"Both Ends Burning" - Roxy Music
Both ends burning with a strange desire
That feeds the fire in my soul tonight
I will dance the night away
Living only for today
Both ends burning while you're counting sheep
Hell- who can sleep in this heat this night.
I continue to be amazed at the persistence of retrograde life advice that pours forth from conservative quarters, with so many commentators who are otherwise allegedly committed to "freedom" and "liberty" advocating for a return to 1950s era norms for "courtship," marriage, and child-rearing. All of it seems to me to be motivated in some great measure by the disturbing notion that people, especially women, are spending their twenties pursuing education, careers, friendships, and, gasp, having sex with persons to whom they are not wed (and have no intention of marrying), rather than getting married early (and not being overly picky about to whom), having a few kids, and tending to cars and suburban lawns. I never really understand the motivation for so vigorously proselytizing this world view -- as Amanda notes, it reeks of the hard sell, the desperate attempt to unload a product that people just don't want to buy. So we have Kate Hymowitz trying to scare women about getting too educated to find husbands, while at the same time shaming men who aren't doing their natural duty and becoming fathers and lawn care experts quickly enough -- although, naturally while men are hopeless in Hymowitz's world, this is the fault of women.
Add to this now, glibertarian economist Bryan Caplan -- who may in fact be the world's stupidest serious academic (well okay, Althouse, Reynolds, and that douche bag from Cornell Law are pretty stiff competition) -- is on npr this morning to promote his book arguing that we should all have more children. Magically omitted from his discussion though is the cost of children. And he's a fucking economist. (Part of the George Mason University Glibertarian Department). Essentially, Caplan's argument is that having more kids will make you happier as long as you don't spend too much time worrying about raising them. (There is a kernel of truth in Kaplan's argument -- people in my socioeconomic set at least tend to overdo the parenting -- but his overall premise is just absurd.) One wonders, who does the minimal job of child rearing in the Caplan household? Why do I suspect that Mrs. Caplan -- and you know goddamn well it is Mrs. Caplan -- does all of the heavy lifting in the household? Children can be a great source of happiness (for some), but they are expensive, time consuming, and have a distressing tendency not to gear their lives around your professional and personal needs. Having more of them does not really minimize these issues.
One common thread between Hymowitz and Caplan -- in addition to their retrograde world views -- is their brutal butchering of evolutionary psychology in conformance with their ideological purposes. So Hymowitz's college women won't marry plumbers because of their undesirable genes and Caplan's children can be raised Lord of the Flies style because in the end it's genetics not nurturing that matters. Jesus.
Update: And then another idiot heard from: Bobo Brooks on the wonder of "theologically rigorous" religions, posing the stark question: Creed or Chaos? Bryan Ferry and I are both resolutely opting for chaos. And another great celebration of freedom:
No matter how special some individuals may think they are, they don’t have the ability to understand the world on their own, establish rules of good conduct on their own, impose the highest standards of conduct on their own, or avoid the temptations of laziness on their own.
So without the god of damnation hovering over our shoulders we'd all just fight and fuck too much. This is classic Straussian stuff. Truth doesn't matter -- we just need a good story to keep the riff raff in line. Jesus, Sully describes Brooks as "at his customary acute" in this piece -- although he then goes on to make a similar point about truth -- and implictly Brooks's cynicism -- as I was making. Sully's a weird guy.
Further update: Can we just put this embarrassment to bed? Really, Sullivan and company are like birthers on this front. (Not to argue from authority, but John Cole and Steve Benen are with me -- I like that company.)
Alright -- gotta do a little work and take Stanley to the vet to get his shots.
What's on your minds?
