Smart post by Ross Douthat musing on the Black Swan phenomenon, in light of my tendency to go all Tippi Hedren when thinking about the Big Bad Bird. Here's Ross:
What I find interesting about this is that I share Rod’s premise – the assumption that various inherently unpredictable disasters are lurking ahead of us – without sharing his tendency to scan the headlines looking for harbingers of the apocalypse. If anything, I lean in the opposite direction, and tend to be dismissive of the various doom-and-destruction scenarios that make their way into print these days. ... Somewhere between Rod’s approach and mine, then, lies the happy medium that policymakers ought to strive – so they should read us both, and split the difference.
All for that -- and you'd better hurry up and get your hardback copy of "Crunchy Cons," which is going out of print (alas!), though you'd might consider the paperback version too. Anyway, I think a lot of the difference between Ross and me might be a matter of tone -- and again, I wonder to what extent the emotional experience of 9/11 haunts my more urgent sensibility.
Of course, we won't know until the future whether I was a fraidy-cat or Ross was too complacent. (For the record, I very much hope Ross is right). LIke Ross says, though, both of us are concerned about the vulnerability of families in our society, and want to see a politics focused on shoring up the family.
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want to see a politics focused on shoring up the family
Can't shore up the family via law. At best, the government can just get out of the way.
Social Security, public school, and women in the workforce (that is, transferring the care of elderly, the education of children, and the labor of women all from the family to the state) has done more to slowly undermine the family than anything else. Any politics used to "shore up the family" that ignore this is merely window dressing.
Even worse, law-based solutions always end up making it worse. Think about welfare, which had the opposite effect as intended. Heck, if government could shore up families, Europe would be a virtual family paradise. Maybe it is, just without children.
mdavid @ 9:20 PM:
"Can't shore up the family via law. At best, the government can just get out of the way.
Social Security, public school, and women in the workforce (that is, transferring the care of elderly, the education of children, and the labor of women all from the family to the state) has done more to slowly undermine the family than anything else. Any politics used to "shore up the family" that ignore this is merely window dressing."
Some points for consideration:
First, we need to realize that laws can serve as incentives to this behavior or that, on occasion. The laws regarding divorce are instructive in this regard. The 1960s' advent of no-fault divorce did more to increase family breakup than the Pill ever did (although modern femino-Stalinism did just about as much). Secondly, the Imperial tax code and its steady erosion of the value of the dependent exemption served to privatize the costs of children while SocSec socialized the costs of caring for the elderly. Naturally, there were fewer children. Thirdly, the entry of females into the workforce was encouraged by the larger corporations as long ago as the 1930s. The inclusion of "sex" as a protected category of people in the 1964 Civil Rights Act served to bring millions of women into the workforce---thus serving to impose a massive downdraft on wages. No family wage, EVERYONE's wage goes down.
There have been some pro-family changes in the law in the last few years. The increase in the value of the dependent exemption and the arrival of the per-child credit both help matters a little. Some states have begun moving away from strict no-fault divorce. Not an awful lot, to be sure, but some.
Probably the biggest area in which pro-family changes in the law could be useful would the revival of censorship. I don't necessarily mean state or local Decency Boards like the ones that existed back in the 1950s (although they would be nice to have around if they had some teeth to them), but something like the revival of the Hays Code. Applied to television, it could go a long ways towards changing social attitudes. (Like the old saying goes: "What can we do to improve teens' attitudes ? Shoot Madonna"---although in 2008 Fergie and Britney Spears would have to join her in Hell.) It might even make it "hip to be square" again. The Catholic Church could revive its decency codes---remember the A-lists, B-lists and C-(condemned) lists ? Just reducing the amount of emphasis on unfettered sexual behavior as the Ultimate Good would do a lot to help.
I know, I know---I'm NOT going to hold my breath waiting. But it has to start with something.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Motto: "Want a surefire way to help a man breathe ? Take your hands off his throat."
Ross:
I disagree with Ross in that I believe you are less concerned with unpredictable events than with wholly predictable trends that do not augur well for our society.
The Black Swan is more concerned with epistemic arrogance and you strike me as the opposite of arrogant. The universality of your appeal and your openess to critique are clearly evident in your comboxes where you seem to come under "full spectrum attack" on a daily basis. My hat is off to you.
"To really learned men has happened what happens to ears of wheat: they rise high and lofty, heads erect and proud, as long as they are empty; but when they are full and swollen with grain in their ripeness, they begin to grow humble and lower their horns."
-- Michel de Montaigne
Ooops, that last post was addressed to Rod.
Karth,
Every item you list:
pill
no-fault divorce
taxes
wages
censorship
are all indeed merely window dressing. Taxes? Pah. A large family making medium-low wages pays zero taxes and even gets their SS/Medicare refunded. Nobody is forcing anyone to divorce, or use the pill, or watch the garbage on the TV.
No, the problem is abandonment. The backbone of the family: the elderly, youth, and mothers have all simply vanished and left the family an empty, meaningless vessel. These choices are not ecoomically required, as we are the richest country in human history. The truth: it's not hard to raise a large family on a single income. It's easy to homeschool. It's not hard to care for our parents at home. We just don't want a family-based culture. And no changes in our laws will make us want it. But have no fear; Darwinian natural selection is working its magic as we speak.
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