The Future of Conservative Ideas
Drake Bennett profiles four up-and-coming right-of-center thinkers: Luigi Zingales, Bradford Wilcox, Reihan Salam, and Megan McArdle. I’ve never heard of Wilcox, but his ideas (family is good!) don’t sound very interesting. Of the other three, I would say that only Reihan is really thinking about an engaged, practical political program.
Not that there’s nothing wrong with being impractical, of course, but I think the most noticeable “ideas gap” on the right is precisely a lack of practical solutions. Given how few Republican Party elected officials there are right now, taking potshots at Obama and poking holes in his agenda is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But I think it’s still the case that for years now there conservative movement has been very bad at identifying concrete problems in people’s lives and laying out things they’d like to change that would ameliorate those problems. The “drill baby drill” episode from last summer at least has the right formal properties, though I’d hardly call it an “idea.”
92 Responses to “The Future of Conservative Ideas”
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July 12th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Zingales has some good ideas. Especially w/r/t to creative destruction and government intervention. He and Rajan make a pretty good case that it is better to spend government assistance with targeted unemployment benefits than propping up dying industries/companies.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Megan McArdle?
Ideas?
Is there somebody else with that name?
July 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Very strange to see Zingales in this group. He is an excellent academic economist whose work co-authored with Rajan is as effective a theoretical slam of Bush-era concentration of wealth as you’ll see. And his co-author Rajan got no thanks for being prescient about where the crisis would come from.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Megan McArdle is a plague.
She’s also a poor thinker, a bad writer, and a petty, selfish person. She brings nothing to the table. She takes things off of the table. She gives pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-libertarian jackasses a bad name.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I missed my chance to have a class with Zingales, which would have been worth more than a lot of the other econ classes I took here.
And I don’t know what McMegan is doing over on her blog, but it’s not thinking. She’s probably the most significant reason I’m ashamed of my school.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Here’s a news flash BigY, conservatives aren’t about finding solutions to personal problems, and definitely not about Government solutions.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
She gives pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-libertarian jackasses a bad name.
Oh, come on now. She’s a perfect example to wannabe ladder-climbing, self-promoting, well-networked twits. And will, of course, end up the most successful of all four.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Given how few Republican Party elected officials there are right now…
In Congress, certainly. But of the total census of elected officials in the USA (legislatures, city councils, mayors, dog catchers, etc), what’s the split?
July 12th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
i remember a few years ago, Matty, when you were just taken with McArdle. Everything she wrote, no matter how incomprehensibly misbegotten, would get a link from you.
I always did figure that the offices of The Atlantic would make a fine setting for a sitcom: Sully as the drunken embittered old vet, Ambinder as the nerdy lacky, Fallows making the rare appearence as the old sage, and you and Megan- the “cool kids”- playing grab ass all day.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Why aren’t Larison or Douchehat on this list?
July 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I think the problems with the Republican party are largely mischaracterized.
They have ideas, sort of. The problem is that these ideas are utterly inconsistent with running an effective or competent government. It is simply not a coincidence that the “frontrunners” for the Republican nomination are people who don’t — or soon won’t — have jobs, other than the think-tank, corporate board, tv personality non-jobs that people seek between presidential runs: Gingrich, Romney, Huckabee, Palin.
Putting their “ideas” into practice is simply impossible. In the best case scenario, they would have to compromise to get something passed, which means they’d violate the purity test required of Republican presidential candidates. They might have to raise taxes, because sometimes, that’s what governors or senators need to do to be responsible. The hope is to be someone like Sanford, whose (ideological) purity is maintained by, for example, rejecting stimulus funds, but luckily there are enough grown-ups who actually override his decisions, so he doesn’t have to face the consequences of them.
To paraphrase one of the more controversial Barbies, governing during a recession is hard. Any wonder Palin doesn’t want to do it anymore?
July 12th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Here’s a news flash BigY, conservatives aren’t about finding solutions to personal problems, and definitely not about Government solutions.
They’re going to have an awfully hard time regaining power with that philosophy. Things like unemployment, a lack of health care, stagnant wages, etc are all “personal problems”. If conservatives are going to actually run on the platform that if elected they will make sure the government does not provide any solutions or help for these…how do they expect to attract votes? Seriously, you should think about the implications of what you’re espousing. Your beliefs are well outside the mainstream in this country, and the more clear you make them, the less support they’re going to have.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
interesting comment on the article here:
“jerrycole wrote:
The premise of this article is badly flawed. Daily tracking polls have shown a substantial shift of voter sentiment in favor of the Republicans. . .More timely than an article about how bereft of new ideas the Republicans are would be one the premise of which is how the Democrats have lost so much support so quickly.”
To be sure, the poll he quotes is Rasmussen, which is often biased, but assuming the Democrats/Obama have dropped a bit in the polls, I think the main reason is that voters elected Democrats to provide more jobs, and that’s one thing that hasn’t happened, at all, so far. If the jobs numbers improve, I think Democrats might be able to withstand the other elements of the conservative backlash. If not, not.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
The conservatives have progressed.
Once it was “L’etat c’est moi”. But the sans-culotte ended that, much to Edmund Burke’s dismay.
Now that the economic conservatism of Hayek and Friedman has been discredited once more, all that is currently viable is the social conservatism of people like Huckabee.
But the plutocrats like Mellon-scaife and Coors fund a lot of propaganda. They are no doubt testing the appeal of the next great sophist right now.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
What is the operative definition of the word “thinker” as used here?
July 12th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Conservatives don’t need no new “ideas”, they got Reagan’s corpse to do all that thinking stuff.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
To be sure, the poll he quotes is Rasmussen, which is often biased
Without reading it, let me guess: he used Rasmussen’s “voter index” or whatever as proof. You know, the one he touts so often that’s only the difference in strong approval and strong disapproval. I’ve seen a lot of Republicans citing that one all the time recently. The explanation, of course, being that Republicans are always going to strongly disapprove, while Democrats only strongly approve if he doesn’t do stuff like waffling on the public option and taking no action on DADT.
But hey, anything they can latch onto to assure themselves it’s a center-right country.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Oh god, Megan McArdle’s the worst. Did anyone read her take down on Taibbi’s piece on Goldman that McArdle wrote and Sully linked to?
I like most of what Sully says, but I have a hard time believing that he actually read what she wrote, because, well, her writing is hard to read and understand. How she has a job at the Atlantic and is beyond me. Maybe they’re following The New Republic’s lead? Like, if you want to write in a fact free zone, then at least do so clearly like Johan Goldberg. And for her to compare Taibbi to Sarah Palin of all people, which is ironic, considering that Megan McArdle herself makes for a good pseudo-intellectual replication of Sarah Palin.
Larison should get a nod, he definitely adds to the debate.
But Ross, no no no. He already has a column at the NYT, so he’s well set for the David Brooks circuit. Ya know, the conservative that you don’t hate because he’s not as fire-breathing as the others, so, you’re more willing to overlook his gaps in logic. Like his recent piece explaining how Sarah P’s failure is a failure of the everyman’s ideal of the American dream, that we live in a meritocracy. While conveniently ignoring the fact that we just elected a self-made man as President. What was Ross really getting at? To think of what Sarah Palin’s election would have done to the hopes and dreams of trailer trash everywhere. Ok, that last sentence was gratuitous.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Re: Why aren’t Larison or Douchehat on this list?
Larison and I disagree on many, many things, but the man is prodigiously brilliant, and a deeply insightful thinker. As is Mr. Douthat.
Re: I’ve never heard of Wilcox, but his ideas (family is good!) don’t sound very interesting.
Funny, then, that so much of the Georgetown/Manhattan/Santa Monica cosmopolites fight tooth and nail against his simple message. And, for that matter, against the idea that morality should have anything to do with sex.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Reihan’s real sharp and smart,(notwithstanding his very late conversion on Sarah Palin) but, it’s like he always defending this notion of Conservatism that exists only in the abstract.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I have an agenda that might have once been thought of as Conservative, but I doubt that it could be considered so now.I consider myself a Milton Friedman Democrat. I endorse the following positions:
1) A Guaranteed Income
2) A Health Care Plan that:
A. Buys everyone Catastrophic Care
B. Has a deductible for medical services that can be shopped, and based partly on income
3) Narrow Banking
4) An end to the War on Drugs
5) Major cuts in Military Spending
6) A Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy, although we can send some aid and jawbone countries
In other words, what I consider necessary is a strong social safety net aimed at helping the poor, otherwise a less obtrusive government than we have now. I believe, as did Milton Friedman, that this could save money, lessen the size of govt, and that it is appropriate for the govt to help the truly needy for humanitarian reasons. This is also Hayek’s view in “The Road To Serfdom”, and has a lot in common with the original Chicago School of Simons, Knight, and Viner. It also comports more closely with the views of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, who were both very pragmatic and non-ideological.
What is my view called then? It seems to me that it’s at least possible that Democrats would accept my positions, but Republicans or Conservatives couldn’t accept any of them. Am I wrong?
July 12th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Family Good!
(Hector, do I have your support for my ideas? I can do more like that.)
July 12th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Political practibility is often based on bad assumptions or worse, horrific management theory.
“Drill baby drill” was a joke. There was no data showing oil or gasoline demand soaring as oil raced to $140 a barrel. Demand imploded as people parked their cars in droves.
Economic data show an inelastic supply demand curve, which meant more oil wouldn’t lower prices. Producers could charge what they wanted in the world oil oligarchy.
Political practibility is the random walk to the Milky Way. It will take us someplace, but likely not where we want to go.
What if someone told JFK to be practical when he envisioned a man on the moon by the end of the decade?
July 12th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Not to mention that it seemed to me that few private companies selling their product (oil) in a market with static to declining demand, at a relatively fixed production cost, at among the product’s most profitable prices ever, would wish to begin increasing their costs in order to produce more product so that an increased supply would undercut the profitability of their product.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
El Cid,
Mr. Wilcox apparently wants to end no-fault divorce, would you get on board with that?
July 12th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
The lack of new ideas is not a matter of individual failing. What ideas could Republicans have? Let’s review their current “solutions”: Privatize, cut taxes to the wealthy, and promote family values–whatever the heck those are. Ok, if you’re a neocon you can talk about how America needs to project its might. If you’re more of a social conservative, you can go on about the need to counter the gay menace and abortion. To formulate solutions, you have to recognize the problem and attempt to analyze it. Let’s take health care–what do Republicans see as the problem? Or joblessness–how do Republicans understand the problem? We don’t hear any analysis, only supposed solutions repeated as mantras. That’s because they don’t have solutions, only mantras: Cut taxes. Privatize. Slash social spending. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. One could sense they don’t want to solve social problems and that their only goal is to cut taxes for the rich and redirect all government into something that administers crony capitalism, oh, and bans abortion and gay marriage, and not much more. So when your supposed solutions are actually your goals, how could you possibly come up with good solutions?
July 12th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
For heaven’s sake, Megan has the audacity to write about insurance markets on a blog called “Asymmetric Information” when she is probably entirely incapable of even following a seminal asymmetric information paper about the insurance market like Stiglitz-Rothschild (1976).
Seriously, her economic training does not extend past the few intro econ courses tailored towards managers and marketing executives in an MBA program and she has the nerve to think she can disprove the economic theories of someone who won a Nobel Prize in the very topic that is the namesake of her blog.
Taking her economic ideas seriously is like getting medical advice from someone who can’t even comprehend a single article in a top medical journal.
And her readers! They’re the type that reads the Wikipedia entry on Ludwig Von Mises and all of a sudden think they no more about economics than Paul Krugman and Brad Delong combined.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Funny, then, that so much of the Georgetown/Manhattan/Santa Monica cosmopolites fight tooth and nail against his simple message.
I didn’t see MY fighting tooth and nail against the “family good” stance. He just said it wasn’t interesting, because it isn’t. Most of it is stuff everybody agrees with (nuclear families are nice to have, counseling is better than divorce, it would be nice if there were fewer abortions), and then depending on the specific pro-family advocate there’s some really off-the-wall moral legislation stances (no legal abortions ever under any circumstances, massive government intervention so minors don’t see porn, etc). So not knowing the guy, he’s probably just a generic “hey I love families and puppies and apple pie” conservative who never actually comes up with any ideas to make the things he wants happen.
And, for that matter, against the idea that morality should have anything to do with sex.
Obviously morality should have something to do with sex. Nobody wants the Brave New World-style sex where there’s no intimacy whatsoever in it. What we are against is the nanny government legislating that sex conform to biblical standards, which is apparently what you want.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
No, now you’ve ruined it, you had the beautiful simplicity of cheering an unresearched catch-phrase.
If it were up to me there might be no marriage at all, so I’m a wrong guy to ask. But I can still say “Family Good!” with the best of my Bizarro and TV caveman peers.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Mr. Wilcox apparently wants to end no-fault divorce, would you get on board with that?
Well, let’s see what that would entail:
“Prior to the no-fault divorce revolution, a divorce could be obtained only through a showing of fault of one of the parties in a marriage. This was something more than not loving one another; it meant that one spouse had to plead that the other had committed adultery, abandonment, felony, or other similarly culpable acts.”
Um, no, that’s a completely insane proposal. You’re proposing that two people that dislike each other and have no desire whatsoever to remain married be forced to do so unless one of them commits adultery. Which, of course, means that if they really want to end the marriage one them will purposefully commit adultery just to have legal justification. Yeah, that’s pro-family alright. I’m sorry, but you can’t legislate a long-term loving relationship. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
“conservatives aren’t about finding solutions to personal problems”
You mean problems like unemployment, lack of health care, hurricane bearing down on your city? Yeah, we noticed.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Re: Nobody wants the Brave New World-style sex where there’s no intimacy whatsoever in it.
Evidently you are not too well acquainted with the ‘thought’ processes of the Georgetown cocktail-party crowd. You will find many of them who read ‘Brave New World’ and think, “What an excellent idea!”
July 12th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Evidently you are not too well acquainted with the ‘thought’ processes of the Georgetown cocktail-party crowd. You will find many of them who read ‘Brave New World’ and think, “What an excellent idea!”
Your fevered imaginations of what a group of people think who do not produce anything of value and whose opinions are quite irrelevant is amusing, I suppose. But of about as equal importance.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
In defense of McArdle, she does have a knack of writing posts that stay in your head. Read, for example, her post on the fall of Eastman Kodak
July 12th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Um, no, that’s a completely insane proposal. You’re proposing that two people that dislike each other and have no desire whatsoever to remain married be forced to do so unless one of them commits adultery.
That’s right Adam, we have to keep dysfunctional families together so they can raise dysfunctional children in order to fulfill a comfortable fantasy about how families were perfect Ozzie and Harriet utopias before the the queers, hippies, commies and librulz ruined society.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I came into this thread specifically and explicitly to read people bashing McArdle. You have not disappointed.
God she drives me nuts. I wish there were some way to filter her blog updates off of the main atlantic page – every several days she’ll write a headline I find sort of interesting, I’ll go read half a paragraph, and then I’ll be reminded of why I can’t read her. Very irritating.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Evidently you are not too well acquainted with the ‘thought’ processes of the Georgetown cocktail-party crowd. You will find many of them who read ‘Brave New World’ and think, “What an excellent idea!”
Have you really met any of these “hipsters” or “Georgetown Cocktail Crowd” that you speak of? I don’t think you’d come across many of them in the monestary you must dwell in.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Ya know, the conservative that you don’t hate because he’s not as fire-breathing as the others, so, you’re more willing to overlook his gaps in logic.
You mean the guy who just used his NYT column… well, what TBogg said. No, it’s very easy to dislike Douchehat.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
That’s right Adam, we have to keep dysfunctional families together so they can raise dysfunctional children in order to fulfill a comfortable fantasy about how families were perfect Ozzie and Harriet utopias before the the queers, hippies, commies and librulz ruined society.
Don’t forget the criminal scientists and engineers who are responsible for mechanized agriculture.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Don’t forget the criminal scientists and engineers who are responsible for mechanized agriculture.
You might want to read something else than Quinn and Zerzan, that stuff rots the brain.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
“Conservative Ideas”!!?? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I actually only came in here to talk shit about McArdle, but:
Here’s a news flash BigY, conservatives aren’t about finding solutions to personal problems, and definitely not about Government solutions.
Inasmuch as the American conservative movement’s watchwords are “we don’t solve problems,” I heartily encourage them to stand by them for as long as humanly possible.
It seems to me that it’s at least possible that Democrats would accept my positions, but Republicans or Conservatives couldn’t accept any of them. Am I wrong?
Don, I (a, at least in my own perception, hard-line leftist) can accept everything you describe. I’m increasingly of the belief that market forces are a great way to handle all kinds of issues that aren’t life and death so that we can free up whatever government-interventionist “capital” we have to use in providing basic services and therefore encouraging a mobile, flexible, safe, and free populace.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
The Right’s hurtin’ if the best they can do is McArdle. She combines standard libertarian pap with a less than sophomoric understanding of basic economics. Sheesh, they’d be better off getting “deep thinking” from Jonah.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
For all the connections she creates, McArdle is an often vehement disagreer as well, and a believer in the blogosphere’s power to kill off wrongheaded arguments on the way to something new and important. “It can take a long time,” she says, “but bad ideas do tend to die.”
Let’s hope it won’t take a long time before the Atlantic realizes hiring McArdle was a really bad idea.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
McArdle is often excellent:
Regulatory capture by big business. You know, like the New Deal.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
#45: The first line of that is an example of why she’s not excellent. I’m fairly sure MY, along with virtually every one of his commentors, as well as most other “liberal commentators” I read, said exactly what she’s saying she couldn’t find anywhere. It’s this level of not doing the slightest bit of research before coming to a sweeping conclusion that’s one of the many points against her.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Re: formulate solutions, you have to recognize the problem and attempt to analyze it. Let’s take health care–what do Republicans see as the problem? Or joblessness–how do Republicans understand the problem?
The GOP does not really see these things as serious problems, at least not serious enough to require political intervention. They do understand that others (like the media) see such things as problems, so they toss off their usual shibboleths in response to demonstrate they, yes, they care about these problems and have solutions to offer.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
McArdle an ideas person? Christ almighty.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
McArdle is all about ideas. She’s just too lazy to check whether or not they’re new. Just this week she came up with wage subsidy as an alternative for retraining programs. Next week, who knows? She may invent a machine to toast bread!
July 12th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Yeah, the “right of center” is screwed if you can’t come up with a list of four such people that doesn’t include McArdle.
By the way, there is absolutely an important role to play for people who want to point out where market-based solutions may be a good idea, where regulatory capture is a serious danger, and so on. But in order for that role to be constructive, those people have to be sane and competent, and such people are regrettably unlikely to work their way to the microphone in today’s “conservative” circles.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
When I hear “Megan McArdle”, my dick runs and hides. She should change her name to “frigid swimming pool”.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
i remember a few years ago, Matty, when you were just taken with McArdle. Everything she wrote, no matter how incomprehensibly misbegotten, would get a link from you.
Was I “taken with McArdle” or did we have the same employer?
July 12th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
When I hear “Megan McArdle”, my dick runs and hides. She should change her name to “frigid swimming pool”.
I really don’t think that kind of comment is appropriate.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
I’m going to defend Megan McArdle…well, sort of. She’s an excellent blogger, in that she is adept at generating content that people will read and that will stick in their heads. She produces enough volume to attract a consistent audience. And unless she is multi-handling as members of her own fan club, she has also managed to attract a set of groupies to support her at every turn. The Atlantic was wise to hire her, in that she must do well in generating hits for the website.
The mistake made by many of my fellow travelers is that they presume that her lack of depth is some sort of liability. For a journalist or a university professor, that would be problematic, but for a pop culture tastemaker or politician in training, that can actually be an asset.
The fact that she can so blatantly misinterpret the material that she critiques and has no fear of building strawmen — just take a look at the opening sentence of post #45 above for a perfect example of using unsupported claim around which to construct a piece — makes her well equipped to become a party propagandist, should she choose to be one. The fact that she disguises herself as a libertarian is even better, as it gives her the appearance of being feisty and independent. That’s a great brand to have, and she knows how to work it.
She’s really the next George Will, able to put a faux-intellectual lipstick on what is ultimately a shallow pig. The Democratic party in particular would be much better off if they could learn the same skills. Blunt intellectualism offends a lot of Americans, who are generally suspicious of overly articulate, intelligent people, and we’d all be better off if we could do a bit better at playing dumb, but looking smart while we do it.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
McArdle…ideas? Bwahahahahaha!!!! I’d rather get open heart surgery from a plumber.
Hell, from Joe the Plummer even.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Was I “taken with McArdle” or did we have the same employer?
It did always seem to me The Atlantic had some sort of link-your-fellow-bloggers quota system, but has this been confirmed in public?
July 12th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
The problem for the right in the realm of policy ideas is that it does not really believe in government. Sarah Palin’s ignorance of policy issues is a perfect illustration of the fact that the modern Conservative Movement expects its elected leaders to turn over the effective governng of the state to a private oligarchy where the US economy will be directed by business interests and social policy will be in the hands of the leaders of the Religious Right. That is really the crossroads America is at today — whether we believe that political power should be invested in a democratically elected and accountable state, or whether a ruling junta or oligarchy will rule behind the fascade of a weak state with figureheads like Palin.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
The one time Yglesias actually reads and responds to his commenters is when he defends himself against accusations that he was taken with Megan McArdle and defends McArdle against an inappropriate comment. When he neglects to label one of the axes of a chart, rendering it meaningless, and scores of comments stack up complaining: no response, no correction. When readers are helpfully informed of the fact that Ryan M. Powers is typing, and scores of comments stack up complaining: no response, no correction. Whenever he writes a post linking to Megan McArdle, and the comment thread consists heavily of requests that he stop linking to her: no response, no justification of his continued paying attention to her.
Really Matt, your readers care a lot more that you justify why you’re not ignoring her rather than that you pick out the couple of puerile comments about her and say what the rest of us are already thinking.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Huh, I was wrong, it took until the second comment for the McArdle-bashing to start.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Adam,
I don’t know whether the law should forbid no-fault divorce. The age of difficult divorce had many evils associated with it, and our age has many evils of its own. In a strictly _moral_ sense, I take heed of this saying:
“It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”
Divorce is an evil, always and everywhere. Sometimes it is the lesser of two evils, and sometimes it is a necessary evil, because we live in a fallen world. It is also said,
“Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
And again, “All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.” The law should recognize the fact that 1) divorce is always a bad thing, and 2) that sometimes it is the lesser of two evils. How the law can best recognize these two opposed truths, I’m really not certain.
As far as churches go, I do not think that remarriages should be allowed for the guilty party, and for the innocent party only when sufficient grounds for the divorce are shown.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
And let me further say this: if I was designing an ideal country, I would make the laws about divorce fairly tight, and I would not allow remarriage (either religious or civil) except in extreme circumstances (especially for the guilty party). That said, we don’t live in a society based either on natural law or on Christian teaching, so I’m not sure that the law needs to mirror morality here. I’m not a big fan of the concept of civil marriage anyway, so one could argue it doesn’t particularly matter what civilly married people do.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
54:
Ugh, no, you’ve forced me to defend the least convincing toupee-wearer on TV since Alan Brady. Will is much, much smarter and a far better writer. The only thing he shares with McArdle is an inclination to prevaricate–and the almost monomanical tendancy to forge ahead when he should be walking back from “ideas” that have been thoroughly debunked.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
“I really don’t think that kind of comment is appropriate.”
Well, no, it’s not, but have you seen some of the other comments that come in here? Pornographic ridicule of your boss? People posting as outed bloggers? Comments on the attractiveness of each and every woman pictured in one of your entries? Nice of you to join us today!
July 12th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
More to the point—and I know some people will passionately disagree—there’s no rule against deleting a comment from one’s own blog, and if the comment adds nothing to the conversation but a sexist insult some of us would welcome that move.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
July 12th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Divorce is an evil, always and everywhere. Sometimes it is the lesser of two evils, and sometimes it is a necessary evil, because we live in a fallen world.
OK, with thinking like that, let’s put Hector on the list of up-and-coming center-right thinkers and take Megan off.
I too came to these comments to enjoy the Megan bashing, and I think the “psuedo-intellectual Sarah Palin” comment was pretty much right on. They’re both terribly wrong, dumber than they should be, mysteriously attractive and endlessly fascinating. I’d have a little more pity for Megan if her ideas didn’t invariably comfort the comfortable by afflicting the afflicted.
But that is the one remaining Republican idea, isn’t it?
July 12th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Give Matt a break. He not only hosts comments for his own blog, but also a large share of comments for The Corner.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
As I recall, you claim to be an Anglican. How exactly did the Anglican Church come about again?
July 12th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Hector: once you hit pubescence, you’re in a position where your opinions on marriage can be taken with anything other than a bellyful of laughter.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Oh, and IIRC didn’t they put a blue box around Matt’s real comments after some people impersonated him and his boss in the comment threads complaining about the Third Way thing? I might be wrong, since he doesn’t post in the comment threads often, but if that’s still in affect then the comments could be fake (only the first one really seems suspect, though it’s possible it’s sarcastic).
July 12th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
not only does the atlantic pay mccardle money, but shes now on npr/pri’s marketplace show prattling on. i switch the radio to sportstalk at that point.
this to me is one modern conservative idea that rules them all – dont pay attention to any problem until its too late and costs 100x more to fix than if you did it sooner + add suffering, death, and ruination to the final tally, unless that problem involves something like taking a brain dead woman off of life support.
July 12th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Calling Megan McArdle, who has been writing professionally for the better part of this decade, an up and comer is like calling a 38 year old a young republican.
Oh, wait….
July 12th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
MY’s blog is where I go to satisfy my never-ending thirst for vicious, misogynistic Megan McArdle bashing. This blog has to break some kind of record for threads where people say the same thing again and again and again.
I’m starting to wonder if MY knows that this happens, and keeps subtly egging it on (e.g. “I wonder if McArdle is thoughtful conservative thinker?”) in order to make up for the time when we was required to link to his Atlantic colleagues.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:06 am
[...] does the media always insist on pretending that modern conservatism has any serious policy designs? The last eight years and John McCain and [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 1:59 am
When libertarians build an alliance with evengalical christians, you know for them, their own ideology is just a cheap excuse to watch other people die on the street while lifing a good life and feel good about it.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Megan McArdle is not an ideas person, and she sucks. That is all.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:11 am
I forgot about those! Maybe they look good w/ the right outfit? I didn’t like skinny jeans when I first saw them. lol. I would love some feedback on my site
roofing contractor when you got time.
July 13th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I would agree that on occasion commentary against McArdle encourages sexist remarks; however, for my part, I’d just point out that I’d rather hear from hack anti-New Deal propagandist Amity Schlaes than any more of McArdle’s glibertarian warbling.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Re: As I recall, you claim to be an Anglican. How exactly did the Anglican Church come about again?
Sweet Lord, not this historically illiteracy again. Although usually I hear it from Catholics, not agnostics. Henry sought an annulment, _not_ a divorce. The annulment was on the grounds that his marriage to Catherine was incestuous according to Levitical law (Lev. 18:16, as well as following St. John the Baptist’s condemnation of Herod for an analogous sin). Specifically, the King’s lawyers argued that the prohibition on incest was so fundamental and rooted in- yes, you got it, “natural law”- that no one, not even the Pope, could dispense with it. This argument is, to me, compelling, and viewed in the right light actually upholds natural law.
In regards to the matter of _divorce_, the Anglican church, as a branch of the holy Catholic Apostolic church, categorically forbade divorce from the 16th thru 19th centuries, and was no different from the Catholics. In the 20th century, the policy became that they would recognize and welcome divorced people, and allow them to participate in the sacraments, but that they would not perform remarriages except for the innocent party in certain situations. This strikes me as the right policy, in keeping with the Church of England’s apostolic tradition. Recently there have been efforts to liberalize the policy which I believe is a mistake. Churches can and should recognize remarried people and welcome them into the church but they should _not_, except in rare circumstances, perform remarriages.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I don’t know whether the law should forbid no-fault divorce. The age of difficult divorce had many evils associated with it, and our age has many evils of its own. In a strictly _moral_ sense, I take heed of this saying:
That’s perfectly fine. You’re free to use whatever book you like for your moral guidance. What I have a problem with is people who want to force their moral beliefs on others through laws. I’m certainly in favor of individual churches or denominations setting such rules, while the government is much less stringent. It appears that’s what you’re saying as well, in which case we agree.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Sweet Lord, not this historically illiteracy again. Although usually I hear it from Catholics, not agnostics. Henry sought an annulment, _not_ a divorce.
Right, he “discovered” after 24 years of marriage that his marriage was incestuous. Or, the girl he wanted to bang would only do so if she were Queen, so he found a legal loophole in the Bible. I think this illustrates quite well why having strict divorce laws is such a dumb idea in the first place: people who really want to get around them will do so through whatever legal manipulations necessary.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:03 am
>>for years now there conservative movement has been very bad at identifying concrete problems in people’s lives and laying out things they’d like to change that would ameliorate those problems
They have relatively little interest in ameliorating those problems: at least by way of government.
They believe (somehow) that “free enterprise” will do the job.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:08 am
The problem for the right in the realm of policy ideas is that it does not really believe in government.
Democrats only create problems for themselves by making statements such as this. You’re only helping to bolster right-wing talking points, using their own branding to perpetuate falsehoods.
The Republican party does not believe in small government. They have no concerns whatsoever with interfering with privacy rights, using government to breach due process, or transferring funds into the hands of religious non-profits to do their bidding. They have no problem with using debt in lieu of taxation in order to finance their agendas. The GOP has no fear of an expanding government, it just has different locations in which it would like to see government expanded.
Democrats and liberals should be attacking these talking points at their foundations and hammer on how false they are, in order to point their opponents on the defensive. It should be made clear that the party that is allegedly tough on terrorism did not try very hard to catch the worst terrorist of the bunch, and that the party that claims fiscal responsibility is generally anything but fiscally responsible. The right obviously has no qualms about building up strawmen and pulling them down, and there should be a concerted effort to beat them at that game.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:23 am
re: drill baby drill. None of the “drill baby drill” advocates ever took the idea to it’s logical conclusion. Their idea was that increasing domestic oil production would force prices down. But the amount of oil available from increased domestic supplies represented only a small portion of the US domestic demand, and an even lesser portion of the total worldwide demand. But even assuming that opening up the alaska or continental shelf fields would make the US 100% self-sufficient, it still would not lower the price. Consider if you’re exxon, and pull a barrel of oil out of the ground, you’re going to sell it to the highest bidder. Therefore the only way that more drilling, even assuming it would result in 100% of the US demand, would be to nationalize the US domestic oil industry. That’s why gas is cheap in mexico; there’s a domestic price that refiners pay well below the worldwide price. I’m pretty sure that republicans would have opposed nationalization.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:45 am
You’d start with a layout of nine concentric circles, decreasing in elevation towards the center?
July 13th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
If conservatives are going to actually run on the platform that if elected they will make sure the government does not provide any solutions or help for these…how do they expect to attract votes?
See: Southern Stategy, GaysGunsGod
July 13th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
#86:
..which is to say that the above two methods worked for thirty years. As to the future, my money says they will exploit 1) misplaced worry about the deficit, incited largely by their own agitprop and 2) Obama’s missteps, like the too-tepid stimulus.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Re: It appears that’s what you’re saying as well, in which case we agree.
That’s not really what I’m saying. I agree that legally, people should be able to _leave_ an unhappy (or, even more, an abusive or unhealthy) marriage if they really want to. What I’m not so sure of is whether they should have the right to _remarry_ after that. (In other words, whether the state and the church should recognize their post-divorce relationships as valid marriages). If I were helping design a nation from scratch, the answer would clearly be no (in most cases). In the United States, the question is open. It would certainly be a violation of human freedom to _legally_ force two people who hate one another to stay married. But once they’ve separated, should they have the right to remarry (in other words, to have the state place its seal of approval on their relationship with their new partners)? Not necessarily. The state should _tolerate_ divorce but it should not encourage or approve of it.
As for Henry and Catherine, the marriage was flatly incestuous according to both Leviticus and the Gospels, and that’s all there is to it, 24 years or not.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Megan McArdle is proof of the fact that any libertarian uterus will get a job. Period.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Re: As for Henry and Catherine, the marriage was flatly incestuous according to both Leviticus and the Gospels, and that’s all there is to it, 24 years or not.
The question hung on whether Catherine’s marriage to Henry’s brother had been consummated or not. She swore up and down that it had not been, though the two had lived under one roof for six months before he died. This loophole is what allowed the Pope to grant a dispensation. Years later Henry later argued that A) the former marriage had been consummated (I think there were old servants produced who swore to that) and B) the Pope had no business granting dispensations to divine ordinances anyway. On which latter point a huge number of theologians and canon law experts, even in Rome itself, agreed with him.
July 13th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
OK I got it. Henry and/or Catherine did/did not do something/anything evil/good, resulting in horror/bliss for the known world/them. Fine. Now count the angels on the next pin(head) that gets off the (short)bus, and be sure to let us know within a 5% probability of whatever floats your particular boat. Let us know when you’re done. In the meantime, the rest of us will go on with a life.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Re: She swore up and down that it had not been, though the two had lived under one roof for six months before he died.
Yes, I’m aware of Catherine’s interesting claim, and I consider it, charitably, BS. The two had lived together, which was generally taken as an indication of consummation, they were both around the age of sexual maturity, and Arthur had boasted at the time of having had sexual intercourse with his wife, viz. “I was in the middle of Spain last night”. Moreover even if Catherine and Arthur had never done it, the doubt surrounding this ‘fact’ should have made the wedding invalid anyway: it could have encouraged people to think that Herodian incest was OK, and thus was condemnable on the grounds of the sin of scandal. The Pope had granted similar annulments before, and his refusal to do so in this case was a craven act of surrender to Spanish pressure, which cast grave doubt on his claim to be the infallible Vicar of Christ on Earth. As you eloquently put it, the Pope had no grounds to be granting dispensations to what was a matter of both divine and natural law.
Semiadult,
Grow up.