The Gruntlwagon, Complete

I owe you several weeks of Saturday posts of the new stickers on the Gruntlwagon, much delayed by weather. Here, as an early Christmas present (to me, at least), is the finished, um, canvas.

If they are too small to read, the five rows, from top to bottom, left to right, read:

Earlham; Swarthmore; Yale.

Flaming Moderate; Fear Less, Sanity More.

E Pluribus Unum [Earth flag]; GRUNTL; We the People Are All Immigrants.

Moderate profits fill the purse; Obama sunrise; Centre College; Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty - Socrates.

Christian and a Democrat.

Accommodating Breastfeeding Is Good Family Support

President Obama has set up a group to create uniform standards for federal agencies to accommodate workers who breastfeed their babies. Many federal agencies have their own policies. The new standards would provide a model for the other agencies and encourage best practices. Accommodating breastfeeding is a good, low-key kind of family support.

Interestingly enough, the first federal agency to create its own breastfeeding policies was the National Security Agency.

Teens Plan For Recession, Have Fewer Babies

The teen birth rate is down 6% since last year - the lowest level recorded in 70 years of U.S. statistics.

The young adult birth rate is down 7% since last year.

Both drops are probably due to the bad economy - girls and women choosing not to have babies because it will be harder to afford them.

Which demonstrates that most of the teen pregnancy rate is not due to ignorance or an inability to plan.

The Birth of an Erroneous Statistic: How Many Wives Earn More Than Their Husbands

About a quarter of wives make more than their husbands in couples in which both work.

This figures is based on a study made just before the recession. Since the recession laid off more husbands than wives, the number may, at this moment, be closer to 1/3. In many of those couples, the husband is not working at all, though he is likely looking for work.

Historically, husbands and fathers work or seek work - period. Most wives and mothers, on the other hand, are more likely to trade off work, or more consuming work, against family needs.

Moreover, in cohabiting couples, she is likely to work more and he is likely to work less than in married couples. Mixing the two kinds of couples muddies the statistics.

A recent Reuters story, citing an unnamed "Princeton study," stated flatly that in a third of couples, she makes more than he does. The nuance of "married" and "both working" was lost.

I fear that this number - "She makes more than he does in one third of American households" - will take on an independent life, like the "50% of marriages end in divorce" myth.

No Labels Will Go Nowhere

As a centrist I want to like No Labels, an attempt to create a common ground political movement. They offer that they are Democrats, Republicans, and independents marching under the slogan "Not left. Not right. Forward."

Alas, I think they will get nowhere. We have never been a non-partisan country - that version of "no labels" is a non-starter. The centrist path has always depended on bipartisanship. Bipartisanship depends on there being two parties with a plan for governing. Right now the civil war within the Republican Party has left them torn among the social conservatives, the libertarians, and the remaining lower-taxes-on-the-country-club Establishment. The only thing they agree on is preventing Democrats from governing. I think that until the tea party revolt runs its course, the GOP will have no positive plan of what it is for.

When we return to the normal American condition of two parties each in favor of government and governing, then we can have bipartisanship and a centrist way forward again.

Still No Stickers

No new bumper stickers on the Gruntlwagon this week. To top the snow of two weeks ago and the rain of last week, we had an ice storm.

Go Mother-Bear Wallets!

MIT is developing proverbial wallets that physically change as your electronic accounts grow and shrink. They aim at "unabstracting virtual assets" - just as the amount of bills and coins in your pocket unabstracts how much physical money you have.

I particularly like the "Mother Bear" model. It has a hinge inside, and an electronic connection to your bank. If making your monthly budget goal looks tight, the wallet makes itself harder to open. That is a good nudge.

Claiming the Sad Virtues of Divorce

Rachel Zucker's "Let's Get a Little Divorced" column is shocking, as it is meant to be.

Her underlying sentiment, that married couples should keep up their independent skills even as they work together as a team, is a sound and honorable one. Framing independence as a good fruit of divorce is not entirely wrong. Still, it is a sad commentary that we have to work backwards through divorce to think about how to be married well.

It reminds me of the story that goes around every year before Black Marriage Day. A little boy in a community where marriage is rare and decent fathers are scarce vows "when I grow up I am going to be a good dad; I'll pay my child support." This is so sad it makes the grandmothers weep.

Sidney Center, NY, Does Religious Unity Right

The Sufi community in the little town of Sidney Center, NY, buried one of their own on the community's farm. The Board of Supervisors investigated to make sure the burial was legal. It was. Nonetheless, one Supervisor, an anti-government Republican named Robert McCarthy, still objected, calling for the dead to be disinterred because "you can't just bury Grandma in the backyard under the picnic table."

That is the ugly part. This is the good part.

The town rallied 'round the Sufis. The next Board of Supervisors meetings was packed - a rare occurrence - calling shame on McCarthy. A local lawyer, who is Jewish, offered to represent the Sufis pro bono. A Republican committee woman resigned in disgust, and instead went to the Sufi community center to meet her turbaned neighbors for the first time. Hans Hass, spokesman for the Sufis, became a national figure for a moment as the story spread. But Hass was already a well-respected local figure, integrated into the town. Hass is a building contractor, volunteer fireman, and captain of the ambulance squad (!).

As if on cue to illustrate the points I had been writing about from American Grace, Sidney Center shows how religious difference binds us together, even in the face of the uncivil minority.

Newseum Press Freedom Map is a Good Shaming Tool

The Newseum in Washington, D.C. has a fascinating map of world press freedom. Green countries have a free press, yellow are partly free, and red countries control their press. The calculations are made by Freedom House, and the tiles that make up the map are changed annually.

The press freedom map shows how unusual our press freedoms are. The map is also an effective tool for shaming the yellow countries into loosening up. For example, Israel moved back from yellow to green this year when it lifted government restrictions on reporting from Gaza.

"What's That Name?" as Class Privilege

This is a fine illustration of class privilege.

One More Thought About American Grace

Robert Putnam is famous for Bowling Alone, his study of declining social capital in America.

American Grace is his major follow-up study, in which he was looking for what does hold America together. He concluded that religion actually does hold us together (which is does not do in some countries). This is an encouraging conclusion, more encouraging that Bowling Alone.

In fact, Putnam and Campbell said that “praying together seems to be better than either bowling together or praying alone.”

No Stickers Again

Too rainy. Soon, though.

American Grace: Conclusion

Putnam and Campbell conclude that religion is the glue that holds American society together. Most people, of all faiths, think all good people go to heaven (or the equivalent good outcome).

Even the "intolerant tenth," who think there is only one true religion, think religious diversity is good for America.

So why doesn't religion divide America, as it does other nations? Because nearly all Americans have friends or relatives of other faiths in their social networks. Putnam and Campbell call them "Aunt Susan" and "my pal Al."

The conclusion that Putnam and Campbell reach at the end of American Grace:

“Devotion plus diversity, minus damnation, equals comity."

American Grace 11: How Does a Religiously Divided Nation Get Along So Well?

The puzzle that Putnam and Campbell are trying to explain: how a country with high religious diversity and high religious devotion has such low religious conflict?

The answer is that we are not really very divided by religion. The secular tenth are the outliers on most measures. The moderately religious and the very religious are alike in most things.

On feeling thermometer measures - how warm (positive) toward Group X do you feel? - the results are a little unexpected:
Mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are all liked by others at above average rates;
Evangelical Protestants and Nones a bit below average;
Mormons, Buddhists, and Muslims (in that order) are least liked.

In the end, ideology generates more animosity than religion does.

American Grace 10: Religious People Oppose Dissent

The one civic negative that Putnam and Campbell find about religious people is that they are more likely to oppose dissent and accept restrictions on civil liberties.

After disposing of two possible arguments - that religious people are more Manichean in their worldview, or that religious skeptics support dissent - the authors offer a different explanation.

Religious people support authority more than secular people do. Religious people build up the social order by giving and serving those in need. For a similar reason, they build up civic order by supporting the authority on which that social order legitimately rests.

American Grace 9: The Religious are More Civic

Religious people give more and do more for religious and secular life than secular people do.

People in religious networks give and do more than people with religious beliefs but no networks.

People who profess no religion, but who nonetheless go to church sometimes, give and do more than their co-(non)-religionists who do not go to church.

Arthur Brooks, who I have written about before, says that conservatives give and do more than liberals. Putnam and Campbell find that this is because conservatives are more likely to be religious. Secular conservatives are not notably giving or civic-minded. In fact, American Grace argues,

“According to the best available evidence, the ‘civic good guys’ are more often religious liberals, not religious conservatives.”

American Grace 8: The Glue of Religion and Politics

The core of American Grace is the connection between religion and politics. The main finding is that the more religious people are, the more likely they are to be Republicans; the more secular they are, the more likely they are to be Democrats. There are, of course, some secular Republicans, and many religious Democrats, but the trend line is clear.

Except for African Americans, who are both very religious and very Democratic.

Putnam and Campbell consider several issues that might connect religiosity and partisanship. This is their overall conclusion on this issue:

The glue which holds religiosity and partisanship together is the political salience of two issues in particular: abortion and same-sex marriage.

In the late '70s the two parties took the same position on these issues, so religious traditionalists had nowhere in particular to go. From the first Reagan election on, though, the Republican Party took a conservative line on both of these issues. There after, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party clearly captured the conservative religious and liberal secular poles of the electorate, respectively.

American Grace 7: Evangelizing Faiths Are the Least Homogeneous

Putnam and Campbell found that 90% of American congregations are ethnically homogeneous. There is still a strong ethnic foundation to religion, most especially for Jews, Black Protestants, and, to a lesser extent than a generation ago, Catholics.

The least ethnically homogeneous congregations were found among Mormons and evangelical Protestants. This is somewhat ironic since Mormons famously resisted admitting black men to their priesthood until the 1970s, and conservative Protestant sects were the core of the religious resistance to integration and black civil rights a generation ago.

However, the whole nation has enjoyed a sea change in racial attitudes. Religious people are now against racism and for ethnic diversity, pretty much across the board. The remaining racists tend to do their organizing outside of religious networks.

Moreover, it makes sense that Mormons and evangelicals would be creating congregations that are increasingly diverse by ethnicity: these are the faiths that most evangelize new people into the faith. And, for the same reason, Mormons and evangelicals are the least ethnically based of major faiths, because what holds them together is common faith, more than a common background. Evangelical megachurches, in particular, have made a concerted effort to evangelize beyond their white base, which has paid off in the past decade or so.

The growing points of American religion are getting less and less segregated, and the younger generations are more and more likely to value ethnic diversity. This bodes well for the future.

No New Bumper Sticker Today - Too Much Snow

I will have a double post on the next dry day.