Reading the left-wing articles #1

Sometimes I feel masochistic enough to read left-wing articles and report on them - I believe it is my attempt to give back to community, as some liberals would say. In the next few installments, for public amusement, I will dissect 4 articles written by liberals - and this post will be the first entry in the series.

Article #1. "Red Family, Blue Family" by By ROSS DOUTHAT, the New York Slimes.

This is an article devoted to an explosive topic of broken families, divorces, out-of-wedlock childbirths and the like. The author attempts to show his cleverness, unparalleled worldliness and ability to understand the complexity of the world - the traits so lacking by the primitive brutes aka conservatives. The article starts with the truth (don't forget that the greatest propagandists and thieves always taught that at first you need to find the common ground with audience - and only then you can sneak in a bunch of baloney):

Fifty years ago, American family structures were remarkably uniform. The rich married at roughly the same rate as the poor and middle class. Divorce rates were low for the college educated and high school graduates alike. Out-of-wedlock births, while more common among African-Americans, were rare in almost every region and community.

That was a long time ago. The intact two-parent family has been in eclipse for decades now: last week, the Pew Research Center reported that in 2008, 41 percent of American births occurred outside of marriage, the highest figure yet recorded. And from divorce rates to teen births, nearly every indicator of family life now varies dramatically by education, race, geography and income.

The beginning was actually quite good, and I was ready to find out if this New York Slimes' journalist actually had decided to analyse the family issues seriously. But alas, the next passage proved to me that his brain could not handle the burdens of hard intellectual labor and gave up. According to Ross, both conservatives and liberals agree on how the break up of American family had come about. Of course, this is utter nonsense, and it is clearly demonstrated by Ross' aversion to list the reasons that are cited by conservatives. According to Ross:

First, the sexual revolution overturned the old order of single-earner households, early marriages, and strong stigmas against divorce and unwed motherhood.

The most remarkable feature of the article, is that this highly celebrated, Harvard educated journalist, does not realize that the list that starts and ends with "First" is nonsensical. Indeed, an attentive reader would notice that nothing follows Ross' proposed first step in the family break up. For some reason, he forgets to mention the welfare system, which supports, promotes and allows single-parenthood. He also left unmentioned the systematic glorification of single-parenthood by Hollywood. Last but not least, the liberal controlled education system bans any attempts to depict single-parenthood as abhorrent. All three of these developments undoubtedly increased the rate of out-wedlock childbirths, broken families and teen-pregnancies, and all three are widely acknowledged by conservative experts. Did Ross miss these reasons due to ignorance - or should we presume that the NY Slimes editor took his job titles too seriously and simply edited them out? And moreover and once again - why did his count ended so mysteriously with number One - what happened with number Two, Three and even Four?

The next passage in his article proves once again that liberalism is a mental disorder:

Today, couples with college and (especially) graduate degrees tend to cohabit early and marry late, delaying childbirth and raising smaller families than their parents, while enjoying low divorce rates and bearing relatively few children out of wedlock.

For the rest of the country, this comfortable equilibrium remains out of reach. In the underclass (black, white and Hispanic alike), intact families are now an endangered species. For middle America, the ideal of the two-parent family endures, but the reality is much more chaotic: early marriages coexist with frequent divorces, and the out-of-wedlock birth rate keeps inching upward.

It would be interesting to understand what Harvard educated Ross meant by the term "remains out of reach". Not having kids out of wedlock is not same as flying to the Moon - you can easily reach it if you want to. Not sticking a penis into a woman's vagina before marriage would achieve 100% certainty that you won't have a baby - how exactly is this "out of reach" for the rest of the country? I can distinctly sense at least half a dozen possible ways to play word games with his expression "out of reach" - but none would let me reach the conclusion that chastity, modesty and a moderate attempt to control one's urges are "out of reach" to the underclass. Are we supposed to believe that the underclass is inherently incapable of self-control? And if so - how can we let them vote? These are not people, these are animals - if we follow Ross' insane ramblings. What if we tie them all up - would that make family stability more reachable for them - or they will still find a way to push normal marriage out of reach and knock up everyone in sight? Is this underclass filled with sexual supermen who can impregnate women through air?

And then comes the passage that really pisses me off - because of its explosive combination of intellectual laziness, stupidity and arrogance:

The authors [of a "provocative new book by two law professors, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone" which blindly repeats all liberal cliches] depict a culturally conservative “red America” that’s stuck trying to sustain an outdated social model. By insisting (unrealistically) on chastity before marriage, Cahn and Carbone argue, social conservatives guarantee that their children will get pregnant early and often (see Palin, Bristol), leading to teen childbirth, shotgun marriages and high divorce rates.

To start with - what is the basis to conclude that conservative vision of the family is outdated? Mind you, I am no prude myself, and I have a really hard time imagining that someone would abstain from sex before marriage - but still, I cannot conclude that this model is outdated. I may say that this idea is insane - but I have no reason to conclude that it is outdated.

Moreover, the idea that a normal couple should wait until marriage before having children, that a divorce is a horrible trauma to children and should be avoided at all costs - such an idea cannot possibly become outdated because it is undoubtedly correct. Lastly, neither Ross, nor his partners in crime (even their names - Naomi and June are clear indications of dysfunctional families) attempt to correlate the rate of divorce, single-parenthood and out-of-wedlock childbirths to family's political beliefs (liberal or conservative). All three proclaim that "socially conservative states have more family instability than, say, the culturally liberal Northeast" but refuse to examine if the broken families in the conservative states tend to vote for liberals or conservatives. Why the sudden lack of curiosity? Is it because authors are stupid or they are trying to fit their conclusions into an outdated (there's a correct use of this word!) liberal ideology?

In short, the New York Slimes article is written by an idiot for idiots (a standard occasion for the aforementioned newspaper) - and I felt quite foreign among the readers of this paper. And still, I believe my efforts were not in vain, and I hope I saved the readers of my blog a tone of time and a mega-tone of brain cells by writing this review.