Would you trust this man with a razor?

Kudos to Matthew Schmitz for his beautiful summary of what has been called “reverse Whiggism” or medieval hipster irony. I plan to link it often when this sort of thing comes up.

My review of the Robert Putnam phenomenon Our Kids runs on TGC this morning. Oh, and in addition to the phenomenon, I also review the book:

The content of the book is less important to these discussions than the symbolic importance of the fact that one of the major intellectual heroes of the American Left is arguing that the breakdown of the family destroys the poor. I wish I could write two reviews: one of Our Kids the book—the actual words printed on the pages—and another of Our Kids the public phenomenon. The latter is much better than the former.

See here and here for the past debate on HT over whether the core institutions of American society are waking up to these problems. Our Kids the phenomenon reinforces my belief that they are. Our Kids the book shows how far they are from being able to understand the nature of the problem and the needed solutions:

Putnam’s list of solutions is full of magical thinking. Vocational education must be radically expanded, but without creating a two-tier education system; day care for children must be radically expanded, but without displacing the role of parents in children’s lives. He even urges us not to champion marriage. Instead we should hand out an endless river of condoms, and pour enormous amounts of money into the exact same welfare and educational programs that have failed consistently for 50 years. School choice is of course out of the question, even though Putnam’s own data show it works; no doubt this is because it increases the power of the family against the state.

Although Putnam emphasizes that family and community structures are more effective than government programs, because of his economic determinism virtually all his proposed solutions involve expanding government programs. The possibility that these programs are becoming a substitute for family and community structures, so expanding them will make the problem worse, is not raised—not even when (as with day care) it seems blindingly obvious. For Putnam, that thought would be unspeakable blasphemy.

There’s also a fascinating mini-case-study in the tension between the Left’s economic determinism and its desire to fight racial injustice. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Yesterday, First Things carried an exchange between HT’s own Dan Kelly and Yale prof Andrew March on the question of whether the Windsor decision, which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, strengthens or weakens religious pluralism. Both contributors did an outstanding job – but I’m the editor, so I’m biased, check it out for yourself! As I wrote in my comment on the exchange:

The most interesting aspect of the debate for me is the question of “dignity.” Kelly attacks the court for presuming to confer human dignity upon practitioners of same-sex marriage; the law, he argues, cannot confer dignity upon human beings—and it cannot even effectively compel people to recognize one another’s human dignity. March, for his part, accepts the possibility of “justifiable transfers from one ledger to another in the national economy of dignity,” pointing to civil rights laws. For my own part, I have never gone as far as my friend Dan in discounting the role of public law in constructing our conceptions of meaning and purpose. We are, after all, cultural creatures. But I share his view that we cannot really form a meaningful concept of dignity that would make it subject to redistribution through political action—dignity isn’t dignity unless it’s intrinsic.

Jim Geraghty reports that Mike Huckabee recently signed an endorsement deal in which he “rips [the] ‘mainstream medical community'” on behalf of a shady diabetes product. From the description, he would appear to be implicitly but very clearly urging diabetics not to avail themselves of the medical care they need:

Prescription drugs aren’t going to cure you. They’re only going to keep you a loyal pill-popping, finger-pricking, insulin-shooting customer so Big Pharma and the mainstream medical community can rake in over $100 billion annually.

Shameless and disgusting if done at any time. Done while publicly declaring that he’s “leaning towards” running for president? “Everybody grab a broom!” (Major content warning at that link.)

Update: Okay, out of fairness – yes, you can manage the symptoms of diabetes without insulin, if you alter your diet in severe ways. And yes, some doctors recommend doing the finger-prick test more often than you need to, because the system of which they’re a part profits from overuse of those tests. But the suggestion here is that the medicine does no good and is all a sham. Moreover, there is no cure for diabetes, but this ad strongly suggests that in fact, there is, and the doctors are hiding it from you. Check out how Huckabee is labeled on screen in the video:

Sorry, there are no “former diabetics.” Broom this man at once.

Your honor, I rise in opposition to papal ninjas.

Peter insists that in spite of jocularity he has a serious point, so I will insist on taking it seriously. One of the major problems with Roman ecclesiology – and with the ecclesiologies of many Protestants and Orthodox as well! – is that it requires the institutional church to be two things at the same time that no institution can be at the same time: the conscience of Christendom and a political authority. The reason no institution can be both at the same time is because all political authorities are constantly involved, for reasons of state, in a variety of hypocrisies and shenanigans. (For a scholarly analysis of the reasons why political authority necessarily involves this kind of thing, see Batman.)

It is not my purpose today to emphasize the intrinsic impossibility of this juxtaposition. Whether or not it could ever be done, the more important point is that it never has, in fact, been done. And for a long time this caused no end of trouble.

But it has not caused trouble in Rome in recent times. The Vatican has blessed the whole world and empowered itself as a moral voice by recusing itself – mostly voluntarily – from the role of political authority. For obvious reasons it cannot formally renounce its claim to have the right to play that role. But in the 20th century it has wisely chosen not to press that claim, and as a result it has emerged as a global moral authority on an unprecedented scale.

Today, there are more and more Catholics and Protestants who, under the influence of Alasdair MacIntyre and other deadly enemies of brotherly love, want to go back to the old way. They long once again for the impossible dream of the institution that will be both prophet and king. And none of them, in my experience, is even beginning to think about the monstrous consequences that would result.

I recently sat in an academic seminar and listed to a respectable Catholic intellectual express the view that he would like to see all non-Catholics forcibly torn out of their homes and expelled from their communities. He insisted that this could be accomplished without putting people in prison or violent confrontation. I hear more and more of this sort of irresponsible thinking.

Papal ninjas would be a first step on a very dangerous road.