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Culture Clips—June 1 , 2004
Compiled by Sylvia Finlayson
Associate Editor, Meridian Magazine

Ignoring the Trends to Our Peril

The breakdown in marriage over the last 50 years carries a cost: America has evolved from being a culture of belonging to being a culture of rejection, and its children are paying the price.

National survey data repeatedly show that the most positive outcomes are in those families where the parents have always belonged to each other and to their children: the intact married family. These families are less likely to live in poverty, depend on welfare and grapple with addictions to drugs and alcohol, among other problems.

Mind you, no responsible researcher would stipulate that all children who come from married families have no problems or that those from single-parent homes are guaranteed to fail; we're talking about trends here. After all, rejection and indifference do the damage, and that can happen in the intact family, too.

Still, if, in a well-intentioned effort to spare the feelings of those around us, we ignore these trends, we do so at our peril. The data show that when fathers and mothers belong to each other in marriage, their children thrive -- and the more they belong to each other, the better off their children are. But when parents are indifferent or walk away from each or reject each other, their children don't thrive as much -- and many wilt a lot.

Patrick F. Fagan
The Miami Herald
5/29/04
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A Disconcerting Reality

"We may have come a long way since women were associated too narrowly with nurture; but we seem to have reached the opposite pole. Women now take the lead, by far, in dissolving families for reasons that usually are less than clear-cut. ...

"Media sentimentality about 'love,' to which women may be more sensitive, may indeed have created expectations that few real-life marriages can meet. ...

"[T]he part of the society in which the divorce culture is strongest is also the part that most tends to deny that there's a need to fight and to blame the country itself for the war instead of the cold-blooded killers who are attacking it. ... Is the divorce culture compatible with patriotism? If people, in childhood, experience having a decent father move to a different apartment, are they as likely to identify with the larger society when they grow up?"

P. David Hornik
American Spectator
5/24/04
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Again, Why Are Women in Combat?

The American women of Abu Ghraib have put to eternal rest any notion that girls are made of sugar 'n' spice and prompted a flurry of possible answers to the question: How could women have done such things?

In searching for answers myself, I've managed mostly to come up with a question I've posed before: What the heck were women doing there in the first place? The last time I asked that question I was referring to Jessica Lynch. I'll keep asking it, even though I know the answer.

It is political correctness, scourge of our times. That intellectual burlesque that places greater value on protecting political sensibilities than on protecting our nation through attention to political realities.

No single person can be blamed, most likely, as the lie that makes men and women equal in all things is a culture-wide deceit. Ehrenreich says she always supported women in the military because she "knew women could fight, and because the military is one of the few options around for low-income young people."

Undoubtedly, some women can fight. And it's true that military service is often a dead ender's exit. But neither assertion satisfies the only question necessary to national defense: Does the presence of women advance or delay the goal of security?

In most combat situations requiring physical strength and endurance, most women clearly fall under the "delay" column.

It's easy to blame the president or the secretary of defense for what happened at Abu Ghraib, but we're all to blame for insisting that nothing matters as much as advancing the myth of gender equality. It's time to grow up and put our PC notions to rest before our enemies do it for us.

Kathleen Parker
Townhall
5/29/04
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Brainwashed to Hate America

As with most British people, my first impressions of America were formed by television. For my family in the 1960s, this meant the BBC alone. We had one of those "snobbish" televisions, not unusual at that time, that could not get the only other channel, ITV.

. . . what I - and presumably millions of others - were hearing from …. the BBC was a particular narrative about America.

This picture of the United States was not all wrong, but it was notable for what it missed out. I learnt very little about the vigour of the freedom provided for under the American Constitution, the country's encouragement of large-scale immigration, its rising living standards. I did not know how well America had reconstructed Germany, Japan and the economies of western Europe after the war.

The BBC did not preach to me about the Soviet threat with the same ardour that it preached about racial prejudice. I therefore thought that America was very violent and very backward, and I could never quite understand why such a country was by far the most powerful in the world. If I asked people why, they would say, "Oh well, it's because it's so rich," as if wealth were something that simply descended upon you without the contribution of human effort. As a result, I understood very little about America.

Today, we are presented with a similar narrative - so powerful that I find that 90 per cent of people here believe it, even those who think of themselves as conservative. The narrative is that America is bullying and naive about the outside world. It is very keen on killing people. George W Bush is taken to embody these characteristics, since he wears cowboy boots and is inarticulate and prays a lot. (Fine for Muslims to pray, not for Christians.)

Charles Moore
Daily Telegraph
5/29/04
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Borderline Compassion

"One of President Bush's most recent 'compassionate' initiatives has indirectly led to more horrific deaths along the Arizona-Mexico border. Bush's proposal for a quasi-amnesty for illegal aliens has been interpreted by poor Mexicans as a welcome mat, increasing the rate of attempted border crossings and the tragic deaths that go with them. Sixty-one people have died along the Arizona border since last October, a threefold increase from the rate of the previous year. ...

"If we really want to encourage more Mexicans to come here, we should have the decency to help ensure their safe passage. If we don't ... then all talk of any sort of amnesty should be dropped, and our seriousness about enforcing immigration laws should be broadcast so clearly that it is understood even in the far reaches of Mexico. ...

"Poor Mexicans don't follow every intricacy of America's political debate, but they get the message when the president is proposing to reward illegal entry into the United States. ... Some illegals are shocked that they are arrested coming across the border: 'Hey, where's my amnesty?' "

Rich Lowry
National Review
5/25/04
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