The Stupid Thread 2 (Part 1)

[EyeDentist]

Link is paywalled for me.

[Basement_Gainz]

@thunderbolt23

Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime.

If this offends a person’s sensibilities, there is no hope for them.

[twojarslave]

@Basement_Gainz

If this offends a person’s sensibilities, there is no hope for them.

Of course there is. It’s called turning 30.

[EyeDentist]

@thunderbolt23

an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for a revival of the “cultural script” that prevailed in the 1950s and still does among affluent Americans: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

A few questions:

++Was that really “the cultural script that prevailed in the 1950s”? Or is this a case of Leave It to Beaver revisionism?

++Do affluent Americans really ‘still follow that script’? My impression (no data, just impression) is they don’t.

@thunderbolt23

“Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

These are all certainly laudable goals. But if their presentation was couched in terms of ‘Let’s re-adopt the values of the 1950s,’ I could see how such couching would make POC, LGBTQ, etc, folks–ie, people who were marginalized back then–feel resentful of the suggestion.

[pfury]

@EyeDentist

Link is paywalled for me.

go to archive.is

copy paste link into bar, click save this page

edit: by link I mean the full URL

wait for loading time, free read

works on 95% of paywall sites.

[thunderbolt23]

@EyeDentist

Link is paywalled for me.

Sorry, it is paywalled. I will try and post the whole thing.

[Drew1411]

@EyeDentist

But if their presentation was couched in terms of ‘Let’s re-adopt the values of the 1950s,’ I could see how such couching would make POC, LGBTQ, etc, folks–ie, people who were marginalized back then–feel resentful of the suggestion.

I could see how it could be taken that way. The op-ed did address those specific situations:

Was everything perfect during the period of bourgeois cultural hegemony? Of course not. There was racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism. However, steady improvements for women and minorities were underway even when bourgeois norms reigned. Banishing discrimination and expanding opportunity does not require the demise of bourgeois culture. Quite the opposite: The loss of bourgeois habits seriously impeded the progress of disadvantaged groups

@EyeDentist

Do affluent Americans really ‘still follow that script’? My impression (no data, just impression) is they don’t.

I think that’s a fair challenge, but what gives you that impression? My impression (same as you, not data) is they do.

I remembered a freakonomics podcast that discussed marriage and how it affects kids raised with two parents. It doesn’t address the education for employment, work hard and avoid idleness portion, just the marriage portion. Reading it again it had some interesting points from actual researchers:

The link between family structure and poverty is something that academic researchers like Melissa Kearney have known about for a long time.

KEARNEY: It’s really hard for researchers to establish the causal effect of family structure or marriage on kids’ outcomes, of course, because we don’t randomly assign kids to married or unmarried parents. But there’s a lot of research that works really hard to isolate factors. That research consistently shows that kids who live with two married parents have lower rates of poverty, have higher cognitive test scores in childhood, have fewer behavioral problems. They seem to have better health outcomes. They’re less likely to live in poverty when they’re 25. They’re more likely to complete college and they’re less likely to become young, unmarried parents themselves.

KEARNEY: I am perfectly comfortable saying that it looks like being born to two, or living with two married parents is beneficial for kids. I know a lot of academics, they don’t want to say that, right? Because it sounds really socially conservative and preachy. But what’s really interesting is if you think of how higher-educated, higher-income parents are behaving, they are still almost entirely having children inside of marriage. Both parents are investing an extraordinary amount of financial resources, time and energy into their kids. In some sense, it’s a luxury to be able to say, “I don’t want to make social commentary like that.” Well, that’s because the kids of higher-educated, higher-income parents — they’re doing extremely well. But the kids who are being born to less-educated single moms, they are falling farther and farther behind.

Wendy MANNING: When we consider the family structure at birth — whether it’s cohabiting or married — we see more negative outcomes for children who are born to cohabiting than married parents.

full podcast transcript: The Fracking Boom, a Baby Boom, and the Retreat From Marriage - Freakonomics

[thunderbolt23]

@EyeDentist

These are all certainly laudable goals. But if their presentation was couched in terms of ‘Let’s re-adopt the values of the 1950s,’ I could see how such couching would make POC, LGBTQ, etc, folks–ie, people who were marginalized back then–feel resentful of the suggestion.

@Drew1411 addressed this, but I’ll follow up to reiterate the authors weren’t claiming turning the clock back to the 50s wholesale - they noted aspects of society that were bad, and distinguished them from the things that we should readopt.

[NickViar]

@EyeDentist

POC, LGBTQ,

Liked for use of initialisms.

[anon50325502]

@thunderbolt23

@EyeDentist

Link is paywalled for me.

Sorry, it is paywalled. I will try and post the whole thing.

To the list of forbidden ideas on American college campuses, add “bourgeois norms”—hard work, self-discipline, marriage and respect for authority. Last month, two law professors published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for a revival of the “cultural script” that prevailed in the 1950s and still does among affluent Americans: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime.” The weakening of these traditional norms has contributed to today’s low rates of workforce participation, lagging educational levels and widespread opioid abuse, the professors argued.

The op-ed triggered an immediate uproar at the University of Pennsylvania, where one of its authors, Amy Wax, teaches. The dean of the Penn law school, Ted Ruger, published an op-ed in the student newspaper noting the “contemporaneous occurrence” of the op-ed and a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and suggesting that Ms. Wax’s views were “divisive, even noxious.” Half of Ms. Wax’s law-faculty colleagues signed an open letter denouncing her piece and calling on students to report any “bias or stereotype” they encounter “at Penn Law ” (e.g., in Ms. Wax’s classroom). Student and alumni petitions poured forth accusing Ms. Wax of white supremacy, misogyny and homophobia and demanding that she be banned from teaching first-year law classes.

Ms. Wax’s co-author, Larry Alexander, teaches at the University of San Diego, a Catholic institution. USD seemed to be taking the piece in stride—until last week. The dean of USD’s law school, Stephen Ferruolo, issued a schoolwide memo repudiating Mr. Alexander’s article and pledging new measures to compensate “vulnerable, marginalized” students for the “racial discrimination and cultural subordination” they experience.

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USD’s response is more significant than Penn’s, because it is more surprising. While USD has embraced a “social justice” mission in recent decades, the law school itself has been less politicized. It has one of the highest proportions of nonleftist professors in the country—about a quarter of the faculty. Mr. Ferruolo, a corporate lawyer with strong ties to the biotech industry, presented himself until recently as mildly conservative. If USD is willing to match Penn’s hysterical response to the Wax-Alexander op-ed, is there any educational institution remaining that will defend its faculty members against false accusations of racism should they dissent from orthodoxy?

Two aspects of the op-ed have generated the most outrage. Ms. Wax and Mr. Alexander observed that cultures are not all “equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy.” Their critics pounced on this statement as a bigoted, hate-filled violation of the multicultural ethic. In his response, Penn’s Dean Ruger proclaimed that “as a scholar and educator I reject emphatically any claim that a single cultural tradition is better than all others.” But that wasn’t the claim the authors were making. Rather, they argued that bourgeois culture is better than underclass culture—specifically, “the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks.” The authors’ criticism of white underclass behavior has been universally suppressed in the stampede to accuse them of “white supremacy.”

The op-ed’s other offense was extolling the 1950s for that decade’s embrace of bourgeois virtues. “Nostalgia for the 1950s breezes over the truth of inequality and exclusion,” five Penn faculty assert in yet another op-ed for the student newspaper. In fact, Mr. Alexander and Ms. Wax expressly acknowledged that era’s “racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism.”

None of the professors’ high-placed critics have engaged with any of their arguments. Mr. Ferruolo’s schoolwide letter was one of the worst examples. The dean simply announced that Mr. Alexander’s “views” were not “representative of the views of our law school community” and suggested that they were insensitive to “many students” who feel “vulnerable, marginalized or fearful that they are not welcomed.” He did not raise any specific objections to Mr. Alexander’s arguments, or even reveal what the arguments were.

Instead, he promised more classes, speakers and workshops on racism; more training on racial sensitivity; and a new committee to devise further diversity measures. Stronger racial preferences will most certainly follow. The implication of this bureaucratic outpouring is that the law-school faculty is full of bigots. In reality, Mr. Alexander and his colleagues are among the most tolerant people in human history, and every University of San Diego law student is among the most privileged—simply by virtue of being at an institution with such unfettered intellectual resources. The failure of administrators like Mr. Ferruolo to answer delusional student narcissism with obvious truth is an abdication of their responsibility to lead students toward an adult understanding of reality.

What are university administrators and faculty so afraid of? The Wax-Alexander op-ed confronted important issues responsibly and with solid grounding in social-science research. Each of these administrative capitulations sends a message to professors not to challenge the reigning ideology. The result is an ever more monolithic intellectual environment on American campuses, where behavioral analyses of social problems may not even be whispered. What happens to America if those banned ideas turn out to be true?

Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The War on Cops” (Encounter, 2016).

[NickViar]

I’m not sure how or why, but my feels tell me this is an -ism. -Ism’s, in my opinion, are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism; he should believe in himself.

[EyeDentist]

@Drew1411

I think that’s a fair challenge, but what gives you that impression? My impression (same as you, not data) is they do.

I know lots of affluent people who do drugs, are lazy (ie, covet idleness), get divorced despite having kids, etc. Again, not offering this as evidence of anything (except the genesis of my non-empirical impression).

@Drew1411

marriage and how it affects kids raised with two parents

You don’t have to work to convince me that, all else being equal, kids do better in a two-parent household than they do in single parent household. I’m right there with ya.

@thunderbolt23

the authors weren’t claiming turning the clock back to the 50s wholesale - they noted aspects of society that were bad, and distinguished them from the things that we should readopt.

OK cool. Like I said, I think the goals/behaviors mentioned are laudable.

@NickViar

Liked for use of initialisms.

TY.

[EyeDentist]

The original Op-Ed:

Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture

It provides no data/evidence in support of its empirical claims. Frankly, it is comically cliche in places.

[Drew1411]

@EyeDentist

I know lots of affluent people who do drugs

Considering caffeine is a drug, so do I!

@EyeDentist

are lazy (ie, covet idleness), get divorced despite having kids, etc. Again, not offering this as evidence of anything (except the genesis of my non-empirical impression).

Joking aside, I know of those people as well, but they seem to be more the exception that the rule in my experience. Either way, thanks for sharing.

@EyeDentist

all else being equal, kids do better in a two-parent household than they do in single parent household. I’m right there with ya.

So at least one aspect of what the op-ed is discussing is supported with evidence. The real question is, how do we (as a society) reverse the declining rate of marriage and people having kids out of wedlock by promoting two-parent households? I certainly don’t know. There are already tax incentives to being married.

[anon50325502]

@EyeDentist

It provides no data/evidence in support of its empirical claims.

Do op-ed’s normally?

[EyeDentist]

In my experience, yes, an at least perfunctory presentation of evidence is typical in Op-Eds. Or at the least, they will allude to evidence by including a clause along the lines of ‘Studies demonstrate that…’

[anon71262119]

@thunderbolt23

Going to try and make @Powerpuff’s head explode:

I’m aware.

Remember the Race thread where many of us were agreeing with each other about the dangers and problems in simplistic explanations about biology? Well, unfortunately mentioning any social or cultural factors has also become a topic that’s really, really sensitive and fraught with danger. In my view, this is one of the big problems with IP like this, the shutting down of conversation, censorship in areas that are deemed too sensitive, likely to offend.

I think this link might be really helpful in explaining the Amy Wax piece. It gives some of the student complaints, and also responses from other professors. Also, there’s some good information about causes of Poverty there towards the end, including a study funded by both Brookings (left leaning think tank) and American Enterprise Institute (right leaning think tank).

Below - From Heterodox Academy, In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/02/in-defense-of-amy-waxs-defense-of-bourgeois-values/

Edit
NOTE: With regard to the Heterodox link. I think the question here is not so much is Amy Wax too provocative, or even really wrong, but do her words merit the kind of labels like “white supremacy” and calls to action that the students outlined. She was accused of “advocacy for white supremacy.”

[anon71262119]

Separating this into another post to avoid confusion.

The link to the AEI-Brookings Bi-Partisan Report on poverty, referred to in the link above. I haven’t had a chance to delve into it, but I really, really like the idea of this very bright, bi-partisan group of people working together. Notice there’s a download button there on the top left where you can find the full report, 88 pages.

Opportunity, responsibility, and security

[EyeDentist]

The Heterodox link was interesting and informative. Reading between (and sometimes not-between) the lines, it’s clear Professor Wax is more than a bit of a gadfly. (The author of the Heterdox piece defending her calls her “provocative,” and someone who “clearly enjoys challenging received wisdom.”) For example, there is this rather inflammatory interview on her part:

‘Not all cultures are created equal’ says Penn Law professor in op-ed

To their credit, Heterodox published a response to its original defense of Wax. The response was written by one of Wax’s law-school colleagues who signed the letter denouncing her Op-Ed:

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/03/i-dont-care-if-amy-wax-is-politically-incorrect-i-do-care-that-shes-empirically-incorrect/

[Basement_Gainz]

Randy couple caught romping in Domino's reveal they love having sex in 'weird...