September 7, 2005 by s.z.

P.S.  Late Happy Birthday to D. Sidhe I meant to do this a couple of days ago -- sorry to be so tardy with my well wishing, but I'm not very organized lately.  Anyway, happy late birthday, and many late returns of the day.  Oh, and everyone else, I believe this is the kind of Catwoman outfit Ms. Sidhe wears when she sings socialist songs for Labor Day.  5:57:53 AM

Jennifer Roback Morse, You're Our Idiot o' the Day! Okay, she's a Hoover Institution Fellow, which should have tipped us off about her work sucking -- but now the people have spoken, and it's official: Jennifer is today's W o'C idiot.  And we will honor her by making fun of more of her work.  (Of course, this means that Sadly, Gavin! will steal our thoughts waves again, probably via some alien technology he found on the moon, but as a public servant, it's a risk we have to take.) Anyway, by visiting Dr. Morse's site,  "JOIN THE MARRIAGE REVOLUTION -- EXCEPT FOR YOU HOMOSEXUALS!", I was able to enjoy several more of her essays.  For example, there is "Does Freedom Mean Getting Your Own Way?," a piece which first appeared in the National Catholic Register in June 2003.  In it, Dr. Jennifer holds that one shouldn't have the "right to sexual activity without pregnancy" because "one-sided kind of freedom would be a right to suspend the laws of cause and effect in order to obtain what we want." Here's a paragraph from it: Here is another way to look at it. One can argue that eating is a good and necessary thing, and that everyone is entitled to eat. It does not follow that each and every person is entitled to eat anything they want and never get fat. No one has a constitutional right to eat just as they please, without ever getting heart disease, high blood pressure or other natural consequences of overeating. You cannot coherently claim that every person has a constitutional right to eat without getting fat, and call it "gastronomical freedom." (Although, considering the number of overweight people waddling around America, maybe people do think this.) And then there's "The Right to Choose Common Sense," which appeared in the National Catholic Register in April 2004.  It's about "reproductive freedom" is really "a demand to suspend the laws of cause and effect to obtain what we want."  Here's part of it: Eating is a good and necessary thing, and everyone is entitled to eat. But we don’t think that everyone is entitled to eat anything they want and never get fat, heart disease, high blood pressure or any other natural consequence of overeating. (Come to think of it, considering the number of overweight people waddling around America, maybe some people do.) Interestingly enough, her Hoover Institution bio indicates that her expertise lies in the area of "economics and ethics" -- which I guess means that since it's economical to sell TownHall the same basic column she has already sold twice to the National Catholic Registry, then it must also be ethical. But since we're honoring Dr. Jennifer today, let's try to find one of her columns that doesn't say"Pregnancy is one of the natural consequences of sexual activity," and then imply that it should be illegal to have sex without getting pregnant. Here's one: Living with the Sandwich We Made.  It appeared in the National Catholic Register in March 2004, and it's about how women shouldn't waste their early adult years getting an education or pursuing a career -- no, they should have a bunch of babies when they're young, so that they can make those kids take care of Grandma later. "The Sandwich Generation," is one of the more frivolous complaints of the Baby-Boom generation: as if we were the first generation in history to have both children and parents. The Sandwich isn’t the problem. The problem is having two dependent generations at the same time. Um, Dr. Jennifer, I think that's the basis of the complaint, not the fact that Baby Boomers have both children and parents.  (Geez, Dr. Jennifer must have gotten her Ph.D. from the same place that Dr. Mike Adams got his.) That is unique in the history of the human race. But why is it unique to us? Although we already know, go ahead and tell us why, Dr. Jennifer. I’ll tell you why. It is one of the unintended consequences of the revolution in contraceptive technology. This technology, including the Pill and legalized abortion, made delaying child-bearing easier for larger numbers of people. Popping a pill is a lot simpler than self-restraint. It is hardly surprising that the age of first marriage and the age of first child-bearing have both steadily risen since the 1960's. This creates a chronological spread across generations. That spread is responsible for the so-called, "Sandwich Generation." Yes, things were better back in the olden days, when people who couldn't exercise self-restraint ended up in shot-gun marriages in their teens, meaning that by the time they had elderly parents, their kids had already had shot-gun marriages of their own, and were out of the house. Let me illustrate by telling my story. Like many women of my generation, I postphoned childbearing until my career was established. I guess "postphoned" childbearing is when you have the kids after phone sex. I thought it was smart and responsible to be independent. I was thirty-eight when I had my first child.Let’s do a bit of simple math. My mom was thirty-one when she had me. (I was the third of six kids, by the way. She wasn’t just getting started.) By the time I had my first, my mom was in her sixties. If I had had my first child ten years sooner, I’d have been twenty-eight, not an outrageously early age at first child-birth. But look at the difference those ten years would have made to my mom. Instead of being in her sixties, she’d be in her fifties. Instead of being infirm when I have school-aged kids, she’d be young enough to enjoy them, and incidently, to help out. Likewise, by the time she got old enough to need significant help from me and my siblings, my kids would be teen-agers. I wouldn’t be driving them to ball games and dance classes; they could drive themselves places. In fact, they might even be some help with their grandparents. Let me illustrate with a story of my own.  My aunt, who didn't use birth control, got married when she was 17.  She was the baby of the family, born when my grandmother was 42.  My aunt went on to have 9 children, the last when she was 52.  By the time my cousin "Kelli" was born, my grandmother was dead, and didn't need any care.  So, obviously, not using birth control makes life simpler for women.  Well, it would, if it didn't result in having 9 children to care for. A family with shorter spacing between the generations would be able to stagger the care of its dependent members across time. The very youngest generation wouldn’t be dependent infants at the same time that the oldest generation is most in need of care. My daugher recently asked me, "Mom, how old should I be when I get married and have kids?" I said to her, "well, Honey, I was thirty-eight when you were born. If you are thirty-eight when you have your first child, how old will I be?" I gave her a minute to do the math. "Seventy-six." "Right. If you wait that long, you may have me, and your baby in diapers at the same time. But, do whatever you want." And so the daughter vowed to put her mother in an old folks home at the first opportunity.  The End. When Thomas Malthus suggested marrying later in life as a means of controlling population growth, he was in effect suggesting a whole lot of delayed sexual gratification. Not surprisingly, few people took his suggestion seriously enough to actually implement it in their own lives. Of course, in those third-world countries where birth control is practiced, the Malthusian catastrophe has been avoided, but in those parts of the world where it isn't, they suffer from a shrinking food supply.  So, I guess Dr. Jennifer's point is that sex is the cause of children, and the effect of children is starving -- and it's wrong (and should be illegal) to try to change any of that via contraception.  No, if you don't avoid having children through the only approved method (self control), you deserve to starve.  So do your children. But today, delayed child-bearing doesn’t necessarily represent responsible delayed gratification. Quite often, that late age of first child-bearing represents the results of ten, fifteen, or maybe even twenty years of contracepted sex. We had our fun. Now it’s time to pay. Yes, if you had 20 years of sex that didn't result in babies, then you must pay!  You must pay dearly -- otherwise, cause and effect get all screwed up. We discipline our kids by giving them the "natural consequences" of their actions. We are in this Sandwich Generation because we didn’t do the math. Now, we are getting the natural consequences of the choices we made long ago. Damn!  She really does believe that babies are God's punishment for having sex -- and God will not be mocked, so He cursed you with aging parents and dependent children, you hussy.  That will teach you to use birth control! 5:33:04 AM