New York Republicans...

...are apparently even more impotent than the Maryland variety, which put the kibosh on gay marriage this past winter.

Equality Über Alles, New York

Yeah, that should stop the demographic slide.

Self-Esteem vs. "Chinese" Parenting

This article in the WSJ about the superiority of "Chinese mothers" has been making the rounds of late. The debate has been had by people who know far more about raising children than I do. But the reason the debate exists, I think, is right here:

By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.

Without question, this is the blinkered, self-emasculating guilt that the modern Western parent has willingly embraced. For some reason, we have decided that to have a child is a dastardly act, and that a parent must labor for decades, giving up all trace of adult life or personality, in order to atone for it. It's gotten so bad that a complete 180-degree turnaround -- becoming a totalitarian shame-dispenser -- can now be seen as an outre position worthy of a new look.

For myself, Here is what I wrote on the subject in September of 2005:

Our modern child-rearing techniques seem focused on the emotional lives of children. I think this is wrong, because in the grand scheme of things, the emotions of children are transitory and relatively unimportant. Child-rearing should be about not the blooming of the child's life but the coaxing into existence of the adult the child must become. None of the research-approved, peaceable parenting skills that the elite would foist on us are half so valuable as inducing a child to think beyond his immediate wants and desires. And I am unconvinced that this can be done without the use of fear.

Yes, I said fear. It is written that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. To this, I add that the fear of parents is the beginning of familial peace. the State of childhood is a state of constant physical and emotional flux. They are long on impulse and short on experience. Catering to that mind-set gives that mind-set power that it neither deserves nor can use justly. To make up for that experience, it is necessary for parents to set boundaries and defend them to the utmost. As the best defense is a good offense, a properly built fear of parental anger keeps boundaries defended, sometimes without the parent even knowing it.

It is not that I love children the less, but that I love adults more.

We Can't Afford Illegal Immigrants.

Janet Daley, in the Telegraph:

If working people are to fend for themselves and support their own families without help, they cannot be under-bid for employment by migrants who, as often as not, have no dependants and no permanent obligations in the host country. The uncontrolled movement of peoples around the globe is problematic for welfare states – which can end up supporting them – but it may present even more dramatic difficulties for a country with a contracting state. The combination of reduced welfare and unlimited migration could produce ugly consequences which no responsible person wants to see.

The premise that immigration should never be limited is relatively modern and backed up by little besides an altruistic frisson. The libertarian responds that labor has the right to move where it wills. And it may indeed. But in a world where the supply of capital outweighs the supply of labor, the free movement of the latter penalizes the workers of nations that develop the former.

Too many promises have been made by altruists, promises based on faith that any good that could be imagined could be done without cost to other goods. Like an overextended credit card, we'll be paying for it for a long time.

The Taxer we Raise, the Broker we Get

The Chinese have had this concept called the Dynastic Cycle for some time: a predictable rise and fall based on human nature and the inherent errors of monarchial government. A family rises to power, becomes corrupt, and falls. Time both seals later emperors in tradition and blocks them from the awareness of what they need to be. The result is the belief that they need do very little.

Monty, over at Ace of Spades:

Governments the world over are discovering that the river of money is not endless. That seemingly-inexhaustable mountain of wealth has been turned into an ocean of debt that will take decades to pay off. The spendthrift habits of the Western nations will put burdens on our children, and other generations not yet born, that should outrage us as a people. We are investing in the old rather than the young, and are punishing risk-taking and entrepreneurship rather than rewarding it. Our tax regimes seem to be deliberately crafted to kill innovation and long-term thinking. (What does "legacy" mean if the wealth I have accumulated in my life cannot be passed on to my children or heirs, but is instead eaten by the all-consuming government?) Young people -- young families -- are the foundation upon which Western Civilization is built. Neglect them, overburden them, cheat them, and you are committing societal suicide.

The premise of democracy is that the people, who live in the world and market, are far closer to reality than a prince sealed off by decorum and thick castle walls. That premise is about to be tested.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: "I need teens to be having more kids, pronto! Legitimate, illegitimate, I don’t care — somebody’s got to pay my Social Security."

Those Vicious Racist Quebecois...

“if you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values. We want to see your face.”

No doubt they're all tea-baggers.

When Has Counting Ever Hurt Anything?

The first thing to ask about conservatives underreporting on the census is "is this really happening?" The only noise I've seen in the wingnutosphere has been to cease the reporting of race, which, as the link notes, counterproductive to conservative goals.

Folks, there's nothing wrong with doing a head count. There's nothing wrong with the government trying to figure out how many people it has, especially as the Congress and Electoral College is determine on population. There have been censuses since 1790; this isn't a progressive evil.

I can't imagine a conservative having a problem with this. Hence, my first question.

I Am So Smart! S-M-R-T!

Glenn Reynolds quotes Gary Becker on the problem of "capitalism" in South America:

In essence, crony capitalism often creates private monopolies that hurt consumers compared to their welfare under competition. The excesses of cronyism have provided ammunition to parties of the left that are openly hostile to capitalism and neo-liberal policies. Yet when these parties come to power they usually do not reduce the importance of political influence but shift power to groups that support them. A distinguishing characteristic of Chile since the reforms of the early 1980's is the growth in competitive capitalism at the expense of crony capitalism. This shift more than anything else explains the economic rise of Chile during the past 25 years that has made Chile the most economically successful of all Latin American nations.

"Crony capitalism" is more or less what I had in mind writing about Mexicoil and cash crops yesterday. It amounts to a gentle kind of fascism, and runs counter to what every free-market-loving liberal and libertarian desires.

Yesterday I was lecturing my Modern History class about the Great Depression, and how the worst thing you can do when the stock market is tanking is panic. He who keep his head while everyone else loses theirs is likely to come out on top. Unfortunately, Latin America has been in one state of politico-economic panic or another for the last 200 years.

But wait, there's more! Donald Sensing has more of the costs leading to a declining birth rate. I'm less convinced that his assertions are as powerful as economic ones. There are plenty of us who don't really care what the feminists and eco-freaks think about our young'uns. But in the cultural centers on the coasts, the image of mass overpopulation and the toil and drudgery of Motherhood surely influences behavior.

We run from the wrong fears, and into the wrong solutions.


UPDATE: Mark Steyn has more, especially as relating to Hugo Chavez. You know, Mister President-for-Life.

How the Nanny State Destroys the Urge to Procreate

Glenn Reynolds sums it up justly:

Today's middle-class kids are always under the adult eye. It's not clear that the kids are better off for all this supervision -- and they're certainly fatter, perhaps because they get around less outside -- but the burden on parents is much, much higher. And it's exacted in a million tiny yet irritating other ways. Some are worthwhile -- car seats, for example, are probably a net gain in safety -- but even there the cost is high: I heard a radio host in Knoxville making fun of SUVs and minivans: When he was a kid, he boasted, his parents took their five children cross-country in an Impala sedan. Nowadays, you'd never make it without being cited for neglect. And you can't get five kids in a sedan if they all have to have car seats, which these days they seem to require until they're 18.

When I was a kid, I was frequently left alone at home from the age of nine forward, and no harm ever came to me. Or I ran all over the neighborhood, which is to say the street we lived on, without ever destroying the universe. Permission had to be asked, but was easily granted, to go around the corner to the library, or down the road a mile or two past the elementary school to the shopping center to buy sodas or squirt guns. And we did this often; my younger brother, younger sister, and myself, and we never violated these norms, because we if one of us did, one of us would tell, and that meant Getting In Trouble. Y'see, my parents managed to discipline us without the state finding out about it, so we learned that limits existed. Call me crazy, but I think such discipline a lot more handy for surviving unemployment (which I had to do), dropping out of college (my brother), or debt (all three of us).

Responsibility without authority is pointlessness. If we hold parents accountable for everything that happens to their kids, but restrain them from punishing misbehavior, then the message we send is "Don't have kids." And that isn't the message we want to be sending, if we want our nation to have a future (Yes, I said "nation". GASP! I'm JUST LIKE HITLER!)

Hell is Repetition...

...for how else could rehearsing a stage production over and over and over again, from Saturday to Wednesday, be call Hell Week?

I have a few essay's brewing, and eventually I'll get that dagnabbed music list finished. But for the nonce, I am indisposed.

Here, go read Mark Steyn. Mayhaps we can start a betting pool as to the final date for the rise of the European Caliphate.

Steyn to Europe: You're DOOMED.

The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

Like anything else, survival is ultimately a choice. The body may will it, short-term, but it is the mind that must plan for it, long-term. Civilizations often die because they've succeeded for so long that they no longer think it requires work to do so.

Read the whole thing, as they say, but I'm suddenly applying this line of thinking to the much ballyhooed dearth of men in higher education. The so-called "War Against Boys" may be a factor, and the feminization of university culture as well, but ultimately, isn't it because boys are choosing not to succeed? And that we're letting them?

I'm a high school teacher: the curriculum is not that difficult. So what is it that's convinced large numbers of young men that education isn't worth it? Call me a crank, but I think it's the way that men have managed to convince themselves that ignorance is spiritual purity and decadence is manliness. I'm open to other suggestions as well.


UPDATE: Belmont Club has more, here and here, both of which aim towards the idea that the West has become a house divided against itself. It's citizenry still cling, if half-heartedly, to the old values, it's military, for the most part, stands firm, but its intellectual and political elite want nothing to do with mere survival. What Belmont Club doesn't say is what the Left wants: transcendence, of the idea of nation, of market, even of self, to attain a higher and better world. Yes, even at their most cynical and bigoted, that is what they want. They also are aware that violence oftimes begets violence. In fact, they are aware of it to such an acute degree that often that is all about violence that they know.

It should make anyone stand up and pay attention that the Military devotes such resources to "Information Operations." As Wretchard writes, we want the guys with guns to do their work and go. But if the elite fears the military, and the populace cherishes it, and this trend continues...well, I hear the Romans loved their freedom, too.

The Population Bomb, redux

Boxing Alcibiades links to a .pdf about whose populations are expected to grow in the next century.

Then follow my link to an article about the real Population Bomb.

The Population Bomb

It's the opposite of what you think.