George Bush, Feral Pigs, and Starbucks

Two interesting and unrelated articles in recent New Yorker issues.

The December 12 issue has an article by Ian Frazier, "Hogs Wild," (pp. 71-83) on feral pigs in the United States. When the author looked at a survey map of wild-hog populations nation-wide he noticed that it correlated to red/blue voting maps for the last presidential election.

Afterward, I could not get this strange correspondence out of my mind. I compiled '04 red state-blue state data and matched it with SCWDS hog-population information on the map that year. I found my first impression to be essentially correct. The presence of feral hogs in a state is a strong indicator of its support for Bush in '04. (p. 75)

I don't know what this means but it seemed interesting.

In the January 9 issue there is a brief note in "Talk of the Town" called "The Latte Class." (p. 26-27) Author Ben McGrath profiles the research of Temple University professor Bryant Simon on the cultural and sociological aspects of Starbucks. He has some intriguing observations on how Philadelphia Starbucks customers act differently from those in, say, Singapore and Brooklyn Heights. He is turning his research into a book. It is one I will definitely want to read.

No Resolutions Here

Unlike a lot of blogs I didn't have any end of year roundup. I did all my navel gazing in November on my blogiversary.

However, there are few things I'd like to share, lessons I end up learning over and over again but maybe if I put them in print it will be easier to retain the knowledge:

Mt. Dew and cranberry juice don't mix -- every other year or so I get this crazy idea that by mixing my Mt. Dew with something it will help me cut back (think of it as a non-alcoholic wine spritzer), and what I always come up with is cranberry juice, known for its medicinal qualities. In theory it should work. In practice, it does not. Trust me on this. It does not work for one second. The taste is indescribably bad. Do not try this at home (or anywhere else). Willpower is the only force you have against the Dew. I have cut back to two 20 oz bottles a week but that's as far as I can go.

Colored mascara -- again, every few years someone goes nuts. In this case the cosmetic industry. This is one of those years when you can buy rainbow shades of mascara. In a consumer frenzy I bought cobalt blue and some shade of green. Again, this does not work. Save your money.

As for the blog, I do have some plans for upcoming features and posts but prefer to spring them on you when you least expect it, because that's just the kind of wild and crazy charmer I am.

Looking for a Sponsor

The PhillyFuture site is looking for a sponsor. Full sponsorship would take around $1200 to $1500 a year. Well worth the effort and would earn someone the gratitude of the regional blogosphere.

Around the Blogosphere

If you've caught up on your regular blog reading after the holidays and these two aren't on your usual list, take a look:

Joe Hoeffel and Friends has had some especially interesting conversation and postings lately.

The Fly Under the Dome has some theories on Montco politics and how it might affect the senatorial race.

Missing Monday

I am sorry to report that a woman previously profiled in a Missing Monday post, Wilma Robertson, has been found deceased.

We tend to think that missing people and potential abductions are a relatively new phenomenon. I can tell you they are not. For example, this young woman disappeared in 1975. For 30 years her family has not known what happened to her.

Since this is the start of a new year, I want to ask anyone reading this who has, for whatever reason, walked away from family and friends who may not know where you are or what happened to you, to please give them some peace of mind and let them know how you are. If you think there are some hard feelings, you can drop an anonymous postcard so there is no direct contact. Have a friend mail it form another city so your exact location remains vague. But, please, get in touch.

Someone I care for fell out of communication at one point. She was living a marginal existence at the time and the worst was feared. Business travel took me to the city she had been living in and I spent a few memorable afternoons trolling strip clubs looking for her. I saw more than one family group in the same area posting "missing" posters for their loved one. (There are many interesting details here but it is a story for another time.) I did not find my lost lamb but must have gotten close as she re-established contact. It is not all we would want but someone hears from her fairly regularly.

Call. Leave a message. Send a card. Contact a third party and ask them to pass a message along. Please do something. Maybe things have changed. Maybe they haven't. All you can do is reach out, one more time.

Patrick Murphy Meets Fundraising Goal

Congrats to the Patrick Murphy campaign for meeting their fundraising goal for this quarter.

Reading Rick: Conclusion

This post will focus on the conclusion (pp. 421-428) of Rick Santorum’s book It Takes a Family.

In the first part of the conclusion he reinforces his view that the poor have suffered more under liberal policies than the wealthy, who have the money and connections to get a second or third chance if there are consequences to what he calls “No-Fault Freedom,” while the poor have no such resources. I agree with him that the monied and connected can afford to clean up after their mistakes while those without cannot easily do so. I disagree with his views on liberals and public policy, but that has been obvious in previous posts.

In the next section he spells out what the terms “civic participation” and “community leadership” mean to liberals and conservatives. In his view, to liberals “those words mean left-wing activists working to bring more ‘government services’ (and government bureaucrats) to impoverished areas or filing lawsuits to make ‘them’ pay – whoever ‘them’ is.” (p. 425). For conservatives it means “fathers volunteering time to build ballparks, grandmothers sitting on front porches or stoops to keep an eye on neighborhood children….” (p. 425) and the list goes on. Now, where in the world does he get this stuff? I consider myself a liberal and I build things in my community, I sit on my porch and watch kids, I belong to local organizations, help with community activities, attend church and participate in activities there, and so on. Most of the people I see at these activities do not consider themselves conservatives, those some may vote Republican.

On page 427 he says “For liberals, public spirit and family spirit are thought somehow to conflict.” Does he really believe this?

On the last page (428) he says “Like every father, I want to pass on to my own children something more than I received.” As I mentioned earlier, many parents I know just hope to do as well as their own parents.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I did not think his list of sources was put together correctly (dates missing on many journal articles), nor was it sufficient to back up the claims, statistics or facts he presents in his book.

For closing remarks, let me say that I found his book thoughtful in a very few places and very shallow everywhere else. He focuses completely on households with young children, perhaps because this is where he is in life. His only mention of the older generation was the benefits of grandparents as babysitters. He never touches on the concerns of the sandwich generation, people with young children and elderly parents and trying to juggle both at the same time. He seems to have no use whatsoever for people who could not, or chose not, to have children. This is leaving out a lot of people. While he promotes the importance of social ties his focus on the nuclear family leaves little time for talking about community ties, other than very briefly in two places. His in-depth discussions of community groups are all faith-based and focused on social engineering – helping people get down payments for houses, marriage and fatherhood initiatives, and so on. He completely disregards parent groups, other than saying that parents should decide school curricula, something that would require a great deal of organization and structure unless you are going to have hundreds of different classes for every parental preference.

There is something else about the book that struck me. He mentions in the bibliographic essay that Jeffrey Rosenberg did many of the interviews used in the book. In the preface he mentions that Jeff Rosenberg did the first draft of many of the chapters. While many public figures use ghost writers it is customary to either ignore their existence or add them to the author credits, for instance, Rick Santorum and Jeff Rosenberg or Rick Santorum with Jeff Rosenberg or something like that. Santorum seems to have taken a middle road. There is a Jeffrey Rosenberg (or more than one person with that name) who has written on fatherhood and childrearing and Pennsylvania matters (search Amazon.com for a list). I also noted that the copyright is held by ISI Books, the publisher, instead of the author. If you check the back of the title page of most books you will see that most often the author holds copyright. There may be some special reason Santorum does not hold copyright. There may be rules about it for senators or tax reasons or something. But I noted it.

One of my readers, Ben, sent me the link to another review and an interview with the senator. Those links are given below and I have added the link to another review. One thing that bothers me about Santorum, and is mentioned in the New York Times Magazine article, is that his parents help out his family financially. For someone who has written a book on the need for strong nuclear families and mentions more than once that he wants to give his children more than he received, I find it odd that he is still receiving financial assistance from his parents. I wrote about this in one of my first posts on this blog. If his parents were contributing to his children’s college funds or putting money into a trust for the kids that would be one thing, but he is a U.S. Senator, and apparently he can’t make ends meet without a check now and then from his folks. I’m sorry but at his age the money should be going the other way, but that is a hot button issue for me and has nothing to do with his book.

For more information:

Washington Monthly review

National Catholic Reporter review

New York Times Magazine article

Reading Rick: Part 6 (Educational Excellence)

This posting covers pages 351-420 of Rick Santorum’s book, It Takes a Famil.y

Part Six: Educational Excellence

Chapter XXXV: Knowledge, Truth, and Education
Chapter XXXVI: Who Rules the Schools?
Chapter XXXVII: Not Raising Children, but Raising Adults
Chapter XXXVIII: Bringing the Lessons Home
Chapter XXXIX: Moral Truth and the End of Man
Chapter XL: Higher Education and Liberal Education

Knowledge, Truth, and Education

At the start of the chapter he treats us to another brief history and quotes from Founding Fathers. He then proceeds on to discussing intellectual capital. This sentence from p. 353 really jumped out at me: “We are drawn to things that seem good to us, and we avoid or shun things that seem bad.” This is the jumping off point for his theory that it is imperative to learn “knowledge of truth” so we can make good and moral decisions. The idea that humans will seek out that which is good just seems so contrary to what we see in the world around us and I doubt all of those bad decisions can be laid at the feet of the school system or poor parenting. Who today doesn't have some understanding of a nurtritious diet and how many of us act upon that knowledge? He goes on to say that intellectual growth and moral growth go hand in hand. Again, we, or at least I, see so many things that contradict this statement.

“A society rich in intellectual capital is one in which the love of learning is widespread and carefully cultivated, where standards are high, where new discoveries are made, and where a rich heritage of old truths is kept alive through critical study.” (p. 355) I would agree with this wholeheartedly.

In his view there are three major building blocks of intellectual capital. The first being the family; the second is moral truth; the third is overcoming current philosophical mistakes.

He thinks schools should serve the parents not the students and that attempts to introduce preschool education is a form of social engineering at war with the family. I reread his part about schools serving parents instead of children three or four times but still can’t grasp the distinction.

As for moral truth he thinks this should regard honesty and loyalty not the more contentious areas which he regards as “human life and sexuality.” (p. 358)

The idea of philosophical “mistakes” regards the “distinction between facts and values” (p. 358). There are many cans of worms here.

In a given year I miss no more than one substantive PTA (or whatever it is called these days) meeting a year (the annual social meeting doesn’t count) and at none of these meetings have the concepts of honesty and loyalty ever been a concern. The nutritional content of lunches, the length of lunch lines, the number of pencils that should be given out to students taking standardized tests, the speed of cars dropping off kids, whether or not the playground fields are open during recess, and the playground aides, ay yi yi, the playground aides – these things come up regularly. Honesty and loyalty – nary a peep.

Who Rules the Schools?

The evils of the liberal model of social engineering in education are traced back to Plato. In his view, school choice is a good thing and parents should be able to send their kids to private or parochial schools without paying taxes to support public schools also. He talks of the school choice available to those with the resources to simply move to a better school district. He asks why college-age students can get Pell grants to go to religious colleges but elementary and high school students can’t get federal scholarships to go to private and parochial schools? He has statistics on the lack of improvement in test scores over the past 30 years.

Not Raising Children, but Raising Adults

In his utopian vision of the parent-centered school and a society in which parents can choose what schools their children go to, parents will need to be a lot more involved in the schools. He sums it up this way, (p. 372), “Of course if you pick a good school – a good educational support system – then you can rely on its educators to deal with many of the details. But if you really want to be a good parent, an informed parent, and a loving parent, then you can no longer just mentally check out when it comes to the details for the educational process for your children.” Clearly this is a guy who really hasn’t dealt with the inner workings of an actual school. His children are home schooled by his wife so they can plan the curriculum as they please. But you try just getting three room moms to agree on what and how to plan one class party, let alone a class curriculum, and you get a dose of cold reality. One parent wants to bring Twister. Another thinks that will involve too much physical contact. One wants all the kids involved with the same activity at the same time, another wants them to be working in small groups, rotating through a series of activities. Depending on the luck of the draw and who you are working with it can be really enjoyable or a real pain. Working with the parents of all the kids on what should happen in the classroom is a recipe for disaster.

He talks about the importance of school readiness and parental involvement with young children. Not flash cards but a love of learning. I agree with him here. However we part ways when he says (p. 374) “most of all what your children need is a sense of their place in the world and a healthy respect for authority.” People should be treated with respect, certainly, but I’ve spent a lot of time talking with my kids about who should and should not be allowed to touch them and where, and that not all adults are necessarily to be trusted. Teaching kids a blanket respect for all forms of authority is not doing them any favors.

He also discusses the disservice parents do their children by giving them too much stuff as opposed to time and appropriate discipline. I agree with him here, too, and with his point that this criticism can be applied more often to middle and upper income parents. He loses me entirely though on p. 375 when he says “I think the discussion in this book to this point paints a compelling picture of a strategy to ease the economic burdens on low-income an single-parent families.” I missed this theme completely.

The rest of the chapter concerns the way parents are not teaching their children discipline and manners. He has a point.

Bringing the Lessons Home

This chapter discusses home schooling. He is an enthusiastic proponent, and all of his children are home schooled. He received a lot of criticism for saying that keeping children segregated by ages in public schools with one teacher for a group of 25 or more is an artificial environment and one they will not be in again. I agree with him on this. Granted people will probably work on small groups reporting to a single manager, but only in school are we usually grouped by age and it is important to learn to work with people of varying ages and backgrounds. He words it very poorly, though, when he says (p. 386) “It’s amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools.” A little more thought probably should have gone into that remark.

He also points out the virtues of cyberschools and says some of his children had been educated this way “until the increasingly uncivil world of partisan politics extended its venom into our home and into our children’s education.” (p. 387) Someone with as much political savvy as he is supposed to have should have seen this coming a mile away.

Moral Truth and the End of Man

If I read this chapter correctly he is decrying the lack of moral values in education. He thinks we can all agree on some values that should be taught (respect for others, the value of friendship, etc). It just isn’t that simple, as years of being a parent of students in public schools has taught me. While you might get a majority agreement with these concepts, agreement on the specifics of teaching them is very difficult. The last part of the chapter is a roundabout discussion of Darwinism and intelligent design (although this term is not generally used in the chapter). To be honest, I skimmed that part.

Higher Education and Liberal Education

He is concerned about the lack of core curricula and Western tradition in today’s higher education. He also says (p. 404) “Whole new academic ‘disciplines’ have emerged that are explicitly oriented now toward dispassionate scholarship and the increase of knowledge but rather towards the radical transformation of society and the advancement of No-Fault Freedom – ‘disciplines’ such as women’s studies, gender studies, and gay and lesbian studies.”

Here’s a gem from the same page: “Grade inflation in the humanities and social sciences has galloped ahead to the point that virtually everyone who graduates from Harvard, for example, does so with honors.” Is that everyone who gets a degree in the humanities and social sciences or is the grade inflation in those areas leading to an honor degree in the sciences also? I am unclear on this. He later says we are strong in science but the humanities and social sciences are in a “wholesale collapse of our intellectual capital.” I’m not sure how this ties in with his concern over Darwinism. I doubt the biology classes at Harvard teach intelligent design.

He condemns moral relativism (the viewpoint that there are no real truths, only what each individual sees as truth), political correctness, and the perceived hostility towards conservatism in higher education. Given that our federal elected officials, most of whom were educated before the “tenured radicals” took over our colleges and universities, can’t agree on what the “truth” is regarding many of the issues of our day, I’m not sure how firm his footing is.

Truth in advertising – I consider myself a moral relativist. For every truth I can think of I can think of an exception to it. I am against violence but might violate that if I had the ability to stop someone from doing something I thought was wrong. A number of people may agree with me on that but our definitions of “wrong” are likely to vary greatly. (You also may not want to stand between me and the refreshment table at a crowded party, but this is hardly the same thing.)

weekly legislative update

No bills were introduced, shuffled, or passed in the state house or senate this week.

Reading Rick: Part 5 (Culture Matters)

This posting covers pages 271-347 of Rick Santorum’s book, It Takes a Famil.y

Part Five: Culture Matters

Chapter XXVII: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful
Chapter XXVIII: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Chapter XXIX: Culture: Ally or Adversary?
Chapter XXX: Violence and a Coarsened Society
Chapter XXXI: Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll: Mostly Sex
Chapter XXXII: Not Withdraw, but Engage
Chapter XXXIII: Culture-Makers, Culture-Mongers, Culture-Consumers
Chapter XXXIV: Culture and Public Policy

This posting will be shorter than previous ones because, get out the smelling salts, I agree with a lot of what he is saying in this section.

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

A brief (not quite 3 page) look at American culture from the view of the Founding Fathers. (Can’t he quote Abigail Adams at least once? She had a lot to say also). The rest of the chapter outlines ways that popular culture affects children and families generally and his concerns about this. The emphasis is on television, movies and the Internet. I agree with some of his concerns. Some of his children are older than mine so his problems are no doubt more complex, but I have found the best way to avoid some of the less savory aspects of popular culture is simply not to allow them in the home, and to supervise, as much as possible, what happens outside the home.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Sen. Santorum’s views on what constitutes good culture and bad culture, most of which focuses on sex. A lot of trashing liberal village elders for encouraging the increase in sexual activity among American youth. I was alarmed to realize that the senator and I probably have similar taste in art and music.

Culture: Ally or Adversary?

This sentence jumped out at me on page 290: “When it comes to children and the family, there are opportunities to find common ground – as long as we can find a way to avoid the polarization that we too often find ourselves stumbling into.” I don’t think the senator stumbled as much as he dove headfirst, given the amount of polarizing partisan finger pointing he has been doing in the rest of the book.

Warning to Hollywood: “We conservatives need to help our cultural community rediscover the better angels of their natures.” (p.291)

He makes this interesting point on page 293: “In Destructive Generation, David Horowitz and Peter Collier pointed out that the generally white, upper-middle-class baby boomer generation that ushered in the Great Disruption of culture in the 1960s had the means, primarily through their parents, to escape the consequences of their ideology.” I would agree to a certain extent but the civil rights workers, for instance Mssrs. Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, might disagree. Minority activists might also disagree.

However, Sen. Santorum also makes this excellent point on the same page: “Well-positioned young men could embrace casual sex: and use peer pressure and family money to encourage the abortion that would eliminate any career impediments.” Finally, a note about the role of men in the abortion controversy.

“I am not suggesting that there is a grand design or plan on the part of the Bigs in the entertainment industry to de-moralize America. (p. 295)” In my reading of the previous 294 pages I thought that was a theme.

Trivia – As a lawyer Sen. Santorum once represented the World Wrestling Federation (p. 298). As a boy he was a big wrestling fan.

He also discusses the decline in morality in comic books. He may have cut his pop culture teeth on wrestling but I cut mine on comic books and they were an enjoyable hobby for many years, into college, if I were honest about it. If you rummage around in my garage long enough you might find my “New Mutants” #1, provided the mice haven’t beaten you to it. And I agree with him that when I was a girl the costumed heroes were indeed heroes. In later years they became more conflicted. Batman became the Dark Knight. Wolverine certainly had (maybe still has, I’ve been out of the loop for years) some psychotic tendencies. Women may have been shrinking violets (in some cases literally) but they became buxom sexpots and one reason I gave up the genre was I became very tired of looking at the exploitive use of women in the artwork (another being the tedious Dark Phoenix/Jean Grey/Madeline Pryor/Scott Summers plot line).

He has hopes for an improvement in the types of entertainment media that is being produced (for example, “Finding Nemo”) and is encouraged that positive representations of religion may yet find their way into prime time.

Violence and a Coarsened Society

In this chapter he discusses the loss of professional athletes that children can actually look up to, and the desensitizing effects of violence on children, whether that violence is on the big screen, the small screen, or the videogame screen. Bill Cosby is quoted. The “broken windows” theory of social breakdown is discussed.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll: Mostly Sex

“Some people ask me, ‘Why are conservatives so obsessed with sex? That’s a good question – and there is a good answer: because the sexual revolution has had huge public, as well as private, consequences.” This is how he starts the chapter on p. 313 In the rest of the chapter he discusses the increasing sexual content on television and the explosion of pornography on the Internet. I agree with his argument but, again, if children are exposed to this it is at least in some part with parental permission. If parents put a tv and an Internet-connected computer in a child’s room they are asking for trouble. If the kids are watching this stuff in the family room while parents are home why don’t the parents know about it?

One note, on p. 318, he says “One irony of our times is that surveys show the most sexually satisfied women in America are: married and religious! Hardly what the media would have you believe.” Now if a married religious woman said this, it could be taken as a group rejoice. When a married religious man says it, the information comes across just a little as bragging. (I have taken the lyrics of Rosa Henderson to heart, and heed her advice, “Don’t Advertise Your Man,” so I will say nothing).

Not Withdraw, but Engage

More discussion on the evils of popular culture, with an emphasis on video games and the types of clothes, especially those marketed to young girls. I have written on this last topic myself. I don’t know when “Sluts R Us” became a design label but I see their influence everywhere. Sen. Santorum gives advice on what parents can do to counteract some of the outside influences our children see. I would agree with many of them. It is odd that he did not talk about informal parental networks. I know when “Spiderman 2” came out I was on the phone with other parents finding out if they were letting their kids see it. Ditto with a number of other films. If the kids says “everyone else….” I can say I know that isn’t true because I’ve talked to X, Y, and Z’s moms and they aren’t going to it either.

Culture-Makers, Culture-Mongers, Culture-Consumers

The gist of this chapter is that if you don’t like it don’t buy it. If consumers insist on less violent, less exploitively sexual products we will get them. Edited versions of movies, now available in some places, are not popular with the film industry but if people want to buy them they will be sold. He also says we should encourage people with values similar to our own to go into the entertainment industry to affect it from the inside. In closing he says that parents are, in the end, responsible for what their children buy and view inside the home. I would agree with all of these things.

Culture and Public Policy

Here he discusses what public policy can do to change popular culture. Some of the items he mentions are providing money for research into how violent and pornographic materials affect viewers, and copyright, such as pirated works, as well as file sharing.

A Summary Note

I find it interesting that Santorum, like many who write on the evils or pornography and the sexualization of popular culture, missed some of the primary forms of public erotica aimed at adult women. He mentions in passing the magazines aimed at teenage girls with sex advice. But nowhere does he discuss daytime soap operas, which were the mainstay of women’s television for many years, until they discovered college students in the 1970’s with “General Hospital’s” Luke and Laura storyline. While there have been some shakeups in recent decades, soap operas are still going strong. He also completely misses erotic romance novels. When I was in high school the first “bodice rippers” hit the shelves of the local grocery stores bookrack. Copies worked their way around study hall with some of the steamier pages dogeared. These days most romance novels have an erotic component. If there are calls to clean up popular culture these two items must also be included, and that will open another can of worms, which a lot of mainstream women would prefer remain unopened.

Reading Rick: Part 4 (Moral Ecology)

This posting covers pages 197-270 of Rick Santorum’s book, It Takes a Family

Part Three: Moral Ecology

Chapter XXI: Liberty and Virtue

Chapter XXII: Moral Capital and the Moral Environment

Chapter XXIII: The Rule of Judges

Chapter XXIV: Abortion: A Personal Aside

Chapter XXV: The Impact of Partial Birth Abortion

Chapter XXVI: How Abortion Affects Our Moral Ecology

Liberty and Virtue

He opens with a discussion of the Founding Fathers and their views on religion. On p. 200 he says “In eighteenth-century America, only a lunatic could have imagined the fanciful Brave New Family arrangements that we find ourselves talking about at the dawn of the twenty-first century.” As one of the keepers of my family’s history, a lineage that in some places I can trace back 400 years, let me assure you that there is no arrangement of household that we have now that has not been in existence for centuries. As someone who has read a good deal of history, American, European and Classical, let me assure you that any family arrangement we have in place now has been around since people started keeping records. If Mr. Santorum has read his Bible he will surely recognize that everything coming before the courts today is reflected in those pages.

On p. 201 he says “In other words, high moral standards, widely shared and publicly honored and nurtured, are part of a common good and our founders knew this.” No argument from me there.

He theorizes there is a triangle needed to sustain a democracy: “Religion teaches virtue. Virtue is needed to sustain freedom. Freedom allows religion to prosper.” (p. 204) In his view this triangle is now unbalanced. He uses this definition of moral capital: “common beliefs, customs, and traditions exhibited both in public and in private, together with a willingness to make ethical judgments in public and to act upon those judgments.” He continues this train of thought on p. 206. “Social capital depends crucially on widespread practical adherence to certain common beliefs or moral norms. Social capital depends on moral capital. And when moral and social capital decrease, lawlessness increases, because there is little left to govern relations between citizens.” The problem, as I see it, are whose beliefs and customs? In the public common area only those beliefs that are held by the greatest majority, as close to unanimous as possible, can be considered the beliefs of the nation.

He ends the chapter (p. 208) with the caution that parents across America worry “what their children are learning in school, on the Internet, and on television.” I have two thoughts here. One is that concerned parents can turn off the television, monitor what the kids do on the Internet, and join the PTA. Those three things will go a long way to allay their fears.I do worry about my children, not those three things but plenty of others. None of these have been reflected in Santorum’s book.

The second thought is that the parents he describes are not concerned about spouses developing a porn addiction or having an online affair or getting involved in online gambling or worried about elderly parents falling prey to telemarketing scams.

In more than one place in this chapter he again takes liberals to task. I find this annoying.

Moral Capital and the Moral Environment

In this chapter, Sen. Santorum says Americans feel they have thrown away our moral inheritance. In his view we took a wrong turn in the 1960’s, although he admits the 1950’s were not without problems. As for the role of women during that decade he cites author Allan Carlson who “has argued that whereas the household had once been a center of productive activity, the advance of industrial technology and suburbanization often left women with few roles beyond those of infant caregiver and consumption specialist, i.e. shopper.” (p.211) This confused me. Is he saying that is was unfortunate women no longer had to do laundry with a washboard? What does this sentence mean? He does credit the 1960’s with the civil rights movement, although he thinks the political alliance between liberals and African-Americans has not served African-Americans well.

In the later part of the chapter he writes about original sin, moral corruption, and the liberal need to drive religion from the public arenas.

He decries our self-centered pop culture. “As a result, we see selfishness and the consequent lack of civility and decency toward other people.” (p. 214) He ties this with liberal policy. I see it as also arising from people like Rush Limbaugh.

Here is another gem, from p. 215 “I am not advocating a replenishment of our moral capital because I want everybody to be alike. I don’t want our government snooping through people’s private lives, either.” Excuse me? Isn't this the guy who involved himself in the Schiavo family's private life? Isn't this the guy who wants the government involved in a number of private medical decisions?

In the last part of the chapter he discusses Environmental Impact Statements, how detailed they are, and the requirement to have one done before construction or development projects can be done. He thinks government should do a moral impact statement to see how legislation will affect the moral ecosystem. As an example he again brings up the increased divorce rate and the damaging effects of divorce on children and how children of divorce often have trouble forming happy marriages themselves. I cannot help but take offense at this, as my parents were divorced but all of the children of that marriage have managed to stay married themselves for over 20 years each.

The Rule of Judges

This chapter is about the liberal orchestration of an activist judiciary. He traces the moral corruption in the family back to the Griswold Supreme Court decision in 1965 that ruled a Connecticut law stating that contraceptives were illegal was unconstitutional. It was all downhill from there. In his view there is no constitutional right to privacy (which sort of counteracts his statement that he doesn’t want government snooping through people’s private lives.) He ends by saying he thinks it is possible for Roe v. Wade to be overturned.

Abortion: A Personal Aside

Abortion is “the great moral issue of our time. Abortion is a toxin methodically polluting our fragile moral ecosystem.” (p. 239). In this chapter he discusses the development of his views on abortion.

I did note that in one of his opening statements he says “It poisons everyone it touches, from the mother and her ill-fated child, to the mother and father’s families, to the abortion provider to each of us who stands as a silent witness to this destruction and debasement of human life.” (p. 239) The father is not mentioned. His family is but he is not. I found this to be symptomatic of his discussions of the subject. Other than passing mentions of promiscuity by both genders, all of his discussions on abortion relate solely to women.

The Impact of Partial Birth Abortion

The title of the chapter is self-explanatory.

How Abortion Affects Our Moral Ecology

More of the same. I did note, in his story of a woman who had planned to get an abortion but decided against it after hearing Santorum speak on television, that his use of language is interesting. He quotes from an email he received from the woman’s boyfriend. “She never told me about her pregnancy because she knew that I would object any decision to kill our child.” It’s HER pregnancy but THEIR child. In his discussion of her decision not to abort: “It was not any easy road for this little girl’s mother. There were objections and pressure from her family and friends to look out for herself, but she persevered through the social stigma and the emotional and physical pain. Hers was a courageous, beautiful act of selflessness. It was followed by another selfless act after the little girl was born – her parents gave her in adoption to a married couple who couldn’t conceive children of their own.” (p. 267) Is there no social stigma and emotional pain for the father?

I see a pattern here. He talks about the pain of women who have had abortion but there is nothing about the fathers of these children. How can he so promote fatherhood and marriage and completely leave out the fathers of the children he says he cares so much about? Where are the education programs for men on the emotional cost of abortion? Where is the push for contraception or abstinence? Other than a discussion of abstinence education earlier in the book it is absent.

Bibliographic Essay

This chapter has one of the longer lists of books but one of the shortest list of articles.

Extra Cash for Christmas?

If anyone out there got a lot of green stuff for the holidays and is wondering what to do with it, consider tossing some Patrick Murphy's way.

Reading Rick: Part 3 (The Roots of Prosperity)

This posting covers pages 119-194 of Rick Santorum’s book, It Takes a Family

Part Three: The Roots of Prosperity

Chapter XIII: Abundant Families in the Land of Plenty
Chapter XIV: Economic Responsibility
Chapter XV: Work and Human Dignity
Chapter XVI: Wealth and Ownership
Chapter XVII: The Power of Knowledge
Chapter XVIII: Faith-Based Transformations
Chapter XIX: Smart Reinvesting
Chapter XX: Wealth and Race

Abundant Families in the Land of Plenty

There are three themes to this short chapter – economic opportunities leads to marriage and children. In countries with less economic opportunity there is a lower marriage and birth rate. The second theme is that higher taxes equal less freedom (to take care of your family and your community). For example, this statement on p. 123: “Beyond marginal [tax] rates, we must also do more to help families, particularly families that are raising children. As I mentioned before, one reason parents are not spending enough time with their children is because of the increased taxes we have imposed on the average American family with children.” One thing that that has struck me throughout this book is the almost complete lack of concern for those past childbearing age. I think those on fixed incomes are concerned with rising health care costs and increasing property taxes. Yet we are hearing nothing about that. Clearly the book is aimed at a particular audience, and the women in those households have not yet reached menopause.

The last theme in the chapter is a description of his view of the liberal policy towards families and welfare. He says liberals are only concerned about the children of welfare parents and not those of working families and that liberals are not concerned with the breakup of the family. In contrast, he says “Most Americans, however, and conservatives in particular, believe the natural family is something to be respected, protected, and nurtured.” Again, I don’t know what liberal handbook he is reading from but the one I’ve been working from is missing the “destroy the natural family” chapter.

Economic Responsibility

Here he discusses the history of the welfare system and his involvement in welfare reform in an abridged format. In his view welfare has made people dependent on government money and kept them in poverty.

The sentence that most took me aback was this from page 128: “The so-called sexual liberation of the late 1960s took hold in society, I believe, because of two principal factors: the legalization of abortion, which started in the late 1960s and culminated with Roe v. Wade in 1973 and – for low-income women – the availability of abortion plus the financial safety net provided by government welfare.” In my college classes that covered this topic, the loosening of sexual mores was tied to the introduction of more easily available contraception, such as the birth control pill, and the coming of age of the baby boomers, with an emphasis on youth culture.

Work and Human Dignity

Here is Santorum’s view of the effects of the enacted welfare reforms, from p. 136: “Research has shown that in every state in the union, a mother working half time at minimum wage is still better of than if she were on welfare. And these women aren’t making minimum wage ($5.15 per hour). They are averaging somewhere around $8 per hour.” While I have no statistics to back up my skepticism, I am skeptical.

He ups the ante by not only providing more statistics but by deriding liberals who refuse to acknowledge the success of welfare reform. In his words (p. 137), “According to liberals, every person deserves a ‘living wage’ regardless of her contribution to a given enterprise.”

Further, “I am all for providing women on welfare with basic training so that they can take entry-level jobs, but beyond that I believe that they should provide for their education under the same circumstances as everyone else – through a combination of financial aid, loans, savings, hard work, and sacrifice. In other words, they must earn it.” (pp. 137-8) I cannot help but note that he thinks all of the people moved off of welfare are women, and he mentions never married mothers more than once.

Santorum provides some first person stories from people who moved from welfare to work and they are heart-warming, the children who were excited when their mother got her first pay check because they wouldn’t have to use food stamps at the grocery store, for example.

He also says that to take an active role in welfare reform he hired five people on welfare to work in his offices. He provides further information on two of them, one eventually went to college and became a teacher, and the other became the administrative assistance for a surgeon, married and bought a house. While I admired him for taking a hands-on role, I don’t wonder that they able to find better jobs with a reference from a senator’s office. I do wonder if those who found a job at McDonalds or part-time at Wal-Mart reached similar levels of success.

I do agree that work provides a level of self-respect that welfare cannot. I do agree that those on welfare should be encouraged to find work and move off of public assistance. I’m not sure that it needs to be such a quick change, and that a more gradual move may be more beneficial. As I wrote in a separate post, my college education was publicly funded (loans paid off on time, with interest) so it would be hypocritical of me to be anything but in favor of providing others with that same opportunity. Giving someone an opportunity to get an education seems to me to be one of the best investments a society can make. Knowing that my current good fortune is based in large part on the government monies given and loaned to me has made me much more civic minded than I think I would have been otherwise. I cannot help but think that it would have a similar effect on others.

Wealth and Ownership

I can briefly describe this chapter but to fully understand it you will have to read it yourself. Here is the chapter theme from p. 144 “We have not democratized access to economic capital.” I would agree with that. He goes on to describe his ideas to set up Individual Development Accounts (IDA), which would set up a nest egg of $500 for each child at birth. The details of it escape me, but I am concerned by a note on p. 153 that upon reaching 18 the child would have to pay back to the government all federal monies paid into the account; it is effect a no-interest loan. He also describes Personal Retirement Accounts (PRA) to supplement social security payments. As examples of ways to empower people economically he describes a faith-based nonprofit program to help people come up with a down payment for a house.

I was surprised that he did not mention two things. One is Grameen banks, either in the U.S. or other countries, sometimes called microlending, where people pool their resources and make small loans to each other, or a large lender makes small loans to people in small groups who are responsible for see that each other pays it back.

The other is investment clubs. The National Association of Investors Corp. has been offering investment education for over 50 years. I’ve been a member of an NIAC-affiliated investment club for over five years and have learned a tremendous amount about investing and the stock market.

He quotes Jack Nicholson from the movie A Few Good Men. (“You can’t handle the truth").

The Power of Knowledge

This chapter covers the importance of teaching economic literacy and I would have to agree with him on this. If people don’t learn how to handle money then no matter how much they earn, they will almost always be poor or in debt.

Faith-Based Transformations

Here Santorum turns his attention to the problem of generating economic capital in communities as opposed to families. He cites two specific examples of neighborhoods or communities transformed by faith-based economic initiatives. They are very nice stories. I looked at the web site of one of them and found no mention of the programs he mentioned. Perhaps they have been eclipsed by a growing or changing mission.

Smart Reinvesting

Here he focuses on strategies that can be used when deciding what neighborhoods are ripe for renewal and which ones are too far gone and need other types of assistance (for example, waiting for tenants to get fed up and move out so landlords are forced to sell to developers). He also provides a case study of renewal in the town of Chester, Pennsylvania.

Wealth and Race

This chapter can be summed up in two quotes. From p. 189: “I have a particular concern for our nations’ African-American community.” From p. 190, here is his view of why the heyday of black enterprises from 1867 to 1917 has faded, “No, what really changed the economic terrain for African-Americans was something else: the arrival of liberal welfare policies, the liberal cultural [sic] of victimhood, and poorly thought-out liberal urban renewal.”

I don’t know what I could add to that; it sort of leaves me speechless. The heyday of black enterprises was from 1867 to 1917? Really?

Bibliographic Essay

Again, I am under-impressed with the currency and depth of the works he cites.


Next: Moral Ecology

Reading Rick: Part 2 (Social Capital and the Ties That Bind)

This posting refers to pages 43-116 of Rick Santorum's book It Takes a Family.

Part Two: Social Capital and the Ties That bind

Chapter V: What Kind of Freedom?
Chapter VI: Habits of Association
Chapter VII: Trust and Civic Connection
Chapter VIII: Subsidiarity vs. Central Control
Chapter IX: Changing Lives, Building Families
Chapter X: Parents and Children
Chapter XI: Religion and Social Capital
Chapter XII: Where Social Capital is Weakest

What Kind of Freedom?

This is an excellent chapter and could just as easily be considered a “liberal” document as a “conservative” document. His points are that the principle of freedom on which our country was founded is the freedom to attend to one’s duties. He has a very good point. Plus, his discussion of the verbs used in the Preamble to the Constitution is very thought-provoking. If you want to read just a small part of this book, these pages (43-49) are the pages to read.

Habits of Association

This chapter is, again, divisive and alarmist.

“When, in the name of ‘freedom,’ public virtue is sunk so low that families must swim against a toxic tide to raise children to be decent and public-spirited adults, something has gone terribly wrong with our understanding of freedom.” (p. 51) What neighborhood does this guy live in?

“Freedom has become the freedom simply to check out from the pursuit of the common good and to do what feels right for me, without regard to those around me.” (p. 53)

“When No-Fault Freedom reigns, trust and selflessness are rare commodities because we each know that others in our community are simply out for themselves (p. 56)

“With No-Fault Freedom, social capital decreases and the stress of daily life increases, and we look at our fellow citizens suspicion rather than with neighborliness and trust.” (p. 57)

Ties the work of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, with the tradition for conservative argument. That wasn’t my reading of the book.

Trust and Civic Connection

Discusses the decline in social capital, referencing Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Gives an example of high social capital among Orthodox Jewish jewelers in the New York Diamond Market. An as example of low social capital he discusses black on black crime.

To his credit he mentions his initial opposition to Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps concept and how his view of that program changed. He mentions Harris Wofford, his opponent in the 1994 senate race, and that Wofford later became the director of AmeriCorps.

Subsidiarity vs. Central Control

This chapter discusses the creation of social capital. However, instead of staying positive he criticizes Hilary Clinton’s book, It Takes a Village. “The warm, fuzzy image of Senator Clinton’s book is that of a community rich in social capital, but the truth of the matter is that liberal policies which tie individuals to the government break the bonds of true community and deplete social capital.” (p. 67) He goes on to say “We [conservatives] believe that only strong families, can improve the lives of individuals, especially children, and make for healthy communities.” (p. 67) On page 68 he says “Conservatives trust families and the ordinary Americans that are formed by them. Liberals don’t. They border on disdain for the common man.” Except, of course, in matters of reproduction, end of life issues, and so on. Then the government should step in?

Changing Lives, Building Families

This chapter discusses the government policies, past and present, regarding marriage, abstinence education, out of wedlock births, fatherhood initiatives, father’s rights, and so on. Some interesting points he brings up are the increased involvement of a larger number of grandparents in the lives of children born to their married children, as opposed to illegitimate births. In his view if a woman has a child out of wedlock her mother is likely to be involved with the child, but a baby born to a married couple is more likely to have involvement from all four grandparents. This is an intriguing theory but I think it would also depend on the marital status and geographic location of the grandparents, as well as the marital status of the children-now-parents. I also think it is likely, and have read similar statements to this effect, that grandparents are more likely to offer economic support to the father of their daughter’s children if he is an official son-in-law as opposed to a “baby daddy.” However, there are economic factors that also come into play and Santorum has not discussed these yet. I can tell you that I am of the firm belief that grandfathers are the most wonderful people in the world.

Parents and Children

This is one of the chapters that got him in trouble. I can easily see why. One theme of this chapter is the lack of time in American life. We work too long and too hard and don’t have time for our children. Here is one of the quotes that caused a ruckus when the book came out: “In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might confess that both of them really don’t need to, or at least may not need to work as much as they do.” (p. 95)

Now if he would stay with that statement, I could go along with him, but he really isn’t talking about both parents needing or wanting to work, as we see on p. 95: “Respect for stay-at-home mothers has been poisoned by a toxic combination of the village elders’ war on the traditional family and radical feminism’s misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect.” And here is where he loses me. It is never about the family sitting down and looking at who earns more, has better health and retirement or educational benefits, a more flexible schedule, and so on. It is about women in the workplace. Phrase it in gender neutral terms and a lot more people would sign on. Last time I checked wives earned more than their husbands in a third of American marriages. If one of Santorum’s projects is a fatherhood initiative, let’s see it carried over to primary childcare and household management.

Another point he makes is this (from p. 96): “And the [tax] burden is often even heavier for larger families, because of the phasing out of child credit for families with a total income of $110,000. Now, before you start complaining about tax breaks for the rich, answer me this: Is a family making $110,000 with one child as well of economically as a family with eight children at that same salary?” If I remember correctly, one aspect of welfare reform was to discourage people from having more children than they could afford to raise and educate. Why shouldn’t that philosophy be reflected in our tax code as well? Regardless of how much you make, should the government encourage you to continue having children? Apparently, the senator thinks families should get tax breaks for having more children. Mr. Jane and I stopped where we did because we didn’t think our economic or temporal resources could stretch any further. We would encourage other couples to do the same.

Religion and Social Capital

In this chapter Sen. Santorum takes liberals to task for their apparent aversion to religion. While I dislike his examples, I have to agree with him on this. The Democratic party has got to come to some accommodation with the fact that many Americans, and a good percentage of the voting public, have religious beliefs that impact their daily lives. I intend to say more about this in future postings.

Where Social Capital is Weakest

This chapter focuses primarily on prison reform issues. This is not to mean reform of prisons but reform of prisoners, often through faith-based initiatives and fatherhood education. I think these programs can have a significant impact, especially when combined with GED and higher education programs, although Santorum does not discuss these much. One thing that really surprised me is his support of a program aimed at giving felons the right to vote if they do not get into trouble again for five years.

Bibliographic Note

The primary source Santorum used for this section was Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000). I read this book several years ago and it had a profound effect on me. It isn’t a quick or easy read but well worth the effort. Santorum also provides a short list of books he and his wife found helpful in childrearing. I have read at least one of those as well, but would add to the list Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families.

Next: Part 3 (The Roots of Prosperity)

Reading Rick: Part I (It Takes a Family)

Here are my thoughts on pages 3-39 of Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family. Either future postings on the book will have to be more succinct or I won't make it through. I may not make it through anyway.

Part One: It Takes a Family.

Chapter I: The Task of Stewardship
Chapter II: The Liberal Vision: No-Fault Freedom
Chapter III: Families and the Common Good
Chapter IV: The Meaning of Family

The Task of Stewardship

He starts the book by saying:

“On my right wrist, every day, I wear a royal blue piece of cloth, a bracelet of sorts. Stitched in white are the letters F.A.M.I.L.Y.” (p. 3)

To verify this I searched Google for images of Rick Santorum. After looking at 400 of these I stopped. I also looked at his official senate site and his campaign site. If the man is ever photographed not wearing a suit and tie or a long-sleeved jacket he keeps it very quiet. There is a photo on his web site of him with his sleeves rolled up to mid-forearm and you can see a bracelet. You can also see it in a photo taken of him with Bono.

Like the preface this section is divisive, “liberal news media, Hollywood, and the educational elite” (p. 3) portray liberals as good and conservatives as bad.

“we have faced down Soviet communism, the greatest tyranny the world has ever seen,” (p. 4) That’s a pretty strong statement to make. The Hebrews under Egyptian rule, African Americans under slavery, parts of Asia and Eastern European under Genghis Khan, those in the path of Attila the Hun, or anyone who lived under any of the other tyrannies in world history, might venture to disagree. How can anyone say something is the greatest the world has ever seen?

He has a long list of alarming trends in American society, including this one “3,500 healthy expectant mothers carrying healthy children exercising a ‘choice’ to end the lives of their children every day…” (p. 5) Where does he get this number? I can't find any reference for it in the bibliographic essay. Looking in the Statistical Abstract of the United States that correlates to the number of abortions per day in the U.S. in 2000, but no information is given on the health of the mother or the condition of her pregnancy. Another alarming trend is “religion under assault by the media and liberal activists and then booted from the public square by court order…” (p. 5) I am a churchgoing woman and as such would rather that religious education be done in the church or the home to ensure that what is being taught is consistent with denominational beliefs.

“Once,” he says on p. 5, “ our social, governmental and educational institutions, along with popular culture, seemed to work together to aid parents in raising their children. Today, many feel that these same institutions are somehow conspiring against them.” I don’t know what time period he is referring to – my mother thought the Carol Burnett Show was awfully racey and forbade me from watching it as a child.

He sees the primary problem in society as the “bigs, - big news media, big enterainment, big universities and public schools, some big businesses, and some big national labor unions, and of course, the biggest big of all, the federal government.” (p. 6) In his view, the bigs are tying to wipe out local government, civic and fraternal associations, neighborhoods, churches, and the traditional family.” (p. 7) I don’t know how these “bigs” could wipe out local government or neighborhoods. Would houses be too far apart for people to meet each other? Even today most people I know are acquainted with as many or more of their neighbors as I was growing up in small town America.


“All of us naturally want to bequeath to our children something more, something better, than we received from out own parents, ….” Is that right? Many of the parents I know just hope to do as well as their parents.

Something that should have been mentioned in preface, the book will look at five pillars of American civilization : social capital, economic capital, moral capital, cultural capital, and intellectual capital.” (p. 10)

“I believe that bad culture is culture that lies; good culture, even it if may be ugly, tells the truth.” So, in his view, The Matthew Shephard Story, The Abu Ghraib Story, would be good?


The Liberal Vision: No-Fault Freedom

“From the time I arrived in State college, I joined the conservative ranks and fought against the liberals on campus and in government.” (p. 13) I think it would be great if someone thoroughly researched his years at Penn State. I’ve heard a number of stories and would enjoy finding out which have some nugget of truth and which are pure mythology.

again division – “For example, I believed that everyone wanted the poor to achieve economic self-sufficiency, but that the two parties had different approaches to achieve that goal. I don’t believe that anymore.” (p. 13)

“So what is the liberal definition of freedom? It is the freedom to be and to do whatever we want – freedom to choose irrespective of choice, freedom without limits (with the obligatory caveat that you can’t hurt anyone else directly).” (p. 14) Well, that’s one definition of liberalism, but I also think it fits the GOP’s vision of small government very well also. Isn’t one tenant of that political philosophy that the government should get out of people’s lives and let them make their own decisions, such as where their children should go to school and how their retirement money is handled?

Quotes from U2’s song “Vertigo.” (p. 14)

“We have sexual freedom: and the resulting debasement of women, mental illness, and an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases causing infertility, cancer, even death.” (p. 14) I’m not certain about the debasement of women, and am completely confused by the inclusion of mental illness.

The family is the foundation of our civilization. He doesn’t mean to exclude singled-head of household families but the focus should be on building and strengthening “what all the research and thousands of years of human history says is the best of our country and our children. That foundation is the family headed by a married mother and father.” (P. 15) Not just advocating for traditional families but healthy traditional families.” (p. 16) His definition: “Families in which selfless regard for others is the rule, not self-centeredness.” (p. 16)

“In the liberals’ ideal world there is no right or wrong; there is only tolerance and intolerance, diversity and narrow-mindedness.” (p. 17) I don’t remember this part of my liberal guidebook either, but maybe the “bigs” version has a special section that mine doesn’t.

“There are many liberals who are selfless mothers and fathers. What they are doing is not practicing what their village elders preach.” (p. 17) I’m so glad he cleared this up for us.

We all see how they [liberals]dominate the mainstream news media: over 90 percent of the elite news media voted for Senator John Kerry in 2004. And that percentage may be even higher when it comes to Hollywood.” (p. 18). I know the NSA is tapping phones, but I thought there was no way to verify voter information, so how does he or anyone know how anyone voted? (p.18)

“Families -- that is to say, moms and dads” (p. 18) This statement excludes from the definition of family all of those who could not, or chose not, to have children. Would it also exclude those marriages where all the offspring have died? It seems a very narrow definition.

“…parental enforcement of standards – in one reason why liberals view the traditional family with suspicion. After all, they say, children did not consent to their parents’ values. Shouldn’t children be free to discover and create their own values?” (p. 18) You know, I’ve listened to the keynote speech at Democratic National Conventions for decades now and have never heard this stated. So I don’t know where he is getting it.

Children from healthy intact families do better, have happier marriages, etc. than children who are not. Instinctively I agree with this, although I did not grow up in an intact family, and, while no one would give me the “well-adjusted woman of the year award,” I think I’ve done okay (so far). So it pulls me in different directions. How many healthy intact families are out there now? How many did there used to be? It is hard to judge how many families fit his definition of healthy unless you can talk to the people who were in those families, and that seriously limits the amount of time you can study and make comparisons.

Families and the Common Good

He says boys who grow up in households with married parents are less likely to become criminals. While there are many good single-parent families, two-parent families are better. Santorum is to be commended for noting that father absence is not just an inner-city minority problem. “it is about emotional detachment as well: middle-class men whose lives center around work and the golf course instead of around their wives and children, for example”. (p. 22)

Divorce leads to father abandonment much more often people recognize, despite the constant attempts by the popular culture to paint a picture of the happily” divorced. (p. 23) I would have to agree with this.

In a childless marriage, it is conceivable that the No-Fault Freedom caveat may be true… (p. 23) It is nice that he makes this exception.

He provides lot of statistics on how children are worse off in single-parent families.

82% of urban, low-income fathers and mothers are in a romantic relationship at the time their child is born. (p. 25) Now how does he know that?

The Meaning of Family

“Since marriage has become more and more about adult happiness, and less and less about children and their well-being, it is no wonder other groups in society want to use marriage for the same purpose.” (p. 31) My understanding of marriage in history, and I have read a number of books on this, is that the idea of companionate marriage, that is marriage solely for companionship and affection is, indeed, relatively recent, but it was previous regarded as a tool for dynastic and business partnerships, with fond regard between the immediate parties helpful but not necessary. The happiness of children, and even the children themselves, tended to be rather near the bottom of the list.

“Every known society has some form of marriage. And it’s always about bringing together a male and female into the kind of sexual union where the interests of children under the care of their own mother and father are protected.” (p. 31) I think inheritance, property transfer, and political or business interests also may have played a role.

“When in Loving v. Virginia the Supreme Court ruled that state laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional, that ruling seemed at first to affect only private individuals. But sixteen years later, the IRS ruled that religious groups that opposed interracial marriage could be stripped of their tax-exempt status, because they were not operating for the public good. The Supreme Court rules furthermore that the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion provided no defense. Of course, I agree that laws against interracial marriage were unjust. My point is this: If we apply the logic of a civil rights same-sex marriage, people who believe children need mothers and fathers will be treated in the public square like racists, and churches that persist in teaching the traditional form will risk the loss of their tax-exempt status. “ (p. 32-33) I think he picked a very bad example here.

“If the sexual unions of men with men and women with women have equal dignity with the union of men and women, then marriage cannot be understood as having anything intrinsically to do with children.” (p. 34) Would this mean marriage between widows and widowers or divorcees beyond the ability of desire for childbearing would be of a lesser nature than the marriage of the fecund?

Disconnecting marriage from babies leads to low fertility rates (pp. 34-36). The logic of this escaped me entirely.

“Men and women marry for many reasons. But the reason the law is involved is to protect society’s future.” (p. 38) Again, I always thought it was inheritance and property rights.

Twice in this section he references the movie version of the Lord of the Rings series, once the Two Towers and the other The Return of the King. I wonder why he refers to the movies and not the books.

The bibliographic essay for this section is below par. Many of the citations he lists don’t have the year of publication listed and I’m not aware of any style manual that finds this acceptable; I was able to look up a date for most of them. The copy editor for the book really should have caught this. There are 19 items listed, eight of them were published in or after 2000.

For an interesting contrast to this section of Santorum’s book, please read chapter 5 “What Makes A Perfect Parent,” (pp. 147-176) in Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (NY: William Morrow, 2005). These authors do not have footnotes either but do have detailed endnotes and I counted 26 items in their notes for this section, 13 of them published in or after 2000. The chapter entitled “Where Have All The Criminals Gone” is also applicable but I think it will be more relevant to another section of Santorum’s book.

next up: Section 2 Social Capital and the Ties That Bind

Happy Day

Oh, my, it has been a busy weekend. The little Janes, all things considered, were well-behaved. They got all of the things they really wanted and a few small extras. It was a lot of stuff but not an avalanche. I made out like a bandit -- seven pairs of new socks, a nice bracelet, a fluffy robe, and two things that will make me the envy of every room parent in PTA -- a double decker cupcake carrier (holds 24), and a cupcake tower (holds 12 cupcakes in a three layer tree shape), and an assortment of other very wonderful things. Best of all we spent today with people we care about and who miraculously care for us in return.

As usual after a long drive I can't get to sleep immediately. If I try it feels like I'm watching one of those video race car games on the back of my eyelids. The cats are pleased to see us so I'll sit with them and watch a little tv to unwind. I hope you all had just as wonderful a time the past few days.

Reading Rick: The Preface

Keep in mind these are my opinions of It Takes a Family by Rick Santorum and I encourage everyone to read it themselves to form their own.

Traditionally the preface sets the tone for the book and lets the reader know what to expect. Sen. Santorum’s preface is divided into two parts, about three pages describing the book and his qualifications and the reasons he is writing it. Another three pages are acknowledgements.

The first part, the description had, in my view, two themes – liberals are bad, conservatives have not staked out a good position on poverty and social problems. It struck me as extremely divisive, to start out with the liberal and conservative labels without explaining what is meant by each, and there is not description in the preface. The second theme is on Santorum’s qualifications. It is a good thing to point out why you as an author know something about your subject but it is best done with a touch of humility and the senator is somewhat lacking here. In one 15-line paragraph we read:

I was trying to help ...
I was assigned ...
I led a team ...
I was elected ...
We [he and Dan Coats] became the heart of ... (p. x)

It’s just a bit much.

Now, the second part, the acknowledgements, is interesting. He does the requisite thanking of the spouse. Publish a book without this and things could get chilly at home. Ditto with any children old enough to read.

A few interesting comments:

Our hours are long, the pace intense, and the stress high, but she not only helps hold me together, she is often single-handedly the steady guiding light for our six children, ages 3 to 14, too. (p. xi)

I wonder if this will jibe with everything late in the book. We shall see. And

In fact, our lives were incomplete until we had each and every one of our children. (p. xii)

I’m not sure what this means. Did he feel his life was incomplete when he only had one child? Is he saying that the family is complete now? If he has other children later, is his life incomplete at the moment? And

My prayer is that the time I poured into this book will result in a somewhat better America in which they may grow and serve their fellow citizens.(p. xii)

No hubris there. One interesting contrast – he thanks his parents but does not mention them by name, not even first names, but gives the full names of his in-laws. He also says he would not have had the opportunity to write the book if he were not elected to the Senate. There are very few things in life I feel certain of. People who feel absolute certainty on a number of things sort of amaze me. How do they do that? How is Santorum certain he would not have been able to write this book if he weren’t elected? Maybe he’s right. Maybe he wouldn't have written it if he had been in private legal practice. But maybe he would. How does he know?

Next: Section 1

weekly legislative update

The legislature was not terribly active this week. In the special session the House defeated SB30 and the Senate referred HB39 to appropriations.

The House passed two bills in the regular session. Details below. For more update information, see our friends at PICPA, the Senate GOP and House Democrats.

Bills Passed in the House:

HB 1068 Prior Printer's Nos. 1227, 2955. Printer's No. 3342. An Act Amending Title 51 (Military Affairs) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, further providing for association group life insurance for eligible members of the armed forces of the United States or its reserve component.


SB 854 Prior Printer's Nos. 1101, 1231. Printer's No. 1429. An Act amending Titles 53 (Municipalities Generally) and 72 (Taxation and Fiscal Affairs) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, further providing for taxation and assessment definitions and applicability; consolidating the sales and use tax provisions of the Tax Reform Code of 1971 and further providing for definitions, for imposition, for exclusions, for credit, for crimes, for transfers to Public Transportation Assistance Fund and for transfers to Property Tax Relief Fund; consolidating the special situs for local sales tax provisions of the Tax Reform Code of 1971; consolidating the personal income tax provisions of the Tax Reform Code of 1971 and further providing for imposition and for classes of income; consolidating and extensively revising the Homeowner Tax Relief Act; consolidating the Senior Citizens Rebate and Assistance Act and further providing for property tax, rent rebate and inflation costs and for funds for payment of claims; and making related repeals.

Reading Rick: Getting Started

In a number of posts I will be reporting on what I have read in Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005).

The book's table of contents is broken down into a preface, forty chapters in six parts, conclusion, bibliographical note, and index. As I report on a section I will create a link to it here to tie all of the posts together.

To begin with I should say that as an analytic reader I find an eight page bibliographic note for 428 pages of text a little alarming. There is not a bibliography or footnotes or endnotes, just the brief bibliographic note. I fear this will prove troublesome to me in my reading. It has been my habit since college to copy the bibliography and title page of books I found interesting so I could later investigate further. Bibliographic notes tend to make it impossible to follow up directly on information in the text.

Here are links to the other entries in this series:

Reading Rick: The Preface

Reading Rick: Part I (It Takes a Family)

Reading Rick: Part 2 (Social Capital and the Ties That Bind)

Reading Rick: Part 3 (The Roots of Prosperity)

Reading Rick: Part 4 (Moral Ecology)

Reading Rick: Part 5 (Culture Matters)

Reading Rick: Part 6 (Educational Excellence)

Reading Rick: Conclusion

War News Radio

In the last New Yorker of the year (Dec. 26 / Jan 2), we find a note that Swarthmore college students are scooping or outdoing the MSM on coverage of the Iraq War. How? By finding a Baghdad phone book and calling people up. They are getting some great stories from people on the ground. They have turned this into a radio show, War News Radio. Certainly more productive than toga parties. Maybe that private school tuition is worth it.

I'm Glad Other People Have Days Like This

In the Dec. 19, New Yorker, we find this description of a publisher's luncheon attended by Condoleeza Rice and some of the editors and reporters of the New York Times this past September 12th.

Such events are common in the life of the Times and other major newspapers, but this one had an odd start. A security dog that had earlier been sniffing for bombs got sick on the carpet of the room where the lunch was to be held. The mess was cleaned up, but the stench was still noticeable when Rice and her party arrived. The air-conditioning was turned up high to diminish the smell, but it was difficult to hear above the noise.

As it happened I read this passage the day after the family van was decorated with a similar odor and I felt a kinship with the Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., publisher of the Times, that I had never felt before. In situations like his I tend to babble like an idiot. It would seem that he suffers from a similar afflication:

"...Just so everyone knows, he said, "it's pretty loud in this room, so my apologies. The bomb-sniffing dog threw up in here." Everyone laughed, but Sulzberger continued to apologise, and, as some of the reporters present cringed, Rice finally said, "Thank you for sharing that."

Perhaps Mr. Sulzberger and I were separated at birth. I wonder if he is sitting in his den tonight, having baked brownies two nights in a row for school parties, and having just enough for the students, the teacher, and one or two left over for attending parents, has had to deny himself the fruits of his labor. Perhaps, like me, there is one telltale bit of chocolate brownie dough on his bottom lip.

(Citation: Auletta, Ken. "The Inheritance: Can Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., save the Times -- and himself?," New Yorker, December 19, 2005, pp. 66-77; quotes in this entry from p. 68)

ShopLocal.com (Knight Ridder News)

The Jan/Feb issue of Fast Company arrived today. I did a quick skim and this jumped out at me:

Tribune Co., Gannett, and Knight Ridder are trying [to save the newspaper business] with a new joint venture called ShopLocal.com. What is provides, in theory, is a list of search results from both newspaper sales circulars and from retailers' sites -- so readers can either buy online or drive to a nearby store that has products in stock.

So I tried it. You type in your zipcode and it gives you stores and online retrailers in your local area (I think it is a 10 mile radius). I noticed some neighborhood stores, though not as many as I would expect. All the same, it is an interesting concept.

Last Minute Shopping Part 2

If you are shopping for someone who lives in a house with children, don't forget board games. Lots of them. We have 5 versions of Monopoly and 3 of Clue. Add in Connect 4, Battleship, Don't Break the Ice, Scrabble, some others I can't remember, and assorted decks of cards. Lately Mr. J has been playing Uno with the kids in front of the fire after homework is done. I'm more the Scrabble type.

For the past several years we have vacationed with an extended family group and take along Cranium and some other games. I can tell you that in such circumstances it is good to be the only teetotaller in the group. In my case it makes up for the occasional slow-wittedness or post-ice cream brain freeze.

Yes, they are hokey, but they are fun. If the kids have friends over we can pull out a board game, I bring in some popcorn or pretzels or cupcakes (or veggies, sometimes its veggies, honest), and off they go.

Princeton Research and the Pew

Got a call tonight from Princeton Research, one of those telephone research survey calls. They wanted to speak to the youngest male in the house 18 and older but Mr. Jane refuses to participate in such things so they asked for the youngest female in the house 18 and older, and that would be me.

The first question was did I think the country was headed in the right direction. I would not answer that one because it was too vague and I figured it would be twisted in whatever direction the pollsters wanted.

The body of the survey dealt with my Internet use, how long have I been an Internet user (about 15 years), do I use email, instant messaging, how often, did I use either yesterday. Did I use the Internet at home, at work, how often, how long, did I use it yesterday. Did I do research. Did I check online news services, radio stations websites, tv stations websites, did I watch the news on tv, did I listen to it on the radio. Did I read online newspapers or national or local newspapers online. And so on. Did I know about voice over the Internet (VOIP). Yadda yadda yadda. What got me was they never asked if I read a newspaper in print. Since I don't listen to news on the radio or watch televised news, by the results of this survey I'm an uninformed fool. I get my news from the Inky, CNN online, BBC online, and my local suburban paper. If I can get it free I take the Wall Street Journal.

Do I read blogs. Do I have a blog. Do I create websites at work, at home for myself or organizations.

Then we get to demographics. They want an age. I balk. She insists that this is really necessary and an age range won't do. So I lie and tell her I am doing so. She wants race but takes no for an answer. She wants to know if there are children under a certain age in the house. I say yes. She wants age or number (can't remember). I refuse. She wants income but she takes no for an answer.

Then she says this is for the Pew Internet and American Life project (or whatever that is called -- I didn't look it up.) Interesting.

Posting Over the Holidays

The legislature won't be in session over the holidays and I'm working on some detailed postings but they won't be ready until after the New Year. What I plan to do over the holidays is read Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family and post comments on what I've read every day or so. There's nothing like going directly to the source and I would rather be ticked over something he said rather than something someone said he said (if you follow that). Rest assured that I did not put money in his pocket by buying it but checked it out of the public library.

If anything else comes up or I get one of the other postings ready early it will be posted at the time.

Last Minute Shopping

Is there a special someone you haven't shopped for yet? Plan on running out Christmas Eve to get all the presents at once? Here's an idea -- stay home, pick up the phone, and buy everyone a subscription to their local paper. Two people in the same household? Buy one the city paper and the other a little local weekly. Are they Philly natives now far from home? Buy them the paper so they can read what's happening back in their old stomping grounds.

Intelligent Design Decision

CNN is reporting that the judge has ruled against teaching the concept of "intelligent design" in Pennsylvania classrooms.