Parenting, Policy, And The Need To Act On An Oxymoron

A who's who of conservative writers are taking up the subject of parenting, more specifically what they call  the criminalization of parenthood because of several high profile cases in which parents have been arrested for endangering their children who skipped church or played unsupervised in a park.

These Michael Brendan Dougherty paragraphs sum up their angst:

My own childhood seems to have become illegal. I was the son of a single mother. During summers I would explore my neighborhood, visit friends' houses, walk to a pond to fish, ride my bike from our home in Bloomfield, New Jersey, to the abandoned lots of Newark, and jump it over curbs. I could be unsupervised from 10 in the morning until 8:30 at night, when the streetlights started coming on. If I was home with my grandmother, sometimes she would leave me alone to do grocery shopping.

As early as seven years old, I was allowed to walk over a mile to school. I traveled long commercial streets like Bloomfield Avenue, and went under the overpass of the Garden State Parkway, all during a time when violent crime rates were much much higher than they are today. The worst that ever happened to me was that I got punched in the the head by a junkie. But I told my D.A.R.E officer, spent an afternoon looking at photos of local junkies and ne'er-do-wells, and got over it, having learned the valuable lesson that I could take a punch in the head. [Dougherty 7/21/14]

Gracy Olmstead offers a big picture summary:

This is the unfortunate result of living in a world where parenting is no longer supported and bolstered by private association and community. If only there had been a family member, friend, or church member who had volunteered to watch Harrell’s little girl. If only the “good samaritan” at the dollar store had considered calling Justin’s father, or offered to take the boys home. We live in a society that neglects the sort of private stewardship that could foster truly safe environments for our children—and unfortunately, when parents are thrown into prison, it hardly seems to create more safe surroundings for these kids [Olmstead 7/17/14].

Each writer, however, is pretty vague on solutions.In fact, they seem to be resigned to bemoaning the status quo or describing how the country came to this state. Radley Balko offers no solutions at all; he merely decries the situation:

You needn’t approve of the parents’ actions in any of these cases to understand that dumping them into the criminal justice system is a terribly counterproductive way of addressing their mistakes. (And I’m not at all convinced that three of the four stories were even mistakes.) The mere fact that state officials were essentially micromanaging these parents’ decisions is creepy enough. That the consequences for the “wrong” decision are criminal is downright scary.

It doesn’t benefit these kids in the least to give their parents a criminal record, smear their parents’ names in their neighborhoods and communities and make it more difficult for their parents to find a job.[Balko 7/14/14]

Ross Douthat wants to require work, ensure liberty, and avoid a police state without saying how such a miracle can happen.

And then finally there’s a policy element — the way these trends interact not only with the rise of single parenthood, but also with a welfare system whose work requirements can put a single mother behind a fast-food counter while her kid is out of school.

This last issue presents a distinctive challenge to conservatives like me, who believe such work requirements are essential. If we want women like Debra Harrell to take jobs instead of welfare, we have to also find a way to defend their liberty as parents, instead of expecting them to hover like helicopters and then literally arresting them if they don’t.

Otherwise we’ll be throwing up defenses against big government, while ignoring a police state growing in our midst.[Douthat 7/20/14].

Dougherty believes restoring community is impossible and conservatives should, therefore, seek to reform the state:

There are two ways to solve the dilemma. The first is a return of those communities, something that seems less likely in an America that is more mobile and more influenced by immigration, which results in constant neighborhood flux. The other is to reform the state's institutions so that they might actually assist parents — not just punish, shame, and harass them. [Dougherty 7/21/14]

Olmstead points out that Robert Nisbet who Dougherty describes as a "communitarian libertarian" predicted the phenomenon but offers no real ideas to correct it.

Nisbet predicted that, in a society without strong private associations, the State would take their place — assuming the role of the church, the schoolroom, and the family, asserting a "primacy of claim" upon our children. "It is hard to overlook the fact," he wrote, "that the State and politics have become suffused by qualities formerly inherent only in the family or the church." In this world, the term "nanny state" takes on a very literal meaning. [Olmstead 7/17/14]].

I don't know what a society based on "communitarian libertarianism" would look like. Having read Appiah and Nozick, I'd suggest the term is a classic oxymoron. Still, arresting a parent because a kid acted like a kid and skipped church gives the state too much power, and the parents who hover like an AH-64D Apache Longbow may be a bit too individualistic to allow a community to thrive. It may not take a village or a superhero but an oxymoron to raise a child. Good luck on getting people to accept policy options based on those premises.

South Dakota Is 7th Most Gay State In The US

Gordon Howie was disconcerted that South Dakotans were less likely to identify as conservatives than their neighbors to the north. I suspect this Gallup poll will make Gordon apoplectic. Based on self-identification, South Dakota has the 7th largest percentage of gay citizens. The state's 4.4% ties us with Massachusetts and is nearly a full percentage point higher than the nation's 3.5% average.

Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/160517/lgbt-percentage-highest-lowest-north-dakota.aspx

Quotation Of The Day: Chart Is Worth A Thousand Words Edition

According to Gallup, Americans have lost faith in nearly every social institution.  In fact, only three institutions have an approval rating over 50%.  The survey was conducted from June 7-10, 2012.

I'm not much of a joiner; some may even consider me cynical and anti-social.  That being said, I have to wonder if any free society can thrive when citizens have so little trust in the institutions that are necessary to hold a society together.

United We Stand?

William Saletan reviews Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Saletan summarizes Haidt's recommendations:

Our task, then, is to organize society so that reason and intuition interact in healthy ways. Haidt’s research suggests several broad guidelines. First, we need to help citizens develop sympathetic relationships so that they seek to understand one another instead of using reason to parry opposing views. Second, we need to create time for contemplation. Research shows that two minutes of reflection on a good argument can change a person’s mind. Third, we need to break up our ideological segregation. From 1976 to 2008, the proportion of Americans living in highly partisan counties increased from 27 percent to 48 percent. The Internet exacerbates this problem by helping each user find evidence that supports his views.

In short, people have to talk to people they don't like, live next door to people who frequently disagree with them, and listen before they speak.  How will the Internet survive?
Snark aside, Haidt's observations require serious consideration.  

I briefly discuss a Haidt New York Times briefly here.  Dr. Blanchard analyzes a Reason article here.

Yet Another Strange Statistic Of The Week

Caucasians who live in rural areas are "America's prime demographic to accidentally die during ill-advised, testosterone-fueled stupidity!"  The abstract of "Living Dangerously: Culture of Honor, Risk-Taking, and the Nonrandomness of 'Accidental' Deaths" published in Social Psychological and Personality Science states,

Two studies examined the hypothesis that the culture of honor would be associated with heightened risk taking, presumably because risky behaviors provide social proof of strength and fearlessness. As hypothesized, Study 1 showed that honor states in the United States exhibited higher rates of accidental deaths among Whites (but not non-Whites) than did nonhonor states, particularly in nonmetropolitan areas. Elevated accidental deaths in honor states appeared for both men and women and remained when the authors controlled for a host of statewide covariates (e.g., economic deprivation, cancer deaths,temperature) and for non-White deaths. Study 2, likewise, showed that people who endorsed honor-related beliefs reported greater risk taking tendencies, independent of age, sex, self-esteem, and the big five.

The article contends,

research suggests that men (White men, in particular) in the southern and western United States who have been influenced by an ideology of honor are especially driven to achieve this goal (e.g., Cohen et al., 1996; Cohen & Nisbett, 1994; Nisbett et al., 1995). Consequently, men from culture-of-honor regions might be more prone to engage in risky behaviors that sometimes lead to death, relative to men from nonculture-of-honor regions, because such behaviors signify that one possesses the ‘‘manly’’attributes of strength and courage (Bosson et al., 2009).

South Dakota isn't mentioned in the article.  I don't know if South Dakota has a culture that has been "influenced by an ideology of honor" but I see my students as being far too willing "to engage in risky behaviors that sometimes [may] lead to death."

Can the London Riots Happen Here?

This paragraph and quotation from this Andrew Sullivan post interests and disconcerts me.

And the use of social media and nifty little bikes reveals the criminal opportunism here. But even Mary Riddell in the Telegraph sees the background of austerity, accelerating social inequality and the bleakness of the economic future as part of the context:

It is no coincidence that the worst violence London has seen in many decades takes place against the backdrop of a global economy poised for freefall. The causes of recession set out by J K Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, were as follows: bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance. [emphasis mine]

The bolded phrasing perfectly describes the United States's economic situation over the past decade.  Further, we are living in era that seems to prize and reward belligerence over competence.  This Frum Forum post compares Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie to make the point.

While talk radio is urging Chris Christie to enter the race, it is demanding that Mitch Daniels exit. The Indiana governor drew accolades from many for his CPAC performance — but Rush Limbaugh and other talkers have blasted him for his talk of a truce on social issues and his decision not to insert a brand-new right-to-work initiative at the top of his agenda.

Why is Chris Christie the heartthrob of the radio right, while Daniels is suddenly an intolerable RINO? Christie is not more conservative than Daniels, and arguably even less so. Christie told the Newark Star-Ledger that while personally pro-life, he won’t use his office to “shove that down people’s throats.” He supports New Jersey’s restrictive gun laws.  And like Daniels, he has decided it’s tough enough to face his public-sector unions that he does not need to start an unrelated fight over right-to-work with private-sector unions. Yet the most acid-tongued of all right-wing commentators, Ann Coulter, has championed a Christie candidacy, asserting that if he declines to run, “Romney will be our nominee and we’ll lose.”

The difference is this: talk radio is not much interested in the substance of a politician’s views or the reasons for decisions. Talk radio wants a confrontational style, and unlike the soft-spoken Daniels, the fierce Christie meets the test. The rule seems to be: it’s OK to be a Republican moderate – provided you are belligerent enough about it. [emphasis mine]

Apparently, belligerence is not enough.  This Eli Lehrer Frum Forum post illustrates that Eric Cantor gets rewarded for being a jerk.

I’m not the first to make this comment, but the current debt limit debate shows what the Tea Party movement (which I once basically supported) really values: being a jerk. Speaker Boehner has a close-to-perfect voting record on conservative issues, is not terribly warm in person (heck, Newt comes across better) and has proposed a good, tough spending cut plan. But he has also demonstrated a modicum of willingness to work with the president and appears to want to bring the debt ceiling crisis to a close.

Eric Cantor—who may well become speaker before the end of the year—does not disagree with Boehner on any major issue including the debt plan but, unlike Boehner, Cantor is basically a jerk who is willing to work against his own Speaker, the President, the financial interests that have traditionally supported his party and, indeed, just about everyone else so long as it keeps him in the media. I’m disgusted.

Cantor apparently is proud of jerk bona fides or stubborn.  From this Talking Points Memo post,

Will S&P's controversial decision to downgrade the country's bond rating -- and its explicit citation of GOP intransigence on tax revenue -- be enough to break the Republicans' broad opposition to tax increases in future deficit reduction legislation?

Not if House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) can help it.

In a Monday memo to the House GOP caucus, he candidly acknowledged that S&P faulted the party's unyielding stance on tax revenues for the downgrade. But he encourages members not to erase this bright line.

"Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that S&P's analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong," Cantor wrote. " In short, there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases. We will be told that there is no other way forward. I respectfully disagree.... I firmly believe we can find bipartisan agreement on savings from mandatory programs that can be agreed to without tax increases. I believe this is what we must demand from the Joint Committee as it begins its work."

In other words, House Republicans should unite against a plan that isn't dominated by Medicare cuts and contains no tax increases. There are 240 House Republicans, and during the debt limit fight, they followed Cantor's lead on this score.

Finally, there's this remarkable big lie that otherizes an entire political movement from Tea Party Nation CEO Judson Phillips.

"I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me," (HT Andrew Sullivan)

Combine income disparity, belligerence, hubristic intransigence, and dangerous hyperbole, and one has a recipe for disaster.  I'm not predicting riots, but it seems as if the seeds of violent social unrest are being sown.