Mark Steyn, Tucker Carlson, and Colonial Floorboards, Or Woe to Us All

 

When we were recording the weekly podcast just now, somebody–James Lileks?  Rob?–asked our guest, Tucker Carlson, if the Republicans could beat Obama in 2012.  Tucker replied with his usual aplomb and good cheer.

“No.”

Tucker named a couple of reasons with which we’re all distressingly familiar.  Too many Americans, Tucker said, like getting stuff from the federal government.  Give up goodies right now to stave off collapse in 10 or 20 years?  Don’t be silly.  Immigrants?  They vote overwhelmingly Democratic. “Even immigrant groups that might surprise you,” Tucker said.  ”Indians, for example.”

Then Tucker named a reason that was a new one on me–or almost new:  Even the most solid part of the Republican base, rural white voters, who have voted Republican ever since the election of Lincoln, are drifting toward the Democrats.  Why?  Illegitimacy.  The traditional family is breaking down among rural whites with astonishing speed.  Unmarried mothers vote Democratic–they need the welfare state.  And they raise their children in an atmosphere of dependency, teaching them, if only by example, to rely on government handouts.

How bad is the problem?  When we finished recording, I did a little research.  Here’s Nick Eberstadt, writing for the American Enterprise Institute:

Forty years after the Moynihan report, the tragic saga of the modern black family is common knowledge. But the tale of family breakdown in modern America is no longer a story delimited to a single ethnic minority. Today the family is also in crisis for this country’s ethnic majority: the so-called white American population….

Consider trends in out-of-wedlock births. By 2002, 28.5 percent of babies of white mothers were born outside marriage in this country. Over the past generation, the white illegitimacy rate has exploded, quadrupling since 1975, when the level was 7.1 percent. The overall illegitimacy rate for whites is higher than it was for black mothers (23.6 percent) when the Moynihan report sounded its alarm….

Today no state in the Union has an Anglo illegitimacy ratio as low as 10 percent. Even in predominantly Mormon Utah, every eighth non-Hispanic white infant is born out of wedlock.

I’d been vaguely aware of this, but hadn’t considered the political impact–the collapse of a big part of the traditional GOP base.  When Tucker mentioned this, the idea was, as I say, almost new to me. As it happens, I’d heard it exactly a week ago today over dinner with Mark Steyn.

Mark had picked me up at the Hanover Inn, then driven 40 minutes into the woods, crossing a covered bridge and making so many turns and switchbacks that it occurred to me that I’d surely starve before being able to find my way back on my own.  At last Mark turned onto a dirt road, bouncing along the ruts–it’s mud season up there–until at last we reached our destination:  An impeccably restored farmhouse dating back to colonial times, now a wonderful little restaurant.

Dinner with Mark is about what you’d expect:  The conversation proves warm, brilliant, erudite, and hilarious, but the recurring theme is, as Mark himself puts it often enough, “the decline of the Republic.” Mark Steyn, tap-dancing at the edge of the abyss. 

For miles in every direction, Mark noted, lay country that until just a few decades ago represented the heartland, so to speak, of the flinty, resourceful, independent Yankee spirit.  Now?  ”You’ll see lovely girls in the local high schools,” Mark said.  ”When you come across them again five years later, they’ll each have three children by three different fathers.”  Then Mark told a story.

In colonial times, it was against crown law to cut down any pine that exceeded a certain girth–twenty-some inches, as I recall–because all such trees were reserved for the use of the Royal Navy, which required a ready supply of masts.  Every time you see a colonial house with floorboards more than two feet wide, you’re witnessing an artifact of the American spirit–an act of rebellion.  Mark pointed to the floorboards in the restaurant, some of which were certainly more than two feet wide.  ”Two centuries ago,” he said, “the families in these parts were felling trees in defiance of the crown. Today they’re raising their children on welfare checks.”

Woe to us all.

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  1. Profile Photo Inactive
    @DavidWilliamson

    If we have Peter on board with a Ryan run for President, there is hope for us all.

    I think someone asked this question before – how do we draft him (Ryan) to run?

    Or maybe the One’s speech, where he invited Ryan to sit in the front row, may turn out to be his fatal error, as Ryan is stirred into action…

    Peter can write his speeches :-)

    • #31
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    @

    With all due respect to Tucker Carlson what can’t go on forever will end. That includes the endless carnival of FREE that the government bestows upon slivers of the population statistically likely to vote leftist.

    And I don’t think a collapse is as long as ten distant years into the future. We could be in the early stages of that unhappy event right now, if the unbacked federal reserve notes that Ben Bernanke is conjuring into existence lead to hyperinflation.

    I note also that financially it is rational on a certain level for people to try and get back as much as they can from the government. In my experience the amazing generosity of the welfare state has been a frequent topic of conversation, and I’m in no way surprised if people phony up paperwork or never get married to get something out of it.

    Standing in line at the grocery store behind someone paying for a pile of steaks with foodstamps will do that, especially if it happens often.

    • #32
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    @LarryKoler

    dittoheadadt: Perfectly correct. It amuses me how many people want to talk only about the secondary and tertiary aspects in the 2008 election of Obama. Most Ricochet members seems to be very wary of this simple, obvious point. He’s an affirmative action candidate who was spotted 20% of the electorate by the summer of 2008.

    Don’t bet on Brooks or Frum not voting for Obama. It will be very interesting to watch these two, especially.

    Finally, I think he will be reelected because no Republican will want to deal with the primary reason that he is president and will cave to forces in his campaign, much like McCain did, to not go hammer and tong against him. This is a contact sport, politics, and no one wants to be the guy to lay a glove on Obama and be denounced as a racist. It’s so very obvious, so very obvious.

    • #33
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    @BasilFawlty

    If Mark Steyn and Tucker Carlson are correct (and I think they are), then ideology trumps political self-interest here. Otherwise, the Democrats would be the ones leading the charge against Planned Parenthood.

    • #34
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    @NickStuart

    It is imperative that public funding of education be de-linked from public provision of education. Education must be voucherized so that families capable of making decisions for themselves can control their children’s education placing their children in the school environment that best reflects their values and provides a sound, basic education.

    Parents who want their children to work on math facts or reading instead of playing the “uterine lining” (as Mark Steyn related his son’s school day in last week’s podcast) can.

    • #35
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    @katievs

    My preference would be for extolling and rewarding and privileging marriage rather than for stigmatizing illegitimacy. Women are already under enough pressure to abort their babies. I’d hate to add more shame and hardship to those who might choose life if they weren’t feeling desperate and overwhelmed.

    I do think a lot more stigma could be usefully dispensed for irresponsible sexual behavior generally. (Not just “unsafe” medically, but morally irresponsible.)

    • #36
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    @LarryKoler
    katievs: My preference would be for extolling and rewarding and privileging marriage rather than for stigmatizing illegitimacy. Women are already under enough pressure to abort their babies. I’d hate to add more shame and hardship to those who might choose life if they weren’t feeling desperate and overwhelmed.

    I agree, but don’t forget that the anti-straight-marriage lobby will fight this. They don’t like the idea that child-bearing marriages are privileged already. Really the gay marriage issue will die very quickly when marriage is sufficiently under-privileged and seen as passe — this is the real issue on the table no matter how it is dressed up. Marriage is bourgeois. We are uncool to think otherwise. Marxism and progressivism have seeped down so deeply into our culture that it is now difficult to ferret out the various sources of the memes associated with them.

    • #37
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    @Yeahok

    I believe Tucker may be correct.

    I’m trying to convince myself that this will be a good thing. Mark Steyn urges us to make a political climate which forces the wrong guy to do the right thing. Well, I believe the anti-Obama/progressive momentum is stronger and easier to maintain than if we elected full republican legislative and executive branches, even if Lewis was our president. Fixing spending and entitlements is going to hurt, Obama is a strong motivator for us to do the right thing. We need to get 60 seats in senate to try to prevent Supreme mistakes but let’s let the lame duck sign the repeal of the new deal and great society. I know I don’t want to see Whiplash asleep at a speech in 2 years.

    A third party run of Trump/Palin (just kidding) will enable enough Republicans to win in congress while allowing Obama to keep his job. Foreign policy is gonna take a hit but we play the cards we get. I realize this is loony but I’m gonna dream.

    • #38
  9. Profile Photo Inactive
    @LarryKoler
    Basil Fawlty: If Mark Steyn and Tucker Carlson are correct (and I think they are), then ideology trumps political self-interest here. Otherwise, the Democrats would be the ones leading the charge against Planned Parenthood.

    Thomas Sowell has an answer here, I think. He’s been interviewed by Dennis Miller and Dennis Prager recently to advance his new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies:Second Edition.

    He said that the short term political effect is a good strategy for getting elected. He points out that Coleman Young of Detroit was glad to see whites flee the city because they wouldn’t vote for him anyway. Young’s personal life was enhanced by this short term strategy and the long term effect of a destroyed city happened on someone else’s watch.

    Look at the 8 years of Bill Clinton. He might be close to a billionaire by the time he dies. Good personal strategy, bad USA security strategy.

    • #39
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    @

    Charlotte Reineck: I imagine that having dinner with Mark Steyn would be a deeply schizophrenic experience: you’d be laughing your a** off while simultaneously becoming suicidally depressed. · Apr 14 at 1:14pm

    Brilliant comment. I have often had this feeling when reading Mark but never could encapsulate it so clearly as you did. Thanks for making me laugh and get depressed all over again. :-)

    • #40
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    @BasilFawlty
    Larry Koler

    Basil Fawlty: If Mark Steyn and Tucker Carlson are correct (and I think they are), then ideology trumps political self-interest here. Otherwise, the Democrats would be the ones leading the charge against Planned Parenthood.

    Thomas Sowell has an answer here, I think. . .

    He said that the short term political effect is a good strategy for getting elected. He points out that Coleman Young of Detroit was glad to see whites flee the city because they wouldn’t vote for him anyway. Young’s personal life was enhanced by this short term strategy and the long term effect of a destroyed city happened on someone else’s watch · Apr 15 at 7:42am

    I agree. Short-term trumping long-term political benefit is certainly part of the explanation for the Democratic love of Planned Parenthood, as is the money the Democrats receive from the organization. However, it still amazes me to see African-American politicians like DC Mayor Grey and Delegate Norton joining hands with a PP official and insisting on continued funding for Margaret Sanger’s racist vision.

    • #41
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    @KCMulville

    That’s the Democrat Battle Cry:

    If you cut spending, you’ll endanger illegitimacy!

    • #42
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    @TazaGul

    I for one am ready to go find some 20 inch trees and cut them down.

    • #43
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    @reidspoorhouse

    Unfortunately I’m afraid that Tucker Carlson has hit the nail on the head.

    • #44
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    @

    It’s definitely true what they say about the illegitimacy rate among whites. At college it seems half of the girls I meet already have children. It’s really surprising. I never know if I’m talking to a mother or not.

    • #45
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