Liberty, marriage, divorce

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been slowly reading Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. It’s a fascinating discussion of trends in higher education that have only continued—and accelerated—in the ensuing years, so that even though some details in the book may be dated, the main points are not.

Bloom ranges further afield than merely discussing how academia—and I quote here from the cover of his book—“has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.” The work is filled with trenchant and pithy observations on a wide variety of other matters in our society.

I’ve written recently about marriage and divorce, here and here. The number and tenor of the responses—one hundred and fifty-five comments so far, and still counting—are a good indication of how much emotion and controversy the subject generates.

In his book, Bloom sees the modern breakdown of the family as having its roots long ago, in the rise of the championing of individualism as a value to support. Continue reading →

Hillary: “flailing?”

The New Neo Posted on by

The problem that began for Hillary Clinton in the debate a week ago seems to be lingering on. According to Yuval Levin at The Corner and Mickey Kaus at Slate, the issue is not so much her position on the issue itself—licenses for illegal aliens—as what the incident and her subsequent behavior reveals about her personality.

Kaus describes her as “flailing,” not a good image for someone who wants to convince us she’s made of Presidential timber. And Levin describes her campaign as “panicked.”

Although both statements contain a bit of hyperbole, I agree that Hillary is showing traits that are counterproductive to the image she wishes to project: firm, unflappable, cerebral; a cool head in a crisis. I’m not a Hillary hater, although back in my liberal Democrat days I was only a lukewarm Clinton supporter at best. There was just something too slick and smarmy about him, too laserlike about her.

I agree with Kaus that Hillary would do best to take a stand, then quit fussing with the subject and move on. The current brouhaha is not all that important except as a revealer of character. It shows her as a person who is more easily flustered than we may have thought.

I’ve said before that I’m already very tired of this election, and we’ve still got a year to go. But one benefit of the incredibly lengthy Presidential campaign process these days is that it takes stamina on the part of the candidates, and over time it continues to reveal character. Stamina is a trait that’s very much needed in a President, and character issues are vital in evaluating how a person would perform in that terribly pressured role.

The campaign marathon may seem endless already, but it’s really just getting going. We’re nowhere near Heartbreak Hill yet, but we’re learning more and more about the toughness of the participants.

Toughness is an odd trait. We all need a certain amount of it, and Presidents need far more than most. Too much qualifies as ruthlessness and coldness, too little as weakness. But no one ever said running for President was easy.

Just wondering…

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Andrew Bolt is right, and that we’ve already won in Iraq.

Or if that’s too utterly unbelievable for you, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that the violence in Iraq continues to decline, civil order continues to improve, and it ends up being a viable and functioning country—and an ally—within the next couple of years.

In other words, what if the new counterinsurgency methods of General Petraeus really have reversed a situation that as recently as last spring looked exceedingly dire, and had many declaring it was already lost?

If so, these would be my questions:

If things turn out well in Iraq, will it finally put the ghost of Vietnam to rest?

If things turn out well in Iraq, will naysayers Reid and Pelosi and Edwards ever say they were wrong?

I have a strong feeling that the answer to both these questions is “no.” This is partly because the Vietnam War years were so searing and the scars so long-lasting, and partly because Vietnam has been so useful for the antiwar side to invoke in order to rally feeling against any subsequent war involving complexities, hardships, or errors of execution. In addition, the Iraq War itself has already caused so much division and anger that even victory will probably be defined as just not worth it by many of those opposed to the undertaking. It is also because admitting misjudgment is an exceedingly difficult thing—and that’s a phenomenon hardly limited to Democrats.

But if things do turn out well in Iraq then I, for one, will be deeply grateful that the Democrats lacked enough votes to achieve their goals of prematurely cutting off the surge and pulling out of that country. Of course, had they been able to do so, history would probably have said they were correct to do so because the Iraq War was manifestly unwinnable.

History isn’t really all that good at evaluating alternatives to what actually happens. Most of the time, it’s difficult enough to understand what did happen, much less to understand the ramifications of what did not. The latter seems to be a matter for the alternative history science fiction writers, not the historians.

The iPod vs. the Top Twenty

The New Neo Posted on by

I (heart) my iPod.

Regular readers of this blog know I’m not the most technologically advanced of people. But although I may be slow on the uptake, I did finally join the trend a few months ago when I became a proud and pleased iPod owner.

It took me a while to learn the basics. But after downloading a ton of music onto it—and spending a bit of money at the iTunes library along the way—I found it a great pleasure to have all those old and new favorites quite literally at my fingertips.

No, I haven’t turned into one of those iPod zombies one sees so often on the street and in the subway, lost in their own world of unending music on demand. Nevertheless, buying the iPod turns out to be only the tip of an expensive iceberg. I’ve successfully resisted the full complement of chic accessories, but I’ve experimented with various earbuds and diverse methods of hooking the iPod up to the car stereo so I can have my music while I drive.

Much as I love my iPod, I’ve perceived over time that it has its own subtle drawbacks. Continue reading →

Shh, don’t tell: progress in Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

This TimesOnline piece points out that things are going relatively well in Iraq today, and yet many people have their own reasons for refusing to acknowledge that fact:

The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters.

The article goes on to say that there are too many people who have staked their reputations, and their political campaigns, on the fact that Iraq is a failure, end of discussion. To reopen and re-evaluate that topic would be much too threatening in personal and party terms. Therefore it’s much easier to ignore the good news from Iraq.

I found the TimesOnline article at Real Clear Politics, where there was another piece featured today, an interview with Natan Sharansky that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The Sharansky piece alludes to the fact that to many, it’s a foregone conclusion that Iraq is a disaster, one that proves democracy is not a possibility in the Middle East:

But [Shransky’s] side is today on a back foot. The war in Iraq and the rise of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, aided by the ballot box, are Exhibits A and B in the case against the Bush Doctrine and its contention that democracy can put down roots in Arab soil.

But Sharansky—without specifically mentioning the recent promising developments in a Iraq—points out that those who forecast doom and gloom in Iraq are the same people who have been wrong so many times before:

Mr. Sharansky says of his adversaries among the Western intellectual elite: “Those people who are always wrong–they were wrong about the Soviet Union, they were wrong about Oslo [the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace deal], they were wrong about appeasing Yasser Arafat–they are the intellectual leaders of these battles. So what can I tell you?” Continue reading →

Getting married: what’s in it for me? (Part II)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I here.]

Marriage is an institution that is virtually universal across all cultures and throughout recorded history, but for most of that time it was an institution far different than it is today. One constant in Western (and many other) cultures was that it was an economic arrangement of major importance and even of necessity for most people.

Think about the ramifications of that fact. It meant that marriage had clear benefits to each party that made it a rare thing for a person not to be married. Whether the marriage was de jure or only de facto (so-called common law marriage), whether a civil ceremony or a religious sacrament, the roles of husband and wife were more clearly differentiated and defined, and more necessary to each other. Continue reading →

Getting married: what’s in it for me? (Part I)

The New Neo Posted on by

I like to think I have a lot of experience on the subject of marriage, including divorce and child custody.

I’ve studied it academically, both the legal issues and the psychological ones. I’ve worked in the field, approaching it from many angles: law, public policy, mediation, couples therapy. I’ve lived it: a long marriage, parenthood, and a divorce. I’ve seen clients, both couples and individuals, married and never married, divorced and separated. I have many friends—both male and female—who confide in me about their marriages and their divorces, their joys and their tribulations. I’m a fairly keen observer, as well, and I’m old enough to have seen a lot and to have observed many changes in society regarding marriage and divorce.

But I have to say that the level of vitriol expressed in the comments section in response to this article by Dr. Helen at Pajamas Media surprised me and disheartened me, even though I’ve read similar discussions before online. The general flavor of comment after comment there—mostly from men—can be summarized as follows: “The bitch screwed me” with the corollary, “Women are all like that.” The formerly married say, “Never again,” and the never-married merely say, “Never.” Continue reading →

Beware of conservative speakers on campus—they might actually change a mind or two

The New Neo Posted on by

Dennis Prager was on the college lecture circuit recently. The occasion? “Islamo-fascism Awareness Week.” The Left’s response was to spearhead a drive to discredit him and the other speakers on the subject with a favorite insult: racist bigots.

It’s interesting to see how charges of racism and bigotry, once reserved for those who unfairly targeted an entire group of people on the grounds of race, religion, and/or ethnicity, have now come to be leveled at those who fairly target part of such a group. As far as the Left is concerned, it has become almost impossible to speak in terms of any such ethnic, racial, or religious categories for any reason—unless, of course, the group in question is being pitied and/or rewarded for victimhood.

But Prager persevered. Strangely enough, he found that he was well-received at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he addressed 300 students on the subject, about a fourth of whom were Leftists originally opposed to him. Afterwards, he received apologies from some, including a student journalist who had written a column (prior to hearing him speak) that compared him to members of the Ku Klux Klan. Continue reading →

The worm turns: NY mourns

The New Neo Posted on by

I watched all four games of the World Series, and it was somewhat of a bore even to me. Winning in four may be satisfying for the team, but the almost total lack of suspense doesn’t make for great baseball theater. To the best of my recollection, at no point were the Rockies even in the lead.

In 2004, when the Red Sox won the Series for the first time in eighty-six years, even though that win occurred in a four-game blowout as well, there was the built-in suspense of thinking the team would choke as in olden days. The only real question was in what new and creative manner they would manage to do so. So it was an astounding surprise, almost umimaginable, when they won at last.

But this time that spell had evaporated, and winning seemed a foregone conclusion. Continue reading →