$100,000,000 Ego Houses

The "Veblen Effect" is when people pay way more than they have to for something to show how rich they are. Among the mega-egos with big bank accounts, there is always a competition to have the Most Expensive of Them All. This is not at all the same thing as having the Best of Them All.

When we think of mega-egos with money, one name may leap instantly to mind. Right. Donald Trump has led the way in building a nine-figure house, just to beat all the other guys. His 80,000 square foot monstrosity in Palm Beach has a "price" of $125,000,000, which is a makeover of a quaint little cottage that he bought for a mere $41,000.000.

And what would one call such a theater of intimidation? Maison de l'Amitie.

The punchline, though, is that Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who has even more ego and less sense of propriety than Trump, already has a $135,000,000 house is Aspen.

Amish Class

In a week of horrible school shootings, the deadliest and most graphically awful were the five young girls killed in the Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. Four of them were buried today.

The Amish are very serious Christians. So they turned the other cheek. They have tried to comfort the dead murderer's widow and her children. They urge her stay in the community. They pray for the crazy person who molested and murdered their children before killing himself as the police closed in. The grandfather of two to the dead girls was asked by a reporter if he had forgiven the killer. "In my heart, yes, " he said, "through God's help."

That is the class of humble people.

Nobel Prize Colleges

The count of the colleges that produced our new Nobel prize winners so far:

Berkeley
Brown
Harvard
MIT
Swarthmore

Stay tuned.

The Euston Manifesto I

A new venture in sensible center-left politics has begun in Britain, and spread to America. The British version begins with the "Euston Manifesto," to which a group of Americans has signed on.

I am always in favor of sensible centrist politics. I am working through the details of the manifesto and its amendments, to see what I think about it.

To start with, though, I was struck by the different ways of describing themselves that the British framers and their American cousins adopt.

The preamble to the Euston Manifesto begins "We are democrats and progressives." They go on to say that they are mostly from the Left, but not exclusive. So, who are they trying to reach? "We reach out … beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment." The left-of-center barrier is the fixed point of their identity. They are not aiming to join liberals and the center. They don't even imagine a center. Instead, the new line they are trying to draw is "between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values." The Euston Manifesto alliance is not distinguishing itself from the Reactionary Right – that is a given – but instead from the Looney Left.

The "American Signers of the Euston Manifesto," on the other hand, have views that "range from those of centrists and independents to liberals of varying hues on to the democratic left." The Americans see the Euston movement as a center-left alliance. The line they want to draw is somewhere right of center. There could be an enemy on the left, too, but it is not named.

The Euston alliance is made by the Left. The American counterpart is made by the left.

As the old joke says, Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language.

Black Incomes Surpass Whites in Queens

That is the title of a fascinating article in the New York Times by Sam Roberts. We can see the point quickly with some numbers:

$46,000 = average household income in the United States

$50,960 = average white household in Queens
$51,836 = average black household in Queens

By contrast, in neighboring Manhattan,
$86,494 = average white household
$28,116 = average black household

What is the difference in black achievement in the two boroughs? First, blacks in Queens are more likely to be immigrants. Second, blacks in Queens are more likely to be married.

Within Queens, the immigrant difference is clear:
$45,864 = average black native-born household
$61,151 = average black immigrant household

Married households in Queens have an even bigger advantage:
$70,324 = average black married native-born household
$84,338 = average black married immigrant household

And which factor matters more, marriage or immigration?
Clearly, marriage is the more important factor in raising household income. Married couples make about 50% more than unmarried households, even though many of the unmarrieds have two or more adults in them.

Queens shows the future of black achievement in America. Immigrants are likely to lead native-born African-Americans. But married couples, wherever they were born, will lead more.

Is the Global Presbyterian Fellowship Schismatic?

The Global Presbyterian Fellowship is a new project by some of the leading congregations of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to get beyond the endless internecine struggle, and get on with the business of spreading the gospel. They had an initial gathering in Atlanta this past summer that generated a major buzz. Something good might be coming, a way forward out of the old mess.

However, the GPF also raises a disquieting parallel. In the 1930s disgruntled conservatives, led by J. Gresham Machen, created an Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions. In its brief life, the Independent Board was aggressively critical of the existing church leadership. They asked congregations to give their mission money to the Independent Board instead of to the official mission agency of the church. The denomination ruled that the Independent Board was schismatic, and ordered all officers of the church to quit it. Machen and the other board members had, in my judgment, created the Independent Board in order to create a schism. Naturally, none of them quit the Independent Board when ordered to. They were tried, convicted, and, in 1936, removed from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. By prior arrangement, they immediately created a new denomination, now known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

When the call for the Global Presbyterian Fellowship was issued, it raised a red flag for me and others who know this history. We were relieved, therefore, to see that the first point of the initial invitation proclaims:

We choose to remain within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we encourage congregations to continue to relate to their own presbyteries in the manner that they deem best. This is not an effort to start a new denomination or to write a new constitution.

At the Atlanta meeting, the GPF adopted a covenant. The language of the covenant is a little less reassuring than was the initial invitation. Gone is any explicit assurance that they choose to remain within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Instead, we find this more ambiguous proposal:

To invest our financial resources only in those local and global mission efforts that we believe are biblically faithful and accountable, within the Presbyterian family and through other partnerships into which the Lord calls us.

That is not a call to schism, but it is not a proclamation of loyalty, either.

On the whole, I do not think the Global Presbyterian Fellowship is, or will be, schismatic. I say this partly out of trust for the initial impulse that created the GPF. I also believe, as I have written earlier, that the New Wineskins initiative has been the magnet for the schismatic forces in the church.

There is plenty of discontent in the Global Presbyterian Fellowship. So far, though, it is trying to build up the church from within.

If Pirates Oppose Zombies, Do Ninjas Support Them?

Austin had a wonderful "March for Zombies' Rights." You know, "Brains – The Other White Meat," and "Zombies Was People, Too." The zombie march drew some protesting pirates. Which raises the important question, if pirates oppose zombies, do ninjas support them?

Junior Gruntled #2 says yes, because ninjas help create zombies. I think they would, because ninjas can hide among zombies while sneaking up on protesting pirates.

The long war goes on …

Family Values Congressman Quits For Hitting on Teen Boy

Mark Foley, a conservative Republican representative from Florida, was caught sending emails to a 16-year-old page that are at least creepy, and seem much worse to me. The Republican leadership knew about them months ago, but covered it up. Now that they have come out, Foley has decided not to seek re-election.

Jon Stewart says the rule is simple: all politicians who decry sexual sins are committing them (ok, he put it a little more graphically). I am not that cynical, but the sheer hypocrisy of the family-values pols, and the shamelessness of their leaders, makes one want to weep.

We will look for better news tomorrow.

Hypergamy Means That the Rich Favor Sons; The Poor, Daughters

One of the most interesting things that I learned from Richard Conniff's The Natural History of the Rich is an implication of hypergamy. Hypergamy is the tendency of women to marry up socially, no matter how high they themselves are in the social structure. The highest-status women, therefore, run out of suitable mates, as do the lowest-status men. Therefore, the rich through history have favored sons and disfavored daughters, while the poor have done the reverse.

The new thought that this led me to was this helps explain why poor neighborhoods tend to produce matriarchal clans. It is not simply that the men are not expected to be responsible, but that the mothers favor their daughters as the more likely child to lift the whole family up.

I am still chewing on the implications of this idea.

No, New York Should Not Ban Fat

The New York City Board of Health took a step closer to banning trans fat in all city restaurants. Many doctors think that trans fat is bad for your heart. It probably is. But it shouldn't be banned in a free country.

The model that the fat banners use is the smoking ban in New York public buildings, including restaurants. I support a smoking ban in most places, including restaurants. Personally, I would let people smoke in bars, since people go to bars in the first place to do things that are bad for them.

The point is, though, that second-hand smoke is bad for other people beside the smoker. Second-hand fat is not even a meaningful concept. The Board of Health might spend its budget trying to convince people that trans fat is bad for them, and telling them all the kinds of food it appears in. They might require labels on all trans fat foods. They might even make fun of fat people.

But banning fat is just too intrusive. It gives some reality to the insult, "health Nazis."

61% of Americans Sleep Together

The National Sleep Foundation surveys the country about how, and how well, they sleep. Most Americans spend their nights "two in a bed," according to a new book by that name by sociologist Paul Rosenblatt. The vast majority of these co-sleepers are married couples. Many of them report that they would sleep better apart – due to snoring, thrashing about, differences in body temperature, etc., etc. Still, when Rosenblatt asked the couples he interviewed why they slept together anyway, "they looked at me as if I'd asked them why they keep breathing."

As most parents can prove from experience, co-sleeping is not always limited to two in the bed. Little people have a hundred reasons to appear in the night, wanting to be held. Often they then spend the rest of the night doing what seem like elaborate ballet routines in their sleep. When the junior Gruntleds were small, we referred to this as "spending the night with the Zamboni machine." For much of our children's youngest years, we hit upon the ingenious solution of sleeping on a mattress on the floor ourselves. The little ones would consent to sleep on the floor next to mom and dad if they were only a few inches higher. This was much better than having sharp little elbows in the ribs, or tiny feet suddenly in one's face.

I find it hard to sleep when business takes Mrs. Gruntled or me away. I can fall asleep well enough when I try. It just seems unnatural to turn out the light and lie down alone. Which I suppose is a sign that marriage becomes second nature to us in a literal sense.

Two in a bed – the bedrock of American solidarity.

Virtual Wedding, Real Brideprice

The BBC reports of a couple of Zimbabweans who met in London, but wanted a traditional wedding back home. They couldn't afford to go home just for the wedding – and similar couples couldn't get back into Britain if they did go home – so their relatives held a wedding ceremony in Zimbabwe for them. The wedding was complete with everything, except the bride and groom. This last point was the news hook for the BBC.

What struck me about this story, though, was that the main reason they needed a Zimbabwean service was to make sure that the brideprice was properly negotiated and paid between the families. Since this is a negotiation that the couple do not take part in even if they were at home, the couple's residence thousands of miles away was no real impediment.

An American might ask, though, if the couple have indeed made it to London, met on their own with no family help, and are not only supporting themselves, but sending money back to their families, why do they need to pay a brideprice at all? The whole social structure that created the brideprice system – where women are scarce, and her family can, in effect, sell her to her husband's family – is missing in London. If they were truly emigrants, we might think that brideprice would be one of the first customs they would want to leave behind.

But, of course, they are not emigrants, but temporary guest workers, by their own choice. They are commuting to a job from the homeplace, like tens of millions of poor people around the globe. They are like hundreds of Appalachian couples over the decades who met in Lexington or Cincinnati or even Detroit, but came back home for the wedding. But in this case, the trip itself is too expensive and legally fraught to make even for a wedding.

These Zimbabwean couples don't want to leave behind the world of brideprice. They just want to pay it in pounds.

Jewish Aspersions

I have been trying to see it from Virginia Senator George F. Allen's perspective. The Southern California kid who turned himself into a Confederate clearly has been searching for roots all his life. He had exposed some bizarre vein of prejudice in calling an Indian-American "macaca" – a North African way of calling someone a monkey. It was in that context that reporter Peggy Fox asked him at a public debate about his rumored Jewish roots. "It has been reported," said Fox, that "your grandfather Felix, whom you were given your middle name for, was Jewish. Could you please tell us whether your forebears include Jews and, if so, at which point Jewish identity might have ended?"

Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post, reports Allen's reaction this way:

Allen recoiled as if he had been struck. His supporters in the audience booed and hissed. "To be getting into what religion my mother is, I don't think is relevant," Allen said, furiously. "Why is that relevant -- my religion, Jim's religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?"

"Honesty, that's all," questioner Fox answered, looking a bit frightened.

"Oh, that's just all? That's just all," the senator mocked, pressing his attack. He directed Fox to "ask questions about issues that really matter to people here in Virginia" and refrain from "making aspersions."

How should we read this? We now know that Allen's mother is indeed Jewish ethnically, though she converted to Anglicanism and raised her son an Episcopalian. Her father, Felix Lumbroso, was imprisoned by the Nazis in Tunisia because he was Jewish and had opposed them. We also know that Allen had only found out about his Jewish roots a month before this public question. And his mother had begged him not to tell, because she had kept it from the rest of the family.

Still, a month is time enough to get used to the idea, and to have an answer ready for the inevitable reporter's questions.

When asked if he had Jewish roots, George Allen took this question as an aspersion.

Now, I am about as Jewish as George Allen is – ethnically but not religiously, from several wonderfully intermarried lines. Like Allen, I carry a middle name from a pretty-Jewish grandfather – Joseph, in my case. My eldest carries my grandmother's maiden name, Blum, as her middle name to honor her beloved ancestor. My daughter is a Christian, an ordinary meat-and-potatoes Presbyterian. But she will Never Forget. We honor our Jewish heritage, as we do the rest of the family lines.

I don't think calling out Jewish roots is "casting aspersions." George Allen does. In that moment, like the macaca moment, he really did reveal his true identity.

Fighting Monsters in the Night

Last night my wife says I earned my keep as a husband … by removing a Big Scary Bug. She was awake at 4, facing some insomnia by reading a murder mystery, when she realized that a praying mantis was sitting on top of her reading light, about 18 inches from her face. It was staring at her. I was soon, um, encouraged to become awake and Do Something. Since we are a pro-mantis household, I eventually succeeded in scooping the bug into a cup unharmed, and then tossing it out the window.

I suggested that if we just waited for it to walk on her face in the night she would make a noise sufficient to let the whole house know just where the bug was, but she didn't go for it.

Turning China's Elite into its Next Ruling Class

There is a fascinating article by Howard French in the New York Times about the race of China's new rich to give their children a boost in the next, even more competitive generation. FasTracKids – what a wonderful, perfectly revealing name – has sprung up in Shanghai to tutor preschoolers in elite culture, sports, and manners.

The late, great sociologist E. Digby Baltzell said that a society will have a stable and legitimate ruling class only when it turns elite individuals, who rise to the top by merit and other individual skills, into a class made of families. The Chinese have, in the past generation, created such an elite of individuals. Now, before our eyes, we see them creating the first generation of what will become the Old Money of the New China.

What is equally fascinating is seeing exactly what they want their kids to learn. Another great dead sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, said that what separates the merely well-schooled from the most socially successful is their mastery of that parallel curriculum of "cultural capital." This is just the kind of knowledge that FasTracKids, and thousands of enrichment programs like it, teach children in families eager to rise socially. And what is the cultural capital that the next generation of the ancient Chinese civilization needs to know? Golf. For pre-schoolers. " In addition to early golf training, which has become wildly popular, affluent parents are enrolling their children in everything from ballet and private music lessons, to classes in horse riding, ice-skating, skiing and even polo." Manners classes are also in demand, as the Chinese rich have been embarrassed to learn that they are considered rude, "ugly Chinese" abroad.

In other words, the next ruling class in China is acquiring the same social capital that the ruling class in the West has been developing for centuries. I expect that mastery of Chinese culture will also be a part of their training. That distinctly Chinese culture they may learn better in regular school and at home. But when the stars of the world's most populous economy join the next global ruling class, they will be just like today's global ruling class: they will all play golf.

Assisted Marriage

There is a wonderful story on Muslim speed-dating in the New York Times. Neil MacFarquhar paints a vivid picture of a "matrimonial banquet" at the Islamic Society of North America's annual meeting in Chicago. 150 women sit at small tables, while 150 men circulate among them for ten short conversations. They had to ban parents from sitting at the tables, too. Instead, the mothers cluster along the walls, watching and swapping information about their accomplished, eligible children. The parents are allowed to mingle with the young people only during the social hour that follows.

The organizers don't even call it "speed dating," because the very word "dating" suggests pre-marital sex to the potential participants and their parents. Yasmeen Qadri, an education professor who spoke in a panel discussion about dating said that what American Muslims really needed to create was an American version of arranged marriage. Since that term would probably seem too directive for freedom-loving Americans, she suggested "assisted marriage."

With the eldest Gruntled daughter now at college, Mrs. Gruntled and I have been trying hard not to be the kind of "helicopter parents," hovering over our child, that college deans come to dread. But, as our eldest said, she is a "helicopter child." Like many in her generation, she wants her parents involved in her life, and values their opinions as she is considering her choices. She makes the choices, but she wants to talk them over with us first.

Could any parent ask for better? Is that not the most civilized arrangement – the children do make their own decisions, but seek the wisdom of their most loving elders? And when better to ask for parental help than in making the most consequential and permanent choice of adult life, the choice of your husband or wife?

Assisted marriage sounds good to me.

Most Business School Students Cheat

56% of students in graduate business programs reported cheating last year. Other graduate students don't do much better, but at least they stayed below the 50% threshold. They do it because "everyone does it." Lead researcher Linda Trevino suggested that students who were drawn to business school were "more self-interested or bottom-line-oriented." Moreover, business schools' "emphasis on the free market and maximization of shareholder value, changes student attitudes." Business school breeds cheaters.

Good to see that the lessons of Enron are sinking in.

Sigh.

How Did They Forget About Children in the No-Fault Divorce Debate? Today's "Privatize Marriage" Arguments Show How.

Judith Wallerstein, author of the benchmark study of the long-term effects of divorce on children, often points out with exasperation that the debate on no-fault divorce in the 1960s and '70s simply ignored the effects on children. Today, when we have the largest generation of divorced-upon children ever and the sad effects of no-fault are to be seen every day, it seems incredible that people could talk about marriage and divorce as if only the married couple mattered.

No-fault effectively privatized divorce. Today a couple can divorce for pretty much any reason and no reason. In fact, one person can just leave another and easily legalize it through divorce, and there is not much the other person can do about it. The children can do even less.

Today we are in the midst of a debate about whether we should privatize marriage the way we privatized divorce. The proponents of this view say that if marriage were just another contract that individuals could choose to make, then the whole messy debate about gay marriage, and the potential debate about polygamy, and a hundred other combinations, would disappear as a governmental issue. People could make contracts with whom they want, for how long they want, with whatever boring or kinky provisions they want.

A good example is the argument by Slate economist David Boaz helpfully titled "Privatize Marriage." This is an old argument, but the main points haven't changed lately. He makes the straightforward case that it would be more rational for the state to get out of the marriage business. Any bond you want to make, of any duration, in any combination and number, and with whatever internal division of power turns your crank should be just another contract. Not a word, not a hint of children. No suggestion that the reason the church, and then, under much prodding, the state got involved in regulating marriage in the first place was to protect children and women from abuse by the more powerful.

The arguments of economists are usually quite rational. But they sometimes miss some essential human factors. When thinking about any aspect of marriage, we have to think about the kids.

The Pope Defends Reason; Churches Burn

The Pope has gotten into hot water for quoting a medieval emperor in a dialogue with a Persian philosopher. The Christian asks the Muslim to "show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

As a result of this quotation, Muslim mobs have been burning churches.

So what was the Pope talking about? Christian philosophy believes that God is always reasonable. Muslim philosophy believes that God is beyond reason. The Byzantine emperor thought it self-evident that God was always reasonable – to suggest otherwise must be "evil and inhuman."

The Pope was not actually trying to slam Islam. He was really criticizing what he always criticizes – the secularity and materialism of the formerly Christian West. We, he said to his German audience, have lost the deep connection between God and reason that was taken for granted in Christianity's golden age.

The argument that the Pope was actually making seems reasonable to me.

The irrational and senselessly touchy Muslim mobs who are burning churches over the Pope's remarks are proving that it is not only secular Westerners who have lost the connection between God and reason.

Church Leaders Make Connections Locally

I spent the weekend at the leadership retreat of Abingdon Presbytery in the left-most corner of Virginia. Executive Presbyter Kevin Campbell and the ministers and elders who joined this conversation are developing a workable and positive idea of how to build up the presbytery.

A presbytery, for those unfamiliar with the Presbyterian system, is a regional association of congregations. In Abingdon's case, there are 55 congregations, some small town, most little country churches. A presbytery is the equivalent of a diocese in a bishop-led system. Instead of a bishop, a presbytery is served by an executive presbyter (sometimes called a general presbyter), as well as a stated clerk and many committees. Even congregational churches, such as the Baptist conventions, usually create local associations, which do much the same thing. Regional associations are a help to a congregation, without being too big to be human-sized.

Leaders of regional associations, whatever they are called, are about the only church people in a position to know what is going on in a group of neighboring congregations. It is the rare congregation that can do everything itself, without ever needing help or getting ideas from outside.

Vibrant denominations rest on vibrant local associations. Local congregations are too small to reliably do everything for themselves – even megachurches. National denominations are usually too large to keep in touch with all the locals.

Church leaders at the regional level are crucial to making strong and responsive denominations.