The Lynne Featherstone definition of marriage

Just one month ago, I argued against same sex marriage on the grounds that it would redefine marriage as an open-ended commitment ceremony to mark the love between people rather than an exclusive, life-long union of a man and a woman:

At the moment Australian law defines marriage as:

the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

That definition of marriage makes sense within heterosexual relationships. If we understand the masculine and feminine as complementary, then bringing one man and one woman together is meaningful in creating a unity out of two complementary parts. On the physical side, this uniting of male and female is what naturally produces offspring, and the care of such offspring underlies the lifetime commitment across generations within a family.

If it is possible for two men or for two women to marry then marriage can no longer be understood in this way. It can no longer be understood as a natural unity of two complementary opposites, and the sexuality within this marriage can no longer be understood, in a larger sense, as serving the purposes of creating new life within a multi-generational family.

Instead, marriage must be understood as a commitment ceremony to celebrate the love between people. But that's an open-ended definition. Why, according to this newer definition, must marriage be exclusive? Can't we love more than one person? And why must it be enduring? If the love goes, then why wouldn't the marriage?

Was I wrong in assuming that marriage was being radically redefined? The evidence is already coming in that I wasn't far off the mark. In the UK, the coalition government headed by the "conservative" David Cameron is attempting to push through same sex marriage. It has been now been revealed that the words "husband" and "wife" will be removed from official forms as part of the push toward same sex marriage and replaced by the gender neutral terms "partner" or "spouse".

That's another step toward the liberal end goal of making sex distinctions not matter in society. But what really grabbed me was a statement by Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat "Equalities" Minister. In defending the same sex marriage legislation she declared:

I believe that if a couple love each other and want to commit to a life together, they should have the option of a civil marriage, whatever their gender.

Marriage is a celebration of love and should be open to everyone.

Lynne Featherstone

Isn't that pretty much what I warned was happening? Lynne Featherstone has redefined marriage as a "celebration of love" which should be "open to everyone." Even if it's not her intention, that definition of marriage will permit just about any permutation and combination of people to be married.

Let's say I love one woman, so I celebrate my love for her by getting married. But then I meet another woman whom I also love. Why shouldn't I then also marry her? After all, according to Lynne Featherstone marriage is there to celebrate the love I feel and should be open to everyone. So why shouldn't it be open to woman number two?

And what if I meet a woman and fall in love and marry her and have some children. But then I no longer feel the same love for her. Why wouldn't I decide the marriage to be over there and then? After all, according to Lynne Featherstone, marriage is there to celebrate love. If  I don't feel the love, then why would I consider myself still to be married?

Lynne Featherstone is mistaken if she believes that you can have the traditional goods of marriage (stable, lifelong commitment) whilst redefining marriage itself to be a celebration of love that is open to everyone. Someone who understands marriage as she does will not have a good chance of holding to a lifelong commitment to monogamy (as it happens, she is divorced).

In opposition to Lynne Featherstone we have to insist that our sex does matter when it comes to marriage and to relationships and that the form of family life also matters a great deal.

Advantage China

Tze Chao worked as an engineer for DuPont in America for 26 years. But he betrayed the company by selling important trade secrets to China. He has revealed that Chinese agents appealed to his ethnic loyalty to encourage him to hand over information to the People's Republic of China.

Lawrence Auster observes:

On the basis of the sacred American liberal belief that only the universal human individual is real and ethnicity doesn't matter, we keep allowing the whole world to enter America. But the tiny little problem with this noble scheme is that the people we are allowing into this country on the basis of the belief that ethnicity doesn't matter, do not themselves believe that ethnicity doesn't matter.

Troubling signs in the U.S.

A Republican state senator in Wisconsin, Glenn Grothman, has introduced a bill which requires,

"the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect."

It's a bold way of highlighting some of the social problems that are connected to the growth in fatherless families.

I don't know if it's a good political tactic or not. But what is certainly clear is that Wisconsin has an issue when it comes to fatherless homes. In the linked article it states that one third of parents in Wisconsin are single - that's clearly unsustainable. And it turns out that in Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, 62% of children are raised in single parent households. That's an incredible figure - and one that ought to be ringing alarm bells.

But what has been the reaction to Glenn Grothman? The reaction has not been "Yes we have a major problem that needs to be fixed but I'm not sure about your methods of confronting the issue". The reaction has been very different - and troubling.

If you look at the comments to the Yahoo article (3,300 of them) the most common arguments are as follows:

• Grothman is simply a moron
• The reason for single motherhood is women fleeing abusive men
• Grothman shouldn't tell people how to live
• My children did OK with a single mum so what's Grothman talking about?
• There are women who become single mothers through widowhood so Grothman is ignorant
• It's all the fault of dead-beat dads

There are a few commenters who recognise growing fatherlessness as a social problem but they're a small minority.

Similarly, the opinion piece in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel is titled "Quality, not quantity, of parents is what counts". The writer, Amy Turin, argues:

Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) would like to put an end to the scourge of single-parent households or at least demonize these loving families that do not suit his preconceived notion of what a family should be. Recent legislation proposed by Grothman would require single-parent household status to be considered a risk factor for child neglect and abuse.

She believes that support for a family with a father in it is just a "preconceived notion of what a family should be". She finishes her opinion piece by calling Senator Grothman "prejudiced" and "out of touch with today's realities" for supporting the traditional family.

I find this response troubling because it shows the extent to which a culture supporting a traditional family life has been lost in parts of the U.S. The values and beliefs supporting a stable family life are no longer there. And the idea of a state subsidised single mother model of family life is being treated as a norm and a right rather than as an exception.

When you have 62% of children being raised in single parent households in a large city like Milwaukee then it's predictable you're going to have trouble. In the UK, for instance, a government review has found that a majority of the most dysfunctional families are fatherless and that each such family costs the public US$118,000 a year. The majority of rioters in the 2011 London riots were also from fatherless homes.

As for Milwaukee, that city has been hit by a spate of "wildings" in which groups of young black men suddenly gather and attack whites:

Large groups of young African-Americans engaged in widespread fighting at the fair midway, and then attacked white fairgoers as they headed home for the night. More than 30 were arrested, and seven officers were injured.

Would that many violent people coincidentally show up at one place at the same time, or are mobs like this forming with the help of social networking sites? We asked that question about the melee at Mayfair in January, and now we're left to wonder again. These incidents are not isolated if they keep happening.

The black kids at the fair started by beating up each other, police said, and at closing time they turned that rage on whites outside the gates. This newspaper normally avoids mentioning the race of people involved in crime, unless it's part of a description to help apprehend someone at large.

But this incident, along with the looting and racially motivated beatings in Riverwest last month, has forced the issue. Similar wilding forced the Greek festival to move out of its northwest side neighborhood, the late Riversplash was hobbled by violence, and Summerfest this year had trouble at a hip-hop show.

Eugene Kane, himself a black American from Milwaukee, wrote:

When people start reporting they were being beaten by black people for no other reason than being white people at the State Fair, that's pretty disturbing.

It's also thuggish and disgusting.

In the comments you read of people choosing to leave Milwaukee, or not to visit, because of such violence. That then leads to a further decline as those from a more stable culture move elsewhere, leaving behind them an even higher concentration of welfare families.

My point isn't that everyone from a single mother family is going to turn out badly. That's obviously not the case. But what is true is that where you have a high concentration of single mother families, you then get a kind of matriarchal culture that is associated with poverty and violence. It is only when young men are brought into a stable role as fathers within a family, that a society reaches a level of productivity and lawfulness that allows it to secure higher civilisational outcomes.

The black American family has already experienced a dramatic decline, but the white family is trending the same way. It's a trend that has to be discouraged, which is presumably what Senator Grothman is attempting to do.

Eltham traditionalists update

Fifteen years ago it was a very isolating experience to be a traditionalist. Then the internet arrived and a very small group discovered each other (mostly at View from the Right). In the past few years, the number of traditionalists on the internet has grown considerably - it's now difficult to keep up with all the different sites and conversations.

But there's still a major limitation. We haven't yet reached the point at which people in a particular locality can get together.

I've tried to hurry things along by setting up Eltham Traditionalists, a group for people living in my own part of Melbourne. I've had some success: half a dozen people have indicated an interest and I've been able to meet up with three of these. Thousands of flyers have been distributed advertising traditionalist politics and dozens of posters have been put up.

We are tantalisingly close to getting to the point of being able to have regular group meetings. Another three or four people would do it.

So my appeal is to any local readers of Oz Conservative (i.e. from anywhere within driving distance of Eltham in Melbourne) to get in touch (via swerting@bigpond.com).

Eltham Traditionalists is an informal network rather than a formal political party. So there isn't any need to formally join or to commit to anything other than the opportunity to meet up at a local cafe or pub. Getting in touch on a first name basis is also OK, and I understand that in some workplaces that might be advisable.

The advantages? You'd be making history - Eltham Traditionalists is one of the first traditionalist ventures of its kind. You'd have the opportunity of political fellowship. You'd also be contributing in a very positive way to the growth of a political alternative to liberalism.

If Eltham Traditionalists can establish a template, then it will be possible to follow it in other places in Melbourne and elsewhere. That's when other opportunities will start to become possible.

So, once again, I'd encourage interested local readers to make contact. We're so close to the regular meeting stage - we just need a few more people to indicate an interest to get there.

Apple doesn't like the word "wife"

You may have seen this story already at View from the Right. Apple has its own word processing software called Pages. If you type a word like "wife" into Pages the proofreader will try to correct you by telling you that you have used a gender specific expression which should be replaced by a gender neutral word like "spouse". Similarly if you type the word "lady" Pages suggests that you change to "woman" or "person".

This is another instance of the attempt to make sex distinctions not matter in a liberal society. It is now considered bad form to write words like wife or lady. These words are gendered and are therefore to be replaced in 'correct' usage.

Lawrence Auster's explanation of why a liberal society can't tolerate sex distinctions is very good:

But why, as I said in the title, must libertarianism, including the hip libertarianism that has always been touted by Apple, turn into PC? How does the belief that we are all free individuals, with no higher entity or authority telling us what do or how to be, mutate into a mad leftist authoritarianism that seeks to banish ordinary words from our language?

It's not hard to understand, but few conservatives and even fewer libertarians understand it. If we are all free individuals, with no authority above us, belonging to no collective categories to which we must conform, then any attribution to us of features or qualities that do not come from our individual choice, such as our sex, is an imposition on us. It violates the core liberal and libertarian principle that we are free, undetermined individuals who choose our own values. In order to be truly free, we must be equally free. And in order to be equally free, we must all become, insofar as possible, sex-neutral beings. Thus Apple's hyper feminist proofreader.

...Again, if you believe that individual freedom is the highest value, then you must also believe that there is nothing higher than individual choice, which in turn means that any larger cultural, biological, or spiritual categories to which we may belong are illegitimate and unjust, because they place limits on our individual choice.

I also liked Jim Kalb's comment in the discussion:

if you choose anything more restricted than the common good as the highest standard in politics, the favored goods (in this case, a particular understanding of freedom as neutral treatment of the goals of individuals) will end up destroying non-favored goods that in a more rational system would be balanced against the favored goods You'll end with something oppressive.

In other words, politics should be about the balancing of a range of goods. There is no magic formula for getting this right - it's a matter of wise leadership, learning from the past, thinking through the logical consequences of policies and so on. The better the balance, the more successful in the long run that society is likely to be.

If, on the other hand, you make just one good the overriding principle (which in a liberal society is the principle of maximising individual autonomy) then other goods will be either banished or neglected or, at least, not taken seriously enough as public goods to be sustained. The end result isn't freedom or individual flourishing but an intrusive state (it has to be intrusive to suppress the non-favoured goods) and individual alienation (as the larger connections in society have been broken in favour of the sole, overriding good of autonomy).

Anna Smajdor: pregnancy is unjust

Dr Anna Smajdor lectures in ethics at the University of East Anglia. She has written a paper ("The moral imperative for ectogenesis") on the issue of fertility. She begins by observing that fertility rates are declining in Western societies due to many women delaying family formation until well into their 30s. She recognises that "the obvious response to this is to persuade women to reproduce earlier." But she cannot endorse this obvious response:

Encouraging women to curb their other interests and aspirations in order to have children at biologically and socially optimal times reemphasizes that it is women who take on the risks, whereas society in general profits from these sacrifices. This, I suggest, is a prima facie injustice.

She believes that pregnancy is unjust, because it might impede women's "other interests and aspirations". So, rather than encouraging women to have children in their 20s, she believes a more just solution would be for scientists to develop "ectogenesis" - childbirth through artificial wombs:

In short, what is required is ectogenesis: the development of artificial wombs that can sustain fetuses to term without the need for women’s bodies. Only by thus remedying the natural or physical injustices involved in the unequal gender roles of reproduction can we alleviate the social injustices that arise from them.

And again:

The fact that women have to gestate and give birth in order to have children, whereas men do not, is a prima facie injustice that should be addressed by the development of ectogenesis.

Having gotten this far, Anna Smajdor then lets loose on pregnancy itself:

Pregnancy is barbaric

There has been a conceptual failure in medical and social and ethical terms to address the pathological nature of gestation and childbirth

Inevitably, part of her argument against pregnancy is the loss of autonomy experienced by women in having to consider the well-being of the foetus:

The final point to make here is the well-known one that, for expectant mothers, the fact of encompassing another life in their bodies often takes a serious toll on their autonomy. Pregnant women are routinely expected to subsume their appetites and desires into those that would be in keeping with the well-being of the fetus. ...Respect for one’s bodily integrity, something that most men may take for granted at least in a medical setting, is by no means assured for women even in societies that pride themselves on concern for ethics and autonomy.

But don't women choose to have children? Yes, concedes Anna Smajdor, but men who choose to have children don't suffer this loss of autonomy and therefore there is inequality and injustice. Anna Smajdor is realistic enough to recognise that her call for ectogenesis won't get much public support right now. But she thinks it is a justice issue that will one day prevail:

People need to be persuaded. Probably the “yuck factor” will be too strong for it to prevail as yet. But just as it was thought absurd that women should vote or ride horses astride, so it may come to seem absurd that they were chained to the degrading and dangerous processes of pregnancy and childbirth simply because of our inability to get our heads round the possibility of an alternative.

I was curious after reading Anna Smajdor's article what my wife had thought about her two pregnancies. So I asked her and she replied "They were the best years of my life".

So there is a vast gulf between how my wife experienced pregnancy and what Anna Smajdor holds it to be.

How did Anna Smajdor arrive at such a negative view of childbearing? Clearly, she looks on pregnancy more as a threatening impediment to female aspirations than as a fulfilment of them. If you take autonomy as your standard, that can make sense. There have been liberals who have criticised motherhood as a merely "biological" rather than self-determined destiny. They see careers as offering more autonomy to women as careers can be uniquely chosen and can bring financial independence.

If you accept the above, then you'll probably think of men as being advantaged in life, as men have traditionally focused on careers, whilst women had children and focused more on home life. So justice comes to mean equalising the opportunity for career, by having men and women adopt the same work and family roles.

Anna Smajdor has taken this one step further, by objecting even to the biological distinction that it is women who bear children (and who therefore potentially might have their careers interrupted) rather than men.

Alternatively it could just be that pregnancy is an unbearable reminder to Anna Smajdor of the reality of sex distinctions that are given to us as part of our nature rather than self-determined.

Lawrence Auster wrote recently:

As I and other traditionalist conservatives often point out (though our respective ways of putting it may differ slightly), the highest thing according to liberalism is the self and its desires. Only that which we personally choose has moral validity. That which is given to us by God, nature, and society without our personal choice and desire--our upbringing, our culture (along with the transcendent moral order it represents), our genetic inheritance, our race, even our very bodies and our sex--has no reality or value and should have no power over us.

But look what that liberal approach leads to. It leads to the idea that a woman bearing a child, nurturing a child within her, is barbaric, pathological, degrading and unjust. The moral thing becomes the artificial womb.

A liberal ethicist believes babies are not persons

A Melbourne academic has hit the headlines after arguing that killing babies is morally permissible:

Doctors should have the right to kill newborn babies because they are disabled, too expensive or simply unwanted by their mothers, an academic with links to Oxford University has claimed.

Francesca Minerva, a philosopher and medical ethicist, argues a young baby is not a real person and so killing it in the first days after birth is little different to aborting it in the womb.

On what grounds does she argue that a baby is not a real person? Here is her key argument:

If...an individual is capable of making any aims (like actual human and non-human persons), she is harmed if she is prevented from accomplishing her aims by being killed. Now, hardly can a newborn be said to have aims, as the future we imagine for it is merely a projection of our minds on its potential lives. It might start having expectations and develop a minimum level of self-awareness at a very early stage, but not in the first days or few weeks after birth.

On the other hand, not only aims but also well-developed plans are concepts that certainly apply to those people (parents, siblings, society) who could be negatively or positively affected by the birth of that child. Therefore, the rights and interests of the actual people involved should represent the prevailing consideration in a decision about abortion and after-birth abortion.

So her argument is this:

i) There is a difference between being a human and a person.

ii) To be a person you have to be capable of making aims. You are then harmed if you are killed because you can no longer accomplish your aims.

iii) Newborns and foetuses cannot make aims, are therefore not persons, and can be killed.

iv) Adult humans and animals make aims, are therefore persons, and therefore would be harmed by being killed.

v) Adult humans not only have aims, but have well-developed life plans, and therefore take precedence over merely potential persons.

Let's stay with this for a while. What all this shows is how important it is to get basic questions right. Liberals have an odd idea that value comes from a person adopting a self-determined life plan. It doesn't really matter what the plan is (though it's often assumed to centre on a professional, creative career). Furthermore, someone who becomes a concert pianist because his father wanted him to is thought to be living a non-human life, whereas someone who becomes a concert pianist after previously considering being a neurosurgeon is thought to be fully a person.

What matters isn't the activity, or fulfilling one's natural or given telos (ends) in life - but the very act of choosing autonomously what one's life will be. That is what liberals assume gives value to being human - it is what, in Francesca Minerva's view, makes us a person.

So it's logical, if you begin from this assumption, to make the criterion of personhood the degree to which you are able to have aims or, better yet, well-developed life plans. That is what is thought to matter in life, so therefore you can begin to be deprived of your personhood only after you begin to be able to make aims.

But what is the consequence of defining personhood in this way? You arrive at the very radical view that not only foetuses but even healthy newborns can be killed if they are thought to interfere with the life plans of "actual" persons.

It's a definition, too, that allows Francesca Minerva to define animals as persons but not newborn humans (though exactly how an animal has life aims that a baby doesn't isn't obvious to me - it makes me wonder if Francesca loves her cats too much to exclude them from the protected category of persons).

And, if truth be told, Francesca's position would make it permissibe for parents to kill not only their newborns but also their young children. Does an 18-month-old child really have a clear capacity for making aims? If not, that makes them non-persons and therefore, in Francesca Minerva's view, without a right to life.

Here are some more snippets from Francesca Minerva's article. They illustrate the radical outcomes of adopting her definition of personhood:

If the death of a [handicapped] newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet.

...Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.

...If a potential person, like a foetus and a newborn, does not become an actual person, like you and us, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at all.

...The alleged right of individuals (such as foetuses and newborns) to develop their potentiality...is over-ridden by the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being because, as we have just argued, merely potential people cannot be harmed by not being brought into existence. Actual people's well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to in short supply of. Sometimes this situation can be prevented through an abortion, but in some other cases this is not possible. In these cases, since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions.

If your moral intuition is that these claims are false, then what's required is a different way of defining personhood. The value of human life can't rest on our capacity for an autonomously chosen life plan - otherwise all those who can't make such aims suddenly find themselves in the category of non-persons without a right to life.

So what does define the value of a human life? A Christian can answer that we are all made in the image of God and invested with a soul, which then makes every human a person. And a non-Christian could find many attributes which give human life value besides making and then acting out life plans. What about the capacity to experience love? Or the other joys of life?

And then there's the question of our telos - our proper ends in life. What if some of these are not self-chosen but are given to us as part of our created nature? Then part of our telos would be to fulfil the higher aspects of this nature. And that might include a maternal and paternal instinct to bear children, to show maternal love and paternal care, and to raise our children to adulthood. That would then make the choice to kill our own child, for being a hindrance to our life aims, a disordered act.

I'll finish with the thoughts of a liberal on Francesca Minerva's position . Nelson Jones, writing in the New Statesman, agrees with the logic of Francesca Minerva's argument:

Biologically, too, those who argue like Giubilini and Minerva are on firm ground. Human babies are, by most mammalian standards, born prematurely with far less autonomy than, for example, a baby cow.

But he doesn't like the argument, because he believes that it's better to base the case for abortion on the grounds of women's bodily autonomy rather than on the lack of autonomy of the foetus/newborn:

This is not how the case for abortion is usually put. As the term "pro-choice" implies, the emphasis is on the pregnant woman and her right to "do what she wants with her own body". The foetus is scarcely considered at all, which is why the moment of birth must be seen as crucial. The mother might be legally responsible for the infant, but it is in no sense still a part of her body. It's hard to argue that prohibiting infanticide impacts her bodily autonomy in the same way that restricting abortion inevitably does.

The JME paper is not, then, a logical extension of the pro-choice case. By switching the emphasis from the rights of the mother to the moral status of the foetus it in fact plays into the hands of the pro-lifers. For however logical the authors' argument, emotionally it is highly troubling. The natural revulsion it elicits can attach equally to late-term abortion, perhaps to abortion as a whole.

He is arguing that Francesca Minerva's position is logical but repulsive (but shouldn't that then lead him to wonder why the liberal position logically leads to repulsive outcomes?). He prefers the older argument which ignored the whole issue of the moral status of the foetus/newborn and which focused instead on the mother's bodily autonomy - once the foetus was no longer part of the mother's body it was then held to no longer compromise her autonomy and so no longer lost moral precedence to the mother.

It seems to be more of a pragmatic rather than a principled objection to Francesca Minerva's position. And Francesca Minerva could argue in reply that the newborn still compromises the mother's autonomy after birth, because of the time, energy and money the mother has to invest in the child. So the argument from autonomy ends up mired in inconsistency.

Something that fits with game

I was browsing through an online personal advice column and came across a post from a young woman which fits in well with some of the ideas put out by those who practise "game".

Her post is reproduced below:

My boyfriend is too nice - the guy flirting with me is macho - what shall I do?

My boyfriend is super nice, I really like him. He treats me well, gives me gifts every now and then (but not too often, so I still really look forward to them), does a whole lot of fun things with me and shows me things I never knew about. And he's always there for me...I really enjoy the long conversations with him in the evening. And I have to admit, the sex with him is great.

The guy flirting with me is the image of what a man should be...strong, the leader amongst his friends and at work, daring, extremely charming and funny. When I begin to be bitchy he just says "Sweety, come here, sit on my lap" in a commanding tone that is also really tender. I would follow him blindly everywhere, as he knows what he wants.

My girlfriend believes he is one of those men who takes part in the Coke ads. I'm not sleeping with him, I would separate from my boyfriend before that would happen. Of course he attempts to do so, but I'm remaining consistent even though I'm turned on.

I no longer know what I want. I know that men like my boyfriend make women happy in the long run and don't only hang around for a short affair. But since I've been in contact with the guy flirting with me, I can't value my boyfriend as much as before.

What shall I do?

Obviously this girl is not following a traditional morality here. I found her post interesting because it shows the dilemma that seems to be part of the romantic life of many women. Many women are drawn to a kind of man (in gamespeak the "alpha" male) who is unlikely to commit to them in the long-run.

Note though that this particular woman seems to know the score. She knows that the flirty alpha guy isn't likely to be the one to make her happy in the long run - her boyfriend is. In a different kind of society, one in which a stable relationship would bring a woman an important measure of material security, respectability, independence from her parents, and a father for her children, then the boyfriend would have a much stronger hand than he has in today's society.

The sexual revolution has altered the balance in favour of the "alpha" male.

It's interesting too that the woman's true feelings, as revealed in her post, are so far removed from what feminists believe about relationships. Feminists often tell men that they need to cultivate a kind of androgynous egalitarianism to appeal to women. In this feminist take on relationships, any problems can be solved by men doing more of the housework. But what this particular woman wants is not a harmlessly domesticated man, but a man who takes even her worst moods in his stride, who is a leader, who knows what he wants, as well as being charming and funny.

The gamists often claim, and it might well be true, that the ideal man for a woman would be what they sometimes call a "lesser alpha" or a "higher beta" - in other words, a man who combines the qualities of this woman's boyfriend, including an ability to commit, with some of the qualities of the "alpha" - such as the confidence in dealing with a woman's moods and an ability to lead rather than to supplicate.

And what did this woman choose eventually to do? She left a note in the discussion thread later on to announce:

I've come to a decision. I told the flirty guy that although he is charming there's nothing lasting that can come of it. And that the whole episode has been more about my ego than about him. I believe that sometimes you have to think according to reason. We women always go for these player men, but if I had gone along with it the end result would have been losing my boyfriend for an adventure.

I'm happy again.

Beyond the marital ideal

There's always a more radical liberalism. Case in point: a recent opinion piece in the New York Times by law professor Laura Rosenbury.

Laura Rosenbury wants family law to change so that it no longer privileges marriage - not even the most liberal forms of marriage. She believes that family law should focus on our relationships with friends.

Why? She explains her position in a longer article she wrote in 2007 for the Michigan Law Review ("Friends with benefits?"). Her starting point is that we should aim to be equal, autonomous, independent individuals and that this aim is better served through friendship than through marriage. Therefore, she wants family law to be rewritten so that we can freely nominate a number of friends (who might change over time) who will receive the state benefits which now go to our spouse or children.

In her article, Laura Rosenbury explains that family law has two goals of "achieving individual autonomy and gender equality within the family." These goals, she argues, as well as that of fostering pluralism, could be more fully achieved if family law began to consider friendship, as friends are able have a personal connection with each other "while simultaneously maintaining aspects of individual autonomy and equality that can be elusive in domestic coupling".

In other words, she believes that through friendship you can have the best of both worlds: "personal connection" as well as autonomy and equality.

To underline this point she goes on to write,

Andrew Sullivan has made a similar connection between friendship and the desire for autonomous living:

"[F]riendship is for those who do not want to be saved, for those whose appreciation of life is here and now and whose comfort in themselves is sufficient for them to want merely to share rather than to lose their identity. And they enter into friendship as an act of radical choice. Friendship, in this sense, is the performance art of freedom."

Friendship is choice, it is freedom, it is "autonomous living". That's the message. And, to be fair, if your aim is "autonomous living" then that's probably right. People don't generally marry in order to achieve goals such as equality, or radical choice or autonomy. They're seeking something else: a loving union with a person of the opposite sex which completes us and which provides a setting for our adult masculinity and femininity; the chance to have children and to fulfil ourselves as fathers and mothers; the opportunity to contribute to one's own tradition by raising the next generation and so on. Most people understand they are sacrificing a certain amount of autonomy in order to fulfil these other aims.

Laura Rosenbury, in other words, is not being illogical in what she advocates - not if the liberal aim of "autonomous living" is the starting point. Once you begin with that aim, then the family will always seem to be a compromised arrangement - even liberalised versions of the family - as the family can never be entirely fluid, never be entirely inclusive or non-discriminatory or non-hierarchical or non-gendered.

As an example of how liberals are unlikely ever to be satisfied with the family, consider Laura Rosenbury's next argument. She concedes that there has been a "revolution in marriage law" resulting from a "policy decision to treat spouses as individuals rather than as a unit".

However, this "process of individualization" isn't sufficient for Laura Rosenbury. Why? Because the two individuals in a marriage are still dependent on each other. They might be treated as individuals within a marriage by the state, but they still need each other to be recognised as a couple in order to get state benefits:

Although spouses are individuals, the law confers benefits to them solely because they are in a couple recognized by the state; if they presented themselves “merely” as friends, they would not be eligible for state recognition. The individuals in the couple are therefore dependent on each other for the continuance of state benefits and legal recognition. This state-induced dependence is at odds with recent processes of individualization, a conflict which has led to increased rejection of “the romantic dyad and the modern family formation it has supported.

So how exactly would Laura Rosenbury like family law to be reformed? She rejects the idea that people might nominate a "designated friend" to replace a spouse. That would still limit autonomy by making coupling too stable and exclusive:

Chamber's proposal permits unmarried couples to have only one "designated friend." Stable coupling is therefore privileged in Chambers' proposal...

The status of designated friends could therefore be described as a “marriage-lite” approach. Although this approach is designed to permit more autonomy and independence within the relationship the primacy requirement limits much of that autonomy.

Take note: in the world of the liberal autonomist it is thought wrong for "stable coupling" to be privileged in family law.

What does Laura Rosenbury want then? It includes this:

...state recognition of friendship must be sufficiently robust to match, or counter, the signals currently sent by state recognition of marriage and family.

...new constructions of family law can better recognize friendship by embracing the principles of nonexclusivity and fluidity. Nonexclusivity is vital to new constructions of family law because exclusivity risks reinforcing the primacy of one comprehensive relationship over others.

...one relatively aggressive approach would gather all of the benefits, default rules, and obligations attaching to marriage and permit individuals to assign some or all of those forms of legal support to the individuals of their choice.

...In addition, such an approach would not necessitate a legal definition of friendship or family, thereby acknowledging the potential fluidity of family and friendship. Individual preference, rather than legal definition, would control which relationships are supported by the state and which are not.

She is reluctant to define family or friendship as this might limit the "fluidity" of such relationships; note too her emphasis on the idea of family law embracing the principle of nonexclusivity, which undermines in principle the "dyad" relationship between husband and wife.

Finally, it's interesting that Laura Rosenbury then pushes an argument that liberal autonomists always seem to arrive at, namely that if we reject marriage we can happily substitute same sex friendships:

Legal recognition of friendship could begin to disrupt these patterns, creating conditions under which women could more explicitly contemplate why they might prioritize domestic family life, particularly married life over friendship. As discussed earlier, Adrienne Rich called on women to engage in such contemplation over twenty-five years ago. Her goal was to challenge compulsory heterosexuality by creating opportunities for women to question why they have embraced marriage with men over relationships with other women.

Legal recognition of friendship could serve a similar function by presenting women with a socially recognized way of living outside of marriage or domesticity. Some women who are not currently living a lesbian life might gain sufficient strength from such legal recognition to prioritize relationships with women—whether the relationships be sexual or friendly in nature, or both—over interactions with men.

But there were feminists who heeded Adrienne Rich's call to set up female communities. The experiment did not have a happy ending.

The larger point, however, is that liberalism is not finished with the family yet. For Laura Rosenbury, relationships must be fluid, non-exclusive, non-gendered, undefined, individualised and independent if they are to meet the test of autonomous living. No version of marriage, not even the most liberalised, can completely satisfy these requirements, so Laura Rosenbury wants non-marital relationships to be legally recognised within family law instead.

And the task for traditionalists? We have to recognise the dissolving logic of liberalism and reject it at a level of principle.

The problem of the mummy teacher

When I became a teacher I soon discovered that the English and history departments in the schools I taught at were dedicated not so much to English and history but to another subject altogether, one which focused obsessively on instances of white racism.

I explained this in terms of the old guard of teachers in those departments. These teachers had typically gone to uni at the height of student radicalism in the early 1970s. They were lefty true believers and very political. It was difficult to challenge them because they were so fiercely committed to political leftism as a world view. But they were on the verge of retirement. My hope was that things would improve after they left and a new generation of teachers replaced them.

And nearly all of those teachers have now retired. But, if anything, things have gotten worse not better.

Why? The problem now is the mummy teacher. The mummy teacher is a very nice person. She bakes for students and staff. She hugs the students and calls them "dear" and "darling". She gives them cards in little decorated envelopes. She is a feminine creature and very "emotionally empathetic".

In a family setting that would be an undoubted virtue. Who would not want to be loved by a mother like that? But what is a virtue at home can be a vice at school.

The mummy teacher is not very political. Sometimes she is not political at all. But she is addicted to issues of white racism. It is what drives her commitment to teaching. She needs it and feeds off it. It is her constant obsession.

I've pondered this for some time now. I've come to believe that the mummy teacher obsesses over issues of white racism for two reasons. First, it creates a powerful emotional moment for her. She can create an emotionally charged journey for herself and her students by studying the holocaust, or lynchings, or apartheid, or refugees or Aborigines.

She does not find this journey unpleasant. She likes to get emotional. Ordinary life does not afford her the opportunity to experience her emotions as she would like to. It is something she looks forward to, the way that some women might enjoy getting caught up emotionally in a romance novel.

It seems natural to her to choose to focus on such things. Why would she focus instead on, say, the creation of Ancient Greek civilisation? What depth of emotion is there for her in that? And why would she focus on correct usage of grammar? Again, how would that motivate the career of a highly emotionally empathetic woman? She might as well stay home with the kids - there would be a greater emotional experience in that. If she's going to come to school, she has to have what seems to her a worthwhile reason to do so.

And what is the second reason for her obsession with the holocaust, apartheid, refugees, the civil rights movement etc. Experiencing life as a highly empathetic woman, she wants to mould her students to be the same. She assumes that the point of teaching history and English is to instill empathy in her students. To identify emotionally with the "other" becomes the ultimate educational aim of both English and history.

For that reason, what she enjoys most is teaching students to create "emotionally persuasive" arguments in their class presentations. And she does not shy away from encouraging students to adopt a stance of advocacy rather than one of dispassionate analysis of the facts.

The result is that white communities, already suffering from a lack of self-belief, get hammered over and over in the school curriculum. And not by radical liberals, but by emotionally feminine women.

What can we do about this? I would suggest the following:

a) Ideally traditionalists would set up independent schools. In Australia close to half of students already attend independent schools.

b) It would help if more men were encouraged to become English and history teachers. That's not an automatic solution: there are plenty of "soft liberal" men in the education system. But the more men, the less likely it is that the feminisation of English and history will run out of control.

c) We need to set out clearly an alternative view of what the teaching of English and history aims to achieve. There doesn't have to be one single aim. The study of history, for instance, might aim to encourage a sense of connectedness to a longstanding tradition; it might set out to encourage an appreciation of art and culture; it might aim to develop analytical writing skills; it might aim to equip students with sufficient general knowledge to take part in educated conversation; it might aim as well to encourage an interest or inquisitiveness in the past and a sense of its relevance to people today.

d) We can encourage parents to take up the role neglected at school by teaching their children about the history and culture of their own tradition. This can be done through books, films, projects, trips to historic sites, family trees and family histories etc.

e) Even a small group of traditionalists could run an after hours programme, offering informal courses in history and culture. Alternatively, a small group of traditionalists could commission books and resources and make them available to parents.

f) We can encourage parents to be careful in looking over the history and English programmes when considering schools for their children. Parents can ask which books and films are analysed at different year levels. If they are mostly about white racism, then parents could opt for a different school.

Finally, to finish on a positive note, there's a story in the Daily Mail today about plans to encourage parents to visit local history sites with their children:

Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, said: ‘In the high street, the housing estate, the park, riverside and field, every town, city and village is full of places in which significant events have taken place.

‘We want every child, their parents and teachers to enjoy and take pride in the heritage of their local area.’

Did South Africa's President sing a kill the Boer song?

This has not been in the news at all in Australia. It appears that the South African President, Jacob Zuma, sang a song earlier this year which contains the phrase "kill the Boer" - the term "Boer" referring either to farmers or to white men.

The song has already been ruled to be hate speech by the South African courts. Another politician in South Africa, Julius Malema, was convicted of hate speech by a court in September of last year for singing the song.

A group representing the Boer population has lodged a formal complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission against the President for singing the song.

It's a particularly serious issue in South Africa, as 3000 white farmers have been murdered in that country since the mid-90s. A written declaration was presented to the EU this month protesting the murders (see below):

There are websites (here, here and here) which track these murders (warning, the content can be graphic).

And here is video of Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, singing the song with gusto at the ANC centenary celebrations in Bloemfontein in January:



I can't vouch for the translation, but the lyrics of the song have been rendered as follows:

Ayasab' amagwala (the cowards are scared) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) ayeah dubula dubula (shoot shoot ) ayasab 'a magwala (the cowards are scared) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) awu yoh dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot)

It has been suggested that Zuma sang a slightly different version of the song with the lyrics "Kill the pink skin" rather than "Kill the Boer" but the overall effect would seem to be much the same.

Why isn't there more international attention focused on the fate of the Boers? One reason is that the Western middle-class is ideologically committed to the idea that whites are privileged oppressors and therefore are immune from persecution. They cannot bring themselves to recognise the vulnerable position of whites in South Africa, particularly the white farmers living in isolation on farms. Nor, perhaps, are they aware of the real poverty of some of the Boers in South Africa, who are given the lowest priority when it comes to employment.

Reuters ran an article on Afrikaner poverty in South Africa back in 2010. About 10% of the white population is thought to live in poverty, with about 100,000 struggling to survive. There are now white squatter camps close to the South African capital Pretoria.

A squatter camp for poor whites outside Pretoria

Why the left doesn't care

I used to wonder if white leftists ever had pangs of conscience over their policies (if carried on for long enough) imperilling the existence of a whole race of people.

But then I realised that if you look at the world through a left-liberal mindset that you're unlikely to register the fact of white decline.

Why? The official end goal of liberalism is a world of "equal freedom" - which means more specifically a world in which individuals are equally autonomous - which means more specifically a world in which no-one is impeded in carrying through their individual life aims by predetermined qualities like their sex, race, ethnicity, sexuality etc.

But liberals have to recognise that qualities like sex, race and sexuality do affect life outcomes. An example would be lower average incomes and educational achievements of black Americans compared to white Americans, or lower lifetime earnings of women compared to men.

So liberals are confronted with a world they see as immorally ordered. And they have to explain why such an immoral order exists.

They are not likely to argue that different outcomes occur because of the differing natures, interests, talents, capacities or life aims of the sexes or races. They would see this as a pessimistic view, one in which the immoral ordering of society was inevitable.

Instead, liberals "optimistically" stick with the idea that society is progressing toward a more moral social order and that the continuing distinctions between the sexes and races are socially constructed and can therefore be reformed.

But why was society constructed immorally to begin with? This is where left-liberals, as distinct from right-liberals, take a particular path. They believe that one group of people organised themselves as a false category in order to "other" and oppress everyone excluded from that false category. The whole system of society, the theory goes, was structured to maintain the supremacy (the unearned privilege) of the false category group.

So who exactly are these people running a false category scam and morally disordering society? Unfortunately if you are a straight white male like myself, the do-badders identified by left-liberals are whites, males and straights.

That left-liberal theory has some very unfortunate consequences. First, it means that white society is treated as being exceptional in a negative sense. If a non-white group does well it can be explained in terms of hard work or a stable family life. But if whites do well, it is due to an unearned privilege. Similarly, left-liberals can look sympathetically on the expression of non-white cultures, whilst taking a hostile view toward a similar expression of a white culture (since the white culture only exists to assert an unjust privilege).

That's why left-liberals are quick to label a white person who takes pride in his culture as a 'supremacist'. That might seem illogical to the average person, but if you are a left-liberal and you believe that whiteness was created for the purpose of maintaining supremacy over others, then someone identifying positively with a white culture will be assumed to be supporting "supremacy".

And a final consequence of the theory? Left-liberals are unlikely to recognise the seriousness of the position that the white peoples of the world find themselves in. After all, the left-liberal theory is that inequality continues to exist because whites are a dominant power oppressing the non-white other. So your whole focus will be on white privilege and dominance in the world rather than vulnerability.

I recently saw an example of this kind of thinking in a comment to a story in the left-liberal Salon magazine. It began with a more conservative commenter challenging the Salon readers with a question: why is it that the solution to the race problem is thought to be mass immigration into Western countries, a measure that if continued will lead eventually to the genocide of whites, whilst Asian and African peoples are allowed to continue their own existence?

A Salon reader responded with this:

Nobody is advocating the "genocide" of white people. It's laughable how you equate a moderate decrease in the economic and cultural influence of whites as some kind of spectacular genocide.

But when you've been privileged for that long, I guess you do lose all sense of perspective.

The Salon reader simply hasn't registered the real position that whites are in. He or she is still fixated on the idea on the idea of whites being privileged, and as such can only recognise a "moderate decrease" in the position of whites. There are no pangs of conscience from the Salon reader because:

a) The focus is on whites being privileged and so nothing more than a "moderate decrease" in the position of whites is recognised

and

b) It is implied that this "moderate decrease" in the position of whites is a moral thing, a taking away of privilege rather than an assault on historic human communities.

What can be done to challenge the left-liberal position? Plenty of things.

i) The left-liberal position thrives when it goes unchallenged. The more non-liberals we get into the political class, the less room there will be for unexamined assumptions on the left.

ii) We can point to the fact that the system doesn't work to privilege whites the way that the left-liberal theory assumes it to do. For instance, whilst blacks do worse than whites in certain areas such as income and education, Asian-Americans do significantly better than white Americans, i.e. it is Asian-Americans who are, on average, the most privileged and not white Americans.

iii) We can point to other explanations for group distinctions. Among them are differences in IQ, in other inherited traits, and in deeply rooted aspects of culture and family organisation.

iv) We can challenge the underlying assumptions on which the whole edifice of the left-liberal approach rests. Is a well-ordered society really one in which predetermined qualities are not allowed to matter? Does that really lead to the freedoms which are most important to people? Does the use of the state to suppress group distinctions really create a free society? And aren't there other important goods alongside freedom which contribute to the moral ordering of a society?

v) We can point to the injustice in regarding whiteness as exceptionally immoral, for instance, when the success of migrant groups is attributed to hard work and determination, whilst that of whites is attributed to unearned privilege.

vi) We can point to ways in which it is obvious that whites do not occupy the oppressor role, for instance, the trends in interracial crime in which whites are more likely to be victims rather than aggressors.

vii) We can personally reject liberalism to the degree that we no longer give it moral authority. And, following from this, we can attempt to organise our own non-liberal networks, institutions and, perhaps one day, communities.

Where will it end? US soldiers required to don empathy breasts

Via View from the Right we learn that a number of male soldiers in the U.S. are being required to put on empathy breasts and bellies to simulate being pregnant. Supposedly this is going to help them to train pregnant soldiers better.

I hardly know what to say. I suppose it's the inevitable outcome of the liberal principle that sex distinctions should be made not to matter in society. That leads to calls for women to participate in the armed services in an equal capacity to men. Which then leads to the army being revamped to fit in women better. Which then leads to the sorry spectacle of marines wearing sympathy breasts and pregnancy bellies.

Where will it end? In theory what will happen is that the military will feminise itself in order to become more female friendly, until a tipping point is reached at which young masculine men lose interest and look elsewhere to express their energies. I'm not sure if that will happen with the military - but if things like the empathy breasts and bellies are the way of the future, then it's certainly possible.

The Orthosphere - a new blog

Posting has been light lately - I should be able to get back to more regular updates very soon. In the meantime, I'd like to advertise a new group blog that should interest many of my readers. It's called The Orthosphere and is a collective effort by a group of Christian traditionalist writers, including Bonald, Svein Sellanraa, Proph (and, I am told, Alan Roebuck, Jim Kalb, Bruce Charlton and Tom Bertonneau). It's possible that I'll cross post a few of my more relevant essays to the site.

What gets printed in the mainstream media

Race issues are once again in the news in Australia. Actor Jay Laga'aia, who is of Samoan descent (and is best known for his role in Star Wars), has accused Australian television of being racist after his character was axed from a popular soapie.

It's probably true that Australian TV has remained more Anglo than the general population. However, Laga'aia himself has done well out of the industry, having won roles on 20 or more shows.

But what really struck me were the comments on the story from readers of the Herald Sun here in Melbourne. A few of the comments attacking whites would not have been made about any other group of people:

Wolfie, Dubbo: As much as I can't stand his screen presence, he sort of has a point. Home and Away is pretty much heterosexual and white. That world doesn't exist anymore, thank goodness.

Really Wolfie? Substitute "black" for "white" and you'd land yourself in front of some sort of tribunal. And then there's this:

Svetlanababe: Whites on Australian TV should be portrayed as the drunken, tattooed bogans they so often are.

Again, would that get into a mainstream newspaper if it were aimed at any other group? The Herald Sun did, it is true, publish the other side of the debate:

M. Taylor: The average Australian is over all these racist claims being made by attention seekers. Laga'aia has done very well out of the Australian TV industry. He should be grateful instead of making such comments.

But even so it seems to be the case in Australia today that Anglos/whites are the one group who are "unprotected" in the sense that you can say in the mainstream media anything derogatory you like about them.