aimless or felonious men are not the only reason for the decline of marriage, but they are a sizable one.
Many of these young men grew up without their fathers and suffered what some call “father wounds.” Would it not make sense for such boys to attend schools properly described as “paternalistic”? These would be tough-loving places, like the celebrated (but still too few) KIPP Academies, with their Knowledge Is Power Program. Would it not also make sense to allow many more boys and girls to attend religious and other private schools, which have their “biggest impact,” according to Harvard’s Paul Peterson, by keeping minority kids in “an educational environment that sustains them through graduation”?
I think that’s a drop in the bucket. The marriage decline (which exists in many European countries that do not have large numbers of “aimless or felonious men”) is in large measure, IMHO, a result of the fact that we have simultaneously removed many of the social (although not the economic) costs of illegitimacy, and decreased the incentives to marry.
Why do people get married these days? The strength of the drive to procreate, to be able to have sex with a regular partner, to avoid the disapproval of peers and of society as a whole, and to meet with favor from organized religion (not to mention fear of dads with shotguns) used to all act as strong drivers to lead men and women to marriage. For most young people in this country, and for society as a whole, these motivations have been tremendously weakened.
[NOTE: Here’s one of my earlier ruminations on related topics, including Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown.]
There are no informal – or many fewer – social sanctions to out of wedlock births. And when the government is supporting your offspring, very little reason for some to care even if there were.
You don’t have to cooperate with the bourgeoisie in order to find social acceptance and support when the power of the state is there to enforce and extract it.
In early years (especially in minority groups) the responsibility unfortunately falls on women to insist on marriage. Men have to be reminded of the value of oathkeeping by their peers.
But also important is helping married couples survive the seven year itch. Even without a religious motivation, couples need to be encouraged to tough it out and make it work. One thing that stands out is that people like Andrew Cuomo and Mike Bloomberg who one would expect to be mature and responsible don’t marry their girlfriends. Even Donald Trump marries his!
Would expanding the definition of ‘marriage’ to include homosexual partners have a positive, neutral, or negative effect on the stability of the institution of marriage and its ability to support the well-being of our children?
If I knew the effect would be positive, I would be all for expanding that definition.
If I knew the effect would be neutral, I would still support it, although with less passion.
If I knew the effect would be negative, I would strongly oppose that expansion.
I wish I knew the answer, and I do not.
Best wishes,
Jim
I’d be interested in statistics about births to unmarried parents in small towns versus large cities. The anonymity of people in large cities could be a factor. In a small community, everyone knows everyone’s business and that might make the “shame factor” higher there.
Most businesses in small towns must be very careful of their reputations because if word gets round that their practices or products are of low quality, their entire markets can disappear.
Jim Nicholas, I wish I knew the answer, too, and of course I don’t — nobody does. But for whatever it’s worth, I do have a theory. (Mr. Whatsit would tell you that I usually do.)
It seems reasonable to me that the stability of any societal institution should increase when more people invest themselves in that institution and therefore have a stake in it. (Right or wrong, we do seem to think that the converse is true — that is, statistics like the ones Neo quoted here make us worry that the fact that fewer people are choosing to marry before giving birth means that the institution is eroding.) It seems to me that people who CAN marry are more likely to care about, support, and help to strengthen the institution of marriage than people who can’t. Also, people who are married, gay or straight, are probably more likely than unmarried parents to raise children who expect to marry when their turn comes. If I’m right, then homosexual marriage should have some positive effect on the stability of the institution of marriage, simply because more people are participating.
And if we agree that the best way to raise children is within a marriage, then homosexual marriage should also support the well-being of children. The number of children born out of wedlock ought to decrease, and there should be a corresponding increase in the number of children born into the greater security and stability of marriage (such as it is, of course. Married gay parents will be just as free to divorce as married straight parents, and I see no reason to think they’ll be any less likely to do so.)
All in all, I’m guessing that the institution of marriage will benefit at least a little from the inclusion of homosexual couples. But it’s just a guess. I’m on record with it now — in 20 or 30 years we can find out whether I was right or wrong!
Seems to me that relying on society to provide a shame factor is a poor substitute for intrinsic motivation. I submit that the decay of marriage is a symptom of a larger moral decay.
Marriage will make a comeback, although perhaps not in our lifetimes. Consider the historical record: social mores oscillated wildly from galloping licentiousness (e.g., late Roman Empire) to stringently puritanitical and ascetic (early Christianity, as personified by St. Augustine).
Marriage will make a comeback once there is a general revulsion with the extent of moral decay, which surely is now a dot-com-like bubble. (Cue the general revulsion! What’s the holdup?) The comeback will be led by blacks, I predict, for several reasons.
First, black families took the earliest and worst hit from liberal policies that destroyed black marriage. They have the highest illegitimacy rate, and not coincidentally the highest crime and especially homicide rate, and have suffered the worst from the attack on the nuclear family. They therefore have the most to gain from turning away from our present lamentable mores.
Second, black culture has always had a strong religious streak running through it, as the ubiquity of black leaders styled “Reverend” reflects. Black churches currently are at a relative nadir of their influence, but that could change. Note the Nation of Islam already takes a strong pro-marriage line (Farrakhan: Our commitment to strong marriage secures our nation ). When mainstream black churches gain traction with a similar line, things will move.
Third, blacks for whatever reason are accorded moral authority in matters cultural and determine what is chic for white hipsters to emulate (the Vanilla Ice effect). This is key to propagating the healing, because it means that the scum in Hollywood will have to at least pretend to sing from the same hymnal to remain relevant culturally.
So I suspect (and hope!) that marriage will revive, and that blacks are the key.
Afterthought: homosexual marriage will not strengthen the institution. Quite the contrary, it makes the institution into a fashionable joke, a playacting much like some high schools used to have pretend marriages between students as a pedagogical device.
Note also that, turkey basters notwithstanding, homosexuals in general do not have families, which are the point of marriage and its importance to stabilizing society against the pathology that has devastated, e.g., the black community. So homosexual marriage is irrelevant as a social asset, but not as a social liability. Homosexuals won’t like hearing that, but it’s true.
What possible reason do folks have to get married, if they don’t already have a strong personal one?
It can be dissolved pretty much at-will, it doesn’t give assurance of exclusivity, it complicates your taxes and it locks you out of a heck of a lot of social financial aid. Also, if you– heaven forbid– should be the wronged spouse, you also lose a lot of presumptions unless you act like a live-in.
Mrs Whatsit –
I actually know several “married” homosexual couples. All female, and two of the couples involved one of the same women, but…the longest lasting one was a bit over five years; that’s the one where they went all-out with a wedding celebration. One involved children. (A girl and boy from a prior marriage.)
Someone wanting to do real research might start by comparing cohabitating straight couples to cohabitating homosexual couples, control for age and background, etc.
Occam’s Beard @ at 2:45 pm-
Yep.
Somewhere I did a long article explaining how promoting a stable society was the gov’t interest in marriage… if I remember right, the responses boiled down to “homophobe!”
Tocqueville, as with all things related to democracy, was the oracle here:
Once the genie of equality is let out of the bottle, it possesses everything, and then destroys it. All it takes is a little thought to see how that works. Beyond a certain bare minimum – for brevity we’ll just call it “natural rights equality” – equalization can only mean destruction. There’s a reason, after all, why the most egalitarian societies on earth have always been the poorest, the smallest, and the most rigid – the only way to have something like full equality is, we might say, to have nothing.
Tocqueville thought, however, that he had glimpsed in America a country where, since equality didn’t have much to destroy in the first place (we were never an aristocracy in the way England was, much less France), the people were able to fashion proxies for the aristocratic constraints that had formerly held popular furies in check.
It was just possible, Tocqueville claimed, that equality might work in America – precisely because we had such incongruent old beliefs mingled in with our newer egalitarian credos. These dusty relics were the four pillars of a free society: effective local government; self-initiative and the “art of association;” strong religious belief; and – to borrow the phrasing of another wise Frenchman, Montaigne – “firm” women.
Tocqueville was keenly aware of the irony here, for when we add those pillars up into a description of what makes us tic, it sounds more like an ideal vision of a medieval peasant-and-workshop citizenry than anything “democratic.” In effect, we were able to develop spontaneously the sturdy virtues of medieval farmers and traders, except within the loving embrace of the advanced British common law and its philosophical exponents.
Robespierre, Saint-Just, Desmoulins, Babeuf – these guys talked like democrats of the purest water. Contrariwise, while the average American in the 1830’s did sound some of the same notes as the French democrats, they talked far more, and far more passionately, about their work, their families, their God, their churches and their Bibles – which is to say, they talked how one would expect tenant farmers in Anglo-Saxon vills to talk.
Could, then, the traditionalist spirit coexist with a democratic spirit? Could Saint-Just and Edmund Burke reside in the same heart, dividing power, checking-and-balancing?
If so, it would be the ferocious devotion to the family and its mystique that would serve as the force-field allowing us to step safely over democracy’s land-mines and make equality work. So sayeth Tocqueville.
Near the end of “Democracy in America,” however, he let an ominous pessimism slip through his analysis, suggesting that it might be that equality can tolerate no moderation, no “quasi-medieval” beliefs, habits, and institutions that block it from stretching forth to the end of its logical tether, where it naturally terminates in savage absurdity.
Returning to our analogy, Saint-Just was nicknamed “the Angel of Death.” No one like Burke could ever have warranted or obtained such a spine-chilling monicker.
Now, that doesn’t mean that all pure democrats necessarily massacre their opponents. It means that democracy itself massacres competing claims, both metaphysical and political. Real massacre may follow, but more likely what will occur is “soft despotism,” as Tocqueville puts it, where the citizens are reduced to “a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the state is the shepherd.”
That said, here’s my two cents. We still get married, I think, because we are still an “old, weird” country, though increasingly less so as we become more progressive. We still possess that singular historical legacy of having bit the hell out of the forbidden fruit of equality while simultaneously using traditional virtues not rooted in equality to try and stay, if not inside, then very close to the Garden.
How else to explain the most truly progressive society on earth – the most innovative, the most dynamic, the most daring, the most prosperous – at the same time being among the most religious and “socially” conservative?
That the two halves of our spirit are not related in their dynamic tension always seemed a nonsense proposition to me. Unfortunately, that they are capable of remaining in fruitful tension without the great annihilator of equality winning out in the end is not so obvious.
The decline of the family is the most portentous signal of that.
Mrs Whatsit,
I think the reasoning you bring to support your theory is very sound. I certainly hope that your ‘guess’ turns out to be right, because I do believe that the expansion of the definition of marriage will happen.
What bothers me most about the debate is the focus on the rights of the adults. If this debate, on balance, shifts the view of marriage even more towards adults’ wishes and less towards children’s needs, it may result in marriage being seen as more optional, less permanent, and less committed to the children than to the adults.
Best wishes,
Jim
1. [NOTE: Here’s one of my earlier ruminations on related topics, including Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown.]
Natalie Portman was one of the related topics. I stated that I would “tone down or withdraw” my uncharitable attitude toward Portman if she married before her child was born.
She didn’t and I don’t.
2. Given the availability of contraception and abortion, women who have children while unmarried are making a choice. (I plead guilty to announcing the obvious, but) IMHO there may be more to this than is obvious.
3. My libertarian side is laissez-faire about out-of-wedlock childbearing or gay marriage, but my conservative side cautions that we are waaaay too cavalier about disregarding the implications of traditional practice. My libertarian side acknowledges that, for individuals and societies, some mistakes are very costly to persist in and very costly to correct–and some mistakes are fatal.
Tesh:
I didn’t mean to be advocating “shame” as the only motivator for stable marriages. But people being what they are, I wondered if it does have a significant effect.
I will however, stay with a larger point and one I have championed in past comments…that homo sapiens spent hundreds of thousands of years living in small communities, that we have only spent a few thousand years living in large cities, and that we stray from the earlier, very successful model at our peril.
Its social engineering… been detailing it for years…
and redistribution of wealth, laws, rules, etc
its not like i havent listed out the almost literally hundreds of quotes from progressives and feminists as to the destruction of family
currently, in another article, there are now, as of this year, more spanish babies than caucasian ones.
so, in essence, demographic genocide has been accomplished, as the majority of that demographic group are elderly (over 50).
now, as in peoria, they are reproducing the attacks on the ‘scapegoats’ just as in germany as i said they would.
but those that dont know how it worked from above, dont know what to look for as an indicator.
however, when you have social justice… a government that will look the other way and treat the “volk” preferentially… they go and attack the others.
peoriachronicle.com/2011/06/25/peorians-living-in-fear/
Tonight, around 11 p.m., a group of at least 60-70 African American youth marched down one of the side streets (W. Thrush) to the 4 lane main drag (Sheridan). They were yelling threats to white residents. Things such as we need to kill all the white people around here. They were physically intimidating anyone calling for help from the police. They were surrounding cars.
they are the Volk, the brutal class which will be USED to hegelianly crush the only opposition they have in the dying demographic.
[you may find it hard to find he original article, the progressives as with pravda, are erasing the facts to make history!!!! ]
webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lHzJ2PFQcMEJ:peoriachronicle.com/+http://peoriachronicle.com/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
you will find that the Volk, are attacking the designated scape goats… now that they are no longer the dominant population!! and they used the same disparate impact arguments to make the volk hate so much they are wiling to kill!!
Mobs Attack on City Buses: Police
Gang of teens storm bus, attack victims and run off with their belongings, police say
Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/cta-bus-wildings-123404378.html#ixzz1QbaDmOIq
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/cta-bus-wildings-123404378.html
Mobs Attack 2 Men In Streeterville
chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/06/05/man-beaten-by-mob-of-young-men-in-streeterville/
5 Teens Charged In Streeterville Mob Attacks
chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/06/06/6-teens-charged-in-streeterville-mob-attacks/
Random attacks cause concern in Chicago
Mob attacks create a sensitive issue for city officials eager to boost tourism and convention business
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-mob-attacks-20110606,0,7509040.story
Pepper Spray-Wielding Robbers On The Loose In Lakeview
chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/06/03/pepper-spray-wielding-robbers-on-the-loose-in-lakeview/
Woman Sprayed, Mugged In Lincoln Park
chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/06/05/woman-sprayed-mugged-in-lincoln-park/
and you can see how they scrub it
Mob attacks: Fear, too, is often skin deep
Whatever explanation for recent downtown attacks, answer is not race
Chicago’s government is blaming the mayhem on Sarah Palin, the Constitution, and of course racism.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-110608trice,0,3099764.column
and just so you know.
feminism got its start in terrorism (rote Zora is one example), so they are volk
and what about the gay volk?
Police bust up Broadway march after broken window, reports of crowd violence
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2011/06/26/police-bust-up-broadway-march-after-broken-window-reports-of-crowd-violence
Teenage gang charged under lynching law after ‘savage attack on 18-year-old student’
* Student so badly injured his mother almost didn’t recognise him
* Youngest member of gang is just 13
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008252/Teenage-gang-charged-lynching-law-savage-attack-18-year-old-student.html
the SADDEST part is thta they are following a template that the victims are too lazy, ignorant, distracted, disbelieving, want to guess, etc… themselves when they can read the process and waht happens and so on..
the trick is to realize that its the END that matters not the trip…
with all the caucasians that make up the west, goes christianity, and judaism – white men (and by extention their not to bright white women, either by putting off, deseases aquired as young people, abortions, distaste created through media, etc)
abortion + social engineering = eugenics
which is why they never argue about them together!!! everything sits as if its alone.
lets go down the germany parallels list
propaganda of the franfurt school, extereme liberal behavior, perversion as entertainment.
check
elite following a different set of rules no longer limited, and so are reversing the condition, and moving the free back into feudal servitude
check
sexualizeation of the kids as in hungary, hitler jugend, nashi, etc.
check
dividing the popualtion between the elite favored volk and the ones to be exterminated. extensive use of erroneous disparate impact ideas based in equality logic…
check
the establishment of Gleichschaltung through PC pressure, hate laws, administrative punishments in delgation
check
the volk start beating up and hurting the scapegoats and are not prosecuted for their social justice
check
hyper inflation due to over printing and economic hell to be coming
check
leader who was not a citizen of the country, hitler was from austria, stalin from georgia, etc..
check
laws to favor some people bringing feminists goal of inequality before the law for equal outcomes to fruition, 274 federal laws requiring preferences against white males… sba8a keeps poor jewish males from being able to compete in stores and small businesses. this duplicates the laws in germany that disenfranchised the scapegoats
check
healthcare laws which with other things will play favorited with the volk and hurt the others hastening their demise. given that most of that oppressor group is over 50, and they arent having children, this is just to hasten the end of the rest of them by removing the only real protestors…
check
social justice as a ideological balance
check
you know..
i can actually go on and keep listing the parallels
even better.
i can even show you how X moved to US to get away from hitler, or some other, and how they did the same thing here…
but hey!
its not the same
right?
well.. if it wasnt… huxley would have returned going nyah nyah insufferably… no?
I worry that marriage skills, if not passed on, will die off.
The Dream is an R’n’B singer, songwriter and producer. He made a comment after his divorce that stayed with me:
“The-Dream said that although he was in love with Nivea, his lack of experience in a family growing up meant he was “not taught how much more than love does it take to run a relationship. Like, ’cause love isn’t just where it’s gonna end. It can’t start and stop with love. There has to be a certain amount of knowledge and patience that’s acquired in order to keep it going and keep it straight, and I found out the hard way”.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The-Dream#Personal_life
I see a lot of people (male and female) in communities with low rates of marriage, whose main ambition in life is to get married and have a strong family life. That’s wonderful, but how will they know how to maintain it if there’s no example in either their families or the wider community?
The wealthy and well educated tend to pay lip service to respecting single parent homes, but have most of their own children within wedlock and have lower rates of divorce.
That shows that they’re not so much at ease with single parent households so much as they’re blasé about *other* people, not of their tribe, ruining their lives. Hey, it’s not like their kids will be going to the same schools, right?
It’s very easy to tolerate outliers as long as you’re sure they will remain outliers – even if some of their children are raised in single parent or divorced/widowed homes, they have 85-90% of the surrounding people in lasting marriages. They have at least some idea of what it takes to have a successful family life.
“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them” — Dr. Mary Jo Bane, feminist and assistant professor of education at Welleslry College and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman
“A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806
.
“No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” — Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, “Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma,” Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18
“Heterosexuality is a die-hard custom through which male-supremacist institutions insure their own perpetuity and control over us. Women are kept, maintained and contained through terror, violence, and the spray of semen…[Lesbianism is] an ideological, political and philosophical means of liberation of all women from heterosexual tyranny… ” — Cheryl Clarke, “Lesbianism, An Act of Resistance,” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writing by Radical Women of Color
“It became increasingly clear to us that the institution of marriage `protects’ women in the same way that the institution of slavery was said to `protect’ blacks–that is, that the word `protection’ in this case is simply a euphemism for oppression,” — Sheila Cronan, “Marriage,” in Koedt, Levine, and Rapone, eds., Radical Feminism, p. 214.
.
“Marriage is a form of slavery.” — Sheila Cronan, “Marriage,” in Koedt, Levine, and Rapone, eds., Radical Feminism, p. 216.
.
“Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the Women’s Movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.” — Sheila Cronan, “Marriage,” in Koedt, Levine, and Rapone, eds., Radical Feminism, p. 219.
“If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.” — Mary Daly, former Professor at Boston College, 2001
“The institution of marriage is the chief vehicle for the perpetuation of the oppression of women; it is through the role of wife that the subjugation of women is maintained. In a very real way the role of wife has been the genesis of women’s rebellion throughout history.” — Marlene Dixon, “Why Women’s Liberation? Racism and Male Supremacy”
“How will the family unit be destroyed? … the demand alone will throw the whole ideology of the family into question, so that women can begin establishing a community of work with each other and we can fight collectively. Women will feel freer to leave their husbands and become economically independent, either through a job or welfare.” — From Female Liberation by Roxanne Dunbar
“The overthrow of mother was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took control in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.” — Frederick Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State
C’Mon Ladies, take a bow..
self extermination as liberation!!!
i told you the peace sign is a death sign
(a life run inverted)
“The first condition of the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society.” [Engels, p.67]
and just so you know
the HOLOCAUST and SHOA and CONFLAGRATION of world war.. its a GOAL and PLAN
“All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character… [A general war will] wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.” — Friedrich Engels, “The Magyar Struggle,” Neue Rhenische Zeitung, January 13, 1849
see..
they are only following the prophet from 1850
if ANYONE took the time to read the stuff i kept pointing to, they would have KNOWN, not guessed, for YEARS prior to now.
anyone other than me realize that we are passed the point of survivability?
for every woman who doesnt hav a baby, another has to have 5 to have a stable population… to increase it, they have to have more than 5
now, other than elite nancy pelosi, can you tell me what white educated college studies person is going to have more than 5?
since the rate is already below the other more populuos groups..
the fact that the spanish can have la raza, and the women can ahve feminism, and the blacks can have black nazim, and the jews and collateral whites, can have what?
ie.. last centuries world war showed them that if you want to eradicate the jews, you have to eradicate the whites too.
and so they did…
or havent you noticed the constant decline as the most productive and so on are replaced by shadows.
Today about 42% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility
Male Births Declining In The U.S.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/11/health/webmd/main2672561.shtml
For the first time, minorities make up a majority of babies in the U.S., part of a sweeping race change and a growing age divide between mostly white, older Americans and predominantly minority youths that could reshape government policies.
History! Census Shows Minority Babies Outnumber White Babies
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The preliminary figures are based on an analysis of the Current Population Survey as well as the 2009 American Community Survey, which sampled 3 million U.S. households to determine that whites made up 51 percent of babies younger than 2. After taking into account a larger-than-expected jump in the minority child population in the 2010 census, the share of white babies falls below 50 percent.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
By contrast, whites make up the vast majority of older Americans – 80 percent of seniors 65 and older and roughly 73 percent of people ages 45-64.
“Hide the Decline” has been practiced for years.
in fact.. you can go back a couple of years on this blog and see how people argued that the current state of things was never going to happen.
well.. it has, and there is no way to stop it now
and with the majority minorities with blood in their brains thanks to lots o lies and bs… well, indiscriminate attacks are now the norm, but unreported.
and the majority minorities are voting themselves mroe and moer of the money of the other group. ‘
and they are having lots of babies, and having the babies fed and raised on the money of the other group, who cant have kids
all ya had to do, was come up with fertility impacting ideas, and then convince the women that it was trendy, etc… then they would abandon their children for the fantasy of great living working all day.
you can read the papers.. women WERE The wellspring and reserve of a societies intelligence.
and so, when they left home, mated indiscriminately, the smartest going infertile..
they exterminated the best of themselves
the soviets did it to themselves first
then saw how destructive it was, and so got the followers of stupid to join them.
its all in the history books, but i guess not reading bella dodd, and not opposing them, and not knowing the history… made it easy for them.
(anyone yet read haverlocks change agent guide for schools yet?)
OB, I don’t often disagree with you, but this time I do. The married homosexuals I know (as it happens, all female, like the ones Foxfier knows) are not “play-acting” at marriage any more than I am. As for doing it to be fashionable, that may well play a role as it so often does for heterosexual couples — if you doubt it, take a look at a copy of “Bride’s Magazine” sometime. I don’t know anybody, gay or straight, who got married as a “fashionable joke.” The homosexuals I know seem to have gotten married for the same muddle of good and bad reasons most straight people do — a mix of love and fear of loneliness, hope for economic and emotional security, faith in the future, wish to be traditional, hope for children, and what not.
As for how often gay people have children, I don’t know the statistics for homosexuals in general, but most of the couples I know — again, almost all female, which may be significant — do have children, married or not. In any event, even if it’s true that “most” homosexuals won’t have children, how does that change the proposition that the children of those who do will be better off if their parents are married than if they’re not? Seems to me that if such families are indeed a tiny minority, that’s an even better reason to give them access to a traditional source of security and strength.
@Artfldgr:
I think this might be of help:
“Tips for Not Appearing Crazy on the Internet…
“No Long Screeds…
“Sane people know that the only people who have hours to spend writing pages of text in a comments section are crazy people. And that’s why no will read what they write except other crazy people with way too much time on their hands.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/tips-for-not-appearing-crazy-on-the-internet/2/
For the love of all that is holy, make your comments shorter. The length alone makes you look crazy. There’s a difference between “long comment” and “pages and pages of badly paragraphed rants that no one seriously reads and which, from a cursory glance, look like you’re just repeating the same thing in each thread.”
My libertarian side is laissez-faire about out-of-wedlock childbearing or gay marriage, but my conservative side cautions that we are waaaay too cavalier about disregarding the implications of traditional practice.
This, in a nutshell, is the fatal flaw of full-on libertarianism. Libertarianism could only work if we were willing to step over people and their children lying starving in the gutter who were there because of decisions they’d made, and to point to them as examples for others.
But since we’re not, we have a legitimate interest in having some say in the behavior of others, when that behavior can foreseeably have adverse implications for those who had no input in the decision(s) that precipitated the calamity.
@texecex:
Aye, I agree that it’s a factor, I’m just ruminating that it’s probably not something we can either rely on or legislate. Marriages are also better if they are committed to for better reasons than shame. It’s a tool, to be sure, though. Sorry, I didn’t mean to disagree with you there.
Some years ago, discussing this issue on another blog, I mentioned I had heard two things while dealing with a couple of organized lefty groups:
They thought marriage was an evil institution and should be destroyed.
They thought gay marriage would be a help in the effort.
I was challenged for cites. There were two reasons I didn’t bother. One was that I hadn’t heard these things where I could find a cite and the other was that the demand for a cite is a time-waster.
(An example was a challenge about a different issue. Cites or you’re a damn’ liar. I said, google it and you’ll have a million two to look at. The response was that google Aubrey and you have 600,000 plus cites that Aubrey’s an asshole.
IOW, the demand for cites is not in good faith.)
Another guy with more time or patience found some. Changed nobody’s mind, of course. However, the accusation changed to me saying that gays who want to get married are trying to destroy marriage. Not what I said, but misrepresenting what somebody says is common. Strange, when what you actually said is there for everybody to see. Anyway, the point is that some people, not the marrying folks, think gay marriage is a way to destroy the institution of marriage. They would obviously not be getting married themselves.
So, do these folks have anything going for them in terms of being correct?
Andrew Sullivan said, wrt the subject, that things were going to have to change to take into account “the complicated lives of gay men”. Presumably expecting to get religious sanction for cruising. Do we use the same ceremony for het marriages?
There are about half a dozen conflicting narratives I could think of that kept the Frank Lombard-Duke case under the radar.
And the BSA makes sure that no kid is alone with an adult. Always has to be two adults.
More to this than simply social and legal permission to go down to the local JP.
Heterosexual marriage was always the most stable vehicle for raising the next generation. It should be no surprise that civilizations that experimented with alternative arrangements like the Moslems aren’t doing so well. Normal marriage functioned for millennia until birth control, welfare disbursements, no-fault divorce, double taxation, and an arguably anti-male bias developed to make it an economic death trap for the men. Why marry when you are fully invested into paying for the punishing costs of raising your children, even when you divorce? In a remarkably insane trend, fathers are now responsible for alimony even if their wives give birth as a result of adulterous affairs! It would be fiscal suicide to marry for most middle and low income men. No wonder the institution is so damaged.
Gay marriage promises to do nothing to alleviate this mess, and in fact will muddle the situation further. Whereas in a normal couple the male always pay support, the courts are probably going to give divorce attorneys eternal erections determining who the provider (ie the goat) will be in gay breakups. They’ll quickly learn the weight of the financial anchor in their ‘marriage’, especially if it includes any children. Therefore the same pressures disincentivizing normal marriage will be in force for gay couples who seek to raise children.
While it may be true that gay couples belong to a higher economic rung making them better able to weather the financial pressures, it’s passing strange to believe they’re immune to this deteriorating economic climate. So anybody trying to seriously argue that gay marriage will improve the birthrate or stabilize the American family is engaging in painful self-deception. Obama and the Democrats keep displaying the worst timing in choosing this period of stagnation to push for legalized gay marriage.
This scenario reminds me of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire where the franchise of the ‘citizen’ was devalued to include everyone solely to collect tax revenue. I’m certain such proponents claimed they were ‘strengthening the institution of citizenship’ only for the public to discover that the price imposed for the franchise wasn’t worth the cost for most of them.
“For you will no longer remember the oracle of the LORD, because every man’s own word will become the oracle, and you have perverted the words of the living God, the LORD of hosts, our God.”–Jeremiah 23:36
When science trumped faith and pronounced that man was an animal like any other then “family”–as in man a part of the family of God–was dealt a deathblow. We moved too far from the Garden (nice essay, kolnai).
Man’s declarations have no effect upon what God has ordained. Marriage will return when and if man wants to end his rebellion. The way may just be led as Occam indicates, by those who have been most cruelly deceived and used: a slaves revolt, if you will. Perhaps it will take a thousand years and those who wish to live in accordance with God’s commandments will suffer persecution from those who, ironically, were entrusted with them, but “perverted the words of the living God, the LORD of hosts, our God.”
Liz,
I’m with on the dangers of not having role models for marriage. I also think that the cultural images kids see today tend to emphasize being cool at the expensive of character issues. Look at older movies, eg, It’s a Wonderful Life. Donna Reed was there for her man. Movies and TV used to be full of parents who took care of their kids emotionally as well as physically. There were signs of things to look for when choosing a mate. I wonder how many classes that read To Kill a Mockingbird ever talk about it from the POV of Atticus as a father and the efforts he made to raise the kids.
Assistant Village Idiot once said that he felt parents should raise their children to be good parents. Among a certain class, the goal seems to be raising them to get a Harvard law degree. For those who have little chance of attaining that goal, we don’t seem to offer many alternatives to be successful and respected citizens. Instead they become people who cling to their guns and religion. We really need some writers and film makers who can offer more options to the young and show them more about what true intimacy means in a relationship.
I left out “you” in my first sentence.
From Jewel Fern’s “Maggot World.”
It was dark and Danny saw many maggots coming out to do their assigned tasks and chores.
He wished for his brother, his father, his mother, his sisters, his cousins, his uncles, anyone who even knew his family. They had been discovered, Danny’s family, and divided. “You are only a maggot,” he had been told.
Maggots don’t understand family.
How wonderful, Danny thought, would the world be if everyone had the love of their parents. He wrapped his whole being around the thought of family. It was simple and good. He understood. I came from them. I am them. They are special to me. I am special to them. I am special.
He cared for family, but maggots aren’t supposed to care. They’re servants, programmed for work only.
He remembered and decided. An electric weird wonderful feeling surged through him. He stood up. The nearby crouching maggots whimpered and shuffled away. A siren sounded. That’s when Danny learned lesson number one of the resistance: Look like all the rest.
This has been going on for generations. After WW1 the family farms in the midwest were destroyed. The dust bowl and the tractor brought corporate farming to the world. Thousands of families were destroyed but nobody noticed between the Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression. Then came WW2 and a whole slew of wartime marriages that just didn’t work out. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of marriages destroyed during and after the war by death, wounds, PTSD and other problems.
Gay marriage is just background noise. The only effect it will have is to continue the overstressing of divorce courts. Of course after the first few thousand well to do gays get taken to the cleaners in divorce court they will become as leery of marriage as young hetero men are.
Michael Cook, editor of the outstanding MercatorNet, thinks there may be a bright side in all this (wake-up call to other states?) but also admits that what is needed is a cultural change of heart (no mean feat).
He writes:
“…The legalisation of same-sex marriage in the state of New York is not altogether bad news. It could wake up voters in other states — and other countries — to the strengths of the push for “marriage equality” and to the weaknesses of the defence of traditional marriage.
“The first strength of the gay marriage campaign in New York, according to the New York Times, was money. Lots of money.
“The story of how same-sex marriage became legal in New York is about shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples who wish to be wed. But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.”
“Governor Andrew Cuomo sought the help of the guys who brought you the global financial crisis – hedge fund managers. He persuaded Paul E. Singer, the founder of Elliott Management, a Republican whose son is gay; Clifford S. Asness, of the quant fund AQR Capital; and Daniel S. Loeb, of Third Point, to donate US$1 million to the campaign.
“The second strength was confusion about marriage amongst both politicians and voters. For many the magic has evaporated from marriage. They have lost sight of what it is all about. Not surprisingly for the Governor of a state which has just lost two seats in the House of Representatives because of its declining population, Cuomo neglected to explain how same-sex marriage was going to benefit the most defenceless group of all — children.
“His impassioned speech behind closed doors to the Republican delegation at the governor’s mansion treated marriage merely as a sentimental partnership. Gay couples wanted recognition, he told them. “Their love is worth the same as your love. Their partnership is worth the same as your partnership. And they are equal in your eyes to you. That is the driving issue.”
“Which leads us to the weakness of the defenders.
“As figures from the Census Bureau reveal, married couples now form less than half (45 percent) of all US households. Married couples with children account for only 20 percent of all households — down from 43 percent in 1950. With so many children witnessing divorce and growing up in broken homes, marriage has become just a trinket, not a jewel to be prized. Native Indians sold priceless Manhattan real estate for $24 worth of cloth, beads and buttons. New York legislators done one better by selling the farm on marriage.
Human nature, logic, economics, and history all support traditional marriage — but too many people simply don’t know how precious that is.
“Furthermore, the logic of same-sex marriage is the logic of contraception: that sex and children have no necessary connection to each other. That being the case, marriage is nothing more than a companionate relationship, with children an optional adornment to the partners’ mutual affection. Since about three-quarters of women between 15 and 49 use some form of contraception, it’s not surprising that voters and legislators believe that “love” is enough to create a marriage. Ultimately the levee against the rising tide of gay marriage has to be a change of heart on contraception.
“How can that be done?
“First of all, by the example of loving couples and their children. Every successful family is an argument against the self-centred egotism of people who care nothing about the next generation.
“Second, by demonstrating more convincingly that same-sex marriage undermines traditional marriage. Many supporters find it hard to articulate why the publicly recognised union of a man and a woman with their children is the only model which works. Defeat in New York is discouraging, but it concentrates the mind on how to frame convincing arguments for future battles.
“The battle is joined between those who believe that marriage is for present fellowship and those who believe that marriage is for future generations. But it will be important to remember that boodles of cash and backroom deals will not deliver victory. What is needed is a cultural change of heart. Nothing less….”
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/and_t/
Andrew Sullivan said, wrt the subject, that things were going to have to change to take into account “the complicated lives of gay men”. Presumably expecting to get religious sanction for cruising.
The modern, public health remake of Johnny Appleseed.
Sadly, if you look at other countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, there is a higher incidence of out of wedlock births. From a 2006 National Review article by Stanley Kurtz:
“The numbers for 2005 are in, and the Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate has done it again, shooting up a striking 2.5 percentage points. That makes nine consecutive years of average two-percentage-point increases in the Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate, a rise unmatched by any country in Western Europe during the same period. Ever since the Dutch passed registered partnerships in 1997, followed by formal same-sex marriage in 2000, their out-of-wedlock birthrate has been moving up at a striking clip.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/217803/smoking-gun/stanley-kurtz
And David Blankenhorn has determined that …”many of those who most vigorously champion same-sex marriage say that they do so precisely in the hope of dethroning once and for all the traditional “conjugal institution.”
That phrase comes from Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at New York University…. She views the fight for same-sex marriage as the “vanguard site” for rebuilding family forms. The author of journal articles like “Good Riddance to ‘The Family,'” she argues forthrightly that “if we begin to value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds over their customary forms, there are few limits to the kinds of marriage and kinship patterns people might wish to devise.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/451noxve.asp?page=3
I think it’s safe to assume that same-sex marriage will not strengthen the already damaged institution of marriage.
1. CV, thanks for the background info, but I have a quibble with the Michael Cook piece you quote:
Governor Andrew Cuomo sought the help of the guys who brought you the global financial crisis — hedge fund managers.
Hedge funds go out of business if they bet too wrongly. The financial crisis was primarily caused by too-big-to-fail institutions in cahoots with governments.
(There are legitimate concerns about hedge funds, but so far efforts to blame them for the economy have had little success despite the Ruling Class’s need for scapegoats.)
2. Supposedly the very people who destroyed the economy are destroying marriage. Isn’t that a–suspiciously–pat and convenient situation, narrative-wise?
Yet the MercatorNet masthead says, Navigating modern complexities.
3. The end of the linked piece asks, Want to read more articles by Michael Cook?
No.
4. If I sound grumpy, it’s from more than staying up last night. I am grumpy about people trying to manipulate me by linking things that aren’t linked: at least, not as strongly as claimed.
That phrase comes from Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at New York University…. She views the fight for same-sex marriage as the “vanguard site” for rebuilding family forms. The author of journal articles like “Good Riddance to ‘The Family,’” she argues forthrightly that “if we begin to value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds over their customary forms, there are few limits to the kinds of marriage and kinship patterns people might wish to devise.”
I’m still letting sink in this viewpoint from a member of the more necessarily biologically committed gender of a sexually dimorphic species.
What next? Bulls coming out in favor of bullfighting?
Time for another Sokal hoax, OB?
Women are reluctant to marry men with poor economic prospects. Boys are getting hurt in the schools as girls do better and better. Well paying industrial jobs have largely disappeared. Black women have dealt with this forever. White women are catching it now.
OB, there’s more where that came from (Blankenhorn wrote a book about it). Here’s more from the article:
“Similarly, David L. Chambers, a law professor at the University of Michigan widely published on family issues, favors gay marriage for itself but also because it would likely “make society receptive to the further evolution of the law.” What kind of evolution? He writes, “If the deeply entrenched paradigm we are challenging is the romantically linked man-woman couple, we should respect the similar claims made against the hegemony of the two-person unit and against the romantic foundations of marriage.”
Examples could be multiplied–the recently deceased Ellen Willis, professor of journalism at NYU and head of its Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism, expressed the hope that gay marriage would “introduce an implicit revolt against the institution into its very heart, further promoting the democratization and secularization of personal and sexual life”–but they can only illustrate the point already established by the large-scale international comparisons: Empirically speaking, gay marriage goes along with the erosion, not the shoring up, of the institution of marriage.”
Occam says, “This, in a nutshell, is the fatal flaw of full-on libertarianism. Libertarianism could only work if we were willing to step over people and their children lying starving in the gutter who were there because of decisions they’d made, and to point to them as examples for others.”
In a free society it is up to the individual and liked minded, freely associated groups of individuals to decide who and what is worth supporting and what is not when it comes to charity. I won’t bore you with a list of charities I choose (important word) to support in my community and society at large, but you’ll have to trust me when I say I am a generous person. However, I deeply resent government holding a gun to my head to extract the fruits of my labor to choose for me what ‘social programs’ my taxes must support.
Someone once said something like, “To protect fools from the folly of their actions is to fill the world with fools.” There is truth in this statement and you can see it all around you everyday. As an experiment, the next time a panhandler asks for money offer to buy them lunch instead. Try that with 100 panhandlers and you’ll find that 70 to 90 are not interested in lunch. They want money to feed their addiction. They made many poor choices along the way, I don’t care for what reason if any, and I have no desire to assist them. However, I am willing to donate to a local rehab clinic. My choice, and mine alone.
If we want to put a dent in illegitimacy, there is a way to do it: adopt a rule that any person, male or female, who has an illegitimate child is not eligible for government benefits. As it stands today, we have a lot of illegitimacy because we subsidize it, in effect. If you are a woman who has a child out of wedlock, you are most likely not able to work full time to care for you and your child, so we make you eligible for AFDC and other programs. If we want to end out of wedlock births, we need to remove the incentives for it.
I doubt very much we will do this, as it would be viewed as unspeakably cruel. I am beginning to think just the opposite, however. When a person has a child out of wedlock and accepts government benefits to pay for his or her bad choices, it reinforces those choices and tells the person that the choice really was a good one. This removes some of the barriers to that person making the same choice again and encourages others to do likewise. Rather than freeing the person to raise the child, however, these programs often initiate a cycle of welfare and bad decisions that can last generations. Is it really cruel to make one person bear the consequences of his or her own bad decisions if that deters future conduct of that person and others?
“Hedge funds go out of business if they bet too wrongly. The financial crisis was primarily caused by too-big-to-fail institutions in cahoots with governments.
(There are legitimate concerns about hedge funds, but so far efforts to blame them for the economy have had little success despite the Ruling Class’s need for scapegoats.)”
When you’re right, you’re right. The too big to fail take risks that only a fool would take unless they knew their cronies in government will bail them out and reward them when the Ponzi scheme collapses. Despite Occam’s protests, I’d gladly and with glee step over their emaciated carcasses. On second thought, I’d take them home and give them to our new dog Colfax to gnaw on. 😉
“”All in all, I’m guessing that the institution of marriage will benefit at least a little from the inclusion of homosexual couples.””
Mrs Whatsit
Has the past forty years of homosexual acceptance benefited the institution of dating and courtship?
Marriage exists as a legal institution because it is a benefit to society AS A WHOLE – it provides a stable basis for rearing the next generation and perpetuating our civilization. Gay marriage does not do this. It is a purely personal matter based upon the feelings of the two persons involved. With all due respect, that is irrelevant to society as a whole. Gay marriage should not be made into a legal institution because there is no reason for it that extends beyond those who are directly involved. Hence, it is not a proper subject for government regulation.
“@Artfldgr:
I think this might be of help:
“Tips for Not Appearing Crazy on the Internet…
“No Long Screeds…”
How about “Blogspot is free. WordPress is cheap.”
“There are no informal — or many fewer — social sanctions to out of wedlock births. And when the government is supporting your offspring, very little reason for some to care even if there were.”
You can thank good ole’ Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” for that one!
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan sent out the warning on his “Two Americas” report in the 1970s. He was called every evil name in the book. Now that he’s gone, everyone agrees about how right he was.
Liz Says:
June 28th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
@Artfldgr:
Lizsays, “”I think this might be of help:
“Tips for Not Appearing Crazy on the Internet…
“No Long Screeds…
“Sane people know that the only people who have hours to spend writing pages of text in a comments section are crazy people. And that’s why no will read what they write except other crazy people with way too much time on their hands.””
Liz,
These are not long crazy screeds, its what Artfldgr has ready access to in the vast wet, organic computer inside his skull. He’s not spending hours to marshall information, he’s spewing info already absorbed in his mind at a rate beyond our abilities. My humble advice is that you (nor I) can keep up with his speed of comprehension and retention. Yes, sometimes he is wrong, but more often he is correct
The most toxic and destructive concept of our times is “human rights”. These rights are supposed to be absolute, with no compromiss allowed, and completely divorced with responsibilities. And this is absurd, since rights of some people are responsibilities of other people and so are conditional on ability and willingness to perform one’s duty. And compromiss is the heart of social interaction. What is even worse, the concept of human rights is quite knowingly abused by enemies of social order, as a wedge issue, to undermine marriage, freedom of contracts, freedom of speach and every known civil liberty.
It is high time to abolish all human rights at question exept those that explicitely enumerated in Constitution. Metastatic growth of human (and animal) rights is a cancer killing Western civilization.
When people say gay marriage demeans or lessens marriage, they are confusing cause and effect. Traditional marriage had *already* been badly battered by the time gay marriage arose as a mainstream issue. Shacking up, out of wedlock births, childless couples and no-fault divorce were well entrenched.
Gay marriage isn’t much like traditional marriage, but it doesn’t look a whole lot different from what marriage had become. So gays started asking “Why not us?”
One question: Have the gays who are now supposed to bolster the institution of marriage done so in the past? What has been their reaction to the films and TV shows, the music, etc? Gays have been prominent in all the lifestyle areas. Have they ever gotten together to say this is over the top, even about Folsom Street Days? I just don’t see them breaking ranks with the radical feminists, the Kevin Jenning activists, or the in-your-face arts crowd. I don’t anticipate their objections to the ridiculous anti-discrimination lawsuits that are sure to come.
I’ll complain about Artfldgr’s post if my finger tip scrolling ever changes to bicycle pedals. But luckily that hasn’t happened, and my right index finger is in much better shape than my knees.
gs,
Michael Cook is writing from either Australia or New Zealand, I believe, so I’ll give him a bit of a pass in terms of analysis of the U.S. financial crisis (indeed he gets points in my book for being tuned in at all) but I think the larger point he was making was interesting and not well-known–that is the fact that a lot of bucks were behind Cuomo’s push for gay marriage. The players themselves and their personal connections (hedge fund managers or not) are also fascinating.
MercatorNet does a great job of aggregating international opinion on topics ranging from social issues to bioethics and I always find them worth reading.
Back to gay marriage…it’s not a matter of people being “denied” a civil right. People should be asking themselves why society has long privileged married couples with special status, benefits, etc. It’s about CHILDREN (whether a union produces offspring or not).
Children need and deserve to be raised with their own mother and father. These are critical and complementary roles. A child raised in a home with two gay partners, no matter how much they are loved and cared for, is still missing either a mother or a father. With gay marriage we are basically saying they don’t need both.
If it weren’t for the good of children, why would the state be interested in validating a “love relationship” among persons? (The tattered status of traditional marriage is really irrelevant here).
This is basically a vast social experiment on kids… and it won’t end well.
I once heard a wise priest talk about the “iconography” of traditional marriage. It’s how we teach the next generation what marriage is. Well, gay marriage is just tearing down that icon even more than it already has.
gs,
Michael Cook is writing from either Australia or New Zealand, I believe, so I’ll give him a bit of a pass in terms of analysis of the U.S. financial crisis (indeed he gets points in my book for being tuned in at all) but I think the larger point he was making was interesting and not well-known–that is the fact that a lot of bucks were behind Cuomo’s push for gay marriage. The players themselves and their personal connections (hedge fund managers or not) are also fascinating.
MercatorNet does a great job of aggregating international opinion on topics ranging from social issues to bioethics and I always find them worth reading.
Back to gay marriage…it’s not a matter of people being “denied” a civil right. People should be asking themselves why society has long privileged married couples with special status, benefits, etc. It’s about CHILDREN (whether a union produces offspring or not).
Children need and deserve to be raised with their own mother and father. These are critical and complementary roles. A child raised in a home with two gay partners, no matter how much they are loved and cared for, is still missing either a mother or a father. With gay marriage we are basically saying they don’t need both.
If it weren’t for the good of children, why would the state be interested in validating a “love relationship” among persons? (The tattered status of traditional marriage is really irrelevant here).
This is basically a vast social experiment on kids… and it won’t end well.
I once heard a wise priest talk about the “iconography” of traditional marriage. It’s how we teach the next generation what marriage is. Well, gay marriage is just tearing down that icon even more than it already has.
Apologies for the double post.
It is a rearguard action now. When certainty belongs to the other side, you can bet your side isn’t advancing. All the weak, deceptive, factually wrong, anecdotal, communist-inspired arguments for gay marriage point to a haggard and beleaguered populace lacking authority and certainty.
What is the motivation of gays who demand marriage? Why is it so important to them that we accept their lifestyle? Because we’re not talking detente here, we’re not talking that we will get to keep our lifestyle, our views, and pass them on to our children.
So be prepared to put up and shut up after you have abdicated your duty to fight for what is right. That you were deceived into acquiescence will not matter.
You won’t be able to claim a mulligan.
Sergey Says:
It is high time to abolish all human rights at question exept those that explicitely enumerated in Constitution.
Sergey, after discounting a bit for enthusiasm, I agree with your post, but have extracted the sentence that gives me concerns.
1. As we defend the concept of human rights against abuse, let’s not forget the need to limit the power of the State.
2. The 9th Amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, declares:
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Nah, gs, no point. Most of that literature qualifies as self-parody. But thanks for reminding me of this. I still chuckle when I think of it.
Libby’s quotes:
Evolution, degeneration, what’s in a word?
No “if’s” about it, comrade. But the more fundamental question is why you are challenging it, and to what purpose? Or is that a silly question?
Terrific. No need to move to the ghetto; the ghetto is coming to you.
Parker, just to be clear, I wasn’t deprecating libertarian impulses, which I share, or imputing invidious character traits to libertarians. I was just pointing out the impracticality of an unfettered libertarian policy.
Some of my fondest memories of academia involve the expressions of undergraduates who, having caused a problem and presented it to me to solve for them, as they realized that I was not going to undertake heroic — or indeed, any — efforts to insulate them from the consequences of a stupid decision. (I’ll henceforth call this the “Colfax maneuver.”)
Not all the teaching — or even the most important — in university takes place in lecture theaters …
Yup. When I was single I dated a tres liberal social worker in the Bay Area. (I know, I can’t figure out how this relationship lasted more than five minutes either, but it did.) She related stories of welfare queens who would have another child just to get “mo’ money.” She tried to explain that while, yes, Mom would get more money, it wouldn’t be enough more to cover the additional expense of another mouth to feed. But this sophisticated high finance argument invariably foundered on the rocks of “mo’ money.”
So maybe a practical way forward (i.e., one that might actually be implemented) is not to increase any benefits in response to further kids. It’s not ideal, but probably the best we can hope for. The Dems would have a field day if we were to try to eliminate benefits entirely.
Yup. LBJ was one of the worst Presidents in American history. He and Carter are running neck and neck.
The relationship is causal: he was called every evil name in the book
he was seen to be right even at the time.
(There. I think I’m caught up now.)
Occam’s Beard Says:
June 29th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
(There. I think I’m caught up now.)
I’m struggling to not get caught up.
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My daughter works in television and tells me that the coveted demographic for shows and advertisers is young men, 18-35, because they have the most disposable income, no responsibilities, and they are willing to spend what they earn indulging every whim.
Occam,
In case you’re still following this discussion, thanks for the clarification. BTW, Colfax is a great dog; a mix of German Shepherd, Collie, and probably a hint of Golden Retriever. I like the Colfax maneuver idea…. he’s a young fellow that loves to chew on bones. 🙂
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“Someone once said something like, “To protect fools from the folly of their actions is to fill the world with fools.” There is truth in this statement and you can see it all around you everyday. As an experiment, the next time a panhandler asks for money offer to buy them lunch instead. Try that with 100 panhandlers and you’ll find that 70 to 90 are not interested in lunch. They want money to feed their addiction. They made many poor choices along the way, I don’t care for what reason if any, and I have no desire to assist them. However, I am willing to donate to a local rehab clinic. My choice, and mine alone.”
The famous Gruhn Guitar in Nashville now, or a couple of years ago, had put a sign up out front asking people not to contribute to panhandlers.
I hadn’t seen it four or 5 years before when I last picked up my Heritage archtop, but it had apparently become quite a problem … to the extent of interfering with business. Things change fast once an “ecology” opens up or is opened up by a court decision.
We wandered over to the fort by the river, to kill a little time touring, and when exiting encountered a tribe of about half a dozen middle-aged drunks lounging in the sun, their backs against the low wall the fronts the river.
“Hey … hey you…”
I sent Kathy and the kids and my sister on ahead and out to the street, and turned around and said, “What?”
“Come here”
“Why?”
“Come here, man!”
“No, you come here.”
“No man you come here … whats a matter … you afraid?”
“What’s the matter with you, you can’t stand up?”
At that point the frantic girls poked their heads back in through the exit and started shouting, “D … stop it!!! Leave them alone, please!”
So, I did.
Great tourist spot though.
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Pretty much what the British government is trying to do at the moment with a total benefits cap of £26.000 (about $41,000). Overwhelmingly popular with the public, hell to get through a democratic Parliament with members who have constituencies to protect…