The Reality-Based Community

I knew I didn't trust George Will as soon as I realized he was a fan of little ball. It's great for junior baseball, but in the real world, little ball died once Ruth started hitting homers.

Why anyone pays attention to him escapes me, but I can say that about a hell of a lot of people.

I haven't read the book. I have read the articles.

Edsall's TNR post makes it seem as if Will's implication of liberalism to him and his book is misplaced. The book, he tells us, is merely reporting: "Again, I don't complain about the fact that the public is closely divided on the conservative agenda and on many key issues; I report that division as fact, something very few people--left, right, or center--disagree with."

The NY Times reviewer offers a quote that's seemingly on point: “The protective stance of Republicans toward the rich and the dominant,” he writes, “and the acquiescence to a morally and intellectually repressive social agenda are too much at odds with the American egalitarian ethic to achieve the overwhelming strength of the Democratic coalition of the New Deal era.” Just the facts?

What is most odd about Edsall's response is that he seems to misunderstand Will's column (certainly as much as he says Will misunderstands or misrepresents his book). Will says that Edsall is wrong to focus on tactical advantages and disadvantages, and that Edsall misunderstands the political appeal of conservativism.

That certainly seems right, as Edsall demonstrates with his blog post's discussion of the quoted paragraph in Will's column. (Edsall notes that one-third of American children--and almost 70 percent of African American children--are born to unmarried mothers. Then, in an astonishing passage about this phenomenon, which is the cause of most social pathologies, from crime to schools that cannot teach, he [Edsall] explains how Americans differ concerning what he [Edsall] calls "freedom from the need to maintain the marital or procreative bond." "To social conservatives," he [Edsall] writes, "these developments have signaled an irretrievable and tragic loss. Their reaction has fueled, on the right, a powerful traditionalist movement and a groundswell of support for the Republican Party. To modernists, these developments constitute, at worst, the unfortunate costs of progress, and, at best--and this is very much the view on the political left as well as of Democratic Party loyalists--they constitute a triumph over unconscionable obstacles to the liberation and self-realization of much of the human race.")

Edsall says "I chose those words specifically to show that the elite of the Democratic Party is as far from the ideological center as are the moralists of the Christian right." Again, if you're looking for the explanation, it's that Edsall and others believe that the view that these developments signal an "irretrievable and tragic loss" is as distant from the political center as the view that these developments signal "a triumph over unconscionable obstacles to the liberation and self-realization of much of the human race." That's just a misunderstanding of politics, if you ask me, and if that's Will's point--and it looks to be--he's right on.

Funny, I stopped reading when you asserted that unmarried motherhood is the cause of most social pathologies.

Now tell me you have to bunt the 8th-place hitter over.

Little ball.

In a previous life I used to get Newsweek and so read Will's column there each week. I started to notice a pattern. There was usually one paragraph in the middle with at least three words that I had to look up. And ya know that was always the place where the weasle or lie was burried.
Does he still do that?

A note to Thomas about facts: the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers is greater in several Scandinavain countries than it is in the US - and their rates violence, theft, rape, venereal disease, abortion, and teen pregnancy are about 75% LOWER than ours.

So, when you say that childbearing by unmarried mothers is "the cause of most social pathologies," what social pathologies and what FACTS are you thinking of?

The parenthetical should have quotes around it or should have been block indented, but I'm too lazy to do it properly--it's from Will's column, as quoted in Edsall's response.

IOW: react to Edsall and Will, or react to me, but don't confuse the two.

Folks:

A housekeeping note: typing your comments, or parts of comments IN ALL CAPS gives the impression of SHOUTING, which is not consistent with our "play nice" rules.

ALL SUCH COMMENTS WILL BE DELETED.

(And, as the Cretan philosopher said, "Everything a Cretan says is a lie.")

Sorry about the caps. I've reread Thomas' post three times - and can't see why any reader would assume the sentiment is not his.

Quoting people who are quoting each other - and making a point about how others have (mis)read their exchange - involves four voices and the potential for confusion.

Michael, I assumed that others would read the Will piece and the Edsall response, both of which include the quoted bit. If someone were to read those short articles and then, soon thereafter, read my post, I suspect they'd realize that the quoted material was from the article.

I didn't have any problem with your caps--it is difficult to emphasize *particular* words without using some convention.

Let me be clear: using all caps for a word or two is FINE. The comment I was referring to was four lines in all caps, by a commenter who made a habit of it.

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