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The Calculator & The Bible
Ross Douthat wrote a powerful piece last week that used the upcoming SSM ruling as a jumping-off point for a larger discussion about the history of social predictions and SoCons’ strong (if imperfect) record on the matter. I commend the whole piece to everyone, but this passage on the left’s increasing prejudice towards quantitative analysis — to the exclusion of all other modes of thought — stood out:
[T]he modern liberal mind is trained to ask for spreadsheet-ready projections and clearly defined harms, and the links that social conservatives think exist aren’t amenable to that kind of precise measurement or definition. How do you run a regression analysis on a culture’s marital iconography? How do you trace the downstream influence of a change in that iconography on future generations’ values and ideas and choices? How do you measure highly-diffuse potential harms from some cultural shift, let alone compare them to the concrete benefits being delivered by the proposed alteration? How do you quantify, assess and predict the influence of a public philosophy of marriage — whatever that even means — on manners and morals and behavior?
Of course, there is nothing in traditionalist thinking that precludes serious data dives; indeed, a traditionalist should hold that his positions will very much be validated by statistics, provided the right questions are posed and investigated dispassionately. Nor, for that matter, should a data-focused researcher be allergic to tradition, which — through the forces of trial, error, and selection — should be expected to form a great many gems that need only a little sunlight to shine. Indeed, Hayek went so far as to say in The Fatal Conceit that “all the benefits of civilization, and indeed our very existence, rest… on our continuing willingness to shoulder the burden of tradition.”
The fact is that thinking through a problem and working (or muddling) through one involve different faculties. Both are applicable to almost any imaginable circumstance, though the particulars of how — and in what proportion to each other — vary immensely with circumstance. Everyone knows that traditionalism can save us from some follies while leading us to others, but the same applies to empiricist modes of thinking as well.
Tradition and research work best when each is used to check and reexamine the others’ findings. If quantitative social research yields predictions that contradict well-established and successful traditions, that’s more than sufficient cause to go back and make sure the researchers made the correct assumptions and didn’t miss anything (Douthat makes a strong case for doing so with regard to many questions regarding sexual mores and marriage). On the other hand, the simple fact of something being tradition doesn’t automatically put it beyond empirical questioning (Douthat similarly points out that a great many of Robert Bork’s more dire predictions about these same subjects did not materialize).
Balance and judgement — as always — are very much in need.
Published in Culture, Law
Please don’t think I am ever questioning your personal Christianity. I score high on those Libertarian poll questions too. In the last few years I’ve come to realize that the government can’t just be laissez-faire when it comes to culture. That would be essentially saying that it’s all realitive, that all cultural positions are relative to each other. And no, it’s not realitive. We have seen the breakdown of the family and there are things the government needs to do to help repair it. I say help, because I am also not idealistic in the other direction to think that there is a quick government fix. It’s going to have to be multi-faceted.
Yabbut to many self-identified “pure libertarians”, the writers at Reason seem statist by comparison ;-)
It’s just not that unusual for hardcore libertarians to read a Reason article and object to it on the grounds that it “advocates too much government involvement”.
Reason has some awesome articles. Also some dumb ones.
Undoubtedly there may be some Reason fans who’d agree with pretty much everything they read, just like there are probably some people who earnestly try to believe everything the American Spectator or People Magazine has to say (a fool’s errand, but some probably try).
Still, I’d wager most fans of Reason disagree with it a lot – they’re not the kind of community that puts a premium on lockstep agreement. Being OK with not always agreeing with each other is part of libertarian culture.
I love some stuff put out by Reason. Totally ignore other stuff. That’s probably normal.
“I want [people to] do everything I want them to and [for my ideas to] be my mark on the world” seems to be a rather standard human emotion about, well, everything. Not just kids. In fact, kids are the one area of human life where that attitude seems to be appropriate, given that it’s usually understood as the job of the parents to mold the moral and intellectual character of the child.
Both/And, not Either/Or. Police are not angels and are completely capable of making very wrong decisions. The Chicago Police used to do mock-executions in order to obtain confessions. Do we support that just because we’re conservatives and they have badges? No, we support the idea that law and order are preferable to privilege and chaos. The police are the institution we’ve set up to uphold that idea, but they’re imperfect. Similar arguments apply to foreign policy.
The problem is that culture isn’t something that can be imposed by government. Unless you want to have a horrifying nightmare police state, the government just can’t have the necessary amount of control over individual’s lives to force them to behave certain ways…and you certainly can’t force people to think certain ways or believe certain things. This isn’t a matter of “relativism.” This is a matter of people who actually believe different things than you do. If you believe (along with Midge and me and most other libertarians on Ricochet) that the current state of things is creating problems, then the only way for you to fix it is to get out there and convince people that they are wrong. The government can’t fix this. There is no silver bullet. Sorry.
Which isn’t to say that government structure has no influence on culture. It does. In fact, traditionalist libertarians blame intrusive government for undermining traditional mores.
Way before the sexual revolution happened, the seeds of destruction were sown when government “social insurance” undermined mutual aid societies that built up poor people’s social and moral capital along with their financial capital.
What can government do? Stop trying to do for us what we need to do for each other, mostly.
Yep.
So much for libertarians being utopians :-)
Yes. And your point was?
For the benefit of the child. Because the child is an end in itself.
Is raising children to please their parents really so bad? Many successful ethnic groups (Asians, a certain strain of French-Germans) seem to do it. Yeah, it can be overdone, but on the upside, it does avoid the common modern American error of letting the kids think that they are the center of the universe.
True. I’m sympathetic to the effort, though. When things are going bad and traditional supports don’t appear to be cutting it, the urge to “DO SOMETHING!!!11!!1!” usually arises from good intentions. And it’s not like the mediating institutions are perfect, either. We’re all groping along in the dark, the blind leading the blind.
Well, I’m not exactly a libertarian. More of an anti-federalist, if anything :-P
Don’t forget us Jews. There’s an old saying: “Catholic guilt is about burning forever in hell. Jewish guilt is about disappointing your mother.”
I did say that motives need not be entirely pure, and the aligning of such motivations -I want was is best for my children because that makes me look good too -done through such institutions as, say, marriage, strikes me as a brilliant social development.
To the contrary, American children believe they are the center of the universe because of their parents’ narcissism. First, the observe their parents’ behavior and imbibe the view. Second, the parental focus on children being perfect by parental standards signifies to the child the realization of Calvin (of “& Hobbes,” not the theologian) that all of history has clearly conspired to create this child who will fulfill their parents’ being -and given this clear importance, they must be the center of the universe.
My point is that your argument can be reductio ad absurdum‘ed into a condemnation of just about everything people do with other people. As a species we’re really not good at following that rule.
Well, sometimes. Sometimes it’s much more complicated. Sometimes development is steered toward the good of the collective (family, community, society, culture) in order that the individual child may eventually benefit from the strength of the collective or avoid the harms that come from the weakening of the collective. But in the obvious cases like stage parents who push their kids into acting to fulfill their own shattered dreams…yeah, you’re definitely right.
Concur.
Eh, a super-recalcitrant perfectionist streak runs in our family, but the expectation that we should be perfect children never gave us the illusion that we were fulfilling our parents’ being. Rather the reverse. We were the inconvenient little yard-monkeys that they tolerated having around in the hopes that one day, we’d be responsible adults who’d do our parents proud. “Remember, we have to put up with you, and children don’t have the moral standing to give their parents a hard time, so knock it off!” was a pretty common message in our household.
It was always clear that we should behave perfectly, but also always clear that our parents held us under suspicion of not meeting this expectation. Maybe that’s why we felt our parents did an exceptionally good job (well, compared to neighboring families) reminding us of how much we were not the center of the universe.
I don’t consider that a reductio ab absurdum. I consider that a pretty good summary of human nature. As a species we are extremely good at such exploitation. We’re even good at convincing ourselves its a virtue. The trick of civilization is to convince people that the best form of exploitation is one in which you don’t exploit others. Market capitalism says that you can become rich by dealing fairly with your customers and workers.
Yet in our semi-Market crony-capitalist system you see the exploitation growing everywhere from immigration to law enforcement.
The honors attached to marriage and standing in the community say that proper rearing and raising of children to be successful adults rather than a pet project or a sexual release can make you a leader among men (Christianity even codifies it in the standards of a deacon -“his children obey him in a manner worthy of full respect“).
Look around, in our semi-pagan family system, and see the damage, from the 20% sexual losers, and 25% never married, the lower-class collapse of family, and the Stepford hell of the middle class -and the top, who live Ozzy and Harriet lives, but deny that to the rest while preserving their own power.
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smart man.
Did you read my last sentence? I specifically didn’t say there was no silver bullet. To say that government can do nothing to help is patently false. There were plenty of cultural laws, such as marriage defined as one man, one woman, before. Laws shape the culture. That is something Libertarians apparently don’t understand.
Laws are a reflection of culture, otherwise people will regard them as unjust and either challenge or refuse to obey. Marriage laws did not stop people from having homosexual relationships, open marriages, or adulterous affairs. In order to change behavior, you need to convince people.
Quit whining.
Suck it up.
An excellent rule of thumb. That tends to work spectacularly. Until it fails spectacularly.