This article makes some very good points against what has become a sort-of 'conventional wisdom' that the US is in decline, at least relative to other powers. As the author points out, there is much to doubt in some of the trend analysis. For example, his point about the reserves China holds is correct: China's economic expansion is deeply tied to exports to the US. China, because of where its demographics are right now, needs to expand or else it will collapse. If it were to undercut America's economy, it would be cutting its own throat. We, being vastly richer, might survive, but there is no reason to believe that they would.
A further point to be made is that the demographics don't favor many of these trends continuing. The EU's demographics are much discussed, and need to be remembered here also. As the aging EU population is replaced by immigrants, internal stresses will only increase. How to formulate a common foreign policy between several nations when each is struggling with such internal difficulties? One can easily imagine a case in the not-too-distant future in which some of these nations where the demographic trends are strongest begin to agitate against the nations where they are weakest.
China also has a major demographic disruption on the horizon, due to the one-child policy. There will be a massive depopulation, and aging of the populace there also. It's already happened -- we cannot now have more children for the years they passed under one-child -- and we are only waiting for the problem to ripen. China's interest is in stability and continued growth, to help it pull past the demographic collapse.
Japan? The demographic collapse is even worse. Russia? Same.
Of them all, India is the only one that is likely to push forward without a massive adjustment. India and the United States are both maintaining natural growth, without suffering economic collapse. China may recover: Russia and Japan will not, and the EU's future is hard to predict at this time.
If I were betting on the future, I'd bet that the US will continue to lead the world. An Indian-American or Chinese-American alliance will develop, as we have many common interests with both.
In fact, it's possible we may have an alliance with both. They border each other, and will rub against each other as they grow. They may prove to need us more than ever as a balancing actor between the two.
Demographics
Cut it Out
I've made this same mistake myself in conversation, and I'm rather younger than either Senators Nunn or McCain. Czechoslovakia was such a wonderful name, it sticks in the brain. If we're going to talk about what people have forgotten, both these men have forgotten more about the region and its history than certain persons have ever had occasion to learn.
Gates Speaks
Secretary Gates reiterates the point that LTG Chiarelli was making.
"America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long -- relative to what we traditionally spend on the military, and more importantly, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world," Gates said at a dinner organized by the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, according to prepared remarks of his speech.The American Enterprise Institute has also written on this, and challenged the Country Teams to take the lead in dealing with counterinsurgency (COIN) and stabilization efforts worldwide. They are not the only ones to feel that the Country Team -- an interagency group that reports to the ambassador, but involves both military and civilian advsiors -- should be the focus of leadership in any COIN or Foreign Internal Defense (FID) efforts. It's an existing solution, but it needs a change in focus from our goverment.
Over the next 20 years, Gates predicted, "the most persistent and potentially dangerous threats will come less from emerging ambitious states, than from failing ones that cannot meet the basic needs -- much less the aspirations -- of their people."
The problem hasn't just been underfunding, however. This is a market-driven solution, so to speak: the reason the military has been taking over intelligence and even diplomacy is that it has done a better job. The reason it has done a better job -- aside from the military's culture of honor, which has salutory effects on human behavior -- is that the military is the only part of the government that doesn't regard war as a failure to be avoided, but rather as a tool to be used.
The civilian agencies don't just need more money. They need a change in mindset. They need -- State especially -- to reconsider diplomacy's relationship to war.
The view of diplomacy that has come to dominate the West is one of quasi-law: the point of negotiations is to create regulations and bodies to enforce those regulations. That mindset has an honorable history, and attempts to mitigate the worst tragedies in human history; but it also creates new problems.
For one thing, it should be obvious at this point that the international "enforcement" mechanisms are broken -- or, rather, that they were always illusions. The legalist model tries to treat relations between states as we treat relations between people within a state, but that concept cannot work. There is no similar way to punish a state, as our systems of law punish individuals.
If a man defies the law, we can fine him, or put him in prison: we don't necessarily have to kill him. If a nation defies its treaty obligations, however, fines don't work: the various 'sanctions'-style regimes end up being shrugged off by governments, the costs pushed down onto the people. The experience in dealing with North Korea should show that you can push sanctions to the point of absolute, grinding poverty, and still not force the rogue state to change.
Nor can we put nations in prison. We can only make them into prisons.
That, too, punishes not the nation but the poor people of that nation. Within those prisons, the leadership remains free to do what it will.
The traditional "enforcement mechanism" in international relations was war. This is not because our ancestors were barbarians, but because it is the only system that works. Engagement and diplomacy are good things, but they must always be braided together with the threat of war if agreements are not kept. Similarly, failing states and rogue states can be addressed better using civilian means much of the time -- so long as the military means are kept plainly in sight, to ensure that a proper understanding exists between us and the people with whom we negotiate.
Modern civilian agencies do need to become more central, and more important. They do need more funding.
They also need to rethink their relationship with their brothers in uniform. They should see each others as partners in the greater cause of national security, and the interests of human liberty. We should not punish the people of rogue states, but seek to help them. If that means we punish their governments, so be it: but methods that punish only the people are unfit for a nation such as ours. We should always be on the side of human liberty and happiness: always on the side of the people, even when we are opposed to their government.
USAID, USDA, State -- they can be a very positive part of making that a reality. They have to recognize, though, what works and what never works: and rethink their relationship to war.
It is not that war is desirable: it is not. But it is also not the thing to be avoided. Diplomacy does not exist to prevent war. It exists to expand the space for human freedom, and to protect the interests of our civilization. Diplomacy and war are not opposed, but are the twin tools available to us. We -- our civilian and our military officers -- must be ready to use whichever one is necessary at the given moment.
Friends & Enemies
This is the number one story on Memeorandum today.
I would like to say -- it would suit my temperment -- that this story was a waste of air and that we should be reading Obama's new plan for Iraq instead. However, he has demonstrated such a disloyalty to his own statements that I see no reason to bother with anything he says or writes at this point. I think we can say with some certainty that anything he says is designed for political advantage in the moment, and will not be considered binding in any way in the future.
So, since the discussion I'd prefer to have is really off the table -- it's bootless to argue about where his plan is wise (though I like the focus on nonmilitary assistance that he's been mentioning lately; a more complete reading on the subject, from people who can be relied upon to mean what they say, is LTG Chiarelli and MAJ Smith's paper from the Combined Arms Center), or where it is foolish. His word, he has demonstrated, is irrelevant.
Thus, the popular opinion -- that the New Yorker story is actually more important than Obama's stated plan on Iraq -- is actually, sadly, tragically correct. "With friends like these," folks; though I suppose, given Obama's record on loyalty to his friends, that one reaps as one sows.
Still, I don't really want to talk about the New Yorker. Maybe we could talk about Chiarelli instead -- it's the one point from Obama's piece that I think is strongly correct, and a worthy idea that deserves wider consideration and awareness. On the chance that Obama might not reverse himself, then, let's read the Chiarelli piece and talk about it.
Buckaroo
I mentioned a while ago that the 20th of June is a major celebration around here, for various reasons. This year, my wife decided to get me a dog. We haven't had a pet in years, due to lease restrictions -- we move so often that we've just rented and not owned a house. While I was in Iraq, however, she convinced our landlord that she needed a dog for protection, and they altered the lease to permit one dog. However, she never actually got around to getting one.
It took almost a month, but we found the right one after much searching at area shelters. His name is Buck -- short for Buckaroo -- and I see no reason to change it.
I think he'll be happy here.
Eucharist Desecration
Cassandra is doing ethics today. I love ethics -- it is one of the most interesting branches of philosophy. Studying it, though, does require that you spend a few hours, or years, challenging things that might otherwise be bedrock principles of your life:
Well, in fairness, if you put people into an ethics class, you are asking them to try using their minds to challenge ethical teachings. The concept is to reaffirm ethics by teaching them not just what is wrong, but why it is wrong.Still, as the discussion shows, the momentary idiocy kept in the class can lead to a better, truer understanding of ethics to guide you through the rest of your life. That's the whole point of teaching the class.
That means they have to pose challenges to the principles. You're supposed to try to see if there are ways around the principle at work: then, if there aren't, you've found something solid.
A lot of students grasp that they're supposed to try to challenge the principles -- that's the point of the class -- but lack the background or understanding to pose a real challenge. They end up sounding like idiots, but they really are doing what students are supposed to do.
This is the work of philosophy, though, which can lead you to refine what you had thought was a precisely formulated ethical principle.
If a student of ethics says something foolish, then, cut him some slack. If a professor of ethics says something horrible in class, he is probably trying to challenge the students in the other direction -- to challenge the principles they hold true, to force them to find a way to defend them. That, also, leads to a deeper understanding of the principles.
A professor of biology will have a harder time justifying himself.
Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”:I gather from his reply (at the link) that he considers himself a sort of counter-Crusader, boldly standing against religion in the... well, against religion. He objects to Catholics trying to get him fired for using a University-owned computer and server to try and organize an attack on their faith. (Actually, being only an associate professor, he's probably in some real danger of getting fired over the matter.)“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”
So, let's do ethics here. What is the ethical principle the professor is using to justify his behavior? Can it, in fact, be justified? Are the Catholics wrong to respond as they are doing, by trying to get him fired for this behavior? If so, why? If not, why not?
UPDATE: There appears to be some confusion about the server's ownership: I'm now seeing reports that actually it's a private server, to which the University's webpages simply link. Does that change the moral issues at work? Is it wrong to try to fire the man his private conduct? Is the fact that the University links to the blog (assuming it proves out that it is privately owned) important, or irrelevant?
Heros in Hollywood
James Bowman has penned a confused critique of Hollywood that nevertheless contains a large kernel of truth: Hollywood has largely quit portraying American heroism in its traditional fashion.
American movies have forgotten how to portray heroism, while a large part of their disappearing audience still wants to see celluloid heroes. I mean real heroes, unqualified heroes, not those who have dominated American cinema over the past 30 years and who can be classified as one of three types: the whistle-blower hero, the victim hero, and the cartoon or superhero. The heroes of most of last year’s flopperoos belonged to one of the first two types, although, according to Scott, the only one that made any money, “The Kingdom,” starred “a team of superheroes” on the loose in Saudi Arabia.The confusion he experiences arises later in the piece, and seems to have two causes. First, he wants to say that Hollywood has changed recently, but finds roots for all the problems he cites going back through the 1930s, and especially in the postwar. This problem is easy to dispose of: it used to be that Hollywood could explore both genuine heroism and these other models; but now, it rarely attempts genuine heroism.
The second problem is larger, and odd given his profession. He misunderstands at least two critical examples: one that he uses at length, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and one he fails to cite where it is most necessary, Open Range.
Open Range is something I cited in a piece on this topic in 2005.
In some respects, Open Range is almost a reversal of High Noon: the entire town comes out with rifles, unasked, to defend strangers they really aren't sure about; and in the end, the ability of one of those strangers to do violence for justice is enough to win him a place in their hearts. Where Gary Cooper left in disgust, Kevin Costner found a home and the respect of a people.In the context of Bowman's piece, Open Range is even more important. Boss Spearman, played by Robert Duvall, is exactly a hero of the type he says that Hollywood doesn't do anymore:
But it is “3:10 to Yuma” that offers the most interesting contrast between the old-fashioned sort of Western and the new breed. It was a remake of a movie first made in 1957, directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. Like so many other Westerns of the period, it was a parable of the heroism of the ordinary people who brought civilization, peace, and prosperity to the Wild West. Heflin’s character, Dan Evans, is a simple farmer in danger of losing his farm to drought who, for the $200 it would take to pay the mortgage, accepts the task of escorting Ford’s Ben Wade, a dangerous killer, to catch the eponymous train to trial. At a moment when it looks as if he is sure to die in the attempt, Evans explains to his wife that he is no longer escorting the prisoner for the money but as a civic duty. “The town drunk gave his life because he thought people should be able to live in peace and decency together,” he said. “Can I do less?”There is in Open Range. While Kevin Costner's character, Charlie Waite, qualifies as a 'victim hero' of the type Bowman describes, Boss Spearman is a genuine hero. He is a decent, honest, hardworking man. He tries to help others who need it, including the boy they have taken in from starvation to train as a cowboy until they can find him other work. People respond to his example, like the troubled Waite, who has followed him for ten years just because he sees in Spearman's example a way to overcome his past and live a decent life in spite of his dark impulses.
Needless to say, there is no comparable line in the remake.
He is finally roused to full battle over the same principle Evans cites: a fury at a rancher who will not allow people to live in peace and decency. After a murderous attack on his small band, who were only passing through, he comes to town to settle up.
We got a warrant sworn for attempted murder for them that tried to kill the boy who's laying over there at the doc's. Swore out another one for them that murdered the big fellow you had in your cell. Only ours ain't writ by no tin star bought and paid for, Marshal.... Baxter's men bushwhacked our friend and shot him dead. Shot a 15-year-old boy, too. And clubbed him so hard, he might not live. Tried to take our cattle. Your marshal here ain't gonna do nothing about it.... A man's got a right to protect his property and his life.As noted above, what is so inspiring about the movie is how -- once someone finally stands up to the tyrant rancher -- the townsfolk increasingly start to side with the embattled cattlemen, finally coming out in full. It is the reverse of High Noon in another thing too: at the end of the movie, the town embraces them. The two cattlemen enter into a partnership to run the saloon in town, and Waite -- finally relieved of so much of his fear and loneliness -- falls in love with and marries the sister of the town's doctor.
Bowman is not wrong to say that such movies are rare. Nevertheless, the abscence of Open Range is a critical failing in a piece devoted to this topic.
Meanwhile, his concept of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is simply wrong.
The subtext of films featuring the whistle-blower hero, the cartoon hero, and the victim hero is that heroism—heroism of the, say, Gary Cooper type—belongs to the public and communal sphere, now universally supposed to be cruel and corrupt, and therefore is really no longer possible or even, perhaps, desirable.Tom Doniphon does reject "a larger civic responsibility" in the early parts of the movie, but not nearly so emphatically as Mr. Bowman describes -- and not at all for the reason he suggests. First of all, Doniphon does help Ransom Stoddard in several ways: rescuing him on the trail, arranging to feed him until he can get back on his feet, and protecting him when Liberty Valance bullies him at the steakhouse. Because there is a code of honor at work, he must find a pretense to step in: the one he chooses is the steak lost when Stoddard is tripped by Liberty, which was Tom's own steak. In addition, he has a role in civic responsibility -- he helps to run the meeting to appoint delegates to the territorial convention.
That seems to have been the point of the great John Ford film of 1962 called “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” In it, John Wayne plays rancher Tom Doniphon in the Wild West town of Shinbone, which is still part of a territory not admitted to statehood and has only a comically feckless Andy Devine resembling anything like a duly constituted authority. Shinbone is terrorized by an outlaw named Liberty Valance, played by the great Lee Marvin. An idealistic lawyer named Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) comes to town to practice his profession only to find that there is no law there. In fact, he himself is robbed by Liberty on his way into town, yet he can find no one there who thinks that this is any of his business, or that it is even possible for this outlaw to be brought to justice. The law is helpless where there is no law enforcement. As Doniphon advises the newcomer, “Out here men take care of their own problems.”
Doniphon is the only man in town capable of standing up to Liberty, but as he himself hasn’t been robbed he doesn’t quite see why anyone else being robbed, let alone this geeky stranger, should be any business of his. Eventually, the idea of a larger civic responsibility begins to sink in—and, with it, a sense that it has become incumbent on him to do what no one else can do. Yet it can only be done outside the law, which remains powerless. This puts Doniphon and Liberty (the name is of course significant) on the same side. Both are outlaws whose would-be heroic struggle has no place in a civilized community. When Wayne triumphs, a way must be found for the townspeople to pretend that it is the law which has rid them of the depredations of Liberty and his gang, and a way duly is found. Stoddard is hailed as a hero and Doniphon, the real hero, is forgotten.
Ford’s film was a parable less of the coming of civilization to the West than of the cultural transformation that was taking place in the postwar period in America and elsewhere—a transformation which resulted in an early but unmistakable foreshadowing of the death of the hero in the 1970s.
What Doniphon does in terms of rejection is not done out of a sense of being 'on the same side as Liberty Valance,' that is, the side that is against law. He participates in the attempts to bring law to the territory. He just has other plans for himself, as he says plainly when turning down a nomination to be one of the delegates: and those plans are made crystal clear by the film. He loves Haley, has been building a home for her, plans to marry her, and wants only to live on his ranch with her in peace. What he does by way of rejecting a larger role in civic authority is done out of that love and that desire.
This is also why he is destroyed by the killing of Valance: not because it brings law to the territory, but because it loses him Haley forever. She had been moving increasingly into Stoddard's orbit, and in her reaction to Stoddard's survival and apparent victory against Liberty, Doniphon sees that he has lost everything he ever wanted. He destroys his home, never rebuilds it, and dies eventually in miserable poverty. Without her, he found nothing in life worth wanting.
It is also entirely wrong to say that "a way must be found for the townspeople to pretend that it is the law" that rid them of Liberty. The townspeople don't have to pretend: they have no idea that it wasn't Stoddard who did it. More, they aren't pretending that "the law" had anything to do with it: they love him for shooting Liberty in the street (as they believe that he did). And yet still more, it is absolutely plain that they loved Doniphon just as much -- he was their first choice for delegate, to a roaring approval from the crowd. Had he stepped out into the light and gunned down Liberty, in the name of stopping him from tormenting the people of the town any further, he would have been just as honored for the act as was Stoddard.
I don't wish to be too critical, because Bowman's larger point is well taken. Hollywood does need to do genuine heroism more often. They don't do it well very often at all anymore: Open Range stands, not quite alone, but in small company. The Western is too often overlooked, today: and our modern war movies are unspeakably terrible as a rule.
By the same token, Hollywood has long been able to do darker works, and there is much that can be valuable in it. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, as well as some of the other pieces he cites -- The Maltese Falcon, for example -- are wonderful movies that bear repeated viewing. Human nature has both bright and dark sides. We can profit greatly from reflection.
Buns & Guns
I'm not sure I think much of this Lebanon concept restaurant, except for one thing: I have to admit that the sandbagging surrounding the outside tables really appeals to me. (You can see it in picture 12, among others.)
I think that's an excellent idea for restaurants in the Middle East.
BB Guns
I kind of understand this story, except for this part:
Now, the simple unlawful possession of any firearm can bring mandatory penalties for anyone who pleads guilty to or is convicted of that crime alone.OK, but how is a BB gun "a firearm"? They sell them in the toy department around here.
Neither Narciso, nor his father knew they broke the law by having the gun without a firearms registration card, both men said.Seriously, what? You need a license to own a BB gun in New Jersey?
"If we knew it was illegal, my dad never would have gotten it," Narciso said.
And it proved ineffective in controlling the problem in the attic, they said.
"That gun couldn't even kill a squirrel," the father, Emiliano Narciso, said.
This isn't a 2nd Amendment issue to my way of thinking, because BB guns don't rise to the level of "arms." Still, is this really a case of "reasonable restriction"?
The Great Backlash
We all knew the day would come.
Probably the fellow did just what I saw a guy do at a bar in Charlotte, NC once. When speaking to one of the local ladies, he said, "Look, b@$$@, I'm from the Bronx and..."
(I'm not sure what meant to say after "and," since he was removed from the premises rather suddenly. I'm sure it would have been inspiring.)
Anyway, of course we regret the need for vigilante violence, even against the Yankee scourge, but...
Wait a minute: dateline Massachusetts?
What's going on here?
(H/t: Hot Air.)
Public/private
There was an interesting article on Yahoo/Flickr today, which touches on a topic that interests me. To what degree is the Internet "public" space? On the one hand, there's nothing to stop anyone at all from coming to visit; on the other, no part of it that citizens can use to express themselves is "public" in the traditional sense of the term. It is privately owned.
There are legal consequences to that, but those don't interest me particularly -- what interests me are the normative questions. In other words, I am interested not in what the law currently says, but rather in the question of what the law ought to say.
We increasingly live on the internet: don't we want some of these public-space protections for our speech? What is the tradeoff for getting them? We can make the law say what we want, assuming Congress can be convinced to go along: so what should it say?
Aristotle and Martial Arts: 10s
I have a post at Winds of Change on free will, Aristotle, and answering a problem posed by some new research into consciousness.
Lily Pad
2008: Floating Lily Pad cities!
1930: Torpedo cars travel 120 mph through New York!
Of course, we have advanced computer modeling now.
Bob Krumm has a report of 1,215 soldiers reenlisting this day in Iraq.
This country is lucky to have such citizens. They make it possible that, as Washington wrote to Moses Seixas, "...everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."
Enjoy the day, yourselves, your family and your country. Have a fig. And remember.
Independence Day
We've just finished talking about patriotism, so I won't discuss that again today. I will just link to a few worthy things, and then get on with celebrating myself. We will be having a cookout down at the horse ranch today.
In Baghdad, they're celebrating differently: with the largest reenlistment ceremony in history.
While most Americans probably slept, 1,215 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines raised their right hands and committed to a combined 5,500 years of additional service during the largest reenlistment ceremony in the history of the American military. Beneath a large American flag which dwarfed even the enormous chandelier that Saddam Hussein had built for the Al Faw Palace, members of all services, representing all 50 states took the oath administered by Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of Multi-National Forces Iraq.I attended such a ceremony in February. Words don't really convey it: it is a deeply moving experience to stand there in Baghdad, in that palace, and hear hundreds take the oath.
BlackFive recommends a tradition of his: rereading Bill Whittle's Freedom.
Cassandra has written a love letter to her country.
Who are we to think that Freedom is ours to spread, Ignatieff asks?The flame right here is going to be roasting hot dogs: but there are other fires in other places. To those who tend them, all the best. This is your day first of all.
We were the First. We are the guardians of the flame.
BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian spies tricked leftist rebels into handing over kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors Wednesday in a daring helicopter rescue so successful that not a single shot was fired.
President Uribe and Columbia can be justly proud of their military of late.
Looking Abroad
I take notice of this study on blog readers, which suggests that liberals are more likely than conservatives to read opposing blogs -- though alll blog readers show strong identification (compared with those who get news chiefly from television) with a political pole.
Johnathan Chait says this means liberals are more open minded, but I suspect it may have something to do with a basic difference in approach. Liberalism is and always has been about applying theory in an attempt to change reality, and often radically; conservatism is about defending what is best in current reality, with suggested changes apt to be slow and incremental.
As a result, it is easy for a liberal to understand a conservative position if he cares to do so: changes being proposed are normally small and slow, and to the extent that any theory is invoked, it is a familiar theory -- we talk often about Aristotle, as men have talked about him for two thousand years. Debates are about history and its lessons.
Liberalism as an approach favors theories that require a fair amount of buy-in from any reader. For example, consider this piece on parental rights, which feels it necessary to explain, in depth, two hundred years of the development of feminist theory in order to begin making its point.
The point is actually a pretty good one, when you get there: but you're going to lose a whole lot of readers along the way. Many people will get as far as the invocation of Engles and stop, figuring communism for a discredited ideology; some will get farther, to the mention-without-irony of hunter gatherer society as "primitive communism" (true only in that the murder rate in such societies has only been approached by modern Communism); others will simply lose interest in trying to understand the difference between "culture feminism," "equality feminism," "victim feminism," "lesbian separatism," and so forth, all of which must be soldiered through to get to the point; others will recoil at the communist concept that the family exists to prop up capitalist society, which the author eventually rejects, but you have to read through the full theory before you get to the rejection; and on, and on, and on.
But you finally get here:
When it comes to parents, however, the ‘right’ to exercise one’s identity – eat what you want to eat, drink what you want to drink, raise your kids how you see fit – is denied by virtue of the fact that, as parents, any ‘rights’ you may have are subordinate to those bestowed upon your child by the official child-rearing orthodoxy.That's a good point, and a concept that is fairly useful. The conservative who did soldier through all of it to get there will be rewarded with that useful concept -- only briefly undermined afterwards by a renewed attack on the "joyless" nature of family life, and a reassertion that Engles was right and "the family still sucks." On the other hand, you learned quite a bit about the conceptual development of feminist theory on the way to getting to 'we should trust parents to look after their families, and not the state.'
The assumption that parents’ rights conflict with children’s rights leads to the policy perspective that, in order to preserve children’s rights to a healthy, wholesome, high-achieving life, parents have a duty to put their own quest for self-identity on hold, and ‘for the sake of the children’ bow to the dictates of the state.
From the bizarre sledgehammer rule that parents must not take their children on holiday in term-time to the insidious attempts to use schools, doctors and TV chefs to determine the content of the family meal to the endless Parliamentary discussions about whether parents should be able to smack their children and if so, how hard, to the tacit encouragement that fathers, like mothers, should not have full-time careers but instead make do with tricky ‘flexible working’ arrangements, the clear trajectory of policy is to use the children to exercise increasing amounts of control over the minutiae of their parents’ lives.
This is a deeply repressive and divisive shift. By setting parents apart from non-parents one clearly-defined section of society that cannot pursue its quest for self-fulfilment, we can see a version of women’s oppression being played out again, with all the bitterness and obfuscation that this caused. And by seeking to manage the relationships of family life, the therapeutic state is setting parents against each other and making them resentful of their children, while encouraging children to disregard their parents’ authority and seek recognition from outside the home: the heartless therapeutic state.
A conservative, who did not feel it was necessary to defend a defense of the family against 200 years of theoretical attacks on the family as an institution, could have said the same thing more quickly.
But that is not the point. The point is that it was worth reading through, because it points to an area of commonality between ourselves and our neighbors. You might not have looked for it, but here is a starting point for a moment of unity and common interest. We both want to defend the family against the incursions of the "heartless theraputic state," at least right at this moment; we want to defend the right of parents to order their families so that they might "pursue happiness" as well as unmarried or childless persons.
Surely it is necessary to do so, because we need to continue to reproduce our civilization. Parents shouldn't be punished for performing that necessary duty.
Personally, I find family life highly rewarding, and I wouldn't say it "sucks" at all. There are certainly sacrifices, but there are also great rewards and meaning. Yet let's let that lie. The point is that, yes, liberals are hard to understand by comparison to conservatives, but it can be worth taking the time.