Is Generalized Trust a Fruit of Privilege?

I am working on how some people come to have a sense that people in general can be trusted. 

Some argue that we learn particularized trust from experience with specific people in specific institutions.  Generalized trusters then generalize from that experience.  This is Robert Putnam's position in Bowling Alone.

Others argue that we learn generalized trust at home as part of our morals, prior to and independent of our experiences in particular institutions.  This is Eric Uslaner's position in The Moral Foundations of Trust.

I incline to Uslaner's position. I would modify it by saying that generalized trust does depend on how trustworthy we find our family to be.  More exactly, I think most people find it hard to trust if they feel betrayed by adults when they are young, especially by the adults in their own families.

Uslaner found that people from intact, mainline religious families were more likely to be generalized trusters.

We know from other evidence that people from intact, mainline religious families are also more likely to enjoy most of the privileges of our society, made all the more powerful because they do not realize that they are privileged. 

SO, is generalized trust a fruit of that privilege?

My best thought at this moment is that privilege insulates you from many of the betrayals that would undermine a sense that people in general can be trusted.  Privilege does not produce trust, nor guarantee it.  But privilege reduces the circumstances in a young life that would undermine generalized trust.

Calvinists Fear the World Less

This is a follow-on to yesterday's post, "The More You Know, The Less You Fear."

Calvinists famously insists that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Therefore, it is reasonable to fear the consequences that God would, in all justice, give each of us.  The harder edges of the Calvinist family grow eloquent in describing how awful that just consequence might be (though one doesn't hear many hellfire sermons from Presbyterian pulpits anymore).

A lesser known consequence, though, of fearing God's justice is that it puts into proportion the world's problems and dangers.  The whole story of Creation has a happy ending.  The universe lasts a long time.  We have much work to do, to be sure.  But the possible bad things we could do have limits, and the promised help that Providence will give does not.

Fearing things truly worth fearing can make us calmer, more deliberate, and more reasonable about the lesser fears that beset us if we only see the little picture.

The More You Know, The Less You Fear

This is an aphorism that I think I made up today.

It is a derived from a longer one that also came to me today:  the better your sociology, the more you trust strangers. This is because you have a better idea of which categories of people are dangerous.

I have been studying social trust, which I think is the crucial glue of the happy society.  Fear is the enemy of the happy society.

More educated people are generally less fearful.  I think this is because they have a more realistic sense of how likely any of the dangers they can imagine really are.  They are also more likely to research potential dangers, rather than rely on gut instinct or fears promoted by others.

Corporations Are Not People; Nor Are They Churches

The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that corporations can have religious beliefs which are protected from civil requirements, just as churches are. 

In this case, Hobby Lobby can refuse to comply with the requirement of the Affordable Care Act that employer-provided insurance include contraception coverage.

This follows earlier decisions by this Court that corporations are 'people' and entitled to rights like actual people.

I think this reflects a degeneration in our civil religion.  We are elevating the 'free market' and the profits made in it to a central place in the collective sacred. 

I think this is an error of fact - markets only work if they are protected and regulated by the state, and those who make profits from regulated markets owe much to society as a whole for that protection and regulation. 

I also think this is an error of faith - markets are a useful decision-making tool for democratic societies.  Corporations are one of the useful tools we have developed to take advantage of this decision-making mechanism.

Corporations are not sacred entities.  Corporations are not even people-like.  They serve us; we should not serve them.

'Corporate sanctity' will, in retrospect, seem like one of the great heresies of this new gilded age.

Does Civilization Begin With Cooking, or Marriage?

For our annual alumni study group this summer we are reading Michael Pollan's Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.  He offers the theory, advanced by many, that culture begins with cooking - specifically, with roasting meat.

I have long taught in my "Family Life" class that turning men into husbands and fathers is the first great act of civilization.

Just on first glance, I think my 'first act' comes first.

I also think that seeing cooking meat as the first act of culture is a more masculine view, while seeing marriage as coming first is a more feminine view.

This is a three-quarters-formed thought, but worth pursuing.

Calvin on God's image in men and women.

I am working my way through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion with an eye to what he says about happiness.

In Book One, chapter 15, Calvin addresses what it means to say that man is made in God's image.  He helpfully notes that when Paul says that man, and not woman, is the image of God (1 Cor. 11:7) “it is evident, from the context, that it merely refers to the civil order.” 

I find this distinction helpful for three reasons.  

First, for making clear that all people share in God's image equally.  

Second, that Calvin has a model for interpreting Scripture in context.  

Third, that Calvin distinguishes between the order of creation as such and the civil order. 

Elsewhere (and throughout) Calvin argues that the civil order is shaped by the Fall, but retains the image of the good order of creation.  I think it reasonable to believe that as we form and reform the civil order, we can move some ways from the unequal relation of the sexes in the civil order that Calvin knew, to a more equal order that is closer to the creation ideal.

The Best Thing I Saw at GA: 1001 New Worshiping Communities

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

The Presbyterian Church (USA) set itself the task two years ago of creating 1001 new worshiping communities.

At this General Assembly we have heard about the 248 new worshiping communities which have been created so far.  Some are traditional churches, most are new kinds of worshiping groups. Half are predominantly 'racial ethnic', presbyspeak for not all white. 

Some of these communities will last, some will be ephemeral.  All, though, are a great step forward. The 1001 new worshiping communities are about the best sign of vitality I have seen in our slimming denomination.

PC(USA) Over-Reaches on Drones

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

The General Assembly voted to oppose drones in combat and surveillance, at home and abroad.  As a commissioner who was a military chaplain said in opposition that drones were the wave of the future - he went so far as to say that in ten years we will not see planes with pilots in combat.

A member of the committee that considered this overture told me that the more modest overture on drones was greatly expanded by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy.  The ACSWP (A C Swap, in Presby-speak) is, in my estimation, the most activist of all the Presbyterian agencies.  In past assemblies that I have followed, they tend to advise pushing the church to the left every time.  Their advice in committee is often more assertive than that of other Presbyterian agencies.

I think the drone vote is one of those that will make the PC(USA) look foolishly naive and offering advice out of its depth.

Presbyterians Dodge a Bullet on Fossil Fuel Divestment

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

An overture came to the GA to divest from 'fossil fuel' companies now. It seems to me this is a bad idea.

The PC(USA) is blessed with a well-developed Mission Responsibility Through Investment process, which is designed to thoughtfully engage with companies when they do bad things. One of the really good things that MRTI does for the church is to really research what, exactly, are the bad things, and have a dialogue with the company about separating the bad from the good.  As a last resort, the MRTI recommends that the church divest from intransigent companies.

The overture proposed to prematurely divest from fossil fuel companies now.  The committee was closely divided, but in the end voted to refer the issue to MRTI.  A minority report was moved to make the church's stock-holding bodies divest within five years.  The Young Adult Advisory Delegates were for it.  The elders, however, voted it down, 70% to 30%.

The GA then considered the committee's main motion, to refer the issue to the MRTI.  This passed, 81% to 19%.

The proposers of the 'divest now' side flatly claimed that "we only have six years" to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon waste.  I believe global warming is real, and that human action has contributed, but I am skeptical of the claim that if we don't act right now we are doomed.

The other error the 'divest now' side made, especially among the YAADs, is the belief that divesting our miniscule holdings in energy companies will somehow help end global warming - rather than just sell those energy company stocks to someone else, who will likely not push the companies to develop alternative fuels.

Anne Zaki is a Great Preacher

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

Yesterday the worship in the middle of the Assembly featured a sermon by Anne Zaki, of the Evangelical Presbyterian Seminary in Cairo.  She preached an excellent sermon on Jairus and the woman who touched Christ's garment.

She has a long association with Calvin Theological Seminary in the U.S.  Here is a brief interview with her. https://internal.calvinseminary.edu/development/studentInterviews/anneZaki.php

Conservatives Pronounce the Death Knell of the Presbyterian Church, Again

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

The Presbyterian Coalition, an organization of conservative groups, issued a press release immediately after the General Assembly voted to allow same-sex marriage in the church.  They write

Today the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) took two illegitimate actions that may prove in future years to be the death knell to the church as we have known it.

It is no surprise that the remaining conservatives in the church consider this the last straw.  Opposition to normalizing homosexual practice has become a defining issue for PC(USA) conservatives.  Thousands have left the denomination in recent years, especially since the church accepted gay ordination a few years ago. 

No doubt, we will see another wave of departures following these decisions.

Still, it is worth remembering that conservatives have pronounced the death knell of the Presbyterian Church in every generation since the denomination was created.

And in the next generation, the new conservative on some new issue will pronounce the death knell, again.

Reformed, and ever reforming.

The Sex War is Over in the PC (USA)

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

The Presbyterian General Assembly voted to change the definition of marriage from "a man and a woman" to "two people, traditionally a man and a woman." The motion passed, 71% to 29%. It will now go to the presbyteries for ratification.

This is strong evidence that the conservatives have mostly given up and moved elsewhere.

An Irenic Gesture on Same-Sex Marriage

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

As the Assembly considers a very consequential measure to change the definition of marriage to "marriage involves a unique commitment of two people," a famous liberal, John Wilkinson, proposed an amendment to add the phrase "traditionally between a man and a woman."

A noted conservative thanked Wilkinson for the amendment.

The motion passed 85% to 15%.

Bad Committee Work on the Authoritative Interpretation

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

One of the most contentious issues before the General Assembly is over whether Presbyterian ministers can perform same-sex marriages.  The committee charged with answering the various overtures on this matter is faced with clear language in the church's constitution which says marriage is a union of 'a man and a woman'.

One of the proposals approved by the committee is to change the constitution to define marriage as between 'two persons'.  This makes sense as a way to solve the problem.

My quarrel is with the other approach, which is to issue an "Authoritative Interpretation" of what the constitution means.  Changing the constitution requires the joint action of the General Assembly and a majority of presbyteries. An Authoritative Interpretation, on the other hand, can be issued by the GA itself, and holds until undone by another GA.

The committee received overtures to issue an Authoritative Interpretation declaring that ministers can, indeed, perform same-sex marriages.

The Advisory Committee on the Constitution, which advises every committee on each overture that comes before it, gave this clear advice:

Section W-4.9001 and related citations (W-4.9002a, W-4.9004, W-4.9006) limit marriage to couples who are “a woman and a man.” Because these statements are clear and unambiguous, they can not be interpreted in a manner that is inconsistent with their plain and ordinary meaning.

In other words, you can't issue an Authoritative Interpretation that when the constitution limits marriage to 'a man and a woman', that does not mean that marriage is limited to a man and a woman.

In what I hope is my one and only speech in the plenary, I asked the committee how they answered this clear word from the ACC.  

The moderator of the committee answered that they didn't.

A member of the committee told me that someone in the committee debate said that the constitution was just describing traditional marriage, not defining marriage in, you know, a constitutional way.

Regardless of what you think about the substance of the issue of same-sex marriage, declaring that 'black is white' is just bad committee work.

Linda Valentine Overwhelmingly Re-Elected

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

Linda Valentine, the Executive Director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, was re-elected to a third term by an overwhelming voice vote.

She has a big job - she is essentially the chief executive of the denomination's 'doing things' arm.

In the past, the election of the Executive Director has been very contentious - in the '90s an Exec was unseated by a floor nominee, even though the sitting Exec was the official nominee.

Linda Valentine's easy re-election is a good sign of renewed trust in the central agencies of the church. 

Belhar Passes - and Why I Voted No

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

The Belhar Confession is a great confession.  It is a landmark in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has a Book of Confessions, the first part of the constitution of the church.  There has been a movement for the past decade to add the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions. The previous General Assembly passed the overture, and sent it to the presbyteries for adoption.  A majority of presbyteries voted to adopt the confession - but not quite the super-majority which is required to amend the Book of Confessions.

This General Assembly, the proponents of Belhar tried again.  They had strong leadership, made a glossy presentation to the Assembly on the first day, and this evening proposed, once again, to add Belhar to the Book.

The commissioners voted,  86% to 14%, to adopt the Confession.  It will now go to the presbyteries again, seeking that super-majority.

I was among the 14%. 

I did not vote against Belhar because it is a bad confession.  It is, as I have said, a great confession.  Its message against racism is timely and apt for the PC(USA).

My objection is to the entire project of the Book of Confessions. I have written against the theory of the B of C several times before.

From the founding of the Presbyterian Church on this continent the church had one confession, the Westminster Confession and its attendant documents. This Confession was not a static 17th century British document, but a living part of the constitution, as living as the parts of the constitution regulating order and worship.  The denomination periodically amended the Westminster Confession, as needed.

In the 1960s, to conclude a merger of two Presbyterian denominations, a new confession - the Confession of 1967 - was commissioned.  Rather than replacing Westminster with this new confession, though, the seminary professors who wrote it also advanced the theory that confessions were not living documents, but documents of their time and place.  Thus they sold the church on the peculiar idea that for the theological foundation of the constitution, the church should have many confessions, all listed together.

The effect was to make the confessions optional.  Officers of the church were left to take whatever 'guidance' they chose from the confessions.  The action in the church shifted to the Book of Order, which became the only truly living part of the church's constitution.

Because I object to the whole idea of a book of confessions, I voted against adding the Belhar Confession to our Book.

I know this is a minority position, which is not likely ever to be victorious.  But I thought, in consistent conscience, I should vote and tell you why.

Voting for Child Care

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

Surprisingly, there is not child care at the GA, or even a good nursing room.

A commissioner made a Commissioner's Resolution to make sure we had it in future was defeated in committee.  The commissioner, a pastor, spoke to the issue, saying he and his pastor wife come to GA with their kids as a family vacation.

This seems like common sense to me. Cheap, too.

By a close margin, we voted to refer it to the Committee on the General Assembly, rather than just requiring it. 

Frankly, I think a bunch of commissioners (and even more YAADs) did not understand that a 'yes' vote meant referral, not the opposite.

The First Real Vote

I am blogging this week from the Presbyterian General Assembly.
 
The first real vote: to ask ministers to pay per capita.

I expect that the great majority of ministers do pay per capita (about $40 per year) and much more.

I thought asking them in this way was tacky.

The motion failed by about 10%.

The Church Works Better When We Trust Our Committees

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

It is true of any organization, really.  I note it now because I have been to General Assemblies in the past in which a recommendation from an official church body was taken as a good reason to vote against the proposal by a significant minority.

So far in our Polity Committee, we have considered the advice of our official advisors to be sound.  When we consider an overture, we have the written response of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution before us, as well as a representative of the committee in the room to reply to the official 'overture advocates'.  On some matters, other advisory bodies also weigh in.

Yesterday we considered a proposal to let presbyteries, rather than congregations, ordain elders.  This was a well-intentioned overture to help newly forming immigrant communities have officially recognized leaders before they had organized as full congregations.  However, this idea strikes at a basic norm of Presbyterian polity that the elders arise from the congregation and are chosen by it. 

A change so basic brought out advisory opinions from a broad range of denominational muckety-mucks - in addition to the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, we heard from the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns, the Committee on Theological Education, the Office of the General Assembly, and the Presbyterian Mission Agency (the main action arm of the denomination) - all advising against.

The Polity Committee heard from representatives of most of these bodies, as well as reading their recommendations.  We appreciated the conflict of goods that this overture represented.  In the end, though, we respected our disparate new Establishment.  We trusted our committees.

Voting Down More Polarization

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

The Polity Committee, on which I am serving, was asked to respond to an overture from a conservative presbytery to allow churches to switch to a more ideologically congenial presbytery.  This would increase the polarization in the denomination.

The committee voted down the proposal, 50 to 6.

This issue will come up again in the plenary in a few days, but I am predicting a similar outcome.

Presbyterians Get the Right Advice

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

The Commissioners to the General Assembly get advice before each vote from an array of Advisory Delegates.  The bulk of them are Young Adult Advisory Delegates; in addition, there are smaller groups of theological students, and ecumenical visitors from other denominations.

If it were up to me, I would abolish all of these official advisors.  For my money, only the Executive (or General) Presbyters of each presbytery, and maybe the Stated Clerks of each presbytery, should get an advisory vote. They are the best informed group in the whole denomination.

To my surprise, a motion came from the floor at the plenary yesterday to ask for advisory votes from the presbytery executives.  This rule would apply only to this Assembly, and would be in addition to the other established advisory votes. 

The commissioners (like me) voted by raising red cards.  I thought the division was pretty close.  The Moderator, eyeballing the array (and from a much better position to see the whole than I had), declared that the motion passed.  I think this is an excellent outcome.

And then twenty minutes later, another commissioner asked if this vote was even legal (it was), and then asked for division.  Since the electronic voting system is still wonky, and since these advisory votes will not matter until the next plenary on Wednesday night, the Moderator put off the counted vote until then.

Still, an unexpected step forward, from my way of thinking.

The Church Gets Ready for the Next Marriage Crisis

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

One of the big issues before all mainline churches, including the PC (USA), is whether our ministers can choose to perform same-sex weddings in those states in which same-sex marriage is legal.

To further the hope of informed discussion, the church got our Theology and Worship staff to prepare a study document on Christian marriage in general, not just the same-sex kind.  This document was duly studied in the church, including in a Sunday School class that I taught.  Today, prior to the official opening of the General Assembly, I went to a discussion session with the staffers who prepared that study document. 

Which gave me a thought about the next marriage crisis in the church:  whether the church should be promoting marriage in general, in the face of the decline of marriage as an institution among the less-educated classes. The PC(USA) has not faced this issue as a crisis because, in general, Presbyterians do get married, and do so before they have children, and are more likely to stay married.  But there are those in society who say that marriage is outdated or simply unrealistic for young people, even if they have kids.  I expect that within a decade this will be a hot issue in the Presbyterian Church.

Which is why I think the time is ripe to start writing the study documents about why the Reformed tradition has always promoted marriage.

Cantor's Defeat Shows that the Republican Alliance with the Tea Party is Not Worth it for Republicans

If the Republican Party ever hopes to return as part of the governing coalition of the United States, they will have to cut ties with the Tea Party.  The alliance has hurt them more than it has helped them.

The latest evidence is the surprising primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to a Tea Party challenger, David Brat.  The issue: the very conservative Cantor was not conservative enough. The evidence: that he might possibly consider immigration reform.

In the short run, it would certainly be costly to the Republicans to wrest their party back from the cuckoos in the nest.  It would likely cost them their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. However, in the medium run, when they no longer had to worry about being primaried, Republicans could start cooperating with the Democrats again in running the country.

Why Young Liberals become Old Conservatives

Young liberals become old conservatives by clinging to the progressive ideas of their youth, which becomes the status quo that the young of the next generation attack.

The Reflexivity of Concerted Cultivation: Or, Why Middle-Class Parents Build Junkyards for Their Kids to Play In

I have written several times about Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods, which compares the child-rearing styles of middle class vs. working class and poor parents.  Middle-class parents schedule and direct their children's many activities, creating a 'concert' of adults helping each of their children develop his or her talents.  Working-class and poor parents, by contrast, make sure their kids are physically cared for, then turn them loose to develop by 'natural growth'.

Tristan Bridges has an interesting blogpost on the new trend of 'adventure parks' for kids - fenced, lightly supervised yards full of junk that kids can play with in ways they choose.  This kind of park is not new - the famous documentary series "Seven Up" takes the group of seven year olds from different classes to an 'adventure park' in 1964.

Adventure parks are an attempt by middle-class, concerted cultivation parents to expand their children's talents by also having some of the creativity advantages of natural growth. Bridges happily terms this 'structured unstructured play' designed to create that seeming oxymoron, the concerted cultivation of natural growth.

I want to add one further step to this argument.  When my Centre College students read Unequal Childhoods, they recognize their own upbringing.  As they, and many thousands of other young people who have studied the pros and cons of concerted cultivation, reflect on their upbringing, they mostly appreciate the great advantages they have enjoyed.  But they see some disadvantages to being over-scheduled, not left to develop their imagination enough.  This information then feeds back into how they want to raise their own children. Thus, the sociological study of childhood creates a market for reflexive concerted cultivation, which is improved by incorporating the just criticism of Concerted Cultivation 1.0.

Meaning is an Individualist Problem

Bradley Wright has a nifty post on how "Meaning is, truly, a first-world problem." In general, people in rich countries have more stuff, but are less certain that their lives are meaningful.

My "Macrosociological Theory" class finished with Charles Taylor's excellent Modern Social Imaginaries.  One of Taylor's more surprising points about modernity is that is has created a new form of social malaise.  Modern people can feel alienated, or anomic, or can even develop a nihilism (I added that last one) that pre-modern people would have found hard to understand.  Taylor's argument is that by disembedding people from their organic social settings and re-embedding them in rationalized institutions, modernity thereby created 'individuals'. 

And having become individuals, it is now possible to attempt to judge our lives as meaningful in isolation from social connections and social purposes.  But what makes most people think their lives and efforts are meaningful comes from the very work they must do to take care of the people they are connected to.

Meaning is, truly, an individualist problem.  Not solely, but in a distinctive way.

Hurrah for the Republican Establishment

Yesterday I wished Sen. McConnell well in his primary fight against a Tea Party challenger.  McConnell won easily. 

Indeed, it was a big day for the Republican Establishment:

Mr. McConnell’s victory came on a day when five other states — Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Oregon — held primaries. And in many of those high-profile contests, it was establishment Republicans coming out on top over Tea Party challengers, as in the McConnell-Bevin race.

I have maintained from their first appearance in reaction to Pres. Obama's election that the Tea Party, like other know-nothing movements before them, would last through three election cycles, then fade. 2012 was their third cycle.  Yesterday, in Kentucky and several other states, the Republican Establishment turned back the invaders.

I am hopeful that these victories will encourage career politicians, such as Sen. McConnell, to feel confident that they can get back to governing without fear of successful attack on their right flank from an anti-government movement.

I hope Mitch McConnell Wins Today

This is not a sentiment I have ever expressed before, and am not likely to again.

Today, though, my senior senator, the core the of Republican establishment, the purest politician in the U.S. Senate, is facing a challenge in the Republican primary from a prevent-government Tea Party candidate.

I hope all the establishment Republicans fend off the Tea Party this primary season, and win their civil war.

Then, perhaps, the two pro-government parties can get back to the business of compromise and trade-offs that is the actual business of governing.

Hindu Nationalist Success in India Can Ultimately Strengthen a Democratic, Secular State

I am hopeful about the election of the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, by a landslide in India.
Some worry that the Modi government will be anti-Muslim.  This a legitimate concern.

Nonetheless, I believe that democratically elected power is good for religious parties, in the medium run.  It makes them moderate their more extreme 'us vs. them' positions.  I had the same hopes for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and lament that they were overthrown in a military coup before they could begin to feel the real effects of democracy.

I also think the Congress Party has been harmed by becoming a family dynasty, and that it has gotten away with deep and wide corruption for decades.  It is time for the Gandhis to retire from politics, and for a chastened new generation of Congress leaders to rise up and make Congress a truly competitive, and more honest, democratic party.  I would particularly like to see Congress make 'India for all' their central theme, which will moderate the majority-tyranny impulses within the BJP.

Teen Pregnancies, Births, and Abortions Reach All-Time Low

This is a good-news story that writes itself. 

Do Professors Even Want to Help Students Develop a 'Meaningful Philosophy of Life'?

David Brooks has a decent column on this year's UCLA study of college freshmen. He notes this change from the first time that study was done:

In 1966, 86 percent of college freshmen said that developing a meaningful philosophy of life was essential or very important. Today, less than half say a meaningful philosophy of life is that important.

My first thought was that today's faculty are much less likely to believe that they are supposed to help students develop a meaningful philosophy of life than were the '60s faculty.  True, there are particular egalitarian and environmental values which are often presumed by many faculty members. But it has been my experience that most professor balk at the idea of articulating a meaningful philosophy of life for themselves, much less seeing their job as helping students do the same.

I can't speak for the the faculty norms of the '60s. I do infer from the fact that the question seemed intelligible when the survey was created that it seemed like a sensible idea at the time.

Brooks cautiously concludes from the above facts that "I’m not sure if students really are ... less interested in having meaning in their lives, but it has become more socially acceptable to present yourself that way."

I think it likely that a big part of this change is that college faculty are less likely today to see "helping students find a meaningful philosophy of life" as their job, or even within their competence.

The 'Princeton White Privilege Guy' Shouldn't Be Silenced, But He Doesn't Understand What White Privilege Means

Tal Fortgang wrote "Checking My White Privilege" for the campus conservative publication the Princeton Tory. 

I am not familiar with the expression 'check your privilege' with which he frames the piece.  He says it is used to silence him as a white male from contributing his opinions in general.  He does not provide any specifics, so it is hard to know the context in which the phrase is actually used.  The closest he comes to an account of how it is used is not, he allows, meant to silence him.  Rather, he says, the charge "teeters between" urging him to examine the roots of his opinion to see if they are framed by privilege, and to suggest that he apologize for having those privileges.

If that is what 'check your privilege' means, then examining the roots of his opinions seems like a reasonable call to critical thinking.  If they do, in fact, mean that he should apologize for his privileges, that would seem to go over the line.  But he does not say they do, so it is hard to know what his actual complaint boils down to.

The bulk of the essay, though, is not really about checking his white or male privilege at all.  It is an account of hard and heroic things done in his family. He checked his family's story of surviving persecution and working hard, and concluded that he does not have any privilege, but only a legacy of good values.

Which means that in his essay on 'white male privilege' he never actually addresses white male privilege.  He is right that his whiteness and maleness is not the whole story of his life.  But neither does he say anyone else said it was.  He does not acknowledge, though, that there have been untold small advantages of whiteness and maleness in his path thus far, which, indeed, is some of the story of his life.

In fact, in this short essay, he does not show any understanding of what his unnamed interlocutors are talking about when they urge him to 'check his privilege'.  That work is still undone.

Are Zombies a Racial Formation?

In my "Macrosociological Theory" class we are reading Omi and Winant's Racial Formation in the United States. They argue that races are constructed when physical differences can be made to coincide with differences in group interest.  In particular, when one group can economically and/or politically subordinate another, they are likely to try to justify that domination on the basis of supposed or slight physical differences.

I have been puzzled by the resurgence of interest in zombies.  I think the main reason is that dramas have run out of groups that can be villains without nuance or redeeming features.  Zombies work well as villains because they are sub-rational, endlessly malevolent, and, conveniently already dead.  Permanently kill-worthy.

So I have been thinking about how well the enterprise of elaborating on the idea of zombies fits Omi and Winant's vision of a 'racial project'.  On the one hand, the physical difference between zombies and humans has been readily adapted to justify treating the whole group as worthy of domination - corralling, caging, experimenting on, even killing.  On the other hand, the zombie stories I know of do not show humans trying to get work out of zombies.

Perhaps that is the next screenplay.

I would say that the construction of zombies is mostly an example of what Omi and Winant mean by a 'racial formation' - but not entirely.

Maybe robots fill the bill better?

Malaria Deaths in Africa Down by More Than Half in a Decade

One big reason:  half the households have anti-malaria bed nets, and about a third of the population sleep under them each night.

This is great news, one of the best in all of public health today.

Trapeze Careers

My wife addressed my "Family Life" and "Social Structure" classes, as she does each year, on how women can 'have it all.'

The readings we have studied leading up to this talk address the fact that men are likely to have a definite plan of how they want their careers to develop.  They identify a ladder, and make a plan to climb it.  Since life rarely turns out just the way we expect it to, men are more prone to have a mid-life crisis when they realize that the narrative of their life is going to turn out differently than they imagined it would.

Women, by contrast, are more likely to have a big picture of a life with career, family, and public duties in some kind of balance.  They often have a less specific plan of climbing one ladder.  Instead, they are more likely to pursue one path, then make choices at the time that lead them in a different direction.  When they look back on their lives, they are likely to discern the thread of continuity that ties this zig-zag path together, though it would have been hard to predict ahead of time.

My wife offered the students, especially the women, the advice that they would be able to achieve a balanced life if they were OK with having a 'trapeze career' rather than climbing a ladder.  And sometimes on the trapeze you let go of one bar before you have a clear grasp on the next one.

I think 'trapeze career' is a wonderful metaphor and a fine counterpart to the career 'ladder'.

A Critique of Davis and Moore on the 'Functional Necessity' of High Pay for Some Jobs

One of the staples of sociological discussions of social stratification is the Davis-Moore hypothesis.  This idea, advanced in 1945 by two then-famous sociologists, Kingsley David and Wilbert Moore, argued that some jobs were so 'functionally necessary' to society that we needed to pay people more to get them to do them.  This also implied that many jobs were not so functionally necessary, and therefore we could pay people less.

While giving a guest lecture for a colleague, I had occasion to read this hypothesis again for the first time in years.

In the intervening years, I have often had occasion to answer student objections about unfair pay.  Their argument is usually something like 'the work teachers do is more valuable that what professional athletes do - we should pay teachers more.' (And, presumably, pay athletes less).

The answer I have given to students was that, for the most part, wages are a measure of market value, not social value. What we get paid is determined much more by the supply of people who can do what we do, compared to the demand from people willing to pay for what we do.  The super-skill of the very best professional athletes is in great demand for a handful of positions.  There are millions of teachers, but even greater millions who are willing and able to do the job demanded at the pay offered.

Which brings us back to Davis and Moore.  The more I think about it, the less I think pay is offered as an incentive to do socially valuable jobs with rare skills.  That is, the pay is not the motivation.  The job is the motivation, for many mysterious reasons.  The pay is what you have to offer to get enough people with the relevant skills to do that job, given the supply and demand. Change either supply or demand, and the pay changes, without any change in the social value of the job.

One of the reasons we honor some jobs more than others is that social status is something that most people want, apart from and in addition to pay.  And status goes both ways - we honor jobs that are worthwhile, but we also honor people who do worthwhile jobs for low pay because they are willing to work for low pay. 

Teach for America, Like the Peace Corps, is a Worthwhile Program of Bourgeois Missionary Work

Teach for America is sometimes criticized because the young people who do it are well-meaning amateurs who do not stick with teaching.  They come from good schools, but were not trained in education.  There is a high rate of leaving teaching after a few years.

I have taken comfort from the fact that the same is true of the Peace Corps.  Indeed, we always expected that Peace Corps volunteers would return to the US after their tour and go into some other field.  The idea was that they would learn more about some other place in the world, which would infuse their future work in any field.

Both Teach for America and the Peace Corps are, in other words, missionary programs.  I think this is a good thing.  I am for bourgeois missionaries to impoverished schools and impoverished countries. I am also for religious missionaries spreading the faith, whether they are there for the long term or not.

Another gripe about Teach for America is that amateur short-time teachers are bad for their students, even if the teachers get a great deal out of the experience. There is something to this. I don't think the amateur issue is that big a deal, but the short time is a problem. However, many education majors also leave the profession quickly, too.  Teaching in poor schools is a hard job, and a hard adjustment.

I have rarely heard people complain that the Peace Corps is bad because sending amateur short-timers hurts the people they were meant to help.  I think one of the reasons we rarely hear this gripe is because if the Peace Corps volunteers didn't go, no one would.  Someone helping for a short time is better than no one helping at all.

In America's poor schools, by contrast, someone would get hired to teach each year.

Still, I think that investing in getting liberally educated young people from the best schools - most of whom have no real experience of poverty - to wrestle seriously with the realities of poor life while trying to help, is worth the investment.  What I would add would be a stronger supportive community to help them weather the first hard years of teaching, so more of them stay.  A model for this kind of support is provided by our Teach Kentucky program.

Suffering Turned to Holiness is the Highest Happiness

Another good one from David Brooks, "What Suffering Does."  His main point:

The right response to this sort of pain is not pleasure. It’s holiness. ... It means seeing life as a moral drama, placing the hard experiences in a moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred.

Amen.  And this is a conclusion that you have to choose for yourself.  It is a hard choice. I don't think those who do not get there are to be blamed.

But there is a further step, which takes us back to happiness. At the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that the highest happiness comes from contemplation.  This comes as a bit of a surprise, after the first nine books talk about how to achieve happiness through action. 

I believe, though, that Aristotle is right.  It is only in contemplating the fruits of a life of active virtue that we can have a deeper understanding of what happiness is.  And the deepest understanding comes from contemplating suffering turned into holiness.

The Less You Know, The More You Want to Invade Ukraine

"The further our respondents thought that Ukraine was from its actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene militarily."

That is the scary conclusion of a study that compared which policy position people favored toward Ukraine with their actual knowledge of where Ukraine is on a map.

This supports my view that knowledge tends to mitigate violence.   

Cohabitation Practice

I asked the "Family Life" class to talk with their friends about what they thought of cohabitation vs. marriage.  Since many of my students effectively live together on campus, I thought that many had already voted with their feet in favor of cohabitation.  To my surprise, they did not regard living together on campus as real cohabitation, because the couple was not cooking together, or splitting the rent, or responsible for most of the things involved in living in the 'real world' yet.

This is a fair enough distinction.  It did give me an idea, though: encourage the couple who are living together to conduct experiments simulating, as realistically as possible, what real cohabitation would be like.  They could, say, make all their meals together for a week.  They could spend another week really pooling their finances, and facing together what sharing all their costs would look like.  They could start interacting with one another's families in a routine way.

Such an experiment might be eye opening.

An important point that we make in the "Family Life" class is that cohabiting is not really the same as marriage.

We could go back one step earlier in the chain to get students to come to grips with the ways in which sharing a dorm room is not the same as cohabiting.

And all of this is in the interest of 'deciding not sliding' into the biggest decision of your life.

7.1 Million Newly Insured Under Obamacare

This is a great day for our nation.  We are making progress toward health insurance for everyone, despite massive resistance by political opponents of the president.

And this number does not include the further millions of young people who continue to be covered by their parents' insurance, including some of our own children.

Not to mention ending the injustice of denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

In a few years, Obamacare will be part of the fabric of the American safety net.  And those who oppose it now will deny they were ever against it.

Spouses Can Calm Each Other's Brains in a Way Cohabitors Can't

Holding your spouse's hand when you are expecting a shock calms your brain.

Holding your cohabitor's hand in the same situation does not.

Trust comes from the permanence of the commitment.

All Parents Can Talk to Their Kids

Kids from professionals' families have heard 30 million more words from adults by the time they get to school than kids from poor families.

This is a gap that families of any class can close.

One of the saddest footnotes I know is early on in Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods. She writes that by the age of three, middle class kids have a bigger vocabulary than welfare parents do.  So the poor parents will have to work on their own language skills to help their kids.

They should.  Win-win.

Things Are Getting Better: Child Mortality

Bill Gates says this is his favorite chart.

This is, indeed, one of the best arguments that things are getting better.

Go sanitation!

The Beginning of the End for Big-Time "College" Sports

Football players at Northwestern University have won the right to unionize.  The National Labor Relations Board has recognized that players in the Division I money sports are, in effect, full-time employees of the university.

It is true that, as the commercials run by the National Collegiate Athletic Association say, nearly all college athletes will go pro in something other than sports. At Centre College's level, in Division III, all the students are truly scholar-athletes.

The money sports in Division I, on the other hand - especially football and basketball - are minor league professional teams located near universities.  The scandal recently documented at the University of North Carolina is only the tip of vast empire of fraudulent academics to sustain the myth of "scholarship" athletes.  The genius of the Division I sports teams is that they run a professional league where everyone gets paid like a professional - except the athletes.  In most states, the highest paid public employee in the entire state is the football or basketball coach at the flagship state university, making millions more than the governor.

I appreciate the role of local teams in creating a collective effervescence and promoting social solidarity.  Allegiances to athletic teams is one of the few things that binds people in a region across class and race lines. Sharing in the fortunes of 'our' team is an important part of the American civil religion.  However, it is only a happenstance of our history that two of our leading sports at the moment have their farm system located in universities.  Baseball had the good fortune to develop its minor leagues before the era of big-time college sports.  This is a model that would be more appropriate for football and basketball, as well.

Then the universities could concentrate on teaching and research, without the massive distortion to their mission that comes when the big sports tail wags the entire university dog.

More power to the players union.

Some Sexual Distinctions I Had Not Heard Before

My "Family Life" class is reading Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker's excellent Premarital Sex in America. I have sent the class out to interview their peers about their own experiences of, and attitudes toward, premarital sex.

One of the interesting results of this assignment is that I learn some of the true, on-the-ground moral distinctions that young people use in regulating and judging sexual practice.

In general, Regnerus and Uecker found that most young people think that sex is best and most appropriate within a committed relationship.  However, many young people, especially young men, have some experience of casual sex.  How do they explain this? 

One young man distinguished between a few 'sexual experiments' that he undertook in casual relationships, which he thought were useful learning experiences, and 'habitual hookups' undertaken by some of his peers, who sought casual sex regularly and for its own sake.

Regnerus and Uecker also found that alcohol was involved in many young people's sexual relations, especially (almost universally) in the casual ones.  So how to distinguish between moral and immoral drunken sex?  One interview subject distinguished between drinking a bit to foster intimacy, which was good, and a 'blackout hookup', which was not.

More dispatches from the front of 'emerging adult' sexual ethics as I receive them.

Childhood Obesity is Down 40%

That is great news.  I didn't see that coming.

Obesity is one vice that is a side-effect of our virtues - in this case, the virtue of plentiful food.  That we still have plentiful food and are combating the side effects is excellent news in itself, and about our problem-solving abilities.

Riots Against an Elected Government Are Not the Same as Riots Against a Dictator

The ongoing occupations, street battles, and riots by mobs of protesters in Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela are not justified.

I don't care for any of those governments.  And I supported the ouster of the dictatorships in each of those countries.  But using the same tactics against an elected government - which plans to hold the next elections on schedule, in the usual way - is wrong.

Parliamentary systems are a little different than ours, in that public protest could force an early election.  But the protests themselves need to remain peaceful, or they lose their moral claim.

Speaker Boehner Leads the Way in Congressional Comity

... if a little grudgingly.

Still, I applaud his decision to bring a bill to raise the debt ceiling without other strings on it. 

This will allow for Republicans and Democrats to work together, which I opens the way to more normal political compromise on other things.

CVS Drops Tobacco: Another Step Up in Our Changing Cultural Standards

Whenever people say that our culture is falling apart, I think of the growing cultural movement against smoking. 

The latest positive development: CVS Pharmacy will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products.

We are not losing our standards.  We are changing them.  And, with a few exceptions, I think our cultural standards are changing in a positive direction.

Elite Women Are Becoming More Like Elite Men, Less Like Other Women

Alison Wolf's main point in The XX Factor is that women in the top fifth of the economy live lives more like their male counterparts - high education, long careers, hired help. 

In fact, if they hire help and go right back to work after they have kids, women of the top classes do not even pay a 'mommy penalty' in their earnings.  Elite women, in other words, are living more like elite men than they are like other women.

The bottom 80% of the economic structure is very gendered.  The Fortunate Fifth, though, are becoming more integrated and similar to one another.

One Reason Women Go to College More Than Men: Women's Careers Have Become Much More Credential-Driven

This is a helpful point made by Alison Wolf in The XX Factor. 

As is well known, women are now more likely to go to and complete college than men.

Part of the reason is that they can go to college now much more than women could in the past.

But another part of the reason is that traditional women's careers - which are still overwhelmingly female - require more educational credentials than they used to.  Nursing and the other health care fields, in particular, are much more credentialized than they were even a generation ago.

Traditional men's careers, by contrast, such as electricians, carpenters, and plumbers, do not require a college degree.  They may even require more certifications than they used to, but not the kind given by colleges.

Men and Women Work the Same Total Hours (There is no 'Second Shift')

This is a finding reported in the excellent new book, The XX Factor, by leading British economic researcher Alison Wolf.

She says of all that she reports in this book, this fact is the one she expects readers to have the hardest time believing.  The belief that men and women now work equally outside the home, and then women come home to an unbalanced 'second shift' is very widespread, especially in the U.S.

As women have worked more outside the home, men have done more housework.  But, as expected, women still do more housework than men. 

However, men still do even more work outside the home than women do, which means that in the rich countries pretty much across the board, men and women work, on average, the same total hours.

Colorada Sensibly Legalizes Marijuana

I think we should legalize marijuana across the board, and tax it heavily. I do not favor using it, but I think it is not worse than alcohol, and should be treated the same way.

I commend Colorado for legalizing the recreational use of marijuana.  I believe this will be the wave of the future.

This is some sensible news to start the new year.

Chinese Democracy is Coming

Two of the happiest developments to end 2013 with was the announcement by the Chinese government that they will end their brutal labor camps, and ease their 'one-child' policy.

I think democracy will come to China as their middle class grows.

They will need a major cultural change to reduce corruption from within.  My hopes are on the evangelical Christian revival that I think will come when they have religious freedom.

Chinese democracy will be a great step forward for the whole world.

It will not come in 2014, but soon.

The Rational Search for That Which Transcends the Rational

I was reading Kelly Besecke's You Can't Put God in a Box, a study of intellectuals seeking a transcendent religion they can believe in beyond the narrow fundamentalisms of existing religions.  They start from a belief that there is a transcendent beyond what any language can adequately say.

I believe this is true.  Thinking about this search for the transcendent clarified something for me.

You can't explain rationally what the transcendent is. However, you can explain rationally why you can't explain rationally what the transcendent is.

The limits of language are rationally discernable.  This helps us be both open minded and humble in describing what is beyond language.

Hurrah for Political Compromise in the Congress

I find it very encouraging that Republican leaders are making a budget with Democrats.

I particularly am delighted that Speaker Boehner has finally attempted to take back his party from their dangerous coalition partners, the Tea Partiers.

This bodes well for actual government.

Caring Ingeniously

In the "Happy Society" class we were talking about Julian Simon's idea that human ingenuity is the greatest resource, the reason we can have confidence in humanity's ability to solve or ameliorate its problems.

One woman, who will in a few years be a fine and caring doctor, was encouraged by the idea of human ingenuity as a great source of hope for humanity in general.  This led me ask her, and wonder myself, how this idea applied to people like her.

The question I asked her was:  "What do you think will be the best way to focus your own ingenuity? People who want to care for and serve others – most of whom are women – tend to think of how they can care well, but not how they can care ingeniously."

Health Care Navigator Suppression Laws are Just Evil

Thirteen states have passed laws making it extremely difficult, or even illegal, to help uninsured people navigate the new health insurance exchanges.

For example, in Texas, "navigators must have 40 hours of state training in addition to the 20 hours the health care law requires. Republican Gov. Rick Perry 'is even trying to limit the hours of navigator operations from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., which is an extraordinary restriction for ordinary folks who are working for a living who want to buy insurance and get benefits'".

I understand that Republicans and Tea Partiers want to deprive Pres. Obama of major legislative achievement.  They fought tooth and nail when the act was being passed.  They shut down the whole government, at huge expense, to try to prevent Obamacare from starting - to no effect.

But to prevent the good work of helping people get health insurance out of sheer partisanship is very, very wrong.

The Iran Deal is a Good First Step

Today's good news:  we made a preliminary agreement with Iran.  They will cap their nuclear weapons program, and we will ease some of the economic sanctions.  For a time.  And then we will assess if each side held up its end.

This is exactly how diplomacy is supposed to work.

One of the most puzzling fights in the 2008 presidential election was over talking to Iran.  Sen. Obama said he was willing to sit down and talk to the Iranians to see if we could work out a deal. 

Amazingly, he was attacked by some hard-rightist.  They said we should only talk to Iran if they had already met all of our demands.  That is the kind of foolishness that guarantees war and misery, and puts the United States in the wrong from the outset.  That is the position of the Athenians in the Melian dialogue - the very model of big-power injustice.

The new Iranian deal shows the wisdom of now-President Obama's approach.

Filibuster Reform: A Centrist View

The filibuster rules were changed in the U.S. Senate yesterday to end the egregious obstructions by the minority.  I am glad that executive appointments can now be voted on, and that some governing will actually happen.

However, I think this is the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

The real problem occurred when the meaning of 'filibuster' was changed.  A real filibuster involves standing up and talking about why you oppose a nominee or bill.  You may be standing and talking for a long time.  You have to hold up all other Senate business to carry on with your filibuster.  This means that you need quite a bit of support from the other senators, or you will lose a cloture vote.

A few years ago, in a foolish bipartisan measure, the Senate rules were changed to allow the mere threat of a filibuster to be enough to block a nomination or a bill.  This is the mistake that should be corrected. 

If the current relatively minor rule change is the 'nuclear option,' then the previous rule change was the tsunami that washed away all meaning to the filibuster rule.

Let's go back to real filibusters if you want to stop the Senate.

The Ubiquity of Fear Campaigns

"Fear campaigns are used extensively in today's society.  An entire commercial break without at least one fear campaign is a rare occasion."

I asked students in my "Happy Society" class to analyze fear campaigns.  They did not lack for material.  I have read papers analyzing campaigns against drinking, meth, global warming, domestic violence, obesity, several medical conditions, and many more.  If this had been an election year in Kentucky, I imagine I would also have seen an abundance of political ads.

I also asked them to imagine making the same argument, but in a positive way.  In some cases it was easy, but in many it was hard.

Advertisers use fear even more than they use sex to sell everything.  This fosters a culture of fear that undermines social trust, and therefore undermines general happiness.

After viewing many fear campaigns, one student reached to conclusion quoted above.

Which leads to a good natural experiment.  The next time you watch television, pay attention to a few commercial breaks. See how often a whole commercial break goes by without at least one fear ad.

The Surprising Thing I Learned About My Students' Image of 9/11

I am teaching a short course on 9/11. 

I wanted to teach this course when I realized that next year's first-year students were in kindergarten in 2001.  Soon the Centre student body will have no memory of the 9/11 attack, while the grownups around them will continue to refer to the events as if they happened yesterday.

The juniors and seniors I am teaching this term were in third or fourth grade at the time. They do remember, though mostly they remember the commotion among the adults and in their school.  But they all saw the pictures of the burning towers of the World Trade Center that day.

The surprising thing I learned from teaching them is that they did not know that the twin towers were a famous landmark before 9/11.  They asked me if, when we heard that the World Trade Center had been hit by airplanes, could most people picture what those buildings looked like?

For young adults today - and likely the whole next generation - their main image of the World Trade Center is of the twin towers on fire, and then collapsing into rubble.

Obamacare Will Be A Pretty Big Success

I think the extension of health insurance to all Americans is a huge step forward. It will soon become as much a part of the fabric of American life as Social Security and Medicare.  It will be hard to convince students in a few years that there was a time when we did not have universal health insurance.

It will also be hard to convince students, especially the Republican students, that Republican legislators all voted against universal health insurance.  That the Republican Party ran three elections on trying to defeat and then overturn what they called Obamacare.  The Tea Party is opposed to the Affordable Care Act beyond the point of reason sometimes.  They shut down the government and were ready to bankrupt the country rather than let the uninsured have health insurance.

The Republican alliance with the Tea Party will, I think, be seen as a disastrous miscalculation, especially about Obamacare.

The Republican Party is strenuously, even frantically, opposed to Obamacare because they know it will be a success.

M23 Rebels Lay Down Arms, Agree to Talk in Congo

"The rebels agree to lay down their arms and negotiate ..." is almost always good news. 

In today's good news, the M23 rebel group in Congo were the ones stopping their war.  The government of the Congo will negotiate to achieve the rebels' reintegration into society. 

The Congolese government was backed by UN troops who, unusually, were sent there to fight.  The rebels' main outside supporters, the government of Rwanda, also accepted the peace deal.

This is not the end of fighting in the eastern Congo - several other rebel groups and gangs remain.  But today's good news sets an excellent precedent for creating lawful order in one of the most lawless places on earth.

We Dwell on Wars that Settle Ethical Conflicts

I attended a fruitful symposium at Maryville College on the moral meaning of the Civil War.

The best idea I had while taking part in this discussion is that the wars we dwell on - the Civil War, the Second World War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution - settled deeply vexing ethical issues. 

Equally big wars that did not settle such questions, though, we ignore.  The War of 1812 or the Korean War, for Americans.  The First World War for the world. 

The comparison I thought most about at the conference was between the U.S. Civil War and the 30 Years War.  This conference emphasized the moral and theological problem that slavery posed for both sides in the Civil War, a problem that could not be settled by the usual theological means.  The 30 Years War, likewise, grew out of a very deep theological problem that could not be settled by theological means. 

But the 30 Years War ended in military stalemate and ideological exhaustion.  The theological conflict was not settled - instead, the Enlightenment thinkers concluded that religious issues simply had to be removed from politics.

The Civil War, by contrast, settled the ethical problem of slavery when the churches and the parties could not.  That war did not settle the problem of racism, which got worse in the post-war era before it got better.  But the Civil War ended the question of slavery, just as World War II ended the question of fascism.

No war is good, but the wars we dwell on did a good thing in settling an ethical conflict too deep to be handled any other way.

Ending the Shutdown: The Reluctant Center Prevails

I am hopeful that the current cooperation between Republican and Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate will end the government shutdown, and remove the threat of a debt default.

Even more importantly, the leaders of both parties, especially the Republican, have been obliged to act like centrists, even if they do not want to. Actually, I think most Republican and Democratic leaders, year in and year out, do want to cooperate with one another. 

For the past few years the Republicans have been bowing to their coalition partners, the Tea Party.  The Tea Party does not wish to cooperate, as they have made clear from day one. Yet the coalition of the two rightist parties was doomed from the beginning. A governing party and an anti-government party can not, by their very natures, work together to govern. 

The Republican Party made a Faustian bargain with a disorganized mass of anti-government social movements, going back to the Reagan Administration. This worked for them through most of the Reagan and Bush, Sr. years, because once in office the Republicans ignored their anti-government wing. They cooperated with the Democrats in making the government larger.

This strategy has come back to bite them, though.  All those years under the wing of the Republican Party taught the disparate anti-government types how to function as a loose party.  In the last three cycles, the Tea Party has emerged as the more effective part of the 'conservative' coalition. The minority Republican Party was forced to make a coalition with the Tea Party to gain shaky control of the House of Representatives.

I think now, having brought the credit of the United States to the brink of collapse, the Republican Party is finally starting to cut their ungovernable progeny loose.

Which is good for centrism, and for responsible government.

Juan Linz: An Appreciation

My dissertation director, Juan Linz, died recently. He was 86, and had been retired for some years.

Linz was a German-born Spaniard who spent his whole career in the U.S., mostly at Yale. He was a political sociologist, propagator of the idea of 'authoritarian' regimes, an expert on the Basque terrorists, and a major theorist of democratic regimes.  His recent work on gridlock and worse in presidential democracies is being much cited just now.

He turned out to be an odd choice as dissertation director.  He was a European and a Catholic (though he was careful never to let students see his faith).  My dissertation was about American Presbyterians.  I often thought that he secretly believed that America and Protestantism were novelties that it was too soon to get too involved with. 

His students will long tell stories of the two large Gladstone bags of books that he always carried with him, and his chain smoking of strong Spanish "Ducados" cigarettes.

I worked with him because he was a Weberian, and had thought a great deal about religion and politics.  I learned a great deal from him on those subjects.

Obscenity and Pornography

This one goes a bit into the weeds.  I apologize for its length.

Yesterday we at Centre had a talk by a visiting philosopher on obscenity law.  My "Happy Society" class went because we have been studying Haidt's Righteous Minds, which talks about the different moral foundations that liberals and conservatives appeal to.  When I read the poster describing Michael Kessler's approach, I knew he was a liberal.  His argument was that an individual's choice to use obscene material hurts no one, so there should be no law against it. A conservative, by contrast, would argue that pornography - the specific example of obscenity that Kessler was concerned with - degrades the sanctity of the body, both of individuals and of the body politic.

To make his argument, Kessler used three arguments:

1) Mill says I am the sovereign over myself, as long as I do no harm to others.

2) The Rowan decision said that householders could opt out of receiving obscene material in the mail.

3) the Miller decision said that community standards could prohibit sending obscene material in the mail to anyone in the community.

Kessler read this sequence this way:
Mill was right - individuals are sovereign over what they do, as long as it does not harm other individuals.

Rowan was right - individuals can exercise their sovereign individuality by choosing not to receive obscene material.

Miller was wrong - the state is imposing a universal judgment that obscene material is not open to the free choice of individuals.

I think this reading is wrong.

Mill is talking about individuals.  I think in practice the range of things that apply only to individuals, without affecting the other people that individual is connected to, is very small.

Rowan is not about individuals, it is about households. The responsible adults of a household decide to protect their little community from the intrusion of obscene material.

Miller is not about the state, and certainly not about the state making a universal substantive judgment.  The community is a larger version of the household that was acting in Rowan.  This large household is making a similar decision to protect their somewhat larger community from the intrusion of obscene material.

Kessler objected to any community standards on the grounds that they might be used to support racism.

But here is the problem.  Liberals use community standards the same as everyone else.  They decide in the little community of their household, or in the somewhat larger community of the social networks they control, such as campuses, that some obscene material is not permitted. For example, they forbid the use of racist words.

Banning the 'n-word' is a community standard.

I think Kessler was confused about obscenity and pornography.  He was drawing a distinction, but the wrong one.  What makes anything obscene is its public quality.  The debate over obscenity is over whether things which are not, or cannot be, forbidden in private must also be accepted in public. Rowan drew the public/private line at the household mailbox.  Miller, more ambitiously, drew the line at the community's border.  Pornography is just one example of the vastly broader category of obscenity.

The other thing at issue in Rowan and Miller is whether pornography is an inherently dangerous substance. Some things are banned even in private because they are too dangerous to the community to be in private hands.  Nuclear weapons would be an uncontroversial example.

Pornography is a somewhat dangerous substance.  I think porn is about as dangerous as marijuana.  They both do dull the moral sense.  But neither is very dangerous.  Therefore, I think they should be regulated the same way.  Not forbidden in private, but strongly discouraged in public.  In other words, obscene - off stage.

Disney Does a Happy Thing: Upgrading Their Part-Time Employees

Disney has decided to make its 30-hour-per-week employees full-timers, so they can get health insurance.  This is a happy outcome, brought about by the Affordable Care Act.

Disney's action is in contrast to the shameful decision by some employers - notably Kentucky-based Papa John's Pizza - to downgrade its nearly full-time employees to part time so that they would not get health benefits.

I believe as universal health insurance becomes the norm in the United States, more companies will follow Disney's lead.

Why Were the Fifty-Somethings the Least Likely to Leave Religion?

The Pew Religion and Public Life project hosted an excellent discussion of what the increase in religious 'nones' (people who profess no religion) means.  One of the tables presented plotted the increase by age from 2008 to 2012.

The main point is that the young are more likely to now say they have no religion than are the old.

What struck me most, though, was the trough right in the middle of this chart: people in their early 50s were the least likely to say they had become less connected to a religious institution in that period.

I am drawn to this table because it has a puzzling anomaly that needs explaining.  I am also drawn to this table because I am in my early 50s, and I have had no inclination in this period to leave the church.

I do not have a good explanation.  I do have one hypothesis to offer, and maybe two.

First, this age group is on the cusp between the Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, between inflated rhetoric and 'just do it.' Being able to partly identify each way, perhaps we are willing to give the church, the land of inflated rhetoric, another chance to just do it in making a better world.

Second, this is exactly the age group of President Obama (b. 1961).  The people most likely to say they had no religion are young Democrats. Perhaps Democrats of the president's cohort are less likely to give up on religion when they see him stay with the mainline church that gave his life direction.

Why Do the Petite Bourgeoisie Like Strongmen?

The small business class is famously the most conservative in society.  They are the backbone of anti-democratic movements, and the supporters of dictators.  Even in very democratic societies, they like leaders who act, and regard political negotiation as weakness.

One of the solid findings of happiness research is that we hate loss more than we like an equivalent gain. We continue to be anxious about possible losses, but quickly get used to sizable gains.

I believe the petite bourgeoisie favors the strongman because their own economic position feels perpetually precarious.  They have a little and hate to lose it.  They fear the poor - whom they tend to regard as lazy, dependent, and undeserving - as coming for their stuff.  Democratic politics, which tends to give something to every group of potential voters, is dangerous because it enables and encourages the poor.  Strongmen are better because they don't have to give any group anything.

Once again, fear appears to be the great solvent of a happy, trusting society.

Hurrah for Rand Paul! He Supports Restoring Felons' Voting Rights.

Senator Rand Paul calls for restoring the voting rights of felons with the completion of their sentences.  He also wants to reclassify the lowest kind of felonies to misdemeanors so the convicts would not lose their voting rights in the first place.

I don't often agree with Sen. Paul, but I thoroughly agree with him on this issue.  Kentucky has the most difficult path for felons to get their voting rights restored, so it is particularly helpful to have a Kentucky senator take this strong line.

Changing the Name of "Grand Wizard High School"

The bad news: 

There is a public high school in Jacksonville, Florida named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.  The then all-white school was given that name in 1959 as a protest against the federal requirement that public schools integrate.

The worse news:

When parents at the now-integrated (and half black) school asked the school board to change the school's name in 2007, the board voted 5-2 to keep the name.

The good news:

Parents are leading a new movement to change the school name.  75,000 have signed their petition.  And all five pro-Grand Wizard members of the school board have been replaced.

The movement to end anti-black racism in this country will be long and slow, and still has decades to go.  But we make progress by little steps, like changing a school name.

National Exceptionalism is True of Every Nation, and Dangerous

This is taken from CNN's account of today's minor dustup over national exceptionalism:

It was a reference to President Vladimir Putin's address Tuesday night, in which he said that while Russia can't be a global cop, it ought to act when in certain situations.

"That's what makes us exceptional," Putin said. "With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth."

Obama's answer to that?

"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation," he wrote.

He concluded with the line, "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

This seems to me to be true and not really that controversial. As a sociologist I have to object to equating God creating all individuals equal with all nations being equal. Likewise, I object to conflating nations with the governments of those nations.

The main point, though, holds.  All nations are exceptional in some way.  But when a government thinks that its policies are justified because our nation is better than other nations, that is dangerous.  It is dangerous for everyone, most especially for the nation imagining that it is above the laws that affect other nations. 

The United States as a state, and the American people as a nation, have some distinctive virtues.  I celebrate and promote them often. But we also have the same kind of self-serving temptations that all states do to see our interests as justifying acting unilaterally, and claiming it is for the common good.

Now, as you have probably realized, I did amend CNN's account of the kerfuffle slightly: I swapped "Putin" and "Obama," and substituted "Russia" for "America."  But the same principle holds.  And it would hold if any other leader were swapped for "Putin" and any other country swapped for "Russia."

Better-off People Seem to Be Having More Children

This is the conclusion of a private report from BCA Research, described in The Economist.

The birth dearth that was threatening to crash the populations of developed nations in a generation or two seems to be reversing. And it is reversing in exactly the cohorts one would most hope it would: educated, married couples who have the structure and resources most conducive to raising children.

A generation ago, the more educated a woman was, the fewer children she was likely to have.  Now, it appears, the opposite is true for younger cohorts.

This is good news, indeed.

The Russians Get the Syrians to Destroy Chemical Weapons? Win, Win, Win

The great news coming out the Syrian crisis would be a win for everyone. 

A win for the Syrian people, first and foremost, who would no longer be gassed by their government.

A win for the United States and its allies in not having to bomb the Syrian weapon capacity.

A win for the Russians in showing that they have the power to help, and actually helping.

It is probably also a win, if only temporary, for the Syrian the dictatorship, in showing that they are slightly less awful than they could possibly be.

This is not a done deal, of course, but it certainly would be happy news if it can be brought home.

Good News From the New Iranian Leadership

My friend Ron Stockton posted these useful facts:

President Rohani, the new President of Iran, sent Rosh Hashana greetings to all Jews "but especially to Iranian Jews." The Foreign Minister of Iran sent his own greetings. The daughter of Nancy Pelosi, a filmmaker who knows the foreign minister, sent a message asking what this message meant given that Iran had denied the Holocaust. The Foreign Minister, who studied and lived in the US, responded that "Iran never denied the Holocaust. One man denied the Holocaust and he is gone. Happy Holidays."

Obama Takes a Centrist Approach to Syria

I think the president is following the right, careful path in Syria.

He is right that the whole international community can't let chemical weapons be used with impunity. Since the U.S. is the leading power in the international community, it falls to us to lead - and, if necessary, carry out - the response.

At the same time, he is right that the whole international system is endangered if countries respond to bad regimes, like Syria, by simply overthrowing them.  That is a cure worse than the disease.

Therefore, a measured response, targeted as far as possible at destroying the specific Syrian military units that carried out the poison gas attacks, is a good centrist path.

Moreover, the U.S. government works better when the president and Congress agree on military action. It has become easier and easier for presidents to make war and bypass Congress.  This is a dangerous practice.  Congressional leaders constantly push to be consulted and to debate and vote on military action.  Sometimes there is no time.  Syria is not one of those cases.

President Obama is right to propose a clear, limited military action that will not (in itself) overthrow the Syrian dictator, and he is right to ask Congress to vote to support this plan or explain why not.

One good outcome of this debate is that so many Republican leaders in Congress have insisted that the president must consult with them before making war.  I hope they will remember this the next time a Republican president wants to make war.

The bigger issue, though, is that I think there are always middle positions and calibrated steps that we can take in policy.  Granted, once an all-out war begins and fear takes over, it is hard to stick to limits.  But we have not had an all-out war in decades, and are not likely to soon.  The Syrian case is the right place for a measured, transparent, policy-driven response.

How to End Voter Suppression: Base Congressional Representation on the Number of Registered Voters

I am disheartened by the repeated efforts to make it harder to vote, mostly for poor people.

I have an idea to create an incentive the other way - to get the parties to be interested in expanding the number of voters:

Base congressional representation on the number of registered voters, not on the sheer number of people, in a district.

Chinese-Slavic Match-Making?

When high-achieving women have a hard time finding suitable husbands in Western societies, where there are roughly equal sex ratios, that is bad.  But when high-achieving women have a hard time finding husbands in China, which has way more men than women, that is terrible. 

Maybe China should import Eastern European men, who also greatly outnumber women in several countries.  The men might be glad to find high-achieving wives and to move to a more vibrant economy, and the Chinese women might be glad to have husbands who don't come with the baggage of oppressive mothers-in-law.

'Stay-at-Home Moms' Who Work Full Time

An interesting tidbit from an American Sociological Association meeting session:

In a study of women's work/family arrangements, a number of women described themselves as 'stay-at-home moms' even though they worked 30 or 40 hours per week.  When pressed, they said that they thought of themselves as stay-at-home moms if they were there when their children were awake.

Naturally, these women did not get much sleep themselves.