A Contentious Bunch
Scrapbook A Contentious Bunch Coincidentally, three of the contributors to this issue—David Gelernter, Daniel Johnson, and Yuval Levin—are also among the collaborators in a terrific new...
...The Scrapbook extends a welcoming tip of its homburg to the full roster of contributors...
...and (2) criminalization of divorce is simply not our legal tradition...
...You sometimes get a sense that whole streets are deserted.’ “Antonio ‘L.A.’ Reid, chairman of Universal Music Group’s Island Def Jam label, calls 515 Park Ave...
...Mandatory Procreation...
...Even the citizens of a sturdy democracy cannot resist forever the erosions of a culture that continually disconfirms their beliefs, their principles, their very daily lives...
...In the valedictory December 1990 issue of Contentions, Midge noted that among the important work carried out by her committee was to oppose “the anti-Americanism of the fashionable liberal and leftist intelligentsia,” which “represented a very real danger to the country, for inevitably over time it was bound to produce a terrible demoralization...
...Happily, there is a new Contentions to pick up where the original left off...
...Reid owns three homes, but says he’s a full-time resident at the building and his three children are enrolled in nearby schools...
...But no serious critic of divorce (or even any un-serious one) has ever argued for criminalization...
...Whew...
...all of them should be...
...I in fact have done so, arguing in a paper for the Family Research Council that no-fault divorce is an experiment gone awry...
...Since then, his comfort has improved, and he’s stable...
...Would Initiative 957 even be constitutional...
...com (David is a Scalia fan...
...Divorce critics may indeed want to return to a status quo ante, but that status quo ante is not a regime of criminalized divorce: It’s a regime of divorce based on fault...
...Scrapbook A Contentious Bunch Coincidentally, three of the contributors to this issue—David Gelernter, Daniel Johnson, and Yuval Levin—are also among the collaborators in a terrific new group blog, Contentions, which is sponsored by Commentary magazine and can be read at commentarymagazine...
...Donald Trump says that more than half the condo owners at his buildings on Central Park West and Park Avenue are part-timers...
...As for criminalizing divorce: Proponents [of same-sex marriage] are right that opponents should, in all justice, devote some of their energy to curbing divorce...
...For a second, we thought they would have had to euthanize the horse—say, round about January 29...
...Its proponents are claiming to base it on a line in the Washington State Supreme Court’s decision of last summer, upholding the state’s marriage law, to the effect that procreation is a ‘legitimate state interest.’ But, as these legal activists surely know, a ‘legitimate state interest’ is, by definition, entirely subordinated to constitutional rights...
...com/contentions...
...The ideologically opposite analogy for Initiative 957 would be something like this: a socially conservative group forms a committee with a name like ‘Citizens for Marriage Equality,’ and proposes a law annulling the parental rights of parents who refuse to raise their children in a ‘gay-affirming culture.’ Nobody would support that...
...Those who have followed this debate know that same-sex marriage opponents have always rejected the view—attributed to them as something they ‘must’ believe—that infertile opposite-sex couples cannot validly marry...
...Let us also not forget that Parade once ran a lighthearted “In Step With Gene Siskel” feature after the movie critic had died...
...A demoralized society cannot mount a defense of itself, in the end not even in that bedrock definition of defense as the military means necessary to hold off an enemy bent on your destruction...
...The Scrapbook is old enough to remember with fondness and more than a little nostalgia the original Contentions, a monthly publication of Midge Decter’s Committee for the Free World, which like that fine organization closed its doors with its mission accomplished—the collapse of the Soviet Union...
...The magazine was happy to inform Bonnie that, according to Barbaro’s doctor, “The fractured right hind leg healed so well, he was out of his cast and walking daily...
...These people ‘may not even know the address’ of their New York holdings, says Mr...
...a ‘wonderful place’ for him and his family...
...It deadens the whole neighborhood,’ says society decorator Keith Irvine, a long-time Upper East Side resident...
...The Washington State Supreme Court’s decision last summer allowed the state to decline to recognize a new and revolutionary form of marriage...
...Next week: Parade goes shopping with Anna Nicole Smith...
...In its February 11 issue, the always-timely weekly ran a letter by Bonnie Redmond of Delaware, asking about the “latest” on Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro...
...More than 10% of Manhattan apartment sales are second-home purchases, up from about 5% eight years ago, estimates Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel, one of Manhattan’s largest realestate appraisal firms...
...Alas, there is an all-too-contemporary sound to those words, without the good cheer that accompanied them in 1990...
...That Was the Week That Wasn’t Where would we be without Parade...
...Crises We’re Not Losing Sleep Over Breaking real estate news from the Wall Street Journal Online, February 12 edition, “Empty Nests: Choice Apartments in Manhattan Sit Unoccupied”: “Wealthy jet-setters have long maintained cozy Manhattan pieds-?terre, but the city’s choicest properties are increasingly being scooped up by out-of-towners...
...That is universes away from allowing the state a new and revolutionary power to destroy existing marriages...
...Simply put, a state power to annul an existing marriage against the wishes of the parties would be a novel and unprecedented power-claim...
...Trump, but ‘they’d still rather own a place in New York than schlep to a hotel.’ . . . “The rise in absentee owners worries some Manhattan residents and urbanaffairs experts, who say too many outoftowners can sap the vitality out of buildings...
...Besides those mentioned above, they are: Davi Bernstein, Max Boot, Daniel Casse, Hillel Halkin, Victor Davis Hanson, Michael J. Lewis, Sam Munson, Joshua Muravchik, Emanuele Ottolenghi, Gary Rosen, Lisa Schiffren, Gabriel Schoenfeld, Kevin Shapiro, Terry Teachout, and Ruth R. Wisse...
...Such an ‘initiative’ would be a mendacious piece of political theater—just like ‘Initiative 957.’” When The Scrapbook starts a blog, it will be called Wagnermania...
...Some of these names will no doubt be familiar to Weekly STandard readers...
...Here’s the abridged version: “A splinter of the same-sex marriage movement is trying to score some quickie debating points by pretending to agitate for a law in Washington State that would require married couples to have a child within three years of marriage, and criminalize divorce for married couples with children...
...A friend and sometime contributor, the distinguished law professor David Wagner, has given Washington State’s proposed ballot Initiative 957 the welcome it deserves (a Bronx cheer) at his blog ninomania.blogspot...
...But he developed a condition in his left hind hoof requiring surgery on January 13...
...What’s more, they are right not to, for at least two reasons: (1) criminalization, in general, is a seriously overused move in American policy-making, across a wide range of issues...
...The idea, of course, is to caricature some of the (already misunderstood) arguments of gay marriage opponents, and to develop that caricature into a political stunt to convince voters that a law like this is the inevitable consequence of rejecting gay marriage...
...Reid says the building can ‘go dead’ some weeks when many residents are gone, leaving hallways empty and his kids without playmates...
Vol. 12 • February 2007 • No. 23
