Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Conservative Crack-Up: Mandy Connell edition

It wasn't that long ago that conservatives negotiated the same-sex marriage issue with ease: they were against it. But over the last few years, there is something in the philosophical physiology of many who claim the conservative mantle that has dramatically changed.

When confronted with the issue today, many so-called "conservatives" begin to twitch nervously. Beads of sweat begin to form on their brow and they begin to ramble incoherently. Basic conservative principles are suddenly forgotten and tradition, which once meant something to the conservative mind, is discarded. Rational thought is cast to the wind.

Either that, or they just run for the political hills in order to avoid having to talk about it.

You can say this about Mandy Connell, host of the Mandy Connell Show on WHAS in Louisville: She's not one to run. But after having listened to two or three shows from last week, you begin to wonder about the state of conservative thought generally and whether this is what we are to expect in the coming debate over same-sex marriage, a debate, that is, of course, already upon us.

Now don't get me wrong, Mandy is smart and articulate. She's a one-woman wrecking crew when it comes to most liberal idiocies. And that's what makes it all the more remarkable that she's bought into this particular one. She's also got a pretty thick skin, and so I doubt she'll get too bent out of shape by my criticisms.

She's a big girl. She can handle it.

On several shows devoted to the issue last week, the number and severity of the errors and fallacies began to approach Bidenesque proportions. In the course of several short hours, Connell argued that:

  • It is stupid to spend "time and energy" on an issue like this.
  • People won't become Republicans if they take this position.
  • Same-sex marriage "doesn't affect me and my family"
  • The opposition to same-sex marriage is primarily religious in nature.

Et cetera.

Seriously? These are the arguments people who call themselves "conservative" are reduced to making in order to justify their abandonment of the traditional view of marriage?

If conservatives oppose same-sex marriage for no other reason, they should do it because, when they do the opposite, they suddenly abandon all intellectual standards, making liberals seem positively rational in comparison.

I will deal with some of these arguments in succeeding posts, but for now, let me just address the issue of civil unions.

On Wednesday's show, Mandy brought on CBS reporter Jim Krasula to explain why the amendment in North Carolina included a ban on civil unions. Krasula was obviously clueless about this particular feature of the law, one that Krasula seemed to think somehow unusual, saying that, in banning civil unions, the North Carolina law "went beyond what many gay marriage amendments have done."

In fact, at least 18 states have either a law or a constitutional amendment restricting or banning civil unions. It is hardly exceptional.

"I really don't understand the logic behind this," said Connell, and asked Krasula to explain, which he clearly was not competent to do.

Of course, the logic behind it is simple, since one of the reasons conservatives don't like same-sex marriage laws is because they constitute a government endorsement of a behavior they think is immoral or harmful to society. So do laws approving same sex unions. They realize that what gays mostly want out of these laws is not practical benefits, but the legitimacy it lends their movement. Now you can disagree with the view that the behavior is abnormal or harmful to society, but the logic isn't mysterious at all.

Kresula went on to argue that the amendment could cost North Carolina economically. Really? Like the 41 other states that either have a constitutional amendment or a law banning same-sex marriage? In fact, outside of New England, only two states don't have either an amendment or a law.

So far, we have not seen a flood of companies packing up their belongings and moving to Iowa and New Mexico, the only two states west of Pennsylvania that haven't passed same-sex marriage laws. And  if there has been some economic influx into business-friendly states like New York and Massachusetts, I'd like to know how that's going.

I realize I have absolutely no influence on who Mandy gets on her show to discuss issues, but couldn't we have somebody who at least has a clue about what they're talking about?

"But man," said Connell, "this thing about banning civil unions, doesn't that just seem mean? It's like, not only can you not get married, ... now you can't even set up a standardized legal arrangement with someone you may have lived with for 25 years."

Okay. Stop. Yes they can. There are all kinds of standardized legal arrangements you can have without being married. You can leave your fortune to your pet parakeet, for crying out loud.

Are there some benefits the government gives to two heterosexual people who get married? Sure there are. But, for one thing, you don't need a law instituting civil unions to change that. Just pass laws that extend some of the benefits now enjoyed by married people to people who aren't.

This is like the argument that we need laws allowing same-sex marriage because there are gays whose partners are not allowed to visit them in the hospital. There are? Where? Which hospital? And if it were a problem, do you need to redefine marriage to take care of it? Of course not. In fact, Kentucky has already passed a law to deal with this that didn't involve changing the marriage laws.

But let's ask another, more fundamental question: Is there some legitimate justification for the government to grant incentives for the formation of families in which there are two biological parents that does not exist for same sex couples or same sex couples in civil unions?

Let's see. Hmmm.

How about that the one sociological fact we know better than just about any other is that families in which there are two parents living with their biological children do more to produce a stable society than any other social arrangement? We know this better than just about any other sociological fact. Not only is it not disputable, I don't know of anyone even remotely well-informed who even bothers to dispute it.

Okay, so where is the similar evidence of the benefits to society and social stability of same-sex relationships?

Now you could make the argument that government has some role in making everybody happy, but I'd like to see Mandy make that argument. And then she could explain how that fits into her libertarian philosophy.

And what's this about opposing civil unions--or same-sex marriage for that matter--being mean? On Thursday's show, Mandy cried foul about some of her listeners who interpreted her disagreement with religious beliefs about homosexuality as being "disrespectful" toward religion. So if her listeners are not justified in interpreting her disagreement with religious believers as being disrespectul of religion, then how is it justified to interpret someone's disagreement with civil unions as being mean-spirited?

Maybe we could investigate the logic of that.

But part of the issue here is that Mandy is a libertarian, not a conservative. That's not a criticism; it's just a matter of truth in labeling. Conservatism is at least partly about ... how should I phrase this ... conserving things. And, as I've said before, when it comes to social issues, if you can't bring yourself to conserve traditional marriage, then you can't be counted on to stand up for much else when the political hard times come.

Many people who call themselves conservatives these days are Rush babies. Their cultural awareness extends no further back than about the early 90s. If you asked most prominent conservatives about Edmund Burke, T. S. Eliot, F. A. Hayek, Michael Oakeshott, or Russell Kirk they'd get a blank look on their face and wonder who you were talking about.

William F. Buckley, Jr.? Who's that?

The traditional conservatism that was preserved and transmitted in the old National Review magazine for so many years and which nurtured people like Ronald Reagan is being fast forgotten in favor of Fox News.

I have no idea who is on Mandy's reading list, but I'm willing to bet it's heavy on libertarians and neocons and largely devoid of traditional conservatives. You know, the ones whose conservatism involved the belief that the judgment of the generations was better than the narrow prejudices of the present, and which extended beyond a sort of Hobbesian self-interest?

You remember Thomas Hobbes. The great conservative thinker?

Prominent conservatives used to feel like they needed to choose between Madison and Jefferson. Now many of them couldn't tell you who Madison and Jefferson were, much less have read them. Instead of championing the conservatism of the American founders, today's average consumer of conservative rhetoric is fed a kind of Readers Digest condensed version of French Revolutionary political rationalism--or, what's worse, Randian objectivism.

It's sad.

One thing the great libertarians of the past could say was that they had read the traditional conservatives and found them wanting. They were libertarians by choice, and knew the difference between traditional Burkean conservatism and their own classical liberalism. But modern "libertarian conservatives" are not libertarians by choice; they're libertarians because they don't know anything different. They caught their libertarianism by contagion and were told it was bad case of conservatism.

I'm being too hard on Mandy here, and not all of these criticisms necessarily apply to her. But the kind of things you hear on her show on issues like this are symptomatic of larger trends in conservatism that will ultimately destroy the movement from within if people who conservatives rely on tell them the way things ought to be don't get back in touch with real conservatism.

14 comments:

KyCobb said...

Martin,

"Okay, so where is the similar evidence of the benefits to society and social stability of same-sex relationships?"

Since you asked:

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20051012/study-same-sex-parents-raise-well-adjusted-kids

And of course you are asking the wrong question. Allowing same-sex marriage has no effect on children being raised by married, heterosexual couples. The real question is whether the children of homosexual couples would benefit from their parents getting married. If marriage benefits the children of heterosexual couples, why should the children of same-sex couples be denied those benefits?

Martin Cothran said...

KyCobb,

Are you aware of the political leanings of the author of that study? "Politics, specifically politics with a progressive tincture," according to the Boston Globe. She's essentially gay rights advocate.

There are some studies from cigarette companies on how smoking doesn't have any ill effects too you might want to check out.

Martin Cothran said...

KyCobb,

Allowing same-sex marriage has no effect on children being raised by married, heterosexual couples

And how is this relevant to anything I said in this post?

Martin Cothran said...

KyCobb,

The real question is whether the children of homosexual couples would benefit from their parents getting married.

No. Sorry. It's not. Why would it? Do you think that the signing of piece of paper somehow magically makes a better environment for a child?

This is certainly not what I'm saying.

E.R. Bourne said...

Martin,

I do agree with most of your post, but I think that you are understating the current circumstances. The entire American body politic is comprised of socialists, neoconservatives, and libertarians; there simply is no prominent voice articulating anything resembling a real conservatism anymore in this country. I cannot name one essential human institution that has not been utterly reshaped by one of these three political ideologies, and this certainly includes marriage. I would go so far as to say that we do not have what our ancestors would call marriage in this country anymore. What we call marriage is a mere legal contract between two individuals that can be liquidated at any time and for any reason. All Americans, so called Christians included, subscribe to this modern notion of marriage which encourages divorce, serial monogamy, selfishness, and the using of children as pawns to be manipulated in legal battles.

Given the revolutionary nature and the ubiquity of leftism in the western world, the advocacy of the legal recognition of sexual perversions like homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia, etc. are all inevitable as long as our politics refuses to assume a form other than one of the three above mentioned manifestations of liberalism. Since this is the case, conservatism, in its most strict meaning, has lost. Why would a traditional Protestant, Orthodox, or Catholic be interested in conserving the contemporary state of affairs? There is nothing left worth conserving.

The overall shallowness of so called “conservative” pundits, radio hosts, writers, and politicians, and the vacuity of their political philosophy is not the cause of this problem but a symptom.

Lee said...

> The entire American body politic is comprised of socialists, neoconservatives, and libertarians; there simply is no prominent voice articulating anything resembling a real conservatism anymore in this country.

That's an indisputable fact.

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in America by 2-to-1. So why do liberals hold so much power?

Simple: divide and conquer.

Liberalism is the ideology of, among other things, bringing all existing institutions under attack (the better to install your own).

The people we call conservatives are not necessarily conservative about every incumbent institution, however. A libertarian who defends the free market from overregulation may not give a fig for someone else complaining that, say, the Catholic Church is being forced to hand out free condoms.

And vice versa. The Church does not care whether capitalism functions in a more pure form, and in fact have been reliably liberal on many of those issues. But they are definitely conservative about their freedom of religion, which has been under attack of late.

There are as many different types of conservatives as there are institutions under attack. And for the most part they don't share the concerns and fears of other conservatives struggling against the leviathan. They care about their own institutions and tend not to see the big picture.

I am reminded of how a wolf pack will single out a wild boar, separate him from the pack, and kill him. If the pigs fought together, the wolves would limp away hungry a hundred percent of the time. But they don't. The wolves are coordinated -- in this case, they are coordinated by a cohesive and unifying ideology. The pigs figure everything is cool so long as they're not the ones makin' bacon for their enemies.

I wrote about this some time back. Not a perfect exposition, but the basic theme is in there...

http://reformedtrombonist.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=17

Lee said...

Sorry, that link is here:

http://reformedtrombonist.blogspot.com/2008/01/conservatives-republicans-and-cheating.html

KyCobb said...

Martin,

"Are you aware of the political leanings of the author of that study?"

Its just one example, I saw several other studies coming to the same conclusion. And the first study was based on the results of 15 other studies. If she is as dishonest as tobacco researchers, you should be able to cite plenty of studies showing the negative effects of same-sex parents.

Art said...

And if there has been some economic influx into business-friendly states like New York and Massachusetts, I'd like to know how that's going.


Well, you could check out the median household incomes for these two states, and compare them to NC.

Or you could compare unemployment rates. Or most any indicator of economic activity and productivity.

The fact is, there are two classes of states - producers and users. The producer states generate a disproportionate share of the GDP of the country and pay out much more to the Federal government than they get back. These states are blue (by and large) and more tolerant of others (and also more respectful of the Constitution).

The user states are largely red. They are poorer, intolerant, they despise things like education and health care (and the Constitution), and they are parasites - they take in much more from the Federal government than they pay out.

(I realize, of course, that in the classical Christian math class, 45 is actually larger than 55, so this short comment may go clear over Martin's head. Nothing I can do about this.)

Singring said...

'There are some studies from cigarette companies on how smoking doesn't have any ill effects too you might want to check out.'

The cigarette companies had a financial interest in those studies. That cannot be said of social scientists investigating same-sex couples, regardless of their political inclination.

But you just go ahead and, like any good conservative Christian, ignore the empirical evidence that is available at your fingertips. like tese studies:

http://dspace.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/2637/1/Developmental%20Psychology.pdf

I quote:
'Results indicated that those students raised by female same-sex couples did not
differ significantly from those raised by opposite-sex couples, or the general student sample in
terms of reports of victimization, psychological functioning, experience of common adolescent
concerns, or prospective use of support outlets provided by family and peers'

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3600164

This study found that gay and lesbian couples function better than heterosexual ones.

And how about this review paper from 2006 (i.e. a paper that reviews the body of scientific literature available on the subject):

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/20183123.pdf?acceptTC=true

I quote:
'Studies using convenience
samples, studies using samples drawn from known populations, and studies based on samples that are representative of larger populations all converge on similar
conclusions. More than two decades of research has failed
to reveal important differences in the adjustment or development of children or adolescents reared by same-sex couples compared to those reared by other-sex couples
.
Results of the research suggest that qualities of family relationships are more tightly linked with child outcomes
than is parental sexual orientation.'

That's just a sampling of the evidence, Martin. Now unless you want to go all cookie on us and claim there's a 'vast liberal conspiracy' at work in universities, you better come up with some pretty good peer-reviewed papers of yourself to counter this evidence.

But then again, since when do conservatives care about the evidence on these matters, when they have their 'intuitions' about 'self-evident natural law' to rely on?

KyCobb said...

Martin,

"How about that the one sociological fact we know better than just about any other is that families in which there are two parents living with their biological children do more to produce a stable society than any other social arrangement? We know this better than just about any other sociological fact. Not only is it not disputable, I don't know of anyone even remotely well-informed who even bothers to dispute it."

I will, and I'd like to see you back it up. As an adoptive parent, I think I and my wife do more to produce a stable society than a lot of families of two parents and their biological children.

Lee said...

> As an adoptive parent, I think I and my wife do more to produce a stable society than a lot of families of two parents and their biological children.

And if they grow up to be conservatives, we'll call it a job well done. ;)

KyCobb said...

Martin,

I have to say that I think you have articulated a defense of premillenia marriage laws which could withstand rational basis scrutiny. Which would then raise the question of whether heightened scrutiny should apply. I still think that postmillenial state constitutional amendments, particularly the one in California which took the right to marry away from homosexuals, are harder to defend because they seem to be clearly motivated by anti-gay animus and does nothing to promote family formation among heterosexuals. And I don't know how one defends DOMA requiring the federal government to pretend that legally valid marriages don't exist.

One Brow said...

E.R. Bourne said...
What we call marriage is a mere legal contract between two individuals that can be liquidated at any time and for any reason.

AKA Old Testament marriage, except husbands are limited to one spouse and the consent must come from the wife, not her guardians.