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A Problem Beyond the Reach of Politics — Troy Senik
A few years ago, while giving a series of talks on a long essay I had written about the malignant influence of teacher unions in California, I got a question from an audience member (or rather the kind of monologue that often substitutes for a question), in which the interlocutor, agreeing with my basic points, essentially said that all of the problems facing public education would fade away if only the union influence was undone.
I agreed that such a scenario would reap substantial dividends, but had to balk at the utopian idea that it was a silver bullet. Even if education was reformed along the exact lines that conservatives preferred, I argued, there’d still be plenty of problems. Why? Because the underlying variables are human. There’s no public policy fix to make kids study instead of goofing off, to get parents more engaged in their children’s education, or to make a 15-year-old think on a time horizon that extends beyond the next weekend. These things either happen or they don’t. Public policy might affect them at the margins, but they are shaped primarily at the social and individual levels.
I couldn’t help but think about that exchange while reading Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that the growth in single-parent families has had an economically destructive impact. Maranto and Crouch end on a similarly stoic note:
There is no quick fix. Welfare reform beginning in the mid-1990s offered only modest marriage incentives and has been insufficient to change entrenched cultural practices. The change must come from long-term societal transformation on this subject, led by political, educational and entertainment elites, similar to the decades-long movements against racism, sexism—and smoking.
No quick fix indeed. And is what little we can do through public policy even worth the candle? Every time I hear about tax incentives for having children, for instance, I always think “do we really want to encourage parenthood amongst those who can only be induced to it by a tax break?”
I think Maranto and Crouch are probably right that the change has to be cultural. What worries me, however, is that I have a hard time envisioning that happening. Of course you could mobilize elite opinion in opposition to racism, sexism, and smoking. The importance of equality and health are two of the only values that cultural elites actually recognize. Here in Los Angeles, you could murder a man with your bare hands and it’d be excused as the logical product of a troubled childhood. Light up a cigarette after doing it, however, and you’re regarded as tainted by an evil that’s been with you since the womb.
But the importance of the family? Of not having children out of wedlock? Who on the West Side of Los Angeles or the Upper East Side of Manhattan is going to carry that torch? It all seems a little … judgy. And no one at the commanding heights of polite society wants to be fighting the same fights as Rick Santorum, regardless of the merits.
I find it almost impossible not to despair on this issue. After all, it’s not as if people will learn from experience. As Peter has repeatedly noted, the rate of out-of-wedlock births have skyrocketed since Daniel Patrick Moynihan first brought the problem to the nation’s attention. Is that really a surprise? Once you’ve learned the lesson, it’s generally too late to do anything about it.
There is no issue on which I’d rather have my pessimism unseated. So over to you, Ricochet. With government essentially powerless and elite society inert, is there a realistic way that you can envision the centrifugal forces at work on the American family being arrested?
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I despair as well. I think we expect too much to think that government can CHANGE the human heart or incentivize “good.” A government made up of mostly good people might help those willing to navigate through the messes we humans are so adept at making.
A government made up of even some bad people–well–we can all see what messes we’ve gotten ourselves into!
I try to remember we each can only control ourselves and the choices we make. After that, we can only hope that our personal example and efforts at living a “good” life might influence those within our sphere, at home, at work, or in our community, to value and pursue what is “good.”
Then there is always the conflicting value judgement as to what is “good” from my point of view versus what is “good” from someone else’s POV.
In the end, the best we can do is join together with others of like mind to create a stronger force to spread the “good”–like here on Ricochet.
Great post, Troy. I’m shaking my head in agreement, but also holding a 3-week old baby on my chest, making it difficult for me to reply at length…
Most of our problems are contained in this video.
I don’t have any faith in government policies, but I do have some hope that people of faith can have some effect. Things are going to get worse. I don’t see any way to avoid that. But humans seek meaning in their lives. When we hit rock bottom, like the alcoholic, people are more likely to pay attention. It’s too bad it has to come to that. If I were a high school teacher, I’d drill into those kids’ brains one thing–if you finish high school, wait until you are married to have kids, get a job and stay married, you will almost certainly never live in poverty. I am a Sunday School teacher and I drill it into their heads.
The only constant in life is change. We are having to endure a stupid age, but stupid ages don’t last forever. They can’t. Eventually they self-destruct like the French Revolution. I have faith that something better will come out of all this stupidity, as something better usually does from ages of stupidity.
The general points of this thread could bear repeating in almost every thread on Ricochet: 1) that almost every issue is too complicated to imagine that a silver bullet policy exists, and 2) that basic human behavior is usually much more powerful than politics.
Having said that, I also think it’s worth asking to what extent “basic human behavior” is also strongly influenced by external (and thus perhaps controllable) factors. I strongly believe that much of the breakdown in family structures – as well as the lack of many intact families to take their parental duties seriously – is not due solely to some spontaneous rejection of traditional values, but is itself a rational (if tragic) reaction to the realities of modern life. While some of those changes are outside of our control (such as contraception and our incredible rise in prosperity), others are not – in particular, the extent to which we make parents feel the consequences of their parenting.
Interesting video – thanks for sharing Guru.
So to those agreeing, and Troy, What is the problem we are looking to fix here?
I’m on record believing we’re doomed. It’s a remarkably freeing perspective. If we’re all going to die horribly in fire anyway, putting it off even a single day counts as a victory.
Obviously I took the wrong lesson from Missile Command.
Maybe there is no panacea. But we can make things better on the margins, and we can certainly stop making them worse (I mean, hypothetically -the American desire to do something, anything means that we’d rather gnaw off our own legs that stop for a minute and think about backing slowly out of the trap).
I think Zimbardo overstates his case (as but one example, I am at different times all 6 of those times). However, I think he is right that there is something about modern life that causes us to be presentist. What that is, though, would have to be a topic for its own post.
I would add another video to Guru’s.
http://youtu.be/MUYpUMaEI88
My take away was that we can’t fix the main problems at root here – they’re too deeply ingrained in our modern society.
I agree with Merina on this point – society is an emergent phenomenon, but it is also capable of some self-correction. While I see our current era less a a “stupid time” and more as a logical (and even rational) reaction to the drastic changes brought upon by modern living, I still think the best course is to work on the individual level while waiting for society as a whole to wake up.
Government social interventions are akin to the enabling actions of an addict’s spouse. You think you can fix the problem, smooth it over, help them over the bump, catch them in your arms when they fall, but all YOUR interventions delay the inevitable “rock bottom” path the addict has chosen.
Human behavior is ultimately controlled by the individual, via actions & choices that reflect our internal values. Wisdom is a the balance between presentist and futurist.
When society fosters the young to remain hedonistic and pleasure seeking, instead of guiding them to grow up and see beyond this minute, we reap what we sow.
Foolish young people existed long before video games: there is NOTHING new under the sun, just different paths to foolishness.
As Merina says, the pendulum swings. Hopefully wisdom will break through this age of stupidity.
there have been experiments done with kids that were illiterate (in third world countries) that learnt to read by playing video games.
On the other hand, we have historic lamentations about the growth of population in New York from the 1800s being restricted by the amount of horse poop piling up on the sidewalks….
Evolution is a self correcting trajectory, even though each step is not necessarily “better”.
These are problems (what ever they may be – single parenthood / unions et. al.) that never existed before, so the solutions of the past are not likely to fix them.
Education is due for a disruption. Look to Khan Academy and the MOOCs for examples. These are shoots of disruptions that will eventually transform the future of education. Ignore the teachers Unions… they will be outlawed by the Bloombergs of the future like horses in New York; and the sentimentalists of the time will lament the loss of their traditional values…
I just made a similar comment over on the last Ricochet podcast, that listening to Charles Murray on these matters is nothing but depressing. There is fundamentally no way to get it back at the national level. Small moves at the local level is as best as you can do, and the only evidence of hope. For in my town and community, and in the relationships I keep, there is a core agreement on the essentials (marriage, family, etc.). Once you expand beyond, however, the willingness to argue or fight for it lessens. Don’t know why that is. The circles you keep, I guess.
If the first black president and his wife had trumpeted the merits of two-parent families with the same energy they’ve devoted to their class warfare, inequality rubbish, it could have been a cultural game-changer.
In any case, sad to say, for some future push to be effective, it would have to come from some popular elite liberal — ideally some popular Democratic president. Then the rest of the elites — in entertainment, media, politics, even the local classroom — would be green-lighted to carry the tune.
Conservatives alone can’t pull this off to any great degree, alas.
We’re seeing a lot of conversations like this lately. I’ve started some myself. The only optimistic replies that don’t sound completely insane always include two words: Great Awakening.
One thing government could do right now that might have an effect. Immediately stop all efforts to remove religion from the public square. Throw out of court all lawsuits by atheist organizations, and freedom-from-religion zealots. Let the anti-religionists know that they must deal with that kind of thing through legislatures and never through the court system.
Here is the problem, the Democratic Party benefits politically from the breakdown of the family. Obama’s “Julia” campaign showed that Obama wants government to be the family you never had.
On most topics, Obama won’t shut up. If Obama CARED about the breakdown of the family, he would do something about it. He doesn’t, so he doesn’t.
If in the statement “no one at the commanding heights of polite society wants to be fighting the same fights as Rick Santorum, regardless of the merits”, you are referencing politicians, the Nevada GOP seems to have proved your point that the change must be cultural by voting to drop both its pro-life plank and support for the definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
However, there are many of us in polite society who want to fight these “same fights” and I would label it the fight for the dignity of the human person. It is a fight for four ideals: life, family, freedom, and solidarity.
It is a fight that must be informed by the Church and prosecuted by the laity. It is a fight that is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-dignity of work, pro care for the poor, and pro-virtue based education. Perhaps the canonizations of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II this coming weekend can light a spark under us. And thanks be to God for Pope Francis – he certainly has stirred up a mess and is a man for our times – he is leading.
In 1986 I would have been a high skeptic of the hope of raising a Republican to the mayoral chair, or of lowering the rate of crime, in the City of New York. It is well, in this recondite world, to remain slightly skeptical of one’s skepticism.
There are many factors at work. One of course is the welfare subsidy for illegitimacy. Another is the reduction of religion to a form of therapy, like Transactional Analysis- ‘I’m okay, you’re okay.’ Hugh Hewitt said the decline in morality is because ‘no one believes in hell anymore.’ Which helps explain urban neighborhoods with many churches also having 90%+ rates of illegitimacy. So a new ‘Great Awakening’ would need to be combined with a sense of God’s disapproval and punishment for immorality.
Put me down with Fredo. The problem is evidently beyond human fixes. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
France looked finished before Joan of Arc, didn’t it?
Europe would have succumbed to Islam, were it not for St. Clare and others, and so on.
The thing is, we have to turn back to God.
I always enjoy the hard-working, often right, Rick Santorum being thrown under the bus. *sarcasm*
One thing … and it just might be the only thing … that can possibly reverse this is the demography reality created by the pro-abortion movement. James Taranto says it more eloquently than I, but here’s my attempt. Over the long run, the children of pro-life parents will out number the children of pro-abortion parents. And the cultural influence of those children might have the impact we hope for.
Respectfully submitted, Jose.
We are able to support a welfare state that allows for single parent families because of our (supposed) wealth. Once the spigot dries up, women will become more discerning as to who they allow to impregnate them. People respond to economic incentives and family structure is no exception. People have children out of wedlock and fail to raise them properly because they can.
Merina,
In your advice you make the assumption that they will get married. This is no longer a good assumption. I would predict that only a bare majority of Millenials will ever marry. Your advice should be: “First, get married. Second, don’t have kids until married. Third, stay married.”
Well the kids I teach in church will probably get married. They’ve been encouraged to think that way since babyhood, as kids should be. And they’ve been taught that sex outside of marriage is sinful. Most (we hope) will marry within the church–not just the local community, the larger church population.
Other kids want to get married too. When you talk to teenagers of any stripe, Fishtown or Belmont, most of them would tell you they one day hope to marry. But here’s the problem Nowadays if you ask them what marriage is, they will be hard-pressed to tell you. This makes it far harder to enter and sustain a marriage because the pathway to marriage has become convoluted and unclear. Living together is assumed, and that is known to be an iffy path to marriage. Sex outside of marriage is so prevalent that that incentive to marry is gone. Dating is very odd now. No one knows the rules and many just avoid it all together. The results of the “sexual revolution” have come home to roost and it is as ugly as many of us thought it would be.
Schools will improve vastly and at all levels of cost, just like with every other product on the market, if government stops getting involved at all. Government schools force all but the wealthy into their system because most people can’t afford to pay the taxes for government schools and pay for a private school.
I suppose some government policies can nip at the edges of this problem.
But government cannot solve this problem and we shouldn’t expect it to.
This is a deep-seated cultural problem that will be solved only when people realize again that:
The most important place to teach these things is in our homes to our own children and grandchildren. Churches and other civic organizations have a place as well. But it won’t happen until people decide that a “marriage culture” is more important than other priorities that we’ve allowed to get in the way.
A fascinating point. Might you consider making this a post of its own, Mendel?
Most of the social practices we advocate were originally put into place because of a simple reason: they worked. Not perfectly, and they were subject to abuse, but still – they got us out of the trees and into comfortable shoes.
So what do we mean by “worked?” A social institution “works” when it:
is productive,
takes advantage of mutual cooperation
respects each individual.
A family is perhaps the most basic, as well as the most efficient, social institution. It brings new life into the world, protects and cares for all the members, while teaching and insisting on mutual support and responsibility.
Like a market, a cultural institution “works” because individuals participate willingly. It doesn’t work when some genius or expert creates a plan, and imposes it on everyone. It doesn’t work when morality is just the latest fashion. Over time, eventually, institutions have to be productive, by taking advantage of cooperation while still respecting individuals. The most robust institutions do all three.
Social innovations will eventually fail if they can’t do all three well enough. The social institutions we conservatives support have an impressive historical track record.
We need to trust evolution – the strong will survive.