Authoritarianism and Parties

This week I will be blogging on a very interesting new study, Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler's Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.

Authoritarians tend to vote Republican these days. But this was not always so. Hetherington and Weiler show that the big partisan gap that we see now, as compared with, say, 40 years ago, is because the Republican strategists have been successful in getting authoritarians to become solid Republicans. They argue that the American electorate is not more authoritarian than it used to be. It is just better sorted into parties now that it was before.

The beginning of this big sort came in the wake of the civil rights legislation, which was led by Democrats but passed by bipartisan majorities. Republicans' suffered a crushing defeat in the Goldwater - Johnson election in 1964. At the same time the Democrats succeeded in shifting black voters to the Democratic Party. Republican leaders then adopted the "Southern strategy" to "go hunting where the ducks are" - that is, to get Southern whites who thought civil rights and integration would upend the social order, to switch to the Republican Party. This strategy worked so well that the GOP successfully recruited other groups who feared that the social order was in danger from the movement for equal rights for women, and today's movement for equal rights for homosexuals.

There are, of course, authoritarians and nonauthoritarians in both parties. But there has been a clear movement of most authoritarians into the Republican Party, which has been a key part of GOP success since 1980.

Authoritarianism: The Spectrum

This week I will be blogging on a very interesting new study, Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler's Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.

Hetherington and Weiler say that the underlying factor organizing American politics for the past generation has been a spectrum running from authoritarian to the somewhat colorless "nonauthoritarian." Authoritarians want order. They see the world in black-and-white terms, and want a muscular response to any threats to the social order.

Everyone sees the social order threatened some times. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 triggered a nearly universal sense in the United States that we were under attack and in real danger. People at the authoritarian pole see our social order as being under dangerous attack all the time. People at the nonauthoritarian pole, by contrast, see the world in more nuanced terms, and try to solve problems with negotiation instead of force whenever possible. They are more accepting of difference because they don't see it as threatening.

Partisan politics forces people toward the poles by forcing choices between one candidate, or party, and another. Political elites are more polarized that regular people are. The strategy of political elites is to push and pull the mass in the middle toward one pole or the other.

Social scientists have put much effort into studying authoritarians. An interesting innovation in Hetherington and Weiler's approach is that they focus on the nonauthoritarians. The authoritarians, they argue, are fearful all the time, no matter what happens in reality. What makes for change in politics comes when the middle mass of the spectrum is made more fearful, or more hopeful.

This analysis strikes me as very useful to centrist analysis. I will unfold their argument hereafter.

Beyond Rebuilding: Conclusion

For the last five Sundays I have been responding to the individual essays in Beyond Rebuilding: Shaping a Life Together. Today I want to say a brief overall assessment of this debate.

The core issue is whether the church should seek to build up the authority of its national leaders to lead the whole denomination, or whether it should break down any power accumulating in its national leaders to tell anyone what to do.

I say you can't have authority without power. When Jesus was praised as one who taught with authority, that was not just a personal compliment. His authority was the reason that he should be listened to and followed. When Jesus gave the keys to Peter, he was confirming that Peter had the authority to use the power that is necessary to run the church. The church serves the powerless, but it does not serve them by being powerless.

Every organization needs power to run. The more that power comes from the authority of its leaders, the better. Authority comes from other people recognizing and following. No recognition of authority, no following of leaders, no church.

The best organizations coordinate the authority of individual leaders into a group that works together, following a coherent vision, for the good of the whole organization. They seek to reproduce that coherent group of leaders for the good of the organization in the future. That is an Establishment.

I think it is clear that the church should seek an Establishment. Whether it will find one even then is still unknown. But I think it is clear that if we do not even seek an Establishment, if instead we undermine any possible Establishment, then we will have a weak church that continues to decline.

Coffeehouses and the Public Sphere

The third (and penultimate) of my Centre Seminar vlog posts on coffeehouses is up.

Preventing Divorce in the Two Kansas Cities: A Great Natural Experiment

Kansas City, MO has the high divorce rate we find in most of the country. Kansas City, KS, has cut its divorce rate by 70% in a decade.

Led by Rev. Jeff Meyers, a white pastor from suburban Christ Lutheran Church, and Rev. Leroy Sullivan, a black pastor of the inner-city Bread of Life Church, Kansas City, KS adopted a Community Marriage Policy in 1996. The ministers in town agreed not to perform any marriages until the couple had worked through a pre-marital inventory and worked with mentor couples.

I have long supported Community Marriage Policies. This is the best side-by-side comparison I know of showing how well it can work.

Average Income and Happiness

Yesterday I noted Daniel Kahneman's contention that Americans report their happiness rises with their income up to a point, but after that point, there is no correlation with happiness. The point he named was $60,000 in household income per year. I noted that this is about the midpoint of the income distribution in the U.S.A. now.

An anonymous respondent pointed out that more money has meant more contentment for her family, and where you live makes a big difference in whether $60,000 buys basic contentment or not. She offered that in her California neighborhood, $60,000 would not go very far. She reports that now that they make $200,000 they are more content than they were when they made half that.

This criticism is just. To apply Kahneman's insight about the nation as a whole to any particular place we would need to adjust the number to local conditions. The median household income in California as a whole is about $60,000. However, of the 100 communities with the highest median household income in the United States, 19 are in California (far higher than California's proportion of the national population). The top of the list: Atherton, CA, with a median household income just over $200,000.

To turn Kahneman's finding into a general proposition, I propose this hypothesis: happiness correlates with income up to the median household income of your community.

Happiness Flatlines Halfway Up the Income Ladder

Boing Boing reports this gem from the TED conference [TED used to mean Technology, Entertainment, Design; now it means Ideas Worth Spreading in many fields]:

Psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman says millions of dollars won't buy you happiness, but a job that pays $60,000 a year might help. Happiness levels increase up to the $60K mark, but "above that it's a flat line," he said.

$60,000 is about the midpoint of the income scale for American families - 50% makes less than that, 50% make more. This is a reachable income standard for nearly all two-income couples, and for the great majority of college graduates by themselves (and much more with a second income in the family).

Once your basic survival needs are met, even in an expensive country, happiness mostly depends on who you spend time with and how well you interact.

Geek Barbie

Barbie is now a computer engineer. She has a binary code tee shirt. And heels.

I think this is progress.

A Fifth of Singles Have Tried Internet Dating

A new study from Duke sociologists Rebecca Tippett, S. Philip Morgan, and Jessica Sauter have found that 18% of single people with access to the internet have tried online dating. The people who use online dating are most likely to be educated white people in cities or their suburbs.

In my survey of Centre College alumni I find that 5.8% of the married alumni met their spouses online. I did not ask how many of the still-single had also tried online data, but I expect the Centre results match those in the Duke study.

Beyond Rebuilding 5

John L. Williams contributed the last essay in Beyond Rebuilding, a volume of essays in response to my Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment. He entitles his response "Thought Provoking, But Insufficient." He agrees with much of what I say, but differs on a couple of points. I feel the same way about Rev. Williams' analysis.

Rev. Williams notes that my critique and proposal is mostly about rebuilding the polity of the church, and does not deal sufficiently with the church's culture and theology. This is largely true. The one crucial area of culture that I deal with is our culture of undermining authority within the church. That is specifically what I am trying to change. Williams rightly notes that the whole world has changed when it comes to authority since the 1960s. This is true. But it is also true that the organizations that have grown and prospered since then have rebuilt their authoritative leadership on a more inclusive basis. The organizations that only dismantled the old structures of authority, without building a new culture of authority, are floundering.

On theology, I think my experience of how the church works is different from Rev. Williams'. I contend that the church's official confession is meant to be the authoritative working summary of the church's theology. As I look at how the church actually employs its many confessions these days, I don't see that. The confessions are quoted when convenient, and ignored otherwise. All the struggles in the church that have consequences are over the rules of order, not the confessions. I do not believe this attitude toward the confessions are simply "a few well-publicized cases" of defiance, but a widespread view that the confessions are for individual guidance, but have no institutional authority.

Rev. Williams, a former synod executive, rightly says that I "would have considered me [Williams] part of the PC (USA)'s Establishment." Not just would have, but do now. Rev. Williams is still part of the Presbyterian Establishment, and has both the experience and, I think, the duty, to lead. Thus, when he writes

What then will propel us forward? I believe it will require a yet-to-be-defined combination of theological restatement for our time, deep contextual analysis, clarity of purpose, shared vision, courageous leadership, and attention to congregational worship, nurture, and spiritual formation, remembering always that Jesus Christ is Lord of all and head of the church.

I say yes, DO IT. Leaders lead. Members of the Establishment earn their authority by making that restatement, doing that analysis, courageously leading - not by pushing it off on others.

Czech, Please

The background one needs for this joke is:

1) Mrs. G's first name is Susan; and

2) The Gruntleds still haven't forgiven Neville Chamberlain for selling out Czechoslovakia.

I sent this message to our eldest daughter:

"I am going to take Mom to the Czech Republic. They have the best Sue datin' land."


I cc'ed Mrs. G., and waited for her to open email. I knew she had opened this message when a belly laugh emanated from her corner of the bedroom.

She forwarded the message to her relatives.

Daughter #1 replied: "Feel the inter-state GROAN. Don't just hear it, FEEL it."

My father-in-law replied: "Very possibly the worst pun I have ever heard or read (or smelled)."

Older Fathers Increase the Risk of Autistic Kids

A new large-scale study in California found that father's age, more than mother's age, increases the risk of having an autistic child. The core finding:

The new study suggested that when the father was over 40 and the mother under 30, the increased risk was especially pronounced — 59 percent greater than for younger men.

Why Men Are More Likely to Do the Driving

Eric Morris wrote a Freakonomics blogpost about why men are more likely to drive when a couple travels together. It drew such a disparate and impassioned response that he wrote another. The core finding is this:

The 2001 National Household Transportation Survey ... showed that, on a typical day, when household members shared a car men were more than three times more likely to be the driver as opposed to a passenger.

This an issue in our family. There are three female drivers in the Gruntled family now, and they all almost always prefer that I drive. I always ask Mrs. G. (we were trained as '70s feminists in gender power, after all) and she almost always asks me to drive.

I can think of two reasons for the gender imbalance in who drives, both well rooted in sex differences.

First, men as a group find spatial problems easier to solve. So if we are taking a trip that might include parallel parking, the ladies in our family would rather that I handled it. This varies quite a bit from individual to individual, so your mileage may vary. Still, the sex difference in handling spacial issues is well-attested, so it should show up as a tipping factor in some driving decisions.

Second, women like to look at their conversation partner when talking, whereas men often do not. If she is driving and talking to him, she may often turn to look at him to see his reactions. Taking her eye off the road while driving is scary to both of them. On the other hand, if he is driving and talking to her, she can look at his face without danger, while he will be much less tempted to swivel to look at her at each turn in the dialogue.

Centre Seminars: Coffee Houses, Part 1 and 2

Centre College has launched a web seminar series. This gives me another chance to talk about coffee houses and public life. The first two episodes have been posted on YouTube. I am pleased to share them.

The Tebow Ad Was Charming

The Super Bowl ad that succeeded in getting the most publicity was the Focus on the Family spot with college football star Tim Tebow and his mother. Pam Tebow was a missionary in the Philippines when she was pregnant with the Tebow's fifth child. She was so ill from a tropical disease and the treatment for it that doctors told her to have an abortion. Pam and her husband rejected that option. After a difficult pregnancy, they had their "miracle baby," who has gone on to obviously glowing health. At the end of the ad, Tim Tebow humorously tackles his mother, which lets her say, smiling, "you gotta be tough."

I can't find a direct link to the ad, but if you go to the Focus on the Family site and click on "The Tebow Story," a link to "Watch the Tebow spots" will appear immediately.

The actual ad that they made is charming. It is very low key. It says nothing about abortion, or even the medical difficulty that Pam Tebow and her family went through.

The controversy, though seems to have brought out the irrational in some people. Before the ad aired, tens of thousands of emails were solicited objecting to it, by people who had not seen it. Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, went so far as to say that "I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it." Alterian SM2, a company that tracks social media content about Super Bowl ads, said that before the ad aired, negative comments far outweighed positive. After people had actually seen the ad, though, most people liked it.

Responsible Fathers in Super Bowl Ads

The ads in the Super Bowl had a strong discourse about masculinity for married fathers. Some, such as the Dodge Charger ad, saw marriage and fatherhood as an imposition - worthwhile, but making a man deserving of masculine compensation in the form of a muscle car.

Others, though, took a more positive view of marriage and fatherhood, more as a challenging adventure. The Google ad, "Parisian Love," did this cleverly, through a series of queries that implied the life course of a man from pre-courtship to wedding and child.

My favorite ad was for Dove. The galloping romp through a man's life from boyhood to responsible, happy marriage and fatherhood is charming. I was particularly interested to note that they suggest having three kids, rather than the customary two of earlier ads. And the conclusion is that married fatherhood is not an imposition, but a great life.

I personally am not interested in the product, but I like this development in the Zeitgeist.

Beyond Rebuilding 4

Reply to "Overcoming the Presbyterian Power Trap: Toward an Authentic Multicultural Witness in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)" by J. Herbert Nelson II.

This is the fourth in a series of responses to the five articles in Beyond Rebuilding, which were written in answer to my Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.

Like Rev. Nelson I want the leadership of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to be made of men and women drawn from all the classes, ethnicities, and cultural groups of America. I have every confidence that if the church seeks leaders who are faithful, loyal, and thoughtful Presbyterians, such a mixture will naturally emerge. We may differ on whether that is happening fast enough, and on whether the season of affirmative action is still needed, or whether the need has passed.

On a larger question, though, I think Rev. Nelson and I may disagree. Neither of us wrote specifically enough in our short essays to settle the point, so I don't want to be too definitive here. I would welcome further dialogue on these points.

I agree with Rev. Nelson that the leadership of the church should have a multicultural background. I do not agree that what the church should be seeking is a multicultural future. The church, like any viable institution, has and constantly recreates its own culture. The culture of the Presbyterian Church should be Presbyterian. This has a definite meaning for our polity, as the name presbyterian suggests. It also has a strong foundation, and is supposed to have clear limits, in our confessional constitution. The Presbyterian Establishment should be able to bring in people from all backgrounds and shape them into Presbyterians.

The content of Presbyterian culture is not rigid or fixed, as the church's changed culture about women in leadership and racial exclusion shows. Leading the discussion about whether and how to change while still being true to the theological convictions of the church is what an establishment is for. But I contend that the aim of a Presbyterian establishment is not to produce a multicultural witness, but to be a group with a multicultural background that gives a Presbyterian witness.

Doppleganger

It was doppleganger week on Facebook recently. I remarked that I couldn't think of a famous person I looked like. This prompted some helpful suggestions.

Several suggested actor Victor French, best known as Mr. Edwards on "Little House on the Prairie."

Ulysses S. Grant got a vote, representing the greatest age of beards in U.S. history.

A sociologically informed friend suggested a young Max Weber (though I think I have a shaky claim on looking like the "young" anything).

One friend made the wonderful suggestion of "santa, pre-realization of true calling."

Finally, we come to Mrs. G.'s suggestion:

What Do Republicans Believe About Sex Roles?

The Daily Kos commissioned a poll by non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000 of over 2,000 self-identified Republicans.

On the whole, these are quite conservative people. Take, for example, these answers:

Should same-sex couples be allowed to marry? No 77%

Do you consider abortion to be murder? Yes 76%

Should contraceptive use be outlawed? Yes 31%

Do you you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is through Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith? Christ 67%


So it was particularly interesting to me to see the answers to these questions about men's and women's roles. The questions were

Should women work outside the home?

Are marriages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households?

What do you think this group of Republicans will say?



Should women work outside the home? Yes 86%

Are marriages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households? Equal 76%

I believe these core objectives of seventies feminism have been achieved.

The Internet vs. the Second Shift

Virginia Heffernan makes a semi-serious claim in the New York Times Magazine that women have benefited more than men from telecommuting. She says that the WAHM - work-at-home mom - is the most valuable of all the motherhood and (or vs.) career options. She even offers telecommuting as a cure for the second shift. The internet is the real technological development that saved women from being tied to the home, because it lets them work from it.

"Marriage Benefit Imbalance" - Beating a Horse that Refuses to Die

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a successful book justifying her divorce, Eat, Pray, Love. Having written about how terrible marriage is for women, she had to write a new book, Committed, to justify her second marriage. Family scholars have been worked up about this book because Gilbert claims that sociologists take as a fact “the ‘Marriage Benefit Imbalance’—a tidy name for an almost freakishly doleful conclusion: that women generally lose in the exchange of marriage vows, while men win big.”

Not true. Family sociologists now show the many ways that marriage benefits women as well as men. Gilbert reaches back to some of the most discredited findings in family sociology to support her conclusion. She cites Jesse Bernard's claim that marriage makes women depressed in the book Bernard wrote to justify her divorce.

What is most striking to me about Gilbert's ambition in her new book is that she misses the main point of marriage as a social institution: to protect and raise children.

90% Egg Loss By 30

A new British study found that, on average, women had lost about 90% of their egg-producing capacity by 30, and had lost about 97% by age 40.

This is in addition to earlier findings that the remaining eggs are more likely to be damaged the older they are.

A Decent Case for Orphanages

Richard McKenzie makes a pretty good case for orphanages in the Wall Street Journal. He does, though, mix together the dire need in Africa, where there are many actual orphans, with the case of American foster children, few of whom have actually lost both parents.

There are half a million children in foster care in the U.S. I think some tens of thousands of them could be better served by a permanent home in an orphanage than in a series of temporary foster placements.

Beyond Rebuilding 3

Reply to "Rebuilding - Or Building Up? An Alternative View of the Church and Its Future" by Cynthia Holder Rich.

This is the third in a series of responses to the five articles in Beyond Rebuilding, which were written in answer to my Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.

Prof. Rich approaches my argument through empirical research on assessment, which I appreciate. She considers E. Digby Baltzell's account of how an establishment assimilates talented outsiders as the just way to build up and renew the leadership of society, which is foundational to my analysis. (She puts a [sic] after "assimilation" for reasons not clear to me - if you read this Prof. Rich I would welcome a clarification). She cites the evangelization of Madagascar as an example of the bad things that can happen for a church that seeks to include only the powerful. I applaud and agree with all of these elements of Prof. Rich's argument.

I think she errs, though, in thinking that I am arguing that the leadership of the Presbyterian Church should include only the powerful. She writes "But being in power (or to use Weston's term, authority) ... raises issues when we try to follow Jesus." Power is not the same as authority.

The leadership of the Presbyterian Church has so little power to make anyone do anything that the idea is chucklesome. But we do recognize that some people have natural gifts for leadership because they understand what would build up the church and the world, they have the energy and dedication to turn that understanding into reality, and they teach with authority. That is why we follow them. That is why in a well-functioning organization, we draw them into positions with bigger responsibilities, broader scope, and larger numbers of people they are responsible for leading. In order to compensate for the demands of these bigger jobs, we pay them somewhat more, we give them what little power there is in a voluntary organization, and, most especially, we pay them with honor.

One of the ways that Presbyterian Church leaders do the work of building up the church is by drawing people to their congregations. That is a by-product of their authority. They have no power to make anyone come to church. A well-functioning denomination would honor and reward leaders capable of building up little congregations into big ones. And big congregations would be smart to call people who had shown a capacity to lead large, complex congregations. A well-functioning denomination would draw upon the skills of those who lead large congregations to be among the leaders of the even larger and more complex bodies of the church. The leaders of large congregations would not, of course, be the only leaders of the denomination, but they do form a natural body of the people most likely to have the relevant skills.

Prof. Rich cites studies of successful racial-ethnic congregations as producing leaders different from those found in the establishment of 50 years ago. My point, and Baltzell's, is that a smart denomination would include the leaders of the most successful of those congregations in the establishment of the entire denomination. It does the denomination no good, and it certainly does those successful leaders no good, to dismantle the establishment.

Prof. Rich rightly notes that authority is a snare to pride. She claims to "speak 'as one without authority.'" Yet she backs her claims with her experience as a seminary professor and her mastery of relevant research. That is a claim of authority. She has a vision for the church. Asking others to follow that vision is also a claim of authority. Authority is not an oppressive thing. Authority is a tool that any institution needs if it is going to do its job. And any large organization - a denomination of millions of people - needs an established body of authoritative leaders working together if it is going to do its job. A Presbyterian Establishment includes all the authoritative leaders who are good at doing the job of the Presbyterian Church.

Puddle

Snowy Saturdays need a bit of wholesome charm. This comes from one of my favorite gruntled sites, It Made My Day:

All the Mom’s were forcing their kids around the big puddle in front of the playground. One mom led her son right into the middle and they both started jumping up and down and splashing each other. IMMD

Tories Are Right: Marriage is What Makes for Stability

The British Conservative Party has proposed pro-marriage tax breaks, like those used in other European countries. The Labour Party says it is not marriage that makes for family stability, so no such breaks are needed.

New research on British families, though, shows clearly that marriage itself is the key factor in family stability. One new headline number: of cohabiting couples with children, only 3% are still together when the child is 15.

Educated and Uneducated Women Want the Same Number of Children, But Uneducated Have More Unintended Kids

Less educated women have more kids than more educated women do. A standard explanation is that less educated women want more kids, or that they would have a lower cost in lost opportunities to do other things if they did have kids.

Kelly Musick and colleagues report in the current Social Forces that both groups of women want the same number of children. However, educated women are better at sticking to their plans. The less education a woman has, the more likely she is to have unintended pregnancies.

The sociologists distinguish among intended, mistimed, and unwanted pregnancies. Mistimed means "I wanted to get pregnant in the future, but not when I did get pregnant"; unwanted means "I did not want to get pregnant at all, but I did." Both of the latter are "unintended."

The core finding is this:

What education mainly deters is unintended births. ... The least educated white women are predicted to have .86 times as many intended, 3.02 times as many mistimed, and 6.68 times as many unwanted births as their counterparts who have graduated from college. [The comparable numbers for black women are 1.36, 1.69, and 7.33]

Dating By Contrasting DNA

A new dating service uses your DNA to find potential mates with contrasting immune systems. People with contrasting immune systems find themselves mysteriously attracted to one another.

The contrast is useful for your potential children.

The obvious next test: to see if contrasting immune system matches and eHarmony, etc., personality matches coincide.

Leaders Choose Themselves

I have written about how leaders for the Presbyterian Church can form an establishment, which can be a great resource for the whole denomination. This has led some critics to say that when nominating committees choose leaders, they should not choose powerful people, but a representative group. Which led me to clarify a thought: leaders are not chosen; leaders choose themselves.

Max Weber devotes much fruitful thought to how a charismatic leader draws a following. The followers see a special quality in the leader. Weber says science cannot tell whether the special quality is really in the person, or is in the followers. In either case, leaders are not chosen because they are already powerful, influential, or authoritative. Leaders acquire power, influence, and authority because others follow them.

The crucial issue, then, is what potential leaders actually do that makes them worthy of following - or not. Leaders lead. If others follow, then that is what makes them leaders. If no one follows, then in the great market of authority, they failed to find their market.

Which leads to a further thought. The idea that leaders are chosen because they have been good members of the group - that they are leaders because a nominating committee elevated them for past service to the group - strikes me as a feminine way of thinking about what leadership is. The leader is the servant who is lifted up for doing what the group already does. My idea of leadership, therefore, seems to me more masculine: the leader is the one who has a vision of what new thing the group needs to do.

When I think of it that way, every organization needs both kinds of leaders.

Beyond Rebuilding 2

Reply to "What Can the Presbyterian Church Do to Turn Around Its Long Decline?" by Rev. Carol Howard Merritt

This is the second in a series of responses to the five articles in Beyond Rebuilding, which were written in answer to my Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.

My primary focus is rebuilding a structure of authority within the church so that we can actually solve some of the denomination’s endemic conflicts. The main job of an establishment is to articulate a coherent vision for the whole organization and stick relentlessly to the practical steps needed to realize it. After more than a generation of drift and decline, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has forgotten that problems actually can be solved, and that healthy organizations grow.

Carol Merritt approaches the problem of decline in the PC (USA) as a pastor, which is appropriate; that is her job. She wants to evangelize young people and build new churches, with which I entirely agree. She wants to focus on choosing leaders in her congregation who are an ethnically diverse group of young men and women interested in spiritual traditions and social justice ministries. This is the niche of Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, of which she is the pastor. I think her approach is a sensible strategy for her congregation.

I do not think it is a sensible strategy for the entire denomination.

Merritt takes it for granted that the niche of the entire Presbyterian Church is to draw people like her - “writing as a woman who grew up a conservative Baptist and converted to Presbyterianism.” Her strategy for contextual evangelism is “in this particular time we can especially minister to those who are leaving politically conservative evangelical megachurches.”

Yet when we look at the entire denomination, the politically conservative evangelical churches, mega- or wishing to be mega-, have been the main sources of growth in the whole denomination. We have been driving out evangelicals – that is, people who actually evangelize – faster than we have been growing them. In the past decade, we have been driving out entire congregations of evangelicals and conservative proponents of Reformed spiritual traditions.

The core of Generation X, who count as “young” in the PC (USA) though some are now in their 40s, are famously concerned with rebuilding basic institutions, most especially strong marriages and strong families. Churches that have approached social justice by promoting strong marriages and clear standards of childrearing have been the most successful at evangelizing the younger generations. This includes churches that encourage people to have more children, a strategy Merritt dismisses as unrealistic.

The way we find leaders for the whole denomination is not simply like finding committee members in a local church. The establishment is not a bureaucratic structure that a nominating committee chooses. An establishment is not made by choosing “those with the most authority, influence, and power in our society.” An establishment is not chosen at all. An establishment, if there is to be one, comes from the people of the denomination recognizing the influence, granting the power, and accepting the authority of those in the church who have made themselves its best leaders and most effective guides. The problem for the church is finding such leaders and not hampering them with counter-productive bureaucratic structures.

Beau Weston Wins Baby Name Poll

A really tiny baby name poll. But still, I found it gratifying, somehow.

Liberal Professors

Sociologists Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse are trying to figure out why professors in general, and sociologists in particular, as so liberal. Patricia Cohen has a pretty good story about it in the New York Times. They argue that the academy has become "politically typed" on the analogy of some jobs becoming "gender typed." It is not that conservatives get all the way through Ph.D. programs only to get turned away from professoring jobs by political discrimination. Rather, conservatives don't even start down the path of professor training. They are more likely to head to business and the professions in the first place.

I am wrestling with this argument. I think it is mostly true. I see a broad political mix of undergraduate students. Of those who head on to graduate school to be professors, quite a few are very liberal; almost none (actually, none that I can think of) are strong conservatives. The liberals expect the academy to be an easier and friendlier place for them to make their way than any other occupation would be. I attract and encourage centrists, some of whom go on to academic careers. Some of them are, indeed, pushed left by academia, though just as often they are pushed more to the center in reaction. This center movement is especially true for religious and family-oriented centrists.

In my own case, as I have moved more to the center, I have encountered some resistance from liberal academics who regard liberalism as a requirement of being a professor. Just recently I proposed a family sociology textbook that would be an empirical and centrist compilation of the basic facts of most people's family lives. A potential publisher said, reasonably, that such a book would be so controversial that it would be too risky to publish - not enough professors would assign it to make it financially viable.

Stealth Starbucks Follow-Up

The New York Times has a story about the Starbucks-owned coffeehouse in Seattle, Roy Street Coffee and Tea, that I wrote about earlier. I give Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, full credit for trying to turn his enormous company around. Trying local, and local-feeling, coffeehouses without using the Starbucks name is OK with me if it produces actual third places that serve good coffee.

I was surprised by one detail in the Times story that they do not comment on: Roy Street Coffee and Tea serves microbrew beer. I have never heard of a Starbucks serving alcohol before. Has anyone else run across this development elsewhere?

She Makes Most of the Financial Decisions, Even When He Makes More

The Pew Center report on marriage and work had an interesting chart on one of my favorite minor topics: who makes the financial decisions in the family?

The survey asked "When you and your spouse make decisions about managing the household finances, who has the final say?" Pew report combined husband and wife reports under three categories: "mainly wife," "mainly husband," and "share." The last combines two different options, "sometimes me/sometimes my spouse" and "we decide together."

Pew wanted to know if the answer to this question varied depending on whether husband or wife earned more. It does. What strikes me as most interesting, though, is that under either condition, she is more likely to make most of the financial decisions. Here are the two tables.

When the husband earns more

• 36% mainly wife
• 35% mainly husband
• 28% share

When the wife earns more

• 46% mainly wife
• 21% mainly husband
• 33% share

I think many couples make a distinction between daily finances and big ticket items. My hunch is that in most couples, the wife makes more of the daily decisions, and the husband has a greater role in the major financial decisions. The Pew results do not capture this distinction.

Still, the overall result is interesting: she is more likely to make most of the financial decisions, even when he makes more.

A Fifth of Wives Make More Than Their Husbands

The Pew Research Center reports that 22% of wives now make more than their husbands. This is up from just 4% in 1970.

Women have increased their education level dramatically in the past generation. This seems to be the main cause of their big jump in wages. More educated people are more likely to marry, so educated women are more likely to be wives. Less educated women, by contrast, are less likely to marry than they used to. Couples in which less-educated women make less than than their boyfriends, even cohabiting boyfriends, are now not in the married chart.

Still, I think it is safe to say that there has been a real rise in the proportion of couples in which she makes more than he does.

Fascinating Developments in the House of Dobson

James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has resigned as chairman of the board of that ministry and has left the "Focus on the Family" radio show he founded. His wife also left the Focus board.

Dobson is now creating a rival radio program, co-hosted by his son Ryan. An anonymous source at Focus on the Family said Ryan Dobson, who is divorced and remarried, could not be the voice of the organization under their policy.

Evidently James Dobson's policies are a little more flexible when he focuses on his own family.

Meanwhile, Focus on the Family, under new boss Jim Daly, has become less partisan and more devoted to hands-on helping with troubled families. Daly said he wants to work with Democrats. He praised President Barack Obama as a role model for African-American fathers. Focus now has a program that finds families to adopt children who have been in foster care.

Beyond Rebuilding 1

My essay, Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment, was published by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as an occasional paper of the Re-Forming Ministry project, led by Barry Ensign-George. It generated some responses. Barry has gathered five of these responses into a new Re-Forming Ministry paper, Beyond Rebuilding? Shaping a Life Together. For the next six Sundays I will respond to these essays. (None of what I say is Barry's fault).

The first essay, "Another Possible Church for a New Day," is by José Luis Casal, General Missioner [Executive Presbyter], Tres Rios Presbytery. He does not take up my argument for a Presbyterian establishment directly. He makes a general case for a missional church, one that is responsive at the local level and not centralized power. In this we agree.

Casal says the basic question is simple: "are we to save a system (structure) or humankind?" I think this is a false distinction. The church, like any social structure, is a tool for getting a job done. I don't think saving humankind is the church's job (that is a little above our pay grade), but I agree with Casal, as he says elsewhere, that the church is meant to proclaim God's salvation of humankind. Christians can't do the job God set for us without the church. We have to "save the structure." The real question is how.

Casal supports the proposal that is now before the church for a simpler, more mission-oriented Book of Order. I support this, too. He believes this will mean "less book and more order." I do not think human organizations work that way. The church is not a spontaneous order like a flock of starlings, made by each individual following simple rules. It is an enormous project that derives much of its ability to serve the world from the fact that it is organized to do things decently and in order.

Casal believes that what has been crippling the PC(USA) is that too much power has accumulated in the center. I think the problem is that we have evacuated most of the authority that the center used to have. Instead we have tried to fill the vacuum with procedures of participation without any coherent vision of what we are trying to do. Articulating the vision and convincing the church that it is just and godly is what an establishment is for.

It has been my experience in these discussions that people who say that the church should get rid of its constraining centralized structures turn out in practice to mean "tear down all the structures, except mine." José Casal does want the church to keep its centralized ethnic advocacy groups. In fact, he wants to expand them, centralize their coordination, and create more paid staff to run them. And General Missioner Casal wants the church authorities to insist on the biblical mandate of tithing to solve the church staff's funding problems.

I do not think that Rev. Casal has described another possible church for a new day. I think he has described the church we have now, with more money and more advocacy structures. That is exactly the program of the vestigial establishment that we have now.

Coffee Coal in Your Stocking

Aldo's, a fine coffee house in Mt. Lebanon, PA, offered this excellent prank gift for Christmas.

The Original Coffeehouse Geeks

I am reading Brian Cowan's The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. He is interested in how the new and odd drink/drug, coffee, and the place for using it, the coffeehouse, became legitimate - indeed, became hugely popular - in Britain in the 1600s.

Cowan makes the very good point that the people who brought coffee to Britain in the first place were "virtuosi" who were curious about how all the world worked and fit together. They followed the plan of Francis Bacon, who thought God had providentially placed useful things all over the earth. It was our job, the virtuosi thought, to seek them out and understand them. The virtuosi were, in our terms, geeks. They wanted to systematically and empirically understand the world, and thus produced the scientific Royal Society. But they were also just curious about how people elsewhere lived. They tried the customs of others to see how they felt.

One of the most successful foreign customs that the virtuosi tried was roasting coffee beans and mixing them with boiling water. They found that drinking coffee led them to want to talk to other people about all manner of things while they all drank coffee together. The coffeehouse geeks had what Avrom Fleishman, writing about today's knowledge class, called "the taste for everything."

Starbucks' Sad Slip

In Everything But the Coffee, Bryant Simon covers the arc of hipness for Starbucks. He dates this from 1992, when the company went public, to 2007, when they first lost money.

My course on coffee houses and public life spent yesterday observing various Starbucks locations. Small groups of students went to the busy downtown store, the inner suburb location with the best reputation as a community hangout, and two successful stores on the arterial roads of Lexington, Kentucky, our nearest city.

Surprisingly, the downtown location seemed to have the happiest interactions, mostly between the baristas and the customers. This is not the kind of place in which regulars would hang around, even if there are people who come in for coffee each day. I think the tone of the downtown store's interactions were better because they did not have a drive-through. The other locations, though, just did not generate much interaction among the patrons.

If you want a timetable of Starbucks' decline to ordinariness, these landmarks might do:

• 2007 loses money for the first time
• 2008 closes hundreds of poorly located stores [including one here in Danville, KY]
• 2009 introduces instant coffee
• 2010 creates "stealth Starbucks" stores that don't use the Starbucks name or logo.

Stealth Starbucks

I am teaching my course on coffee houses and public life this term. Today we will be fanning out to several Starbucks stores in Lexington to observe how well they do, in fact, function, as "third places." A third place is a place after home and work where we can socialize with others. In the ideal third place, strangers can become acquaintances and build up a body of friendly, though not consuming, social connections. Starbucks promotes itself as a third place.

Bryant Simon looked at how well Starbucks actually functions as a third place in Everything But the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks. He concludes that few Starbucks stores actually have that third place function. Simon has a blog, named after the book, that reports on new Starbucks phenomena. He notes that recently Starbucks itself has been pulling away from its own brand. Instead, they have been opening "stealth Starbucks," Starbucks owned and operated stores that mimic local independents. They name themselves after their location, and don't show the Starbucks logo.

Simon sees this move a part of a larger trend of resistance to chain stores, mass brands, and the general corporate homogenization of America.

I was reminded of Standard Oil's practice, in John D. Rockefeller's day, of buying out local oil companies but continuing to sell under the old, local brand. Most people did not know they were buying from the behemoth Standard, but thought they were still supporting the relatively local company. Standard was so successful in consuming all the competition that they became a monopoly in some places.

Starbucks is not likely to become a monopoly of third places. Indeed, I think the concept is an oxymoron. Part of the appeal of a third place is that it is local, it is the place where I am a regular. In theory, I suppose, Starbucks could become a monopoly supplier of coffee to local third places and independent coffee houses. So far, though, the independents take pride in resisting what my local coffee man calls "the Jolly Green Giant."

Buying a House Together Before Marriage Gets Your Priorities Backwards

Many couples live together before marriage. Some do so for a long time, even have children. A few of them put off getting married because they have an insanely expensive idea of what a wedding should be.

The current housing market is producing the next illogical step in that progression: couples who buy a house together before they get married. They seem to be thinking that marriage is a maybe, but a house is something real.

I think they have that completely backwards.

Centrism and Supporting the President

Last week I assessed the first year of the Obama administration in five areas. My assessment is largely positive. These posts drew a variety of criticisms. I answered most of the specific criticisms in the comment area of each post. Today I want to address some general criticisms.

Some readers thought that being centrist meant that I should not support any party. I wrote:

Ideologically I am a centrist. I support and criticize based on position, not party. I usually find more to support on the Democratic side, and more to criticize on the Republican side. That is how I picked my party. I hope that is how anyone would pick his or her party.

carter said...

I agree. Most people find more to support on one side or the other then choose a party. Does that mean everyone is a centrist? Since you seem to agree 90 percnt or more of the time with the left why call youself a centrist? Name five other centrist sociologists. How do you define centist?

This give me a good opportunity to clarify the relationship between centrism and ideology, as well as centrism and party. I think the left and the right are small, while most people fall in the center. I do not think that anyone who is not a conservative is a liberal, nor vice-versa. However, there are essentially only two parties, which these three positions are obliged to choose among. Liberals who wish to be politically effective work with the Democratic Party; conservatives who wish to be politically effective work with the Republican Party. Centrists are obliged to choose. There are a large number of centrist Republicans, and an even larger number of centrist Democrats, including me.

One of the defining characteristics of centrists is that we believe there are many possible middle positions in every contested issue. Centrist political discussion consists of weighing the pros and cons of these middle options and choosing among them for good reasons - or at least reasons that can be explained to others. Since we must choose among positions for public reasons, centrists are less likely to simply follow a party line.

Which brings me to a second line of criticism I received.

pam said...

Mr. Gruntled it is painfully obvious you have drunk the Obama Kool-aid.

You are in danger of loosing your centrist credentials.

Gruntled said...

Pam: could you be more specific in your criticism?

pam said...

It is becoming kind of humorous.Virtually Obama's every shortcoming is blamed on Bush. It makes Obama look weak and you look a little whiney. Will it ever stop? I can only hope. It is distracting.
All four of you first year "centrist reports" Blame Bush in one way or another.

Gruntled said...

Which shortcomings do you have in mind? I think I have been naming strengths and achievements of the Obama administration.

President Obama has, indeed, had to spend more time fixing mistakes of the previous administration so far than on developing his positive program. I don't call these mistakes simply because they were made by the previous administration, but because I think they were mistakes. Do you think torture by our government was a good thing, or a mistake?

pam said...

There you go again...you make my point.

Centrism does not mean being wishy-washy. Centrism is just as firm a basis for judgment as any other position. When it comes to presidents, everyone - left, right, and center - is obliged to make some substantive judgments about whether the president's positions and actions are good or not. Making such a judgment does mean you lose your centrist credentials. Neither does it mean you are a partisan.

Moreover, each president has to respond to the previous administration's actions. Sometimes they build on their predecessor's strengths, and sometimes they correct their predecessor's mistakes. Centrists, and everyone else, need to make a substantive judgment about whether the prior administration's actions were strengths or mistakes, and whether the current administration is building on the past for better or worse.

Centrists are not partisans. We do not drink anyone's Kool-Aid.

Two Beaus

My children united me with my etsy monster for Christmas.

The First Year of the Obama Administration: A New Era for America

The greatest achievement of the Obama administration came with his election.

I am among those who think the worst sin of our wonderful country has been anti-black racism. It produced many great evils for black and white Americans. Worse, it produced an irrationality at the heart of the American experiment in equal liberty right from the beginning. The civil rights movement turned the corner in changing the culture of America. Only after the civil rights revolution was it possible for America to begin to realize the meaning of her creed, as Martin Luther King said.

The election of Barack Obama sealed the victory in the long struggle against America's worst sin. This does not mean that racism is over - it probably never will be, certainly not in the foreseeable future. But the old era is dead. The new generations that come after now will find segregation as hard to imagine as slavery. Barack Obama is in the role of Joshua to the civil rights generation's Moses.

Barack Obama is an African American. But he is also a representative of the new generation that lives beyond the old black and white struggle. His parents were black and white. His children are African American in the usual sense of the word. He, though, also represents the new generation of Americans who came from all over the world, the post-1965 generation of global America. I believe that the Obamas are a potent symbol of the way forward, not only beyond our original sin, but also beyond the new ethnic conflicts of this generation.

Still, the first black president can't just be average. He has to be a great president. His family has to be exemplary. It was inevitable that the first black president would face extraordinary tests just because some groups would try to test him. That he also has to deal with a major recession and wind up an elective war and face global warming were not inevitable, but they add to my sense that this president has to be extraordinary.

Time will tell whether Barack Obama will be a great president, or even a decent one. I think his preparation, his family, his character, and his convictions all are well suited to greatness in the larger role that history has thrust upon him. I will be watching and hoping for his success with keen interest.

The First Year of the Obama Administration: World Standing

The most immediate achievement of President Obama was to restore the standing of the United States in the world. This turn-around began on election day. Centre College sends most of its students abroad in their college career, and they reported from all over the world the sea-change in attitudes toward Americans in November 2008. I was with students at the University of Sydney for President Obama's inauguration, which we watched with a packed and delighted house at the United States Study Center.

The realities of world politics have eroded some of that euphoria. Still, the United States is seen as a much more responsible power in the world now than it was two years ago. President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, while premature for his achievements, represents the hope and prod to be the world leader for lawful, respectful international order.

I think the Obama administration has been most successful in getting us back on track on civil decency in conducting our affairs. We are working better with our allies, especially in conducting our wars. I am glad that we are engaging the world again on climate change, though so far no nation has much to show for it. De-escalating the "axis of evil" rhetoric about Iran and North Korea helps make constructive engagement more possible. I hope we can make progress in getting Israel to deal justly, or at least realistically, with the Palestinians. Most important, in the medium run, is developing solid relations with the most moderate Muslim states, and encouraging democratic reforms there to head off Islamist coups. This is not just in the interests of the U.S., but of peace for everyone.

The major issue for the future will be how we deal with China. I think the Obama administration has a realistic sense that having sent our manufacturing capacity and our IOUs to China, we have to treat China with more respect than we have for the past decade. We still have to push them toward democracy and freedom; since we gave them most of our leverage, the task is tricky.

The war against Al Qaeda will dominate Obama's foreign actions for the foreseeable future. All of American relations with other nations, though, are improved by the better standing of the U.S. that we now have in the world.

The First Year of the Obama Administration: Health Care

The first two urgent tasks of the Obama administration were cleaning up the mess in the economy and in war that the president inherited. I think it is greatly to his credit that, while addressing these inherited emergencies, Pres. Obama has also aggressively pushed ahead with solving the top long-term domestic problem: health care. This is really where the positive program of the Obama administration begins.

The United States spends more on health care than any other nation, without getting all citizens cared for. We have the worst of both worlds, because we lack a universal system of health care insurance. Barack Obama made universal health care central to his campaign. I agree heartily.

The President is not the king. He cannot decree law. Laws have to come from the legislature. The president's party does have a majority in both houses of the legislature - just barely. And that party - my Democratic Party - is a very big tent. Its members never march in lockstep. Moreover, legislators are horse-traders and pork-collectors for their constituents. All legislation is full of compromises that no one person would ever have chosen, least of all the president.

President Obama knew that to get universal health care he had to go to work on it right away, work on it hard, and make many compromises. Moreover, in our ingenious republican form of government in which powers are separated and separated again, the legislature has to take the initiative in actually crafting legislation. Until Congress produces a bill, the president has the bully pulpit and not much else.

I believe Pres. Obama has been admirably focused on getting a universal health insurance bill through Congress. This fight is far from over, and he faces some wiley opponents. Nonetheless, I believe he will succeed. Universal health insurance will be one of the great achievements of the Obama administration.

In order to get health care, the president has had to hold up on many other important needs of the country. I am very hopeful that we will have a law signed by the State of the Union address later this month. The president can then turn to next great initiatives of the Obama administration.

The First Year of the Obama Administration: the Wars

On 9/11, 2001, the United States was attacked by Al Qaeda. They operated from Afghanistan, protected by a similar movement, the Taliban. The real war has always been with Al Quaeda. The Taliban made themselves a target by getting between us and Al Qaeda. Barack Obama said as a candidate that the real war was with Al Qaeda. President Obama has kept that focus. I believe he is completely correct in that focus. It will be a hard war, especially as it spills over more and more into Pakistan. Many Americans, left and right, will get tired of this war long before it is over. But as the President said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, this is one of those cases where lasting peace requires war against an enemy that does not want peace.

After 9/11 the world supported the United States as it never has before, and is not likely to again. If we had asked the world to help us fight Al Quaeda, we would have had an enormous coalition, including Russia and many moderate Muslim states. We might even have been able to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the top Al Qaeda leadership. I think the Taliban regime would have fought the coalition, and they would have been removed. That war could have been over years ago.

Alas, the Bush administration used the crisis of 9/11 to invade a different country, one that had nothing to do with 9/11. That ended world support, increased Muslim opposition, and undermined the real war against Al Qaeda. Worse, the Iraq war helped Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda's stated objective in attacking the United States, which it did several times around the world since the start of the first war in Iraq, was to get U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia. After 9/11, the Bush administration complied with Al Qaeda's demand. Another objective of Al Quaeda was to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. The Bush administration did that, as well. The Iraq war recruited angry young men from all over the Muslim world to join the fight against the Western invaders.

Worse still, the way we fought the war corrupted the United States. We became open torturers, jailed anyone we didn't like, including U.S. citizens, without charges or trial, created prisons far removed from law, used secret foreign prisons that were even worse, and openly flouted the whole system of decent conduct that the United States used to champion. The government declared a right to spy on anyone, including U.S. citizens. We had a system in place to allow quick authorizations of justified wiretaps, but the Bush administration simply ignored them. The previous administration openly suspended habeas corpus, which to my mind is the very symbol of tyranny.

On his first day in office, President Obama said he would close down the prison at Guantanamo. I applaud that. He has not done so yet. Worse, he has moved some of those prisoners to a prison at a military base in Afghanistan that is even further from American law or press. These failures are bad. Still, I believe we have stopped torturing prisoners. We appear to have stopped warrantless wiretaps. We have not suspended habeas corpus. I have seen no reports that the Obama administration is using secret foreign prisons. President Obama has made great strides in restoring the rule of law in the United States. This is a great good in itself, and also helps restore our standing in the world.

The right war is against Al Qaeda and its allies, who attacked the United States. One of the tactics used by Al Quaeda is terror. They use this tactic because they are too weak to use many others. Their weakness is no excuse for terror - many weak fighters did not stoop to terrorizing innocent populations. Al Qaeda is evil, and should be fought to the end. However, we are not fighting a war against "terrorism." Terrorism is just a tactic. Declaring a war on terrorism is like declaring a war on amphibious assaults. If Al Qaeda stopped using terrorism they would still be the enemy.

I believe President Obama will take increasing heat for pursuing the right war. He will be criticized by partisan opponents because they are partisan. He will also be criticized by peaceniks who oppose war. That is their job, and in the great ecology of American politics, it is good that there is a significant pacifist voice. That is the tradition I was raised in. Most of this criticism will come from President Obama's (and my) fellow Democrats. Nonetheless, President Obama has clearly stated the Niebuhrian position, with which I agree, that we must fight the right war against Al Qaeda to victory.

The First Year of the Obama Administration: the Economy

I voted for President Obama with great enthusiasm. I supported his proposed policies, both domestic and foreign. I am impressed with him as a leader. I think the Obama family are delightful. I believe the Obamas are likely to be the family most like the Gruntleds to ever live in the White House. This first week of the new year I am going to offer five brief judgments on how the first year of the Obama administration has gone, inviting your replies.

The most urgent problem President Obama faced when he took office was the collapse of the economy. A few companies that lent money were so large, and took risks so huge, that when the inevitable bubble-burst came they threatened to take the world economy with them. This handful of firms consisted of some jumped-up stockbrokerages that called themselves banks, a massive insurance company, and automobile finance companies that incidentally made cars. They got around the sensible safeguards that we had built following previous collapses partly by skirting the existing regulations, and partly by the Bush administration's policy of ignoring regulations.

I believe that if the Obama administration had had even six months to deal with the under-regulated bubble-economy before it collapsed, much of the disaster could have been averted. But that is not the way it played out. When the collapse did come, the Bush administration was paralyzed. They bailed out some firms and let others collapse piecemeal, with no larger plan. When Obama took office his half-assembled team was stuck with the commitments outgoing Treasury Secretary Paulson had made - and still had to save the actual economy. And the Bush bailouts saddled the new administration with gigantic debts that will take years of recovery and prudent administration to overcome.

SO the Obama administration had to save the remaining Wall Street "investment banks." It sensibly brought them under the regulations that actual banks had to follow. They were stuck with AIG and its ridiculously self-indulgent management, which the administration has tried to bring to some responsibility. I agree with the president that we could not simply let General Motors fail, though they richly deserved to. I believe the United States government, forced to be owners of what should be a grown-up company, has been remarkably indulgent in letting almost all of the bosses keep their jobs. I am hopeful that General Motors can learn a lesson fast enough to become an independent company again. It appears that Ford has learned from its brush with disaster and may become fairly responsible. I never thought Chrysler would reappear as an independent company once it was bought by Daimler, so I will not be surprised if it disappears.

The big picture is that the Obama administration saved the world economy from collapse. The parallels with the mess created by the Hoover administration, and eventually cleaned up by the Roosevelt administration, are clear. Things are bad, but getting better. We are not worried now about a massive chain reaction of collapsing financial institutions around the world, as we were in the last days of the Bush administration.

On the first great test, President Obama passed.

Merry Christmas - See You Next Year

The Gruntled Center will take a break for Christmas week.

I am grateful for the early Christmas present of Senate passage of the health care bill.

See you in the new year.

Pitching In is Another Centre Virtue

Each year I join other members of the Centre College faculty and staff, as well as the student Orientation Committee, in helping first-year students move in. We get to meet the new students, and their parents are wonderfully grateful.

When I took my eldest to Swarthmore, my alma mater, there was also an Orientation Committee. They saw us pull up with a van full of stuff. They did not move to help. We later learned that the tee shirts they were wearing said "I am not your mother or your father."

Moving daughter in to her dorm sophomore year, I saw a young man sitting in the dorm lobby, reading. I pointed out to him, in a friendly spirit, that there were young ladies who could use his assistance moving their heavy things in. He gave me an odd look, picked up his book, and left the building.

This reaction would be unthinkable at Centre. The Centre ethos is to pitch in, especially if someone asks for help. Centre students are overwhelmingly involved in service. The Greek organizations, to which most students belong, sell themselves to the world not on their academics, or parties, or friendliness, though they do all those things well, but on their distinctive service projects.

In the big world, Centre alumni are famous, sometimes national leaders, in how many of them pitch in to help Centre itself. In projects great and small, you can count on old Colonels the help.

Service is a Centre virtue.

Centre's Institutional Builders

The Auditor of Public Accounts of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is Crit Luallen, a Centre graduate. She has been an excellent auditor, an exemplar of clean government. Prior to this elected office she held a number of high-level appointed positions in state government. All of her work has been involved in building up institutions and making sure they run well.

Ed Hatchett was Crit Luallen's predecessor as Auditor. He is also a Centre gradute and a fine exemplar of clean government. His work has also been devoted to making institutions run well.

One of the important audits that Crit Luallen has performed lately has been of the Kentucky Association of Counties. Their officers spent association money wildly and inappropriately. The old officers were forced out. Today it was announced that a new head has been appointed to clean up the Kentucky Association of Counties: Ed Hatchett.

Centre College does well at training young people to build up institutions and make them run well. This is not what every college does. It is good that we have a great ecology of educational paths and higher education institutions to train all kinds of people for our great and varied nation. But this skill - building up institutions and making sure they run well - is a clearly a valuable contribution to the whole. Go Colonels at your real work.

Explaining How to Be Original

"How to be original in our quizzes in order to make a higher grade would have been helpful."

This comment stood out on my course evaluations for this term.

My standard for a good grade - a B - is that students tell me back what I told them. I think this is often the high-school standard for an A.

My standard for an excellent grade - an A - is that students tell me back what I (and the course readings) told them, in detail, and that they add something original.

Some students find adding something original to be the easy part. They think about what we are studying and make connections with other things they have studied all the time. The hard part for them is demonstrating mastery of the official curriculum.

Other students, though, like the one above, have a different reaction, that is somewhat surprising to me. Most Centre students are very good at rising to expectations. This kind of student poses a kind of paradoxical problem: how to explain that I expect the unexpected?

"Away We Go" is Lovely

The Gruntled family watched "Away We Go" last night, and enjoyed the whole thing. We saw it as a moral tale of two people who are deeply in love realizing that they need to get their lives in grownup order before their baby comes. He makes ridiculous jokes, she is indulgent and moves the family forward. He is delighted about the coming baby, and is sure they can work everything out. She worries in a perfectly plausible expectant-mother way. The core story seemed, to us, very familiar.

The shape of the movie is a road trip to see where they might want to live and to bring up their child. With both sets of parents out of the picture, and with flexible jobs, they can move anywhere. All the friends and relatives they spend time with are, of course, quirky (this is an indie movie). Each family has a different frailty of family life that is instructive to the central couple. The Gruntleds found the send-up of the New Age faculty family especially hilarious.

In the end, they come round right.

I then read the extensive comments on the IMDB message boards. I was surprised at the strong negative reactions of a whole strand of commentators. There are threads of sociology, too, as some people try to figure out what kind of people liked the movie, and what kind hated it. The main theory seemed to be that young hipsters would like it and others would not. I don't qualify as young or hip.

I think "Away We Go" appeals to people who like the moral quest to transform themselves to do right by a baby. The real appeal to me is that the central couple have a just sense of proportion about how big a challenge raising a baby is, and how wonderful.

Teens Choose Marriage, Tolerate Unmarried Childbearing

One of my central contentions as a centrist is that we can and should make a distinction between the good and the tolerable. Many people want to follow the common, traditional, normal path for themselves, but tolerate other paths for other people.

One encouraging piece of evidence for this contention comes from the views of teenagers reported in The State of Our Unions 2009. When asked if they thought that most people will have fuller and happier lives if they choose legal marriage rather than staying single or just living with someone, almost forty percent of girls and a third of boys said yes. This proportion has been rising.

At the same time, when these teens were asked whether having a child out of wedlock is "experimenting with a worthwhile lifestyle or not affecting anyone else," just over half of girls and boys said yes. These proportions have also been rising.

Now, I think the majority of teens are wrong in thinking that having a child out of wedlock doesn't affect anyone else. And I would strongly counsel anyone not to experiment with that lifestyle.

My point is that most teens are willing to accept experiments with unusual family practices, even as they themselves increasingly think that most people would be happier making families the traditional way. We do not have to make all ethical decisions based on what we ourselves do or want. We can choose for ourselves the way that we thinks works best for most people, while tolerating other practices in society.

The Race Gap is a Marriage Gap: Child Poverty

I believe that most of the gap between African Americans and other Americans is due to the very low black married parent rate. Support for this view comes from a study by Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill, cited in The State of Our Unions 2009:

If family structure had not changed between 1960 and 1998, the Black child poverty rate in 1998 would have been 28.4 percent rather than 45.6 percent.

Reducing Your Divorce Risk (a Lot)

The State of Our Unions 2009 has a wonderfully encouraging chart about how good your chances are of lifelong marriage if you are reading this blog. We all know that about half of marriages are projected to end in divorce. If you regularly read The Gruntled Center, you know that this is not quite true - the overall divorce rate is probably under 50%, most first marriages last, and, most importantly, this rate does not mean that each marriage - your marriage has only a 50/50 chance.

Wilcox and Marquardt quantify some factors that reduce the risk of divorce dramatically.

Factors That Decrease the Risk of Divorce: percent

Annual income over $50,000 (vs. under $25,000): -30

Having a baby seven months or more after marriage (vs. before marriage): -24

Marrying over 25 years of age (vs. under 18): -24

Own family of origin intact (vs. divorced parents): -14

Religious affiliation (vs. none): -14

Some college (vs. high-school dropout): -13

Good News on the Marriage Gap

The main overall finding of The State of Our Unions 2009 is, I think, this:

In large numbers, therefore, the college-educated part of America is living the American dream—with happy, stable, two-parent families.

The marriage rate for college-educated people is rising, against the trend for the rest of the population. Couples in the college class are better matched than before. They are happier than other marrieds, and much happier than cohabitors.

The one long-term weakness of college marrieds is that they don't have enough kids to replace themselves. Even here, though, college-educated women seem to be the quickest to pick up the message of the birth dearth. Young college women want more children (and I can vouch for this in my own classes) and are starting to have more kids, too.

I think the college-educated class leads the nation in most social trends. I do not think that we are heading toward a marriage-based caste division. Rather, the college class is turning around some long-term bad trends in family life. The rest of the nation will eventually start to follow.

Rising Breadwinning Wives May Be Assisted by the Recession

Christine Whelan's contribution to The State of Our Unions 2009 suggests that the recession's silver lining may be that more couples will accept breadwinner moms and child-rearing dads.

She reports a statistic I had not seen before (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics): 1/3 of wives make more than their husbands, and among women making more than $55,000, 1/2 of wives make more than their husbands.

An important point to remember in interpreting these figures is that more educated and more securely employed people are also more likely to be married. People who live together without marriage, and especially who have children without marriage, are much less likely to have higher education, secure jobs, or marriages.

Obama's Fine Peace Speech

President Obama gave a fine speech in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. He made the crucial and sensible point that in this actual, fallen world, keeping peace requires strength, and restoring peace sometimes requires war. He said, rightly, that "The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. ... We have done so out of enlightened self-interest."

I was particularly glad to hear his forthright declaration that we must fight war within the civilized code of treaties and conventions that make war less horrible. One of the things that grieved me most about the previous administration was how casually and ruthlessly it threw away America's moral rules and moral standing to get what it wanted. President Obama proclaims the crucial ethical insight of the whole Niebuhrian tradition: "And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war."

Especially when we confront a vicious, ruthless adversary, it is most important that we not become vicious and ruthless ourselves.

Some commentators to the left of me have thought there was some irony or inherent conflict in giving a peace prize to a president waging war. I think this is a soft-headed notion.

What really bothers me about the "irony of a peace prize for a war president" line is that I believe they don't really believe it themselves. The reporters asking this question know better. They are reaching for an easy dig, a sophomoric "paradox." This kind of deception has real costs. It is why people find smart liberals in general, and the press in particular, arrogant and not worthy of trust.

I believe it is a settled centrist point: peace requires a strong, forceful, and sometimes violent defense, or there will be no peace.

"L'Oreal Professor" - The Density of Globalization

I am reading Bryant Simon's Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks. He is talking here about the fight between Starbucks and the Ethiopian government (aided by Oxfam) over trademarking the names of famous types of Ethiopian coffee.

I was struck by the density of the intertwined global world, going way beyond this Starbucks question, in this sentence:

Douglas Holt, the L'Oréal Professor of Marketing at Oxford University's Saïd Business School and an Oxfam ally, warned that Starbucks was playing "Russian roulette" with its brand, putting the company in "significant peril."

He Invests Aggressively, She Shops Aggressively, They Lose Money

Ronald Wilcox has a fine little piece in the State of our Unions report that I have been blogging on this week. In many couples, he controls the long-term investments, while she controls the daily finances. This division of labor, Wilcox says, has some costs.

Men are overconfident investors, and are more aggressive in trading the household's stocks and bonds. They do worse than the average woman would, because women generally are more cautious and better informed about investment.

Women are confident shoppers. They are generally better informed than men about what products are and where to get them. Partly as a result, they tend to be more aggressive in shopping, spending more time seeking bargains and buying things.

Wilcox suggests that most couples would be better off combining these tasks, if not swapping them altogether.

I personally am a cautious investor and a reluctant shopper. The message I take from Wilcox's report is that all couples would be better off if they did less buying.

Marital Status Still Follows the Business Cycle, But Not as Much as It Used To.

Alex Roberts has a fine article in the new State of Our Unions on the declining relationship between the business cycle and the divorce and marriage rates.

The divorce rate goes down in recessions. It appears to be going down now. So does the marriage rate. Divorce and marriage are expensive. Most of the reduced demand for these expensive changes is just being put off - when economic times get better, the marriage rate will go up (yeah!) and so will the divorce rate (boo!).

The interesting new development is that these family rates are less tied to the business cycle than they used to be. Roberts' reading of this change: marriage is less of an economic decision. For men and women with careers, marriage is more of an emotional union. They can afford to both marry and divorce when they feel like it. For people without steady work, both marriage and divorce as seen as so risky that they just skip the whole thing - shacking up and splitting up whenever.

The irony, Roberts points out, is that marriage is still the great wealth producing institution for most people. The folks who benefit most from marriage financially are the poorest - the very people least likely to marry.

Financial Fights Are the Best Predictor of Divorce

The 2009 edition of The State of Our Unions has just been released by the National Marriage Project under new editors Brad Wilcox and Elizabeth Marquardt. The focus of the report this year is financial issues that affect marriage, especially during this recession.

The lead report is Jeffrey Dew's "Bank on It: Thrifty Couples Are The Happiest." I want to lift up three particularly interesting points from his study.

Paul Amato and Stacey Rogers showed a decade ago that the top three predictors of divorce, in declining order, are extramarital affairs, drug or alcohol abuse, and "feeling that one's spouse spent money foolishly."

The trend of a couple's relation to debt was a significant factor in their happiness. If they started in debt but reduced it, they became happier; if they started with no debt but added to it, they became unhappier.

Third, Dew's own study found that the amount of conflict over money matters predicts divorce better than any other factor.