Continued from this post:
If pornography degrades women and discrimination demeans minorities, gay marriage must diminish heterosexual marriage and its civilizing influence.
Taxes are not the price we pay for civilization. Taxes are the price we pay because liberal policies undermine the natural order to be found in free markets and voluntary associations.
If the execution of criminals is “immoral,” what does that say about the execution of unborn innocents?
I have written before about the hidden cost of government programs that encourage mothers to work outside the home:
The twentieth century was a time of great material progress. And we know that there would have been significantly greater progress had the hand of government not been laid so heavily on the economy. But what we don’t know is the immeasurable price we have paid — and will pay — for the exodus of mothers from the home. We can only name that price: greater incivility, mistrust, fear, property loss, injury, and death.
I focused on the economic evidence. But there’s direct evidence of the harm caused by pushing mothers out of the home. First, there’s this:
Researchers tracked the reaction of 70 toddlers in Berlin to their separation from their parents and homes.
They found stress levels were still raised months after beginning child care – even though outward signs of distress had stopped.
“For most toddlers the initiation of daycare is a major stress,” writes report co-author Michael Lamb.
The study of children’s reaction to leaving home casts light on a question that will have been asked by many working parents: “Do children really worry about being away from their parents?”
The answer from this study suggests that children do experience increased stress. . . .
And, more tellingly, there’s this:
A study, the results of which were reported in The [UK] Independent yesterday, indicates that toddlers who are looked after by their mothers develop significantly better than those cared for by nurseries, childminders or relatives.
The report, presented by Penelope Leach, president of the National Childminders’ Association and one of the co-authors, shows that toddlers given nursery care fared worst of all. According to The Independent these children “exhibited higher levels of aggression and were inclined to become more compliant, withdrawn or sad.” Those under the care of relatives fared somewhat better.
The research, which involved 1,200 children and their families in the London and Oxfordshire area, showed that “youngsters looked after by childminders and nannies came second in terms of their development to those who stayed at home with mother.”
The report confirms other studies that show that young children develop best when in the care of a parent, usually the mother, in a loving environment. The report also showed that institutionalized daycare, as proposed by many governments, is detrimental to the development of toddlers.
Society is nothing without civility. Government efforts to push mothers out of the home are nothing less than a crime against society.
(Thanks for my daughter-in-law for the lead.)
Related posts:
I Missed This One (08/12/04)
A Century of Progress? (01/30/05)
Feminist Balderdash (02/19/05)
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values (04/06/05)
Judge Roberts and Women (08/19/05)
If women are the same as men, except for certain anatomical features, there’s no reason to favor women candidates for office because they might possess more “compassion.”
If a woman’s place is outside the home, whose place is inside the home, where children need the kind of moral education best given by a parent?
Excluding the inculcation of immoral socialistic ideals, public schools cannot venture very far into moral guidance without offending someone’s “sensibilities.” Nor can public schools enforce moral guidance with a quick swat.
And what’s wrong with a quick swat as a way of imprinting a moral lesson? It’s a lot more effective than “Joshua, I’m telling you for the last (100th) time not to do that.”
If the black poor are poor because they’ve been “kept down” by discrimination, then affirmative action isn’t of much use to them, except as a way of victimizing whites. (Moral lesson: Two wrongs don’t make a right.)
If the black poor are poor in spite of generations of welfare programs aimed at them, perhaps the problem is that such programs have created a form of dependency that destroys initiative.
If, as Thomas Sowell argues, “black” (redneck) culture is largely responsible for both the perpetuation of black poverty and racial prejudice, doesn’t that make a strong case for “acting white” instead of clinging to a culture that isn’t even authentically “black”?
And where’s the “compassion” for poor, inner-city blacks when they cannot obtain a better education through school vouchers because of resistance to vouchers by their own “educators” and white “liberals” in adjacent suburbs?
If it’s good to have racial and ethnic diversity in housing and jobs, why isn’t it good to have intellectual diversity (a.k.a. free speech) on campuses?
Homosexuality has driven many Catholic priests to molest boys. The Church wants to protect boys by banning the ordination of homosexuals. Liberals must choose between their reflexive defense of homosexuals and their purported desire to protect children.
That purported desire should also cause them to rethink where they want mothers to spend their days and where they want children to go to school.
A few weeks ago, in a comment thread at Catallarchy, I made this observation:
Less teen sex = less disease + fewer unwanted children + fewer early (and often unhappy) marriages
Parents who want to protect their children therefore try to teach them to eschew sex because of its potential consequences. Abstinence — by definition — works better than prophylaxis and contraception.
That evoked a response in a later comment thread that I had “list[ed] only the harm caused by sex and not the benefit.” Well, there were plenty of hedonistic voices arguing the benefit side. What was needed was someone to argue the cost side, and that’s what I did. Moreover, my point — which seems to have been missed in all the shouting — was about the responsibility of parents to teach their children about the cost side.
The usual argument goes like this: Kids will do it anyway. Well, kids are less likely to do it “anyway” if they’re brought up to believe that they shouldn’t do it “anyway.” And the bringing-up isn’t done in public schools, it’s done in the home by parents who teach their children not only about sex but also about responsible (i.e., moral) behavior.
The critics of abstinence education focus on the results of studies (e.g., here and here) about the sexual practices of groups of public-school students. They conclude that abstinence education in public schools is ineffective and perhaps even counterproductive in its effects on teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. But such studies aren’t above criticism; see this, from The Heritage Foundation, for instance. Moreover, what those studies don’t tell us is what happens to teens who are predisposed (by their parents) to eschew sex. Here’s one bit of relevant information (from a research paper published by The Heritage Foundation):
[T]aking a virginity pledge in adolescence…is associated with a substantial decline in STD rates in young adult years. Across a broad array of analysis, virginity pledging was found to be a better predictor of STD reduction than was condom use. Individuals who took a virginity pledge in adolescence are some 25 percent less likely to have an STD as young adults, when compared with non-pledgers who are identical in race, gender, and family background.
More tellingly, there’s this, from the National Institutes of Health:
Teens — particularly girls — with strong religious views are less likely to have sex than are less religious teens, largely because their religious views lead them to view the consequences of having sex negatively. According to a recent analysis of the NICHD-funded Add Health Survey, religion reduces the likelihood of adolescents engaging in early sex by shaping their attitudes and beliefs about sexual activity . . . .
Sexual intercourse places teens at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and unintended pregnancy. The information provided by the study may prove important for health researchers and planners devising programs that help prevent teens from engaging in sexual activity.
Hmm . . . isn’t that what I said at the outset?
I now turn to this story about a letter published in the British Medical Journal (available only by subscription):
A letter by Australian bioethicist Dr. Amin Abboud published in the July 30 edition of the British Medical Journal notes that “A regression analysis done on the HIV situation in Africa indicates that the greater the percentage of Catholics in any country, the lower the level of HIV.”
Dr. Abboud’s letter comes in response to an article published in the journal’s June 4 issue which wonders if newly elected Pope Benedict XVI will alter the Church’s teaching on condoms in light of the burgeoning HIV/AIDS epidemic. Abboud asserts that “On the basis of statistical evidence it would seem detrimental to the HIV situation in Africa if he did authorise such a change.”
“On the basis of data from the World Health Organization,” reports Abboud, “in Swaziland where 42.6% have HIV, only 5% of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37% of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4% of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22% of the population is HIV infected, and only 6% is Catholic. In Uganda, with 43% of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4%.” . . .
Abboud concludes his letter stating, “The causes of the HIV crisis in Africa need to be found elsewhere. The solutions must go beyond latex. If anything, the holistic approach to sexuality that Catholicism advocates, based on the evidence at hand, seems to save lives. I would welcome an editorial on that or, as a minimum, some evidence based advice on HIV.”
It all boils down to personal responsibility, which is taught by parents (especially those who bring up their children in a traditional religion) and undermined by government programs. I thought libertarianism was all about personal responsibility, but for many libertarians it seems to be all about hedonism.
Technorati tag: Abstinence
George Neumayr writes about “The New Eugenics” at The American Spectator:
EACH YEAR IN AMERICA fewer and fewer disabled infants are born. The reason is eugenic abortion. Doctors and their patients use prenatal technology to screen unborn children for disabilities, then they use that information to abort a high percentage of them. Without much scrutiny or debate, a eugenics designed to weed out the disabled has become commonplace….
“I THINK OF IT AS COMMERCIAL EUGENICS,” says Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the International Center for Technology Assessment. “Whenever anybody thinks of eugenics, they think of Adolf Hitler. This is a commercial eugenics. But the result is the same, an intolerance for those who don’t fit the norm. It is less open and more subtle….
THE IMPULSE BEHIND PRENATAL SCREENING in the 1970s was eugenic. After the Roe v. Wade decision, which pumped energy into the eugenics movement, doctors scrambled to advance prenatal technology in response to consumer demand, mainly from parents who didn’t want the burdens of raising children with Down syndrome. Now prenatal screening can identify hundreds of conditions. This has made it possible for doctors to abort children not only with chronic disabilities but common disabilities and minor ones. Among the aborted are children screened for deafness, blindness, dwarfism, cleft palates, and defective limbs.
In some cases the aborted children aren’t disabled at all but are mere carriers of a disease or stand a chance of getting one later in life. Prenatal screening has made it possible to abort children on guesses and probabilities. A doctor speaking to the New York Times cited a defect for a eugenic abortion that was at once minor and speculative: a women suffering from a condition that gave her an extra finger asked doctors to abort two of her children on the grounds that they had a 50-50 chance of inheriting that condition.
The law and its indulgence of every conceivable form of litigation has also advanced the new eugenics against the disabled. Working under “liability alerts” from their companies, doctors feel pressure to provide extensive prenatal screening for every disability, lest parents or even disabled children hit them with “wrongful birth” and “wrongful life” suits….
The right to abort a disabled child, in other words, is approaching the status of a duty to abort a disabled child. Parents who abort their disabled children won’t be asked to justify their decision. Rather, it is the parents with disabled children who must justify themselves to a society that tacitly asks: Why did you bring into the world a child you knew was disabled or might become disabled?…
Andrew Imparato of AAPD [American Association of People with Disabilities] wonders how progressives got to this point. The new eugenics aimed at the disabled unborn tell the disabled who are alive, “disability is a fate worse than death,” he says. “What kind of message does this send to people living with spina bifida and other disabilities? It is not a progressive value to think that a disabled person is better off dead.”
In sum, the state is condoning and encouraging a resurgence of Hitlerian eugenics. And it’s not just happening to the unborn. As I wrote here, “think about the ‘progressive’ impulses that underlie abortion (especially selective abortion), involuntary euthanasia, and forced mental screening — all of them steps down a slippery slope toward state control of human destiny.”
Related posts:
I’ve Changed My Mind (08/15/04)
Next Stop, Legal Genocide? (09/05/04)
Here’s Something All Libertarians Can Agree On (09/10/04)
It Can Happen Here: Eugenics, Abortion, Euthanasia, and Mental Screening (09/11/04)
Creeping Euthanasia (09/21/04)
PETA, NARAL, and Roe v. Wade (11/17/04)
Flooding the Moral Low Ground (11/19/04)
The Beginning of the End? (11/21/04)
Peter Singer’s Fallacy (11/26/04)
Taking Exception (03/01/05)
Protecting Your Civil Liberties (03/22/05)
Where Conservatism and (Sensible) Libertarianism Come Together (04/14/05)
Conservatism, Libertarianism, and Public Morality (04/25/25)
The Threat of the Anti-Theocracy (05/03/05)
The Consequences of Roe v. Wade (06/08/05)
From a post at Right Reason by Francis Beckwith (paragraph break and emphasis added by me):
A 1997 article in The New Republic, a magazine whose editorial position is generally supportive of abortion-choice, cites the work of Ruth Padawer, a staff writer for the local Bergen County, New Jersey, newspaper, The Record: “she called local clinics, asked how many [partial-birth abortions] they performed, did some math and wrote up her conclusions: `Interviews with physicians who use the method reveal that in New Jersey alone, at least 1,500 partial-birth abortions are performed each year, three times the supposed national rate. Moreover, doctors say only a minuscule amount are for medical reasons.'” (William Powers, “Partial Truths,” The New Republic [March 24, 1997]: 19)
Dr. Hakell’s practice and Ms. Padawer’s story were confirmed by a stunning confession by Ron Fitzsimmons, then-executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers. Since 1995, when the debate over partial-birth abortion began, Fitzsimmons and his abortion-choice colleagues had claimed that partial-birth abortion was extremely rare (about 450 per year) and performed only in late-term pregnancy for serious reasons such as severe fetal deformity and to save the life of the mother. In 1997, Fitzsimmons, on an episode of ABC News’ “Nightline” admitted, in an answer to Ted Koppel’s question, “[W]hat were you lying through you teeth about?,”: “When I said that the procedures were performed only in about 450 cases and only in those severe circumstances. That was not accurate. But we have no apologies for this procedure.” (Ibid) According to The New Republic’s account, “Fitzsimmons tried, several times, to tell Koppel that, in fact, 3,000 to 5,000 partial-birth abortions were performed every year on fetuses twenty weeks or older; and, of course, only 500 to 750 were performed for reasons of maternal health in the third trimester.” (Ibid) Fitzsimmons told the New York Times that “in the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along” and is “performed far more often than his colleagues have acknowledged.” (David Stout, “An Abortion Rights Advocate Says He Lied About Procedure,” New York Times [February 26, 1997]: A11)
A perfect illustration of the slippery slope down which Roe v. Wade has led us. For more about the dangers of state-sponsored eugenics, read this and follow the links.
REVISED 05/15/05 (9:11 PM)
Several months ago, in “How to Fight Crime,” I said:
According to an article in today’s NYTimes.com, “Most Crimes of Violence and Property Hover at 30-Year Lows.” Three important things happened after 1995 — the year in which the rate of violent crime began to drop markedly. First, the incarceration rate continued to rise: Persistence pays off. Second, the percentage of the population that is male and 20-24 years old continued to drop, in keeping with the general aging of the population. (Age usually brings with it a greater degree of maturity, stability, and aversion to committing criminal acts.) At the same time, spending on criminal justice functions (police, corrections, and courts) continued to rise, especially spending on police.
I’m sure there are other causal factors, but those are probably the big ones. The first and third of those factors — incarceration and spending on the criminal justice system — go hand in hand. And they are the public-policy weapons of choice in a society that values individual responsibility.
Then Freakonomics was published. In it economist Steven Levitt challenged that orthodoxy. Here’s how The Washington Post reported Levitt’s findings about the drop in crime:
Freakonomics is packed with fascinating ideas. Consider Levitt’s notion of a relationship between abortion access and the crime drop. First, Freakonomics shows that although commonly cited factors such as improved policing tactics, more felons kept in prison and the declining popularity of crack account for some of the national reduction in crime that began in about the year 1990, none of these completes the explanation. (New York City and San Diego have enjoyed about the same percentage decrease in crime, for instance, though the former adopted new policing tactics and the latter did not.) What was the significance of the year 1990, Levitt asks? That was about 16 years after Roe v. Wade . Studies consistently show that a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by those raised in broken homes or who were unwanted as children. When abortion became legal nationally, Levitt theorizes, births of unwanted children declined; 16 years later crime began to decline, as around age 16 is the point at which many once-innocent boys start their descent into the criminal life. Leavitt’s [sic] clincher point is that the crime drop commenced approximately five years sooner in Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and Washington state than it did in the nation as a whole. What do these states have in common? All legalized abortion about five years before Roe .
Well, Steve Sailer (among others) has attacked Levitt’s findings:
First, Levitt’s theory is predicated — at least publicly — on abortion reducing the proportion of “unwanted” babies, who are presumed to be more likely to grow up to be criminals. The empirical problem with this is that legalization (which occurred in California, New York, and three other states in 1970 and nationally in 1973), didn’t put the slightest dent in the illegitimacy rate, which is, by far, the most obvious objective sign of not being wanted by the mother and father, and has been linked repeatedly with crime:
You’ll note that the growth in the illegitimacy rate didn’t start to slow down until the mid-1990s when the abortion rate finally went down a considerable amount.
My article offers a simple explanation, drawn from Levitt’s own research, of why legal abortion tends to increase illegitimacy.
Second, the acid test of Levitt’s theory is that it predicts that the first cohort to survive being culled by legal abortion should have been particularly law-abiding. Instead, they went on the worst teen murder rampage in American history. Here’s a graph showing the homicide rate for 14-17 year olds, and below each year is the average birthdate of the 14-17 year old cohort.
For example, the 14-17 year olds in the not particularly murderous year of 1976 were, on average, born about 1960 (i.e., 1976 – 16 years of age = 1960), so they didn’t “benefit” from being culled by legalized abortion the way that the 14-17 years olds during the peak murder years of 1993 and 1994 should have benefited, according to Levitt.
In contrast, the homicide rate for the 25 and over cohort (none of whom enjoyed the benefits of legalized abortion) was lower in 1993 than in 1983.
Levitt seems to have a good answer to Sailer’s second point. But Sailer has the better of it on the first point, which is the critical one to Levitt’s case. As Sailer puts it in his American Conservative article:
The most striking fact about legalized abortion, but also the least discussed, is its pointlessness. Levitt himself notes that following Roe, “Conceptions rose by nearly 30 percent, but births actually fell by 6 percent …” So for every six fetuses aborted in the 1970s, five would never have been conceived except for Roe! This ratio makes a sick joke out of Levitt’s assumption that legalization made a significant difference in how “wanted” children were. Indeed, perhaps the increase in the number of women who got pregnant figuring they would get an abortion but then were too drunk or drugged or distracted to get to the clinic has meant that the “wantedness” of surviving babies has declined.
If the legalization of abortion did result in less crime it’s only because abortion became more prevalent among that segment of society that is most prone to commit crime. (I dare not speak its name.) What policy does Levitt want us to infer from that bit of causality? Would he favor a program of euthanasia for the most crime-prone segment of society? Now there’s a fine kettle of fish for Leftists, who favor abortion and oppose “oppression” of the the segment of society that is the most crime-prone.
I stand by my original assertion that ” incarceration and spending on the criminal justice system…are the public-policy weapons of choice” in dealing with crime. Whatever abortion is, it isn’t a crime-footing tool.
Related posts:
Does Capital Punishment Deter Homicide?
Libertarian Twaddle about the Death Penalty
Crime and Punishment
Saving the Innocent?
Saving the Innocent?: Part II
More on Abortion and Crime
More Punishment Means Less Crime
More About Crime and Punishment
More Punishment Means Less Crime: A Footnote
Clear Thinking about the Death Penalty
Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
Another Argument for the Death Penalty
Less Punishment Means More Crime
Crime, Explained
Regarding the debate about homosexual marriage, a common libertarian position — which I have shared — is that marriage should be taken out of the hands of the state and made a private, contractual relationship. Christopher Tozzo (a.k.a. KipEsquire) of A Stitch in Haste argues against that stance and for legal recognition of the homosexual union as a form of marriage:
As for the hyper-anarcho-libertarians [and many minarchists as well: ED] who try to short-circuit the entire gay marriage debate by moaning that “government should get of the marriage business altogether,” well, even if such a lament somehow helped the real-world quest for equal treatment of gays (I don’t see how it does), it’s also, quite frankly, an unacceptably naive and simplistic worldview.
The great thing about marriage, qua legal status, is that it eliminates the need for the (extremely complicated) “bundle of strictly private contracts” that radical libertarians and defenders of theoretical polygamy…seem to think is such a “neat-o!” idea. Ask any gay couple who has actually tried to do it — I guarantee you they’ll say it’s not so “neat-o.”
Stated differently, marriage, qua legal status, is extremely efficient economically. It saves time. It saves resources (e.g., lawyers drafting documents). It saves money. It saves grief over lost, destroyed or badly-drafted contracts. In an (admittedly Rawlsian) sense, the shortcut of marriage, qua legal status, does the greatest good for the greatest number. It’s simply a smart idea in a modern society.
Tinker around the edges all you want. Should there be a “marriage penalty” within the federal income tax? I doubt it. Should there be a spousal benefit under Social Security? I seriously doubt it. But these are overlays that don’t go to the core of marriage qua legal status. The real meaning of marriage in modern society — automatic property rights, automatic inheritance rights, automatic child custody rights, automatic healthcare rights, automatic decision-making rights of all kinds, these all derive not from some abstract “bundle of contracts” concept of marriage, but from the legal status concept.
But…polygamists need not apply:
And they [“automatic rights”] require that marriage be limited to two people.
If consensual polygamists want to try to build a bird’s nest from the individual twigs and strings of contractual arrangements, then by all means they have a right to do so (assuming no externalities, especially to the children of such arrangements). But the assertion that to draw the line at two-person marriage is “arbitrary” is nonsense.
Well, it’s no more “nonsense” than the assertion that marriage — as recognized by the state — should be limited to the union of a man and a woman. If KipEsquire were truly interested in the equal treatment of citizens, it seems to me that he would could suggest a way to extend the same “automatic rights” to polygamists that he would extend to homosexual partners. (Or is he prejudiced against polygamists? Heaven forbid!) For example, the law would merely have to specify that, in the absence of valid documentation to the contrary, all survivors of a polygamous relationship share-and-share-alike in the property of a deceased member of that relationship.
As for the “efficiency” argument — which is really about cost-avoidance for homosexual partners — the “automatic rights” that legally married heterosexuals “enjoy” aren’t all that “neat-o.” Many, many heterosexual couples must spend lots of money on lawyers to carve out exceptions to those “automatic rights” bestowed so sweepingly by the state. Where’s the “efficiency” for those heterosexuals? And where’s the “efficiency” for not-legally-married heterosexuals, whom KipEsquire seems to have overlooked? Or are they, like polygamists, to be left entirely to their own devices?
KipEsquire seems to be more interested in the legalization of homosexual marriage than he is in the real effects of legalization on society’s well-being. To put it in the form of a question: What’s really at risk if society — acting through the state — undermines the privileged status of heterosexual marriage by bestowing equal benefits on other forms of marriage, and even on temporary relationships?
Well, Megan McArdle (a.k.a. Jane Galt) of Asymmetrical Information tried to address that question, at length, and for all her trouble KipEsquire misunderstood her point:
Jane cites four mini-case-studies — income taxation, public housing, welfare benefits and liberalized divorce — to argue what we all know already: that changing government policies changes people’s behaviors at the margin.
Um, so what?
The mile-wide blindspot in Jane’s tome is that all her examples are non-discriminatory.
The mile-wide blindspot in KipEsquire’s response is that Jane’s examples aren’t meant to be about discrimination. Nor is their effect on “marginal” behavior to be dismissed simply because KipEsquire wants to dismiss it. The examples illustrate the danger of the slippery slope: that many bad things that can happen when standards are relaxed — just a “bit” — for the sake of attaining a particular objective that seems “good” or “decent” or “fair” or simply attainable through raw political power.
So let’s return to the real issue, which isn’t — or shouldn’t be — cost-avoidance for homosexual partners, or fairness or decency or other such easily deployed phrases. The real issue is whether or not the state, by recognizing homosexual marriage, will undermine heterosexual marriage, with generally bad consequences for society. For I am a consequentialist libertarian:
Fundamentalist (or “natural right“) libertarians say that humans inherently possess the right of liberty. Consequentialists say that humans ought to enjoy liberty because, through liberty, humans are happier and more prosperous than they would be in its absence….(For more about this debate, read the online symposium, The Transformation of Libertarianism?.)
I stand with the consequentialists. Fundamentalist libertarianism reduces liberty to a matter of faith. If libertarianism cannot stand on more than faith, what makes it any better than, say, socialism or the divine right of kings?
The virtue of libertarianism, [which I explicate here, here, here, and here], is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.
For the sake of argument, I will accept a point on which Jane Galt and KipEsquire agree, which is that, in KipEsquire’s words,
the hyper-anarcho-libertarians who try to short-circuit the entire gay marriage debate by moaning that “government should get of the marriage business altogether”…[offer], quite frankly, an unacceptably naive and simplistic worldview.
Or as Jane puts it:
There are a lot of libertarians who dismiss arguments about gay marriage with the declaration that the state shouldn’t be in the business of sanctifying marriage anyway. I don’t find that a particularly satisfying argument. It’s quite possibly true that in some ideal libertarian state, the government would not be in the business of defining marriages, or would merely enforce whatever creative contracts people chose to draw up. That’s a lovely discussion for a libertarian forum. However, we are confronting a major legal change that is actually happening in the country we live in, where marriage is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, an institution in which the government is intimately involved.
Okay, now that the state is a central player in this drama, let’s see where that takes us.
Enter libertarian Jennifer Roback Morse (no pseudonym), writing in “Marriage and the Limits of Contract” (Policy Review Online, April-May 2005):
Marriage is a naturally occurring, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society. Western society is drifting toward a redefinition of marriage as a bundle of legally defined benefits bestowed by the state. As a libertarian, I find this trend regrettable. The organic view of marriage is more consistent with the libertarian vision of a society of free and responsible individuals, governed by a constitutionally limited state…..
My central argument is that a society will be able to govern itself with a smaller, less intrusive government if that society supports organic marriage rather than the legalistic understanding of marriage….
The new idea about marriage claims that no structure should be privileged over any other. The supposedly libertarian subtext of this idea is that people should be as free as possible to make their personal choices. But the very nonlibertarian consequence of this new idea is that it creates a culture that obliterates the informal methods of enforcement. Parents can’’t raise their eyebrows and expect children to conform to the socially accepted norms of behavior, because there are no socially accepted norms of behavior. Raised eyebrows and dirty looks no longer operate as sanctions on behavior slightly or even grossly outside the norm. The modern culture of sexual and parental tolerance ruthlessly enforces a code of silence, banishing anything remotely critical of personal choice. A parent, or even a peer, who tries to tell a young person that he or she is about to do something incredibly stupid runs into the brick wall of the non-judgmental social norm….
No libertarian would claim that the presumption of economic laissez-faire means that the government can ignore people who violate the norms of property rights, contracts, and fair exchange. Apart from the occasional anarcho-capitalist, all libertarians agree that enforcing these rules is one of the most basic functions of government. With these standards for economic behavior in place, individuals can create wealth and pursue their own interests with little or no additional assistance from the state. Likewise, formal and informal standards and sanctions create the context in which couples can create marriage with minimal assistance from the state….
One side in this dispute is mistaken. There is enormous room for debate, but there ultimately is no room for compromise….We will be happier if we try to discover the truth and accommodate ourselves to it, rather than try to recreate the world according to our wishes….
Being free does not demand that everyone act impulsively rather than deliberately. Libertarian freedom is the modest demand to be left alone by the coercive apparatus of the government. Economic liberty, and libertarian freedom more broadly, is certainly consistent with living with a great many informal social and cultural constraints….
We now live in an intellectual, social, and legal environment in which the laissez-faire idea has been mechanically applied to sexual conduct and married life. But Rousseau-style state-of-nature couplings are inconsistent with a libertarian society of minimal government. In real, actually occurring societies, noncommittal sexual activity results in mothers and children who require massive expenditures and interventions by a powerful government….
But for this minimal government approach to work, there has to be a family in the first place. The family must sustain itself over the course of the life cycle of its members. If too many members spin off into complete isolation, if too many members are unwilling to cooperate with others, the family will not be able to support itself. A woman trying to raise children without their father is unlikely to contribute much to the care of her parents. In fact, unmarried parents are more likely to need help from their parents than to provide it….
Marriage is the socially preferred institution for sexual activity and childrearing in every known human society. The modern claim that there need not be and should not be any social or legal preference among sexual or childrearing contexts is, by definition, the abolition of marriage as an institution. This will be a disaster for the cause of limited government. Disputes that could be settled by custom will have to be settled in court. Support that could be provided by a stable family must be provided by taxpayers. Standards of good conduct that could be enforced informally must be enforced by law….
The advocates of the deconstruction of marriage into a series of temporary couplings with unspecified numbers and genders of people have used the language of choice and individual rights to advance their cause. This rhetoric has a powerful hold over the American mind. It is doubtful that the deconstruction of the family could have proceeded as far as it has without the use of this language of personal freedom.
Moreover, it is clear that the kind of marriage a free society needs is heterosexual marriage, which — a Morse explains — 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. 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.
But many — KipEsquire among them — will say that the state’s refusal to legitimate homosexual marriage simply isn’t “fair.” And I will ask, “unfair to whom, to the relatively small number of persons who seek to assuage their pride or avoid paying a lawyer to document the terms of their relationship, or generally unfair to members of society (of all sexual proclivities), whose well-being is bound to suffer for the sake of homosexual pride or cost-avoidance?”
I’d rather maintain my stance that the government ought to keep its mitts off marriage. But Megan McArdle, Christopher Tozzo, and Jennifer Roback Morse have convinced me that I oughtn’t to do so. So I won’t.
Faced with a choice between libertarian shibboleth and libertarian substance, I have chosen substance. I now say: Ban homosexual marriage and avoid another step down the slippery slope toward incivility and bigger government.
(Thanks to my son for pointing me to Morse’s article.)
UPDATED BELOW
Tom Smith of The Right Coast rants the best rant I’ve ever read (pace Lileks):
Mark Kleinman [sic throughout; s/b Kleiman: ED] seems to find my little artistic effort depicting Michael Schiavo in the Bad Place in poor taste. It may be. When wondering how to respond to the killing of a person whose parents just wanted to take care of her, good taste is one of the first things to go….
Besides, there’s a lot to talk about, such as, what should be done to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again? By this sort of thing, I mean the slow killing of a woman, even though her parents stood ready to care for her, at the instigation of her former husband, a man of an apparently extremely selfish and spiteful character….Professor Kleinman calls me a ghoul, which is rich….I think all of us ghouls should unite, and keep an eye out for old people, babies, and people in power wheelchairs, because I think in the next decade or so, they’re going to need all the help they can get.
As I said upon learning of Terri Schiavo’s death by starvation and dehydration, “Are you next?” That’s all I could muster at the time. Tom Smith has articulated my outrage. Go, read his post.
UPDATE: Kleiman, not surprisingly, opposes the use of torture. I guess he forgot to add the footnote that says “except in the case of a speechless, defenseless, innocent person.”
Those who resist the culture of death by decree do so for the same reason as those who resist taxation, regulation, and redistribution: to compromise is to surrender yet more of life — perhaps life itself — to the state.
…if not the century. Apropos the Schiavo case, especially “those who brim with passion not just for the state-approved quietus, but with fury for those who oppose it,” James Lileks concludes, “you never think you have need of any chocks until you’re in the truck, and you realize it’s rolling down the hill. Backwards.” Down a slippery slope.
UPDATE: Then, there’s this, from Mark Steyn:
In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo’s life…has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.
The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it’s the demography, stupid.
From NRO‘s K.J. Lopez:
‘Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.”
Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, penned this chillingly cold line in his book “Practical Ethics.”
In case you’re not freezing yet: Singer explains that, “Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time.” Hence, they’re disposable.
And when you’re asleep you have no sense of your own existence over time. Moral: Don’t fall asleep or Dr. Singer will have you euthanized.
Sick.
I’ve written several times about the slippery slope of involuntary euthanasia and similar atrocities, but my hat’s off to the Hobbesian Conservative, who hits one out of the park in a post titled “Ugh!” Go read.
This is a good idea:
Gov. Mike Huckabee took the former Janet McCain to be his lawfully wedded wife Monday night, just as he did nearly 31 years ago, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do them part.
This time, although the actual vows were not repeated, the emphasis was clearly on the “until death” pledge.
Upgrading their vows to that of a covenant marriage, a legally binding contract available only in Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana, the Huckabees hope to jump-start a conservative movement that has shown little sign of moving in recent years. A covenant marriage commits a couple to counseling before any separation and limits divorce to a handful of grounds, like adultery or abuse.
Here’s an even better one (from my comment on a post at Agoraphilia):
The “wrong” [thing about the controversy surrounding same-sex marriage] is that government is involved, one way or the other. When I contract for services, I don’t submit the contract to a government entity for approval. If the other party breaches the contract I may, if I wish, seek redress in a government-sponsored court. But government, in that case, is merely acting (or should be acting) as a neutral referee in a contract dispute. Actually, because of the demonstrated inability of government-sponsored courts to make sensible decisions, it would be better to take marriage out of government’s hands by stipulating that marital disputes must be resolved by the parties themselves, through mediation, or through binding arbitration — as the parties wish — but not through the courts.
A “covenant marriage” needn’t require the state’s blessing, just an informed, binding commitment by both parties to the covenant.
Many, many horrific things happened in the twentieth century, but — despite it all — America made tremendous economic progress. Consider real GDP per capita, which (in year 2000 dollars) was about $4,300 in 1900 and $34,900 in 2000. That increase represents an annualized rate of growth of 2.1 percent.
Before we throw a party to celebrate that great accomplishment, let’s look behind the numbers.
Monetary measures of GDP exclude a lot of things that might be captured in the term “quality of life”; for example:
[F]ailing to account for the output produced within households may lead to misleading comparisons of economy-wide production, as conventionally measured. The female labor force participation rate in the United States has grown enormously since the early part of the 20th century. To the extent that the entry of women into paid employment has reduced the effort women devote to household production, the long-term trend in output, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), may exaggerate the true growth in national output. [Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), Designing Nonmarket Accounts for the United States: Interim Report (2003), p. 9 in HTML version]
The “effort that women devote to household production” involves a lot more than shopping, cooking, cleaning, and all of the other activities usually associated with the term “housewife.” Not the least among those activities is the raising of children. Child-rearing (a quaint but still meaningful phrase) includes more than feeding, bathing, and toilet training. Parents — and especially mothers — impart lessons about civility — lessons that are neglected when children are left on their own to disport with friends, watch TV, and imbibe the nihilistic lyrics that pervade popular music.
Yet, the apparently robust growth of real GDP per capita between owes much to the huge increase in the proportion of women seeking work outside the home. The labor-force participation rate for women of “working age” (14 and older in 1900, 16 and older in 2000) grew from 19 percent in 1900 to 60 percent in 2000, while the rate for men dropped only slightly, from 80 percent to 75 percent. Who knows how much damage society has suffered — and will yet suffer — because of the exodus into the workforce of women with children at home? These figures suggest the extent of that exodus in the latter half of the twentieth century:
Because estimates of GDP don’t capture the value of child-rearing and other aspects of “household production” by stay-at-home mothers, the best way to put 1900 and 2000 on the same footing is to estimate GDP for 2000 at the labor-force participation rates of 1900. The picture then looks quite different: real GDP per capita of $4,300 in 1900, real GDP per capita of $25,300 in 2000 (a reduction of 28 percent), and an annualized growth rate of 1.8 percent, rather than 2.1 percent.
The adjusted rate of growth in GDP per capita still overstates the expansion of prosperity in the twentieth century because it includes government spending, which is demonstrably counterproductive. A further adjustment for the cost of government — which grew at an annualized rate of 7.5 during the century (excluding social transfer payments) — yields these estimates: real GDP per capita of $3,900 in 1900, real GDP per capita of $19,800 in 2000, and an annualized growth rate of 1.6 percent. (In Part V of “Practical Libertarianism for Americans,” I will estimate how much greater growth we would have enjoyed in the absence of government intervention.)
The twentieth century was a time of great material progress. And we know that there would have been significantly greater progress had the hand of government not been laid so heavily on the economy. But what we don’t know is the immeasurable price we have paid — and will pay — for the exodus of mothers from the home. We can only name that price: greater incivility, mistrust, fear, property loss, injury, and death.
Most “liberal” programs have unintended negative consequences. The “liberal” effort to encourage mothers to work outside the home has vastly negative consequences. Unintended? Perhaps. But I doubt that many “liberals” would change their agenda, even if they were confronted with the consequences.
In a piece I cite here, columnist Jack Wheeler predicts that “The dark chapter of America’s peculiar institution of abortion is coming to an end.” Perhaps it is. Consider this story, from AP via Yahoo! News:
Congress Helps Providers Refuse Abortions
Sun Nov 21, 8:25 AM ET
Politics – U. S. Congress
WASHINGTON – Congress made it a little easier for hospitals, insurers and others to refuse to provide or cover abortions. A provision in a $388 billion spending bill passed by the House and Senate on Saturday would block any of the measure’s money from going to federal, state or local agencies that act against health care providers and insurers because they don’t provide abortions, make abortion referrals or cover them.
“This policy simply states that health care entities should not be forced to provide elective abortions, a practice to which a majority of health care providers object and which they will not perform as a matter of conscience,” said Rep. David Weldon, R-Fla., a doctor who sponsored the language.
Weldon said his measure was simply a refinement of decades-old restrictions against federal aid for most abortions. “This provision is meant to protect health care entities from discrimination because they choose not to provide abortion services,” he said.
But Democrats complained that the provision was slipped into the voluminous year-end spending bill without debate or discussion in the Senate or the House.
“Now any business entity can decide to tell doctors working for it they can’t give information to women about their right to choose,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.
Many clinics and other providers, in exchange for federal funds, are required to at least tell pregnant women who do not wish to have a child that abortion is among their options. Weldon’s language would make it more difficult to enforce that, opponents said.
“The Weldon amendment is essentially a domestic gag rule, restricting access to abortion counseling, referral and information,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. “Health care companies should not be able to prevent doctors from giving medically necessary information.”…
Well, boo hoo, Ms. Boxer and Ms. Pelosi, but private businesses most certainly can tell their employees what constitutes acceptable, job-related speech. You may be able to say anything in the halls of Congress, but you can’t go to work for, say, an airline and expect to keep your job if you publish an article in which you advise travelers to fly with a different airline. The pending law merely nudges a traditional employer-employee relationship toward its proper state.
If a doctor doesn’t like it that his employer forbids him to discuss abortion as an option, the doctor can find an amenable employer or set up his own practice. Isn’t that the American way?
In any event, the pending law also signals another positive change. It breaks a link between federal funding and federal interference in the operations of state and local governments and businesses. It’s a small step, but it’s in the right direction.
A few posts ago I observed that “pro-abortion extremists have captured the moral low ground in the battle over abortion rights,” after opining that “animals are more important than human fetuses” to the Left. But the Left’s moral decay is evident in other ways.
The Left caricatures black Republicans — that is blacks who choose not align themselves unthinkingly with the party of liberal condescension — as something like “Aunt Jemimas” and “Uncle Toms”.
The Left views non-Western cultures as incapable of embracing democracy. Yet, the Left is incapable of accepting a democratic outcome in the United States, preferring instead to think of the majority as religious fanatics, cretins, and “Hitlers”.
The Left would abandon the Middle East to Osama bin Laden and other terrorist thugs, all the while complaining about the high price of oil. One wonders where the Left will stand when we face down (or take down) Syria, Iran, and North Korea.
The Left claims to “support the troops” but shows it by spitting on them, just as it shows its true disdain for democracy by its thuggish behavior at political events.
The affluent Left (that is, much of it) shows its arrogance toward “inferiors” by opposing school vouchers and the privatization of Social Security, because the “masses” must be told how to mange their own affairs.
The Left profits from free-market capitalism — then spends some of the profits to promote “enlightened” government regulation of those same markets.
The list could go on and on. But the moral bankruptcy of the Left has become so evident — outside the media, academia, and other Leftish circles — that it’s only a matter of time before the political tide turns against the Left — and rolls over it.
Hypothesis: Members of PETA tend to hold NARAL-like views about abortion. If that’s true, then those who profess to abhor almost any harm to animals — even if the harm feeds humans or benefits medical science — also tend to favor an almost-unbridled (perhaps totally unbridled) right to kill a living human fetus. In other words, I suspect that animals are more important than human fetuses in world of the fashionably left, as epitomized by PETA.
All of which is another way of saying that pro-abortion extremists have captured the moral low ground in the battle over abortion rights. As Jack Wheeler explains, in a piece at WorldNetDaily about “The beginning of the end of abortion“,
…Confederate Southerners held many decent values – but on slavery they were morally wrong. No relativistic morals here, no “that’s just your opinion” situational ethics, no wiggles, hesitations or qualifiers. Slavery is immoral, period – even the LibDems agree.
Thus the teachable moment – for abortion is morally no different than slavery, the claim that one human being may own another as personal property to be disposed of if the owner so chooses.
Thus we need to refer to abortion as “the peculiar institution,” and Roe v. Wade as disgracefully unconstitutional as Dred Scott. Watch for this to happen. Watch for abortion advocates to be increasingly on the defensive as they are made to understand the moral equivalence between abortion and slavery….
If you’re wondering how a libertarian can be against abortion, read here, here, and here.
Politics and Prosperity 
