Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
Progressives Just Can't Help Themselves:
Opining on the Regulation of Marriage
I know what my readers must be thinking: what does this never-married bachelor know about marriage? In fact, I am concerned: most comparative divorce statistics consistently show the United States among the highest rates in the world (almost half of new marriages, e.g., here).
I have mentioned to readers before (e.g., in discussion of infant mortality rates) that one should always look at comparative statistics with caution because there are often apples-and-oranges issues. In fact, since marriage and divorce are regulated (without common standards, statistics gathered, etc.) by the states (not the federal government), we have another layer of apples and oranges. Typically, we see the comparison of marriages and divorces per 1000 in the population. It's not a clean comparison, because most marriages last longer than the 72 days it took for celebrity Kim Kardashian to file for divorce after her first wedding; the divorce rate includes couples whom have been married any number of years. Looking at marriages over time, the divorce rate lowers to about 40%. A number of factors are associated with longer marriage, e.g., socioeconomic success (e.g., income, higher education, etc.) and children.
I would venture to guess that couples whom are regular church-goers, like my parents and siblings, also have more stable marriages overall. All six siblings have had successful marriages. Interestingly enough, 4 of my siblings married non-Catholics; 3 of those in-laws have since converted to Catholicism, the oldest and longest married one just recently, and the remaining spouse has regularly gone to Mass with my sister since they were married years ago. To be honest, almost every couple I have ever known is still in their original marriage. (I think that a nephew and one of my cousins had divorced their wives. There were unusual circumstances in these cases; for example, my cousin decided that he didn't like living in Australia.)
Of course, I have known some divorced people. The year after I left the Navy, I flew to the Orlando wedding of my best friend and fellow Navy instructor Joe whom married Lynne, also a fellow math instructor, whom had divorced her idiosyncratic first husband (e.g., he once locked her out of their house). As an ensign, I had had a bit of a crush on unavailable Lynne; I remember one day Lynne, who had magnificent long, curly dark hair, came to work with a hairstyle without curls. I protested to Lynne: why mess with perfection? Joe then said, "Lynne, pay no attention to Ron: I like your hair just the way it is." So we were arguing about her hairstyle, and Lynne seemed to be thrilled with the attention. Later, I said, "Joe, remember the first time I met Lynne, you told me to cool my jets, that she was taken? Why did you just score points with Lynne at my expense?" Joe said, "Well, you never know what'll happen..." How ironic it was a couple of years later, when I went on my first date with this tall girl; she was upset at me for some reason. I later found out that she had her hair done for our date, and I hadn't seemed to notice or complimented her on it.
We also see statistics cited predicting even higher rates, allegedly based on US Census statistics, for second or third marriages (e.g., 60 to 70%). As an empirical researcher, I'm deeply suspicious about "statistics that lie", so this is a good time to excerpt a relevant discussion from Kalman Heller (my edits):
A false conclusion in the 1970s that half of all first marriages ended in divorce was based on the simple but completely wrong analysis of the marriage and divorce rates per 1,000 people in the United States. A similar abuse of statistical analysis led to the conclusion that 60 percent of all second marriages ended in divorceThe commonly quoted numbers are overstated myths, the more accurate numbers reflect complex factors, and that our society really has two very separate divorce rates, a lower rate (by half) for college-educated women who marry after the age of 25 and a much higher rate for poor, primarily minority women who marry before the age of 25 and do not have a college degree. It is now clear that the divorce rate in first marriages probably peaked at about 40 percent for first marriages around 1980 and has been declining since to about 30 percent in the early 2000s.What started this rant? Jennifer Nagy, a recently divorced 29-year-old PR analyst whom married at 19, published a Huffington Post commentary, advocating pushing the minimum age of 25. Comedian Steve Crowder (remember the conservative rap video "Mr. America"?) wrote a worthy rebuttal (also see the embedded video below).
I understand that Ms. Nagy is jaded and her perspective is warped through the prism of her own experience and interpretation of misleading statistics, but what incensed me, for obvious reasons, was the way she ended her rant:
Who knows? Maybe there are 20-year-olds that get married and stay madly in love for their whole lives. Maybe puppy love can last forever.
Could be. Maybe there is such thing as fairies and unicorns too.
Just saying...You see, my Mom was 18 when she married my Dad, who had himself just turned 21. And she was 19 when I was born 13 months later. My folks had to put up with the Jennifer Nagy's of their own back then. So, before resuming my commentary, I want to dedicate one of my folks' favorite songs to them:
Nat King Cole had it right. My folks are still the cutest in-love couple I know. And they made it without college, with 7 kids, and an enlisted man's salary (which wasn't much back then). Five of the kids have college degrees, and a third sibling is working on her first Master's degree. Two of my siblings married while their husbands were still in college, a third just after graduation, and a fourth (no college) got married around the same age, all below Nagy's cutoff. All of those marriages are going strong.
Now, let me get to the policy issue: as a libertarian-conservative, the social conservative side of my philosophy wants to support the institution of marriage, e.g., raise barriers both to entry and exit. I don't like quickie Vegas weddings, etc.
Do I know some people should never get married? Yes. I'll give an example to make my point. This is not a story. I was doing a gig in the western suburbs of Chicago in the mid-to-late 1990's; the business was a packaging products business (e.g., box sets for CD or DVD collections). The consultant DBA on the ERP project was supposed to transition to me. Let's just say many DBA's I've met are odd people. He was a shorter white guy whom I think used to work for Oracle Consulting and had started his own consulting business. He was a survivalist (remember the Y2K scare?), a huge fan of the Backstreet Boys (not most grown men I knew were) and a fitness fanatic whom, I believe, offered to give me $50 if I threw out everything in my refrigerator and pantry and bought "healthy" stuff. He gave me my first envelopes of EAS Myoplex, totally out his pocket; he was genuinely concerned about my health. (I was working out every other day, so I wasn't in bad shape at the time.)
He had recently married a woman of color, whom was pregnant with their first child. (I never did meet her.) I'm trying to recall the exact context of the conversation; I mostly remember the outrageous things he said in response. I probably asked him something like, "Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?" "A girl. It had better be a girl." Now in hindsight, I should have just stopped the conversation there, but I was curious why it had better be a girl. He turned, looked at me straight in the eye and said, "Because I don't want a little black boy looking up at me and calling me 'daddy'."
I still can't believe anybody said that; I think it's one of the most heartless things I've ever heard another human being say. I tried to regroup and said, "But chances are that your daughter will be black, too." "That's different. I like black girls. My wife is black. I just don't want a black son." I must have asked him at some point what was the story of their relationship (my guess is they must have met at some fitness center). He was quite clinical: "I wanted to have sex with her. I'm a Christian; I don't believe in sex outside of marriage. So we got married." The odd thing was that he never said 'love' once in the whole discussion. And he said similar type things again on subsequent occasions.
There was a part of me that wanted to reach out to his wife and warn her to leave this guy. (Heaven knows what danger she was in; some of these fitness buffs use designer steroids.) Had she heard what I heard? How could she not know how he really felt about her and their baby? Maybe she knew but was in a state of denial: he'll change the first time he holds his first-born son... "Oh, I can change him..." Talk about fairies and unicorns!
But on the other hand, it was none of my business, and I didn't want to be the reason for a marriage splitting up, not to mention the circumstances of a pregnant woman, perhaps having to raise a child on her own.
However, as you may suspect from my libertarian opinions, I have a definite opinion about this: the one thing I'm sure of is that the government is certain to be wrong in any policy it prescribes for fixing the marriage / divorce problem.
I think the broader issue is the culture. If it was in my power, I would have K-12 study the list of virtues, of the responsibilities as well as the rights of being a citizen, read things like JFK's Profiles in Courage. (Perhaps if we "banned" Profiles in Courage, teenagers would actually be motivated to read it!) As far as I'm concerned, there's far too much collectivist claptrap in the schools.
Chicago Teachers Set to Strike? Thumbs DOWN!
Can you believe that Chicago is bragging about finally achieving a 60% graduation rate? (I have become so cynical; I wonder if they did like Florida and lower the passing grade on standard tests...)
Okay, most readers know where I stand on public education: PRIVATIZE, PRIVATIZE, PRIVATIZE. I want to go further than tweaks at the edges with vouchers.
But given the political reality, where do we stand? I find myself in the unprecedented position of cheering on Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The union is angry with Mayor Emanuel rescinding a 4% raise. Emanuel also wants to bump up the school day by 20% (thumbs UP!) So Chicago Public Schools is offering a 2% raise guarantee, but the union wants 20% (that, of course, the chronically underfunded city does not have....)
I'm sure my two niece teachers don't want to see their crazy old uncle engage in union bashing, but I think it's arrogant to demand more and more from the taxpayer without necessary productivity increases; we have a profession that does a lousy job weeding out the bad apples, rejects market/merit-based pay and raises and protects seniority-based preference in layoffs.
(When I was a professor, I wasn't on the clock: it was whatever hours it took for me to do the job I expected of myself in the classroom; I didn't get paid extra for working 70 hours a week. It would have been a lot easier to teach courses without new preps and few assignments or exams. I remember one of my former conspiracy theory students actually accused me of trying to make the course hard so people would drop out and thus I would have fewer papers to grade!)
The teacher union has authorized a strike by significantly higher percentage votes than necessary. It should be interesting to see how Mayor Emanuel responds to the challenge; initially he seems to be paying lip service to public service, but arguing that they simply don't have the money. Former Mayor Daley is on the second webpage nauseatingly still pandering to the unions, reminding people that his sisters are teachers and saying the trite paeans.
When I was a professor, I wasn't in it for the glory: I was doing my job, and I worked to a higher, internal standard of performance. I also knew professors whom, in my opinion, didn't measure up to my standards of the profession. What did I think of generic praise from people whom never sat in on one of my classes, unearned praise that also served to reinforce the already inflated egos of mediocre colleagues whom had no business being in a college classroom?
Mayor Daley, you should be ashamed of yourself; you know on your watch hundreds, maybe more tenured teachers were no credit to the profession; good teachers don't need a union. Thousands of kids graduated, or didn't graduate, from a school system that at the end gives them a pretty piece of paper that some of them can read: how do you sleep at night?
On the Reading List
I embed links in my posts all the time, but usually they have to do with the general political nature of the blog. (I do feature a daily quote and some in memoriam and entertainment items; these are related more to my miscellany post format). This new feature will feature links that don't fit in the overall context of the blog or my miscellany format.
I'm straight, and I don't have any gay acquaintances (to the best of my knowledge). I've known since I took my first psychology course years ago that homosexual behavior exists across species. As a Christian in the Roman Catholic tradition, I hold with the Church's consistent teachings on sex and marriage, but I also accept people as they are, children of God.
Josh Weed is happily married to Lolly; they are devout Mormons and have 3 beautiful little daughters. There's one difference: Josh claims to be gay, a fact that the couple grappled with before they dated and married. You can find a copy of his viral well-written post here. I don't understand their relationship, but I don't have to: it works for them. I honor their integrity and courage in speaking out. God bless them and their beautiful children.
Political Humor
"In an event celebrating her 25th anniversary of being elected to Congress, Nancy Pelosi revealed that the ghost of past feminist leaders spoke to her at her first White House meeting as speaker. In a related story, doctors now say, 'Yes, Botox can cause hallucinations.'" - Jay Leno
[Jay, Jay, Jay.... Those brownies she brought back from San Francisco? It turns out that you need to eat the brownie to find out what's in it...]
"Guantanamo Bay detention center is now undergoing millions of dollars of upgrades that include a new soccer field and cable TV. Remember when Obama was campaigning? Didn't he say he was going to close Guantanamo Bay? Didn't he say that? Apparently, he just meant for renovations." - Jay Leno
[Well, you see, there were morale problems at the prison after the Guantanamo Four were sent to Bermuda, where, at US taxpayer expense, on the first day of captivity there, they proceeded to eat butter pecan ice cream, took a sunset dip into the ocean, fished, stayed in beach cottages, and dreamed of opening the first Uighur restaurant...]
"Enriching-your-life classes for Guantanamo detainees include learning to paint and writing a resume. Why do they need a resume?" - Jay Leno
[Jay, you're confused: it's called an "obituary"...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (with Stevie Nicks), "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"
