I know I usually post about marriage and parenting, but I thought given the economic crisis the world is facing I'd talk economics. Please forgive me, but I've had a thought, and I'd really like your opinions!
Here's the issue: right now, through payroll deductions in both Canada and the U.S., working families are paying for seniors through Social Security (U.S.) and CPP (Canada). As we found out in the debt ceiling debate, Social Security money isn't deposited into millions of little bank accounts; it comes out of general revenues. So your money isn't being saved for you; it's paying today for seniors. And many of those seniors have way more money than you do.
Eventually, with the budget crisis the Western World is facing, people are going to start to notice, and see that young people paying for wealthy older people, as young people receive fewer and fewer government services and older people more and more, cannot fly. So they'll HAVE to means test Social Security and CPP, meaning that the wealthy won't get as much. I don't think they'll have a choice.
I don't like that idea, because as soon as you means test, you give a disincentive for being responsible. If people know, "If I save for my retirement, like I'm supposed to, then I'll lose the government 'free money' ", then they'll stop saving.
We can't reward irresponsibility and punish responsibility.
But is there another way? I think there is.
Here's what it would look like. Instead of taking a portion of all paycheques and putting them into a vast account called "Social Security" and "CPP", the government could deduct 5% or 10% or whatever from your paycheque and then deposit it into your personal retirement account that you now control. It isn't going into general revenues; it's your money. You can't lose it. You're not funding other poeple; you're only funding yourself. But the government is forcing you to do it. If the government doesn't deduct the money, most people won't save. This way, the same amount of money is flowing out of your paycheque, but it's going to you, not to anyone else.
If your investments tank, or if you never made very much money, then government help would still be available to the elderly poor. No one would starve or freeze. But in general, people would be responsible for themselves now.
Of course, the transition would be hard, because I don't know how they'd wind down Social Security and then implement this. Probably for a few decades it would have to a mix of both.
But why isn't this being talked about? Doesn't this seem like a logical solution? Or am I missing something? I'm just genuinely curious what other people think, so I decided to throw it out there.
But one thing's for certain: expecting struggling young families to pay more and more of their paycheque to the wealthy, who currently have more resources, can't keep going on for very long. Something's gotta change. This seems like a good place to start. What do you think?
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
We live in the one of the best countries in the world. We have unspoiled nature, but we also have beautiful, clean cities. We have freedom. We have relative prosperity. We have health.
And so it’s jarring when we see homeless people. How can we have such poverty in such a wonderful country? Across Canada we have opened homeless shelters and food banks. We have public housing. We have breakfast and lunch programs for poor children. We provide welfare, job retraining, legal aid, and more.
Yet despite decades of these programs, poverty is still with us. And so we continue to throw money at the problem. In fact, we throw so much money at it that we could likely bring each and every poor person out of poverty just by giving them the cash we spend on programs—though I wouldn’t advocate that. Despite poverty programs, poverty isn’t disappearing.
I recently heard a talk by Tim Huff, an author and homeless advocate, who posited that the reason we’re not curing poverty is that we don’t understand it. We think we’re talking about poverty of resources—people don’t have enough money, or food, or stuff, and so we try to help them get more money or food or stuff.
But what if that’s not really the problem? He went on to explain that in his work with the homeless, he has discovered that they suffer far less from poverty of resources than they do from poverty of relationship. When people have real community, they will weather storms like job loss or family breakdown. On the other hand, if someone has no community, then what should be a relatively minor setback can cause them to lose their home.
I was stunned as I listened to him, because it made so much sense and yet I had never thought of it that way. And my mind wandered to two women I know only peripherally. Both became pregnant at age 20. There, though, the similarity ends. One has supportive parents, who have set up the nursery, and are caring for the baby so that she can go to school for the next few years to become a nurse. The other has alcoholic parents. She is now living in a subsidized apartment, caring for her baby alone.
I thought of my own mother, who was penniless when my father left. We lived with grandparents for a time and then with my aunt and uncle for a few years while my mother got on her feet. We had a church community that helped with baby-sitting and the occasional gift when she needed it. And my mother managed to thrive, without ever going on welfare. Today, she spends her retirement days trying to be that community to other women who need help.
The problem with attacking poverty as a money issue, Tim said, is that you’re dealing with the symptom, and not the root of the problem. The real issue is that we have a breakdown of family and of community. Those with a close family and a close community are not harmed by occasional financial setbacks. Those with chaotic families are, because everybody is too busy dealing with their own issues to help you with yours.
We can keep throwing money at the problem, but it’s not going to fix it, because it’s not a poverty of resources. It’s a poverty of relationship. And government can’t replace the family. Until we can rebuild families, and rebuild communities, there will always be people who fall through the cracks. We need strong families to raise strong people, and today those are in short supply. So if you want to help with poverty, build your marriage. Raise great kids. Encourage community at your school or your church. Let’s build relationships, which really are the best weapon to fight poverty.
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Shortly after Osama bin Laden was killed, Rush Limbaugh apparently was talking up a storm because he said on his show that with three wives, you'd think Osama's house would have been a little neater.
I really don't want to debate whether that comment was offensive to women or not, because that's not where I'm going with this, though if you'd like to comment on it, you're more than welcome. I don't listen to Rush; don't get him on my radio up here in Canada. But I saw a link to this transcript, and I thought this was interesting:
Folks, it was a pigsty. I'm not trying to offend Muslim sensibilities here. Pigsty's been around long before I was aware that that had some sort of possible problem with Muslims. I mean, for crying out loud, dirty windows, half eaten food on the floor, filthy clothes shoved under the unmade bed. I mean it looked worse than a teenage kids room. It looked like a crack house. And they continue with this business here that it was some million-dollar property.
Then he says:
Here's a guy with three wives living in a pigsty. One ought to be enough to keep it clean.
So, what's up?
First, a simple observation. Polygamy is absolutely, completely, undeniably disgusting. I can't think of a worse type of relationship. You are property; you aren't loved. That's not even marriage. A marriage is between one man and one woman, and it is exclusive. Polygamy is a debased distortion of what God intended (and God even warned Solomon about it).
And think of what polygamy does: it tells women that you're not really special. You're here to perform a role, which is basically a sexual one. You're not here to be a confidante or a friend, because I can't treat you any differently from any of the other wives. So I'm just going to use you.
No wonder depression is so high in the Muslim world!
If you were one of Osama's 3 wives, would you clean anything? I don't think I would, because nothing would really be mine. Everything would be his, and if I made it better, then I'd be making life better for two of my rivals and all of their children, too. So there would be a race to the bottom, I believe; a race to see who can get away with doing the least, so that nobody else benefits from our labour. And Osama, of course, would never clean because it was beneath him. So they all lived in squalor, despite the fact that he was supposed to be so revered. His life was disgusting, his end was pathetic, and he poisoned everything he touched.
Socialism has a similar problem as Osama's lack of housekeeping, by the way. When everything is owned in common, then people don't care for it properly, because others can abuse it or can skate along with no effort on their own part. That's one reason, for instance, that agricultural output in the former Soviet Union kept decreasing every year, despite all the new agricultural policies. When people don't own the crops they produce, and when others can benefit from their own work, then people will not work as hard.
Ownership matters. If we're going to have pride in something, we have to have a stake in it which cannot be taken away. We have to be able to benefit from the fruits of our labour, but, just as importantly, we have to be able to benefit ONLY from the fruits of our labour. If we can get something for free, why work for it? But if we do work, and then we can enjoy the rewards, we will.
So let's bring this back around to us. Do you take pride in your home? I did a whole lot more when we bought our house than when we rented. For the first seven years of our marriage we were in rental housing, and it's hard to get excited about a place you know isn't really yours. We could never paint any colour other than beige, and we couldn't put much up on the walls. We couldn't change the kitchen cabinets or fix them up. And why would we put work into a place we weren't going to stay in?
But as soon as we moved, I started buying decorating books and gardening books and everything, because I wanted to make a nice place for my family.
It's funny, but I used to think I was a bad housekeeper. Looking back, I think it was more that I was just a pragmatic renter, and it was hard to get excited about beautifying a place that wasn't mine. That's not an excuse to keep things messy, by the way; I'm just saying that I got much more excited about cleaning once it was my house.
The other big difference is that when you're renting, you tend to live in a smaller place than you would otherwise. You're giving your money away to a stranger every month, so you tend to live more frugally, saving up money so you can invest in something that's really yours later. For us, that meant we never had enough storage space when we were renting. We never had enough rooms, or enough closets, or enough wall space for bookcases for all our stuff. And it's much harder to keep the house neat when there just isn't room for everything.
The moral to this story? Don't be too hard on yourself if you're living somewhere that isn't really yours. Do the best you can, but realize that comparing yourself to someone who owns their own home isn't the same. And save some money, so that one day, when housing prices finally do settle down to a reasonable level, you'll be able to actually own something.
Oh, and don't become Muslim. Polygamy doesn't work for so many reasons, but one is that nothing is ever really yours--even your husband.
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
A train wreck of a political scandal has erupted in the United States over these last few weeks, and despite its sordidness, it has given me reason to hope for our future once again.
In case you have not heard, a Democratic Congressman from New York named Anthony Weiner (I am not making that up) apparently sent lewd pictures of himself to strange young women on Twitter. He was discovered when instead of sending one as a private message, he sent it for all the world to see, and now everyone knows where he stands on the boxers vs. briefs question.
Originally he claimed his account had been hacked, and he self-righteously demanded that news organizations focus on something more important. As more and more pictures surfaced, though, he was
eventually forced to resign in disgrace.
That’s right: he was forced to resign. Woo hoo!
For I still remember when another politician was caught in a rather uncompromising position involving a cigar, a blue dress, and the line “it depends on what the meaning of “is” is,” and everybody pretty much excused him.
That was back in my major feminist days during my postgraduate degrees, and I initially liked Clinton. But unlike the rest of the media, I wasn’t comfortable with saying, “It’s not about the sex; it’s about the lying.” That didn’t wash with me. I thought it mattered that he had sex with a 21-year-old intern. All the feminist literature I had read taught me that this was an abuse of power—and yet here were these same feminists saying we should excuse him, because he was a Democrat.
Now there’s one big difference between Weiner and Clinton, which was that Monica Lewinsky was a willing participant, and Weiner seems to have emailed or “tweeted” pictures of himself to women who didn’t ask for them. But nevertheless, in the early commentary of the Weiner scandal, I kept hearing variations on that now standard line: “the issue is not the sex; the issue is the lying.”
When people say that, it’s as if they’re also saying that we’re not allowed to judge anyone’s sexual behaviour as being somehow unseemly. So let me clearly state that sending nude—or even merely lewd—pictures of yourself to young women who are strangers, while you are married and a Congressman, is disgusting, immoral, and shows an amazing lack of judgment. Besides opening yourself up to blackmail, it’s just plain a mean thing to do to your wife, and an ultra-creepy thing to do to these women.
In the nineties, liberals in both Canada and the United States had to excuse Bill Clinton’s behaviour because they didn’t want to give leeway to Republicans. Republicans, in turn, to avoid being labelled as “prudes”, had to frame the issue as just the lying, and not the fact that the man was engaged in sexual activities while talking about national security on the phone.
But Clinton was a president. Weiner was just a creepy Congressman from New York. And so people didn’t circle the wagons. One by one, reluctantly at first, key members of both parties said, “he’s got to go.”
People were just plain grossed out, a reaction I cheered wholeheartedly, since I have teenage daughters—who are not on Twitter. And there is nothing funny or cute or quirky about sending nude pictures to young women. So perhaps we’ve finally given rest to that line, “it’s not about the sex; it’s about the lying.” Sometimes it is about the sex, and about how creepy and icky someone is being. I hope we as a society are free to start calling out people to behave responsibly again. If Weiner called us back to some basic standards, maybe he did serve a purpose, after all.
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Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's! Sorry for the Canadian slant for my American friends, but I think you'll understand anyway:
Before children understand the birds and the bees; before they can make their beds or tie their shoes or choose clothes that match; even before they venture forth to school, they have already grasped one simple concept: fairness. If Jimmy gets cake, everyone should get cake. M&M's should be shared equally, as should jelly beans and gummy bears. In fact, it's this attempt at fairness that's usually the impetus for many children learning how to count beyond ten.
Yet as they grow, their definition of fairness often changes. If one child saves his allowance for months so that he can buy a new video game, and one child squanders money on chocolate, it’s not fair that the first child should have to let the second child play said video game. If one child practices piano, and one never does, it's not fair that both get to watch equal amounts of television. If you don't follow the rules, you shouldn't get the rewards.
Thus, fairness can be defined in different ways. It certainly can mean that everybody gets the same number of gummy bears, but it can also mean that people receive rewards commiserate with their effort. When people work and study harder, they get more. When they work less, they get less. And interestingly, the two definitions of fairness are ultimately diametrically opposite. Tell a child who has just purchased a packet of M&M's with her chore money that she must share them with her sister who goofed off and didn't get any allowance and she'll cry, "That's not fair!" But tell a union leader that seniority should be based on merit rather than just years of service, and he or she will cry, "That's not fair!", too. We may use the word "fair", but we mean entirely different things by it.
So which definition of fairness do you agree with?
That's essentially the debate that our country had last week. The difference between left and right usually boils down to concepts of fairness. The left thinks everybody should have equality of outcome; we should all have basically the same amount, and it's not fair for some to have much more. The right, on the other hand, thinks that people should get what they put into something. We should be responsible for our own actions.
Looking at the new map of Canada, surprisingly divided into blue and orange with only dots of red, it's interesting to see where the colour lines are. The one province of the country that is always clamoring for the government to do more--Quebec--is almost completely orange. The one province of the country that just wants the government to leave them alone so they can work hard and grow, all on their own--Alberta--went pretty blue.
Perhaps I'm being too simplistic in drawing the political lines like this, but I think the difference between left and right isn't just about spending; it's about philosophy. What is the role of the government? And what is the role of citizens? Personally, I think the more government does, the less citizens do. We start relying on the government too much, and it distorts family relationships, economic decisions, and even, in my view, the moral health of the community.
The problem the Liberals had was that nobody was quite sure what they stood for. In the next few years, the Liberals are going to have to pick a side: which vision of fairness do they stand for? Do they want everyone to have the same, so they stand for higher taxes, more regulation, and more government, or do they want people to be responsible for their own outcomes? And the rest of us should ask the same question, too. It's only fair.
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I am writing late this morning because I was up late last night watching the Canadian election results, and despite my 5-day migraine, I am HAPPPYYYYY!!!!!!!!
Woo hoo!
For my non-Canadian readers, in a nutshell our Conservative government won a majority, and I am looking forward to stability, more economic growth, and a steady hand. I think that's good.
At the same time, I know Christians disagree with me about politics, and I just want to say that I think is perfectly okay. Jesus trumps politics, and I hope politics don't ever alienate people from God.
Another thought: I don't necessarily agree with the idea, "everybody should vote", as if voting itself is a good thing. If you really don't care, and you haven't really thought about the issues, then maybe the best thing is NOT to vote. I remember watching videos of people saying they voted for Obama because he was pro-life. I sometimes think people should have to write a basic test to vote--except I know I don't really mean that. But the mantra "everybody should vote" is sometimes silly. I think everybody who cares should vote. I do think everybody SHOULD care, but if you don't, then don't vote. I'm really okay with that, although I think it's a shame that some don't care.
Next, about bin Laden: I've been getting beaten up on Facebook for posting a quotation yesterday "glorifying in the defeat of your enemy". And so I've been thinking and praying about it.
Apparently there's a quote going around the internet today about how Martin Luther King Jr. said he would never rejoice in the death of his enemies--but he didn't say it. It's a fake quote.
Regardless, I think this is a thorny issue. The Bible is filled--simply filled--with all kinds of songs and passages celebrating an enemy's defeat. I have a hard time believing, therefore, that it's anti-Christian to rejoice when an enemy is defeated. At the same time, I understand the urge towards compassion, because God does not want anyone to perish.
Yet the same God who wrote the Old Testament also wrote that He didn't want anyone to perish, so it's not straightforward. God was not a pacifist; He demanded that Israel go to war many times, and He is still the same God, yesterday, today, and forever. I think the problem we sometimes have with Old Testament passages is that in OT times it was obvious who God's people were and who the enemies were. Today we're a little more uncomfortable saying that we are God's people and they are the enemies. Doesn't that sound arrogant?
Personally, I don't have a problem calling radical Islamic terrorists the enemies of God's people, since they target God's people and deliberately call for their deaths. So that's just where I stand.
But my husband pointed out that perhaps sometimes I come across as too hard-hearted, and I think he's a right. I'm a very black and white thinker; I always have been. I don't have a lot of room for grey. I'm also seriously on the logical side, and not so much the emotional, so my compassion meter is sometimes a little faulty.
Therefore, while I think it's fine to rejoice in the death of one's enemies, I wouldn't say that it is the greater good. And so I am done rejoicing, and I am back to praying that the evil that is in the world will see the light--for there is much evil today. And I will continue to pray for those who must fight against that evil and stand up under it.
UPDATE: Okay, I don't know what's right anymore. I've seen reputable web sites say the MLK quote is bogus, and other websites (and a friend) type a passage that looks like it's the entirety from a book he wrote. But I'd need the book to verify. So I just don't know. That's always the problem with the internet, isn't it?
UPDATE 2: The plot thickens. Apaprently it IS bogus, but maybe not. Here's the link, and you can decide for yourself!
Well, the story just got worse. Now a school in Chicago has banned brown-bag lunches, requiring the children to eat in the cafeteria, because they don't trust parents to send healthy things.
Now, I understand the sentiment. I've helped out in public schools, and the number of kids who bring nothing but pop and chips for lunch is truly atrocious. But I completely agree with Mona Charen, from National Review Online, about this. She says:
Like any good mother, I hate to see kids eating chips and candy for lunch. But what the liberal coercive humanitarians can never see is that their intrusiveness further diminishes parental responsibility. We want to encourage parents to do the right thing for their kids, not remove the responsibility from their hands and thereby implicitly encourage carelessness.
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
The image of the twenty-something man living out of his parents’ basement while practising to be a Guitar Hero champion is quintessential to our society. Young men are lazier than they ever have been. And we tend to blame this on the schools, the parents, or even the men themselves.
What if, instead, it’s a perfectly logical reaction to the way our society is changing?
Rather than asking why today’s generation is so lazy, maybe we should be asking why prior generations were not. Certainly The Great Depression, when people were desperate to work to eat, had an impact. Two World Wars forced millions of young men to grow up all too fast. But it isn’t only in this century that young men have become responsible earlier. It’s throughout our cultural history.
What made them mature? I think it was the fact that they could not get what they most wanted—a secure future with a wife and children—unless they were financially stable. Marriage was pretty much everyone’s goal, since it was the only way to experience any kind of romantic relationship, and so most people strove for it.
Today marriage is superfluous. Marriage is only to be desired after people have had time to find themselves and spend years partying. Even after that point many don’t want to marry. There’s often no real incentive. Romantic relationships are certainly not confined to marriage anymore. It’s relatively easy to find a partner even if you’re not offering a lifetime commitment. And lifetime commitments can be risky—she might have an affair and take half your money! With so many women running around today, it’s often rational for men not to want to commit. And if you don’t have to offer a lifetime commitment, then you also don’t have to grow up. You don’t have to get your own place. You don’t have to get a real job. There’s no downside to staying a kid.
Of course, laziness is not limited to the male gender. Plenty of females don’t want to grow up, either. We all know women who ditch marriages frivolously, or refuse to commit to willing young men. But eschewing marriage altogether is still largely a male phenomenon, for the simple reason that women have biological clocks. If they want babies, they have to get to it before they’re 35. Men don’t have a time limit.
And in any transaction, the one who wants it the most has the least bargaining power. If the woman wants a lifetime commitment, but the man doesn’t, he ends up calling the shots because she needs him more than he needs her. And on a population wide basis, when women want marriage more than men do, men on the whole decide how relationships should go.
At one point women had the upper hand, because if men wanted access to sex they had to commit. Now we’ve lost that upper hand. And interestingly, it’s largely been done in the name of feminism. Women don’t need men, the feminists cried. Marriage is an oppressive institution. Women’s sexuality needs to be freed! Well, we’ve won freedom, girls. This is what it looks like. We can get any job we want, any role we want, any salary we want. We can do whatever we want in bed with whomever we want. We just can’t always get the marriage we want.
Is this what life was supposed to look like?
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I'm packing for a 12-day Girls Night Out tour across Alberta, which I leave for tomorrow! If you happen to live in Alberta, do check us out! It's a fun evening of faith and fellowship, and I'd love to meet some of my blog readers!
But in the meantime, I'm inundated with laundry and suitcases, and so I can't really put a profound thought together in my head. And so I thought I'd just post some observations I have about life and things that I don't understand, and see if you can enlighten me!
1. Why do Catholic schools insist that girls wear kilts?
I asked this on my Facebook Page last night after driving by a Catholic high school yesterday when school let out. I saw at least fifty teenage girls in kilts, and none of them, and I mean none of them, came more than 3 inches below the underwear line. I'm pretty sure I could see some panties there. Now I know this school has a rule that the kilt has to be a certain length, but that rule is obviously not being obeyed. Why not switch to pants? You may want to encourage femininity, but this is going a little far. So I don't get that. I really don't. (Plus it's so COLD in winter!)
2. Why doesn't America just drill for oil?
Sorry for getting political, but this is something we Canadians don't understand about you Americans. We extract our oil--in Newfoundland, in the Arctic, in Alberta. We're your biggest oil supplier, I believe. But instead of drilling for your own, you put your nation at risk because of all the Middle East turmoil. Sorry, but I don't get it. And we all know American oil would be drilled in a more environmentally friendly manner than Nigeria or Venezuela or even Saudi Arabia drills it, so overall American oil would help the environment, not hurt it, if we stopped relying on these terrible states for oil. So I don't understand that one.
3. How can parents walk away from their kids?
I guess this one should be its own blog post, but I've been watching as formerly completely involved dads (and in one case, a mom) has stepped completely back from parenting after a marriage split. My own dad walked out and barely had anything to do with me (though he did send money). I just don't understand how a parent could WANT to live without a child. I like to think that if my husband and I split (not that we would), I would fight for every second with them. How come some parents don't?
4. Why do irresponsible people get so much from the state?
I'm quite close to a number of foster parents, and hearing how much the Children's Aid Society tries to keep families together--how much money they pay families, how much stuff they buy for families (even hiring maids to clean the house), just so that the kids don't need to be removed. Why is it that women who have 5 children by 5 different fathers, and don't feed the kids, and live off of welfare, can get a ton of stuff from the state, while married parents, where one parent stays at home, who survive on one low income by scrimping and saving, don't get the state paying for maids, or for cribs, or for clothes, or for transportation, let alone medical & dental. There's something wrong when people who play by the rules are penalized for doing so, so that there is no incentive to do what's right.
5. Why can't I always feel God?
Again, this one should probably be its own blog post, but I'm in one of those crazy periods in my life where I'm busy, and I desperately need His peace and strength, and I'm not feeling it. It's my own fault; I've let busy-ness crowd out too much of my quiet time. But I pray that sometime today I could hear that still, small voice again and feel strengthened, because I'm tired.
Those are some of the things I wonder about, in no particular order. Anyone have any answers for me?
Don't have time to write big pieces today, but I recently read two different blog posts on a similar topic that converged for me.
Here's the issue: With feminism, men have become less and less necessary to women. We can earn our own way, and we can be single parents. At the same time, we've hoisted huge costs onto men. When we divorce, they usually pay a ton of child support, and often don't get much access to the kids. We decide whether or not we even have a child or not. Men are left out of the picture.
Yet men are also having an easier time getting what they want--namely commitment-free sex--because feminism has said that women should express their sexuality, too. So men can now get all the sex they want without committing. And if they commit, they'll likely lose a ton of income and lose access to their kids anyway. So why get married?
I'm not saying this attitude is correct, of course; I'm just saying it's prevalent in our culture. Here are two articles, written from a secular viewpoint (big warning) that deal with this:
I'm not going to comment on much of this, except to say that feminism has done a world of damage to marriage, regardless of whether or not there were also some benefits. I just throw this out there as a topic for discussion.
And I think I'll leave the last word on malehood to Dr. Laura, who sums up what I think more men should be (instead of finding excuses as to why it's all women's faults that they've stopped committing):
Did you see the news report about Lara Logan, the foreign correspondent for CBS news? She was covering the Egyptian protests when she was separated from her crew, carried off by about 200 men, and brutally beaten and sexually assaulted before being rescued by a group of women and some members of the army.
My heart just goes out to her. Can you imagine how terrifying that would be? I was in Tunisia when I was 20, which is a far more educated and moderate country than Egypt, and yet I have never felt so vulnerable. On buses I was constantly groped. In public I was stared at and hissed at. When I came home, it took me two months before I could look men in the street in the eye again, or stop crossing the street when I saw a man coming towards me. And I wasn't even assaulted!
I think sometimes we forget how vulnerable women can be. I am not saying that Ms. Logan acted foolishly; she likely knew what she was risking, and CBS likely did, too, and she chose to go anyway. That is what reporters do, and it is a risk they are willing to take. Male reporters and cameramen have been attacked, kidnapped, beaten, and killed, too, in the Middle East this year. It's a dangerous job, but a lucrative and rewarding one, and I guess she took a risk that in retrospect was too much.
But women do bear a disproportionate risk than men. And if you've never been in the middle of a group of men who are all leering at you and reaching for you, I don't know if you understand how scary it is. We're insulated from that in most parts of North America because we don't have mobs, and we don't have that kind of society. The only thing that might compare is being black and walking through a group of whites (or vice versa). But I don't think the fear approaches what is the Middle East. What was weird about Tunisia was how many places were simply empty of women. When our team went walking through parts of the city, I and a friend were the only women in sight. That doesn't happen here. It's common there. And it's not a nice feeling.
It's also why I don't think we should kid ourselves about women in combat. They aren't safe; they just aren't. And women are at a far greater risk when they are in combat than men, because if we are captured, far worse things are almost guaranteed to be done to us than will ever be done to a man.
Should a country allow women to be raped or killed, when there are able bodied men not serving in the military? Even if those women are willing to take the risk?
That's a tough question. Lara Logan was willing to take the risk, and it didn't turn out well. But it was still her decision, and to say that she can't go because she's a woman seems paternalistic. It's like saying that a woman can't decide to be a missionary in a dangerous land, even if she feels called to do so, because it may be dangerous. We applaud women who risk their lives for the sake of the gospel; obviously no gospel is involved in what Ms. Logan was doing, but I don't think we can say one is wrong and the other right. In both cases, women are taking the responsibility for themselves on themselves.
When it comes to women in the military, though, I see a difference, because those women are fighting on our behalf. They are not just accepting risk; they are doing so in our name. And I think to allow women to accept the risk of rape and torture and murder on behalf of able bodied men seems wrong, especially when so many women in the military are single moms.
Of course, there's also the issue of military effectiveness when women are in combat, and how that would affect the men in their unit, but I see that as a separate issue. I'm just asking here: should we allow women to take on inordinate risk? Because there's no doubt that the Middle East is inordinantly risky for women.
I want to leave you with one more news story that has my blood boiling. In Bangladesh, a 14-year-old has been murdered for being raped. Andrew McCarthy reports:
A 14-year-old girl named Hena had been killed by fewer than 80 lashes of the 100-lash whipping local sharia authorities had ordered her to suffer. It’s difficult to contain one’s anger at the details. Hena had been raped by a 40-year-old Muslim man, described in news accounts as her “relative.” The allegation of rape got the authorities involved, but that turned out to be even worse than the sexual assault itself.
Under sharia, rape cannot be proved absent the testimony of four witnesses. Rapists tend not to bring witnesses along for their attacks. In any event, moreover, sharia values a woman’s testimony as only half that of a man, so the deck is stacked and rape cannot be proved in most cases. Yet that hardly means the report of rape is of no consequence. Unable to establish that she’d been forcibly violated, the teenager became in the eyes of the sharia court a woman who’d had sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Thus the draconian lashing sentence that became a death sentence.
Islam's founder, Muhammad, married a 6-year-old girl. He consummated that marriage when she was 9. That is just simply sick and evil. The Qu'ran says it's okay to beat your wife if she is disobedient. That is disgusting.
Can you imagine growing up in that religion, believing that God hates you because you're female? Believing that you deserve to be raped, that you should not be protected, that you aren't important?
We serve a God who loves women. He didn't stone an adulteress; He pardoned her. He had long conversations with another. He appeared first after His resurrection to another. He knew women, and He loved them, and He honoured them. And in Galatians 3:28, Paul wrote, "There is no male nor female...for we are all one in Christ Jesus."
My heart hurts for the girls who grow up thinking God is distant, angry, and cruel. God is not like that.
But in the part of the world that believes that this is what God wants--that it's okay to kill 14-year-old girls who are raped; that it is okay to marry 9-year-old girls; that it is fine to rape women, as long as they are not Muslim; that it is good to kill your daughter if she is defiled, then that is not a safe place for women. It just isn't.
I will never go to the Middle East again unless God specifically asks me, because being in Tunisia scarred me, even though nothing like what happened to Ms. Logan happened to me. But such things will keep happening until the pathology that is the radical Islamic view of women is ended. Any women going there must know that there is a huge risk. And because of that, I am very reticent to change our rules to allow women to serve in combat. I don't want any woman raped or murdered "in my name".
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
During the last election, one of my very conservative friends took off of work to vote. When he arrived back after lunch, his rather liberal co-worker was joking with him that they both could have saved the bother, since his vote cancelled out the other guy’s.
“Not for long,” my friend chuckled. When the co-worker looked quizzical, my friend replied, “You see, buddy, I’m raising eight voters. You’re only raising one.”
And it’s true. That particular friend has eight amazingly behaved children. I have another friend with nine, several with eight, and a couple with seven. My girls are even friends with two sisters who are growing up in a family of fourteen. I always bring the average down when we go anywhere with these families, with just my measly two.
But it occurs to me that perhaps my friend is right about the impact of demographic trends on our culture. For instance, the reason our fertility rate in Canada has dropped below replacement level is not because families over the last few decades are shrinking. It’s that fewer women are actually having children in the first place. Of the women who do have children, the number of children is actually creeping up slightly.
We’re diverging into two different cultures: one that has children, and one that does not. And those who are likely to have many children are also those who were more likely to come from big, intact families. While there obviously are exceptions, such as the very dysfunctional mom who has six kids with five different men, on the whole the nuclear family is growing where there is a commitment to it.
So the question is: which culture will end up ahead in the days to come? Will the conventional family make a comeback, or will marriage and childrearing continue to be devalued?
Our culture is betting on the latter. Media tells us that children are a drain—they cost money, emotional energy, and time, and they rob us of the fun we could be having! When friends like mine go out in public with their brood, they get the dirtiest looks, as if having a pile of kids is somehow wrong (even though none of these families is on social assistance).
Yet let’s think about this logically. The next generation will be made up of those who are not yet born. Where will these kids come from? They’ll be born to the people who are actually reproducing. The next generation is likely to resemble the people who are actually having the kids, not the people who are making the movies.
People who don’t value kids and don’t value the nuclear family don’t tend to have children—or if they do, they have very few. People who do value children do tend to have children—and they tend to have more. And then this is repeated. That’s one of the reasons why studies in the United States, for instance, have shown that attitudes against abortion have steadily hardened since Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973. Prolife people tend to have more children, and so their values have been passed on more frequently.
This does not mean, of course, that the children of large, intact nuclear families will necessarily turn out well. It’s just that statistically they’re likely to be wealthier than average, more likely to get married, and less likely to end up in jail. That culture that values family, that passes on family traditions, and that yearns for a lifetime commitment has great staying power.
So perhaps my friend with the eight children is right. The traditional family may look bleak now, but I think it’s set for a comeback. And I’m gearing my own girls to be ready for it.
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Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
Did you follow The Plan? You know the one; our parents drilled it into us. Get an education, get a job, get married, have a baby. And do it in that order! No marriage before a diploma, no babies before a job, but most of all, no babies before marriage.
According to a new Time/Pew study, 39% of us are giving up on the Plan because we think marriage is superfluous. Yet statisticians will tell us that The Plan makes sense. Those who follow it are far more likely to escape poverty, be personally happy, and raise kids who are well-adjusted. But here’s the even bigger kicker: they’re far less likely to get divorced.
Why does this happen? Kay Hymowitz, author of The Marriage Gap, has found that while divorce rates may be high today, they tend to be high for a certain subset of the population: those who didn’t follow The Plan. Those who wait until they’re married to have children, and those who get their education first, tend to make it a priority to stay married.
At face value, this seems counterintuitive. It’s the educated women, after all, who don’t need a husband to support a child; they can afford to raise one on their own. Yet these women are waiting for marriage to have children, while other women don’t tend to in the same numbers. And when the latter group does marry, those marriages tend to be more fragile.
Essentially, Hymowitz argues, we are dealing with two different cultures: those that still believe in The Plan our grandmothers would have recognized, and those who think it’s archaic. Those who accept The Plan tend to be careful sexually, because the thing that would most upset their goals would be to get pregnant without being married.
On the other hand, if marriage really is considered superfluous, then the order in which you do things suddenly doesn’t matter. If you’re not waiting for the right spouse, but instead you’re more interested in finding a guy now, then you may enter into relationships which aren’t stable or healthy, and you’re more likely to end up pregnant. And this can easily derail many educational plans—and even romantic plans.
Sociologist Charles Murray crunched the numbers, and found that among American university educated women in families making more than $100,000 a year, the rate of illegitimacy was only about 2%. They’re still living in Leave it to Beaver days. Go down to the working class, who have a high school education but earn less than $60,000 a year in family income, and the illegitimacy rate is up to 10%. But among the underclass, who never graduated high school? It’s 45%. And that’s not because those girls got dropped out because they were pregnant; most of those pregnancies happened long after they left school. And since single parenthood is one of the highest indicators for childhood poverty and abuse, that’s a problem.
Not only this, but if choices around marriage and parenting really are primarily cultural ones, then these mini-cultures are likely to be replicated. People who believe in The Plan—even if they themselves made mistakes in the past—will raise kids who follow it. People who don’t believe in it will raise kids who likely won’t follow it. And it will be increasingly difficult to cross over into these two groups. Rising out of poverty, then, is not just an educational issue; it’s also a cultural one.
Our schools preach that students should get an education, but maybe they need to start talking about marriage, too. Wait until you’re married to have kids, and you are dramatically less likely to end up poor, more likely to be in stable marriages, and more likely to be happy in the long run. We need to get back to The Plan. Marriage is good for you. It’s good for your kids. Let’s stop pretending it doesn’t matter, and maybe we’d be the land of opportunity once again.
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Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. I've decided to publish this week's a day early, since it's a Remembrance Day column. Here you go!
The first time I met a soldier I was nineteen years old. My Queen’s University housemates and I encountered him in line at a movie, and we felt sorry for this lost, obviously brainwashed soul. We invited him back for a homecooked meal in the hopes that we could talk him out of his warmongering ways.
Consider this column my apology to him.
I grew up in downtown Toronto, which recently denied a request to display “Support Our Troops” on their buses because such sentiment was deemed too political. Twelve years ago I moved to Belleville, and my whole perspective has changed. Today, when I think of the military, I do not picture violent prone individuals. I think of honourable and amazing men I call my friends: Kevin and Kelly and Steeve and Gerry and Gord and Craig and Mike, and I remember Nelson. I now sport a Support Our Troops magnet on my van, which somehow always manages to get stolen whenever I drive to Toronto. But I happily replace it nonetheless.
The military families I have met have so little to do with warmongering and so much to do with what I want Canada to be. I have come to realize that the things that we equate with being Canadian—freedom, responsibility, opportunity, duty, honour, sacrifice, generosity—are often best exemplified by the military, whose main job it is to protect Canada, to stand up for what we collectively believe in, and to spread that belief around the globe. As the poet said, “it is the soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion. And it is the soldier, not the journalist, who has given us freedom of the press.”
Last week, in Iraq, fifty-eight unarmed worshipers were gunned down while attending mass at a Catholic church. That’s barbaric, and that’s the kind of thing that our forces are trying to prevent in Afghanistan. I don’t know if they will be successful; can you change a part of the world that thinks it’s okay for girls to be married at ten, that it’s not okay to educate women, and that people don’t have the right to their own beliefs? But today little girls are attending school in Afghanistan, and that is something for which Canadians should take much pride.
This year, I hope that our schoolchildren are being given the chance to take pride not just in what their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents did, but also in what our soldiers do today. In my schooldays we recited In Flander’s Fields and listened to talks about World War II. The production too often rendered the impression that good wars were those which were fought only very long ago, and had little to do with me today. In that moment of silence, I would always meditate on my great-uncle who was wounded in Vimy Ridge. Remembering seemed like only a duty to the past, rather than also a duty to the future.
When I close my eyes on November 11 now, I thank God for the sacrifices of those in World War I and II who saved this world from unthinkable horror. But throughout the day I also think of Suzanne and Lisa and Eileen and Cheryl, who lived for months without husbands, navigating toddlers learning to walk and teenagers starting to date, all without their mates. I see Rebecca’s and Ethan’s faces right after their daddies came home. And I see the faces of my friends, with tears in their eyes, when they hear that another comrade will not be making that trip back.
I cannot enter into their lives completely, for the military is a family all to itself. But I can stand with them, and I can say thank you. And I can remember.
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Last Monday I was in Toronto, in World Vision headquarters for some speaker training, and looked up at the television set to see my hometown.
There was the Pinnacle Street courthouse, across the street from the library where my children usually were that time on a Monday, hanging out while waiting for their music lessons. I had called them that morning and told them it may be wise to avoid the library that day, because worldwide media was parked on the doorstep.
It was the trial for Russell Williams, the former commander of the Trenton air base, Canada's largest military base, charged with two counts of first degree murder, two sexual assaults, and numerous other perversions.
His name will forever be linked in Canadian history with Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson. He is despicable.
This case really rocked us because it happened so close to us. Our church is also filled with military personnel from the Trenton base who were so thrown by the revelations. But Jessica Lloyd, his last victim, lived next door to my former sister-in-law, who at the time lived alone with her teenage daughter. It was only a few kilometers from my house, and I drive by their several times a week.
Jessica's disappearance affected everybody. She went missing in the morning; by that afternoon, posters were already up all over Belleville announcing she was missing. I've never seen such a well-organized campaign.
And the police were brilliant. I have many friends who are police officers, and while they can't disclose everything, I know they worked tirelessly and diligently and it was good old-fashioned police work that caught Williams.
I'm glad the trial is over, and I hope that our little town can get back to normal soon. But there are two things I will continue to think about, once I have pushed the perversions and gross revelations out of my mind.
1. It is just dangerous for women to live alone, especially young women.
That's not fair. I'm sure I'll get tons of comments bad-mouthing me for stating the obvious, just as I received comments on my other posts talking about how women should try to protect ourselves from assault, but it's the truth.
Yes, women should be able to live however they want and wherever they want. But Russell Williams deliberately targeted women who lived alone. Jessica lived just off of a highway he used to commute, and he noticed her, by herself.
I am not blaming Jessica. It was not her fault. I have lived alone, too, and I know many women in their twenties don't have a choice. But this case has changed me. I will not let my girls live alone, as long as I have power over that decision. I will encourage them to have roommates, and if they do need to live in an apartment, I will make sure it is at least on the third floor.
Would I have been this careful before this case? No, I wouldn't. But in the same way that the Paul Bernardo case has made me lecture the girls about stepping near a car to give directions, even if it's a woman who's asking (it was Karla, looking lost and holding a map, who grabbed Kristen French), Jessica has made me determined never to let my girls live alone, if I can help it. It will never totally protect them, but I do believe that there are evil people who deliberately look for single women. I don't want my girls to be one of them.
2. I was really saddened to read the victim impact statements by Jessica Lloyd's family. Over and over again they said a variation of "I don't know how God could create such evil, and I will never believe in a god again."
I completely understand that sentiment, and with the way Jessica Lloyd was tortured, I think it would be hard to feel any other way.
I just don't think it's helpful. It's really quite sad, because you're turning away from God, the one person who could offer real healing in this absolutely atrocious situation. How can you ever have peace on this side of heaven after a loved one was killed so horrifically, unless you get that peace supernaturally, from God? By turning their backs on Him, I'm afraid that they're turning from real help.
I believe God will still be reaching out for them now; how could He not? But there is this misconception that it was God who created that evil. No, He didn't. He created Russell Williams, but Williams made the choice to ignore God and to let evil grow inside him. Williams doesn't represent a creation of God as much as he does a rejection of God. If Williams' victims now turn from God because of what Williams did, then doesn't evil ultimately win? To turn to God--the antithesis of Williams--is to turn away from Williams, to punish him most effectively. To turn away from God is to reject the good that Jessica was, and that God offers to them now.
They are hurting so badly, and there is so little our community can do to help. I pray that all the family members will be able to catch a bit of sleep soon, and that their dreams will be peaceful and quiet. I pray that they may one day remember with laughter, and not just with tears. And I pray that those who do know them can reach out and help, instead of being so overwhelmed that they don't know what to say.
But most of all, I pray that they will run to God, even if it's in desperation. God didn't abandon Jessica Lloyd; Russell Williams abandoned God, and that had horrific consequences. I hope his evil deeds don't cause others to abandon God, too, and live in hopelessness, alone.
What a sad, sad week for our community. If you followed the news at all, will you say a prayer for the Lloyd and Comeau families? They will need it so badly in the days and weeks and years to come.
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
Last November, at Kingston General Hospital, Brigitte Robinson underwent an emergency Caesarean section to deliver her healthy baby girl. Afterwards, her husband, John Kennedy, remained at the hospital to help her care for their daughter.
All would have been well had John and Brigitte not been in the same ward room as a Muslim couple who insisted that John leave whenever the Muslim mom was breastfeeding (even though her bed was surrounded by a curtain), and banished him from using the sink in the shared bathroom.
Those working on the floor decided that the easiest way to deal with this situation was to move the John and Brigitte and a third couple into private rooms, away from the Muslim family. They went along with the plan, until the bill for $750 arrived. Kennedy has steadfastly refused to pay. As he explained to the Whig Standard last week, he wasn’t the one who minded being in a ward room; it was another couple who minded his presence.
Unfortunately, the hospital can’t discuss its side of the story for privacy reasons, so we only have Kennedy’s account to consider. But when the story hit the local paper, it quickly spread to blogs and talk radio, to almost universal condemnation for the hospital. It’s not hard to imagine why. As anyone who has been on a maternity floor recently will know, frequently the mom needs the dad to help with the newborn, because the nurses aren’t going to do it around the clock. On a maternity floor, a dad is not optional. He’s essential. If you don’t want another man near your wife or newborn, then, you should request a private room, rather than insist that everyone else accommodate you. End of story.
Like many of our public institutions, though, Kingston General Hospital seems to have lost basic common sense. I'm not surprised. “Common sense” implies that we have something in common. In an increasingly multicultural society, though, that's not necessarily true. Thus, new rules are constantly being created to govern social behavior which we, at one point, would never have thought twice about. And in these policy sessions, political correctness rules.
But that’s not the only reason why hospital administrators may be prone to making dumb decisions. Their main focus has to be to meet the budget. Thus, day after day they go to meetings and talk about “best practices”, trying to create rules, and procedures, and guidelines for everything under the sun so that the bottom line can be met efficiently and uniformly. They're divorced from the actual delivery of care. Their concern is creating conformity through rules, not recognizing when exceptions should be made.
Here's another story: in Oregon last week, 7-year-old pigtailed Julie Murphy set up a lemonade stand. Unfortunately for her, the Health Department got wind of it and told Julie that she needed to pay $120 for a license to handle food. What kind of an imbecile tries to stop a 7-year-old girl from selling lemonade to her neighbours? One that spends most of his or her life in meetings! The public outcry was so great that the Health worker was ordered to go back and apologize to the little girl. I hope he had to buy a glass of lemonade, too.
What do these cases teach us? Bureaucracy, by its very nature, will tend to overreach and enforce rules your average person knows is ridiculous. So when bureaucrats, in their pursuit of uniformity, do something completely inane, don't stand for it. Be loud, like John Kennedy. Get publicity, like little Julie. Let's restore our public institutions to reflect what this country is supposed to be: compassion mixed with common sense. Wouldn’t that be a nice change?
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Spent this morning walking in a rose garden and strolling by beautiful old homes with their host as and roses and petunias and irises swaying in the wind. It was marvelous.
I needed that today. Last night we watched a really disturbing movie. I don't know why we rented it; I often like action movies (as long as there's not too much swearing), but we couldn't find anything in the store except the movie Unthinkable.
The movie actually was quite good, I suppose. The problem was that it was so disturbing.
Here's the premise: an American who has converted to Islam has managed to get his hand on enough nuclear material to build 3 (or 4) bombs. He has placed these bombs around the country in secret locations. The government has found him, but not the bombs. So how do you get him to tell you where they are?
In comes Samuel L. Jackson's character, who proceeds to torture him, to the horror of FBI agent Brody, played by Carrie Anne Moss from the Matrix. She is your typical politically correct agent. She "respects" the Koran. She thinks he's brave. She says no one is allowed to torture at all, and we should simply ask the guy questions.
I won't tell you what happens later in the movie, because it doesn't really matter for this post. But the movie ends up asking the question, "could you do the unthinkable to get information?" Is it right to do the unthinkable?
At one point Moss' character decides it's not, and says, "We can't do this! Just let the bomb go off!" (knowing that six million people will die). I'm not sure what I think, after watching the movie. I'm not as squeamish about torture as some people are, although I don't really want to go into that here. I think we're in a horrible conflict with a barbarian enemy, and it's very hard to win against barbarians if you insist on being completely civilized. The problem that I keep coming back to is this: is it worth surviving if you give up your civilized nature? If you have to give up who you are, is it worth saving all those lives? We can have different answers to that, but at least it's an important question to ask. I often feel that those who reject torture out right fail to realize that by doing so, you could be condemning millions to die. If you've thought about it and still feel that's worth it, okay. At least we're debating on the same plane. But don't pretend like we can win a war where we're always pristine. I don't think we can.
And that's why I needed to go for a walk in the rose garden today, because I was just overwhelmed with the ugliness of the world after watching that movie. Many things are ugly, of course, that are in the news on a daily basis: child kidnappings, rapes, gang shootings. Or there's ugliness just in natural disasters, like the recent floods in Pakistan.
Somehow, though, I find that ugliness easier to deal with. Natural disasters are just that. You can't blame anyone for them. Violence against another is usually an aberration. It can be explained as an evil individual, and it doesn't mean that the society itself is poisoned. Even corrupt governments that hurt their people I can better get my head around, because again, we're dealing with a minority oppressing a majority, and somewhere you hope that the majority does not share this view.
But what this movie brought home is that the ugliness may one day have to be in all of us, if we are to survive. And I don't like that. As a Christian, I can't accept that. I don't like thinking about it. I don't like that this existential conflict that our society is involved in cannot be won cleanly, for I don't believe it can. And so I pray for those who will one day have to make these hard decisions, that they will do the right thing, because I do not claim to know what the right thing is.
It just makes me feel dirty to live here. I know it is only because I saw the movie so recently, and then my dreams were haunted by it, but sometimes you need your palate cleansed. And so I walked through the roses, and saw the beauty, and smelled the flowers, and realized that even in the midst of ugliness beauty can grow. Perhaps that is all we are asked to do: bloom even when the world is ugly. We can't control what happens at those upper echelons of government or army decision making. We can't control terrorism, or violence, or evil. All we can do is to try to live out Jesus, where we are.
Some people will be asked to do horrible, impossible jobs before all of this over. I pray for them, and I'm glad that I am not among them. But let's not be quick to condemn, for I'm not sure that there always is a right thing to do that's obvious at the time. We've been debating the HIroshima bomb for over sixty years now (I support Truman's decision there), and people still aren't satisfied. But how can you be, when such evil exists in this earth? When evil exists, there isn't always a nice, clean answer. And I think I will stop looking for one, and just pray for those who are tasked with finding one. In the meantime, I think I'll plant roses.
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's! For all my American friends, I'm afraid it gets kind of political on your front. But I thought you may be interested in seeing how other countries are viewing your current transformation:
Back in the fall, the Berkeley school district in California made international headlines when they decided to cut funds for Advanced Placement Science labs because not enough minority students were enrolled. Even though many white and Asian students were studying diligently to prepare for university, it was decided that the Advanced Placement Science was racist.
Closing the educational gap between certain minority students and others has always been a public policy challenge, but what I find so interesting here is the race to the bottom. At one point researchers were trying to find ways to encourage minority students to study hard so that they could score well. Now we’re asking other students to stop studying so that everything can be equal.
And thus we have a little microcosm of the choices that our society has to constantly make. Where do we invest? Do you play to your strengths, or to your weaknesses?
For decades it was assumed that America played to the strengths, and Canada played to the weaknesses. We had a nice, semi-socialist state that would bail out people who had made mistakes, while America forced them to fend for themselves. Lately it seems as if we have traded places. It is in America that the president is saying that if you were snookered by banks into signing loans that you couldn’t repay, or taking a mortgage that you never should have taken, you don’t have to pay it back. When it comes to letting defaulters off of the hook, our banks are strangely silent. We still operate by the assumption that one lives up to one’s responsibilities.
And that brings us to the central question facing governments when they look at places to cut spending: who is responsible for the fortune of citizens? Is it the citizens themselves, or is it the government? If people make bad choices—say by purchasing vacations or electronics rather than RRSPs, or by spending their twenties in a blur rather than in school, who should bear the brunt of that problem?
The whole debate is summed up well by African-American economist Thomas Sowell, who says: "There is much discussion of the haves and the have-nots, but very little discussion of the doers and the do-nots." Sowell, the son of a single mother, excelled in an Ivy League education entirely through his own hard work, and has been a widely read professor for decades. He feels that making excuses for people, rather than encouraging them to work hard, promotes an infantilism that prevents people from actually succeeding. They start to believe that other people owe them something, and that they themselves can never make their lives better, so why try?
Sowell has a point. Most of us don’t begrudge a social safety net for those who genuinely are “have-nots”, through little fault of their own. What we don’t want, especially in an economic downturn, is for the government to take tax money we have earned and hand it to those who believe they deserve it, without doing anything for it.
I want to live in a world where everyone has an opportunity to be their best, and that includes the “doers”. Those who have initiative, who have motivation, and who have a desire to succeed, like those Science students, should not be held back because others don’t have that same drive. I don’t want to be a society in a race to the bottom. Our society succeeds when people with initiative are encouraged to start businesses that create jobs, to make new discoveries that make our lives better, or to become philanthropic. And I’m glad Canada is rapidly becoming that “beacon on a hill”, even if it has to come at the expense of our neighbour to the south.
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My children have been busy at a practice all weekend and today for an international Bible quiz meet in Calgary next week, and I'm sitting here in a hotel writing as many columns as possible in a three day period. It's going remarkably well! Got 11 done so far; four more to go.
Over lunch Saturday I decided to switch on the TV, and regretted it almost immediately. Most shows are inane, and the commercials are worse. But one commercial which I keep seeing is for "The Kids Are Alright", an "invigorating and heartfelt" look at the "modern family".
Here's how they define a modern family: married lesbians used a sperm donor to each conceive a child. Those children are now teenagers. The daughter tracks down the sperm donor, and chaos ensues.
Perhaps it is heartwarming. I have no doubt that lesbians in committed relationships truly want to have a child. But let's be honest: while the media loves to talk about this, it isn't that common. Most homosexuals, when given the choice to marry, did not. Homosexual relationships break up at a far greater rate than heterosexual relationships. While some homosexual couples are committed, it isn't the norm. Why should we treat it as if it were?
What I am glad about, though, is that they are showing the quest for the sperm donor, because they're showing that it shouldn't be taken lightly. It's become normal in our culture to assume that sperm donation is a viable option if you want to have a child and your husband is infertile, or you're in a homosexual relationship. But why use a sperm donor? Why not just adopt then?
Because they want a child that is biologically theirs. It is vitally important to them to have that biological link. Yet even though the mother agrees that biology is important to her, by using a sperm donor she makes the decision for her child that biology should not be important, because she creates a child who will never, ever know his or her father. She's saying biology is important to me, but it shouldn't be to you. It's ridiculous and completely wrong.
And thus we have the plot of the movie, where the teenage girl tracks down the sperm donor, who appears to be a bit of a carefree loser who was in it for the money.
I assume it all has a happy ending, but why Hollywood should call this the "modern family" is beyond me. Most families look nothing like this, no matter how prevalent Hollywood tries to make them seem. And that's a good thing. It is chaotic to create a child who will never know one parent. It is one thing to adopt a child and take them away from their biological roots; that child already has been separated by necessity, and that child needs a parent now. But to create a child deliberately? That is entirely a different story.
And then to assume that that child has no need of both parents, or has no need of both a mother and a father, that love is all that matters, is to disregard millennia of knowledge of human behaviour. The mother and father perform unique roles in the family, and are not interchangeable. At times a single mother must raise a child, but we would never say that this is the ideal. And yet with homosexual couples we're supposed to ignore the problem of the lack of the other sex parent and announce that all is hunky dorey to show that we support the lifestyle!
This really has nothing to do with whether or not you think homosexual relationships are fine (I have an opinion, obviously, but that's not pertinent to the issue at hand, and I'd really appreciate it if the comments don't go in that direction, because I think that can be needlessly hurtful). It has everything to do with the rights of a child to be raised by his or her biological parents, or by the next best substitute. And as soon as we begin to say that the substitute need not be an actual mother or an actual father, but could be absolutely anybody, then we destroy the notion of "family". All we have left is love, and love is not all a child needs.
A child also needs a sense of identity, and that identity is best passed on by two parents--one male, and one female. A child needs a sense of commitment and loyalty, which is best found in a committed marriage relationship, not in an ad hoc arrangement of whichever adults happen to love each other at any given time. And a child needs a sense of society, which again, is best found within the family.
As we give up on marriage and replace it with voluntary adult relationships which are not necessarily lifelong, that child loses the sense of community that a committed marriage relationship used to give him. Cohabiting couples who have children, for instance, are six times more likely to break up than married couples with children. And homosexual couples are about twenty times more likely to be unfaithful in their relationships, or to break up, than heterosexual couples. Heterosexual marriage matters.
So perhaps Hollywood wants to believe that this is the modern family, but I don't believe it. It's a modern reality, but thankfully it's still not a common one. And I hope we don't give too much credence to this movie, because I want to believe that we can go back to what is best for the child, not what is best for the adult. We are, after all, adults, and we should start acting that way.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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