What makes someone genuinely conservative?

If you were to believe the mainstream media we are blessed with a real choice in politics between left-wing progressives and right-wing conservatives.

But do we really get such a choice? When you look at their beliefs, most of the establishment "conservatives" turn out to be right-liberals, who follow something similar to an older classical liberalism.

So our choice is, in reality, restricted to two variants of liberalism: a social democratic left-liberalism and a free market oriented right-liberalism.

I'm not alone in doubting the credentials of the establishment conservatives. In a recent article at Brussels Journal, Takuan Seiyo pulled no punches in describing the limited options for voters in the US elections:

In the United States - a country that has ruined itself through its own naïveté about human nature, about the world and about itself, the presidential election is being contested between a right-liberal candidate of the Stupid Party and a left-liberal candidate of the Evil Party.

Over at What's Wrong with the World, a similar observation is made:

"Conservatism" is in our time not conservatism but right-liberalism: political liberalism with a few 'conservative' unprincipled exceptions ... For a while that meant that 'conservatism' was classical liberalism; now it means, for the most part, culturally 'big tent' neoconservatism ...

So looking beyond the election of this very moment, the way to beat the Left politically ... is to stop becoming the Left ... the hard Left has a whole core worldview which anchors it and which it will not give up for anything. The Right has nothing of the kind: the political Right is basically a classical liberalism / neoconservatism ...

... as long as 'conservatives' are willing to support liberals like McCain just because he tepidly throws them a few policy bones, conservatism will be not merely neutralized, but will remain complicit in the inexorable march of liberal modernity/postmodernity. (Hat tip: Vanishing American)

It's important then for a newer generation of conservatives to support something other than right-liberalism. Which raises the question of how we define a genuine, non-liberal conservatism.

I won't attempt here to give a definitive answer to the question. I just want to kick things off by making a few relevant points.

First, you can't be a conservative unless you are seeking to conserve some aspect of the society you live in.

The thing you want to conserve, though, cannot be liberal values. If this is what you want to conserve, then you are a liberal and not a conservative.

The former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, attempted to define conservatism as conserving liberal values. In a speech he made while in office, he stated openly that:

.... ours is a liberal government holding liberal principles.

He went on to argue that:

I have stressed the commitment of the Government to liberal principles and values. Precisely because of that commitment it is also concerned to conserve and protect those principles and values.

Once liberal institutions are installed in a society, a government which wishes to preserve them must in some sense be conservative.

The idea that conservatism means preserving liberal values is a losing one for genuine conservatives. Fraser in his subsequent political life has proved this over and over by adopting all the latest "progressive" liberal views.

There's a second pitfall to be avoided. It's no use seeking to conserve a particular entity in society on the liberal grounds that the entity can be defined any way we want it to be.

Former Liberal Party minister Tony Abbott took this road not so long ago. In a speech full of eloquent references to Edmund Burke, he sought to defend the family as follows:

Supporting families shouldn’t mean favouring one family type over others. We have to resist yearning for “ideal” families and “traditional” mothers. Every family is a source of nurturing and security for its members.

This is useless. What are we really seeking to conserve if it's thought illegitimate to favour one family type over others? If all kinds of living arrangements are equally valid, then the task is not to conserve any existing arrangement, but to overthrow any preference or advantage for the traditional type. We are back with a radical liberalism, rather than a genuine conservatism.

So a genuine conservatism must seek to conserve a distinct entity of society that is not a liberal value or institution.

People are most likely to be drawn toward a genuine conservatism if what they wish to conserve is their own larger communal tradition, i.e. their ethny or nation.

I'll give as an example a recent defence of fatherhood by American columnist Kathleen Parker. She wrote:

as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.

In the coming years we will need men who are not confused about their responsibilities. We need boys who have acquired the virtues of honour, courage, valour and loyalty. We need women willing to let men be men – and boys be boys. And we need young men and women who will commit and marry and raise children in stable homes.

I'm not exactly sure where Kathleen Parker stands politically. She may not be consistently conservative in the way I'd prefer. Nonetheless, the above quote is useful because it shows how an aversion to 'cultural suicide' encourages a wider concern for the traditions which sustain a society.

Kathleen Parker is right to suggest that unless boys are brought up to be confident about the masculine virtues, they are less likely to make adult commitments, particularly to family life.

If there is no tradition you identify with, then this won't seem so problematic. If there is no larger entity you are trying to keep going, then you're less likely to be concerned if young men lack confidence and direction and if family formation is disrupted.

So it works best if conservatives set out to conserve their own larger communal tradition - their ethny or nation - rather than one aspect of it alone (such as family, church, language, culture or history).

CD of the Day, 10/30/08: Class Three Overbite-Horses for Courses

Mike Elgert and Brad Jendza have done it again. The duo known as Class Three Overbite has followed up their 2007 debut Rendezvous with perhaps an ever better disc this time with Horses for Courses. Lots of bands can capture the sound of the 70s, but few can capture its spirit, and CTO are one of those bands. Equal parts the sound of Queen, T-Rex, Jellyfish and other band who aren't afraid of putting some spunk in their power pop, Class Three Overbite still manages to not bite off more than it can chew.

That becomes apparent right off the bat with "Storm's Comin'", a cornucopia of falsetto vocalls, funky riffs, and guitars that rawk. If this one doesn't grab you, you may already be comatose. "Chasin' The Rabbit" sounds like a secular Rick Altizer fronting Queen, and "Sunshine" is Freddie Mercury gone flower child. "Reptiles" will make the day, if not week or month, of anyone who thinks the power pop world revolves around Jellyfish, and if there's any justice in the world, Paul Thomas Anderson will re-release the movie Boogie Nights with "Porn Addict" included in the soundtrack. "Wait For Me" is another standout with its Brian May guitar sound, "She Can't Make a Decision" is pure rock, and I always thought "Lex Luthor" deserved his own song. Finally, "You'd Better Love" is the perfect kind of overblown (and I mean that in a good way) power ballad to close out an album like this.

Coming back to their most profound influence, I'd say this is the best Queen album not named after a Marx Brothers movie that you'll find, and another year-end top-part-of-the-list contender to a year that started off slowly but is finishing strong.

CD Baby | MySpace

A different mental world

This is Dr Helen Szoke explaining why single women should have access to IVF:

Two Victorian women are hoping for their first baby, but even though they are both fertile, they can't get pregnant.

One woman can't conceive because her husband is infertile - but there is some hope for her, legally.

She can get donor insemination treatment.

The other woman can't get pregnant in Victoria because she doesn't have a male partner.

And under our state law, she will be turned away from all fertility services.

The only real difference between the women is their marital status.

When I first read this, I was struck by the difference in the way Dr Szoke conceives reality. Family relationships are insignificant to her. A difference in marital status means nothing to her, even in terms of a woman bringing a child into the world with or without a father.

Dr Szoke is the CEO of the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission - in other words, an important officer of the state. Her way of thinking illustrates just how distorted a philosophy of non-discrimination can be. She writes:

Lifting the ban on fertility services for single women ... will remove discrimination ... It is a shame that in the 21st century we still discriminate against people on the basis of their marital status ...

So it's now considered discriminatory to expect that a woman might partner with a man in order to have a child.

It's necessary to insist here that some forms of discrimination are reasonable. It is reasonable to expect that a woman will partner with a man in order to have a child.

In doing so, a child is brought into the world with a father.

Dr Szoke disagrees and believes that we all have a "right" to have our wants met by the state and that any denial of this right amounts to shameful discrimination.

But look at what is required to follow such a principle - Dr Szoke has to trivialise and disregard important human relationships to make the principle work. To blot out the real consequences of her anti-discrimination principle, there are certain rooms of thought that have to be left empty.

Scripting the new family

What do liberals think about the family? I have recently read two commentaries on the changing family by liberal writers. Here is the start of one of these items, an editorial from the Melbourne Age newspaper:

Until the 1960s, the script for family life was predictable, says David de Vaus, professor of sociology at La Trobe University. "The script was boy meets girl, fall in love, get married, set up house, woman stops work to have babies. Then he retires at 65 and one of them dies." Since then, slowly but steadily, Australians have been tearing up the template.

As Professor de Vaus documents in his statistical analysis Diversity and Change in Australian Families, the norms once imposed by one's family, gender, class or ethnic group have largely fallen away. What remains, for better or worse, are individual choices.

The editor is here taking a negative view of traditional family life, on the basis that it is "predictable", based on a "template" or on imposed norms, and that it lacks individual choice.

Why take this view? The answer is that liberals believe, as a first principle, that to be fully human we must be self-created by our own will and reason. Therefore, a consistent liberal will think that our freedom as humans depends on choosing our own life patterns.

But for this to happen there needs to be individual choice about something as basic as family life. We can only be "self-created" if there exists a diversity of family types to choose from, or, to put it in liberal terms, if family structures are "fluid" enough to be individually "negotiated".

Therefore, liberals don't like the idea that there is a single, ideal family type - that of the traditional family of father, mother and children - which individuals will naturally aim for. If this were true it would mean that there was an impediment to the liberal aim of the self-created, self-defining individual.

Note too that the liberal principle has wider ramifications. The liberal idea is that to be fully human we must be free to be self-created. But it's not only the ideal of the traditional family which limits the choice of life pattern or self-identity. So too do things basic to human life which we are born into, and cannot choose for ourselves, such as our sex, our class and our ethnicity.

That's why the editor so readily links the "imposed norms" of family life, to those of "gender, class or ethnic group". All four are basic to our identity but are illegitimate in terms of liberal principles. They are closely linked together as problems to be overcome, or oppressions to be liberated from, in the liberal mind.

Humanizing the future

Which brings me to the second item I've recently read putting the liberal view of the family. It's a discussion paper titled "New Families for Changing Times" published by The Australia Institute.

The author, Pamela Kinnear, begins with a quote by Suzanne Keller (who I believe is a professor of sociology at Princeton University):

Ultimately all social change involves moral doubt and moral reassessment ... Only by examining and taking stock of what is can we hope to affect what will be. This is our chance to invent and thus to humanize the future.

I'm not sure that the quote would mean much to the ordinary person. It seems senseless. For a liberal, though, the ideas expressed here are important: we are made human when we are free to "invent" our own destiny.

The implication is, though, that if we accept what either nature or tradition has bestowed we are dehumanized. To use a common liberal term we have to reject nature and tradition and come up with our own "script".

As you might expect this doesn't leave much room for the traditional family of dad, mum and the kids. Pamela Kinnear makes it clear from the very first paragraphs of her discussion paper that she, as a social progressive, supports the breakdown of the traditional family:

Throughout the Western world, the changing nature of families has led to a highly charged debate. Conservatives view family change as a wholly negative phenomenon and attribute 'family breakdown' to a wider decline in moral values and the unhealthy dominance of selfish individualism over more traditional values of responsibility and obligation. They believe that the primary objective of social policy should be to protect the traditional nuclear family from the forces of change.

By contrast, social progressives reject the notion of family breakdown and argue that we must accept the transition to a new diversity of family forms. They regard the idea of family as an evolving social construct.

For Pamela Kinnear the new diversity of family life is part of a positive historical trend toward people realising their "self-identity" by which she means their self-created identity. She writes,

Western societies in the period of late modernity are characterised by an emphasis on personal growth and self-identity ... While conservatives understand this process as one of the growth of selfish individualism, it is more accurately understood as a process of individualisation, one in which the social categories of the past (gender, class, race and so on) no longer serve as the framework for individual behaviour or cultural beliefs.

In the age of individualisation, previous modes of behaviour and expectations have been disembedded from society, and we are now in the process of re-embedding new ways of life in which individuals must invent and live according to their own biographies. With respect to family change, the problem with 'conservative wailers' (as Ulrich Beck calls them) is that they see only the process of disembedding without paying heed to the process of re-embedding.

In this transition, relationships, including marriage, must be reinvented too. The downside of the 'pure relationship', freed from convention, is some instability as partners continuously re-evaluate their relationship. They ask whether it fits with their own life project to realise self-identity.

You see, for the liberal Pamela Kinnear a "pure relationship" is not a marital union which combines love and fidelity, but one which is "freed from convention". So we should aim, it seems, to be as unconventional as we can in our relationships. Being committed to a lifelong marriage, and having children, is as conventional as it gets, and therefore presumably highly impure in the Kinnear world view.

(Note too how Pamela Kinnear, just like the Age editor, places the rejection of the traditional family alongside the rejection of gender, class and race identities. The same underlying principle makes all of these things illegitimate in the liberal mind.)

Fallout

I won't attempt a complete conservative response to these liberal claims about the family. However, it is worth pointing out a basic flaw in the liberal argument. We are supposed to believe that changes in the family represent a shift toward individual choice. Yet how many people really want their "own biography" to include a divorce, or single parenthood, or childlessness. In most cases, these things will be experienced as a loss and a hurt rather than as individual self-realisation.

The Age editor seems to be at least partly aware of this. He writes,

We have more freedom now - and more space to worry about the decisions we have made. The degree of comfort a person feels with the looser arrangements now in place largely depends on how well he or she is able to adapt to the present period of unpredictable transition.

To be the first person in a family to divorce, for instance, or to decide not to marry, can be a lonely and challenging experience, even if, from an individual experience, the choice was the right one.

For each one of us the future is unknown, and always has been, but for the tens of thousands of Australians who have broken from tradition - by embracing single parenthood, say, or by choosing career over family - where their trajectory will take them may also, in dark moments, appear unimaginable. Life without the script is life stripped of comforting certainties.

Again, we are presented with the idea that we have more freedom if we reject the traditional family in order to lead a "life without the script." This means that divorce or single parenthood or spinsterhood is treated as something that people choose positively for themselves.

This, to me, is not a credible view of how people really want their lives to turn out. If we could have what we truly want, how many people would really "embrace" single motherhood or divorced fatherhood? It is a natural desire for people to want to find a life partner and to raise children. When this desire is frustrated it is a matter of personal grief, not a bold choice to be liberated from a script.

At least, though, the Age editor concedes that those who do "choose" such things face loneliness and insecurity. And he makes a more significant concession toward the end of the editorial when he writes,

According to the Institute of Family Studies, more than a quarter of men and women have fewer children than they would ideally like to have. The figure indicates that a reservoir of pain and regret may surround the decline in the nation's fertility.

So at least we have an admission that people don't always freely choose their family situation, and that changes to family life (a lower fertility rate) can reflect frustrated desires and unhappiness rather than a boldly chosen liberation.

The conclusion to Pamela Kinnear's discussion paper is also notable. She wants to argue that the functions of caring and nurturing can be just as well fulfilled in new families as in traditional ones. But to prove this she is forced to make the following claim about children who have experienced a parental divorce:

Children too are fully capable of adopting an ethic of care and becoming moral philosophers adept at understanding and negotiating the complexities of modern family life.

Really? I would not have objected if Pamela Kinnear had simply claimed that most divorced parents still care greatly about the welfare of their children. But what she is doing is applying the liberal pretence to children: she wants us to believe that children can become self-creating moral philosophers who show individual autonomy by negotiating their way through complex, uncertain circumstances.

It would seem that children are to be "liberated" from the "script" of a secure emotional attachment to parents who set clear moral limits and guidelines.

A different approach

Of course, we could instead choose to tear up the script of liberalism itself. What if we really decided to be independent minded and thought outside of liberal first principles? What would happen?

Well, we would no longer be forced into a revolt against nature and tradition. Nor would we need to reject important, but unchosen, aspects of human identity and connectedness.

We could consider ourselves to be both human and free, whilst at the same time pursuing important goals, like finding a life partner and having children. We would no longer be forced to accept, as a best outcome, a combination of freedom and loneliness, or freedom and regret.

It is the convention of liberalism we need to overturn, rather than the traditional ideal of family life.

(First published at Conservative Central, 12/12/2004)

What causes family violence?

In today's Herald Sun it's reported that:

More than four out of five family violence cases also involve mental illness, financial hardship, alcohol abuse or housing difficulties.

The information comes from a Journeys to Safety report released by Anglicare Victoria.

Why is the information significant? Because it contradicts the claims of patriarchy theory. According to this theory, men use family violence to enforce the oppression of women. In other words, domestic violence exists to maintain the dominance of the powerful in society.

If you believe in patriarchy theory, you're likely to insist that the numbers of women affected by family violence is high and that male culture is accepting of domestic violence. You are also likely to focus on cases of domestic violence involving wealthier white men, as these men are supposed to represent power in society.

The Anglicare report, though, shatters much of this framework. A large majority of cases of domestic violence are linked to very specific, predictable factors rather than to a generalised male culture or to systems of power.

So it isn't marriage in itself, as a "patriarchal institution", that women have to fear, but certain forms of breakdown of social norms, involving mental health, drug abuse or homelessness.

CD of the Day, 10/28/08: Allen Devine-Poportunity

Boston's Allen Devine has been around for a while - this is his fourth solo release - but he's mostly focused on the instrumental side of guitar rock. Fortunately for us he's decided to go the power pop route, and the results are one of the year's more pleasant surprises. Poportunity (love those titles with the "pop" play on "op-" words - when do we get Poperation or Poptimist or Poptometry?) is classic power pop in the vein of The Goldbergs, Marshall Crenshaw, the recent Galaxies release and others that just have "that" sound.

"What In The World" starts things off with some meat-and-potatoes power pop with a few neat flourishes, such as the Del Shannon-like guitar bits and some rock 'n' roll piano. "It's on the Way" (now playing over to your right) has a mellow-but-jangly vibe that recalls Bobby Sutliff; "Tonight" really does sound like a track from one of the Goldbergs discs; the 1:53 "Janine" has a 60s feel, and "My Baby Sezz" throws a bit of a curveball, a country-ish honky tonk number with sax. Elsewhere, "I Never Really Said Goodbye" sounds like a Big Star-era Alex Chilton ballad, and "Change" rocks with abandon. In keeping with the best traditions of power pop, the whole affair consists of 10 tracks clocking in at just under 25 minutes, so Poportunity never comes close to wearing out its welcome. If you're starved for vintage power pop, this disc may be your best "poption".

CD Baby | MySpace | eMusic | Listen at Lala

So it's just self-interest?

Spinoza was one of the first of the classical liberals. I'm reading a book about him at the moment titled The Courtier and the Heretic by Matthew Stewart.

By the 1670s, Spinoza was advocating the following:

Spinoza, like most modern theorists, grounds the legitimacy of political authority in the self-interest of individuals. He argues not only that everyone, and every thing, for that matter, is driven by self-interest but that they ought to be as well. "The more every man endeavours and is able to seek his own advantage, the more he is endowed with virtue," he says in the Ethics. "To act in absolute conformity with virtue is nothing else in us but to act, to live, to preserve one's own being (these three mean the same) under the guidance of reason on the basis of seeking one's advantage." (pp.101-102)

So I am to be self-interested and to seek my own advantage, and to set my sights at the level of self-preservation. These ideas, so familiar within classical liberalism, are already present in the world view of Spinoza.

Stewart goes on to tell us that:

Spinoza did not invent the idea of a secular state founded on self-interest; rather, he observed it clearly for the first time ... The very features of modernity that were then and are still regarded by many as its signature evils - the social fragmentation, the secularity, and the triumph of self-interest - he enshrined as the founding virtues of the new world order. His political philosophy was, in essence, an active response to the challenges of modernity. (pp.102-103)

Here's some more:

According to the author of the Ethics, self-interest is a virtue itself. The political order he intended to establish is one in which all social goals are secular, and so none may transcend the self-realization of the individual. In his magnum opus he baldly avowed that "no virtue can be conceived prior to this one, namely, the drive to preserve oneself." (p.107)

From wikipedia we learn that Spinoza was a naturalist in his philosophy:

Spinoza rejects the dualistic assumption that mind, intentionality, ethics, and freedom are to be treated as things separate from the natural world of physical objects and events.

So Spinoza's challenge was to explain such things as intentionality, ethics and freedom naturalistically.

He could no longer assert the existence of an inherently existing good or evil:

Spinoza held a relativist's position, that nothing is intrinsically good or bad ...

Because Spinoza believed that nothing exists outside natural causes, he was a determinist who believed that all things were determined by natural laws:

... Spinoza believes in his deterministic universe that, "All things in nature proceed from certain necessity and with the utmost perfection." Therefore, nothing happens by chance in Spinoza's world ...

So how then did he ground his concepts of ethics and freedom? He took the philosophical idea of a "conatus" - a striving to continue to exist and thereby to preserve one's essence - as his general principle.

In Spinoza's view, we act virtuously if we act rationally to strive to exist, in accordance with this idea of a "conatus". Similarly, we are free inasmuch as we are not constrained from acting to preserve our essential being:

His concept of "conatus" states that human beings' natural inclination is to strive toward preserving an essential being and an assertion that virtue/human power is defined by success in this preservation of being by the guidance of reason as one's central ethical doctrine.

And again:

His goal is to provide a unified explanation of all these things [intentionality, ethics, freedom] within a naturalistic framework, and his notion of conatus is central to this project.

For example, an action is "free", for Spinoza, only if it arises from the essence and conatus of an entity. There can be no absolute, unconditioned freedom of the will, since all events in the natural world, including human actions and choices, are determined in accord with the natural laws of the universe, which are inescapable.

However, an action can still be free in the sense that it is not constrained or otherwise subject to external forces.

A couple of observations. First, it's not easy to integrate the different claims made by Spinoza. If everything that happens is both perfect and necessary, then how can you have different degrees of freedom and constraint?

Second, Spinoza identified a naturalistic aim of preserving one's own being and he grounded both virtue and freedom on an absence of external constraints in pursuing this aim.

This aim, though real and important, is nonetheless a narrow one to occupy an individual life and a human culture and civilisation. It was chosen because it helped to resolve certain difficulties within Spinoza's naturalistic philosophy.

The intellectual foundations of classical liberalism are neither persuasive nor appealing. Do we really wish to understand virtue in terms of rational self-interest? Is freedom really to be understood merely as an absence of external constraints in the pursuit of individual self-preservation?

As for the other plank of classical liberalism - a belief in the pursuit of material prosperity - Spinoza advocated this as a means of occupying the energies of the common man. It was his version of the "bread and circuses" which was supposed to keep the common man at a safe distance from the more substantial issues of life (Stewart, p.103).

There seems to be little to gain in rejecting modern liberalism in favour of more classical forms. We need to think independently of both of these political philosophies and assert a worthier and more fitting politics of our own.

Missionaries attacked in Sydney

Here's a news item which the American media has reported on but which the Australian media hasn't been willing to cover.

Two young Mormon men from America were walking home through an area of Sydney known as "Little Lebanon" (thought to be the suburb of Auburn) when they were suddenly attacked by a group of six men of Middle Eastern appearance. The two young Americans were beaten and stabbed.

According to American media sources:

... the United States embassy in Australia is said to be investigating the incident. An official motive has not been released, though Collinsworth's mother believes it was a combination of racial and religious reasons.

"Chris is in a real melting pot, there's guy from all over the world," said Alisa Collinsworth. "He said the guys who came after him were Lebanese Muslims and they were grown men... they were big guys."

Why hasn't the Australian media reported on this story? Are there Lebanese Muslims in Sydney who are willing to launch unprovoked attacks on people because they are white? Or because they are missionaries for another religion? Is this a "hate crime" committed against two white American Mormon men?

There's more information on the attack here and here.

Another singer-songwriter roundup.

Jonathan Rundman-Insomnia - ccomplishments. Jonathan Rundman has been one of the more underappreciated artists of the decade in the genre, and his 2004 release Public Library was a real treat: smart, literate, wry and rocking. For the unfamiliar, you might also want to get a start with his recently-released best-of. Or you can jump right in with his latest, Insomniaccomplishments, consisting of songs written while going through the sleep-deprived days of being a father of a newborn child (been there, done that). Rundman's at his best mixing rock, power pop, Americana and singer-songwriter balladry, and his latest is 18 tracks of just that. Tracks to check out: "If You Have a Question", "Imperfection", "Nothing Downtown" and "Here at 2141". Worth staying awake for.

CD Baby | MySpace

Daniel Christian-I Am Merely Sand. Normally, I don't review older releases, but this 2006 gem just recently came to my attention. Christian reminds me of a cross between James Taylor and Todd Herfindal of The Meadows, and if that sounds intriguing to you, give his disc a listen. Whether it's the Americana of "New Sun Rising" or the hooky pop of "...Unto Herself" or the storytelling of "Estella", Christian is a quality singer-songwriter. Also of note is the 8-minute closing track, "Water From The River", which is kind of a pastiche of all the facets of his sound.

CD Baby | MySpace

Dave Yaden-Bear Me Up. Sometimes the artists do the work for me, at least when it comes to analogizing their sound. Right there on Dave Yaden's CD Baby page it says "Billy Joel meets The Band", and damned if he isn't right. In fact, Joel himself had a few "meets-The-Band" moments on his first couple of pre-superstardom discs and at times that sound is present here. The disc is produced by Todd Beauchamp, who had a pretty good disc of his own last year, and the sound is upbeat and radio-friendly. The upbeat "Can't Let Go" is a high-quality opener, "Alexandra" is where The Band's influence comes in, and "Down the Line" is a midtempo marvel.

CD Baby | MySpace | Listen at Lala

Lala. (Updated)

Many of you may have noticed on my last couple of reviews I've added a "Listen at Lala" link at the end. For those who haven't heard, Lala.com has relaunched itself and in the process might be the most exciting thing in online music since eMusic and iTunes. Create a free account, and you can listen to any disc it has (most of the majors and a considerable amount of independent, CD Baby-type stuff) once in its entirety for free. After that, you can buy a stream of any track for 10 cents, which lets you listen to it online as many times as you want (You get 50 free permanent streams for signing up before you have to start spending a dime). Like the other services, you can still buy the mp3 for less than a dollar if you prefer.

The other cool aspect of it is that you can use it as a digital locker for your online music collection; you can download a small app that scans your music collection and either matches the tracks in their own database or uploads the tracks they don't have to their server so that you can listen to it all from any computer. They use an iTunes-like interface to manage this, and it's pretty neat. They're also on the verge of releasing a iPhone app that will let you stream your collection.

The big catch, though, is that it's available in the U.S. only at the present time. The upshot of it for this site is that any time I review a disc they have, you'll have the opportunity to listen to it one time all the way through for free, which is a big deal especially now that CD Baby has cut the samples on its site for new discs from 2 minutes to 29 seconds due to ASCAP/BMI licensing issues. CD Baby is still the best place to buy if you want the physical disc and/or to see the artist get paid, but Lala is now the best place to sample.

UPDATE: They have a "forecast" feature which allows you to select four songs that you can have anyone listen to, and if you look to the right, you'll see mine. I plan on featuring 4 songs that either strike my fancy at the moment and/or come from discs I recently reviewed.

CD of the Day, 10/23/08: Hey Now, Morris Fader-Ride The Fader

Hey Now, Morris Fader is a 2-man band out of Boston, and with Ride The Fader (the title being an apparent homage to the NY indie band Chavez' famous 90s disc of the same name, as well as their own name), they've managed to come up with one of the top piano-pop discs of the year. Ride The Fader will definitely appeal to fans of Jack's Mannequin, Frank Ciampi, and yes, that guy with the initials "B.F." who tends to get mentioned in every piano pop review.

Opener "Vanishing" sounds as if it come come from The Biography of Reinhold Messner, the initialed one's final band disc, with its pensive piano sound. "Airport Song" is a real delight, with a 70s vibe and some damn fine playing from frontman and pianist Brooks Milgate. Other standouts include the insistent "Down In Front", the upbeat and poptastic "Hypochondriac", which recalls fellow Bostonian Ciampi, and the jaunty "Talk to Myself". The common thread on all these songs is the workout Milgate gives his piano, and his technical ability reminds me quite a bit of Bruce Hornsby as well. If you ears are tickled by the tickling of ivories in support of quality pop tunes, you'll want to Ride The Fader.

CD Baby | MySpace | eMusic | Listen at Lala

CD of the Day, 10/22/08: Cliff Hillis-The Long Now

With so many artists out there and so many records to hear, and so little time in which to listen to it all, an artist who delivers consistently great music is worth his or her weight in gold. And in the power pop community, very few artists fit this bill as Cliff Hillis does. From his work in Starbelly (whose brilliant 2002 release Everyday and Then Some deserves a spot in the Top 20 power pop discs of the decade) and Ike to his high-quality solo work, Hillis is a known quantity, and his brand new solo disc The Long Now is another feather in his cap.

All of what I said above means that I'd buy his records sight unseen (or hearing unheard I guess), making the rest of this review superfluous for those familiar with his work, but for the uninitiated or those who have overlooked him, Hillis' sound is the golden mean of power pop - punchy enough to satisfy fans of Fountains of Wayne or Cheap Trick, but melodic enough to satisfy fans of Squeeze, Michael Carpenter and Paul McCartney. The rollicking, acoustic-based "She Sees" opens the track in "I've Just Seen a Face" territory, and it's followed by the brilliant "Never Understand", an electric guitar-heavy melodic gem that recalls his Starbelly days. By the time "Elevator" rolls around three tracks in, you're left to marvel at how effortless his sound seems as another near-perfect melody wafts through your speakers. And the rest of the album lives up to the standards - "Northern Lights" rocks with grace; "Follow You Anywhere" is more bright pop; "Like an Island" is positively majestic; and "All For The Sake" has a laid-back, country-rock-pop sound that reminds me of Carpenter and Bryan Estepa.

When the year-end list rolls around, there may be only be one digit in front of the period on this one, and make sure you pick it up through Not Lame or Kool Kat, where you get a bonus EP of 6 songs that include tribute tracks (including a cover of McCartney's "This One") and his contest-winning Chili's baby back ribs jingle.

Not Lame | Kool Kat | MySpace | Listen at Lala

Is Boris really a conservative?

Boris Johnson was an editor of the 'conservative' Spectator magazine, then a 'conservative' MP, then a shadow minister on the 'conservative' front bench, before becoming the 'conservative' Mayor of London.

But he is a liberal.

Consider his reasons for supporting Barack Obama in the upcoming US elections. He writes:

And then there is the final, additional reason, the glaring reason, and that is race. Huge numbers of voters, whether they admit it to themselves or not, will hesitate to choose Barack Obama for President because he is black. And then there are millions of white Americans who will undoubtedly vote Obama precisely because he is black, and because he stands for the change and the progress they want to see in their society.

After centuries of friction, prejudice, tension, hatred - you name it, they've had it - America is teetering on the brink of a triumph. If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

If Obama wins, then black people the world over will be able to see how a gifted man has been able to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling.

If Obama wins, then it will be simply fatuous to claim that there are no black role models in politics or government, because there is no higher role model than the President of the United States.

If Barack Hussein Obama is successful next month, then we could even see the beginning of the end of race-based politics, with all the grievance-culture and special interest groups and political correctness that come with it.

If Obama wins, he will have established that being black is as relevant to your ability to do a hard job as being left-handed or ginger-haired, and he will have re-established America's claim to be the last, best hope of Earth.

Consider the way Johnson frames this. On the one side there are the bad guys, the whites who won't vote for Obama because he is black. On the other side there are the good guys, the whites who will vote for Obama precisely because he is black and because he stands for change and progress.

So the point of the election is not to select the best candidate, the one who will conserve what is best in the American tradition, but for whites to prove something about themselves, namely that they are non-racist and in favour of more modernist "change and progress".

How is this genuinely conservative?

Note too that Johnson defines the American past in terms of "centuries of friction, prejudice, tension, hatred". But finally, with Obama, a "triumph" over this past is a looming possibility.

Again, what kind of conservative would so limit his appreciation for American history and culture to prejudice and hatred? It is subversive in the extreme to read a national history in these terms. It is an act of delegitimation rather than conservation.

Then there is Johnson's argument that Americans should elect Obama because that would smash a glass ceiling and provide a role model for blacks all around the world.

Is it really the case that a US President should be elected to encourage the aspirations of Africans? Would someone who really cared about the fate of the existing American tradition really make this a priority?

A genuine conservative would not make smashed ceilings a principle for electing presidents.

Then there is Johnson's shallow claim that electing Obama would make race irrelevant in the world, thereby ending race-based politics, political correctness and a grievance-based culture.

Sure.

This is much the same as believing that by electing Hillary Clinton, feminist women would realise that there was no office denied to them, thereby finally putting an end to a feminist inspired gender war.

Nothing of the sort happened when Margaret Thatcher was elected and why would it? Feminism has its roots in the modernist mindset, something that can't be overturned by a particular election result. Furthermore, why assume that feminist women would abandon a movement which gives them advantages in their pursuit of power? Why would feminist women agree to a level playing field when they have the benefit of positive discrimination legislation, quotas, public funding, university departments and so on?

Feminism is much more likely to lose position when men begin to set limits on what they will accept.

It's the same with the ethnic grievance culture Johnson refers to. When white Americans accept the premises put to them, namely that the American tradition is illegitimate because of its racism, and that whites must redeem themselves of guilt, and that any inequality is due to an institutional racism perpetrated by whites on the "other" - then the demands placed on white Americans will only grow.

Finally, there is Johnson's claim that an Obama victory, by making race not matter, will re-establish America's claim to be "the last, best hope of Earth".

I can't believe that a genuine English conservative would look to any foreign nation to be the "best hope" for the world. Was the song "Land of Hope and Glory" really composed for some other country?

Nor would a genuine conservative make the principle of non-discrimination the "telos" of the world - the end-point to which history is progressing and on which the moral fate of the world depends.

A conservative wishes to conserve his own tradition and to build on what is best in this tradition. He isn't likely to focus on a single, abstract, political telos, but on the health of family, community and nation.

On this basis, Boris Johnson is not a genuine conservative.

Sweden - not merely odd

The Lego toy company is in trouble in Sweden for breaching equality guidelines:

Sweden’s Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising (ERK) singled out images in a recent Lego catalog which featured a little girl playing in a pink room with ponies, a princess, and a palace accompanied by a caption reading, “Everything a princess could wish for…”

On the opposite side of the page, a little boy can be seen in a blue room playing with a fire station, fire trucks, a police station, and an airplane. The caption beneath reads, “Tons of blocks for slightly older boys.”

In its findings, the ERK singled out the images for preserving traditional and anachronistic views on gender roles, according to the Göteborgs-Posten newspaper.

Furthermore, said ERK, the pictures constituted a form of stereotyping which was degrading to both men and women.

When I googled the story I found it listed on several websites dedicated to odd, humorous or bizarre news. On one site, for instance, it was listed alongside an item titled "Man charged for catching, cooking squirrel" and another titled "Rabbit scares off burglar".

It's a mistake, though, to dismiss the story as a harmlessly eccentric aspect of Swedish life.

First, the Swedes are serious about creating a genderless society. The Swedes have adopted patriarchy theory as a state policy. This means that they consider the traditional male role to be the normal human one; the traditional female role they consider a social construct created by men to oppress women; therefore, it is state policy to deconstruct sex differences to create "equality" between men and women.

That's why Lego got in trouble in Sweden for distinguishing between girls and boys in its advertising - the distinction is now considered illegitimate.

Second, Sweden is not the only country to have followed this path. For example, Lego also got in trouble in Ireland. The Irish equality watchdog critised Lego for having a TV advert aimed at boys with the slogan "Who will win the battle?", whereas adverts for Barbie dolls for girls had the slogan "She's so soft and pretty".

Ireland's Equality Authority also complained that:

Blues and pinks were used to differentiate between toys directed at boys and girls ... Toy store owners were also found to be at fault for segregating toys into boys’ and girls’ aisles.

The Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland code states that sex stereotyping should be avoided but the researchers say this may not be sufficient, pointing out that in Sweden, no advertising aimed at children under 12 is allowed.

Chief executive of the Equality Authority Niall Crowley said ...“An advertising process is needed that challenges gender stereotypes rather than communicating and reinforcing them.”

Nor is the US immune to this belief that equality requires the abolition of sex distinctions. Barack Obama said last year that women should be required to register for military service and he has now also declared that he would consider opening combat roles to women.

Here is how he put the case for requiring women to register:

... he did say women should be expected to register with the Selective Service, comparing the role of women to black soldiers and airmen who served during World War II, when the armed forces were still segregated.

"There was a time when African-Americans weren't allowed to serve in combat," Mr. Obama said. "And yet, when they did, not only did they perform brilliantly, but what also happened is they helped to change America, and they helped to underscore that we're equal."

So Obama not only believes that women are equally able to serve as soldiers, he thinks they should do so in order to "underscore that we're equal".

The modernist mindset is especially striking here. What seems to matter to Obama is that society be regulated without regard to sex distinctions between men and women.

This means overlooking a lot of things. The young women I know have developed in a distinctive way toward an attractive womanhood. It seems like a slap in the face to who they are to suggest that they should be sent into combat. It is like declaring that what they are, distinctly, as women is seen by society as redundant. In old-fashioned terms, it is a dishonouring of their womanhood.

In the Obama mindset there is no essential masculinity or femininity. I find it difficult to believe, though, that the average man has never beheld a woman and recognised something essentially feminine in her. Isn't there in heterosexuality a sense of appreciation, and love for, what is essentially masculine or feminine in the opposite sex?

If we take what is essentially feminine from women, then where does that leave men? Imagine looking on women and not having a sense of their femininity. Does that not undercut our own masculine responsiveness to women? Doesn't it deplete important aspects of our own identity as men?

If there really were no essences, then heterosexuality itself becomes unreasonable and arbitrary. Why would men fall in love with women, if there were no real essence to either category. It would then make more sense for what modernists say about sexuality to be true - that sexual attraction is spread evenly along a continuum.

And if there does exist an essential masculinity and femininity? Then we have a definite nature to develop as best we can in order to "self-actualise" - as do all living things. If this is so, then it makes little sense to regulate society without any regard to sex distinctions. By doing so we only hinder the self-expression and self-development of individuals.

We should let boys be boys and girls and be girls - and value what is best in both sexes. The Swedish project is not oddly humourous - it's an intrusive aspect of modernism to be seriously resisted.

Friday Roundup.

All Day Sucker-The Big Pretend. I noted these guys back in January from last year's IPO compilation, and they've now unleashed The Big Pretend, their second-full length disc. They strike me as kind of a cross between Orson, Weezer and Everclear, and have a big, radio-friendly pop sound. The disc is sort of an LA concept album, complete with an amusing 40s/50s-sounding introductory theme. The IPO teaser track, "The Picture (That Took Me)" is here, and it's the highlight, but there are several more interesting tracks including the manic pop of "Life In The Passing Lane", the quite catchy "Santa Ana", and the baroque nostalgia of "Beverly Park". A fun disc that will make you feel like you're in L.A., regardless of where you are.

CD Baby | MySpace

Goh Nakamura-Ulysses. Staying in the Golden State but moving up the coast, San Francisco's Goh Nakamura is quite the pleasant surprise (although this is his third disc) to discover. He's got an excellent folk-rock/pop sound that is quite Beatlesque in spots; in other words, he's like a less depressing Elliot Smith. "Somewhere" wouldn't sound out of place on a Jon Brion album; "Sarah Rose" has all the charm and melody of McCartney at his acoustic best; and the title track conjures up the denser sound that Smith had on his last two albums. Now I'm going to go back and check out his first two discs.

CD Baby | MySpace

Big Bus Dream-The Jesters of Xmas Town. Big Bus Dream is another example of Charlotte's thriving pop scene, which has brought us the likes of Jamie Hoover, James Deem, Transmission Fields, and some other high-quality artist whose name I'm likely forgetting at the moment. This is their second full-length (the debut was produced by Hoover) and they have a sophisticated pop sound that's very similar to The Eels; in fact, frontman Mike Shannon (a former CBGB's fixture) is a vocal ringer for Mr. E himself. If you start at the beginning, you'll notice this resemblance off the bat in "Another Me", and their understated folk-pop also carries some Elvis Costello and Lou Reed influence, nowhere more so than the biting "Money Trumps Everything". Other highlights include the Willie Nile-style "Tremble", the languid "Already Gone" (which has a hint of the Pernice to it), and the fiddle-friendly "Since You Left". This is one Bus you'll want to catch.

CD Baby | MySpace | mp3s at Sonicbids

CD of the Day, 10/15/08: Greg Pope-Popmonster

One of the more underrated power pop bands of the last several years has been Edmund's Crown, whose Regrets of a Company Man was one of my favorite releases of 2006. The Tennessee band has been one of the leaders of "southern power pop", along with artists like The Luxury Liners (whose frontman David Dewese has ironically just released a solo disc of his own), The Rewinds and Bill Lloyd. The man behind the Crown is Greg Pope, and he's out with his solo debut that not only continues the Edmund's Crown sound but expands upon it (and which sports pretty cool album art to boot). Popmonster is a true solo debut as well, with Pope writing, singing and playing all the instruments on each track.

Freed to do his own thing, Pope lets loose a total of 16 tracks here but there really isn't any filler. Opener "Sky Burn Down" lets you know you're not in Kansas (or at least Tennessee) any more as he revs up a Robert Pollard-style rocker in both sound and length (2:08). "I Got a Life" is another infectious barnburner which recalls both Matthew Sweet and The Who in places, while "Lost My Friend" and "Playing Nashville" travel in more familiar Edmund's Crown territory. "The Only Thing I've Got" also clocks in around 2 minutes, and has a definite Alex-Chilton-by-way-of-Paul-Westerberg vibe. Other standouts include the aching Jon Brionesque pop of "Only One You", the jangly "Footpath", the bright Americana-influenced "Little Things", and "Reason With You", another track that would have fit on nicely on Regrets of a Company Man.

A real tour-de-force and with Halloween approaching, this Popmonster will be scaring its way up my year-end list.

CD Baby | MySpace

¿Que paso con iCarly en canal 5?

Me refiero al canal 5 de televisa en México (televisión abierta).

Y es que hace poco, en lo que llamaron el "viernes sin clases" transmitieron el primer episodio de iCarly.

Hay que mencionar que dicho viernes hicieron algunos cambios en la programación y pasaron nuevos capitulos de algunas series como El manual de Ned y Zoey 101. Incluso llegué a pensar que no iban a transmitir el capitulo final de la 7a temporada de Smallville, ya que no transmitieron esta serie ese dia. Afortunadamente lo pasaron el lunes siguiente.

Pero me pregunto ¿Por que pasaron iCarly únicamente ese día y ya no lo han vuelto a transmitir?

La razón por la que me tardé en escribir este post es que esperaba que estuviera escondido entre la programación, quizá entre las horas que no acostumbro ver tanta televisión. Tenía la esperanza de que ya lo estuvieran transmitiendo, pero NO, ya he comprobado que NO.

Quizá lo transmitieron un solo día para ver qué tanto rating lograba, o fue una probadita de lo que vendría después o sencillamente lo pusieron por error. Cabe recordar que era un día con programación especial, y no con la programación regular de todos los dias.

De cualquier forma hubiera esperado que siguieran transmitiendo dicha serie por canal 5, especialmente después del éxito que ha tenido en televisión de paga.

En caso de que haya sido una prueba para ver el rating y ese dia haya logrado bajo rating y esa sea la razon de que no lo volvieron a transmitir, creo que estan cometiendo el mismo error que cometieron con The OC.

Hace tiempo cuando estaban apenas incorporando ya en serio esto de las series extranjeras en canal 5, se les ocurrio poner a The OC los viernes en la noche. Fue un fracaso y a las pocas semanas lo quitaron, pero ¿a quien se le ocurre poner una serie para adolescentes en viernes en la noche?

Lo mismo pasó con iCarly, lo pasaron antes de Doctor House (House M.D.) un viernes, por lo que no era precisamente un buen horario, especialmente considerando el público al que va dirigido esta serie. En todo caso, lo deberían de haber puesto más temprano, en un horario similar al de El manual de Ned o Zoey 101.

Asi que para televisa: ¡Queremos ver a iCarly en el canal 5!

Singer/Songwriter Monday.

Three quality singer/songwriter offerings to start the work week:

Preston Girard-Along Chicago. Despite the album title Girard is from Kansas City, and he works in the idiom of singer-songwriters like AM, Gus Black and David Gray. From the defiant start-stop of "Pretty" to the jangle of the title track to the balladry of "Under", Girard shows a real command of his craft. But the real standout here is "Little People", near-power pop with a chorus that will stay in your head.

CD Baby | MySpace

Tyler Burkum-Darling, Maybe Someday. This Minneapolis artist comes down more on the alt-country side of singer/songwriterdom, but with a pop sheen that recalls Ryan Adams before he got (too) full of himself and some of Jeff Tweedy's more sublime moments in Wilco. Opener "Blue as the Sky" sets the tone with its achingly beautiful melody and arrangement; the midtempo "Gales of November" veers into Counting Crows territory; "Hurricane" channels Adams circa Heartbreaker, and "Everything You Said" is pure pop. An impressive full-length debut for anyone who values the laid-back and melodic.

CD Baby | MySpace

David Kitchen-Underground. Here's one to watch. This is the debut EP from Virginia's David Kitchen, and it's a pop fest that brings to mind everyone from Nick Lowe to Tal Bachman to Steely Dan. Exhibit "A" is the dizzyingly catchy "Underground", which might be one of the tracks of the year. "Mean Old Mister Gravity" is another toe tapper that features horns and flutes; "You Know That I Will" is a pleasant midtempo number, and closer "Remembering" mixes jangle with some fine guitar solo work in service of another catchy tune. I will now state the obvious and obligatory: Bring on the full length!

CD Baby | MySpace

Liberalism & lost community

I've been gradually working my way through Liberalism & Community by American academic Steven Kautz. The book is an attempt to defend the classical liberalism of writers like John Locke.

In previous posts I've criticised classical liberalism for its overly pessimistic account of human nature. According to Kautz, Lockean liberalism begins with the idea that people are naturally selfish and solitary. The natural condition of man is thought to be a war of all against all. The human passions are negative aspects of existence, being warlike and irrational.

This faulty reading of human nature has some drastic consequences. It means that a "natural" community will be thought of negatively, as a merely civilised war of all against all, in which "partisan" causes will be invented to justify the carrying on of a civil war.

Having set up this framework, classical liberals then propose a solution: reason can be used to establish an unnatural peace, in which moderation is the chief virtue and in which all agree to banish "partisan" public causes and pursue strictly private pursuits instead.

The Lockean view unnecessarily diminishes what is possible within a community. It also fails to recognise, and therefore defend, the natural sources of unity and loyalty within a society.

Kautz draws out a few further consequences of the Lockean framework:

In a liberal world, high-minded moral and political aspirations have their proper place only outside the sphere of common deliberation and common action of citizens.

Liberals must therefore admit that ... politics properly attends above all to the manifestly instrumental questions of security and prosperity, because debates about these matters admit compromise and encourage moderation; and so, the ways of life of citizens and statesmen are soon deprived of their former dignity - statesmen are supplanted by bureaucrats, citizens by entrepreneurs.

Liberal politics, in short, is boring ... we refrain from more exciting or inspiriting political or moral partisanship, because we worry that such quarrels are often merely more or less quiet modes of civil war - cold civil war so to speak. When the political community steps beyond these bounds, it invites civil strife.

Our passions do not by themselves bring us together in political communities, other than by way of war for the sake of partisan or private advantage ... (p.34)

It's strange that classical liberals believe that we are naturally solitary and selfish, but that they think the impulse to high-minded public action so strong, that it is a danger to social peace.

Admittedly, liberals like Kautz argue that the high-minded public action is fraudulent and really masks an effort to pursue selfish, warlike qualities at a higher, social level.

If this is true, though, then why relegate the high-mindedness to a private level? If it's fraudulent, and exists merely as a cover to civil warfare, then it is as redundant at the private level (or more so) than at the public level.

Classical liberals can't have it both ways. Either high-mindedness has some merit, in which case the Lockean account of human nature is wrong, or it is fraudulent, in which case it's senseless to delegate it to a private, rather than a public, realm.

It seems all too convenient that people who believe that we are by nature selfish, anti-social and acquisitive should limit "community" to a technical pursuit of material prosperity, one in which "statesmen are supplanted by bureaucrats, citizens by entrepreneurs".

Anthony Esolen has drawn a distinction between men who are domesticated and men who are civilised. The domesticated man thinks only in terms of his own family; the civilised man has the capacity to think and act for the larger, common good:

Women do not in fact civilize men; they domesticate men, as I've said before. Men civilize men. There's a difference.

What is that difference? A soldier in a cavalry unit who spends most of his time in barracks or under the skies, may well be more civilized, more trained to think of and to act for the common good, to command other men or to obey, than many a high-priced lawyer or even college professor. He's not domesticated, though, and his new bride at first might find him pretty hard to live with.

On the other hand, men who live comfortable lives apart from other men, taking no initiative for the common good, considering only their wives and children and not the welfare of anybody else's children, never to be relied upon in time of public need, may be domesticated but not civilized. You might find plenty of men of the former sort at the inception of a great nation. You will find plenty of men of the latter sort at its decline.

In what way does classical liberalism allow for men to be civilised? It would appear to directly disallow civilised thinking in men: it assumes that the impulse to think or act for the common good is a dangerous, irrational passion, a form of cold civil war in which one party seeks to dominate another. Better just to leave things to the bureaucrats to sort out merely technical aspects of social organisation and financial policy.

We have had a few centuries now for classical liberal ideas to seep into Western culture and consciousness. I wonder if the influence of these ideas helps to explain the passivity of Western men when faced with civilisational decline.

Greens have no country?

I thought readers might be interested in a few posts from elsewhere.

One is titled Sweden: The Triumph of Cultural Marxism. The Scandinavian writer Fjordman looks at the radical policies being adopted by the Swedish Social Democrats and the Swedish Greens.

The Swedish Greens, for instance, believe literally in open borders:

We do not believe in artificial borders. We have a vision of unrestricted immigration and emigration, where people have the right to live and work wherever they please ... We want Sweden to become an international role model by producing a plan to implement unrestricted immigration.

My one concern with Fjordman's article is that he appears to lay much of the blame on the Frankfurt school of "cultural Marxism". This school came to prominence in the 1930s - too late to explain the larger shifts in Western society.

At Dogfight at Bankstown there is an interesting post titled The Tyranny of Liberalism. It concerns the breakdown of the family amongst the poor in Britain, leading to a very sad outcome for one particular girl. Yet child-rearing experts refuse to judge or criticise the negative trends.

Finally, Vanishing American has posted an item titled Remaking Womanhood, in which she reflects on the changes in the imagery of womanhood in the last few decades.

Thursday Roundup.

Readymade Breakup-Alive on the Vine. New Jersey's Readymade Breakup is back with their followup to last year's Isn't That What It's For? and they're better than ever. This is vintage power pop with a radio-ready sheen that fans of The Jellybricks, The Shazam and The Meadows will enjoy. "One by One" is a scintillating opener, "Surrender" reminds me of The Raspberries, and "Stretch Your Head" incorporates a bit of soul in the mix. These guys know their craft, and will not disappoint.

Not Lame | Kool Kat | MySpace

Private Jets-Jet Sounds. How Swede it is! These Swedish retro power-poppers are back as well, following up their debut EP, and it's a delight. Of course the comparisons to other Swedish poppers like The Merrymakers and The Tangerines are in order, but they also have a more classic, British-sounding 60s vibe (fittingly they played IPO at The Cavern Club this summer). "I Wanna Be a Private Jet" enthusiastically gets things started, while "Speak Up, Speak Out" channels "Ain't That a Shame". Elsewhere, "Starshaped World" is vintage, sunshine-y pop, and "First Division of Love" lays on the sports metaphors to a jaunty love song. Chances are if your hairline's receding like the band members on the cover (like mine), you'll be loving this one.

CD Baby | MySpace

Gigantic-Gigantaphonic Sounds. Well, if Jet Sounds weren't big enough for you, how about Gigantaphonic Sounds? This "big-name" Australian band has finally released this 2006 disc in North America through Zip Records (also home of The Wellingtons, whose new disc arrived in my mailbox yesterday, thanks) and they have a fine guitar pop sound that recalls The Gin Blossoms, Teenage Fanclub, and everyone in between. The jangly "Some Suburban Road" is a real treat, and other standouts include the TF-friendly "Balloon Animals", the rocking "Mr. Sound", and "Lied To", which has hooks that will stick with you.

Not Lame | MySpace

Premier Brumby: children don't need fathers

I won't often get the chance to praise Ted Baillieu, the Liberal Party leader here in Victoria.

He is very much a liberal, rather than a conservative, on most issues. However, he did draw a line in the sand in a parliamentary debate on Tuesday.

Premier Brumby put forward legislation giving greater access to IVF for single women and lesbians. Ted Baillieu argued against the proposal, arguing that IVF should only be available to married or de facto heterosexual couples:

Kids deserve the basics. Every child has got a father and mother and I think that ought to be the starting point.

Premier Brumby countered by claiming that the legislation was in the best interests of children:

Good parenting was about giving children unconditional love, he said, not necessarily the family structure into which they were born.

I suppose that at first glance Brumby's statement might sound nice and open and accepting. But the logic of it is not so sweet. If all a child needs is unconditional love, then any kind of family arrangement can be argued for. A child could be brought up without a mother by two men, or by a host of unrelated adults in a commune, or by a mother and her various boyfriends and so on.

What is especially damaging is that, by Brumby's logic, fathers are no longer necessary to their children. By passing legislation which deliberately creates fatherless families, the state is officially approving the idea that men aren't needed by their children.

In a letter in today's Age, one single mother defended exactly this idea:

For more than a decade I was a single mother. My fiance and I split when I was 16 weeks' pregnant. My daughter has never met him. She has only one legally recognised parent - an extremely proud, loving mother ...

Ted Baillieu suggests that the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill is wrong to open up fertility treatment to same-sex couples and single women as children will somehow be disadvantaged if they are born into such families.

My daughter is now 12 ... She has certainly not missed out by not having a father.

There is a popular TV show airing in Australia at the moment called Find My Family. On a recent episode a daughter who had not met her father since she was a small girl was finally reunited with him. It was touching to watch, and it made the claim that children can happily be denied contact with a father seem dubious. As the show's website puts it:

So many Australians have grown up without a mother, father, brother or sister, and often that absence leaves a gaping hole in their identity.

On Find My Family, long-lost loved ones are reunited and that hole is filled with tears of joy.

What would happen if men really accepted that their children would be equally well off without them? Wouldn't couples be more likely to divorce during difficult times in a marriage? Wouldn't men invest less time and energy in the raising of their children?

Premier Brumby's idea is best suited to a society in which men have only a sporadic connection to family life, and in which women bear the greater burden of both childcare and paid work.

There are women who realise what is at stake and who are willing to argue strongly for the paternal role. Here, for instance, is Stephanie Dowrick writing in support of fathers:

...fathers matter. And, good or bad, the effects of their parenting will go on reverberating throughout their children's lifetime ...

....[parents] will also have roles that are specific and distinct. When two adults become parents for the first time, the new father may best support both the baby and his unfolding sense of himself as a father by giving most of his support to the new mother: meeting her needs so that she can meet the inexhaustible needs of her new baby.

This requires considerable selflessness. Yet it is being able to step up and play this essential role that will set the tone for fatherhood ahead and for his individual strength and confidence.

As children grow older, the role that fathers play changes fast. Even with both parents in the workforce, fathers still often "represent" the outside world and its values more powerfully than mothers do. How fathers interpret the outside world and bring it home to their children through discussions and especially through example sharply impacts on the way children see themselves in the social universe.

What Dad values and believes, where Dad gives his time, how Dad offers or withdraws his encouragement or interest, how Dad deals with disappointment or conflict, whether Dad is able to be consistent and reliable, when and how Dad "takes charge", the willingness with which Dad takes responsibility, and how loving Dad is to Mum: these are all factors that will have a huge impact on the psychological development of children.

But perhaps nothing matters more than for a man to recognise while he is in the thick of it just how important family life is to him, and he to it.

Consider the difference in attitude between a man who shares this positive assessment of his own role and a man who, like Premier Brumby, believes that families are just as well off without a father.

The difference is profound and is likely to have far-reaching consequences for society.

The election is upon us!

No, I'm not talking Obama vs. McCain (not much suspense there any more). I'm talking about the "Shake Some Action" Revisited site, where your vote for the top 5 power pop albums of all time is being solicited for the rest of this month in order to come up with a fans' list to go with the Top 200 list John Borack compiled in his excellent Shake Some Action book.

Of course being the opinionated sort that I am, I have my own top 5 picks, which consist of one unsurprising pick, one not-too-unsurprising pick, two unsurprising artists but surprising discs, and one out of left field. Here I go:

1. Big Star-#1 Record/Radio City. The Rosetta Stone of power pop. I don't have any grand new insights on this legendary disc, but I will state that "September Gurls" might just be the perfect song.

2. Cotton Mather-Kon Tiki. I've waxed poetic on this one before, but I will simply state it comes closest to approximating a Beatles album than anything else out there, and I don't mean it simply in the sense of aping the Beatles sound, which a lot of bands are quite capable of. And if Kon Tiki was the best album the Beatles never released, "My Before and After" was the best song they never released.

3. Matthew Sweet-100% Fun. I've taken some heat for picking Clint Sutton as the #1 disc of 2008 in my spring list, and although I'm not sure it'll stay at the spot at year's end, the reason I love it so much is that reminds me of what I consider Sweet's best album and a stone classic. Although Girlfriend gets all the praise and the list mentions, I always thought 100% Fun was the more focused, tighter, melodic and rocking of the two. The first couple of seconds of "Sick of Myself" might be best way to open an album I've ever heard, and the wonderful "Get Older" is probably the most overlooked great song on this disc. (Side note on Sweet: The title is the notoriously thin-skinned Sweet's response to complaints that the Girlfriend followup, Altered Beast, was too "dark". Later, after the 100% Fun followup Blue Sky on Mars took some critical heat, Sweet responded with the bitter "Write Your Own Song" on 1999's In Reverse. So I sure hope he isn't reading this when I mention that his new disc, Sunshine Lies, didn't do much for me.)

4. Marshall Crenshaw-Field Day. Like the pick above, this isn't the disc people have in mind when they think of the artist, and while his self-titled debut would find a spot in my all-time top 20, this one to me is his true best. Maligned at the time as a result of Steve Lillywhite's reverb-heavy production, the controversy about the sound obscured the fact that this was Crenshaw's strongest set of songs, from the perfect power pop of the album's lone hit, "Whenever You're on My Mind", to gems like "For Her Love" and "Monday Morning Rock". My only knock on the debut was that it was a bit too retro-conscious, and what makes Field Day so great is that it marries Crenshaw's brilliant songcraft (which shows a greater depth and maturity here) to a more up-to-date vibe, even without considering Lillywhite's production.

5. Valley Lodge-Valley Lodge. Wha??? Alert and/or longtime readers might recall that this wasn't even my #1 disc of 2005, so what's it doing at #5 of all-freaking-time? Well, first of all if I had to re-do my 2005 list, this one probably would be at the top, and secondly, I've been listening to it a lot lately. But the more I listen, the more I'm convinced this might be the purest, most fun, power pop album I've ever heard, and here I mean power pop in the narrowest sense: rocking guitars, sugary melodies, etc - not the broad parameters I use in the choice of discs I review on this site. This disc has it all - aside from songs that deliver one hook after another, there's an intelligence and sense of humor that prevails here, unsurprising since frontman Dave Hill (ex-Uptown Sinclair) is an adept a professional comedian as he is a rocker. And what seals the deal for me is Hill's penchant for slipping into falsetto in the middle of verses and choruses, which makes these songs so much damn fun to sing along to. If you've been somehow immune to this disc's charms these past three years, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Fatherless America

I recently came across the book Fatherless America by David Blankenhorn. Published in 1995, it's too good to adequately discuss in a single column. For now, I just want to cover the most important section of it.

In the chapter "The New Father", Blankenhorn discusses the way that fathers are now meant to be. He believes that the ideal of the new father is androgynous, that "fatherhood without the masculinity" is what is being aimed for.

There is now an assumption that "parenting" is what women have traditionally done - the hands on care and nurture of children - and that a good father is therefore a man who shares or takes over this mothering role.

Blankenhorn has no trouble finding authorities who promote this vision of a non-masculine fatherhood. For instance, he quotes James Garbarino, the president of an institute for the study of child development, who asserts,

To develop a new kind of father, we must encourage a new kind of man .. If we are to rewrite the parenting scripts to emphasize nurturing and the investment of self in children's lives, we need to ask, "Why can't a man be more like a woman?"

Similarly, Diane Ehrensaft in Parenting Together openly endorses the idea of men and women "mothering" their children together. Then there is Andrew M. Greely who states bluntly that society should administer a "dose of androgyny" to men and "insist that men become more like women". One textbook on family life reassuringly claims that "androgyny would be especially beneficial to men".

A necessary fatherhood?

To his credit, David Blankenhorn immediately identifies one of the main dangers in this vision of a new, non-masculine fatherhood: it makes men unnecessary within a family. Blankenhorn puts it a little more academically, writing that,

At bottom, the New Father idea presupposes the larger thesis that fatherhood is superfluous. In this respect, the New Father is indistinguishable from the Unnecessary Father.

If there is no distinctly masculine role for fathers, then the most that men can do is to help out with mothering tasks. But this is not a necessary role. It could be done successfully by a single mother, or by two women living together.

Which raises a critical question. Why would intellectuals insist that there is no distinctly masculine role for men as fathers? Blankenhorn argues that,

undergirding the entire New Father model is the imperative of gender role convergence. The essence of this imperative is the removal of socially defined male and female roles from family life.

I think he's right. Liberals, who currently dominate the political class, believe that we should be self-created by our own will and reason. This means that they don't like the idea that we should be defined by things we haven't chosen for ourselves. One thing we don't get to choose for ourselves is our sex. This means that liberals wish to deny or remove the traditional influence of gender on our identity and behaviour. And this includes overthrowing "gendered" roles within the family. Hence the liberal preference for "gender role convergence".

Blankenhorn actually lays out a very similar argument to this. He writes that there are two ideas which are supposed to replace socially defined gender roles.

The first is "the moral importance of personal choice - the belief that choosing freely among family behaviors is not simply a possible means to something good but is itself something good." This is, in other words, the liberal idea that it is a moral good to choose for ourselves our role within the family, rather than accepting a traditional role.

The second is "an ideal of human development based on a rejection of gendered values ... In part, the imperative of role convergence simply urges the reduction or elimination of sex specialization within the family. But in a larger sense, the imperative warns that any notion of socially defined roles for human beings constitutes an oppressive and socially unnecessary restriction on the full emergence of human potentiality."

Blankenhorn really gets to the heart of the issue here. The liberal political class believes we must be self-defined rather than socially defined, or else we are oppressed and restricted in expressing our humanity.

The critical moment

We now arrive at what I think is the most interesting part of the book. Blankenhorn has already traced the acceptance of the "unnecessary father" back to the idea that we must be self-defined and therefore should choose our own family roles and reject socially defined gender roles.

He then quotes one supporter of this view, Mark Gerzon, who celebrates this self-defining principle of family life because,

Couples may write their own scripts, construct their own plots, with unprecedented freedom ... a man and a woman are free to find the fullest range of possibilities. Neither needs to act in certain ways because of preordained cross-sexual codes of conduct.

Blankenhorn notes that this is "a vision, ultimately, of freedom". He is right: liberals, no matter whether they are left-wing or right-wing in their politics, usually justify their beliefs with the claim that they promote individual liberty. Blankenhorn is also right when he goes on to note that the liberal concept of liberty has an undeniable appeal and that it is an orthodoxy within American (he could have said Western) culture. He writes,

In many ways, it is a bracing, exhilarating vision, bravely contemptuous of boundaries and inherited limitations, distinctly American in its radical insistence on self-created identity. It draws upon the American myth, the nation's founding ideals; it echoes much of what is best in the American character. It is the vision of Whitman in his "Song of the Open Road":

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines.
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute.

There is so much to commend in this vision. It is the reigning ethos of much of contemporary American culture.

And here we have that crucial juncture which separates liberals and conservatives. A liberal will at this point stick to his vision of individual freedom, and deal with negative social consequences as they arise (or ignore them). A conservative, though, will too much value what is being lost, and will question a "freedom" which destroys an important human good.

Which way does Blankenhorn go? He decides for conservatism. He declares of the liberal vision that,

... as a social ethic for fatherhood, I dispute it.

I dispute it because it demands the obliteration of precisely those cultural boundaries, limitations, and behavioral norms that valorize paternal altruism and therefore favor the well-being of the infant.

I dispute it because it denies the necessity, and even repudiates the existence, of fathers' work: irreplaceable work in behalf of family that is essentially and primarily the work of fathers.

I dispute it because it tells an untrue story of what a good marriage is. In addition, I dispute it because it rests upon a narcissistic and ultimately self-defeating conception of male happiness and human completion.

The last point is, I believe, of tremendous significance. Can we really as men achieve a sense of self-completion, of fulfilling our natures, if we accept the role of a genderless self-defining individual, with no necessary place within a family as father or husband? I can't help but agree with David Blankenhorn that the answer is no.

Fool's gold

I'd like to finish by quoting some of the conclusion to the chapter on "The New Father". I think these excerpts show the quality of thought and expression that exists throughout Fatherless America. Blankenhorn writes,

The human child does not know or care about some disembodied abstraction called "parent." What it needs is a mother and a father who will work together, in overlapping but different ways, in its behalf...

Ultimately, the division of parental labor is the consequence of our biological embodiment as sexual beings and of the inherent requirements of effective parenthood ...

In service to the child and to the social good, fathers do certain things that other people, including mothers, do not do as often, as naturally, or as well ...

Historically, the good father protects his family, provides for its material needs, devotes himself to the education of his children, and represents his family's interests in the larger world. This work is necessarily rooted in a repertoire of inherited male values ...

... androgyny and gender role convergence reflect the ultimate triumph of radical individualism ... it is the belief, quite simply, that human completion is a solo act. It is the insistence that the pathway to human happiness lies in transcending the old polarities of sexual embodiment in order for each individual man and woman to embrace and express all of human potentiality within his or her self ... Now each man, within the cell of himself, can be complete ...

This idea, so deeply a part of our culture, is fool's gold. It is a denial of sexual complementarity and ultimately a denial of generativity ... Especially for men, this particular promise of happiness is a cruel hoax. Like all forms of narcissism, its final product is not fulfilment but emptiness.

I hope that it's possible to glean the quality of David Blankenhorn's writing from these excerpts. He has written a detailed, insightful and eloquent book which still stands nearly a decade after its first appearance as a most compelling defence of traditional fatherhood.

(First published at Conservative Central, 21/11/2004)