Right for All the Wrong Reasons

H/T to Jessica; June Carbone and Naomi Kahn ‘explain’the 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage.

I tell you folks, I’ve been needing a break from all the Depression Porn that being a Reactionary entails.  And there’s nothing that gives me more sadistic glee than tearing apart those whom are better educated, and far, far stupider than I.  Let’s start by analyzing the personalities involved.

Both of them are employed as Law School professors, and nowhere on their bio does it mention work in the private industry.  Between that, and their long list of Socially Responsible Activism, I’m forced to conclude that they’re both prime examples of the Crusaders described by our good friend Aaron Clarey.  Furthermore, if you’ve read the Captain’s book Worthless, you’ll be familiar with massive ponzi scheme that is modern Law School; $100 000 in debt for the opportunity to earn $45 000 per year!  Not only do they train become to become horrible, horrible lawyers, they help usher them in to a life of horrible debt.  Model Citizens here, folks.

Then there’s the book they co-authored, RED FAMILIES V. BLUE FAMILIES (Oxford University Press 2010) [I am not going to provide SEO with a link]; from the description:

Red Families v. Blue Families identifies a new family model geared for the post-industrial economy… the changing economy is rapidly eliminating the stable, blue collar jobs that have historically supported young families, and early marriage and childbearing derail the education needed to prosper. The result is that the areas of the country most committed to traditional values have the highest divorce and teen pregnancy rates, fueling greater calls to reinstill traditional values.

No surprise, they hate the farmers in fly-over country and glorify the urban elites.  Now given that this book features “groundbreaking research first hailed in The New Yorker” it would be a bit presumptuous of me to write them off as ideological hacks.

Thankfully, they wrote an article for the HuffPo so factually idiotic, that I can dismiss the book through ad hominem.

Let’s look at what they wrote:

1. Attacks on Jobs and Wages. The “traditional” marriage that conservatives are so fond of talking about rested on the ability of a man — any man — to earn a “family wage” in a stable job. Those assaulting unions, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, have undermined both the family wage and job stability. Job stability has declined in the United States since the 1970s. Dartmouth sociologist Matissa Hollister explained last year that the strongest evidence for this “is decline in long-term tenure among men employed in the private sector.”

This is, of course, based upon the assumption that Unions (Democrats) are what Freed the Working Man from the evil Capitalist overlords, and that Republican support of ‘Capitalism’ is what eroded the middle class.  This is asinine; just open a history book.

Throughout most of history, Evil Capitalists and Feudalists have exploited the common worker – and yet marriage was stable.  For two hundred years, corporations have averaged the same profit levels – both before and after Unionization.  Child labour wasn’t banned until it had almost entirely disappeared in Britain – that is, when British parents were wealthy enough not to force their children to work.

Social abundance doesn’t derive from Democrat legislation; it allows a sufficient surplus for the parasites to exist, and take credit.  While the Republicans are doing nobody any favours with their military-industrial-complex of corrupt legislation, and importation of illegal immigrants, it’s ultimately Government Redistribution which is driving away the blue-collar jobs.

2. Attacks on Work/Family Balance. In the absence of male job security, two incomes have been increasingly important to family life. Yet, managing two incomes also involves managing the down-time between jobs. Those characterizing themselves as “conservatives” have led the assault on unemployment benefits, education and work/family balance necessary to flexible family roles. While 178 other countries have paid parental leave, only a few states – all blue – guarantee paid leave in the United States. A few blue states — California, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Hawaii – as well as Puerto Rico — offer temporary disability insurance programs, an option through which a biological mother can “draw on public insurance for pregnancy and childbirth.”

A lesson Democrats and Activists just refuse to learn is that people respond to incentives.  This sort of paid maternity leave they’re talking about is precisely what’s encouraging single motherhood – the ‘replacing the husband with the government’ concept that’s been gone on at length throughout the alt-right blogosphere.

And let’s not forget one of my personal pet peeves, that of tricking women into the workplace.  The myth that 1950s housewives were chained to the oven, forced to listen to soap operas all day, while their husbands had exciting jobs in the arctuarial business.  That stay-at-home moms didn’t contribute to the overall wealth through volunteer work, community participation, and home production (let alone raising a generation).  That it’s not wealth until it’s part of GDP – ie, until they can be taxed.

How much government and private spending goes towards things that used to be included in the marriage?  Paying to have your kids raised in a daycare, to support maternity leave, huge HR departments to ensure nobody’s feelings are hurt?  This is what’s impoverishing us; not rent increases.

3. Attacks on Women. As Amato’s work documents, managing a world in which many women outearn men requires more flexible gender roles. Yet conservatives have led the fight against women and women’s autonomy. They link same-sex marriage to the remaking of the institution in the gender neutral terms they oppose.

Ah, yes, acknowledging gender differences is misogyny; not wanting to legislate into existence huge HR departments to prevent hurt feelings is an attack on women.  Leaving people alone to make their own decisions about their mating patterns – rather than subsidizing and coercing pre-defined Equality – is Patriarchal.  Not supporting a radical redifinition of marriage, which has never existed in any society – is harming the institution of marriage.

[For the record: the main thrust of Gay Marriage is regarding deathbed decisions, and inheritance.  This would be equally served by the label ‘Civil Union’, yet they demand the title ‘Marriage’.  I more or less support it, but it is such a boutique issue compared to the financial apocalypse, that I can hardly be bothered to care.]

4. Attacks on Reproductive Freedom. The war on women, which focuses on reproductive autonomy, has contributed more to elimination of the stigma against non-marital births than the counter-culture of the 1960s. How? Eliminate the male premium that supported the shotgun marriage and oppose abortion as murder and what’s left are single mothers struggling to make it on their own

Where to start?  First with the fact that they equate the anti-abortion stance with an attack on reproductive autonomy.

As I’ve said before, one’s stance on Abortion usually has more to do with squick-factor, than Logic.  It’s a damn thorny issue, but pretending that the other side is a bunch of extremists is completely ridiculous.  [Almost] Nobody is saying that you should be able to have an abortion after your water breaks; similarly, nobody is saying that using a condom is a form of abortion.  We all draw a line somewhere – the specific location of that line just varies.  The opinion that “Abortion is murder!” is no more reproductive slavery, than arguing against infanticide is parental coercion.

And as for the rest of it – the pill, condoms, the Sponge (if he’s worthy) – I’d like to see a single case of a Republican arguing for banning these things.  Find me one, and I’ll find a dozen instances of Feminists arguing against a male birth control pill.

Add into the mix the huge State Machine to extract money from men for the sake of the children; the huge state machine which hands out free welfare checks for being a Heroic Single Mom.  The Democratic state is the one who’s so eager to drive a wedge between women and men.

5. Attacks on the Marriageabity of Men. Studies of marriage and gender relationships show that norms change quickly with gender ratios: marriage rates in most societies go up when men outnumber women and go down when women outnumber men in the marriage pool.

It’s called Hypergamy.  What’s that, you’re writing on this topic and you’ve never heard of it?

At the height of what economists have called the”Great Compression” of the ’50s and ’60s — a time of increasing security for ordinary Americans produced by progressive policies of very high marginal tax rates and a reduction in income inequality — marriage rates soared. On the flip side, what Timothy Noah has described as the “Great Divergence“– a period starting in the 1970s characterized by ever higher rates of income inequality valorized by the right — has weakened the institution of marriage for many.

As any True Austrian knows, the ’50s and ’60s were a time of decreased government spending – after bankrupting itself during WWII, the Federal Government had to cut back on the spending which caused the great depression.  The ’70s saw the maturation of the Hippy, Baby Boomer, Cultural Marxist breakdown of society, and the growing welfare state.  Blaming generation effects on the election of Ronald Reagan is absurd.

Now I titled this article “Right for all the wrong reasons” – and the fact of the matter is that Republicans are No Friend to the Civilized Person.  They’re sellouts; they’re Democrats transported from thirty years ago; they’re cannibals, ever ready to eat those who are ‘too far’ to the right, to prove that they’re a bunch of good little socialists.

It’s Republicans that shout at us to “Man Up!” It was Reagan who (eerily reminiscent of Schwartzenegger fighting the Unions) passed no-fault divorce, and believed in Laffer Curve, Trickle Down, Chicago School, Keynesianism nonsense.  The Raw Truth of the matter is that Republicans and the Democrats destroyed marriage hand-in-hand.  One side wants to sell us for the value of the minerals our bodies contain; the other wants to pound us into egalitarian worker drones.  Neither are our friends.

As for Carbone and Kahn?  They picked out their favourite colour of outfit twenty years ago, and will happily twist any fact to fit a false-dichotomy of politics because it supports their source of revenue.

This is why I’m looking forward to the Financial Apocalypse.  Ain’t going to be much demand for Lawyers when me and my trusty hound are tasked with Defending the Fuel.