Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s so much news and so many good articles I thought I’d do a short roundup.

Here’s a piece further elucidating the treaty vs. executive agreement argument on the Iran deal. The gist of it is that although it is not a treaty, it may violate a treaty (nuclear non-proliferation), and that nothing in Corker-Menendez precludes the Senate from saying this and treating the deal as a treaty, but that Obama would successfully ignore that.

We are just finding out that Lois Lerner had a second secret email account, this one under the name of “Toby Miles,” that she used for IRS business during the time of the monitoring of conservative groups. This is how it came out:

According to IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas, the agency discovered the email account when it was assembling documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, the public interest law group that filed an open-records lawsuit to gain access to emails sent by Lerner during the time she targeted conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.

…”It is simply astonishing that years after this scandal erupted we are learning about an account Lois Lerner used that evidently hadn’t been searched,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, accusing the IRS of concealing information from Lerner that could inform the targeting controversy.

Not all that astounding, actually. But interesting.

The French train defenders were lucky as well as heroic, but anti-gun opponents are trying to spin their successful capture of the train terrorist into some sort of argument that you don’t need a gun to stop an attacker who’s armed with an AK-47. Good luck with that; his guns were inoperative, and that’s probably the only reason the heroes all lived to get their Legions of Honor.

Jimmy Carter’s big regret

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse reports on Jimmy Carter’s major regret, according to Carter:

REPORTER: And anything you wish — I’m sorry — that you had not done or that you’d done differently?

JIMMY CARTER: I wish I’d sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued them and I would have been re-elected.

I’m going to leave out the question of whether Carter is narcissistic in relating it to his own re-election. What I want to focus on now is a different sort of narcissism on Carter’s part, as well as Carter’s poor judgement: that is, his idea that “one more helicopter” would have done the trick.

Years ago I wrote a long post on the rescue mission known as Operation Eagle Claw. There were so many things wrong with the operation that it’s hard to know where to begin. Some were bad luck; some were mechanical, some were logistical:

…[T]he details…are a case of “whatever could go wrong, did go wrong;” from vicious sandstorms, to the utterly improbable coincidence of the planes’ initially encountering a truck and a civilian passenger bus as they landed in the desert, to a fatal airplane crash. Debacle, indeed; the planes never even came near Tehran.

One more plane probably would not have mattered, because so much had gone wrong. But there was also a serious problem that probably could not have been fixed even by a few more planes. The problem was inherent in a directive for which Carter himself was directly responsible:

Perhaps it’s a good thing [the planes] didn’t [get to Tehran]. From the evidence in the piece, the loss of life would likely have been even greater had they done so. It’s very difficult to believe that this mission ever had any chance of succeeding. Not only was the weather problem in the desert underestimated, and the assault force relatively small (one hundred thirty two men maximum, with some planes expected to encounter technical difficulties and drop out), but here was the game plan for controlling crowds around the embassy:

“Another presidential directive concerned the use of nonlethal riot-control agents. Given that the shah’s occasionally violent riot control during the revolution was now Exhibit A in Iran’s human-rights case against the former regime and America, Carter wanted to avoid killing Iranians, so he had insisted that if a hostile crowd formed during the raid, Delta should attempt to control it without shooting people. Burruss considered this ridiculous. He and his men were going to assault a guarded compound in the middle of a city of more than 5 million people, most of them presumed to be aggressively hostile. It was unbelievably risky; everyone on the mission knew there was a very good chance they would not get home alive. Wade Ishmoto, a Delta captain who worked with the unit’s intelligence division, had joked, ‘The only difference between this and the Alamo is that Davy Crockett didn’t have to fight his way in.’”

Carter is old and sick now. But that doesn’t change history, even though he’d probably like to do so.

Why doesn’t Carter mention as a regret the ascendancy of the mullahs in Iran under his watch? Yes, I know—there’s no way he could argue that that might have been cured by one more helicopter.

If you’re not familiar with his role in that transition, take a look at this post of mine. Here’s an excerpt:

The Shah lived in what’s known as a “rough neighborhood.” This meant that, in order to implement the modernization of Iran, he felt he needed to be harsh in dealing with the opposition. Jimmy Carter was dedicated to the cause of spreading human rights throughout the world, and he decided to put pressure to bear on the Shah to expand civil liberties and relax his policies towards those in his country who were against him.

Carter threatened the Shah with cutting arms shipments, and in response:

The Shah…released 357 political prisoners in February, 1977. But lifting the lid of repression even slightly encouraged the Shah’s opponents. An organization of writers and publishers called for freedom of thought, and 64 lawyers called for the abolition of military tribunals. Merchants wrote letters requesting more freedom from government controls. Some people took to the streets, perhaps less fearful of being shot to death, and they clashed with police. A group of 120 lawyers joined together to publicize SAVAK torture and to monitor prison conditions. Dissident academics formed a group called the National Organization of University Teachers, and they joined students in demanding academic freedom. Political dissidents started disseminating more openly their semi-clandestine publications.

As events spiraled out of control, there were demonstrations throughout Iran. Police reacted harshly, and many protesters were killed, which led to more demonstrations and more deaths, which led to–well, you get the idea.

A genie of dissent had been unleashed–a valid one, because there was much to protest. But as things escalated, and the Shah eventually lost the support of the army and the police (a turning point), few seemed to be prescient enough to predict what forces would replace his regime–not what was hoped for, but what was likely to do so. There were only three choices, and two of them–the mullahs and the Marxists–could reasonably be expected to be far more repressive than the Shah.

Jimmy Carter was probably sincere in wishing that his pressure on the Shah would lead to greater civil liberties, not fewer. But if so, it was one of the gravest miscalculations in history. Be careful what you wish for.

On New Years Eve of 1977:

President Carter toasted the Shah at a state dinner in Tehran, calling him “an island of stability’ in the troubled Middle East….Did the Carter administration “lose” Iran, as some have suggested? Gaddis Smith might have put it best: “President Carter inherited an impossible situation — and he and his advisers made the worst of it.” Carter seemed to have a hard time deciding whether to heed the advice of his aggressive national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wanted to encourage the Shah to brutally suppress the revolution, or that of his more cautious State Department, which suggested Carter reach out to opposition elements in order to smooth the transition to a new government. In the end he did neither, and suffered the consequences.

Even after it became known that the Shah was suffering from cancer, President Carter was reluctant to allow him entry to the United States, for fear of reprisal against Americans still in Iran. But in October, when the severity of the Shah’s illness became known, Carter relented on humanitarian grounds. “He went around the room, and most of us said, ‘Let him in.'” recalls Vice President Walter Mondale. “And he said, ‘And if [the Iranians] take our employees in our embassy hostage, then what would be your advice?’ And the room just fell dead. No one had an answer to that. Turns out, we never did.”…

No, they never did. And soon the whole world knew it.

We are reaping the rewards now.

I would compare Carter to Obama, but I think the former comes out much better than the latter. At least Carter tried. I think his main flaws re Iran were weakness and naivete. Those are not Obama’s main flaws, although some seem to think so.

I am declaring war on cobwebs…

The New Neo Posted on by

…with my fabulous new ceiling duster.

I bought it yesterday at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, a store that’s a bit expensive but really the only place to go for such esoteric items. I have high ceilings and quite a few cobwebs, a combination that requires a specialized tool, and there it was: a telescoping pole that’s about seven feet long when fully extended, with a lambswool top that resembles a lighter-colored version of the bearskin hat.

You know the hat:

bearskin

Here’s a photo of the duster (made by Casabella, in case you’re interested):

duster

And a closeup of the top, which is removable and washable and beautifully soft:

duster2

Why am I carrying on like this? I don’t know, but there’s a feeling of intense satisfaction at finding the exact right thing for the job. Oh, and perhaps the duster is really a tribble, which would explain a lot:

Conservative whining, conservative solutions

The New Neo Posted on by

Some of the responses to my post yesterday on activism had interesting suggestions, but others featured what I’ve come to think of as conservative whining (sorry folks). For example, one common complaint is that demonstrations don’t work because the MSM won’t cover them.

No, the MSM doesn’t cover and won’t cover them unless they are massive and continual, and even then probably not. At any rate, demonstrations are hardly the best solution, they are just (as I wrote in the post) the first suggestion that popped into my head. But whether it be demonstrations or something else, the idea is to make the MSM cover you; to get creative, like the Yippies were (remember Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin?), or like Breitbart.

I know, much easier said than done.

I sometimes fall prey to this whining too, but I think it needs to be resisted. I often think that people on the right believe in their hearts of hearts that other people should see that their ideas are obviously superior, and so all they should have to do is to state them clearly and they’ll win converts. But obviously that’s not the way the world is going to work, is it?

There were some good suggestions in the comments section in that thread. Please take a look, particularly at this, this, this, this, this, and this.

And if it’s not time for a march on Washington, then it’s certainly time for a Gramscian march. Way past time, actually.

In the comments section of a similar post I wrote yesterday at Legal Insurrection, one commenter responded this way:

Sorry, but until we get “activists” in the Congress, White House, and Supreme Court, daily million man marches won’t do anything but make the marchers feel better.

A President can only ignore the will of the people for eight years, and Obama’s eight years are about up. Then it will be time to put an activist in his place, and enough activists in Congress to reverse the course of this country.

Here was my reply:

One of the points I was trying to make in the post (and in the quotation towards the end of the post) is that expecting electoral politics to somehow do the trick first is probably an error. The left didn’t suddenly win more elections because the population spontaneously decided to go left. It won more elections because of activism and what is known as the Gramscian march through many institutions in American society. The right may keep losing elections unless it can counter that activism and that march.

About the Gramscian march:

The war of manoeuvre was the Stalinist model. One simply used political violence to achieve one’s ends. But Gramsci thought this would not work in the more highly developed Western countries. For these countries, he recommended a war of position. A war of position is one in which one first identifies “switch-points of social power” and then one seeks to peacefully take control of those switch-points. The switch-points all relate to the field of cultural values ”“ in particular, the arts and education. The most important switch-points of power are positions like school principal, university professor, government policy maker, education department bureaucrat and journalist.

In 1967, Rudi Dutschke, a German student leader, reformulated Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy of cultural hegemony with the phrase, “The long march through the institutions.” Instead of a long military march, such as the one undertaken by the Chinese Marxist Maoist Tse-Tung, in the highly developed western countries the long march would be through the most culturally significant of our social institutions ”“ that is, through schools, universities, courts, parliaments and through the media, through newspapers and television.

I’m better at describing the problem than in finding the solution. But I don’t see how throwing up our hands in despair and declaring ourselves victims—of the MSM, or of the politicians—is going to solve it.

Stock market roller coaster

The New Neo Posted on by

The jitters continue:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly fell more than 1000 points””its biggest ever one-day point decline on an intraday basis””before recovering to trade 194 points lower, or 1.3%, at 16265. The S&P 500 fell 1.4%, while the Nasdaq Composite Index was down 0.9%.

The Dow entered a correction on Friday, falling 10% from its recent peak, following its worst week since 2011.

Monday’s moves came after a sharp selloff in Chinese shares accelerated, wiping out gains for the year. Oil prices fell by around 4%, while investors headed for relatively safe assets such as U.S. government bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note recently was 2.025%, having dipped below 2% for the first time since April.

[ADDENDUM: Just to clarify, today’s roller coaster ride ended with the market down 588 for the day.]

A Biden-Warren ticket…

The New Neo Posted on by

…would be a formidable prospect, and is a very real possibility.

I have long wondered why Warren hasn’t started a run. But I think that a teamup as Biden’s VP would be (to coin a phrase) just the ticket. He has the gravitas and experience (yes, “gravitas” doesn’t really cut it for Biden, but you know what I mean), and she is a leftist woman.

Here’s a question: why not organize a march on Washington against the Iran deal…

The New Neo Posted on by

…or against illegal immigration, or any number of issues on which the majority of Americans oppose this administration?

Those who were around during the Vietnam War protest days remember all those marches on Washington. I attended one, and it was absolutely huge and very impressive.

And of course who can forget the photos of Martin Luther King standing in front of the Washington monument on the Mall?

king

Of course, it’s not clear how effective or important those marches were, even when dealing with administrations that cared how the public thought. This administration most definitely does not. But visuals are powerful, and they can affect some lawmakers and some of the public that hasn’t made up its mind yet. They also help to rally energy on the part of those who are already aligned with the viewpoint of the demonstrators.

The issues we face today are extraordinarily crucial for the future of America. And yet (as commenter “Eric” keeps pointing out, again and again, and I agree with him) the right seems curiously passive in the activist sense. There are many forms of non-violent activism, but demonstrations are one of them, and a visible one at that. So what’s up with all this passivity?

Some might answer that demonstrations are just not in the style of the right; we don’t do groups. My answer is that the right needs to figure out something effective that is its style, then, or to change its style, because it is sluggish and ineffectual despite having the majority of Americans on its side in this fight. Donald Trump is not the answer, but the crowds he’s drawing shows that there’s this untapped and outraged energy that could be channeled.

Here’s Eric again:

The only effective solution to the Left-activist Gramscian march is a Right-activist Gramscian (counter-)march where the people collectively take the Left head on everywhere and win control of American society in honest competition.

When the Right wins their contest against the Left, then GOP candidates like “Cruz, Walker, Fiorina, and to a lesser degree Rubio” can do their part defeating the thus-reduced Democrats within the elected political lane.

Conservatives of all stripes need to stop passing the buck to the GOP. However, because conservatives habitually insist on demanding the GOP solve a problem that requires a victorious Right-activist Gramscian (counter-)march to solve, while they habitually eschew the collective Marxist-method activism that is necessary to compete for real with the Left, Trump is able to exploit the resulting market inefficiency.

Ideas, anyone?

Another French train attack hero named…

The New Neo Posted on by

…although this one was less successful, because he rushed towards the shooter before the gun jammed.

I had wondered about the identity of the man on the train who was reported to have been shot in the neck, and here’s the information:

Mark Moogalian, who is reportedly a 51-year-old academic originally from Midlothian, Virginia, spotted a suspicious passenger while traveling on the Amsterdam to Paris train Friday…

“My husband told me that he had seen someone strange because he had entered the toilets with his suitcase and it lasted a long time,” Moogalian’s wife Isabelle told Europe1 radio Monday. “A little while later the guy came out and that’s when he saw that the guy was carrying a gun.”

Isabelle Moogalian, who was also aboard the train, said her husband spotted the gunman “being grabbed from behind by a different person” ”” thought to be a 29-year-old French banker who has chosen to stay anonymous.

Mark Moogalian told his wife to “go” and then “rushed towards the gunman to remove … the Kalashnikov.”

She added: “I did not see my husband get shot, it happened too quickly and I was pretty much hiding behind seats. But I look at my husband through the seats at an angle and he looked straight at me and said, ‘I’m hit!’ … There was blood everywhere. I ran towards him and I could see that he a wound on his back, I then saw another wound by his neck.”

That explains that.

It also highlights the reality that rushing a gunman is very very dangerous, a fact somewhat obscured in the story of the three younger American heroes because they were fortunate enough (although they didn’t know it at the time) to be rushing a man whose several firearms had either jammed or become inoperative because of magazine trouble. But the terrorist still had a knife and/or box cutter, and managed to do quite a bit of damage with it to Spencer Stone before he was through.

Isabelle Moogalian further explained the Stone was a versatile hero, saving her husband’s life into the bargain despite his own injuries:

“He put his finger on my husband’s neck wound to stop the hemorrhaging continuing and he stayed in this position during the whole voyage,” she told Europe1.

And on the gunman:

She added: “It surprised me how long time-wise it took these two, even three people to neutralize him. It was unbelievable. He had a lot of strength for a guy his size.”

Moogalian is still in a French hospital and as far as I know is expected to recover.

A little side story on this issue. I could identify with that last part of the story because at the age of around forty my then-husband helped subdue an unruly and violent airplane passenger (not a terrorist, who was not armed with a gun) on an airplane flying between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This occurred considerably before 9/11, and I was fortunate enough to not be on the plane, but a drug-crazed passenger had tried to strangle or perhaps stab a stewardess and several passengers including my husband rushed towards him and held him down in the aisle while he fought them off.

My husband later reported that it had been astoundingly difficult even for two or three of them to subdue the guy, whom he said was probably high on something like meth and seemed to have superhuman strength. There were no restraints available on the plane, but they used someone’s belt and also held him down forcibly while he struggled against them for the rest of the flight, including of course the landing, which they prayed wasn’t going to be rough because obviously not only were none of them strapped into their seats but they weren’t even in their seats.

We got four free tickets from that airline out of the deal, by the way, rather than the Legion of Honor. But the flights were nice; we took a trip with my husband’s brother and his wife.

More stories from the French train attack

The New Neo Posted on by

This is most definitely an interesting report:

Thwarted train gunman Ayoub El-Qahzzani was part of an Islamic terrorist cell which came within hours of carrying out a ‘major’ attack in Belgium before it was shut down in a deadly fire-fight with police, according to French media reports.

El-Qahzzani has been linked to a gang of Muslim fanatics in Belgium who opened fire on anti-terrorism officers when Special Forces closed in on them near the railway station in the eastern city of Verviers, in January 2015.

Two terrorist suspects were killed and a third was arrested in the operation, close to the Belgian border with Germany.

Now El-Qahzzani has been linked to this terrorist cell, which was made up of Islamic extremists who had returned to Europe after fighting against the Assad regime in Syria.

France’s La Voix du Nord newspaper reported: ‘According to our sources, he [Al Qahzzani] was part of the same jihadist group which attacked on Belgian anti-terrorist police in a violent fire-fight in January 2015, in Verviers, near Liege.

‘It appears that he had been identified as a potential security threat by the Spanish authorities who had alerted French authorities and had asked them for further information about him.’

Too bad they didn’t watch him more closely.

One of the heroes of the French train shooting, Alek Skarlatos, tells the story of what happened, including how fortunate it was that the gun jammed:

If you’re going to have terrorists, best they should be incompetent.

More here from one of the three Americans, Anthony Sadler:

Mr Sadler has described how the attacker pleaded with them to return his AK-47.

He said: ‘He was just telling us to give back his gun. ‘Give me back my gun! Give me back my gun!’ But we just carried on beating him up and immobilised him and that was it.’

The men have since been commended for their bravery by President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande has tweeted that he will meet the men tomorrow to thank them.

Today, Mr Stone emerged from the central hospital in Lille, France, wearing bandages and a sling – and offered the cameras a humble wave before slipping into a black sedan with diplomatic license plates.

The US airman was stabbed in the hand during the scuffle with a Klashnikov and Stanley knife on Friday – almost severing his thumb – but was hailed a hero as he disarmed the suspect then administered first aid to others before caring for himself.

At that link you’ll also find conflicting stories about whether the train crew acted badly or not.

Trying to talk oneself into an open marriage

The New Neo Posted on by

This article by “Michael Sonmore” (which I’m assuming is a pseudonum) at NY Magazine is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read, although the author says he’s very very happy. It’s an exercise in talking oneself into something—in this case, being in an open marriage when initially one member of the couple wants it and one does not. Here’s Michael:

When people ask how it started, I say this: We married young. She’d had sex before me, but only with a handful of people a handful of times. She never had a boyfriend, never had a lover. I was the first man she ever had the chance to get to know intimately. By her mid-30s, having already had our children and entering her sexual prime, she felt keenly her lack of sexual experience. Happily for me, she was willing to talk about it, willing to ask if I’d be open to exploring other options. We opened a bottle of wine and started talking, and talking, and talking.

She didn’t present it as an issue of feminism to me, but after much soul-searching about why the idea of my wife having sex with other men bothered me I came to a few conclusions…

The conclusions lean heavily on feminist theory, having to with power and self-expression and a host of other things, and then Michael segues into this:

She knew how deep our love was, and knew that her wanting a variety of sexual experiences as we traveled through life together would not diminish or disrupt that love. It took me about six months ”” many long, intense conversations, and an ocean of red wine ”” before I knew it, too.

Well, are you convinced that Michael is convinced? I’m not, and I wonder how much red wine he’s still swilling down in order to stay convinced that he’s convinced. The couple has two young children aged three and six, by the way, so although Michael is also able to have sexual relationships with other people, and has certainly exercised that option many times, it turns out that his wife seems to get more action and therefore Michael’s the one doing the majority of the babysitting.

I suppose open marriage can “work”for some couples somewhere, somehow, under some circumstances. I think the numbers are very few, and I doubt most of the situations involve young children. I could write about Michael’s choice from a lot of angles: a critique of his “feminist” stance, a moralistic viewpoint, a religious one, or a personal one, but I’m going to take a different tack: a practical one, and I’m going to write this as though I’m addressing Michael himself.

You say you love your wife and she you, and your love is strong. You have young children about whom you care deeply. Do you understand that you’ve just upped the risks in your marriage tremendously? And these risks (including the risk of being badly hurt) are actually even greater for you than for your wife, although there are large risks for both, as well as for your children.

The first risk is that open marriages like yours don’t tend to be even, as you’re already found out. To be blunt, your wife is getting more action than you. You may think that’s your choice, but even if you wanted to change it, you might find you have a difficult time doing it. The reason has to do with certain differences between men and women (yes, there are differences), and the relevant one here is that it is still—even in our hookup culture—more common for women to want some sort of emotional commitment or at least intensity of emotion before they have sex.

Why would that lead to more action for your wife? Wouldn’t it be the other way around? The key is in economics of a sort: your wife is a more rare and desirable commodity in the sexual marketplace. If more men are looking for no-strings sex, and more women wanting sex-with-strings, then a women like your wife—attractive, hot to trot and supposedly emotionally unavailable and undemanding—is just what a lot of guys are looking for and having trouble finding. The fact that she’s married is a small glitch, hardly worth troubling over, since her marriage is “open.” For a lot of men, this is an opportunity both golden and rare. All she really has to do is put out the word, and they will (pardon the expression) come.

For you it’s a bit different. Young men who want sex without commitment are a dime (or perhaps a penny, or a centavo) a dozen. And although many more women than in previous years are willing to sleep with a man without a ring and a date (a marriage date, that is), there still aren’t tons and tons of women whose idea of “just right” is a married guy with no possibility of commitment at all. Why not at least take a guy who’s free, and who could possibly have love and marriage with you in his future?

So your road will be tougher, and your wife’s easier. That’s just the way it is. And you’ll be doing a lot of babysitting, so I hope you enjoy it.

There’s another way in which your risks are higher. Sex tends to be bonding, as you may have noticed. The very act of sex and orgasm actually causes people of both sexes to release a hormone, oxytocin, which—if you believe articles like this—may have a greater effect on women and make them more likely to fall in love with the guy they’ve just slept with. Even if oxytocin has nothing to do with it, the phenomenon of becoming closer and closer to someone you’ve been having sex with is one of those things that occurs, and you probably have noticed it can occur in both sexes but may in fact happen somewhat more often in women.

But for both you and your wife—whatever you may think, whatever you may think you know (as in that paragraph of yours I quoted at the outset)—you really don’t have a clue about the risks you run of having one or the other of you fall in love with someone else, and although you’ve tied yourself into a pretzel justifying sexual infidelity and telling yourself that your very normal feelings of jealousy are somehow abnormal and exploitative, I wonder how well you (or she) will do when emotional infidelity comes to stay.

You seem aware of that danger. In fact, you wrote:

I don’t want her to fall in love with anyone else, and every time she goes on a date, I confront the possibility that she might. It happened at the beginning: The first person she dated after we opened up fell hard in love with her, and my wife, overwhelmed by his ardor, tried to love him back. Watching it happen, I was confused, angry, and terrified that she wanted to leave me. She assured me she didn’t, and whatever feelings she had for him didn’t lessen what she felt for me. Believing her then was the ultimate trust exercise.

It is likely to happen again, and perhaps again. And it may just be that one of those times she won’t be able to assure you so convincingly that “whatever feelings she has for him don’t lessen what she feels for me.” Have you ever fallen in love, hard? One of the things that makes it so overwhelming is the novelty of the new person, the new discoveries—the intensity of the new as opposed to the boredom (intermittent or continuous) nearly inevitable with the old. You have actually countered this boredom with an interesting trick, which is to talk between yourselves about each of these new guys, and that probably adds a sexual titillation and newness to your own sex life. Good luck with that when she (or even you) does find that the feelings for the other are greater.

And then there’s pregnancy. I certainly hope your wife has foolproof contraception, because she could become pregnant with another man’s child. How do the two of you feel about her carrying that man’s child to term? How do the two of you feel about abortion? How do both of you feel about abortion if and only if the child isn’t yours? How do the two of you feel about having a paternity test while the child is still in utero, a test that occurs either between 11 and 13 weeks or 16 and 22 weeks, and increases the risk of miscarriage?

Oh, and of course the more partners you both have the more you run the risk of STDs. And of course each of you informs all potential partners before getting involved that you are in an open marriage, right?

People are monogamous in marriage for a great many reasons. Some reasons are religious. Some are traditional. Some people take vows seriously. Some don’t want to hurt their spouses, and know that infidelity would do just that. Some aren’t even tempted, or tempting. Some are isolated and don’t have much opportunity. Some aren’t all that interested in sex anyway. Some are afraid of STDs.

But some, and this might just be the majority, consider monogamy a gift they voluntarily give to themselves and their spouse and their marriage and their children, a gift that makes for some hardship but that also makes it less likely to cause pain to that spouse and to those children, or to damage the bond itself.