Who Decides? Part 1

A Reprint from my other blog experiment

Originally Posted 1/18/2007

Just last week the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program on PBS had a segment on homeschooling. As you might expect from that paragon of not-being-Leftist-no-matter-what-content-we-actually-show called PBS, it was terribly narrow in its focus, skewing the presentation into a very anti-homeschooling stance.

As usual, the focus of the report by the mainstream media was on two areas – 1) they’re crazy! And, 2) they are making their kids crazy, too! No matter how many homeschooled kids are Liberal and go to Evergreen State College (a rookery for the far Left), no matter how many homeschool magazines and blogs discuss evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology so that parents can discuss it with and teach it to their homeschooled kids, no mater how many homeschooling parents have a degree in biology or are professionals in fields such as Cell and Developmental Biology, and no matter how many homeschooled kids go on to be accepted at a major university to study biology, the money quote for any, and I mean any, mainstream media discussion of homeschooling is where a parent avows “we don’t teach evolution” and at least one child chimes in with “I don’t believe evolution”.

This is obviously meant to paint homeschooling in a negative light.

The program also refers to homeschoolers’ higher performance in reading, math, college GPA, SAT and ACT scores, but quotes Prof. Reich of Stanford (a professor of Political Science and Education) as, well, dismissing them. I was intrigued by this, did some research, and spoke with Prof. Reich via phone. Mr. Reich was very generous with his time and opinions, especially since I caught him with an unsolicited phone call on a national holiday. In short, I believe that this particular article and several others I have found that quote Mr. Reich do a poor job of explaining his objections.

In the almost 20 minutes that we spoke, Mr. Reich explained that he felt that current measures of homeschoolers’ performance are lacking for a simple reason – we don’t know how many kids are homeschooled. Therefore, we have no real idea what percentage take the ACT, go to college, etc. He even rejects the fact that homeschoolers perform substantially better on the ACT over traditionally schooled students because we have no idea what percentage of homeschoolers take the test – although he did admit that the self-selection to skew the results so much would need to be severe.

Personally, I find this a bit tough to swallow. After all, the ACT is administered to more than 50% of high school graduates in only 25 states, meaning that the ACT average for traditionally educated students is heavily self-selected, too. If the SAT or ACT was a universally-administered test for traditionally-educated students, but not for homeschoolers, he might have a point. As it is, he seems to accept the self-selected ACT scores for one group and to dismiss the self-selected scores of the other.

He went on to state that most information about homeschooling is anecdotal; that for every ‘a homeschooler won the national spelling bee’ story there is an ‘a homeschooler was kept at home to hide abuse’ story, and neither type of tale really told the entire story. He wants, he says, comprehensive data on all homeschoolers, akin to a drivers license for drivers.

With just a touch of prompting he elaborated that his true concern is that some homeschooled kids will grow up so isolated from outside influences that they will be unable to interact with other citizens with different beliefs which is, he states, a problem. In a pluralistic society like the modern world, I would tend to agree that such person could be a problem. When I asked if he knew of any homeschooled people with such narrow outlooks, he admitted he only really knew of… anecdotes.

During our discussion he was adamant that he felt parents have a right to pass on their own beliefs to their children, but was worried that they would not make their children aware of alternatives. At the end, I asked if a fair summary of his concern is,

“Who determines what homeschooled children are taught?”

He demurred, stating he felt a better summary would be.

“Parents should not have unchecked authority over their children’s education, nor should the government.”

Since I did catch him with a surprise call and a pop quiz, I will gently point out that he probably did not realize that his position is, indeed, a discussion of who determines what homeschooled children are taught.

Indeed, in my experience the entire debate about homeschooling always gets down to that bedrock question – who has the authority to determine how children are educated and what they learn?

Kids Today, with their Music and their Haircuts!

During my discussions of fertility, birth rates, population decline, and the future, I have been fairly direct in my conclusions – the future population of the Earth will be smaller and more religious. I have had a surprising number of people counter that religious and political beliefs are not a matter of parentage, but of ideology. As one person stated ‘just because your parents are religious and Conservative doesn’t mean you will be’. Granted, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that some people from religious homes grow up to be atheists. And some people raised atheists become religious.

Statistically, however, the children of parents with ‘identifiable beliefs’ (i.e., they have an opinion on politics or religion strong enough to express it) are most likely to share their parents’ beliefs when they reach adulthood. The development of your political and religious outlook, called political socialization and religious socialization respectively, has been studied, especially in the last 25 years or so, and shows that most adults reflect the religious and political attitudes of their parents. The various ‘socialization factors’ that lead to our ideological development include family, school, peer groups, major events, workplace, marriage, etc. By far the most critical factor is the family, especially since the vast majority of political and religious beliefs are developed in childhood. Even the second most influential element, school, pales in comparison, even when attempts are made to directly influence political outlook with concerted school efforts. Indeed, researchers are coming to suspect that the main influence of school is as an environment where children learn the skills needed to promote and defend the beliefs developed at home. Thus, while major changes in life (leaving home for college, entering the military, marriage and parenthood) can cause something called ‘resocialization’, or seemingly-dramatic changes is behavior and outlook, the large majority of adults mirror the political and religious beliefs of their parents. Research also indicates that, for children of Conservatives or Liberals, the majority of those who do not mirror family beliefs become moderates, not members of the opposite extreme.

There is some evidence that Liberals/Mainline Religious families have lower rates of positive socialization (i.e., their kids are more likely to not be Liberals than Conservative children are to not be Conservatives). This seems to be especially true of Mainline Religious families who may have Liberal children, but those children are less likely to be religious. The biggest problem for Mainline Protestants and religious socialization is that Mainline Protestants are usually intermittent church-goers, and thus their children are less likely to be religious.

In brief: Liberals are likely to have Liberals kids and Conservatives are likely to have Conservative kids, but a higher percentage of Conservatives’ kids are like their parents. Devout parents tend to have devout kids, but lukewarm parents tend to have unchurched kids. Got it? OK.

Let us draw some conclusions. Given identical populations and birthrates, over time there would be a tendency of a group to slowly become more Conservative, since Conservatives have a slightly higher positive political socialization. Concurrently the level of religious participation would tend to sort out into devout and unchurched with fewer and fewer ‘sometimes’ attendees.

This leads to the second argument that I tend to hear: ‘If socialization patterns favor Conservatism’, I am asked, ‘why the dominance of Liberal ideas in the 20^th Century?’ The answer to this lies in another element of political socialization – major political events. Let’s skip the potentially-huge discussion of if the Democrats were really Liberal (as we currently use the term) pre-WWII and focus on a few events [This also allows me to skip the discussion of ethnic alignment with political party and its decline, etc.]. The first is the Great Depression. This led to a slight preference towards Democrats because of their support of social welfare programs. This tendency was reversing itself when the next political event came along, Vietnam. Opposition to the draft led many young adults to become Liberals. In both cases, major events led to a slight increase in political socialization towards the Left.

However, even with these major events, and supporting events like Watergate, there was never a dominance of either Democratic Party or Liberal/Leftist influence in America. The nation leaned Right from 1900 to 1930 and even with the landslide Democratic victories in 1930 and 1932 a coalition of Conservative Democrats allied with Republicans regained dominance of both houses of Congress by 1937 and maintained that dominance for almost 40 years. Even the post-Watergate presidential election of 1976 was amazingly close, with less than a 2% difference in the winners. Ronald Reagan’s historic landslides and the Republican Revolution of the ‘90’sshow that even when baby-boomers were in their most politically-active phase that Conservatism was very strong in America, as it remains today.

To put it another way, there was no dominance of Liberal ideas in the 20^th Century. In my opinion, the late 19^th and early- to mid- 20^th Centuries are remarkable for the (relatively limited) levels of success Liberal/Left ideas actually enjoyed.

Besides, the growth of Socialism, Communism, major wars, and political scandals and their cumulative bolstering of the Left all pale in comparison to the effects of demographic shift in the last 40 years.

The facts are clear – Liberals have fewer children than Conservatives. Much more directly, the devoutly religious have many more children than the non-religious, and the impact of religiosity on fertility seems to be growing over time. A study out of Australia illustrates how the impact of this cannot be understated. The study tracked a group of women from age 30 to age 40. It found that 22% were childless, 16% had one child, 35% had two children, 20% had three children, and 7% had more than three children. This means that 27% of the women accounted for more than 50% of the children. When the demographic, economic, and social factors were examined, the researchers found some interesting facts; women who had not cohabitated before marriage were more than 2.5 times more likely to have 3 or more children than women who had; women who had not planned their first child were over 1.5 times as likely to have 3 or more children than women who planned their first child; Catholic women were over 1.5 times more likely to have 3 or more children than non-Catholics. Toss in that starting young and having more than one child before being 28 also increased the chances of a woman have more than 3 kids, and you see a clear pattern - Catholic women who marry young and start having children early are having much more impact on the future than their own numbers indicate.

Using the generic “80% of children share their parents’ political and religious affiliation” (instead of the ‘97% of the children of very devout homeschooling Conservatives share their parents’ values’) that means that about 40% of the next generation will behave in a similar fashion, representing a 50% growth in relative numbers in a single generation. With Australia’s TFR of about 1.6 these political and social impacts will come faster than they will in America with its higher TFR and immigration, but those changes will be reflected in every nation with a negative TFR.

In the end, I stand by my position, which is: the demographic shift we are currently experiencing will lead to population that is increasingly religious and Conservative.

Those Who Cannot Look in the Mirror

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to write about population and demographics from time to time. I am not alone, of course; there are a number of Conservative and Moderate people discussing birth rates and such out there. There is also a strain of commentary on Liberal blogs - especially Feminist blogs, mainly mocking Conservatives that want kids.

I have noted again and again that these Feminists seem to think that Conservatives are racists. I have covered many of the ways that the facts of racial violence show that these stereotypes are wrong, but this lumping of “Conservatives are racist” and “wanting large families is about racial supremacy” stuff is getting so ludicrous that I figured I’d take a look.

First, we find that our erstwhile source of all things Feminist - as long as they are radical things - Amanda at Pandagon points out that not only are people who want large families racist… they are genocidal (actually, see ascribes a genocidal motive to all those who oppose abortion, but we‘ll help her out by focusing on just proponents of large families). Reading the comments on Amanda’s post will reveal an echo-chamber of people more than willing to proclaim that all who want large families are racist, genocidal, and (by strong implication) fascist. They also refer to a commenter who posted that he was interested in ‘preserving his own culture’ as a ‘racist misogynist’ whom the moderator called on the others to ignore. Now, far be it from me to claim that Liberals/Feminists must act a certain way, but - isn’t this commenter right to value his own culture?

I visited a number of quiver full sites online. You can see many of them for yourself and a search can find you more. I searched pretty carefully and I found that these sites have quite a bit in common; they tend to advocate large families (no surprise), they love kids (no surprise), and they don’t talk about race. At all. The only reference I found at all related to race was one mention of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt when Teddy, not the author, spoke of declining fertility in White women in the early 1900’s. That’s it. I do admit, if you google ‘+quiver full +supremacy’ and look at the religious/quiver full sites that result, there is a discussion of supremacy. But it is the Supremacy of Christ, not a race.

Some of the “Progressive” sites you find, though, do speak of race. An article in The Nation(not the most Right-leaning of papers, of course) speaks of the quiver full movement and, as it does so, mentions race twice; first by claiming that “race suicide” is a subtext to the quiver full movement (with no citation, naturally); and, once again, a reference to a quote by Teddy Roosevelt about White birth rates over a century ago. From this article you get the Pandagon bit, mentioned above, and a few related posts from the Left side of the blogs, all claiming having many children for religious reasons is racist, almost all pointing to the Nation article or to Amanda’s post. Some even claim being pro-large families at all is evil. There is also a Newsweek article on the quiver full movement, but it makes no leaps as far as racial motivations.

The quiver full movement almost completely dismisses the Leftist claims that they are racist, only pausing occasionally to point out that Christianity has a lot of non-White members and that the quiver full movement calls on all Christians to have children as a blessing of God.

While we have some fairly prominent Feminist bloggers making the charge that wanting a large family is racist, even genocidal, the movement they point to this time is pretty obviously race-blind. Pandagon and the other Feminist blogs like to paint the Catholic Church as racist, but of course, the Church is very multi-ethnic and always has been. So where is this hateful accusation coming from? Well, I have a theory.

It is, in short, projection. The Left, always quick to dodge reality when it suits them, is projecting their own biases onto their ideological opponents. I’ve already gone into detail about how people in the North and West deride Southerners as racist bigots when, in fact, the North and West have much higher rates of race-motivated crime. I have also discussed how Liberals denounce Conservatives as racist and discriminatory despite the fact that studies show Conservatives to be race-blind while Liberals favor Whites over minorities. In both cases, Liberals accuse others of the actions that Liberals, themselves, exhibit. They cling to these notions of how ‘the other’ acts despite the evidence to the contrary. So why is Amanda of Pandagon and her comrades so eager to point to the Right and claim that people who refuse to use contraception are genocidal? That’s a rather simple one, really.

Its because the origins of modern contraception use, especially the founding of Planned Parenthood and the development of the birth control pill, were covertly and overtly racist and genocidal, with a strong underpinning of elitism thrown in. The founder of Planned Parenthood and primary source of funds for the research that culminated in the birth control pill was Margaret Sanger. Ms. Sanger’s support of eugenics is widely known, as are the many statements she made disparaging the mentally ill, the retarded, and the ‘unfit’, Of course, she also said the same things about Blacks and the poor, too. While some try to distance Ms. Sanger from the horrors of Nazi Germany, they have great trouble doing so since her support of Fascists was fairly evident. Her defenders are in the rather uncomfortable position of admitting that she worked closely with, supported, and was supported by racists and fascists, she made a lot of comments that might seem racist or fascist, but you can’t pin her down to a definitively racist or fascist quote. That’s pretty shaky. She hoped that incentives would work to reduce the population of ‘undesirables’, but advocated coercion and force if incentives failed. Showing that she certainly believed that she and other experts knew what was best for everyone and was willing to use force to impose it.

“OK,” you say, “Sanger was a eugenicists and, possibly, a racist and, maybe, a support of fascism. So what? That was years ago!”

Really? Who is the primary focus of Planned Parenthood today? The same groups Sanger targeted - minorities and the poor. Analysts noted in the 1980’s that Planned Parenthood focused its efforts on poor urban minority areas, resulting in 33% of abortions being performed on minority women who made up less than 20% of the total population. Contemporary advocates of contraception and abortion continue to see these two things as means of eliminating the poor, the ignorant and the unhealthy - and these same advocates are intimately involved in groups that advocate policies of government-promoted and funded contraception and abortion. A list of proponents of eugenics reveals a broad group, to be sure, but a group with a bias toward the Left with some rather prominent names as large boosters of contraception and family planning

The end result is that we see that the birth of the ‘family planning’ movement was in the midst of Liberal eugenicists. Planned Parenthood and related groups flourished under the umbrella of eugenics and ‘racial improvement’. Abortion was as much a part of the eugenicists’ arsenal as forced sterilization (and, often, more prominent). To this day groups that advocate ‘family planning’ specifically target the poor and minorities, resulting in a much higher incidence of abortions in those same groups. Call it what you will, but the end result of contemporary family planning is virtually identical to the planned results of the eugenics movements of the pre-WWII era.

Access to abortion and contraception combined with the attitude that children are a financial burden has resulted in plummeting birthrates in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and North Africa with indicators that the rest of Africa will rapidly join in. In a number of countries abortion is being used to eliminate women before they are even born. All these facts reveal why Feminists must denigrate women who want large families. For if they were to admit the possibility of merit in large families, they must examine the consequences of their own attitudes and actions. Such an examination would reveal that, regardless of their stated motives, the end results of Feminists’ advocacy for ‘family planning’ are indistinguishable from the hopes and dreams of the ‘racial hygienists’ of the late 1800’s.

Those Who Will Not See

I have been reading Bitch PhD for, oh, about 2 years now, almost since she started blogging. Someone mentioned that she had posted about a letter issued by the Vatican and I dropped by. I disagree with a fair amount of what she argues for, and admittedly just don’t understand why she is so darn angry about some things, so is one of a group of leftist/feminist/gay blogs that I drop in on once a week or so to make sure I am not soley reading opinions that match mine.

Dr. B, as she is sometimes called, is in many ways a fairly standard feminist blogger. She acknowledges that children are so much a part of life as to be inevitable and, thus, kids and parents need societal support. This is a nice contrast to some who feel that kids are solely a choice and, well, too bad if you need help, sucker! She is married and has a child. She has tried to avoid the mommy wars, but not always in what I consider the right direction as it were.

Let me be very clear at the beginning; I find Dr. B to be morally reprehensible. This is not hyperbole, I am not exaggerating to be snarky. Her narcissistic demands coupled with her insistence that all her troubles can be laid at the feet of ‘patriarchal society’ are not just distasteful, they are evidence that her life, her words, and her ideology are perfect examples of the damage “mainstream” feminism is doing to men, women, and society.

As her blog reveals, she has been pursuing a career in academe for some time while her husband stayed home to raise their child. She spent a fair amount of time insisting that this mutual decision of her and her husband was agreeable to both and that it was best for them. OK, I know a fair number of people online with a similar arrangement, and members of my own extended family were doing similar things in the ‘70’s. I thought it was a bit ironic of her to refer as often as she did to the housework she used to do, years back, but what the heck.

In a recent post this is revealed to be, well, not as clearly a mutual decision as she may have portrayed. She makes it very clear that she refused her husband’s proposal for some time. Was she unsure if she loved him? No, that doesn’t seem to be the reason. Was she unsure that he was the ‘right guy’? That’s a bit more unclear, but it doesn’t seem to have been the reason she delayed accepting his proposal and then insisted on cohabitating before marriage. No, her stated reason for deferring accepting her husband’s proposal and for living together before marriage are to… make sure she could ‘have it all’ – a career, a marriage, kids, the freedom to do whatever she wanted, etc.

She also insisted that her fiancé formally promise to support her in getting her PhD, no matter what. She insisted that he quit his (well-loved) job if he wanted children. She insisted that, if he wanted kids, he must be the primary caregiver/full-time parent. And if he wanted to keep their kids out of daycare (which she knew he did) he must be the one to stay home.

She also insists this wasn’t extortion. A casual reading of her blog will reveal that if she heard of a man making such demands of a potential wife, she would label it patriarchal sexism, and inherently oppressive. But just as some people will always view White men as oppressors and Black men as oppressed, regardless of the facts, it seems that making absolute demands of your spouse is a mutual agreement if you are a woman, and oppression if you are a man.

[Yes, I am not only aware that marriages usually have absolute demands from both spouses, I have given and received them. I just don’t call them ‘mutual agreements’ or ‘oppression’. I call them ‘marriage’ and ‘living with your spouse, who is, after all, different’].

So, her husband agreed to her demands, abandoned his well-loved career, and settled in as a house-husband. The post I linked above goes into detail, but the short version is – beginning-track academics don’t make very much money (which was not, I hope, a surprise to anyone involved). Her husband worked very hard to be frugal, was not quite the housekeeper he hoped, and she was irritated and upset about these things. Making him resentful. The big surprise was, of course, that while she had made all of these absolute demands that she be allowed to get a PhD, and that he follow her career wherever it might lead, in the end… she didn’t like the demands her career made of her.

That’s right. She carefully considered what her husband must be willing to do, clearly set forth what she expected him to do in the form of absolute statements, and proceeded to move their life down the path that her demands placed before her family – without being sure that she was willing to do the very things she demanded of her husband and child. Eventually, she decided she and her husband would look for work. She was a starting academic, he has a decade of specialized experience. To no one’s surprise (I hope) he got a new job first, and it pays well. She has now moved into the role of full-time mom.

As a stay-at-home mom, she is quickly discovering just how important stay-at-home moms actually are. She now realizes that a ‘professional mother’ is everything from teacher to medical aide. That stay-at-home moms support schools, are the driving force of charities, care for the sick and elderly, are the backbone of many grassroots political actions, etc., etc. In short, she is being forced to realize how valuable and critical stay-at-home mothers really are.

Don’t worry, though. I see no growing admiration of how hard her husband worked when he was in her shoes, just a smoldering resentment that he doesn’t do more around the house (just like she resented him not doing everything when he was the stay-at-home parent and she was busy working). She is very quick to insist that she is not a ‘lady-who-lunches’ - and then tacitly admits that the existence of social groups like ladies’ clubs, bridge clubs, and such make social networking more efficient, allowing women to do all of those roles with better communication. And never mind the recreation and social aspects of these support groups she disdains!

She moves on to argue that society does stay-at-homes moms a grave disservice; they are not recognized for the vast amounts of unpaid work that they do, and their economic insecurity is ignored. She is right on both counts, of course. The problem is, both of these areas of neglect can be laid at the feet of second-wave feminism. While Dr. B blames “society”, this change is recent. Betty Friedan was very vocal about disparaging the work done by stay-at-home moms and the mommy wars are largely fought between feminists who count the work of stay-at-home moms as valueless and those moms, who know better. The oh-so-despised 1950’s are chock-a-block full of open admissions that the lives of stay-at-home moms were packed with difficult, yet rewarding, work. Remember all those labor-saving devices? The advertisements portraying stay-at-home moms as busy, yet vibrant, as they did the essential work of caring for the family? Sure, the corporations were branding products, but not in a vacuum – the hard work and social contributions of professional mothers was widely accepted and acknowledged as part of society.

Not so any more. Now mothers are told that their work is valueless, primarily because they do not earn a wage. Dr. B wants to fix this by… well, adding them to Social Security [I agree – if we have social security, stay-at-home mothers should be a part of it, and not just because their husbands worked]. And ‘changing society to value stay-at-home mothers’. She rejects the Conservative methods as ‘lip service’, but has no real concrete statement of what she would do.

She explicitly rejects the concepts that being a stay-at-home mother is about creating a better quality of life to the mother and family, or that being a stay-at-home mom can bring a better balance to life. Not because these statements aren’t, or can’t be, true, but because she finds them… too “inward and nuclear”. Never mind that quality of life and life balance are about inner well-being and the well-being of the nuclear family.

She also decries the economic exposure of stay-at-home mothers. They are one divorce or death away from penury, after all. Of course, these issues aren’t new – this has always been true. Society responded with social answers - marriage was seen as a Big Deal and all parties were very careful before they entered into marriage. Marriage was seen as a life-long commitment, reducing a woman’s exposure. The extended family would provide assistance to the widow and orphan. Indeed, most or the elements of ‘patriarchal oppression’ that feminists decry were about ensuring familial stability to protect the most vulnerable members of society – women and children.

She goes on in her posts to claim that she is a victim of a society that has not ‘advanced’ enough. She is, she seems to think, ‘stuck’ at home because society doesn’t… something. Here is a quote:

“Here I am, twenty years later, in a position not unlike [a non-traditional student she knew as an undergrad]. Not because I've married someone like she did; but because whether or not my own personal husband insists on those expectations, my own personal society does. It's okay for me to have a career--as long as my house is clean, I spend a lot of time with my kid, I give up control over where I live, I accept economic dependence (on my husband or on the Bank of America), and I live with the depression that's surely partly the result of all these "choices."

Let’s take a look at this lament, shall we? She is a stay-at-home mom, economically dependent upon her husband. She blames society because ‘society’ requires her to have a clean house (no, that is you and your family), as long as she spends a lot of time with her child (God, what a burden! Society sure is cruel), she gives up control of where she lives (well, that is, based upon her writings, a function of the careers chosen by her and her husband), and she is economically dependent upon her husband (which is why marriage exists, to allow a team of people to raise children). She makes it clear she thinks these decisions were imposed on her by society and she is depressed by this lack of control over her own life.

Pardon me while I fail to agree with this wave of self-pity. I am not sure of Dr. B’s academic discipline, but it obviously isn’t Business, and Engineering branch, etc. When she chose a doctorate in Humanities and a career in academe, she must have known that these freely-chosen paths, made by her alone and stated to her then-boyfriend as imperatives, required that she go where the limited-number of jobs are. And she must have also known, very clearly, that people starting out in academia make very little money for quite some time. Two years of posts by Dr. B paint a picture of society disapproving of her choice in education and career, including the one I linked to above. For her to now claim ‘society forced me to take a career path that I now realize, about 20 years after starting down it, that I don’t like’ is the depths of hypocrisy. Worse, she neglects the sacrifices made for her by her husband and now demeans the work he has taken up to support her by seeing his hard work for her as oppressive! She is so busy pointing her finger in blame at faceless society that she forgets that her own ambitions, her own choices, her own demands, and her own failures are the cause of her being where she is – a stay-at-home mom with a husband providing more economic support for their family than she could while she spends her days with their child.

So we come back full circle to the core of the second-wave feminist argument, such as it is. That core is that the work of stay-at-home moms – although critical to society, although central to the family, although beneficial to children – is worthless compared to having A Career. A woman with A Career is complete, they say, a woman who just stays home is not, they say. Men who stay home while their wives work are cool, women who stay home while their husbands work are fools, they say. That self-same husband, working to support his family, is an oppressor, they say.

“But Deep,” you say “While Dr. B is narcissistic and hypocritical, she’s hardly ‘morally reprehensible’. Why did you say something so harsh earlier?”

Dr. B’s morals are well-advertised on her blog, and they are reprehensible. She believes in an open marriage, meaning that she has regular sexual partners other than her husband, and engages in casual sex when available. Her husband (who gave up his career and working life to support her in her education and career) is expected to support her in her escapades. She sometimes takes her young child with her on her overnight-or-longer liaisons with lovers. Why does she do this? Well, the usual excuse of ‘who can have sex with just one person for more than, like, a week?’ is in play. But she also argues that since her husband annoys her (because he is familiar) she can ‘work out’ her issues with her husband by being with other men. That’s right, she doesn’t stop yelling at her husband’s annoying habits through working with him, or compromise, she does it by sleeping around.

This makes me wonder why Dr. B ever married. It isn’t for economic security (she is angered by the very thought), or for an exclusive relationship. It wasn’t for children (she states, quite clearly, that she was fine without them, but her husband wanted them). It wasn’t for family connections (they live far from their families, she kept her maiden name their child has her last name, not his). She wouldn’t compromise on her education goals (she made him agree to support her PhD work, even if it meant living apart) or her career goals, or her demands in regard to having and rearing children. As far as I can tell, for her marriage is a tax break.

Indeed, I worry about her husband. Here is a man who gave up a career he loved for his wife’s ambitions. He worked hard as a stay-at-home dad while his wife made too little and the debt was piling up. He supports his wife’s affairs (and has some of his own, I assume), even when she takes their child. She kept her name, and gave it to their child. When, after 20 years, his wife decided she doesn’t really want the career he gave up so much for, he jumped back into the labor market and is making more than she did. Her reaction is often resentment – she resented that he wasn’t a better housekeeper, she resents that he doesn’t do more housekeeping now (a nice double-standard), she resents that he is supporting her! I assume he reads her blog, so this is probably well known to him.

Yes, she expresses admiration for him on her blog and, yes, I know that any marriage is complex and dynamic. I know that the years of schooling she went through and the beginnings of her career certainly had a dynamic home life swirling around them. All givens. But her extreme focus on what she wants, her career, and her desires are disrespectful of him to a high degree. Her need to be in relationships with others in order to make her relationship with him ‘work’ is devaluing to him. If I were to go to Feministe or Pandagon and describe Dr. B’s relationship with the genders reversed, I am quite confident that those feminists would say that Dr, B’s husband was being oppressed and that he should leave.

Of course, your next question is, why does anyone care? Dr. B’s blog is read by about 3,500 people per day, a healthy number, and she is fairly well-regarded by feminist bloggers, meaning that her ideas have a broad audience. She is generally seen as a ‘moderate’ feminist. I just want to point out how very messed up this moderate feminist is, how contradictory her life is, and how profoundly unhappy she obviously is. While feminists point to my wife and call her a ‘house negro’ or a ‘Serena Joy’ for choosing to be a professional mother, this particular feminist is in a tough position; her husband has completely supported her positions on a non-traditional marriage, a non-traditional working arrangement, and her choices of high-education and a career. After all this, she discovered that she wasn’t happy with her career and, due to the various choices her and her husband made over the years, she is now a stay-at-home mom. Despite her realization that stay-at-home moms can have rich, intellectually-demanding lives with a major positive impact on not just their family, but the community and society, she continues to reject it as less-valuable than a career. I have no idea how she can intellectually support this. It is important that we see this, recognize this, and repeat the intellectual bankruptcy of feminism.

Meanings of Words

This morning I heard Jackie Northam on NPR slip from journalism into opinion (not that uncommon on NPR) as she explained that what is going on in Iraq must be called a ‘civil war’ because, well, Webster defines it as “a war between geographical or political factions of the same country“ [Please note: I am using a transcription of what she said on the air, not the actual quote from the online Webster’s] and she (and the experts she likes) thinks it fits. Of course, she points to the Shi’a, the Sunni, and the Kurds and the factions fighting this ‘civil war’.

Big problem already, isn’t there? After all, Shi’a and Sunni are not geographically- or politically- defined, are they? They are religious groups, or “sects”, meaning that violence between such groups should be described as ‘sectarian violence’ – the very phrase dismissed by Miss Northam in an offhand manner in the radio piece I linked to, above. The Kurds are also not involved in the waves of violence we hear so much about – the geographically and politically (and racially) identified Kurdish regions are wonderfully violence-free.

In short, Miss Northam proves that she is capable of reading a dictionary, but also shows that she has trouble understanding the meanings of the definitions she finds. By her own statements of what 'civil war' means and her own description of who is doing the fighting, Iraq is suffering not from a civil war, but from sectarian violence. Her piece descends from journalism into unannounced opinion-spouting in a fairly-blatant attempt to paint anyone who doesn't call it a civil war as being dishonest.

I don’t even need to get into the definition of ‘foreigner’ and how it relates to the definition of ‘civil war’ that she uses in this context to render this piece moot.

A World of Artisans: Distributionism as an Economic Third Way

This is the fourth in a series of articles about Distributionism. You can read the earlier pieces here, here and here.

I will attempt to draw the various ideas together to show not just how to encourage Distributionism, but what I think a Distributivist society would look like and some of the effects I think it would have on other societies. To make this as clear as possible I will attempt to do this in a single post, so I apologize in advance for its length.

In the views of Distributivist thinkers (and in my own opinion) Fascism, Communism, Socialism, and laissez-faire Capitalism all result from the same mistake. And that mistake is to misapprehend the goal of economic activity. For laissez-faire Capitalists, the error is thinking that the goal is to maximize profits with the goal of accumulating the greatest possible capital; for Communists the goal is transformation of Mankind into a new sort of person with a different nature; for Fascists the goal is social order and stability; for Socialists the goal is perfect equality of outcome (which they mistake for justice). Belloc and Chesterton point out where these errors can lead, and history has shown them to be pretty accurate. In every case the essential needs of Man are in at least some ways neglected, leading to unhappiness, abuse, and, eventually, tyranny.

The real answer is surprising in its simplicity; the goal of economic activity is the same as the goal of society. The goal is happiness. In ‘The Outline of Sanity ‘Chesterton wrote,
“There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or in any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier”

We seek happiness in society through friendship, family, the development of character, and the improvement of our fellow man. We seek happiness through economics by acquiring the essentials of stability, the leisure of self-improvement and beauty, and the improvement of our fellow man. As the principle of solidarity points out, society and economics cannot be divorced from one another. This means that we must engage in economics with our neighbors and cannot forget that we are as dependent upon them as they are upon us. The principle of subsidiarity points out that, just as the most important element of society is the smallest and closest (the family), so our economics should look to smaller, closer ventures to maximize happiness.

There can be no true happiness in the absence of security. The first goal of society is security (from outside invaders, from crime, from abuses of rights) and the first goal of economics should be security (from hunger, homelessness, and exploitation). But just as a society that does not need to fear crime is not necessarily fair or open, a society where all are fed is not necessarily just or free. Security is the foundation, not the end, and this must always be kept in mind.

Many Distributionists argue that concentration of capital into the hands of too few people leads to a decline in liberty that can lead to a state resembling slavery for those who lack capital. The proposed solution is to strive to distribute capital as much as possible (hence Distributionism) so that most, if not all, families are capable of self-sufficiency. This leaves a wide range of possibilities; farmers that have enough land to provide for themselves both directly and through the sale of ‘excess’ produce; skilled tradesmen with their own tools and enough skill that they can be either self-employed or find employment both readily available and their jobs portable (such as a carpenter or computer programmer); factory workers who are part-owners of their factory with sufficient equity that they are involved in issues of capital expenditures and share the reqards and risks of production; retail employee/owners who make cooperative purchases of stock, participate in sales, and either lease or co-own their facility.

As you can see, the ideas of self-sufficiency, solidarity, subsidiarity, an aversion to wage slavery, and social justice tend to point along a particular path, one that rejects Communism, Socialism, and Fascism and is opposed to corporate consolidation and monopolies. The result, where as many people as possible are professionals that own all the tools required for their work and deal as directly as possible with each other, could be called a world of artisans.

A world of artisans would nullify the tendencies of industrial and post-industrial nations to slip into authoritarianism, regardless of their ‘flavor’. The economic displacement of both industrialization and the transformation to post-industrialism creates feelings of fear and insecurity amongst many people who are incapable of self-sufficiency do to a lack of personal capital; they need wages to live and are incapable of generating them without access to someone else’s capital. Changes in the structure are coming that means that they are unsure of continuing access to capital. A simple example is a worker at an auto-plant. He cannot make cars himself; he owns none of the tools, materials, or facilities to make cars himself; his skills are specialized to the point that no other employment but car-making affords him the potential of a living wage. As plants are closed or moved, he is (naturally) afraid of losing his home, even of losing his life to hunger.

Capitalist economies will always lead to some level of insecurity; it is their nature. The feelings of fear created by those lacking capital will be utilized by those who desire change. They may be Machiavellian, they may be benign, but someone will harness the insecurities to effect change. If the desire is to do away with the insecurities of Capitalism altogether, the goal of change will be Communism. If the goal is to use the power of the central government to take capital from one group and give it to another to ameliorate insecurity, the goal is Socialism. If the goal is to make Capitalism more efficient in the desire to accelerate economic growth and reduce insecurity through expansion, the goal is laissez-faire Capitalism in its ‘purest’ form. If the goal is to stabilize society while maintaining Capitalism (and the largest Capitalists), the goal is Fascism.

I am aware that some will argue with my definitions, above. These are my own very broadly-brushed opinions, nit an in-depth analysis of political methods other than Distributionism.
Distributionism argues that Communism and Socialism are wrong (and lead to oppression) because they make the mistake of blaming Capitalism. They further argue that Fascisms and ‘invisible handers’ are similarly wrong for blaming people. You cannot reject economics, nor reject people – you must integrate them. This is done by making as many people as possible independent economic actors – in other words, capitalists.

But how do we get there?

As I mentioned in Part II, the shift to Distributionism cannot be coerced or via ‘negative’ means. You cannot seize land from those that have ‘too much’ and give it to those who have ‘too little’; who would decide? Who would enforce such decisions? Both obviously require – a massive, powerful central government, the very antithesis of Distributivist thought. Likewise, imposing higher taxes on people earning ‘too much’ and giving this money to those earning ‘too little’ result in the same formula – injustice enacted by remote, faceless entities. In addition to leading to resentment (from all sides as to what is ‘just’), alienation (of different groups from one another), dependency (of those who gain with no effort), and lawlessness (by those wishing to either avoid being taxed or who wish to profit unjustly) the power of the central government will continue to expand at the expense of local leadership, the family, and the individual.

The path must be positive. Some steps are relatively obvious and even partially in place. Small businesses should be encouraged with tax breaks and loans. Similarly, cooperatives, credit unions, and similar solidarity groups should also receive tax breaks. Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies for a strictly limited time to encourage transition. The removal of farm subsidies and their replacement with tax incentives would go a long way toward creating Distributionist farms. Local, regional, state, etc. funding for training, especially in trades and professions, would encourage the creation of more artisans. Laws that encourage guilds should also be created.

And here we come to another key element in early Distributionist thought; the guild. Similar to unions, similar to professional associations, and similar to consortiums, guilds are still unique. The European guilds of the medieval period are, as noted in the link, the source of most modern concepts of intellectual property, business ethics, trade, and social security. The were formed by members of the same or closely-related trades or professions, generally as independent, self-employed artisans and professionals working together for their own greater good. They set standards of education for their members (and prospective members), codes of conduct, quality standards for products, even rules for contents, size of products, etc. Virtually all of them also organized funds and systems to care for the widows and orphans of members, for members no longer able to work due to disability, and the retired/elderly members of the guild.

Historically a number of guilds negotiated exclusive contracts with cities, preventing non-guild members from practicing their professions there. This eventually led to their concentration in such cities and, ultimately, their downfall as they became isolated and hidebound fraternal institutions. Their counterparts outside the cities often refused to join organizations they saw as urban and both were more able to change quickly and, interestingly, were easier prey for large capital concerns who wished to consolidate. Distributionist thought is to learn from history and employ the best of guilds while rejecting their tendencies to become focused on defending exclusive territories and protecting trade secrets. Under this model Guilds are to have an almost dual nature; internal and external. Internally they act like fraternal societies and professional boards/consortiums. They ensure training and performance standards, enforce ethics, provide insurance services for members, manage pensions and trusts, engage in cooperative enterprises with other guilds, etc. Externally, they are almost like a brand. Consumers that deal with members of, for example, the baker’s guild know that they can trust the contents of the baker’s goods, his level of training, the standards of cleanliness of the bakery, his business ethics, etc.

Guilds differ from unions in a very important element – all levels of the profession or trade are in the same organization. While unions tend to pit employee against employer, guilds force them to work together. Since guild members have the skills, tools, and other capital needed to make them ‘portable’ (they can work for themselves or another master of their profession with ease) there is less insecurity on the part of wage earners. Employers within the guild ‘worked their way up’ through the guild and are very clearly aligned with their workers in the joint venture of success for all members of the guild. Since many guilds historically had rules on the election of guild members to local leadership councils and guild assemblies, the voice of the employed has as much weight as the voice of employers in large decisions, as well. The preferred management of Guilds is at the level of individual self-employed worker, then small shops, then a neighborhood, etc. The involvement of workers ensures such things as a living wage, decent social benefits, and a voice in larger decisions. The non-exclusive nature of a guild means that guilds that become corrupt, exclusive, coercive, etc. will simply have their members melt away/ It is almost like the Wobblies, but with the managers and owners involved, too!

More seriously, the Guild system is a microcosm of Distributionism; the line between employer and employee is virtually eliminated since the employee has the means to become self-employed or an employer himself; the organization is founded on the principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and justice. The goal of guilds is not to erase Capitalism (which was the goal of many early trade unionists), but to embrace it, to take the best of Capitalism and share it through the free actions of voluntary members. At the same time, guilds share the risks and dangers of Capitalism and ameliorate them through acting with and for each other. Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism through close association with their peers, a focus on the needs of their community, and a desire to contribute to the society that makes their success possible. These voluntary organizations succeeded not by rejecting Capitalism, but by sharing the Capitalism, the risks and insecurities as much as, or even more than, the rewards. This is an emulation of civilization itself; the protection of society by sharing risks and hardship is the cornerstone of the advance from barbarism. The voluntary sharing of the benefits of security is the cornerstone of a just civilization.

I can almost hear you now,
“Hold it!” you say, “Deep, you aren’t describing Distributionism as a ‘Third Way’, are you?”

No, I’m not. Mainly because I don’t think that it is a third way. Communism has always been a pipe-dream of people whose arguments begin and end with ‘once we change Man’s essential nature…”; Socialism is an argument that concludes “…and thus we will give Man more freedom by carefully controlling him.”; Fascism is an argument that “We know what is best for you!”; Laissez-faire Capitalism is an argument that “Selfish, unjust actions lead to altruistic, just results… eventually.” Distributionism rejects Communism, Socialism, and Fascism as unjust and immoral in their very conceptualization. It also rejects laissez-faire Capitalism as a wrong-headed attempt to separate ends from means. So, in the end, it is not a Third Way, it is simply the acknowledgement that Capitalism is the best known economic system, and that very minor, voluntary controls can prevent Capitalism from becoming a tool for injustice.

Since Distributivist writers and thinkers spend a lot of time explaining what is wrong with the world, and what Distributionism is against, it has been argued that Distributionism is no more than a reaction, a denial, a ‘no’. In short, it is impractical, even evil. The arguments against Distributionism range from ‘it prohibits international trade’ to ‘it cannot compete with huge multinationals’ to ‘it has no political platform for politicians to use in advocating it’. I find the concept that Distributivist are against international trade when virtually all of them point to the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation as an example not only of international trade, but successful competition with huge multinationals. Or that small firms cannot compete with large ones when small ‘mom and pop’ shops have successfully limited WalMart in China and carved out serious market share in America in recent years. I must also confess that I was surprised when Fr. Neuhaus, whom I normally find to have a very informed opinion, dismisses Distributionism as not having anything to which to attach policies or platforms in the political arena. America has; a Small Business Administration that promotes small business; farm co-ops, credit unions, consumer co-ops, and business co-ops like ACE hardware on almost every corner; a history where the Grange movement held strong, if brief, political influence over national politics; a growing concern over the impact of large enterprises like Wal-Mart and Microsoft of the well-being of the average person; and a rather large (and growing) government job training program. With all respect to Fr. Neuhaus, but I suspect his obliviousness to possible political planks supporting Distributionism may have more to do with his own ignorance of Distributionism, politics and American business than any weakness of Distributionist thought.

Indeed, it would be a rather simple matter to craft political positions that would have a broad appeal and promote Distributionism in a non-coercive manner. As I mentioned earlier, tax breaks for small businesses would be well-received by many. Pointing out that the vast majority of new jobs in America are generated by small businesses would go a long way to making it more popular. Tax incentives for co-ops would face similar approval across a broad segment of society, and it would be a simple matter to increase support for credit unions and similar activities. Reduction of levies and tariffs for small business and co-ops would also help. An increase in awareness of the value of trades would be of great benefit, too.

That seems pretty simple, really; the engine of job growth in America (and the world) is small business; tradesmen are critical for small business; co-ops of all sorts are efficient, competitive organizations that provide solid business benefits to their participants. I am not sure what Fr. Neuhaus and his fellow detractors are missing, but these seem easy sells as political positions. Conservatives can focus on tax relief for business owners and job creation, Liberals can focus on job creation and tax relief for students, blue collar workers, and mom & pop shops. Both can appeal to farmers and rural voters by supporting co-ops.

Seems like a win-win to me.


Next time: more on Distributionism, but on a more personal level.

Sad Boy

I recently read an article by Nina Burleigh in Salon.com called “Country Boy”. While I was stunned by the content and tone while reading it, I am even more upset after I have had time to reflect on it. Please go read the article before continuing; the entirety of her work is important.

While the intro paragraph is simply expository, the contempt begins very quickly. Despite the evident beauty of the region (which she admits later) her description of the small American town of Narrowsurg is of a ‘depressed’ and ‘harsh’ realm, oh-so distant from the lost, ‘idyllic’ existence in Paris with its superior culture and social services.

Her contempt for the town and those in it never flags. She reveals that her friends were other ‘city folk’ – who were openly contemptuous of the institution of the town (without bothering to visit or investigating them, she admits). At one point she feels the need to pause and inform the readers that the ‘Narrows’ in Narrowsburg refers to the local river narrows, not the mindset of the residents. Despite he early references to the principal and other school staff being open and friendly, the narrative shows her and her husband as deeply suspicious of the local residents, constantly fearful of maliciousness and being ‘singled out’ – even though she has no examples of such behavior. Indeed, the bucolic atmosphere of the town and its people keeps seeping through her narrative despite her best efforts to justify her own paranoia.

Her over-reaction was based upon her perception of an incident she describes. The incident began simply; a flyer in her son’s backpack with an open invitation to a bible study, obviously described as not part of regular school. How did she and her husband react? With ‘panic’! They did not send a note back; they did not call and ask, or complain, or request a conference. No – they immediately called the ACLU! The ACLU assured them that such information being made available is, indeed, not felonious, but the ACLU did call to complain about the flyer perhaps looking official (well, it did cause two grown people to immediately seek legal help).

She seems upset that the principal who had to field the call, was forced to apologize for a harmless incident, and was as aware as the author that only one set of parents in town would be so reactionary, was ‘less warm’ to her and her husband thereafter.

Her revelations of their fear of religion and the religious actually gets worse. When she and her husband discovered that their son’s kindergarten teacher was actually devout (in a conservative church, yet) they were very careful not to express their own political and religious views. Why? They feared their son would be ‘singled out’ by the same woman she had earlier described as a ‘cheery’, ‘enthusiastic’ teacher with almost two decades of teaching experience. If the teacher had been a member of MoveOn, would Mrs. Burleigh have worried about the ability of conservative parents to speak freely without fear? Somehow, I doubt it.

She also betrays a distrust of the military and veterans; her and her husband were ‘uneasy’ that 25% of the town adults were veterans and that 10% of the local graduates had gone on to military service (and this after her discussion of the economic woes of the area). She mentions wanting to ‘protest’ the Pledge of Allegiance by sitting down as her son recited it in the mornings. The only favorable mention of a veteran comes from one who expressed his desire that no child experience war. She interpreted the following silence as an acknowledgement of rebuke by the townspeople.

I assume Mrs. Burleigh has never spent any time in a Legion hall or a VFW post. As a proud member of the VFW I can tell you this – every veteran shares this desire to spare all people from war. When it is expressed by a veteran, especially on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, the proper response is silence. The silence veterans all share when remembering the sacrifices made by the living and the dead, the horror of destruction, and the desire for peace. You don’t applaud the acknowledgement of death; you don’t cheer the memory of friends who died to save your life. Non-veterans with a sense of decency who hear these things are silent out of respect and the clear knowledge that the pains and sacrifices of American veterans were given up to provide those young men and women, those children, and the author herself her freedom from slavery, terror, and death. Her sheer inability to understand this silence is almost the most self-damning thing she writes in this piece.

I said ‘almost’ the most self-damning thing she writes. The most self-damning is the very heart of the text; her attitudes toward her own son.

Her son sounds like a cheerful, outgoing sort. Based upon his mother’s writing, it seems that being exposed to the influences of a ‘traditional’ school was quite good for the young man. He also seems to have absorbed the patriotism that is so very common in America. Well, if you avoid the largest cities and college towns, that is. He recites the Pledge of Allegiance with gusto, sings ‘the Star Spangled Banner’ and ‘America the Beautiful’, and comes to love his country.

This is a major problem for his parents. His mother views patriotism as “childish” and naïve, something to be shed sooner than a belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and far, far more fantastical than those two mythical beasts. She mentions how she and her husband are careful to explain all of America’s faults to their son. She wistfully wishes she could believe in a land where ‘good and brotherhood’ co-exist while making it clear that Narnia is much more real than an America where such things as that could be.

Her son now goes to school in Manhattan. He doesn’t say the Pledge anymore and doesn’t favor the flag’s colors as he once did. While the small, ‘conservative, traditional’ school taught him to read two grades above his placement in the “well rated” school he now attends, I doubt that he will continue to be challenged to the same level of performance. She admits what this metropolitan, certainly large, absolutely ‘liberal, modern’ school has already expanded his horizons” now he wants an xbox, knows how to curse, and knows what the word ‘sexy’ means.

Oddly enough, his new school doesn’t even seem to have a single American flag.

Update:
See also the Colossus of Rhodey
and Alarming News
Another Update:
Dr. Sanity
More Updating:
The Anchoress, Sadly, No!, Instapundit, Crush Liberalism, The Corner, Teahouse on the Tracks, NewsBusters, Clear and Present, The Urban Grind, Rebecca Hartong, and many others.
Yet More:
LeatherneckM31

The Peaceful Left

There was recently an article talking about the angry Left. There has been a lot of pushback from the Left blogosphere, but the blog featured in the WaPo article, My Left Wing, actually claims that they (although Maryscott runs it, it is a joint blog in some ways) are not angry, but wrathful; they claim that wrath, a ‘just’ emotion, motivates the Left while anger (seemingly an ‘unjust’ emotion) motivates the Right. The author of the piece draws parallels with the Grapes of Wrath and mentions that the anger of the Right led to the Know-Nothings, the Moral Majority, Huey Long, and other ‘repressive, jingoistic’ movements. The wrath of the Left, the author contends, led to Populist and Progressive movements and the protests against the Vietnam War (with the implication that these things are righteous).

The author explicitly admits that ‘out of context’ the vitriol of the Left (as exemplified by Maryscott), seen as anger, can be “jagged and shockingly hateful”. Well, I must agree that many see it that way. But, the author continues, when seen ‘in context’ it is a passionate force that ‘unites readers’ by having them share her wrath and this shared wrath creates a sense of ‘empowered community’. So, what context is it that transforms the expletive-laden foamed ranting of this self-described ‘insanely angry’ woman into an exercise in community building? What type of context could forge a reality where the Ann Coulters of the world seethe with the impotent rage of the powerless while Maryscott and fellow wrathful Leftists roar with the empowered rage of those abandoned by their government?

Why, nothing less than the “call-to-action of a people’s revolution”, of course.

Oh, that context.

Let’s be honest, here – this guy is actually a pretty good example of the typical Modern American Leftist. These sorts, seemingly immune to self-reflection, point to Ann Coulter and attempt to savage her as angry but look to Howard Dean as a man driven to anger by the injustices of this dusty Earth. Or the scores of leftwing bloggers who rant on and on about how much they hate ‘ignorant, mouth-breathing, close-minded, inbred, racist, xenophobic, theocratic, greedy, homophobic, wingnut, fundie rightwingers’ who are inherently evil because they are so… bigoted. That is why the author of this piece can sneer down his nose at Huey Long and the Moral Majority while holding up Populism, Progressivism, and the Vietnam Protests as paragons of ‘righteous action’.

Maryscott O’Connor, the boss of My Left Wing, describes herself as a “leftist Liberal Socialist commie” with obvious pride. The author refers to the ‘context’ of a ‘call-to-action of a people’s revolution’ transforming ‘shockingly hateful’ words and actions into a righteous cause – all part and parcel of the Communist agitators of 3-4 decades ago. It is all part of the whole; the Left in America still embraces Socialism and Communism very closely, often very publicly. The Nation calls for the Left to openly admit that they are, indeed, Socialists. In that article for the Nation the author, Ronald Aronson, argues that the Democrats lack a vision because they have abandoned Socialism (at least publicly) and he calls on them, much like the Daily Kos and many other leftwing bloggers, to move further to the Left and embrace Socialism proudly and publicly.

How many times must Socialism and Communism fail before the Left admits that they are failures? No Communist government has survived the 20th century with anything resembling actual Communism fully in place without massive pain. Communist China is a capitalist’s paradise, only lacking civil rights. Vietnam is quickly joining China as a “we’re run by dictators called Communists, but we want time and a half for overtime so little Suzy can get a new cell phone” style state. The Soviet Union slaughtered tens of millions of its own people with purges, pogroms, and purposeful starvation campaigns. The repressions of Communist dictatorships in South America were terrible. The repression in Cambodia under Communism were horrific. The concept of Communism permitting civil rights is a joke, let alone the sometimes-heard argument that Communist nations were “more free’.

Communism is primarily an economic system. The Soviet Union collapsed because of a total failure of its economy. Cuba went from being the envy of Latin America, a nation so wealthy that it had positive migration to Cuba from all over the world, to being one of the poorest nations on Earth. The only reason Cuba survived was the more than $100 billion dollars in aid poured in by the Soviet Union prior to its collapse. Since then Cuba has subsisted on aid, tourism, and similar means. The devastation of the Communist economic system looks like it will last two to three generations after Communism ends. Even Germany, which had half of its economy remain non-Communist, will take decades more to recover. Mentioned earlier, the only reason China and Vietnam are doing well economically is – they no longer have Communist economies. Venezuela’s quasi-Communist president’s attempts to create a Communist-style economy have already damaged the Venezuelan GDP (which is shrinking per capita), even with its large oil wealth.

So Communism is a complete failure as a economic system (its primary purpose) and all Communist nations have been marked with repression, terror, and injustice. Every. Single. One. It seems obvious that, in this day and age, Communists are one of three sorts of people: the first sort are totally ignorant of history. They don’t know about the routine repression, murder, torture, and other repressions of all past Communist regimes, nor the economic stagnation, mismanagement, and waste. This allows them to believe the propaganda that Communism will ‘make things better’. Most “four year Communists” (i.e., college students majoring in Peace and Justice Studies) are of this sort. The second sort of people want a world where the few people who are left are simple, largely-ignorant peasants who till the soil for subsistence and have no access to industry or technology. Surprisingly, there are a fair number of modern Communists like this.

The third sort are the ones that believe that they will be the apparatchiks, the Party Members, the movers and shakers. You know, the dictators. No scratching in the earth for wheat for them; no bone-crushing quota at the smelter to achieve the newest Five Year Plan in their Communist Utopias. No, sir, they will be giving speeches at the Party Congress, addressing the UN, and setting those Five Year Plan quotas! I personally believe that there are more of these types leading marches, writing columns, and updating their blogs than most suspect.

“But Deep,” you say, “That Aronson fella’ was talking about Socialism, not Communism.”

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I say.

Way back when Marx was talking about such things originally, he envisioned an ‘intermediate stage’ between the chains of Capitalism and the liberation that would be the new era of the Communist Man. Marx and later theorist theorists termed this halfway house of the soul ‘Socialism’. Before that difference became effectively formalized by the Bolshevik Revolution, Socialism and Communism were completely interchangeable terms. After the foundation of the Soviet Union the Socialists of Europe began to drift away from what became Stalinist Communism. But Socialism retained the essentially Communist ideas of the exploitation of labor, the class struggle, and that the means of production need to be controlled and centrally planned.

In other words, Socialism is still Communism Lite. There is still great debate over how close to Communism Socialism is, should be, could be, ever was, etc. In the end, however, the European Socialist nations share certain characteristics – they accept as true the central arguments behind Communism (as I mentioned, the class struggle, the labor theory of value, the historical inevitability of the advance of Socialism, that all profit is theft, and the belief that at least the main elements of production need to be controlled by the state. Many toss in a distrust or hate of any personal property); they have a mixed economy (either because their nation is not fully Socialist and Capitalist elements resist the transition, or they have modified their view of Socialism to face reality); and they are all in decline.

Of course they are in decline; after all, many if not all of the core ideas they base their economic theories on are simply wrong. Its like trying to research genetics by studying DNA while thinking that Lamarck fellow certainly had it right. The two ideas are in conflict.

As I have written before, the economic decline of Europe may be irreversible. Their per capita GDP and median income are lower than in America, their tax base is shrinking rapidly, and they are facing the vastly increased cost of pensions and healthcare for a population of elderly that will increase 50% in the next 20 years. As the recent riots in France have proven, the Socialist elements of Europe will certainly continue to resist any attempts to change the status quo – effectively dooming themselves to a squalid future.

So while Communism promises poverty immediately, Socialism defers it for a generation or two down the road. I’m sure that you’ll agree with me that one is not really an improvement over the other.

But what about the examples the author uses? Populism, Progressivism, and the Vietnam Protests? These were surely noble!

Maybe. But I don’t think so. To begin, the first time I read the author praise Populism as “visionary” and then hold up Huey Long for contempt in the same sentence I burst into a long, loud laugh. After all, Huey Long was a Democrat and master populist whose tremendous local political power was based upon his plan to soak the rich, provide a minimum income to all people, and create a universal pension system fueled by a steeply progressive income tax. The man was a Socialist populist if their ever was one in this country. I suspect he is rejected by the modern Left for the crime of being a Southerner. While the most recent Populist Party in America was a vehicle for a former Klansman, the original was a far-left party of union members and poor farmers. Let’s just say that populism has had a checkered history that the author seems largely ignorant of and move on.

Progressivism is largely a synonym for Socialism, although many self-identified Progressives of my acquaintance seem to be more focused on social issues rather than economic theory. This doesn’t mean that they don’t support ideas like a living wage, steeply progressive taxes, universal health care, etc. It just means that they don’t understand economics. Progressives traditional oppose Capitalism and embrace Socialist ideas of labor, markets, and wages. This means, of course, that they are ignoring the reality of Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa that show that these economic concepts are flawed. As Socialism is Communism Lite, Progressivism is Socialism Lite. “All of the faulty premises, none of the history of failure!”

The protests against the war in Vietnam sometimes had a noble aim. While I always have (and always will) suspect that a great deal of the reluctance to fight by many of the protestors was born of fear of battle (or even just fear of the regimentation of army life), there were many who seemed willing to face prison for their opposition. So I give at least some of them the benefit of my own doubts. However, many involved were involved for selfish reasons, and some were involved out of (wait for it) Communist ideals.

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War were eventually found to be collaborating with North Vietnam to cause mass rebellion in the US Army and, eventually, to stage a POW release as political capital for VVAW. The VVAW also promoted the view that the legitimate government of Vietnam was the Communist party of the North. The protests led to the formation and activities of groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army (a Communist group dedicated to the violent overthrow not just of the American government, but American society as a whole), the Weather Underground (a similar group), and other groups (the Black Panthers, the White Panthers, etc.) were all avowedly Communist and most either embraced/advocated/performed violence or condoned it – if that violence was aimed at Capitalism. Indeed, the Yippies (Abbie Hoffman’s group) were anti-Capitalism first, anti-American culture second, anti-war third or fourth.

Again and again when we look at the Left we see Communist errors about the nature of people, society, and economics at the core of their beliefs. No matter how many times Communism is tried and failed, the Left returns to it. The more wounded and ineffectual Socialist governments become, the more the Left in America wants to emulate them. While Cuban refugees become millionaires in Miami, the Left claims that Cuba is a poor nation because America exploits them. While Venezuela’s GDP shrinks and the country morphs from a coffee exporter to a country where coffee is scarce, the American Left praises its quasi-Communist president for his sound economic ideas. At the same time that scholars are still struggling to quantify the perhaps 120 million dead as a result of Communism, the Left points to its ideals as the best way of life.

How is it possible for people who speak intelligently, can document an education, and claim to be motivated by compassion be so blind to the horrors that Communism has inflicted on the world? How is it possible that they watch the once-great material wealth and rich culture of Europe drain away like water poured onto sand and decide that they want to emulate them and their ideas?

The short answer is, one thing motivates their embrace of Communism/Socialism: fear.

Democracy is an inherently messy process. Sometimes the things that you support don’t rise to the top. Sometimes the things you want don’t get into the law. Sometimes the things you hate prevail. Leftists don’t like this. Thus we witness their push to use the courts to avoid the democratic process, or to reverse democratic decisions. Don’t like the actual will of the people (as expressed through their elected representatives)? Just use a sympathetic judge to force through the changes you want and claim the moral high ground as “the real majority” or “the voice of the people” or as representatives of the “historical inevitability of Progressive thought”.

Capitalism is also an inherently risky venture. Two people with equal backgrounds, equal education, equal money can start out at the same time with the same goals. Twenty years later, one could be the richest man in the world, the other could be an assistant manager at a Quickie Mart. Another twenty years and the first man could be slinging hash in a greasy spoon and the second could be buying a private island in the Pacific. Hard work and determination can take you far, but there are no guarantees; luck and uncertainty are always part of the equation (although they can be planned for). While some people embrace this as a chance to achieve, others are terrified of the potential to fail.

I’ve always suspected that this fear underlies at least some of the many young people born into the middle and middle-upper class who turn to Communism; they are terrified of both the possibility of failing and, perhaps even more, the spectre of being mediocre. After all, if success is largely a result of hard work and determination, who and what do you blame if you aren’t the richest man in the world? So they turn to a system that wants to make everyone the same – no losers. No winners, but no losers.

In the end, Communism and Socialism are just more utopian schemes. They both promise perfection on Earth if you just believe and follow the rituals, people will change into perfect people, society will be transformed into a perfect society, and hunger and want will vanish forever. Because of this vision of Heaven on Earth, it will probably continue to lure the immature, the frightened, the confused, and the ignorant for decades to come.

[For the record, this utopic vision is why the Catholic Church has always distrusted Communism and Socialism. Despite all of the rhetoric from the Left, the Church understands that the people and things of this world will never be perfect.]




(note: I am unsure of the author Nonpartisan’s gender and use male pronouns throughout. If I am wrong, too bad.)