Clinton's "Black Knight" Strategy

Mrs. G. has been saying this for weeks, but Andrew Sullivan actually posted it.

The Deep Government Says Guantanamo Prisons Are a Stain on the United States

Colin L. Powell, Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher and Madeleine K. Albright agree.

That, in itself, is amazing.

What they agree on is that the political prison camps at Guantanamo Bay are damaging our reputation in the world and are probably illegal. The Secretaries of State for Democratic and Republican administrations agree that what the current administration is doing is wrong.

Christopher and Albright, and also Baker, Powell, and Kissinger (!) together make as clear a common voice from the center of the political system as one could ask for.

Rigidity, Not Patriarchy, Makes Family Roles Rigid

An article with the eye-catching title "Feminism Keeps My Marriage Together," by Christie Church, makes the claim that patriarchy was damaging her marriage because of the rigid roles it imposed on them. Feminism, she argues, let Church and her husband get free of the rigid expectations of their wife and husband roles imposed on them by society.

A patriarchal family does normally have rigid roles for wife, husband, and other family members. But so does a matriarchal family. Even an egalitarian family can have rigid roles -- in fact, a commitment to a 50/50 split of all family work forces even more rigidity than does patriarchy.

It is not the patriarchy that makes the rigidity, though; rigidity makes rigidity.

The Beavers scale of family functioning is a five-point scale running from chaos, through tyranny, rule-bound families, and the somewhat colorlessly named adequate and optimal families at the top of the scale. The problem in the bottom half of the scale is achieving enough order to have a secure life. In the bottom half of the scale, rigidity is a step up. This is why the middle -- not the bottom -- of the scale is the "rule-bound" family. Rule-bound is, as the name suggests, characterized by rigid roles. Most rule-bound families will lean toward patriarchy, but there are other rule-systems that they can enforce rigidly on one another.

The achievement of the rule-bound family is order. The price they pay is that it is hard for family members to be intimate with one another, without upsetting the rules. This, I think, is the problem that Christie Church is really wrestling with, more than patriarchy.

What makes the higher functioning families adequate and optimal is that they can maintain sufficient order while dealing appropriately with the individual qualities of each person in the family, not just their roles.

Church and her husband seem to be moving beyond rule-boundedness to a more flexible, adequate functional system. For them, that meant dividing labor in ways that were a little less traditional. For other couples, that might mean quite different arrangements -- strict equality, or complete reverse of tradition. I expect that for most couples, flexibly dividing family labor based on the interests, skills, and resources of each half of the couple would, in fact, result in a mostly traditional sexual division of labor most of the time. But however labor might be divided in an appropriately personal family, the point is that it is being rigid about roles that creates rigid roles in a family, not patriarchy or any other social system.

Wine With Dinner for Teens?

Following yesterday's post about drinking licenses for 18, 19, and 20 year olds, I was drawn to a column in the New York Times by wine writer Eric Asimov. He is a wine professional, and grew up with teens having a little wine with meals as part of his family's normal practice. Now that his kids are coming to the age when they would normally be introduced to wine, he and his wife were torn by the school's message that kids should have zero alcohol.

Asimov read the research and talked to the experts. His conclusion:

in a household where wine is regularly served with meals, and where there is not an alcohol issue, violence or a communication problem, young people might experience some degree of protection against future alcohol abuse by being offered small tastes of wine.... the research seems to indicate that it can help by teaching children that wine is a ceremonial beverage that we drink for its taste and for how it goes with food, and that the point of drinking is not drunkenness.

This seems to me an entirely sensible conclusion. Moreover, in 30 states, including Kentucky, it is legal for parents to serve their own children alcohol. I myself am a teetotaler and don't have wine with meals, so have not had occasion to offer it to my children. But I think that it is appropriate for my older teens to try alcohol. I will argue the benefits of a teetotal life, but if they learned to be moderate drinkers -- one glass of wine or beer -- that would be OK.

Choose Responsibility at the Grass Roots

I support Choose Responsibility, a national movement to create drinking licenses for 18, 19, and 20 year olds. Tonight I got my first chance to promote the idea locally. Many communities participate in the biennial federal survey of teen drinking, which they then discuss in town meetings. Tonight Danville had its town hall meeting. This was mostly about high school drinking, which was pretty scary. 80% of high school senior reported drinking ever, and a quarter reported binge drinking recently. When I made the pitch for drinking licenses for high school graduates, this was a new idea to most present. One person said "Oh, no, then they will just drink more; that would be like giving them condoms, which makes them have more sex." But I think most were open to exploring the idea -- especially those who deal with college students.

Family Citizenship by Military Service

The Associated Press has a new story on more than 100 soldiers who are awarded citizenship posthumously. The story focuses on their families' ambivalence in dealing with this sad achievement. Truthout.org passed the story on as part of their criticism of the war.

Yet as I read the story, this is one area in which the Iraq war has actually made things better. The AP reports that there are tens of thousands of "green card soldiers" in the U.S. Armed Forces. They get U.S. citizenship in exchange for their service.

At the start of the war, these servicemen and women would only be awarded citizenship when their service ended. For the families of those who died, this was particularly bittersweet. In response to criticism, though, Pres. Bush changed the rule to allow citizenship to those who applied for it on enlistment. Since then 37,000 soldiers have been naturalized. Another 20,000 foreign nationals serve in the U.S. military who have either not applied for citizenship or not completed the paperwork.

Another important change is that the relatives of dead soldiers who are awarded citizenship posthumously have the same advantages in coming to the U.S. legally that the relatives of living citizens do. This ended the Catch-22 in which the relatives of naturalized soldiers could get on the fast track to citizenship only if the soldier survived the war.

The United States has always offered immigrants military service as the fast way to citizenship. This seems to me a good and just thing. And these improvements in the path of naturalized soldiers seems to me a silver lining of this bad war -- even for the families of the dead.

The Audacity of the Greatest Hope

A joyous Easter to you all.

"Just Do It" Do-Gooders

David Brooks has an excellent column about the new breed of social service activists who are in it for results, not for big rhetoric and lifestyle theater. He writes, "The highest status symbol in their circle is a Rand study showing that their program yields statistically significant results." These are my kind of servants of the public good.

I see this as the coming to fruition of Gen-X. Howe and Strauss, in 13th Gen, predicted when Gen-Xers were still college students that what they would bring to the commonweal was a devotion to getting a practical job done. Reacting against Baby Boomer rhetoric, they eschewed big causes in their wild youth. Now settling into years of social responsibility, they want their work to really yield results.

I was born in 1960. I am on the cusp between the Boom and Gen-X. I feel the pull of both styles. But my heart is with the Xers.

Pick a problem. Try a solution. Test the results. Git 'er done.

Unilateral Divorce Increases Violent Crime

A new study by two Spanish researchers at a German labor institute using American data found that unilateral divorce led to increases in violent crime of 8 to 12% in the 30 years following divorce reform.

Another Marriage Benefit: Low-Stress Sleep

A new study from Brigham Young University researchers found that happily married people have lower blood pressure than singles by about four points. Even more interesting, happily marrieds had lower blood pressure while sleeping. Unhappily marrieds, on the other hand, had higher blood pressure than singles.

Adultery is Common, But Not Normal

After every big adultery scandal, such as Elliot Spitzer's, someone will run a story about how common adultery is in the animal world. In this week's entry, the New York Times' Natalie Angier opines that "In Most Species, Fidelity is a Fantasy." She combines the results of very varied studies about shrikes, voles, foxes, gibbons, and humans to conclude that "anywhere from 10 to 70 percent of the offspring will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male." No big deal, she implies.

But it is a big deal. And it makes a big difference which end of the spectrum we fall on. In fact human beings are close to the 10% end. The great majority of children are fathered by their mother's husbands.

I think the subtext of articles like "Faithfulness is a Fantasy" is to normalize adultery. This is not simply reporting the facts, but making them worse than they are now. The truth is that among human beings, fidelity is normal, adultery is rare.

Obama Names Wright's Error

Barak Obama has taken some heat for things his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. I think Obama's previous repudiations of Wright's crazy comments should have been more than enough to put the issue to rest.

Today in Philadelphia Sen. Obama gave a great speech on race. He reiterated his repudiation of Wright's crazy talk. Then he went beyond that repudiation, and named the underlying error that his pastor made. In this statement I hear the Joshua generation giving the right answer to a disappointed member of the Moses generation:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation.

Amen.

Deport Polygamist Illegal Aliens

There is a growing subculture of West African illegal immigrants in this country who sneak in, then buy wives from home to serve as rightless free domestic labor. They make a bunch of kids at once, on the public nickel, to be US citizens who will retroactively make the whole thing legal. And create a voting bloc for polygamy. No thanks. Nip it in the bud. European nations that have given up on monogamy are already reaping the whirlwind these days, with the women doing most of the suffering.

Biting the Bullet About Women in Church Leadership

I am working on a larger project to restore the Establishment in the Presbyterian Church. By Presbyterian Establishment I mean an informal but real group that can lead the church and heal its divisions with recognized authority. Some readers have worried that my comments about the role of women in such an Establishment might be contested to the point of closing some readers' minds to the rest of my argument. I want to try a draft of this section on you, my helpful readers, for your comments. This is just one snippet from a much larger document in which I lay out the rest of what I mean by a Presbyterian Establishment.

The case of women in the Presbyterian Establishment is both the easiest and the hardest to resolve. It is the easiest, because there are so many devoted women in the church, many of whom have significant leadership experience and potential. It is hardest because, at every higher level of power, there are fewer women who are willing to take the job than there are men.

As a sociologist who has taught and studied family life, sex, and gender, I have become convinced over the years that the differences between men and women in their approach to power is deep. To be sure, women have been excluded from the opportunity to achieve power and to be part of the establishment in the past. Changing sexist structures that excluded women is a great gain and something we should always be vigilant about. But I believe that assuring women equal opportunity to be part of the Presbyterian Establishment will not result in an equal outcome of women being half of that Establishment.

I have been convinced that women, as a group, are less likely than men to sacrifice their families for positions of power. Moreover, women tend to be less likely to want to rule over others than men are; likewise, women tend to be less likely to accept other women ruling over them than they are men. To be sure, there will always be some women who would make good leaders and who are willing to do the job, even at the cost of being separated from others. But I think it is simply a fact of our complementary sexes that women will never voluntarily take up a proportionate share of positions of power, in the church or any other organization.

So if your main goal is equal representation of men and women in all positions of power and authority in the church, then the Presbyterian Establishment project is probably not for you. The more effective the Establishment is, the less likely it is to simply reflect the raw demographic diversity of the church. I say, so be it. The church needs an Establishment that works with real effect and authority.

I Am as Cool as I Have Ever Been

I was listening to the interview on NPR with Dan Kennedy about his days working in the record business. He tells a rueful tale of being a middle-aged guy who thinks he is still as cool as he was at 17.

This got me thinking: was I ever cool? Certainly not at 17, nor college, graduate school, early married life, making a career. Nope, nerd all the way. So now - as a professor who looks so much like a professor that I am on college billboards, a dad whose children gave him a bumper sticker reading "I [heart] embarrassing my teenage children in front of their friends," a fat guy pushing 50 who holds hands with his wife in public -- now I am as cool as I have ever been.

Spitzer's Wife

I agree with Maggie Gallagher: the innocent wives of guilty adulterers should not be expected to stand by their men during the public confession of guilt. That should be his humiliation, not hers. If she chooses to keep him afterwards, that should be credited to her moral heroism. And if she stands by him when he denies the charges, that is honorable marital loyalty.

Adulterers should do the perp walk and press talk alone.

Spitzer

Susan Estrich, a smart politico who taught Elliot Spitzer in law school, concludes that this is why a man so smart could do something so stupid:

"There is only one obvious explanation for why a smart man would commit such a totally self-destructive act: He didn't think he would be caught."

This could be so. Still, my inclination is to think that it is something else. He is a sometimes sanctimonious, sometimes bullying crusader. I think such a man might do something so wrong, catchable, career-ending, and humiliating because he thinks, subconsciously, that he is a fraud.

Half of Teens Girls Are Sexually Active, and Half of Them Have a Sexually Transmitted Infection

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their major study of teen girls and sex. The headline of this post contains the main finding.

The news story, and many variants on it, goes on to attack abstinence-based sex ed curricula. This strikes me as a non sequitur, at best. The report does not indicate what sort of sex education these girls might have had. One might look at the raw finding and conclude that we need much more education in abstinence.

The secondary finding is that half of African-American girls have sexually transmitted infections. The rate for white and Hispanic teens is 20%. This is just a disaster. My expectation is that the sexual activity of girls directly correlates with whether their fathers are active in their homes, but that is not provided in the news articles. This would account for the enormous racial disparity in the STI rate, though.

Vasectomies for March Madness

Yes, this is a serious suggestion. The University of Oregon suggests that men get a vasectomy before the NCAA tournament begins, so they can sit around healing while they sit around watching basketball.

What a wonderful idea.

Catholics Come Home

A Catholic ministry (apostolate) run by American lay people, called Catholics Come Home, has produced some fine commercials now running on television. I particularly commend the one called "Epic." It does, indeed, present the epic sweep of the Catholic Church, both now and historically. They make some astounding claims -- astounding because they are true -- such as "we are the largest charitable organization on the planet"; "we invented the college system"; "we developed the scientific method"; and my favorite, "with the help of the Holy Spirit, we compiled the Bible."

Beat that, proddies.