Family and Nation

...Secular humanists also purvey the myth that Catholics call abortion murder because they are puritanical and hate sex...

...In contrast, blacks from female-headed families were increasingly trapped in a hopeless tangle of pathologies...

...He recognized that the making of a President is a mere epiphenomenon of the larger philosophy of conservatism...

...Democrats, the author implies, are almost blameless in accounting for Washington's excessive girth...

...No pigs...

...Realizing its mistake, the Park Service has still found it impossible to re-establish the lost populations of wolves and cougars (although it apparently faked a "comeback" of the original wolf population during the 1970s...

...These same programs, though, did accelerate family breakdown by also training black women, who have proved able to translate their training into successful employment and—with their "independence factor" enhanced —quick divorces...

...Brookhiser's frame of reference, unlike that of so many of his contemporaries, is remark-ably wide...

...Ungulates like elk and deer, formerly kept under control by predation, began multiplying beyond all reasonable proportions...

...If there is a better book on the 1984 presidential elections than The Outside Story, I have not yet read it...

...There are hints that he's aware of re-cent research showing that $80 billion worth of federal job training and job creation programs since 1960 have produced no positive results among black males...

...WE MANE MONEY THE OLD FASHIONED WAY •WE STEAL IT!he suggests that if job programs in the 1960s had concentrated on male employment, the "underclass" problem might have been nipped in the bud...

...Unintentionally echoing George Gilder, I LIBER TEES A collection of somewhat outrageous T-shirts All designs copyrighted by B.M.G...

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...Liberals such as Bill Moyers and Ellen Goodman have also recently discovered the plight of the family, and are searching for ideas...

...By the end Moynihan edges close to the notion that "family policy equals welfare policy...

...By this, Moynihan means that if someone, presumably the state, would provide female-headed families with greater in-come, more "parental contact time," male role models, the means of stronger discipline, and so on, the children in such families would function with few difficulties...

...Honest 'N...

...During the 1960s and early 1970s, he labored almost alone to place the family on our political agenda...

...Among fundamentalists there is that whop-per of a myth that the Pope is the Anti-Christ and the _Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, a hideous and many-tentacled pagan cult...

...Moynihan castigates those social work therapists who have emphasized the individual to the exclusion of the family and those "social scientists" who have flirted with "alternative life styles...

...While their comprehensive proposals aimed, in essence, at the socialization of child rearing, their analysis of the components of family policy was without equal...

...They express unthinking convention, what is done or not done, because everyone does or fails to do it—the morality of head counts...

...Of course, it is no coincidence that this list of needs suspiciously resembles those traditionally met by a father: a perfect example of circular reasoning...

...But whenever it feels impossible to write about them with anything else, a mental glance at Washington (the scene of their worst outrages...

...Indeed, he goes on to adopt the feminist solution to family breakdown: punish the men...

...The Allan C Carlson is editor of Persuasion at Work, published by the Rockford Institute...

...Among evangelicals there is a more sedate myth that Catholicism is a numbing religion riddled with dead formulas, empty rituals, and rigid prohibitions — a legalistic religion which fears the Bible and freezes out the grace of Christ...

...Harvard historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr...

...Even in these areas, though, the Senator does offer some useful in-sights...

...Moynihan, the modern Democrat,also quails before the feminist movement...

...This is an unfortunate conclusion coming from one of our nation's few authentic politician-philosophers, particularly one who argues that a clear theory of family must lie at the heart of effective policy...

...Then, there is the abiding myth that Catholics can't really explain why they are Catholic, that when Catholics are challenged their convictions crumble, and hence Catholics fear democracy, the open circulation of ideas, and freedom of religion...

...Brookhiser is naive in his belief that the public is more or less rational, that politics is a genuinely serious business in which ends and means must be balanced judiciously...

...In this thoroughly troubling account, the animals of Yellowstone emerge as a species of low-level political appointee, subject to every change of administration...

...The service, dominated by rangers whose main background is law enforcement, has long resisted the adWilliam Tucker is The American Spectator's New York correspondent...

...951 Lti^ TORT `AAYNE, INDIANA CORPORATE OFFICE: BOX 62 BLOOMINGTON...

...The rangers carried out a brutal extermination campaign that was largely successful...

...vice of knowledgeable scientists...

...If that's what you've been looking for in a Catholic monthly magazine, then help us explode myths and prejudices, and subscribe today...

...Forgotten are his promising earlier references to the Catholic theory of the family wage (in which compensation for work is skewed in favor of heads-of-households with children) and to the failure of U.S...

...But Richard Brookhiser is having none of it...

...once said that prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church is "the deepest bias in the history of the American people...

...As I was walking back to the cabin one night, a bear crossed my path about ten feet in front of me...

...and no Mafia-murdered fetuses...

...Moreover, it is said, Catholics opposed to abortion don't really care about the sanctity of human life, as they claim to, because they are utterly indifferent to the threat to innocent life posed by nuclear weapons...

...ticularly in the area of tax relief...

...His treatment of Charles Murray's Losing Ground, to begin with, is less a dispassionate critique than a full-blown assault...

...Yet Moynihan chooses to ignore the implications...

...The lesson was that without a theory of society, including a clear method of measuring family health, political action is worse than useless...

...It is impossible," he observes at the end of The Outside Story, to write about the carryings-on of American politicians without irony...

...The truth," he once remarked, "to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache...

...Prices listed below include postage and handling within the U.S.A...

...tion, and themes of its outside story...

...Politicians should not be silenced, and the abuse directed at them must not seek to expel them from the human community...

...All this foolishly upset the natural balance...

...One day I saw a senior fire warden head off into the woods with a horse and packmule for a two-week patrol of the remote wilderness...

...He came to understand that no large modern government, whatever its intentions, can avoid having policies that heavily influence family formation, structure, and relationships...

...In the end, Senator Moynihan resigns himself to the inability or inap'See Travis Hirschi and Hanan C. Selvin, "False Criteria of Causality in Delinquency Research," Social Problems (Winter 1966...

...In 1968, Moynihan wrote the introduction to a new edition of Nation and Family...

...If the party of the bear loses power, the grizzlies may be out of luck...

...1 One-year Canadian or foreign subscription . . . . US$17 (regularly $22) Payment must be drawn in US Dollars ^ Sample copy $3.50 ; Send coupon or letter...

...Taxpayer Award f`:OEFEro YOUR RIGHT Print and shirt colors are appropriate to designs...

...The height of political folly, he admits, came in Jimmy Carter's 1980 White House Conference of Families, which degenerated into an acrimonious dispute over the definition of "family...

...SEND: $ 7.95for1 $14.95for2 To: Blue Mt...

...As early as 1965, he had noted the serious erosion in the value of the tax exemption for children and urged corrective action...

...In the case of abortion, it recognizes that the gulf between contending sides is fundamental and irreconcilable, and yet that the partisans of both positions have more in common, as Americans, than the sum of their differences...

...Alone, it seems merely punitive...

...He acknowledges that the Democratic party of the 1965-1984 era was drifting away from the ideas of church, family, and community...

...Nor does he account for the failure of federal programs to halt the disintegration...

...The Senator's central formulation—'The essence of family policy is that it focuses on the out-comes of other policies"—allows him simply to advance standard liberal cure-alls (more AFDC, more Medicaid, more federal job training) without giving attention to specific family questions...

...Berkeley, CA 94706 ^ One-year subscription $14 (regularly $19) ^ ^ One-year student, unemployed, or retired per-son's subscription $12 (regularly $16) ^ Two-year subscription $23 (regularly $35) w---.--This is an intimidating syllabus of myths — but happily, each myth is inaccurate and erroneous, and each one is disproved by the existence and insistence of the NEW OXFORD RE-VIEW...

...Social conservatives are eager to translate the "pro-family" label into policy, parWhen I was in college I spent two wonderful weeks in a remote Yellowstone cabin where a friend was working as a smoke ranger...

...Consider the words of Francis X. Maier, Editor of the weekly National Catholic Register: "The NEW OXFORD REVIEW is simply the best publication of its kind in the United States — always provocative, always interesting, always solidly Catholic...

...Moynihan concludes that "a credible family policy will insist that responsibility begins with the individual...

...Moynihan has the knowledge, background, and sense of conviction to become a leader of this emerging coalition...

...While this is certainly a worthy principle, he translates it exclusively into a federal campaign to track down illegitimate daddies and make them pay...

...He also learned, particularly from Gunnar Myrdal, that good social-science research helps only to clarify options: social policy itself must flow from moral judgments, which social science cannot create...

...INDIANA WGTC 1370 AM BLOOMINGTON INDIANA WADI...

...As a result, a series of disastrous policy decisions has brought about radically adverse changes in Yellowstone's natural environment...

...Among secular humanists there is a politically handy myth that only Catholics regard abortion as murder, and that no one in his right mind who is not a Catholic would object to legalized abortion...

...Environmentalists, who might have sup-plied the missing expertise, have concerned themselves only with "separating man from nature...

...Secondary factors are the important elements, he says...

...Wholly ignored is the systematic campaign of the feminist movement against the family unit, which began in the late 1960s, ran into the early 1980s, and found an institutional home in the Democratic party...

...If the party of the elk gets the upper hand, the Northern Yellowstone Elk will thrive, perhaps too much for their own good...

...After trying a few shots of it on his customers, the larval statesman concludes sadly that it must hurt them...

...These things just sort of happened...

...For example, he does note that in Project Head Start "we were .. . paying women...

...As part of a comprehensive effort to re-create families with employed fathers at home, this effort would have a place...

...at one point, he even suggests that his party stands for a small federal government...

...As critics of sociology long ago explained, the use of terms such as per se, as such, and in itself in social research almost invariably signals serious logical difficulties.' Moynihan knows this, but the feminist beast must be appeased...

...Moynihan is fully aware of the problem...

...Hence, among modernist Catholics there is a corrosive myth that Catholics who believe in the creeds and the Church's magisterium are both narrow-minded ignoramuses who self-righteously cling to the letter of the law and mean-spirited bigots who fear Protestants and fail in charity toward their neighbors...

...It felt like the Old West...

...The opportunity now exists to create an American family, policy that might actually help families...

...propriateness of government to adopt a single model of family health...

...He shows also how the Social Security system has been used quietly over the past two decades as a massive income redistribution scheme to reduce poverty among the elderly...

...Of course, Moynihan knows better...

...Moynihan's lengthy quotation from British anthropologist J. D. Unwin's Sex and Culture also reveals full understanding that the male-female issue—the question of gender roles—lies near the heart of the poverty problem...

...Primarily, Chase believes, the animals of Yellowstone have been caught in a squeeze between a sluggish Park Service bureaucracy and a misguided, other-worldly environmental movement...

...The point is: if you want a Roman Catholic magazine that confounds the conventional stereotypes, then the NEW OXFORD REVIEW is for you...

...The elk were never more than one group among large populations of mule deer, mountain sheep, beavers, antelope, moose, bisons, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and other wildlife...

...He is also correct that the Reagan Ad-ministration's concern for family well-being has not extended much beyond the rhetorical, and that there are libertarian-styled minions within the White House who view children as mere "consumption goods," of no greater intrinsic worth than a dog...

...only in 1985 did an increase in the personal exemption from $1,040 to $2,000 become the pro-family centerpiece of the Reagan tax reform plan...

...BLOOMINGTON...

...is a useful and necessary re-lief...

...Graphics 125 Liberty St...

...Even the "Nixon-Moynihan" Family Assistance Plan of 1969-1970, flawed and ill-fated though it was, focused some attention on the troubling economics of modern family life, a subject which now promises to dominate domestic policy debates of the latter 1980s...

...Fifteen years ago, for example, Yellowstone gave up fighting forest fires altogether and adopted a "natural burning" policy that is supposed to rejuvenate vegetation more quickly...

...Although they may have summered there during prehistoric times, they regularly left Yellowstone's high plateau during the winter for lower pastures...

...Wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions were dubbed "Nazis of the forest...

...book's title is a variation on the Nation and Family label used by Swedish social democrat Alva Myrdal in 1941...

...Yet this state-enforced transfer of resources from the young to the old has produced an unintended result: The poverty rate of children in the United States is now seven times that of the SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCB...

...Smoke rangers are now a thing of the past...

...The basic feminist goal was to secure economic equality with, and independence from, men...

...rather, we are content to be living witnesses to the truth about Catholicism and the falsehood of all the myths...

...This insight earned Moynihan the "racist" and "sexist" epithets, and left him for a time a political pariah...

...He refers constantly to the "feminization of poverty," to the rapid rise in the number of female-headed families locked in poverty, and to the new American underclass...

...Allentown, PA 18102 T-SHIRTS ARE GREAT GIFTS...

...Please allow 2 to 8 weeks for delivery of first issue) SPECIAL DISCOUNT RATES FOR FIRST-TIME SUBSCRIBERS 1 STATE ZIP CODE PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER 1 1 1 STREET ADDRESS THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 39 hijacking of the civil rights movement by white middle-class women, which effectively scuttled attempts to create jobs for lower-class black males...

...it knows what it does...

...His discussion of the pro-life heckling of Geraldine Ferraro, for instance, is worlds away from the narrow vulgarity of those misguided young conservatives who, emulating the worst excesses of the sixties, take to the streets in search of instant resolution: Civility is not the same as politeness, or manners...

...It is, at any rate, nice to think so, nicer still to read so witty and compelling an argument for the good sense of the American public...

...The most tragic episodes Chase re-counts concern the fate of the Yellowstone elk and the grizzly bear...

...Between 1934 and 1939, she and her husband Gunnar devoted their considerable energies to constructing family and population policies for Sweden...

...Moynihan's famous 1965 report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, reported on the emerging linkage of poverty to family structure within urban ghettos...

...He dismisses Murray's argument that these are products of government welfare policies, but offers no systematic ex-planation for their cause...

...up to $9.20 an hour to look after the children of men who couldn't make $1.50 an hour...

...The elk—now the dominant species in northern Yellowstone—are apparently not even native to the park...

...Twenty years later, though, prominent blacks such as William Raspberry and Glenn Loury are acknowledging Moynihan as a prophet...

...Mail to: 1 NEW OXFORD REVIEW Room 381 1069 Kains Ave...

...Through progress in civil rights, he said, blacks in intact families were moving toward income equality with whites...

...INDIANA 47402 TELERHONE B?2 332 7251 FAMILY AND NATION Daniel Patrick Moynihan/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/$12.95 Allan C. Carlson 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 elderly, an unprecedented situation among modern nations...

...His three talks have now been published as Family and Nation, which, like Moynihan's earlier books, is entertaining, pro-vocative, and often maddening...

...Perhaps Mr...

...Make check payable to NEW 1 OXFORD REVIEW...

...He actually buys into one of the great myths of modern sociology, that "as such, youth from female-headed households are not necessarily more likely to have difficulties than other children" (emphasis added...

...In April 1985, Moynihan reviewed his career in family policy as Harvard University's Godkin Lecturer...

...Who best understands the principles that inspired those clean structures, and who is best able to sustain them, are ultimately issues of every presidential elecWe Americans owe Daniel Patrick Moynihan a large debt...

...Liberalism, he observes casually at one point, "hasn't contributed anything first-rate to art or philosophy—to beauty or thought—since Swinburne or Mill...

...In the contemporary American welfare state, he concludes, parents and their children are the big losers...

...Moynihan makes many telling points in Family and Nation...

...During the 1920s and 30s, however, the Park Service became obsessed with "predator control...

...Actually, we at the NEW OXFORD RE-VIEW don't waste much time fretting about the myth-makers...

...Feminism's political triumph meant the Help us explode myths about Catholics...

...The established media have duly noted us: Time finds us "conservative" (true enough, when it comes to doctrine, morality, and ecclesial authority), Newsweek says we're "cheeky" (probably more true than we realize), and The New York Times thinks our editorial policy is "curious" (probably very true, at least from the Times's perspective...

...There is a tenacious myth among Americans generally that says Catholics are stupid, lazy, and superstitious...

...policies to take into account the very different burdens borne, for example, by the father with nine children and the unmarried male...

...Oddly, myths about Catholicism have even worked their way into the Catholic Church herNAME (Please print or type) self...

...But deeper prt,blems haunt the book...

...Without adopting the Myrdals' full social democratic perspective, Moynihan clearly learned from them how to "think about" the family...

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...By the early 1960s, the rangers were forced into the painful task of thinning the elk herds through entrapment and slaughAntlerless Lawyer Season Obscene, Profits BELIEVE IN SOCIAL SECURITY 'THECHECK5INTHEMAIL POLITICAL PROMISES 'I 110Ell,TI-.1111N.V my wife -YES my dog -M/MBE my gun NEVER...

...Mencken would certainly have thought so...

...The Senator also levels cheap shots at the Reagan Administration, accusing the President of holding "white, male, and Protestant" biases, laying on him full blame for the growth in the size of government since 1980, and so on...

...Still, it is astonishing to pick up Alston Chase's Playing God in Yellowstone and realize that the very "ecology" of Yellowstone has become as malleable as the Washington political landscape...

...Honest social research, he correctly notes, tends to have a strong conservative bias, raising obstacles to, rather than encouraging, social reform and otherwise telling liberals things they would rather not hear...

...Civility is self-conscious...

...He emphasizes that the disorganization of family life has spread beyond blacks and other minorities to white society as well...

...Between 1970 and 1984, for ex-ample, the proportion of white families with female heads doubled from 10 to 20 percent...

...It would be tragic if his recently acquired ideological shackles left him crippled at the very moment he was needed the most...

...PLAYING GOD IN YELLOWSTONE: THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA'S FIRST NATIONAL PARK Alston Chase/Atlantic Monthly Press/$24.95 William Tucker 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986...

...Although we tend to think of such images as eternal, we know they are not...

...Adult sizes S, M, L, XL, XXL...

...Yet Moynihan is also the senior senator from New York, a Democrat, and regrettably he couldn't resist dragging politics into his analysis...