Today, the Projo is running its second Scott MacKay story in three days on the dismal state of the Northeast GOP. Today’s story is focused on Rhode Island; Sunday’s story was about the Northeast in general. Neither story breaks much new ground, although today’s does confirm that Patricia Morgan is seeking another term as Rhode Island’s State GOP Chairwoman…
As their election rout of two weeks ago sinks in, Rhode Island Republican leaders are trying to figure out how to rebound at a time when their state party chairwoman, Patricia Morgan of West Warwick, says she would like to be reappointed to the post she has held for the past four years.It is worth noting that the party getting all of the media attention is the one most observers would deem the “irrelevant” one. When are the stories about what the Democratic party plans to do with its legislative mandate going to appear? Everyone loves a winner, apparently, except the assignment editors of the mainstream media.
Could the lack of interest in the majority party be because they have no plans to address any problem nor change anything at all (except maybe to increase the state subsidization of failing urban governance)? [Open full post]
I’d like to thank Justin for elaborating upon my initial post and also direct you to Stanley Kurtz’s post on the NY Times Magazine piece, “Gay Donor or Gay Dad?“. As Justin explains:
With “alternative” families, it’s not so much that the family’s story is more complicated as that it must be made complicated in order to create the illusion of this intangible purpose. Merely from the fact that the parents inherently refuse to acknowledge that their relation to their child is not “normal” — let alone “ideal” — the emphasis changes. Their relationship was never about merging themselves in the person of a child. The surrogate parent — from the start a necessity — was chosen, at best, for “traits that I want for my child” or, at worst, for being “amenable to the lifestyle that I wish to live.”
Kurtz also treads along a similar path:
Implicitly and explicitly, the NYT article makes the case for accepting this radical new family form–using arguments we’re familiar with from the battle over same-sex marriage. These families want the same thing as everyone else, we’re told. Structural novelty notwithstanding, it’s said that the day-to-day lives of these bold family experimenters are boringly normal. Yes, we’re told, there are problems and instability, yet the same can be said of conventional families. And we’re led to believe that many of the problems faced by these unconventional families stem from the lack of role-models and legal safeguards. That lays the groundwork for a “conservative case” for defining conventional marriage and family out of existence. Just give us the legal safeguards and social precedents for three- and four-parent arrangements and we can prevent many tragic misunderstandings between potentially warring adults…
To be clear, my primary concern is for the children, not the parents. Do I have sympathy for parents in alternative relationships who want to start a family? Yes. But just because they have the legal ability to bring a child into this world, it doesn’t mean it is right. In the aforementioned piece, Kurtz points to a study, The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs, which can be read here. Here is the explanation of the problem that needs to be confronted (for the entire Executive Summary, please read the extended entry, below):
This report examines the emerging global clash between adult rights and children’s needs in the new meaning of parenthood. It features some of the surprising voices of the first generation of young adults conceived with use of donor sperm. Their concerns, and the large body of social science evidence showing that children, on average, do best when raised by their own married mother and father, suggest that in the global rush to redefine parenthood we need to call a time-out.
Whether it is through redefining marriage or genetically rengineering children (so they can have, say, 3 genetic parents): all are done to sate the desire of the parents–the children are secondary. These same undesirable motivations are not unique to non-traditional families, but the innovations that are cropping up to accomodate the changing definition of family are being implemented with little forethought for the consequences that will be most felt by the children of such genetic creativity.
The call for a time-out–to say “Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”–needs to be heeded. In 1955, William F. Buckley was referring to the political and ideological movement of Liberalism. Now, we are confronted with forces that are changing the meaning of the definition of family, which is the fundamental cornerstone of civilized society. Yes, I think the least we can do is say, “Time out.”
I wonder if you’ve fully articulated your beliefs, here, Marc:
I agree that–other than their unique family structure–there is nothing that sets these folks apart from “average” people.
I ask because I think your “however” is insufficiently strong to stand its own ground in the cultural arena:
However, I think that the baseline structure of the parent/guardian relationships that they have cobbled together, which form the foundation for the family they have “designed,” is inherently more complicated and, thus, potentially more confusing and damaging to the children who are supposed to be the most important star(s) of these family constellations.
Already, within the quotation that you provide, one can find the argument that families formed around heterosexual relationships can be equally complicated — perhaps more so, for having not been “designed.” And what if sociologists and psychologists — ever ready to define normalcy into their own intellectual preferences — are able to show that complication is not a detriment to children? I agree with your conclusion, though, so I’d suggest we look for ripples in more fundamental waters.
However complicated they may become, traditional families offer a very compelling narrative for children’s place in the world: They are born through the sexual expression of their parents’ love and act as a bridge from ancestry to progeny. In Christian terms, they are the full fruit of their parents’ spiritual joining in matrimony, binding their parents (and their parents’ families) together in a relationship reminiscent of God’s creation of mankind. In evolutionary terms, they represent the joining of their parents traits in a purposeful development of their species. Anywhere within this range of perspectives, they are a significant end, a significant achievement, in themselves.
Even if they were the product of a “Whoops! We’re pregnant!” conception, children have access to this meaningful construct. Even if the parents separate, the child still has a claim to the romantic, religious, evolutionary context within which he or she was born; it’s the parents who have fallen short. Even if the parents adopt the child, he or she fulfills a role for them that the biological parents were not able to need, just as the adoptive parents fulfill a role of which the biological parents were not capable for the child. Now, I’m not saying that we moderns haven’t dulled the shine of the marriage ring, or that parents’ choices after their children are born do not matter, but in whatever set of terms one chooses, there is an inexpressible truth to this: the genealogical tree is much more than a breeding chart.
With “alternative” families, it’s not so much that the family’s story is more complicated as that it must be made complicated in order to create the illusion of this intangible purpose. Merely from the fact that the parents inherently refuse to acknowledge that their relation to their child is not “normal” — let alone “ideal” — the emphasis changes. Their relationship was never about merging themselves in the person of a child. The surrogate parent — from the start a necessity — was chosen, at best, for “traits that I want for my child” or, at worst, for being “amenable to the lifestyle that I wish to live.”
I can hear the objection, already, that heterosexuals choose spouses for the same collection of reasons, but that only highlights what’s missing: that the relationship chosen for the sake of the children is at least intended to be the most significant relationship in the parents’ lives, in a manifest confirmation of that incalculable meaning.
I do not doubt (especially having just read a New York Times piece so naked in its leveraging of emotional weight) that the majority of homosexual parents will do the best that they are able for their children, nor that any given family will find broad social or metaphysical considerations possible to overcome. However, they are drawing on a pool of cultural capital while insisting that its plain basis be ignored for their sake, and that is “what the big deal” is.
I urge everyone to read this NY Times Magazine piece, “Gay Donor or Gay Dad?” about the complicated nature of family relationships that can develop when two same-sex partners seek a donor to assist them in starting a family. Reading the whole thing is essential because it is a complicated piece about a new, complicated family structure. Here is what would be considered a picture of a successful relationship:
Mark, 48, Jean, 37, and Candi, 34, now have two children — Mark (named after his father) is Candi’s biological son, and another boy, Joseph, now 7 months old, is Jean’s biological son. For a long time Mark, who was working as a freelance information technologist and financial consultant in Minneapolis until he took the job at the museum, could arrange his schedule to suit the mothers’ needs. He spends time with the kids once a week, sometimes alone, sometimes with his long-term partner, Jeffrey, who is 36 and went to college with Candi, and sometimes with one or both mothers. The relationship among the fathers and mothers has been a surprise benefit, he said, creating a brother-sister feeling. Despite the fact that the mothers are still financially responsible for the children, Mark has put them in his will. Each birthday and Christmas, he deposits a $1,000 bond for their education. Like any good father, he said, “I want to see them do well.”
Then there is this confusing explanation of another family (I stress that the story must be read to sort it all out):
When [R.’s] daughter was 2, her nonbiological mother became impregnated with sperm donated by a gay black friend. She bore twins. A couple of years later, the mothers split up. A custody battle ensued, in which the white mother tried to gain sole custody of all three children. The judge ruled against her. The final agreement essentially assigned the three mixed-race children to the white mother roughly 60 percent of the time and to the black mother 40 percent of the time.
The current family tree is a crazy circuit board: The black woman has a new female partner. The white woman is now living with a man, and the two have had their own child. So, as R. said, between the one child that R. has with the black mother, the twins borne by the white mother with a black donor and the newest, fourth, child born to her with her new male partner, all of whom have some sort of sibling relation to one another, things can be a little confusing. “They’re quite a little petri dish of a family, as you can imagine,” R. told me.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that such confusion doesn’t occur within heterosexual relationships, but these sorts of unions as constructed and designed are–of necessity–complicated from the start. Evidence of both are found in this explanation:
Candi’s attention returned to me: “Why is this worth a story? It’s not even worth discussing. We’re just as American as our next-door neighbors. You see all these families with stepdads and stepmoms and half brothers and half sisters. What do you say about marriages that 50 percent of the time end in divorce? Why are we so threatening?” Most heterosexual parents, she said, marry, have sex “and then suddenly: ‘Whoops! We’re pregnant!’ Our families are designed. They’re conscious. They don’t just happen by happenstance. We had to sit down and say: O.K., what’s your relationship to the kid going to look like? What’s our relationship to each other going to look like? What’s this family going to look like?” She didn’t understand what the big deal was. “We want the same things that every other family wants! You know? We shop at Costco; we shop at Wal-Mart; we buy diapers. We’re just average. We’re downright boring!”
I agree that–other than their unique family structure–there is nothing that sets these folks apart from “average” people. However, I think that the baseline structure of the parent/guardian relationships that they have cobbled together, which form the foundation for the family they have “designed,” is inherently more complicated and, thus, potentially more confusing and damaging to the children who are supposed to be the most important star(s) of these family constellations.
I say “supposed to be” because much of the entanglements and complications described in the story arise from the attempts to delineate what “rights” each of the adults have in these relationships with regards to seeing and interacting with the kids. It seems that’s what’s best for the kids is less important than the type of relationship that the adults will have with those kids. That’s not really out of the ordinary: too many adults put their own feelings and desires regarding the parent/child relationship ahead of the children’s. Yet, if such misplaced prioritization is bad enough when you have a typical two-parent family, what the heck do we expect can happen when you have a 3 or 4-parent one?
Henry Kissinger’s statement from a BBC interview that victory in Iraq is no longer possible is causing a bit of a media stir. Here’s a snippet of CNN’s report on the subject…
A U.S. victory in Iraq is no longer possible under the conditions the Bush administration hopes to achieve, but a quick withdrawal of American troops would have “disastrous consequences,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Sunday….What needs to be remembered in evaluating these remarks is that this is not the first conflict where Dr. Kissinger has declared victory out-of-reach. During his tenure in the Nixon administration, Dr. Kissinger was the leading voice for basing American foreign policy on the idea that a clear victory over the Soviet Union was not a realistic objective. [Open full post]
“If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible,” he said.
{N.B. Cross-posted at Spinning Clio–MAC}
Historian Ralph Luker points to a new book by Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks called Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. According to this story:
When it comes to helping the needy, Brooks writes: “For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice.”
…The book’s basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.
Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone’s tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don’t provide them with enough money…
“These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago,” he writes in the introduction. “I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book.”
Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.
…Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University and 2004 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, does not know Brooks personally but has read the book.
“His main finding is quite startling, that the people who talk the most about caring actually fork over the least,” he said. “But beyond this finding I thought his analysis was extremely good, especially for an economist. He thinks very well about the reason for this and reflects about politics and morals in a way most economists do their best to avoid.”
Brooks seems very reluctant to embrace his findings. I would bet it’s because he isn’t too keen on the idea of the political hammer it could become for social (religious) conservatives. I also think he’ll get his wish of having other academics putting his findings through rigorous analysis! Finally, Ralph poses a good question: “do people on the left actually say: ‘I gave at the IRS.’?”
[Open full post]One could, I suppose, respond to Andrew Stuttaford’s prods about an intelligent designer by wondering aloud why this sort of thing isn’t an example of built-in wonder — a cold-blooded miracle, if you will:
Twice within a year the brown arole lizard has evolved changes in its body and behaviour to outwit a predator — confirming Charles Darwin’s theory on natural selection.
Changes in limb length were observed by biologists after they introduced a predator, the northern curly-tailed lizard, to islands off the Bahamas where the brown arole is found.
In the first six months the brown arole, Anolis sagrie, developed longer legs so that it could outrun its predator, Leiocephalus carinatus.
Over the second six-month period the arole changed its behaviour so that it spent far less time on the ground and longer on branches and plant stems.
After a year the surviving aroles had much shorter, stumpier legs that were more suited to clinging on to thin branches. “We showed that selection dramatically changed direction over a short time, within a single generation,” the researchers reported in the journal Science.
We live in a skeptical world, indeed, if lizards’ spontaneous ability to grow or shrink their legs is not evidence of design! Sadly, upon review of the online abstract and supporting materials (PDF), it appears that the ever-intriguing evolution/miracle debate needn’t be had. From the former:
We predicted that the introduction of a terrestrial predator would first select for longer-legged lizards, which are faster, but as the lizards shifted onto high twigs to avoid the predator, selection would reverse toward favoring the shorter-legged individuals better able to locomote there.
And from the latter:
For individual identification, each lizard received an island-unique pattern of colored marks by injecting elastomer (Northwest Marine Technologies) subdermally into two limb segments. In November 2003 and May 2004, we censused nearly exhaustively on each island to determine surviving individuals. …
Selection gradients could only be calculated on islands for which some, but not all, lizards died. Because survival of marked lizards was either 0 or 100% on some islands in some of the time periods, our sample size was reduced to nine islands in the first time period and five in the second time period; those five islands were used in the repeated measures analysis. On these islands, an average of 20.6 males was measured at the start of the experiment; survival
rates were 33% and 58% in the 0-6 and 6-12 month periods.
Interest may or may not compel me to pick up a copy of the magazine with the full article in it, but it appears that Stuttaford’s source was incorrect. The lizards’ limb length didn’t change; rather, lizards of different limb lengths survived at different rates. Gee. The only astonishing finding here, as far as I can see, is the tendency of scientists and the materialists who love them to trumpet their documentation of the obvious and treat it as if it is revolutionary new proof that God doesn’t exist.
As far as evolution goes, what I’d be interested to know is whether this single generation of lizards manages to convey its adaptations to the next generation. Note that the study addressed only males. If females, for a made-up example, have to lie dormant on the ground for a time in order to lay eggs, then the species might not survive at all. Or if long-legged gals are somehow better able to mate among the “high twigs,” then the evolutionary influences on leg length might cancel out.
What would be exponentially more difficult to cancel out, given human beings’ capacity for split-second adaptation, is the long-legged credulity of modern skeptics.
In the pages of the Providence Journal, Richmond, RI, resident Rod Driver encourages Rep. Jim Langevin to seal our fate and ensure war — perhaps with a nuclear component — with Iran (at least):
On that date the House voted on an amendment offered by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D.-Ore.) to prohibit the administration from initiating military operations against Iran, Syria, North Korea or other nations without authorization from Congress. This, of course, is exactly what the U.S. Constitution requires.
But Rhode Island’s representatives, Langevin and Patrick Kennedy, voted with Tom DeLay (R.-Texas) and almost all other Republicans to defeat the amendment. See 2005 Roll Call No. 285.
Unless this vote is reversed, President Bush is likely to regard it as authorization to attack Iran.
It’s stunning that some people — who don’t give any indication of being drooling morons — can be so un-forward-thinking in their advocacy. To ask a question that Driver doesn’t seem to have considered is to answer it: What is likely to be Iran’s reaction were the United States to tie its own hands when it comes to war?
I fear we’re heading into an unimaginably dangerous era.
So far, in addition to alluding to Dan Yorke’s thought about disbanding the RI GOP and remarking upon the post-election insight provided by the current RI GOP Chair Patricia Morgan, I’ve written about the need for the Rhode Island GOP to coalesce around a cohesive and cogent political philosophy and how work needs to be done both from the top down and from the bottom up. I ended this last by writing that “All politics may be local, but in Rhode Island, it’s personal.” It’s my opinion that therein lay the key to political success for the RI GOP.
I think that it is the process whereby the RIGOP chooses its candidates that needs to be refined. I believe that the party relied too much on “self-starters.” While a willingness to run is admirable, too often it seems that simple desire doesn’t translate into electability. I don’t mean that they haven’t organized their campaign or that they don’t have attractive ideas. No, what I’m getting at is a much more visceral problem. Too many of their fellow Rhode Islanders don’t know who the hell they are!
As I mentioned in the last post, money would go a long way in solving this problem. It can be an equalizer. It’s a quick solution and also absolutely necessary for running a campaign. Money can get you 30-35% of the electorate. Being known by the electorate is crucial, but “being known” is more than just name recognition. No, here in Rhode Island, where everybody knows everybody, a candidate has to make sure they are known–and I mean really known–in the community BEFORE they decide to run.
Success in Rhode Island politics is heavily dependent upon personal connections. A candidate will get votes for being a “good guy” regardless of his political disposition. (This doesn’t mean that only native Rhode Islanders need apply, but I think it is a tremendous advantage over an out-of-stater like myself and most of the rest of the Anchor Rising contibutors). The RI GOP needs to identify their own “Jimmy who lives up the street” to run against the Democrat’s “Tommy who lives down the street.” And these candidates need to already be integral members of their local community.
But what about the rank and file Republicans who may want to run some day but may not be so visible within their community right now? Read on.
Rhode Island GOP Chair Patricia Morgan sat down for an extensive and wide-ranging interview with Dan Yorke yesterday. I believe that the viewpoints of the current GOP Chair are worthy of conclusion in this discussion we are having about rebuilding the RIGOP. Call it serendipity, I guess.
First, here are my quick takes on some of the items that came out of the interview:
The headliner is that Steve Laffey was engaged in some dealmaking with regards to the Senate run and that he asked for either the URI Presidency or an Ambassadorship in lieu of taking on Chafee. He was denied both. Throughout the interview, Morgan repeatedly talked of healing the party, but in the end, Laffey proves to be a constant source of friction, even for her.
It would appear that a lot of the money/resources sent to the RI GOP from the National Party was spent in the primary for the GOTV (Get Out The Vote) effort, which essentially helped Senator Chafee. I understand that it was used to build a GOTV system (computers, lists, etc.) and that it would have been unwise to hold back until after the primary. I even recognize that using the primary as a “dry run” for the general election was a good idea.
However, I also can’t help but wonder if too much of those resources were used specifically for the GOTV effort on behalf of the Chafee campaign in the primary. How much of those resources were spent identifying independents and Democrats and then cajoling them to vote for the first–and probably only–time for a Republican? As a caller said, why couldn’t the RI GOP just have stayed out of the Senate ’06 primary and let the two candidates with the deepest pockets slug it out on their own? Then they could have still built the GOTV effort and focused on the local races, where the money was really needed.
I think that all can agree that the Governor absolutely needs to take charge of the party. I realize he has a state to manage, but if he wants to have a lasting legacy, he had better step up and create an environment whereby individuals with whom he shares a political philosophy can carry the banner in the future.
Finally, we can agree that there are a core set of principles (mostly fiscal/good government) around which the RI GOP needs to build. However, many of the most energized volunteers in both the national and local GOP are those who prioritize social issues over economic. They don’t engage in politics for the sake of helping themselves (ie, pocketbook issues), they do it so that their children will have a better future in a world that is a little less crass than it is now. Those resources need to be tapped and the only way to do that is to convince social and religious conservatives that their input is valuable and that their viewpoint will be respected.
In the extended entry (below) is a summarization of that conversation.
