Beyond the marital ideal

There's always a more radical liberalism. Case in point: a recent opinion piece in the New York Times by law professor Laura Rosenbury.

Laura Rosenbury wants family law to change so that it no longer privileges marriage - not even the most liberal forms of marriage. She believes that family law should focus on our relationships with friends.

Why? She explains her position in a longer article she wrote in 2007 for the Michigan Law Review ("Friends with benefits?"). Her starting point is that we should aim to be equal, autonomous, independent individuals and that this aim is better served through friendship than through marriage. Therefore, she wants family law to be rewritten so that we can freely nominate a number of friends (who might change over time) who will receive the state benefits which now go to our spouse or children.

In her article, Laura Rosenbury explains that family law has two goals of "achieving individual autonomy and gender equality within the family." These goals, she argues, as well as that of fostering pluralism, could be more fully achieved if family law began to consider friendship, as friends are able have a personal connection with each other "while simultaneously maintaining aspects of individual autonomy and equality that can be elusive in domestic coupling".

In other words, she believes that through friendship you can have the best of both worlds: "personal connection" as well as autonomy and equality.

To underline this point she goes on to write,

Andrew Sullivan has made a similar connection between friendship and the desire for autonomous living:

"[F]riendship is for those who do not want to be saved, for those whose appreciation of life is here and now and whose comfort in themselves is sufficient for them to want merely to share rather than to lose their identity. And they enter into friendship as an act of radical choice. Friendship, in this sense, is the performance art of freedom."

Friendship is choice, it is freedom, it is "autonomous living". That's the message. And, to be fair, if your aim is "autonomous living" then that's probably right. People don't generally marry in order to achieve goals such as equality, or radical choice or autonomy. They're seeking something else: a loving union with a person of the opposite sex which completes us and which provides a setting for our adult masculinity and femininity; the chance to have children and to fulfil ourselves as fathers and mothers; the opportunity to contribute to one's own tradition by raising the next generation and so on. Most people understand they are sacrificing a certain amount of autonomy in order to fulfil these other aims.

Laura Rosenbury, in other words, is not being illogical in what she advocates - not if the liberal aim of "autonomous living" is the starting point. Once you begin with that aim, then the family will always seem to be a compromised arrangement - even liberalised versions of the family - as the family can never be entirely fluid, never be entirely inclusive or non-discriminatory or non-hierarchical or non-gendered.

As an example of how liberals are unlikely ever to be satisfied with the family, consider Laura Rosenbury's next argument. She concedes that there has been a "revolution in marriage law" resulting from a "policy decision to treat spouses as individuals rather than as a unit".

However, this "process of individualization" isn't sufficient for Laura Rosenbury. Why? Because the two individuals in a marriage are still dependent on each other. They might be treated as individuals within a marriage by the state, but they still need each other to be recognised as a couple in order to get state benefits:

Although spouses are individuals, the law confers benefits to them solely because they are in a couple recognized by the state; if they presented themselves “merely” as friends, they would not be eligible for state recognition. The individuals in the couple are therefore dependent on each other for the continuance of state benefits and legal recognition. This state-induced dependence is at odds with recent processes of individualization, a conflict which has led to increased rejection of “the romantic dyad and the modern family formation it has supported.

So how exactly would Laura Rosenbury like family law to be reformed? She rejects the idea that people might nominate a "designated friend" to replace a spouse. That would still limit autonomy by making coupling too stable and exclusive:

Chamber's proposal permits unmarried couples to have only one "designated friend." Stable coupling is therefore privileged in Chambers' proposal...

The status of designated friends could therefore be described as a “marriage-lite” approach. Although this approach is designed to permit more autonomy and independence within the relationship the primacy requirement limits much of that autonomy.

Take note: in the world of the liberal autonomist it is thought wrong for "stable coupling" to be privileged in family law.

What does Laura Rosenbury want then? It includes this:

...state recognition of friendship must be sufficiently robust to match, or counter, the signals currently sent by state recognition of marriage and family.

...new constructions of family law can better recognize friendship by embracing the principles of nonexclusivity and fluidity. Nonexclusivity is vital to new constructions of family law because exclusivity risks reinforcing the primacy of one comprehensive relationship over others.

...one relatively aggressive approach would gather all of the benefits, default rules, and obligations attaching to marriage and permit individuals to assign some or all of those forms of legal support to the individuals of their choice.

...In addition, such an approach would not necessitate a legal definition of friendship or family, thereby acknowledging the potential fluidity of family and friendship. Individual preference, rather than legal definition, would control which relationships are supported by the state and which are not.

She is reluctant to define family or friendship as this might limit the "fluidity" of such relationships; note too her emphasis on the idea of family law embracing the principle of nonexclusivity, which undermines in principle the "dyad" relationship between husband and wife.

Finally, it's interesting that Laura Rosenbury then pushes an argument that liberal autonomists always seem to arrive at, namely that if we reject marriage we can happily substitute same sex friendships:

Legal recognition of friendship could begin to disrupt these patterns, creating conditions under which women could more explicitly contemplate why they might prioritize domestic family life, particularly married life over friendship. As discussed earlier, Adrienne Rich called on women to engage in such contemplation over twenty-five years ago. Her goal was to challenge compulsory heterosexuality by creating opportunities for women to question why they have embraced marriage with men over relationships with other women.

Legal recognition of friendship could serve a similar function by presenting women with a socially recognized way of living outside of marriage or domesticity. Some women who are not currently living a lesbian life might gain sufficient strength from such legal recognition to prioritize relationships with women—whether the relationships be sexual or friendly in nature, or both—over interactions with men.

But there were feminists who heeded Adrienne Rich's call to set up female communities. The experiment did not have a happy ending.

The larger point, however, is that liberalism is not finished with the family yet. For Laura Rosenbury, relationships must be fluid, non-exclusive, non-gendered, undefined, individualised and independent if they are to meet the test of autonomous living. No version of marriage, not even the most liberalised, can completely satisfy these requirements, so Laura Rosenbury wants non-marital relationships to be legally recognised within family law instead.

And the task for traditionalists? We have to recognise the dissolving logic of liberalism and reject it at a level of principle.

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The problem of the mummy teacher

When I became a teacher I soon discovered that the English and history departments in the schools I taught at were dedicated not so much to English and history but to another subject altogether, one which focused obsessively on instances of white racism.

I explained this in terms of the old guard of teachers in those departments. These teachers had typically gone to uni at the height of student radicalism in the early 1970s. They were lefty true believers and very political. It was difficult to challenge them because they were so fiercely committed to political leftism as a world view. But they were on the verge of retirement. My hope was that things would improve after they left and a new generation of teachers replaced them.

And nearly all of those teachers have now retired. But, if anything, things have gotten worse not better.

Why? The problem now is the mummy teacher. The mummy teacher is a very nice person. She bakes for students and staff. She hugs the students and calls them "dear" and "darling". She gives them cards in little decorated envelopes. She is a feminine creature and very "emotionally empathetic".

In a family setting that would be an undoubted virtue. Who would not want to be loved by a mother like that? But what is a virtue at home can be a vice at school.

The mummy teacher is not very political. Sometimes she is not political at all. But she is addicted to issues of white racism. It is what drives her commitment to teaching. She needs it and feeds off it. It is her constant obsession.

I've pondered this for some time now. I've come to believe that the mummy teacher obsesses over issues of white racism for two reasons. First, it creates a powerful emotional moment for her. She can create an emotionally charged journey for herself and her students by studying the holocaust, or lynchings, or apartheid, or refugees or Aborigines.

She does not find this journey unpleasant. She likes to get emotional. Ordinary life does not afford her the opportunity to experience her emotions as she would like to. It is something she looks forward to, the way that some women might enjoy getting caught up emotionally in a romance novel.

It seems natural to her to choose to focus on such things. Why would she focus instead on, say, the creation of Ancient Greek civilisation? What depth of emotion is there for her in that? And why would she focus on correct usage of grammar? Again, how would that motivate the career of a highly emotionally empathetic woman? She might as well stay home with the kids - there would be a greater emotional experience in that. If she's going to come to school, she has to have what seems to her a worthwhile reason to do so.

And what is the second reason for her obsession with the holocaust, apartheid, refugees, the civil rights movement etc. Experiencing life as a highly empathetic woman, she wants to mould her students to be the same. She assumes that the point of teaching history and English is to instill empathy in her students. To identify emotionally with the "other" becomes the ultimate educational aim of both English and history.

For that reason, what she enjoys most is teaching students to create "emotionally persuasive" arguments in their class presentations. And she does not shy away from encouraging students to adopt a stance of advocacy rather than one of dispassionate analysis of the facts.

The result is that white communities, already suffering from a lack of self-belief, get hammered over and over in the school curriculum. And not by radical liberals, but by emotionally feminine women.

What can we do about this? I would suggest the following:

a) Ideally traditionalists would set up independent schools. In Australia close to half of students already attend independent schools.

b) It would help if more men were encouraged to become English and history teachers. That's not an automatic solution: there are plenty of "soft liberal" men in the education system. But the more men, the less likely it is that the feminisation of English and history will run out of control.

c) We need to set out clearly an alternative view of what the teaching of English and history aims to achieve. There doesn't have to be one single aim. The study of history, for instance, might aim to encourage a sense of connectedness to a longstanding tradition; it might set out to encourage an appreciation of art and culture; it might aim to develop analytical writing skills; it might aim to equip students with sufficient general knowledge to take part in educated conversation; it might aim as well to encourage an interest or inquisitiveness in the past and a sense of its relevance to people today.

d) We can encourage parents to take up the role neglected at school by teaching their children about the history and culture of their own tradition. This can be done through books, films, projects, trips to historic sites, family trees and family histories etc.

e) Even a small group of traditionalists could run an after hours programme, offering informal courses in history and culture. Alternatively, a small group of traditionalists could commission books and resources and make them available to parents.

f) We can encourage parents to be careful in looking over the history and English programmes when considering schools for their children. Parents can ask which books and films are analysed at different year levels. If they are mostly about white racism, then parents could opt for a different school.

Finally, to finish on a positive note, there's a story in the Daily Mail today about plans to encourage parents to visit local history sites with their children:

Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, said: ‘In the high street, the housing estate, the park, riverside and field, every town, city and village is full of places in which significant events have taken place.

‘We want every child, their parents and teachers to enjoy and take pride in the heritage of their local area.’

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Did South Africa's President sing a kill the Boer song?

This has not been in the news at all in Australia. It appears that the South African President, Jacob Zuma, sang a song earlier this year which contains the phrase "kill the Boer" - the term "Boer" referring either to farmers or to white men.

The song has already been ruled to be hate speech by the South African courts. Another politician in South Africa, Julius Malema, was convicted of hate speech by a court in September of last year for singing the song.

A group representing the Boer population has lodged a formal complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission against the President for singing the song.

It's a particularly serious issue in South Africa, as 3000 white farmers have been murdered in that country since the mid-90s. A written declaration was presented to the EU this month protesting the murders (see below):

There are websites (here, here and here) which track these murders (warning, the content can be graphic).

And here is video of Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, singing the song with gusto at the ANC centenary celebrations in Bloemfontein in January:



I can't vouch for the translation, but the lyrics of the song have been rendered as follows:

Ayasab' amagwala (the cowards are scared) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) ayeah dubula dubula (shoot shoot ) ayasab 'a magwala (the cowards are scared) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) awu yoh dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot) aw dubul'ibhunu (shoot the Boer) dubula dubula (shoot shoot)

It has been suggested that Zuma sang a slightly different version of the song with the lyrics "Kill the pink skin" rather than "Kill the Boer" but the overall effect would seem to be much the same.

Why isn't there more international attention focused on the fate of the Boers? One reason is that the Western middle-class is ideologically committed to the idea that whites are privileged oppressors and therefore are immune from persecution. They cannot bring themselves to recognise the vulnerable position of whites in South Africa, particularly the white farmers living in isolation on farms. Nor, perhaps, are they aware of the real poverty of some of the Boers in South Africa, who are given the lowest priority when it comes to employment.

Reuters ran an article on Afrikaner poverty in South Africa back in 2010. About 10% of the white population is thought to live in poverty, with about 100,000 struggling to survive. There are now white squatter camps close to the South African capital Pretoria.

A squatter camp for poor whites outside Pretoria

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Why the left doesn't care

I used to wonder if white leftists ever had pangs of conscience over their policies (if carried on for long enough) imperilling the existence of a whole race of people.

But then I realised that if you look at the world through a left-liberal mindset that you're unlikely to register the fact of white decline.

Why? The official end goal of liberalism is a world of "equal freedom" - which means more specifically a world in which individuals are equally autonomous - which means more specifically a world in which no-one is impeded in carrying through their individual life aims by predetermined qualities like their sex, race, ethnicity, sexuality etc.

But liberals have to recognise that qualities like sex, race and sexuality do affect life outcomes. An example would be lower average incomes and educational achievements of black Americans compared to white Americans, or lower lifetime earnings of women compared to men.

So liberals are confronted with a world they see as immorally ordered. And they have to explain why such an immoral order exists.

They are not likely to argue that different outcomes occur because of the differing natures, interests, talents, capacities or life aims of the sexes or races. They would see this as a pessimistic view, one in which the immoral ordering of society was inevitable.

Instead, liberals "optimistically" stick with the idea that society is progressing toward a more moral social order and that the continuing distinctions between the sexes and races are socially constructed and can therefore be reformed.

But why was society constructed immorally to begin with? This is where left-liberals, as distinct from right-liberals, take a particular path. They believe that one group of people organised themselves as a false category in order to "other" and oppress everyone excluded from that false category. The whole system of society, the theory goes, was structured to maintain the supremacy (the unearned privilege) of the false category group.

So who exactly are these people running a false category scam and morally disordering society? Unfortunately if you are a straight white male like myself, the do-badders identified by left-liberals are whites, males and straights.

That left-liberal theory has some very unfortunate consequences. First, it means that white society is treated as being exceptional in a negative sense. If a non-white group does well it can be explained in terms of hard work or a stable family life. But if whites do well, it is due to an unearned privilege. Similarly, left-liberals can look sympathetically on the expression of non-white cultures, whilst taking a hostile view toward a similar expression of a white culture (since the white culture only exists to assert an unjust privilege).

That's why left-liberals are quick to label a white person who takes pride in his culture as a 'supremacist'. That might seem illogical to the average person, but if you are a left-liberal and you believe that whiteness was created for the purpose of maintaining supremacy over others, then someone identifying positively with a white culture will be assumed to be supporting "supremacy".

And a final consequence of the theory? Left-liberals are unlikely to recognise the seriousness of the position that the white peoples of the world find themselves in. After all, the left-liberal theory is that inequality continues to exist because whites are a dominant power oppressing the non-white other. So your whole focus will be on white privilege and dominance in the world rather than vulnerability.

I recently saw an example of this kind of thinking in a comment to a story in the left-liberal Salon magazine. It began with a more conservative commenter challenging the Salon readers with a question: why is it that the solution to the race problem is thought to be mass immigration into Western countries, a measure that if continued will lead eventually to the genocide of whites, whilst Asian and African peoples are allowed to continue their own existence?

A Salon reader responded with this:

Nobody is advocating the "genocide" of white people. It's laughable how you equate a moderate decrease in the economic and cultural influence of whites as some kind of spectacular genocide.

But when you've been privileged for that long, I guess you do lose all sense of perspective.

The Salon reader simply hasn't registered the real position that whites are in. He or she is still fixated on the idea on the idea of whites being privileged, and as such can only recognise a "moderate decrease" in the position of whites. There are no pangs of conscience from the Salon reader because:

a) The focus is on whites being privileged and so nothing more than a "moderate decrease" in the position of whites is recognised

and

b) It is implied that this "moderate decrease" in the position of whites is a moral thing, a taking away of privilege rather than an assault on historic human communities.

What can be done to challenge the left-liberal position? Plenty of things.

i) The left-liberal position thrives when it goes unchallenged. The more non-liberals we get into the political class, the less room there will be for unexamined assumptions on the left.

ii) We can point to the fact that the system doesn't work to privilege whites the way that the left-liberal theory assumes it to do. For instance, whilst blacks do worse than whites in certain areas such as income and education, Asian-Americans do significantly better than white Americans, i.e. it is Asian-Americans who are, on average, the most privileged and not white Americans.

iii) We can point to other explanations for group distinctions. Among them are differences in IQ, in other inherited traits, and in deeply rooted aspects of culture and family organisation.

iv) We can challenge the underlying assumptions on which the whole edifice of the left-liberal approach rests. Is a well-ordered society really one in which predetermined qualities are not allowed to matter? Does that really lead to the freedoms which are most important to people? Does the use of the state to suppress group distinctions really create a free society? And aren't there other important goods alongside freedom which contribute to the moral ordering of a society?

v) We can point to the injustice in regarding whiteness as exceptionally immoral, for instance, when the success of migrant groups is attributed to hard work and determination, whilst that of whites is attributed to unearned privilege.

vi) We can point to ways in which it is obvious that whites do not occupy the oppressor role, for instance, the trends in interracial crime in which whites are more likely to be victims rather than aggressors.

vii) We can personally reject liberalism to the degree that we no longer give it moral authority. And, following from this, we can attempt to organise our own non-liberal networks, institutions and, perhaps one day, communities.

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Where will it end? US soldiers required to don empathy breasts

Via View from the Right we learn that a number of male soldiers in the U.S. are being required to put on empathy breasts and bellies to simulate being pregnant. Supposedly this is going to help them to train pregnant soldiers better.

I hardly know what to say. I suppose it's the inevitable outcome of the liberal principle that sex distinctions should be made not to matter in society. That leads to calls for women to participate in the armed services in an equal capacity to men. Which then leads to the army being revamped to fit in women better. Which then leads to the sorry spectacle of marines wearing sympathy breasts and pregnancy bellies.

Where will it end? In theory what will happen is that the military will feminise itself in order to become more female friendly, until a tipping point is reached at which young masculine men lose interest and look elsewhere to express their energies. I'm not sure if that will happen with the military - but if things like the empathy breasts and bellies are the way of the future, then it's certainly possible.

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The Orthosphere - a new blog

Posting has been light lately - I should be able to get back to more regular updates very soon. In the meantime, I'd like to advertise a new group blog that should interest many of my readers. It's called The Orthosphere and is a collective effort by a group of Christian traditionalist writers, including Bonald, Svein Sellanraa, Proph (and, I am told, Alan Roebuck, Jim Kalb, Bruce Charlton and Tom Bertonneau). It's possible that I'll cross post a few of my more relevant essays to the site.

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What gets printed in the mainstream media

Race issues are once again in the news in Australia. Actor Jay Laga'aia, who is of Samoan descent (and is best known for his role in Star Wars), has accused Australian television of being racist after his character was axed from a popular soapie.

It's probably true that Australian TV has remained more Anglo than the general population. However, Laga'aia himself has done well out of the industry, having won roles on 20 or more shows.

But what really struck me were the comments on the story from readers of the Herald Sun here in Melbourne. A few of the comments attacking whites would not have been made about any other group of people:

Wolfie, Dubbo: As much as I can't stand his screen presence, he sort of has a point. Home and Away is pretty much heterosexual and white. That world doesn't exist anymore, thank goodness.

Really Wolfie? Substitute "black" for "white" and you'd land yourself in front of some sort of tribunal. And then there's this:

Svetlanababe: Whites on Australian TV should be portrayed as the drunken, tattooed bogans they so often are.

Again, would that get into a mainstream newspaper if it were aimed at any other group? The Herald Sun did, it is true, publish the other side of the debate:

M. Taylor: The average Australian is over all these racist claims being made by attention seekers. Laga'aia has done very well out of the Australian TV industry. He should be grateful instead of making such comments.

But even so it seems to be the case in Australia today that Anglos/whites are the one group who are "unprotected" in the sense that you can say in the mainstream media anything derogatory you like about them.

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