Merry Christmas!
And may I recommend a book currently receiving a lot of positive press right now, from my esteemed colleague Adam English. I have read only an excerpt from The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Nicholas of Myra, but am waiting to read the rest of it now. Here's a nice review from the Wall Street Journal.
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In the first instance, it is probably true that in general the higher the education and intelligence of individuals becomes, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and ‘common’ instincts and tastes prevail.
F. A. Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. London, 1944: page 102
There is a lot of talk that over the past decades we in the U.S. have become more polarized politically. For example, Kevin Drum makes that argument here, and Edward Luce does so here. And you can read through a whole lot more here.
I don't buy the argument that we're becoming more polarized; we've always been polarized. It's just now we disagree greatly along different margins and principles. For example, here is historian Richard Rehn discussing the election of 1800:
"While the Federalist press accused the Republicans of being 'filthy Jacobins' and 'monsters of sedition,' the Republican press denounced the Federalists for being 'Tory monarchists' and 'British-loving aristocrats' and the president for being 'a mock Monarch' who was 'blind, bald, toothless, querulous' and 'a ruffian deserving of the curses of mankind.' By the late 1790s both President John Adams and Vice-President Thomas Jefferson came to believe that they had become the victims, in Adams's words, of 'the most envious malignity, the most base, vulgar, sordid, fish-woman scurrility, and the most palpable lies' that had ever been leveled against any public official."
The issues over which they were discussing might seem a bit trite now, but the tone was as vitriolic then as we perceive our tone to be today. What's changed is that our preferences and ideals differ from that of 1800. So in a sense we perceive it as more vitriolic today, but I doubt it.
Our disagreements today might not enjoy as wide a consensus as in times past, but that's not because we're less willing to cooperate and compromise today relative to times past. What's happening is that today we have new preferences and ideals over which we are arguing, and as Hayek noted in the quote above, these differences today are of a higher order and are therefore likely to find less agreement.
After millennia of argument and debate, humankind came to agree a lot on the most basic of social laws that we accept as "natural" today — "[We] shall not steal," and "[We] shall not murder," we better appreciate and understand the importance of property rights. But that only occurred over time, and as we've further evolved socially, new issues arise and our wants and preferences further evolve. What they fought over in, say, 1800 is largely settled and we're now debating along different margins. The divergence of ideals and opinions today may seem greater than in times past, but those arguments back then were likely just as vicious. It's just that today we've come to accept the outcomes of those previous debates and are now debating new issues.
And this is such an important thing to keep in mind when discussing any social order. At no time did someone rationally construct the rules and institutions needed for a peaceful and prosperous social order. Such rules and institutions evolved over time and emerged out of vicious debate, much like what we in this country are experiencing today. The debates have high stakes, but maybe not so much today as in times past; I don't know. What we do know is that societies that choose well go on to secure largely peaceful and prosperous orders, while those that don't languish in poverty and strife and disorder. So far, those living in the developed world benefit from people in the past choosing well. People living in the latter never evolved to accept the basic rules and institutions to which those living in the developed and advancing countries already adhere and largely take for granted.
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I'm not getting in the middle of this other than to say that the responses of the moronic mayors (Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, Edwin Lee of San Francisco, and Thomas Menino of Boston), who supposedly serve the interests of all residents of their cities not just the majority, were despicable. As Voltaire stated, "I disapprove of what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." This should be the response of any politician, but these guys instead took on the typical politician's stance, falling to the ground and kowtowing to their political base rather than standing up for principle and defending the rights of even those with whom they disagree, as they swore to do when they took office.
But the primary lesson is for managers to refrain from putting the reputations of their companies they manage and own on the line by making political statements. Although Chick-Fil-A is privately owned, a CEO of a publicly traded company jeopardizes the investments of shareholders.
The other lesson is the response Mr. Cathy's statements generated. They appeared to have backfired. But then again, here is an interesting history of boycotts.
But beyond their commercial effect, boycotts, even losing ones, have a way of highlighting a cause. They connect individuals to larger political forces that otherwise feel abstract and distant. For Chick-fil-A, that means the broader question of gay rights. Huckabee’s consumer action could generate more debate about same-sex unions than a ballot initiative would have -- and far more direct reflection on individual responsibility and agency. The boycott and counter-boycott gave consumers a stark choice, and a clear connection between their actions and their beliefs.
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Whether you agree with the baker or the gay couple, it is true that when you discriminate you impose a cost on yourself. The couple in the video below were willing to pay up to $1,000 for a wedding cake (WOW!@!) and the baker refused to make one for them.
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A very interesting editorial by Jeff Jacoby.
A Quinnipiac University poll this month suggests just how important the marriage gap has become to President Obama’s reelection hopes. Among voters nationwide, it found, Obama’s advantage over Mitt Romney is narrow, 46 percent to 43 percent. Drill beneath the surface, however, and a sharp divide appears. Among married voters, Romney has a robust 13-point lead, 51 percent to 38 percent. But Obama enjoys an even larger lead among singles, 54 percent to 34 percent. Unmarried women in particular are in the president’s camp: They support him 2-1 over Romney.
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The political stakes are clear. Single women, one of the fastest-growing population cohorts, already account for one-fourth of all eligible voters. They are the “most reliably Democratic voting group outside African Americans,” writes Washington analyst Jessica Gavora, and coaxing them to the polls is an urgent priority for Obama’s strategists. That explains the Democrats’ whipped-up accusations of a GOP “war on women.” And it explains the Obama campaign’s “Life of Julia,” an Internet slideshow that depicts a woman reaping the benefits of government programs at each stage of life. With help from “President Obama’s policies,” Julia is able to get an education, go to work, access health care, raise a child, launch a business, and retire in comfort. Everything, it seems, but get married.
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It really wasn't difficult to see the flawed reasoning exhibited by Hollywood and "Murphy Brown" when it came to single parenthood. Dan Quayle was correct.
Isabel Sawhill from the Brookings Institution notes:
Twenty years later, Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic. The number of single parents in America has increased dramatically: The proportion of children born outside marriage has risen from roughly 30 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2009. For women under age 30, more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. A lifestyle once associated with poverty has become mainstream. The only group of parents for whom marriage continues to be the norm is the college-educated.
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In later research, Ron Haskins and I learned that if individuals do just three things — finish high school, work full time and marry before they have children — their chances of being poor drop from 15 percent to 2 percent.
Unfortunately, don't expect Hollywood and those on the left who championed single women having and adopting children to issue a mea culpa and apologies to all the lives, young and older, that have been made worse off.
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John Cochrane has an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. It's regarding the mandate that all employer-provided health care insurance covers prescription contraceptives, but Cochrane does an outstanding job of explaining why health care coverage for foreseen expenses is a bad bet, including this great example.
The minute pills are "free," under insurance, the incentive for drug companies to come up with cheaper versions vanishes. So does their incentive to develop safer, more convenient, male- centered or nonprescription birth control. And by making pills free but not condoms, the government may inadvertently be contributing to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases.
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In fact, nearly half of all singles surveyed (46%) say their political views have not changed in the last 10 years — including men and women of all major ethnic backgrounds (African Americans, Caucasians, Asians, and Latinos fall into the 92-96% range) and those of different sexual orientation (94% of straight men, 96% of straight women, 93% of gay men and 89% of lesbians). So if you date someone across the political aisle from your own, accept that you probably won’t be able to change anyone’s beliefs one way or the other — and get ready to make some real compromises for the sake of your relationship.
It seems that politics is a greater minefield for a couple to navigate than any other issues they may encounter. If you can't compromise and accept someone for their political differences, are you really going to compromise and accept someone for dysfunctional behaviors like smoking, drug use (illegal and legal), sports attendance and participation, and video game use?
From a different story comes this interesting item of note relative to the story above:
Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is.” That is, when it comes to looking for love, conservatives are more open-minded than liberals.
See here. (HT: Tyler Cowen for the second story.)
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Merry Christmas to all, and congratulations to those who graduated this semester.
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My friend Brad Birzer does an excellent job defending liberal arts education against criticism by Rush Limbaugh. Of note:
From what little of I know of Limbaugh, I know he speaks affectionately of the Founding Fathers. But, of course, the majority of Founding Fathers were classically educated. It would have been impossible to have had an American Founding without the classics.
Well stated. Excellent!
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