Marriage is the Best Fatherhood Initiative

The Obama administration has given high profile to programs to promote active fatherhood. I applaud these efforts.

Marriage proponents, like me, are distressed, though, that the administration has taken a step back from parallel programs to support marriage that had a high profile in the Bush administration.

Active fatherhood is good for kids, fathers, and mothers. Active married fatherhood is even better for kids, fathers, and, especially, mothers.

Grown-Up Party of the Center

Michael Gerson has an op-ed in the Washington Post contrasting the Ugly Party - from both ends of the political spectrum - with the Grown-Up Party. He does not place the Grown-Up Party, but from his examples it seems to me to be clearly in the center.

In his criticism of the Ugly Party way of talking he has a lovely quote from John Avlon:

If you only take offense when the president of your party is compared to Hitler, you are part of the problem.

Freedom Isn't Free - So Pay Your Taxes

On the Fourth of July the Gruntleds celebrate Independence Day along with other patriotic Americans. We will hear often today that "freedom isn't free." What most people who I hear use this phrase mean is that we have to be willing to go to war to defend our freedom, and sometimes other people's freedom. This is true.

I was surprised when some of these same people mocked Vice-President Biden for saying that paying taxes is patriotic.

Freedom Isn't Free in the most obvious financial sense, too. We honor our military for defending us. Most of what we pay federal taxes for is to pay for our military expenses. Taxes pay for our freedom in the most direct way. And the thousand and one other things that we expect the government to do also cost money. Of course some tax money is badly spent. But nearly all of it is spent on what we the people elected our representatives to spend it on - serving the common good. Many government programs do not benefit me directly, but they benefit some citizens. Paying for programs that benefit other people is what good citizenship requires.

Freedom isn't free. Paying taxes is patriotic.

Chastened Has the Right Message About Sex

Hephzibah Anderson, a British journalist, came to think at 30 that the quick march to sex with the men she knew in her 20s had short-circuited her emotional connections with them. So she swore off sex for a year. In a new book, Chastened, she talks about what she learned. Her interview with Aylin Zafar in the Atlantic concludes thus:

"There's been a lot less sex, but more romance. And a lot more emotional closeness."

The Low-Libido Middle Class is Not Really a Problem

Camille Paglia has another catchy title in her latest New York Times op-ed: "No Sex, Please, We're Middle Class." She thinks that the United States' middle class is in a sexual doldrums. No chemicals, no female Viagra or its male counterpart, can make up for the boringness of our cerebral work and lives. She wants a revitalization of lust.

I think she is right that the sexual appetites of the dominant class are not overwhelming. Popular sociology has invented the concept of DINS - Double Income, No Sex - for couples who would rather work than couple. This is a new circumstance.

I do not think a low libido in the dominant class is a problem. The sexualization of everything in popular culture, and the ubiquity of porn, has, I think, put so much overemphasis on sex that it loses its cultural power. Sexual stimulation still works on our bodies, as it always has an always will. But too much sex in the culture means that ordinary people don't have to spend much time thinking about it.

I think we can see low libido among married couples as a healthy, proportionate estimation of the modest good that is sex.