Mark Steyn on the decline of the family (and what that costs):
Seventy percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, so are 53 percent of Hispanics… and 70 percent of the offspring of poor white women. Over half the babies born to mothers under 30 are now “illegitimate” (to use a quaintly judgmental formulation). For the first three-and-a-half centuries of American settlement the bastardy rate (to be even quainter) was a flat line in the basement of the graph, stuck at 2 or 3 percent all the way to the eve of the Sixties. Today over 40 percent of American births are “non-marital”… The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose cheques never bounce. A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far harder to fix.
See also Heather Mac Donald here, here and here. Or if you’re feeling terribly radical and edgy, you could do as Laurie Penny says and “fuck marriage,” “fuck monogamy” and fuck all of those other “small ugly ambitions.” What could possibly go wrong?
Patrick Hennessy spies some slack in the system:
Ministers will hit back in the row over welfare this week by publishing a raft of figures which they say show that tough measures – or the threat of them – are already “changing behaviour” by seeing people drop their claims. These include the figures on incapacity benefit. As well as the 878,300 who chose to drop their claims [rather than face a medical], another 837,000 who did take the a medical test were found to be fit to work immediately, while a further 367,300 were judged able to some level of work. Only 232,000 (one in eight of those tested) were classified by doctors to be too ill to do any sort of job. Some 30 people claimed they were unfit to work because of blisters, while 60 cited acne and 2,110 said “sprains and strains” rendered them unfit for employment.
Tim Worstall has more.
Thomas Sowell ponders guns and what’s rarely said about them:
If someone comes at you with a knife and you point a gun at him, he is very unlikely to keep coming, and far more likely to head in the other direction, perhaps in some haste, if he has a brain in his head. Only if he is an idiot are you likely to have to pull the trigger. And if he is an idiot with a knife coming after you, you had better have a trigger to pull. Surveys of American gun owners have found that 4 to 6 percent reported using a gun in self-defence within the previous five years. That is not a very high percentage but, in a country with 300 million people, that works out to hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns per year. Yet we almost never hear about these hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns from the media, which will report the killing of a dozen people endlessly around the clock. The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.
And Chris Snowdon is momentarily optimistic about the culling of quangos:
One of the coalition’s stated priorities after the general election was to have a “bonfire of the quangos” which would save the taxpayer £2.6 billion and rid us of numerous pointless bureaucrats. Three cheers for that, of course, and some progress seems to have been made, with more than 100 of these parasitic organisations biting the dust. It is, however, notoriously difficult to slim down the size of the state thanks to the vested interests who depend upon it. Governments are also incredibly inefficient even when it comes to closing things down. Almost unbelievably, the cost of the bonfire will be £830 million — nearly twice the original estimate — and the government could not resist setting up some new quangos in the process.
As usual, feel free to add your own links and snippets in the comments.
A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society.
It’s almost as if those bourgeois values had evolved for a reason…
“And Chris Snowdon is momentarily optimistic about the culling of quangos”
They’re like weeds – as fast as you cut one down, up springs another:
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/the-bishop-of-selbie-and-the-phe/
But… but Julia, we need these mighty heroes performing their vital services – say, by hassling restaurants to downsize children’s portions. It’s what our expropriated earnings are for.
The decline of marriage will, indeed, have ever more disastrous consequences for children born into single parent families. A great many of the single parents are liable suffer from it as well, as people who reside alone in later life seem to be at far greater risk of cognitive impairment. Everyone’s unhappy! Except, of course, the commentators who decry bourgeois values, who will, in a few years time, doubtless be smiling through their friends’ weddings – spouses in tow.
The question I have when I read Conservatives lamenting this fact, though, is, “What’s to be done?” Mac Donald just says that the state should “promote marriage”, but if there is one thing governmental campaigns against obesity or alcohol have taught us, it is that governments can be hopeless at “promoting” things. Ideas, anyone?
BenSix,
Ideas, anyone?
Heather Mac Donald did sort of praise Bloomberg’s publicity campaign warning of the practical woes of teen pregnancy, while noting the inevitable howls of outrage. Like you, I’m rather sceptical of what the state can (or should) do to affect the situation. And I don’t spend my time thinking up ways for other people to live. I’d imagine some might argue that the state could do less – i.e., it could stop shielding such people from the normal consequences of their own poor choices and irresponsible behaviour. But the fallout from that seems quite unpleasant too.
Ideas, anyone?
Speak up. Question stupidity. Do it yourself instead of looking to the government or some “other” to solve the problem. This is a cultural problem that is creating an economic problem, not the other way around.
WTP,
This is a cultural problem that is creating an economic problem
We seem to have lost the notion that imposing on others needlessly, simply because one can, or because one is stupid over and over again, is… well, impolite.
What interests me are the contortions of some advocates of the fatherless family, or “anti-family,” as one of Laurie Penny’s associates puts it. The author of the piece in question avoids actual data and unflattering correlations and instead simply asserts one thing after another. We’re told, based on nothing, that, “A couple cannot raise a child better than one [person] can.” Apparently, the “diffusion” of the family unit – i.e., absent fathers, instability, hardship and subsequent dependence on the state – “is one of the most exciting things to happen to the American social pattern since sexual liberation…”
And so the breakdown of the family unit can sound quite thrilling, as a woolly abstraction mouthed by idiots. Note the tone of the article; a recipe for failure and hardship is presented as being very radical and subversive, almost titillating. Note too the claim that ‘nuclear’ family structures (regardless of gender) “isolate” people, rather than, say, introducing them to a potential support network of aunts, grandparents, sisters-in-law, etc. And the claim that raising a child without a partner (and therefore without at least half of that familial support structure) isn’t isolating at all. Because, hey, the “community” will fill in the gaps. Or more typically, the state and its bureaucracy. And gosh, how wonderful is that?
What is it Caligula says to the crowd in I, Claudius…? “If you only had one neck, I’d hack it through.”
Ideas, anyone?
Ban it, seriously, ban marriage. Banning drugs has certainly put a crimp in their use. Banning alcohol during Prohibition in the U.S. certainly stopped people from drinking and also left us with a greatly strengthened Mafia (thanks Do-gooders!). If we ban it people will be falling over themselves to get hitched and stay that way.
Oh all right, they probably won’t, but it’s worth the thought.
And so the breakdown of the family unit can sound quite thrilling…
It’s cognitive dissonance. It has to sound thrilling and exciting otherwise they’d have to admit to themselves that clamoring for the right to rut at will and without (some) consequences has marred the lives of millions of children in the West who’ve had to endure far worse lives in single, or blended (shudder) families than they otherwise would’ve had. I’d certainly hate to look at the inner cities and the feral, just about human, populace and think that was my legacy.
Speak up. Question stupidity. Do it yourself instead of looking to the government or some “other” to solve the problem.
Well, I do. But I doubt that many people listen, and suspect that fewer give a damn. Economic or cultural shifts do not have to be left to an “other” but they do tend to demand an “us”. I agree that there is no convenient solution, though.
Note the tone of the article; a recipe for failure and hardship is presented as being very radical and subversive, almost titillating.
For a great many post-1960s liberals, anything that has been viewed as disrespectable must be meritorious. Social conventions had been too prohibitive or bigoted in some cases, of course, but I think it was assumed that these vices were inherent to social conventions. It doubtless helped that rejecting tradition gives you a delightful sense of self-importance: not only are you a revolutionary within your age but you are revolting against the course of history. What an enlightened person you must be!
Marriage, then? A sham. Smash it! Drugs? Brilliant! Send ’em in! Crime? Well, it might not be ideal but you can sympathise, can’t you? Of course, as these ideologues grow up they realise that long-term relationships are nice to be in; hard drugs are toxic and life is more pleasant in neighbourhoods where you don’t have to fear getting your head kicked in. They aren’t liable to say that, though, because, well, it is square talk. And as they are unlikely to meet a lot of poor mothers; dying junkies or people who have to be cautious leaving their front doors they don’t have to think about it too much.
BenSix & Tom,
What’s amusing (or tragic, depending how you look at it) is that our would-be revolutionaries act as though their hackneyed, wearisome anti-bourgeois posturing is somehow new and radical. As if the history of anti-bourgeois posturing began with them. Which may explain the fact that, despite their emphatic shouting on the subject, Laurie and her peers don’t tell us why these cultural tools should be done away with, or what would happen if the conventional family unit disappeared altogether. But apparently it’s radical and that’s what matters.
As I’ve said before, probably more than once, it’s one of the great problems for cartoon radicals. In denouncing bourgeois habits – usually while enjoying the benefits of such behaviour, directly or residually, and while very much counting on others holding on to such values and paying for everything – they have little of practical use to offer their followers. If you do away with marriage, monogamy, responsibility, deferred gratification, personal territory, etc., you’re basically left with a recipe for dependency, resentment and unhappiness. Though if a person’s objective is the cultivation of dependency and resentment… then, well, I suppose that doesn’t matter.
But I doubt that many people listen, and suspect that fewer give a damn.
Agreed, but I don’t let that stop me anymore. I don’t go looking for a fight by bringing up uncomfortable subjects on which to bore people to death. But when a subject is brought up by the know-it-alls that I know from social convention that I’m supposed to just nod my head up and down like the little doggie mom kept on the dashboard of our 1962 Plymouth Valiant (but I digress), I speak up. It makes my wife uncomfortable, even though she (often) agrees with me. Sometimes I catch crap from my friends for doing so, who I know agree with me but are too damn cowardly to be seen standing for anything. But I do it anyway. I think of the poor schmucks who went over-the-top in WWI, knowing that being one more piece of cannon fodder one way or the other wasn’t going to change the outcome. But they did it anyway because if enough men failed to do their duty, it would change the outcome. I understand that what I say can be perceived as over dramatizing the fact, but I disagree. This crap has been coming on for decades now and it is only now that common sense is starting to get some traction. We can’t just quit or abandon hope because we don’t think many people are listening. Maybe they’re just waiting for the tide to turn. A scary thought in itself, but it’s all we have AFAICS.
denouncing bourgeois habits – usually while enjoying the benefits of such behaviour, directly or residually, and while very much counting on others holding on to such values and paying for everything
Well said, David.
Josh,
Well, you’d think it would be too obvious to be overlooked, even by poseurs and recidivist idiots. The Occupiers who laid siege to a conservative conference counted on their victims not responding in kind, i.e., physically and with force of numbers (and with the moral anonymity made possible by mobs). Squatters and their academic cheerleaders count on others not laying claim to their property. And clowns like Laurie Penny would squeal quite loudly if the theft and thuggery they excuse when done to others were turned on them. Self-styled leftist ‘radicals’ usually count on the rest of us showing the kind of bourgeois restraint they sneer at and exploit.
It’s a large part of what makes them such obnoxious little bitches.
BenSix,
Ideas, anyone?
Well it’s worth reminding ourselves that monogamy and the idea that men should be around to support their children predates the state. We live in an era where people find it hard to grasp the idea that if the state didn’t supply something then it might still exist. Thus when libraries are threatened with closure the elite are completely incapable of stepping up to the plate and recreating non state libraries as they all were once.
And in the same way, Libertarians shouldn’t list the exceptions where they will permit state interference to restore or create some ideal. Instead, they should trust their instinct that institutions will arise from the free associations of people.
Here’s a thing.
Neurosurgeon Dr Ben Carson suggested that white lefties can be quite racist – “the most racist people there are.” Specifically, “because they put black people in a box and insist that they think one way – and if they don’t, they attack them as illegitimate.”
Numerous white lefties respond by calling him an “Uncle Tom.” Also, “Uncle Ruckus,” a “puppet,” “a monster” and a “token.” The Daily Kos opts for the term “political Mandingo.”
“The more reliant you are on the welfare state, the more experience you have of it, the less you love it. And by extension, the further removed you are from the welfare state, the less experience you have of it, then the more you can fantasise about its virtues and grow to love it – or at least to love an imaginary version of it derived from watching Casualty and reading Polly Toynbee columns.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100209863/the-middle-class-loves-the-welfare-state-but-the-poor-hate-it-because-they-see-the-devastating-impact-it-has/
If you say “Fuck Marriage,” you are bold feminist progressive supporting social innovation and inventing new forms of (in)human society. If you say “Fuck Gay Marriage” (which is implied by “Fuck Marriage”), you are a dangerous reactionary oppressor.
Numerous white lefties respond by calling him an “Uncle Tom.”
I wonder what the Kos kiddies would do if a non-lefty site used the same language about a black man?
Scream and shout and bay for blood in the exact same tolerant, deep-thinking manner as the Mindless Stoning Rabble in Life of Brian?
Karen,
I wonder what the Kos kiddies would do if a non-lefty site used the same language about a black man?
Yes, it’s quite extraordinary. But the left is the ideological home of racial bean counting, and for many on the left a person’s melanin levels should automatically denote and define their political preferences, so I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised.
It’s rather like how dozens of prominent leftwing feminists spat misogynist comments at Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean, for the sin of having views at odds with The Opinions That All Women Are Supposed To Have™. Apparently their deviation was sufficient grounds for gynaecological comments and gang rape fantasies – from feminists, remember – and mocking Palin’s disabled child with nasty jokes about abortion. As grand feminist Pooh-Bah Gloria Feldt said while making sneery boob jokes, by daring to disagree they’d become “fair game.”
Dr Benjamin Carson, runaway slave.
To borrow another metaphor, there is a new secular Inquisition, where women and minorities who dare disagree with collectivist dogma are hauled before the Leftist Ecclesiastical Courts, declared Heretics! and banished from public life, forever objects of scorn and ridicule.
Fortunately, for now, only the Media obeys these verdicts. What happens when the State starts enforcing such things?
If I can acquire power over just one poor differently-abled undocumented exconvict transgender lesbian black Hispanic Muslim victim of female circumcision(TM), I will rule the world.
Is it just me, or is the End Game in the arena of marriage and family to obliterate terms such as “Mother,” “Father,” “Husband,” “Wife,” and insist on “spouse” and “parent,” thus to banish the heteronormativity of it all?
Are they eventually hoping to make it disgraceful to be publicly “cissexual”? Will girly girls and manly men be seen as bigoted rebukes to the unfortunate souls whose sexual identity never really gelled one way or the other–or to those daring souls who refuse to be “pigeonholed” into one gender?
(In my experience, most gay men eschew hyper-macho posturing but happily self-identify as male, and among lesbians, self-identifying as female [whether butch or lipstick] isn’t usually problematic. So this isn’t even about sexual orientation.)
But wouldn’t it be delicious to force the majority to stop being so hideously cissexual? How dehumanizing would it be if, like whazzername, we’re forced to be “they” or “it” instead of “him” or “her”?
(Much easier to get away with in English or Mandarin; good luck with heavily gendered languages such as Swedish and the Romance cluster.)
What if you were considered a monster for growing a beard or showing cleavage?
I look at some of the things that the Left has been pushing, such as putting “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” on birth certificates instead of mother and father, at the Massachusetts school that declared that trans-gendered (non-surgical!) primary-school children are permitted to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their preferred gender–and that it is against policy to inform the parents that the child has expressed this desire. And that somewhere, it is proposed that you can (or you already can) go ahead and change your legal sex without having undergone the medical procedure.
This two-year-old article describes how Islam uses sexual identity as a lever of State control, and how the Left is trying to use that same lever to control the West, only with the polarity reversed.
Absurd? Ridiculous? Far-fetched?
Since when did that stop the Left?
Dicentra
Since “they” make preferences for say “Black People”, but there’s no definition of “Black Person”. Just say You’re black. Same with “women only” groups, just say you’re a woman. Very good fun to turn up to these things and “spout bullshit to abuses of power”.
ErisGuy:
“If you say “Fuck Marriage,” you are bold feminist progressive supporting social innovation and inventing new forms of (in)human society. If you say “Fuck Gay Marriage” (which is implied by “Fuck Marriage”), you are a dangerous reactionary oppressor.”
Well, “marriage” in the sense of “a life-long commitment between a man and a woman to raise a family” is evil and anti-progressive. “Marriage” in the sense of “an absurdly expensive and pointless ceremony for two people to say ‘I love you'” is fine. So it’s quite possible to say “fuck marriage (sense 1)” whilst also saying “gays should be allowed to marry (sense 2)”.
(Incidentally, getting society to abandon the former definition of marriage and adopt the latter will remove one of the main non-state methods of social organisation, further shifting the balance of power away from the citizen and towards the government. I’m sure that’s all just a co-incidence, though.)
Feminism is Socialism with panties…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNx2SLJVwy8
The Daily Kos opts for the term “political Mandingo.”
Wow. No one does smug racism like the educated left.
Rafi,
Wow. No one does smug racism like the educated left.
I’m still a little baffled by the article’s bizarre sexual detour:
Why, it’s almost as if the author had some hang-ups of his own.
But apparently the “Tea Party GOP is a racially chauvinistic political organization,” a “union of racism and conservatism,” though no evidence is provided for such claims. They – the non-leftist Other, as it were – are “in search of a black political messiah who can successfully package and sell a set of policies that are hostile to people of colour, and which no black or brown folks with any self-respect or common sense, would support.” The people who do in fact support non-leftist policies and who happen to have darker skin are casually, and righteously, ignored. Because if any such people exist at all, they must be foolish and self-hating, according to our leftist betters, who just know these things. On account of being leftist and therefore better than us. Apparently it’s inconceivable that people with darker skin could think for themselves and reject leftist politics, because leftist politics are All That Any Authentic Black Person Could Possibly Want™.
Reed,
Thanks for the link to the Stefan Molyneux video. I was unfamiliar with him. Some of his web chats look relevant and quite interesting.
[ Added: ]
Incidentally, the web chat led me to GirlWritesWhat’s twitter stream, which in turn led me to this video. Some of the rhetorical manoeuvres being illustrated may be familiar to regular readers.
Spiny Norman:
“To borrow another metaphor, there is a new secular Inquisition, where women and minorities who dare disagree with collectivist dogma are hauled before the Leftist Ecclesiastical Courts, declared Heretics! and banished from public life, forever objects of scorn and ridicule.”
That’s not entirely fair. The Inquisition actually maintained quite high standards re: burden of proof, and made sure people brought up before it were given a fair hearing and opportunity to defend themselves. In fact the Inquisition’s courts were so good, their methods and organisation ended up being copied by the secular courts, and still form the basis of most of continental Europe’s legal systems today.
The logical conclusion of Laurie Penny’s Fuck Marriage fantasy is Mick Philpott and his domestic arrangements. Anti-bourgeois free love, dogging, a menage à trois, benefit dependency, refusal to accept paid work. What’s not for a leftist to like?
GirWritesWhat’s videos are an absolute must see. Excellently researched and argued…
http://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat/videos?view=0
Also recommended is ‘Man Woman & Myth’…
http://www.youtube.com/user/manwomanmyth/videos?view=0
…and I’m sure most already know of him, but Thunderf00t’s videos are also ‘must see’…
http://www.youtube.com/user/Thunderf00t/videos?view=0
“Apparently it’s inconceivable that people with darker skin could think for themselves and reject leftist politics”
Black Conservative!
Like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, these two words together strike terror in the heart of liberalists.
http://www.rightvoicemedia.com/2013/03/black-conservative/
As a black man, I love it when ignorant white women like Janeane Garofalo speak for all blacks. It’s thrilling to me that Janeane would take time out of her busy Hollyweird life to protect me and my peeps — the downtrodden, the oppressed…the lowly Negro.
http://theblacksphere.net/2009/04/racist-garofalo-to-the-rescue/
Janeane Garofalo is warning black people again about Tea Baggers, as she reprises her role from Mystery Men as “Protector of the Lowly Negro“!
Garofalo says that the Tea Parties are full of white supremicists, and I felt this needed further investigation, and thus began my “Search for the Tea Party Racist!” (VIDEO)
http://theblacksphere.net/2009/10/garofalo-racist/
Plenty more here…
http://theblacksphere.net/
A little inconvenient history…
http://cdn.pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/files/2013/03/jim-crow.jpg
Reed,
GirlWritesWhat’s videos are an absolute must see.
Yes, I’m enjoying them. And thanks again. It’s kind of what the ‘Elsewhere’ posts are for – commenters sharing items they find interesting. Hey, I like presents too.