The Future of Marriage

While Stephanie Coontz explains (hopes for) the decline of marriage — from her over-educated, yuppie, “liberal” perspective — ugly reality persists. From a post at MarriageDebate.com:

“About 80% of black babies are born to unwed moms,” Indianapolis Star, January 24, 2008:

About eight in 10 black children in Indiana are born to unwed parents — a start to life that sets them up for problems during adolescence and beyond, according to an Indiana Black Expo report [being released Friday]…

Child Trends, a nonpartisan national children’s research organization, reports children born to single mothers are more likely to:

Live in poverty and experience social and emotional problems.

Have low educational attainment, engage in sex at younger ages and have a premarital birth.

Enter adulthood neither in school nor employed, or have lower occupational status and income, and more troubled marriages and divorces than those born to married parents.

The issues that spin out of struggling single-parent families show up throughout the new Black Expo report, including the teen birth rate of 81 per 1,000 for blacks. That is almost twice the state’s overall teen birth rate of 43.5 per 1,000.

Contrast that slice of harsh reality with Coontz’s smug tone:

[T]he time has passed when we can construct our social policies, work schedules, health insurance systems, sex education programs — or even our moral and ethical beliefs about who owes what to whom — on the assumption that all long-term commitments and care-giving obligations should or can be organized through marriage. Of course we must seek ways to make marriage more possible for couples and to strengthen the marriages they contract. But we must be equally concerned to help couples who don’t marry become better co-parents, to help single parents and cohabiting couples meet their obligations, and to teach divorced parents how to minimize their conflicts and improve their parenting.

Who is this “we” of whom Coontz writes? Is it government? Is it “liberal” know-it-alls like Coontz? What we (the real we) need is less government involvement in family matters, not more. We certainly don’t need the amoral, socially destructive “help” of Coontz and her ilk.

Poland: Where the "Bad News" is Good

Guest post:

These days when, as a conservative, even the “good news” is bad, it’s nice to hear some good “bad news.” By that, I mean “bad” to the socialist-minded media. I am speaking of Poland, a veritable recusant country in the hyper-liberal European Union. When the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled against France for barring a lesbian woman from adopting a child, Polish politicians took the lead in denouncing the decision. Apparently 90% of Poles oppose adoptions by alternative lifestylers.

Last spring, Warsaw played host to the World Congress of Families and defiantly opposed EU pressure for “same-sex marriages” and abortion. Poland has repeatedly stymied efforts to introduce homosexual propaganda as being subversive of public morals, especially as regards children. Currently Poland prohibits abortion in all but a few cases, despite political and economic penalties leavied by the EU. And while this is this not perfect, it is a far cry from the drive-through abortion practices of most countries. Fortunately there has been an ongoing effort (though momentarily defeated) to close even that contradictory loophole (permitting “eugenic abortions”) by religious conservatives.

No doubt Poland’s unusually strong social conservatism has much to do with its pugnacious Catholic heritage and legacy of sucessful non-violent resistance to totalitarian occupiers (both Nazis and Communists). One more bit of “bad news” for Euro-leftists is the tiny island nation of Malta, famed for its heroic resistance to both Ottoman Turkish and German sieges. Today it faces a new, more subtle political siege against its pro-life, pro family government (see related item).

Euthanasia Is Creeping Closer

It’s about to pounce on Canada.

(For much more, see this post and the links at the end of it.)

"Family Values," Liberty, and the State

Among Maverick Philosopher”s answers to Dennis Prager’s 23 questions in “Are You a Liberal?” is this gem:

The State is involved in marriage in order to promote a legitimate common interest, namely, that there be healthy families in which men are tamed, women are protected, and children are socialized. There is no reason to extend these protections to any two people who choose to cohabit.

MP points to a deeper truth, which is that civil society (and thus liberty) depends to a large extent (though not exclusively) on the exaltation of heterosexual marriage and “family values.” As I say here:

Liberty requires a consensus about harms and the boundaries of mutual restraint — the one being the complement of the other. Agreed harms are to be avoided mainly through self-restraint. Societal consensus and mutual restraint must, therefore, go hand in hand.

Looked at in that way, it becomes obvious that liberty is embedded in society and preserved through order. There may be societally forbidden acts that, to an outsider, would seem not to cause harm but which, if permitted within a society, would unravel the mutual restraint upon which ordered liberty depends. . . .

What happens to self-restraint, honesty, and mutual aid outside the emotional and social bonds of family, friendship, community, church, and club can be seen quite readily in the ways in which we treat one another when we are nameless or faceless to each other. Thus we become rude (and worse) as drivers, e-mailers, bloggers, spectators, movie-goers, mass-transit commuters, shoppers, diners-out, and so on. Which is why, in a society much larger than a clan, we must resort to the empowerment of governmental agencies to enforce mutual restraint, mutual defense, and honesty within the society — as well as to protect society from external enemies.

But liberty begins at home. Without the civilizing influence of traditional families, friendships, and social organizations, police and courts would be overwhelmed by chaos. Liberty would be a hollower word than it has become, largely because of the existence of other governmental units that have come to specialize in the imposition of harms on the general public in the pursuit of power and in the service of special interests (which enables the pursuit of power). Those harms have been accomplished in large part by the intrusion of government into matters that had been the province of families, voluntary social organizations, and close-knit communities. . . .

The state has, in the past century, undone much of which society had put in place for its own protection. For example, here’s Arnold Kling, writing about Jennifer Roback Morse’s Love and Economics:

Morse argues that the incentives of government programs, such as Social Security, can have the same [destructive] consequences [as government decrees].

It is convenient for us who are young to forget about old people if their financial needs are taken care of…But elderly people want and need attention from their children and grandchildren…This, then, is the ultimate trouble with the government spending other people’s money for the support of one part of the family. Other people’s money relieves us from some of the personal responsibility for the other members of our family. Parents are less accountable for instilling good work habits, encouraging work effort…Young people are less accountable for the care of particular old people, since they are forcibly taxed to support old people in general. (p. 116-117)

Most Western nations have created a cycle of dependency with respect to single motherhood. Government programs, such as welfare payments or taxpayer-funded child care, are developed to “support” single mothers. This in turn encourages more single motherhood. This enlarges the constituency for such support programs, leading politicians to broaden such programs.

Earlier in the same article, Kling says:

There are a number of issues that provide sources of friction between market libertarianism and “family values” conservatism. They concern personal behavior, morality, and the law.

Should gambling, prostitution, and recreational drugs be legalized? Market libertarianism answers in the affirmative, but “family values” conservatives would disagree.

Another potential source of friction is abortion. It is not a coincidence that the abortion issue became prominent during the sexual revolution of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. That was a period in which social attitudes about sex-without-consequences underwent a reversal. Prior to 1960, sex-without-consequences generally was frowned upon. By 1975, sex-without-consequences was widely applauded. In that context, abortion rights were considered a victory for sexual freedom. Libertarians tend to take the pro-choice side.

Gay marriage is another legacy of the sexual revolution. Again, it tends to divide libertarians from “family values” conservatives.

One compromise, which Morse generally endorses, is to use persuasion rather than government in the family-values struggle. That is a compromise that I would favor, although unlike Morse, I approach the issue primarily as a libertarian.

If one views a strong state and a strong family as incompatible, then a case can be made that taking the state out of issues related to prostitution or abortion or marriage actually helps serve family values. If people know that they cannot rely on the state to arbitrate these issues, then they will turn to families, religious institutions, and other associations within communities to help strengthen our values.

I am unpersuaded, for the simple reason that society cannot rebuild its norms without the state’s help. Having sent the wrong signals about “family values,” in general, and about heterosexual marriage, in particular, the state has wrought much harm; for example:

Abuse risk higher as kids live without two biological parents

Thursday, November 15, 2007

– David Crary, AP National Writer

….[M]any scholars and front-line caseworkers who monitor America’s families see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”…

[T]here are many…studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

-Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

-Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.

-Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University….

Census data leaves no doubt that family patterns have changed dramatically in recent decades as cohabitation and single-parenthood became common. Thirty years ago, nearly 80 percent of America’s children lived with both parents. Now, only two-thirds of them do. Of all families with children, nearly 29 percent are now one-parent families, up from 17 percent in 1977.

The net result is a sharp increase in households with a potential for instability, and the likelihood that adults and children will reside in them who have no biological tie to each other….

“It comes down to the fact they don’t have a relationship established with these kids,” she said. “Their primary interest is really the adult partner, and they may find themselves more irritated when there’s a problem with the children.”

And the beat goes on:

The teen birth rate in the United States rose in 2006 for the first time since 1991, and unmarried childbearing also rose significantly, according to preliminary birth statistics released [December 5, 2007] by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)….

The study also shows unmarried childbearing reached a new record high in 2006. The total number of births to unmarried mothers rose nearly 8 percent to 1,641,700 in 2006. This represents a 20 percent increase from 2002, when the recent upswing in nonmarital births began. The biggest jump was among unmarried women aged 25-29, among whom there was a 10 percent increase between 2005 and 2006.

In addition, the nonmarital birth rate also rose sharply, from 47.5 births per 1,000 unmarried females in 2005 to 50.6 per 1,000 in 2006 — a 7-percent 1-year increase and a 16 percent increase since 2002.

The study also revealed that the percentage of all U.S. births to unmarried mothers increased to 38.5 percent, up from 36.9 percent in 2005.

And on:

An ETS study reported by the NYT finds four family variables–including proportion of single-parent families–explain two-thirds of the variation in school performance.

And on:

[M]arriage qua marriage tends to be a much more important indicator of well-being, both for children and for parents, in the United States than it does in Europe. Perhaps this will not always be so; perhaps the coexistence, in the 1990s and early Oughts, of falling crime and higher rates of out-of-wedlock births are a leading indicator of the Swedenization of American social norms. But I doubt it, not least because the secondary consequences of family breakdown, persistent inequality and social immobility chief among them, appear to have worsened over the last decade….

What the state has sundered, it must mend. With respect to marriage, for example, I have argued that

it is clear that the kind of marriage a free society needs is heterosexual marriage, which…is a primary civilizing force. I now therefore reject the unrealistic (perhaps even ill-considered) position that the state ought to keep its mitts off marriage. I embrace, instead, the realistic, consequentialist position that society — acting through the state — ought to uphold the special status of heterosexual marriage by refusing legal recognition to other forms of marriage. That is, the state should refuse to treat marriage as if it were mainly (or nothing but) an arrangement to acquire certain economic advantages or to legitimate relationships that society, in the main, finds illegitimate.

The alternative is to advance further down the slippery slope toward societal disintegration and into the morass of ills which accompany that disintegration. (We’ve seen enough societal disintegration and costly consequences since the advent of the welfare state to know that the two go hand in hand.) The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state — though innocuous to many, and an article of faith among most libertarians and liberals — is another step down that slope. When the state, through its power to recognize marriage, bestows equal benefits on homosexual marriage, it will next bestow equal benefits on other domestic arrangements that fall short of traditional, heterosexual marriage. And that surely will weaken heterosexual marriage, which is the axis around which the family revolves….

….Although it’s true that traditional, heterosexual unions have their problems, those problems have been made worse, not better, by the intercession of the state. (The loosening of divorce laws, for example, signaled that marriage was to be taken less seriously, and so it has been.) Nevertheless, the state — in its usual perverse wisdom — may create new problems for society by legitimating same-sex marriage, thus signaling that traditional marriage is just another contractual arrangement in which any combination of persons may participate. Heterosexual marriage — as Jennifer Roback Morse explains — is a primary and irreplicable civilizing force. The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state will undermine that civilizing force. The state will be saying, in effect, “Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer — above all — will “pick up the pieces.” And so it will go.

Of course, the state not only continues to undermine heterosexual marriage (except where the general will is consulted through referenda), but it also continues to undermine other social norms. There is, for example, the new California statute known as SB777,

a public education bill prohibiting schools and teachers from “reflecting adversely” on gays and lesbians. The Democratic majority in both houses of the California State Legislature supported the bill, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger [in October 2007]. Meanwhile, pro-family groups are mobilized and will challenge this bill with a petition to force a statewide referendum. The law’s implementation has been postponed by court order until January 1, pending results of statewide signature gathering….

Although the bill adds “sexual orientation” to the list of protected groups in this State, supporters are playing down its significance, calling it instead a safety measure. Meanwhile, critics, including Republican members of the Legislature, all of whom were opposed, regard the legislation as an attack on the family….

On the face of it, the changes are simple and uncomplicated. Existing provisions of the Education Code that prohibit discrimination against members of protected racial, ethnic, national, gender, ancestral and disabled groups have been changed to include “sexual orientation,” which specifically refers to members of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual groups.

Supporters of this change are right in one particular, at least from their point of view: the bill simply “updates” existing law. That is, existing law already gives protected status to members of designated groups. The question has always been whether that effectively denies protection (or provides less) to all not belonging to those groups, including especially white males. This sort of categorizing, critics have argued, puts members of all groups in gender conflict while opening the door to protected status for illegal aliens….

Not surprisingly, SB 777 adds the term “sexual orientation” to the categories of persons protected against “hate crimes,” a concept based on the assumption that a violent crime against a gay or lesbian person is particularly heinous, more so than when committed against others.

The main part of the bill concerns public education. All public school districts will be responsible for forbidding any discrimination and monitoring for compliance. Thus, while religious schools whose tenets conflict with homosexuality and lesbianism are exempted, publicly funded alternative and charter schools are not. The new law specifies that “No teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that reflects adversely upon persons because of [sexual orientation].” (Italics in text.) The same requirement is laid on districts’ adoption or use of textbooks or other instructional materials.

The bill does not define what constitutes adverse reflection. It could mean anything from simple good manners, which is wholly defensible; to failure to “celebrate” the homosexual lifestyle, as prominent writers such as Harvey Mansfield have noted. According to its advocates, diversity comprehends all protected groups. who should be celebrated and not merely tolerated.

According to press reports, only in September did State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, the bill’s main sponsor, remove language that would have forbidden in public schools the use of “mom,” “dad,” “husband” and “wife.” It is a fair question whether removing those terms has changed the intent or effect of this legislation.

This latest development in the so-called “culture wars” once again raises the question whether it is a zero-sum game in which, in this case, the protection against adverse reflection on gays and lesbians necessarily entails a rejection of traditional morality and even human categories. Many do not believe so. Time will tell whether this is part of a slippery slope or merely equal justice. Still, one wonders when the straighforward concept of protection takes the broader form of not “reflecting adversely,” that the object is not tolerance but privilege.

I have no doubt that the object is privilege. The effect of SB777, should it become law, will be to suppress and further denigrate heterosexual marriage and all that it stands for. On that point, WND quotes Meredith Turney, the legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute:

[State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack] O’Connell, the bill’s author Sen. Sheila Kuehl and Gov. Schwarzenegger have all maintained the party line that SB 777 merely “streamlines” existing anti-discrimination laws. However, these attempts to discredit the public outcry against SB 777’s policies are disingenuous and misleading. In fact, SB 777 goes far beyond implementing anti-discrimination and harassment policies for public schools.

The new law states that “No teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias because of’ … (homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexual or transgender status). Including instruction and activities in the anti-discrimination law goes much further than ‘streamlining.” This incremental and deceitful approach to achieving their goals is a favorite and effective tactic of liberals. Expanding the law is not ‘streamlining’ the law.

Mr. O’Connell’s doublespeak reveals his – and his peers’ – arrogant attitude toward their “gullible” constituents. In fact, parents are not stupid and they recognize that their authority is being undermined by such subversive school policies. This is nothing less than an attempt to confuse the public about the true intention of SB 777.

The terms “mom and dad” or “husband and wife” could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured.

Parents want the assurance that when their children go to school they will learn the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic – not social indoctrination regarding alternative sexual lifestyles. Now that SB 777 is law, schools will in fact become indoctrination centers for sexual experimentation.

Just as taxpayer-funded universities have become indoctrination centers for political correctness and other Leftist dogmas.

Yesteryear’s rebels (the “kids” of the ’60s and ’70s) didn’t get everything they wanted through their protests and riots. So they found a more effective way to destroy the social fabric, which — being perpetual adolescents — they despise. The more effective way was to seize the levers of power in academia and government, and thence to dissolve the social cohesion upon which liberty depends.

No, the answer isn’t to take the state out of the “family values” business. The answer is for social and fiscal conservatives to recapture the levers of power and undo the damage that the state has done to liberty over the past century.

There will always be a state. The real issues are these: Who will control the state, and to what ends?

A Century of Progress?
Feminist Balderdash
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values
The Left, Abortion, and Adolescence
Consider the Children
Same-Sex Marriage
“Equal Protection” and Homosexual Marriage
Marriage and Children
Abortion and the Slippery Slope
Equal Time: The Sequel
The Adolescent Rebellion Syndrome
Social Norms and Liberty
Parenting, Religion, Culture, and Liberty
A “Person” or a “Life”?
The Case against Genetic Engineering
How Much Jail Time?
The Political Case for Traditional Morality
Anarchy, Minarchy, and Liberty
Parents and the State
Academic Bias
Ahead of His Time

A Wrong-Headed Take on Abortion

Sigrid Fry-Revere opines:

I take issue with Radley Balko’s characterization of the abortion debate in “Getting Beyond Roe”…as being about “setting community standards” and that issues such as abortion “are best dealt with in those diverse laboratories of democracy, the states.” Abortion should no more be a question for local politics than slavery.

Does she mean to equate slavery and the bearing of a child conceived as a result of a consensual sex (which it almost always is)? Yes, as we shall see.

Fry-Revere continues:

The right to have an abortion per se is not the issue, but the right to self-determination, the right not to be used as a means to an end against one’s will, the right not to be considered a communal resource — in short, the right for women to have the same control over their own bodies and their own fates as men.

But don’t women have “control over their own bodies” when they agree to engage in an act that might well result in pregnancy? By what standard would the outlawing of abortion cause women to be treated as a “communal resource”? Does the illegality of murder make a “communal resource” of murderers? Are unaborted children forced to repair public highways when they come of age? What the hell is a “communal resource” and what does it have to do with abortion?

Let’s give Fry-Revere another chance:

I believe abortion is morally wrong, but I also believe that in a conflict between mother and fetus, a woman’s right must always take precedence.

What does she mean by “conflict”? Abortion seldom is the result of a conflict, other than the conflict between a woman’s and/or her mate’s convenience and the life of the child they conceived.

Fry-Revere suggests that a fetus has fewer rights than an adult because:

A human being’s rights under the law increase with maturity.

I have never heard of such a thing. If it were true, the murder of a new-born child, a one-year-old child, or a 50-year-old adult would be treated as a lesser crime than, say, the murder of a 90-year-old person.

Fry-Revere concludes:

Fetuses are potential children, not full grown adults, and women are full grown adults, not children. It is time we start treating each with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Fry-Revere’s reference to fetuses as “potential children” is just another way of saying that fetuses have no rights. But where does she actually talk about the “respect and dignity” a fetus deserves? Nowhere. It’s all about what women want, about the false equivalence of pregnancy and slavery, and about the wacky theory that rights somehow accumulate with age (but only from birth, not from conception).

The title of Fry-Revere’s post (“What about Fetal Rights?”) is supremely ironic. The content is supremely cynical.

PC Madness

“Dumbleore was gay,” says J.K Rowling.

“Pinocchio was Chucky‘s father,” say I.

Both statements bear the same relation to reality, which is none. Mine, at least, isn’t tritely au courant.

UPDATE: For a hilarious parody of Rowling’s PC “revelation,” see this post at The Needle.

Mark Steyn…

…is always on target. Today he writes:

When the family dies, the nation follows: We’ve all seen heartwarming Hollywood movies about plucky waitress moms struggling to do the best for their kids against the odds. But that’s the point: It’s against the odds. In Britain, a quarter of all children are being raised by single parents – which is to say a lot of them aren’t being raised at all, which is why many a quaint old English market town transforms after dusk into a desolate dystopia preyed on by packs of feral 14-year olds. And, as always, it’s easier to fall into the hole than to climb out. The Scottish journalist Andrew Neil recently pointed out that, in Glasgow, government spending now accounts for 70% of GDP, and in the poorest part of the city life is nasty, brutish and as short as in the Third World. Male life expectancy in North Korea: 60 years; Bangladesh: 58; Yemen: 57; Gabon: 55; Calton, Scotland: 54 years. Middle-aged Torontonians live with their parents but middle-aged Glaswegians live with their ancestors.

This is what you might call trickle-down morality: In the space of 40 years, the middle-class abolished “living in sin” and embraced “long-term partners”, and the working class stopped worrying about “broken homes” and accepted the sociological designation of “alternative families”. And reversing it will take a lot more than targeted tax breaks and entitlements: It’s the stupidity, economists.

Tell me again why we should further hasten the breakdown of society by legitimating* illegitimacy, quick-and-easy divorce, homosexual “marriage,” and involuntary euthanasia.

We reap what we sow. We are about to reap chaos, right here at home. Mark my words.
__________
* The correct word (see “legitimate“), not the barbarous “legitimizing,” from the neologism, “legitimize.”

Is It Sexist…

…to say that women are more cooperative than men? Not if it’s true. Nor am I surprised.

A Century of Regress

If this is true, so is this.

Compare and Contrast, Again

In praise of Kay S. Hymowitz’s realism about the limits of libertarianism, I say in “Compare and Contrast” that

Good things don’t just happen, they must be made to happen. If they are not, bad things will prevail because the anti-social aspects of human nature — dominance, enviousness, and aggressiveness — outweigh the pro-social ones.

Hymowitz’s “libertarian” critics (e.g., Ilya Somin), just don’t get it. Somin thusly ends a post about Hymowitz’s response to his critique of her stance on libertarianism:

Hymowitz concludes her response by criticizing what she calls the libertarian “tendency to view individual personal liberty as The Good that should swallow up all others.” In reply, I can only reiterate a point I made in my critique of her original essay: believing that protecting liberty is the highest or even the sole legitimate purpose of government does not require libertarians to conclude that it is the highest good for all institutions. Still less does it commit us to believing that it is a good that “swallows up all others.” To the contrary, libertarians have long contended that liberty actually facilitates the achievement of other important values and does so far more effectively than government coercion.

What Somin (and other so-called libertarians) fail to understand is this: Liberty doesn’t just happen; it is not innate in human nature.

The true choice is not between liberty and government coercion, it is between ordered liberty, in which government does not (by omission or commission) undermine morality, and social dissolution, in which it does precisely that.

It is quite clear that we have been, for quite some time, in a state of government-condoned and government-sponsored social dissolution. As civil society dissolves, government takes over its functions, in ways that no self-styled libertarian could possibly endorse.

The key defect of libertarian absolutism (of the kind preached by Somin et al.) is its adherents’ blindness to its consequences. They cannot seem to grasp the fact that wanting liberty and having it are two different things. They are fixated on “what ought to be” and blind to “what is possible,” given human nature.

A Mini-Fest of Links

It’s time to disgorge some of the links that I’ve been hoarding.

First up is Arnold Kling’s “Religion, Government, and Civil Society.” I had missed it because it was published in February of this year, when I was neither blogging nor reading blogs. Kling compresses much wisdom into a relatively short essay. (For my views on the importance of civil society — as opposed to statism — read “On Liberty” in the sidebar and go here.)

Relatedly, here is Tyler Cowen’s post about philanthropy. (I hereby apologize for having thought bad thoughts about Cowen.)

Next is a piece (reproduced here) by Douglas Kmiec about the (now-stayed) ruling by an Iowa judge, in which he struck down Iowa’s defense-of-marriage act. That is to say, the judge ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. (My views on the subject are in this post, among others.)

“Crunchy cons” — love ’em or hate ’em — always stir the pot. Here are two posts by Mr. Crunchy Con himself, Rod Dreher. It seems, on the surface, that Dreher is a “civil societarian,” as Arnold Kling defines it. But do not be deceived by the reasonable tone of Dreher’s posts (linked above). Dreher is, in fact, a pseudo-civil-societarian with a statist agenda. For more on that, go back and read this post (toward the bottom) and this one.

I wrote recently about “The Slippery Slope of Constitutional Revisionism.” The U.S. may not have traveled as far down the slope toward vicious statism as has the U.K. But it could do so, quite easily. Let this be a warning to you.

How Much Jail Time?

That’s the question asked by Anna Quindlen, in the current issue of Newsweek, about the punishment for abortion. Quindlen observes that

[i]f the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal.

The aim of Quindlen’s column is to scorn the idea of jail time as punishment for a woman who procures an illegal abortion. In fact, Quindlen’s “logic” reminds me of the classic definition of chutzpah: “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.” The chutzpah, in this case, belongs to Quindlen (and others of her ilk) who believe that a woman should not face punishment for an abortion because she has just “lost” a baby.

Balderdash! If a woman illegally aborts her child, why shouldn’t she be punished by a jail term (at least)? She would be punished by jail (or confinement in a psychiatric prison) if she were to kill her new-born infant, her toddler, her ten-year old, and so on. What’s the difference between an abortion and murder? None. (Read this, then follow the links in this post.)

Quindlen (who predictably opposes capital punishment) asks “How much jail time?” in a cynical effort to shore up the anti-life front. It ain’t gonna work, lady.

A "Person" or a "Life"?

While I’m on the subject of eugenics (previous post), I have a few more thoughts about abortion. (Many of the links at the bottom of the previous post lead to other posts I have written on the subject.) These few more thoughts are triggered by Judith Jarvis Thomson‘s article, “A Defense of Abortion” (Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1 (1971): 47-66), which is available online here (among other places).

“A Defense of Abortion” has been rattling around in the back of my mind since I first read it a few years ago. Thomson’s case for abortion in rests on the analogy that she poses in the fourth paragraph of the article:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. “Tough luck. I agree. but now you’ve got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.” I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.

Glen Whitman has criticized, implicitly and effectively, Thomson’s analogy and others of its kind. I will not repeat Whitman’s criticisms here; read them for yourself at his post, “Every Abortion Analogy Fails.”

I want to focus, instead, on another aspect of Thomson’s verbal trickery. She begins “A Defense of Abortion” with this:

Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception.

In the second paragraph she writes:

I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception. A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted clump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree.

The trickery is this: Most (right-minded) opposition to abortion does not rely on the premise that the fetus is a “person”; it relies on the fact that the fetus is a human life. Thomson tries to evade that fact by appealing to our sense of a “person” as a walking, talking entity — someone like you and me. “Conveniently” for Thomson, a newly fertilized ovum does not resemble such an entity. The lack of similarity therefore justifies (in Thomson’s mind) the dismissal of the fetus as a non-person and, therefore, the taking of its life — if that is the convenient thing to do.

Eugenics

Ross Douthat (the newest addition to my blogroll) points out that Lefty blogger Kevin Drum is “scoffing at the suggestion that contemporary progressives might be enabling eugenics.” Drum doth protest too much. There is no doubt in my mind that contemporary regressives (le mot juste) are enabling eugenics.

The Case against Genetic Engineering

Slate‘s William Saletan, writing at The New York Times, reviews Michael J. Sandel’s The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. I have not read Sandel’s book, nor do I plan to read it. My case against genetic engineering, to which I will come, may bear no resemblance to Sandel’s. But there’s no way of learning what Sandel’s case is, given Saletan’s rather glib criticism of Sandel’s book.

Saletan’s glibness is evident in passages such as these:

[G]enetic engineering is too big for ethics. It changes human nature, and with it, our notions of good and bad.

When norms change, you can always find old fogeys who grouse that things aren’t the way they used to be….But eventually, the old fogeys die out, and the new norms solidify.

Once gene therapy becomes routine, the case against genetic engineering will sound as quaint as the case against running coaches [a practice apparently unknown before the 1924 Olympics].

In a world…controlled by bioengineering, we would dictate our nature as well as our practices and norms. We would gain unprecedented power to redefine the good. In so doing, we would strip perfection of its independence. Its meaning would evolve as our nature and our ideals evolved.

Saletan, in so many words, professes a tautology: The future will bring what it will bring, and whatever it brings will be the future. Saletan might as well write this: If murder is widely accepted in the future, murder will be acceptable in the future. I doubt very much that Saletan would endorse such a statement. I suspect, rather, that an effort to be clever at Sandel’s expense led Saletan down a moral blind alley of his own construction.

What is that moral blind alley? If it is not obvious to you, consider this passage from the entry for moral relativism at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Metaethical Moral Relativism (MMR). The truth or falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is not absolute or universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons.

The definition of MMR* points to Saletan’s error. He treats the same (or very much the same) group of persons as being a different group because of the passage of time. In other words, the future just “happens” — as if people cannot make judgments in the present about the consequences, for them, of pending or reversible decisions.

To come at it a different way, Saletan conflates what could be with what should be. There could be a market for genetic engineering, but should there be such a market? There are, after all, markets for murder, arson, and the fruits of theft (among other such things), but I doubt that Saletan would condone such markets.

The real issue, then, is whether to allow genetic engineering, in light of its consequences. Saletan finally approaches that question when he says that “self-engineering….seizes control of humanity so radically that humanity can no longer judge it.”

But Saletan waits until the final paragraph of his review to say even that much. He then quickly closes the review with with smart-alecky observations instead of pursuing the consequences of genetic engineering. Perhaps he thinks that he has done so when, earlier in the review, he writes this:

The older half of me shares [Sandel’s] dismay that some parents feel blamed for carrying babies with Down syndrome to term. But my younger half cringes at his flight from the “burden of decision” and “explosion of responsibility” that come with our expanding genetic power. Given a choice between a world of fate and blamelessness [without genetic engineering] and a world of freedom and responsibility [with genetic engineering], I’ll take the latter. Such a world may be, as Sandel says, too daunting for the humans of today. But not for the humans of tomorrow.

There again, Saletan assumes that the future will be what it will be. More importantly, he badly mischaracterizes the world of today. Our present world, contra Saletan, is (relative to the brave new world of genetic engineering) one of freedom and responsibility. To use the example of a baby with Down syndrome (properly Down’s syndrome), parents who choose to abort such a baby (for that is what Saletan means) have every bit as much “freedom” to make that choice (under today’s abortion laws) and are just as responsible (morally) for their decision as they would be if they were to choose bioengineering instead. Genetic engineering simply introduces different “freedoms.”

Thus we come to the real issue, which is the wisdom (or not) of allowing genetic engineering in the first place. For, as we know from our experience with the regulatory-welfare state, once an undesirable practice gains the state’s approbation and encouragement it becomes the norm.

And that is the broad case against allowing genetic engineering: If it gains a government-approved foothold it will become the norm. It will result in foreseeable (and unforeseeable) changes in the human condition. It will cause most of us who are alive today to wish that it had never been allowed in the first place.

How so? Consider the specific case against genetic engineering:

Following upon (but not supplanting) abortion, it would enable humans to retreat further from the acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of the procreative act. The prospective acceptance of responsibility for our actions is a restraining influence upon which civil society depends. That restraining influence has been lessened enough by such elitist initiatives as the legalization of abortion, leniency in the punishment of criminals, and permissiveness in the face of disruptive speech and behavior in public schools.

It would reinforce the attitude — inherent in abortion — that humans are mere machines to be overhauled or junked at will. It would, in other words, take us another giant step down the slippery slope toward state-condoned (if not state-conducted) euthanasia.

From there it would be an easy step for the state (controlled by “liberal” elites) to dictate who may have children, how many children they may have, the gender-mix of the children, the occupations those children may pursue, etc., etc., etc.

Yes, genetic engineering could have some positive consequences (e.g., reducing the number of children born with Down’s syndrome). But the prospect of such consequences should not eclipse the broad, fundamental, negative consequences for human dignity and liberty.
__________
* The validity of MMR is a matter for another post…sometime, perhaps.

Singer Said It

From an article at LifeSiteNews.com:

In a question and answer article published in the UK’s Independent today, controversial Princeton University Professor Peter Singer repeats his notorious stand on the killing of disabled newborns. Asked, “Would you kill a disabled baby?”, Singer responded, “Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole.” . . .

“Many people find this shocking,” continued Singer, “yet they support a woman’s right to have an abortion.” Concluding his point, Singer said, “One point on which I agree with opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby.”

Let us be clear: Singer admits that it is the people who don’t support a woman’s “right” to have an abortion who insist that there is no distinction between the fetus and the newborn — or the fetus and an old person whose death might be convenient to others. Given Singer’s endorsement of involuntary infanticide — abortion and the killing of “disabled” newborns (“disabled” as determined how and by whom?) — Singer accepts, by implication, the rightness of involuntary euthanasia.

An Argument Against Abortion

Don Marquis, a professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas, is the author of “Why Abortion Is Immoral” (Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 86, No. 4 (Apr., 1989), pp. 183-202). The full text of Marquis’s paper seems to be unavailable on the web, except for a fee (here).

This post gives a thumbnail version of Marquis’s argument, based on an interview of Marquis by Hugh LaFollette, host of the (defunct) program Ideas and Issues at WETS-FM. The interview, which lasts about 25 minutes, was broadcast on February 8, 1997. Here’s a synopsis:

To understand what’s wrong with abortion, start by asking what’s wrong with murder. It is depriving a person of a future of value, if a person has such a future. That is the best explanation of why we think it’s wrong to kill except in exigent circumstances. For example, it would be merciful to kill a person who is trapped in a burning car and dying in agony. (Presumably, killing murderers in the service of justice and enemies self-defense are similarly defensible because such acts protect lives of value.)

Given the wrongness of killing (in most circumstances), it’s wrong to kill an infant because it deprives the infant of its future of value. Similarly, it’s wrong to kill a fetus, for the same reason.

What about the objection that an adult has interests but a fetus does not? A fetus is an undeveloped human being that will have interests.

What about the objection that an adult is conscious and aware, whereas a fetus in early stages of development is not. The fetus will be conscious and aware, just as a person in a termporary coma will be conscious and aware. If killing the person in a coma is wrong, killing an early-stage fetus is wrong for the same reason.

What about contraception? Contraception does not end the life of a definite individual with a future. There is an individual after conception, but not before.

What about the status of the mother who is carrying a fetus. Isn’t her life worth consideration? Shouldn’t she have a choice? Liberty always is constrained by moral considerations. In this instance, it is right to restrict the liberty to abort, because abortion is wrong.

More detailed summaries of Marquis’s argument against abortion can be found here and here.

The Slippery Slope in New Jersey

From LifeSite:

New Jersey Looking to Harvest More Organs by Easing “Brain Death” Criteria

By Hilary White

NEWARK, June 16, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In some jurisdictions the effort to produce more organs for transplant patients is being aided by plans to “streamline” the medical criteria for “brain death” so that organs can be harvested from patients who are still breathing and have a heartbeat. . . .

If they slip by the abortion net, grab ’em while they’re still breathing.

(Thanks to my daughter-in-law for the link.)

The Slipperier Slope in England

See this, about “a London Times piece on the selective abortion of well-advanced fetuses with minor and easily corrected genetic defects.” Then see my earlier post about “The Slippery Slope in England,” and follow the links therein.

Gay Marriage and the Future of America

Steve Dillard writes at Southern Appeal that the push to legalize same-sex marriage

is no longer about tolerance, it is about forcing everyone to agree that homosexuality is perfectly normal. And if your religion tells you otherwise, well, the government will just have to pummel that “bigotry” out of you.

Dillard links to an article at Catholic News Agency, which summarizes a piece by Maggie Gallagher (president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, or IMAPP) in the May 15 issue of The Weekly Standard. According to the CNA article,

[t]he recent conflict over gay adoptions in Boston and the decision of Catholic Charities in that city to withdraw from the adoption business is only one sign of the huge cultural battle to come between religious liberty and sexual liberty, Gallagher suggests. Gay marriage has already been legalized in Massachusetts.

People who favor gay rights face no penalty for speaking their views, but can inflict a risk of litigation, investigation, and formal and informal career penalties on others whose views they dislike,” Gallagher writes. . . .

“Precisely because support for marriage is public policy,” she writes, “once marriage includes gay couples, groups who oppose gay marriage arel ikely to be judged in violation of public policy, triggering a host of negative consequences, including the loss of tax-exempt status.” . . .

Among a number of legal experts, Gallagher interviews Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress. . . .

He says same-sex marriage will affect religious educational institutions in at least four ways: admissions, employment, housing, and regulation of clubs.

In addition, he foresees future conflict with the law in regard to licensing, as well as psychological clinics, social workers, marital counselors, etc.

He also warns that the expression of opposition to gay marriage in the corporate world will not be suppressed by gay advocates but by corporate lawyers,“who will draw the lines least likely to entangle the company inlitigation,” Gallagher writes. . . .

Gallagher also interviewed Robin Wilson, an expert in family and health care law, who . . . believes that public-support arguments may be advanced to compel churches to participate in same-sex marriage or risk losing their tax-exempt status.

Wilson also points out that the First Amendment did not prevent religious hospitals from being punished for refusing to perform abortions, once abortion became a constitutional right. . . .

Gallagher also interviewed Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum. . . .

Most of the time, the need to protect the dignity of gay people will justify burdening religious belief, Feldblum argues. But that does not make it right to pretend these burdens do not exist or do not matter.

While the burdens must be considered each time a law is passed, she said she believes sexual liberty should win out in most cases “because that’s the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner.”

Feldblum’s view, I fear, is likely to prevail. The establishment of “gay rights” — especially same-sex marriage — is being used and will be used as an excuse to further diminish religious freedom, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. It will diminish the great good done by religious insitutions in this country, by undermining their charitable works and civilizing influence.

And it will diminish the great good that is done by the institution of heterosexual marriage (in spite of its imperfections). When I faced the reality that the state will regulate marriage (as opposed to the cop-out position that the state ought not to regulate marriage), I concluded that

the kind of marriage a free society needs is heterosexual marriage, which . . . is a primary civilizing force. I now therefore reject the unrealistic . . . position that the state ought to keep its mitts off marriage. I embrace, instead, the realistic, consequentialist position that society — acting through the state — ought to uphold the special status of heterosexual marriage by refusing legal recognition to other forms of marriage. That is, the state should refuse to treat marriage as if it were mainly (or nothing but) an arrangement to acquire certain economic advantages or to legitimate relationships that society, in the main, finds illegitimate.

The alternative is to advance further down the slippery slope toward societal disintegration and into the morass of ills which accompany that disintegration. (We’ve seen enough societal disintegration and costly consequences since the advent of the welfare state to know that the two go hand in hand.) The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state — though innocuous to many, and an article of faith among most libertarians and liberals — is another step down that slope. When the state, through its power to recognize marriage, bestows equal benefits on homosexual marriage, it will next bestow equal benefits on other domestic arrangements that fall short of traditional, heterosexual marriage. And that surely will weaken heterosexual marriage, which is the axis around which the family revolves. The state will be saying, in effect, “Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer — above all — will pick up the pieces.” And so it will go.

Moreover, the undermining of heterosexual marriage will cause the fertility rate (number of births per woman per year) to decline, given the high correlation between marriage and reproduction. (In spite of the 1960s and women’s “liberation,” two-thirds of births in the U.S. are to married women.) Replenishment of the population requires a fertility rate (births per woman in a lifetime) of 2.1. The projected rate for the U.S. in 2010 is just 2.1, with this breakdown by race and ethnicity: white — 2.1; black — 2.1; American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut — 2.5; Asian and Pacific Islanders — 2.3; Hispanic (all races) — 2.8. (Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2006, Section 2; Tables 77 and 78 for definition of fertility rate and projected fertility rates, Tables 80 and 82 for births to unmarried women.) The bit of good news is that official statistics show that the abortion rate in the U.S. declined from 1990 through 2002 (see Table 93, Stat. Abs., 2006, Section 2), and the decline seems to be continuing. (Thanks to my son for that last link.)

Why is the fertility rate so important? When a population does not replace itself — especially the more able components of a population — economic growth slows. (It is a falsehood perpetrated by the Left that population equals poverty. In an technologically advanced country with generally free markets — such as the United States — the opposite is true. Go here, and read point 6. Also see this.) Slower economic growth makes it harder to support the growing propotion of the population that is elderly, especially when the elderly rely heavily on transfer payments from workers, as is the case in the U.S.

And there’s more. As the European interviewee in this Zenit News Agency article says,

[t]he work force diminishes and the active population ages with consequences on the capacity of innovation and competitiveness [my point, above: ED]. This is the background of the problem that Europe is already paying for, in relation, for example, to the United States, where instead the rate of fertility is greater.

There is also a cultural and social problem that has to do with immigration: Though the latter is necessary to replace the labor force in decline, the rate of immigrants tends to increase rapidly, especially among young people, making more difficult the integration and transmission of the culture of the host country. Often, xenophobia arises as an angry reaction to this situation [or as a rational reaction to the likely political and economic consequences of indiscriminately admitting aliens: ED].

Let’s not forget moreover the consequences on security: A nation without children is a nation that does not even have a desire to fight for its own values and freedom — so much so that it believes it is not worthwhile to transmit them. And, because of this, it prepares to be a land of conquest for emerging civilizations.

(Thanks to my daughter-in law for the link to the Zenit story.)

The prospect of a “European” America should be frightening to every American outside academia, Hollywood, Manhattan, and other Leftist enclaves. The U.S. has to go a bit further (but not far) down the slippery slope to Europeanism. The proponents of “gay rights” — and especially of gay marriage — will push us down that slope if we let them. What lies down that slope? Here’s Mark Steyn to explain:

To those on the American left who find Europe more “sophisticated”, you’re right: it’s sophisticated in the sense that a belle époque Parisian boulevardier is sophisticated – outwardly dapper and worldly, inwardly eaten away by syphilis and gonorrhea. It’s only a question of how many others the clapped-out bon vivant infects before his final collapse.

That’s a harsh judgment but not an overstated one. There are many agreeable aspects of old Europe – old buildings, good food, foxy looking women who dress to show themselves off. But underneath the surface everything is collapsing. The differences between America and Europe in the 21st century are nothing to do with insensitive swaggering Texas cowboys. Indeed, they’re nothing to do with Iraq, Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, or any other particular issue. They’re not tactical differences, they’re conceptual. They’re about how each side of the Atlantic views the world. Most nations in Europe can never again be American allies – not because of anything America’s done, but because of a huge number of profound changes, voluntary and not so, upon which the Continent is embarked:

1) It’s changing in its formal structure, as its elites merge their countries into one pan-European political entity.

2) It’s changing economically, as its people decline and age and its cradle-to-grave welfare systems become unsustainable.

3) It’s changing demographically, with the importation of large unassimilated Muslim populations that make it all but impossible for political leaders to be seen supporting America or Israel.

4) It’s changing in its political tempo, as populations hostile to European integration look for neo-nationalist parties to express their discontent.

Where will this end? Some European commentators got very irritated in 2003 when Denis Boyles of America’s National Review appeared to dismiss the Continentals as “cockroaches”. They were right to be ticked. The Europeans are not cockroaches. The cockroach is the one creature you can rely on to come crawling out of the rubble of the nuclear holocaust. Whereas the one thing that can be said with absolute confidence is that the Europeans will not emerge from under their own rubble.

A harsh characterization and prognosis? Perhaps a bit, but not by much. Given the present state of Europe, my money’s on Steyn.

Frédéric Bastiat wrote about “what is seen and what is not seen.” The “seen” side of “gay rights” is less overt discrimination against homosexuals and the enjoyment by homosexuals of privileges (not rights) formerly withheld from them. The “not seen” side of “gay rights” is the general diminution of most Americans’ freedoms and prosperity. But that diminution soon will become quite visible at the rate things are going.

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