The Day the Revolution Began: Pepperdine Lectures by N.T. Wright

This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for the day the revolution beganI’ve been a fan of New Testament scholar N.T. Wright’s work for the last several years. His Surprised by Hope even earned a much-coveted spot among my Honorable Mentions on my Most Influential Books list a couple years ago. His popular works have a way of reaching all audiences with insightful, erudite scholarship. His newest book–The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion–is no different. Mormons have had an uneasy relationship with the symbol of the cross, which is odd when one considers how frequently it is mentioned in the Book of Mormon (e.g., 1 Ne. 11:33, Jacob 1:8, 2 Ne. 9:18, 3 Ne. 27:14-15, Ether 4:1). Some of our atonement theories adopt a pseudo-scientific framework in order to work out the mechanics of what we call The Atonement. Unfortunately, our understanding of the Atonement is often divorced from the context of scripture. For example, we often fail to recognize that the terms atonement, redemption, and salvation have very different meanings and contexts within scripture: priestly/cultic, kinship, political/martial. Wright attempts to place Christ’s crucifixion within the broader context of Israel’s covenant and deliverance and ultimately the grand narrative of creation itself.

In Wright’s view, Jesus’ sacrifice is too often transformed into a reductive “works-contract” theory in which Jesus takes the punishment for our sins so that we can go to heaven. In short, Christians have reduced the Atonement to merely address personal morality (important, but not the whole story) and in turn have cast Israel’s God as a pagan deity that requires punishment and sacrifice in order for us to enter into a Platonized afterlife. So what is it really about? Wright explains,

First, it seems clear to me that once we replace the common vision of Christian hope (“going to heaven”) with the biblical vision of “new heavens and new earth,” there will be direct consequences for how we understand both the human problem and the divine solution. Second, in the usual model, what stops us from “going to heaven” is sin, and sin is dealt with (somehow) on the cross. In the biblical model, what stops us from being genuine humans (bearing the divine image, acting as the “royal priesthood”) is not only sin, but the idolatry that underlies it. The idols have gained power, the power humans ought to be exercising in God’s world; idolatrous humans have handed it over to them. What is required, for God’s new world and for renewed humans within it is for the power of the idols to be broken. Since sin, the consequence of idolatry, is what keeps human in thrall to the nongods of the world, dealing with sin has a more profound effect than simply releasing humans to go to heaven. It releases humans from the grip of the idols, so they can worship the living God and be renewed according to his image…In the Bible, God’s plan to deal with sin, and so to break the power of idols and bring new creation to his world, is focused on the people of Israel. In the New Testament, this focus is narrowed to Israel’s representative, the Messiah. He stands in for Israel and so fulfills the divine plan to restore creation itself. 

For Wright, the fall of Adam and Eve was their failure to fulfill their vocation as God’s image-bearers in the world. The covenant with Abram (Abraham) established his family (the eventual nation of Israel) as the vehicle by which creation would be set right. Yet, Israel also failed in their vocation and experienced exile just as their primal parents. However, God was faithful to his covenant with Israel despite their faithlessness. It was through Jesus–Israel’s true representative–that the covenant was fulfilled and the curse (for example, see Deut. 30:15-20) of exile, condemnation, and death was exhausted. Through the cross, idolatry, the “principalities…powers…the rulers of the darkness of this world [and] spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12), were defeated.

The book is theologically rich and thought-provoking. Check out Wright’s lectures on the subject at Pepperdine University below:

2016 NAS Report on Immigration: More of the Same

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The National Academy of Sciences released a new report in September that “provides a comprehensive assessment of economic and demographic trends of U.S. immigration over the past 20 years, its impact on the labor market and wages of native-born workers, and its fiscal impact at the national, state, and local levels.” Here are the highlights from the press release:

  • Effects on wages: “When measured over a period of 10 years or more, the impact of immigration on the wages of native workers overall is very small.”
  • Effects on employment levels: “There is little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers.”
  • Effects of high-skilled immigrants: “Several studies have found a positive impact of skilled immigration on the wages and employment of both college- and non-college-educated natives. Such findings are consistent with the view that skilled immigrants are often complementary to native-born workers; that spillovers of wage-enhancing knowledge and skills occur as a result of interactions among workers; and that skilled immigrants innovate sufficiently to raise overall productivity.”
  • The role of immigrants in consumer demand: “Immigrants’ contributions to the labor force reduce the prices of some goods and services, which benefits consumers in a range of sectors, including child care, food preparation, house cleaning and repair, and construction. Moreover, new arrivals and their descendants are a source of demand in key sectors such as housing, which benefits residential real estate markets.”
  • Impacts on economic growth: “Immigration is integral to the nation’s economic growth. The inflow of labor supply has helped the United States avoid the problems facing other economies that have stagnated as a result of unfavorable demographics, particularly the effects of an aging workforce and reduced consumption by older residents. In addition, the infusion of human capital by high-skilled immigrants has boosted the nation’s capacity for innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological change.”
  • Fiscal impact of first-generation immigrants (1994-2013): “Annual cross-sectional data reveal that, compared with the native-born, first-generation immigrants contributed less in taxes during working ages because they were, on average, less educated and earned less. However, this pattern reverses at around age 60, when the native-born (except for the children of immigrants) were consistently more expensive to government on a per-capita basis because of their greater use of social security benefits.”
  • Fiscal impact of the children of immigration (1994-2013): “Reflecting their slightly higher educational achievement, as well as their higher wages and salaries, the second generation contributed more in taxes on a per capita basis during working ages than did their parents or other native-born Americans.”

I’ve written about the economic literature of immigration before and the NAS findings are pretty consistent with the ones I shared previously. This report could’ve used more exposure, especially given the outcome of Tuesday’s election.

Unfortunately, I doubt it would’ve mattered.

How Atypical Was This Election?

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Donald J. Trump is President Elect of the United States of America.

The predictions were off. Way off (The polls themselves may not have been.)*****

Numerous commentators–from the professional to the everyday Facebook warrior–have put forth various explanations based on the exit polls, including change-seeking voters, gender gaps in the voting blocs, the white working class, wealthy whites, anti-Clinton voters, anti-PC voters, sexist voters, racist voters, etc.

There’s probably a grain of truth in all of these explanations (some more than others). But if we just look at the general numbers, what can we say for sure? Despite early claims of high voter turnout, that just wasn’t the case.**

2016 Election
Trump Clinton Total Turnout
59,698,506 59,926,386 119,624,892
2012 Election
Romney Obama
60,933,504 65,915,795 126,849,299
2008 Election
McCain Obama
59,948,323 69,498,516 129,446,839
2004 Election
Bush Kerry
62,040,610 59,028,444 121,069,054

Not only was voter turnout low in general, but even Republican turnout was slightly lower* than in past years. It was significantly lower for Democrats.

Given the racially-charged rhetoric and sexual misconduct this election season, how did Trump do among minorities compared to other Republican presidential candidates?

% Trump Romney McCain Bush 04 Bush 00 Average
Whites 58 59 55 58 55 57
Blacks 8 6 4 11 9 7.6
Hispanics 29 27 31 44 35 33.2
Asians 29 26 35 43 41 34.8
Other 37 38 31 40  No data 36.5
Women 42 44 43 48 44 44.2

A few things that jump out at me:

  • Trump had higher support among Hispanics than Romney, though both fell woefully short of McCain and Bush. Nonetheless, the bump in Hispanic support is surprising.
  • Trump had higher support among blacks than both Romney and McCain and ended up above average for the last 5 elections.
  • Trump had higher support among Asians than Romney, though still short of McCain and especially Bush.
  • Trump had the lowest support of women of the last five elections (can’t imagine why…). Nonetheless, it’s not drastically lower than most of the other candidates, which may astonish some.
  • Trump actually had lower support among whites than Romney and ended up only slightly above average when considering the last 5 elections. In other words, the white support for Republicans has been pretty consistent.

There is much more that could and should be considered when parsing the numbers. Groups aren’t monolithic and factors like income, education, etc. are necessary in order to paint a more accurate picture. However, pundits pointing out that, say, white people–rich/poor, urban/rural, college/no college, whatever–supported the Republican nominee is hardly a shocker. As conservative writer David French put it, “White voters responded mainly by voting in the same or lesser numbers as the last three presidential elections. That’s not a “whitelash,” it’s consistency.”**** It increasingly looks like what some outlets have been saying is correct: Democrats stayed home.*** While further analysis may tell a different story, a lot of this looks like pretty normal partisanship. One party just didn’t show up.**

*Update (11/14): Trump currently sits at 60,265,858, while Clinton is still ahead with 60,839,922. This puts Trump’s turnout slightly above McCain’s numbers, while Clinton falls woefully short of Obama. Some are projecting that overall turnout may actually surpass 2012, though others are claiming a 20-year low. We won’t know for several more weeks. Check out Monica’s post today on the popular vote.

**Update (11/15): From The Washington Post: “It’s a very odd result. Turnout up slightly in terms of raw numbers, but down as a percentage of those eligible. A likely drop in votes for the Democrat and a spike in votes for third party candidates, with the Republican holding steady. More votes for the Democrat, but the Republican becoming president.” Looks like my claims about low voter turnout were incorrect, but my main point about low turnout among Democrats seems to be holding up.

***Update (11/18): Looks like the case for low Democrat turnout is getting stronger and stronger.

****Update (12/02): Trump didn’t flip the Rust Belt. Democrats lost it.

*****Update (12/21): Vox has an excellent write-up now that the votes have been counted: “Voter turnout in 2016 was actually closer to 58.9 percent, slightly higher than 2012, according to data from the US Elections Project. Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes — more than Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Richard Nixon in 1968. She lost the election by 107,000 votes in three states…Clinton, the “unpopular” candidate, was able to turn out voters — just not where it mattered. Democrats lost the presidential election in three states; Clinton lost in Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes and in Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes. Votes afforded to Green Party candidate Jill Stein in either state were more than Trump’s margin of victory. Trump won Pennsylvania by a slightly bigger margin, surpassing Clinton by a bit more than 44,000 votes…Clinton’s ability to mobilize voters was in already-blue states — states like California and New York.”

Update (1/9): The title of this new FiveThirtyEight post–“Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton the Election“–says it all.

Leaders Who Are Not Very Righteous

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“I do not want you to think that I’m very righteous, for I am not. There was one good man, and his name was Jesus.” – Joseph Smith

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

From the Sunday morning session of the April 1974 General Conference, it was Elder Boyd K. Packer’s talk We Believe All That God Has Revealed that caught my attention. Elder Packer has a reputation for being stern and doctrinaire that—to my mind—seems undeserved. In this talk, for example, he not only quotes from Hugh Nibley but also states flatly that Joseph Smith—aside from acting as a conduit for revelution—“was otherwise an ordinary man, as were the prophets in ancient times and as are the prophets in our day.”

This is an important perspective to keep in mind, especially when the other talks sometimes verge on the hagiographic. I dislike it when folks use needlessly complex words, but I like “hagiography.” It means “the writing of the lives of saints” or, in common usage, “biography that idealizes its subject.” So, it’s a useful word to employ when it comes to how Mormons sometimes interact with our leaders. There is a tendency to hero worship that we don’t always do a good enough job of avoiding.

Whenever new General Authorities start waxing poetic about how much they love each other and how great they all are, I confess to feeling a little alienated. It makes me uncomfortable when they testify to each other’s positive qualities, much as I’m uncomfortable when people get up and bear testimonies of their friends or family in the ward. I honestly don’t care that much if the General Authorities are good people. Joseph Smith said, “I do not want you to think that I’m very righteous, for I am not. There was one good man, and his name was Jesus.” That is my concern.

I believe in loyalty to the Church and in obedience to the leaders, but they can neither earn nor disqualify themselves from that loyalty and obedience because it has nothing to do with them. I owe everything to my Savior. When He calls representatives to serve in His Church I follow them out of my devotion to Him, not because I think they are particularly wise or spiritual people. I hope they are, but it’s not really my concern one way or the other.

But before anyone gets too excited about agreeing with me or disagreeing with me on this point, I think it’s wise to keep in mind that it’s almost always possible to miss the mark in either of two directions. Speaking of acquiring a testimony of the scriptures, Elder Packer said in the same talk that:

There are those who have made a casual, even an insincere effort to test the scriptures and have come away having received nothing, which is precisely what they have earned and what they deserve. If you think it will yield to a casual inquiry, to idle curiosity, or even to well-intentioned but temporary searching, you are mistaken. It likewise will not yield to the overzealous or to the fanatic.

You can miss the mark by not trying hard enough, by being casual, insincere, or even lazy. But you can also miss the mark by trying too hard, by being overzealous or fanatic.

If you preach a sermon only on the peril of blind belief and fanaticism, you’re going to risk misleading or enabling those who already have a tendency towards taking an insincere interest in their testimonies. If you preach a sermon only on the peril of casualness and insincerity, you’re going to risk providing ammunition to the zealots.

So I am more bothered by the tendency towards hero-worship in the Church. But it seems plain to me that there’s also a problem—and probably a far larger problem—of members who don’t take the leaders and their council seriously enough. It’s not an either-or. It’s even quite possible that I go too far in my sense of alienation and in my skepticism towards the hagiographic approach to our leaders. If that’s the case, then I rely on the Savior to bring me into line as I continue to follow Him and sustain His leaders.

There are two more quotes I want to mention from his talk. First, he said that in order to learn of the scriptures, “one must, of necessity, move from criticism to spiritual inquiry.” Our society is hyper-critical and drowning in irony. That is because irony and criticism are safe. A critic is always detached from and opposed to the thing he considers, and never risks being accused of foolishness because he never fully accepts or embraces anything. This is short-run wisdom and long-run folly. In the end, if you have not fully given yourself to anything in this life, then what was the point?

The pretext of superiority that comes with an attitude of cynical detachment or hardened irony is just that: a pretext. Understanding requires love, and love requires risk. We have to be willing to venture if we want to gain.

Then:

When a humble man bears testimony based on spiritual inquiry and righteous living, be careful before you repudiate his witness because he is otherwise unlearned. Many an academic giant is at once a spiritual pygmy and, if so, he is usually a moral weakling as well. Such a man may easily become a self-appointed member of a wrecking crew determined to destroy the works of God.

I’ve got an uneasy relationship with the term “intellectual.” I like to analyze and think and ponder and talk about ideas. If I could get paid to do it, I would do nothing but take classes in linguistics and philosophy and history and physics and math and computer science and psychology for the rest of my life. So maybe I am an intellectual. But I’m pretty profoundly disappointed with what passes for academic discourse—in the secular world and also within the religious community—and so I have to confess to a predisposition to agree with Elder Packer. After all, I think the ambiguous relationship between intelligence and learning is rather baked into our scripture, with “the glory of God is intelligence” on the one hand, but also the pointedly conditional, “to be learned is good if [you] hearken unto the counsels of God.” These days, it seems like most of the counsel from PhD-holding Mormons tends to flow the wrong way. We’ve got an embarrassment of riches when it comes to councilors willing to tell Christ’s Church how to amends its policies and teachings.

And—last of all—a quick quote from a different talk. In Build Your Shield of Faith, Elder L. Tom Perry said, speaking of his siblings as they were growing up with faithful parents, “While our shield was being made strong, theirs was always available, for they were available and we knew it.” I love the image of parents extending their own shields of faith over their children to give their kids time to grow their own shields before going out to face a hostile and treacherous—but also beautiful and promising—world.

Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

Victimhood Culture Metastasizes

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One of the most important papers for understanding the political climate we live in is “Microaggression and Moral Cultures” by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning.

In the article, Campbell and Manning explore three stages in the evolution of moral culture:

  • Honor culture
  • Dignity culture
  • Victimhood culture

The essence of honor culture is reputation. That is because–in a society without a strong, centralized authority–the best defense against predation is a reputation for drastic overreaction. If people believe you will overreact to any provocation, they are less likely to provoke you. Unfortunately, when everybody is trying to build a reputation for toughness and overreaction at the same time, “people are verbally aggressive and quick to insult other.” This causes damage to reputation, and so we have “a high frequency of violent conflict as participants in the culture aggressively compete for respect.”

When strong, formal authorities begin to emerge, the logic of the honor culture dissipates. If someone insults you and you react by physically assaulting them, then–in the presence of a strong authority–you’re going to end up getting punished more harshly than they are. When there is a legitimate criminal justice system to handle major offenses, the best response to a minor offense is to simply ignore it. As a result, reputation is not as important in dignity cultures. In an honor culture, appealing to an outside authority is a sign of weakness. In a dignity culture, failing to appeal to an outside authority is taking the law into your own hands.

The transition from an honor culture to a dignity culture is vitally important, because a dignity culture has a much greater capacity for pluralism. Free speech is more than a legal framework or a constitutional right, it’s also a tradition. In a dignity culture, where having a thick skin is encouraged, that tradition can flourish because minor conflicts and disagreements don’t carry the risk of exploding into open hostility and violence.

Victimhood culture is an outgrowth of dignity culture that combines the worst of honor and dignity cultures. It is “characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance on third parties.” The “sensitivity to slight” comes straight from honor culture, and the “heavy reliance on third parties” comes straight from dignity culture. The basic idea of victimhood culture is to manipulate third parties to intervene in a dispute on your side by appearing to be the victim.

The bigger the apparent injustice, the greater the chance of persuading a third party to take your side and the more drastic the action you can convince them to take on your behalf. Victimhood culture, then, is fundamentally about manufacturing and maintaining the highest degree of apparent victimhood. As Campbell and Manning point out, one simple way to achieve this is through the use of outright hoaxes and “hate crime hoaxes are common on college campuses.”

The gold standard in victim culture, however, is the microagrresion. Microaggressions are essentially a form of bundling. First, you bundle individual instances of minor offenses into larger patterns. Second, you bundle individual people (victims and perpetrators alike) into larger cohorts. By using this approach, an isolated and incidental comment from one individual to another becomes a symptom of systematic oppression of one entire category of people by another category. These forms of bundling are important, as we will see at the end, because they forge a link between victimhood culture and identity politics.

According to Campbell and Manning, one of the results of the rise of victimhood culture is a “clash between competing moral systems” as dignity culture and victimhood culture come into conflict. This is certainly true. Progressive social justice theories like Critical Race Theory “[reject] the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy,” which are the heritage of dignity culture. There is no doubt that victimhood culture–championed by progressive social justice ideology–is incompatible with dignity culture.

This is why so much of the push-back against second-wave political correctness has been bipartisan. There are plenty on the left of American politics who still cling to old-fashioned notions of liberalism like freedom of expression, the marketplace of ideas, and the dignity of individuals. Aligned with conservatives who share these concerns, they form a bipartisan coalition that is engaged in the conflict Campbell and Manning predicted: dignity culture attempting to hold off the insurgent victimhood culture.

But there is another conflict going on as well. The most vociferous push-back against progressive social justice ideology (and ostensibly the victimhood culture it embraces) comes from the alt-right. What is notable about this push-back, however, is that instead of genuinely objecting to victimhood culture, the alt-right has embraced a re-branded version of it. The best example of this is the most obvious: Donald Trump’s promise to “make America great again” and his obvious appeal to white grievance.

Just as with the progressive social justice movement, Trump’s appeal works because it has enough truth in it to give it the feel of veracity. One of the best explanation of this comes (believe it or not) from a Cracked article: How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind. The article (which includes lots of non-censored swearing) does a fantastic job of outlining the legitimate grievance of white, rural America.

Which leads me to an essential side-note: it is possible for the world to simultaneously get worse for both the minorities that liberals care about (black, Hispanic, women, and LBTQ Americans) and the group that Trump and the alt-right appeal to (rural, white Americans). I recently had simultaneous stories in my Facebook feed about white highschoolers putting a noose around a black student’s neck and another about how Berkeley students barricade bridge, force whites to cross creek. These two stories neither cancel out nor justify each other.

One of the things that contemporary theories of racism as systematized prejudice and discrimination fail to appreciate is that in the United States there is more than one system. The legacies of systemic oppression of racial minorities are absolutely still in place. My review of The New Jim Crow should leave no doubt about where I stand on that. But the existence of systematized anti-black discrimination in the criminal justice system does not obviate, cancel out, or justify the creation of anti-white (usually: anti-poor-rural-conservative-white) discrimination in other systems, like academia in general or social psychology in particular.

So this is where we stand: in the battle of victimhood culture against dignity culture, Trump and the alt-right are not fighting against the so-called social justice warriors. They are–with their grievance-based, identity-centric campaigns–quite literally part of the problem. They are fighting fire-with-fire while the whole world burns down.

Along these lines, David Marcus’s recent Federalist piece (How Anti-White Rhetoric is Fueling White Nationalism) is a must-read. In it, Marcus attacks another prong of the progressive social justice approach to race, writing that a shift to emphasizing privilege amounts to “ask[ing] white people to be more tribal” and is even “abetting white supremacy.” Marcus points out that the number of active Ku Klux Klan chapters more than doubled (from 72 to 190) just between 2014 and 2015, and argues that “one of the key components of this racism is the almost-daily parade of silly micro-aggressions and triggers.” He adds:

Young white men, reacting to social and educational constructs that paint them as the embodiment of historical evil, are fertile ground for white supremacists. They are very aware of the dichotomy between non-white culture, which must be valued at all times (even in the midst of terror attacks), and white culture, which must be criticized and devalued. They don’t like it.

It may seem like a stretch to draw parallels between ill-advised anti-racism efforts and the alt-right (let alone the KKK), but here’s a headline that might give you pause: Cal State LA offers segregated housing for black students. According to the article, the decision came after the Black Student Union cited “microaggressions” as part of their call for “housing space delegated for Black students.”

Journalism student Aeman Ansari recently made a similar case in the Huffington Post, justifying the expulsion of student journalists from an event because those journalists were white and arguing that safe spaces are different because “segregation was imposed on people of colour by people of privilege, not the other way around.” That’s a legitimate difference, but it doesn’t erase this fact that the two groups of people in America who think whites and blacks should not mix are the KKK and progressive social justice activists. The different terminology–safe space vs. segregated space–and the differing power dynamics can’t efface the fact that both of them have the goal of racial separation.

It is a genuine tragedy that–after such great (albeit incomplete) progress towards racial equality in this country–we are now seeing a resurgence of the kind of hardcore, strident racism that has not been prevalent for decades. But this is where we are today.

Victimhood culture, as Campbell and Manning note, originated with the political left because “the narrative of oppression and victimization is especially congenial to a leftist worldview.” However, there is nothing about the tactics of victimhood culture that dictate it must remain exclusively an artifact of the left, and it has not. “Naturally,” Campbell and Manning observe, “whenever victimhood…. confers status, all sorts of people will want to claim it.” White identity politics is a natural and inevitable response to minority identity politics, and it follows basically the same playbook.

So, while victimhood culture was initially created by left-wing activists in college campuses, it has metastasized and spread throughout American society. Because it is such an effective political weapon, it is has proved irresistable to many of the folks who originally set out to destroy it. Based on grievances both real and imaginary, the alt-right has embraced the logic and tactics of victimhood culture. Because victimhood culture is fueled by identity politics and tribalism, the rise in the co-option of victimhood culture by the alt-right necessarily entails a reawakening of old-school racism the likes of which we have not seen openly promulgated for decades, if not more.

I agree with the solution that Marcus proposes, and it’s a solution that applies not only to the resurgence of racism in the US but to the broader problems plaguing our society. He writes that “our anti-racism efforts must be refocused away from guilt and confession and towards equality and eradicating irrational judgments based on race…we must return to the goal of treating people as individuals, not as representatives of their race.”

I would only add that this vision could be expanded even farther: we must treat people as individuals, not as representative of their race, gender, political party, or any other kind of identity-tribe.

 

The Welfare State & Social Capital

Samuel Hammond, the Poverty and Welfare Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center, has an interesting post at LearnLiberty.org on the welfare state. He describes the role religion has played in social assistance, explaining that “philanthropy had to be earned through reciprocal relationships rooted in trust and goodwill. Churches relied on their member’s contributions and self-sacrifice to measure their strength of commitment to Christian ideals and bond the community together.” But then he points out how religion’s social assistance “began to unravel in the early 20th century”:

First, the social spending of the New Deal crowded out significant amounts of church-based welfare. By one estimate, New Deal spending caused church charitable spending to fall by 30 percent.

Then came President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” and “War on Poverty,” and with it the creation of Medicaid and the expansion of food stamps and other income supplements targeted at the poor. Spending on Medicaid and Social Security rose exponentially after 1990, following a landmark Supreme Court decision that greatly expanded eligibility and a misconceived federal budget that promised to match state spending on low-income hospitals dollar for dollar, essentially turning Medicaid into a money pump.

Data shows that commitment to religious community in the United States has been steadily decreasing, and in a way that seems correlated to spending on public welfare. Since 1990, America’s non-religious population has grown from about 5 percent to over 20 percent and is climbing. A comparison of U.S. state rankings reveals a striking negative relationship between the generosity of the welfare system and the size of the self-identified “very religious” population.

So does the welfare state lead to a decline in social capital? When we look at the data from Europe, the “evidence by–and–large contradicts the U.S. narrative. Indeed, empirical studies tend to talk of welfare being “trust enabling”. Consider Sweden, which has one of most comprehensive welfare states in the world but also ranks near the top in measures of social capital.” So why the difference?:

The key factor appears to be the high level of decentralization in many social programs. For example, inSweden delivering healthcare is the responsibility of County Councils, while welfare, disability, and programs for the elderly are controlled by municipalities. Swedes also have very high rates of union membership. Yet instead of being confrontational with the employer, the norm is mutual advantage. In turn, unions are entrusted to manage stuff that in the U.S. would be cynically regulated, like unemployment insurance and parental leave. 

Economists extol the virtue of this kind of decentralization, known as subsidiarity, for reasons of asymmetric information. That’s just jargon for the truism that, in tight communities, everybody knows everybody. I was astonished to learn, for instance, that 75% of Swedes report attending “study circles,” 10% on a regular basis. These are regular meetings of a dozen or so people organized by larger voluntary associations that “range from the study of foreign languages to cooking to the European Union question.”

Elsewhere, Hammond proposes three ideas for decentralizing the U.S. welfare state:

  1. Medicaid wavers: “The first is the 1915(c) Home & Community-Based Waiver, which allows states to provide long term care under Medicaid through community based settings. An example might be an individual with severe intellectual or developmental disabilities. Traditionally, under Medicaid the individual will receive long term care through an agency and may even become institutionalized. Using the HCBS waiver, the eligible individual can self-direct their care from top to bottom, appoint a friend or family member as caretaker, and take control over their living environment. In some cases, the individual may even become the de facto employer, with the aid of a fiscal intermediary to handle payroll and other tasks beyond their capacities. So not only does the waiver redirect program delivery in a way that re-engages family and community, it also greatly enhances individual autonomy and self-determination.”
  2. Prevention programs: “A second, more recent example, is the Department of Health and Human Services’ initiative to channel Medicare spending on diabetes prevention through local YMCAs. The program launched as part of an innovation grant under the Affordable Care Act and is still being independently evaluated, but initial findings are promising. It’s a perfect case study in why community matters. By bringing pre-diabetic participants under one local roof, any direct educational benefits are reinforced by the peer-effects of other participants who may begin to form a loose network, check in on how well each is holding to their new diets, and so on. The best part is that, in theory, peer networks can persist long after the initial intervention. That means if this particular program were ended its effects may continue to reproduce overtime. The “cultural channel” for social policy is thus underrated by many progressives who automatically associate the enforcement of social norms through shame and stigma with conformity or oppression. Yet such social structures also serve as robust mechanisms for enhancing an individual’s self-control.”
  3. Universal basic income: “[Charles] Murray argues that [a lump sum transfer] only works if all or most other transfer programs are eliminated. It is in essence a strategy for eliminating the “hidden information” problem of poverty. With a basic income deposited monthly, it is no longer credible for someone who gambles their stipend away to claim total desperation, since their income stream is common knowledge. The remaining alternative is to appeal to friends and family. With the incentives set just right, the economies of scale and insurance benefits of pooling resources could lead to a dramatic community revival; however, Murray’s theory has yet to be put to the test.”

This is why conservatives and libertarians need to “declare peace on the safety net” and seek out innovative ways to make it more effective and efficient.

O Canada: Bastion of Western Liberty?

Over the years, I’ve heard people of a certain political persuasion argue that the United States should be more like their northern neighbor Canada. And over the years, I’ve enthusiastically agreed, but mostly for different reasons. A recent article in The Economist captures a few of those reasons:

Donald Trump, the grievance-mongering Republican nominee, would build a wall on Mexico’s border and rip up trade agreements. Hillary Clinton, the probable winner on November 8th, would be much better on immigration, but she has renounced her former support for ambitious trade deals. Britain, worried about immigrants and globalisation, has voted to march out of the European Union. Angela Merkel flung open Germany’s doors to refugees, then suffered a series of political setbacks. Marine Le Pen, a right-wing populist, is the favourite to win the first round of France’s presidential election next year.

In this depressing company of wall-builders, door-slammers and drawbridge-raisers, Canada stands out as a heartening exception. It happily admits more than 300,000 immigrants a year, nearly 1% of its population—a higher proportion than any other big, rich country—and has done so for two decades. Its charismatic prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has been in office a year, has welcomed some 33,000 Syrian refugees, far more than America has. Bucking the protectionist mood, Canada remains an eager free-trader. It was dismayed by the EU’s struggle to overcome a veto by Walloons on signing a “comprehensive” trade agreement that took seven years to negotiate (see Charlemagne). Under Mr Trudeau, Canada is trying to make amends for its shameful treatment of indigenous peoples, and is likely to become the first Western country to legalise recreational cannabis on a national level. 

The article acknowledges that Canada’s geographic location, history, and the like are important factors for its political decisions above, but it nonetheless makes an effort to find against the populist rhetoric within its own borders:

Canada not only welcomes newcomers but works hard to integrate them. Its charter of rights and freedoms proclaims the country’s “multicultural heritage”. Not every country will fuse diversity and national identity in the same way that Canada does. Indeed, French-speaking Quebec has its own way of interpreting multiculturalism, which gives priority to the province’s distinct culture. But other countries can learn from the spirit of experimentation that Canada brings to helping immigrants find employment and housing. Its system of private sponsorship, in which groups of citizens take responsibility for supporting refugees during their first year, not only helps them adapt but encourages society at large to make them welcome. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called on other countries to copy it.

Canada has been managing its public finances conservatively for the past 20 years or so. Now in charge of a sluggish economy, Mr Trudeau can afford to give growth a modest lift by spending extra money on infrastructure. His government has given a tax cut to the middle class and raised rates for the highest earners to help pay for it. These economic policies deserve to “go viral”, the head of the IMF has said. Canada has a further economic lesson to impart in how it protects people hurt by globalisation. Compared with America, its publicly financed health system lessens the terror of losing a job; it also provides more financial support and training to people who do. And its policy of “equalisation” gives provincial and local governments the means to maintain public services at a uniform level across the country.

Perhaps most important, this mixture of policies—liberal on trade and immigration, activist in shoring up growth and protecting globalisation’s losers—is a reminder that the centrist formula still works, if politicians are willing to champion it. 

Of course, it’s important to point out that Canada “remains a poorer, less productive and less innovative economy than America’s.” Trade among provinces is still problematic and the “peace, order and good government” that is “enshrined in its constitution” may be “inadequate without an infusion of American individualism.” But when Canada outpaces the U.S. in economic freedom, it may be worth looking at the things they get right.

Adverse Effects of Family Instability: Possible Gender Differences

“When marriage breaks down,” writes sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, “boys are more likely than girls to act up. From delinquency to incarceration and schooling to employment, a mounting body of research suggests boys are affected more by family breakdown than girls. As Richard Reeves, the co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families, recently put it, when it comes to thriving in difficult family environments, girls may be more like dandelions, while boys may be more like orchids.” He points to

research by economist David Autor and his colleagues [that] indicates that one major reason why boys are falling behind girls in school is that they are affected more by fatherlessness than girls when it comes to their behavior and academic progress. The figure below, taken from Autor’s new research in Florida, indicates that the gender gap in school absences is larger for boys from unmarried, father-absent homes than for boys born to married parents. Likewise, the gender gap in school suspensions and high school graduation in Florida is also smaller for boys from married homes. 

 

auterfigure

“Similarly,” he continues,

economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have found that young men (at age 30) are less likely to be employed if they come from single-parent families than from married-parent families. Moreover, as the figure below indicates, young men from lower-income families do relatively worse than their female peers if they hail from single-parent families. But young men from married, lower-income families do relatively better than their female peers. In other words, Chetty’s new research suggests that young men’s labor force participation is affected more negatively by single-parenthood than young women’s employment prospects, especially when both are raised in a lower-income family.

 

chettyfigure

However, “it’s also possible that family instability and single parenthood affect girls and young women in ways that are not directly related to antisocial behavior, which is a classic male expression of emotional turmoil. In other words, perhaps both boys and girls are orchids in the face of family instability, but their vulnerability is simply expressed in different ways.” Wilcox then draws on the 2016 American Family Survey conducted by YouGov for Deseret News/BYU. The findings?

  • “[A]dult women are much less likely to report that their current relationship is “in trouble” if they come from a stable married home, and the advantage they enjoy from stability is clearly larger than the advantage that man from a stable home enjoy in this domain.”
  • “[T]oday’s women are much less likely to find themselves in a financial crisis if they hail from an intact, married family, as the figure below indicates. If the results of this survey are replicated in other data sets, they suggest that women may be affected by family instability more than men when it comes to their relationship success and freedom from economic distress.”

 

relationshiptroubleupdated

economiccrisisupdated

Wilcox says that the “survey suggests women have greater difficulty in forging and maintaining strong relationships as adults when they have been exposed to family instability or dysfunction as children. This, in turn, may lead to more relationship “trouble” and also to a higher incidence of single parenthood as adults. A higher incidence of single parenthood, in turn, may help explain why women with unstable families are more likely to report financial distress. Finally, if the absence of a stable, married home has a bigger impact on girls’ future relationship trajectories than boys, it may also explain why the gap in relationship trouble and financial distress by family stability looks bigger for women than men in this new survey.”

We Too Are Fathers

Father bonding with newborn daughter by Kiefer.Wolfowitz under CC BY-SA 3.0. Click for original file.
Father bonding with newborn daughter by Kiefer.Wolfowitz under CC BY-SA 3.0. Click for original file.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

One of the talks from the priesthood session of the April 1974 General Conference stood out to me, and that was Elder Marion D. Hanks’ talk Boys Need Men. I took the title of this post from one of the lines of his talk: “Only God knows the worth of a boy, but we too are fathers, and we have an inkling.”

Some of that sentiment is universal. He could have as easily said, speaking to a more general audience, “Only Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother know the worth of a child, but we too are parents, and we have an inkling,” and that would have been just as true. I love that sentiment, and the idea that—as parents—our highest calling is to emulate our Heavenly Parents and provide our children with the love, support, and challenges to foster their growth and happiness.

Along those universal lines, Elder Hanks went on:

Every individual is a kind of an omnibus carrying with him all the past that has gone into his making, all the potential in him for influencing the present, and he has, in addition, the sobering reality to face that he carries within himself the seeds of the future.

But there is also something unmistakably specific about fathers and boys as opposed to mothers and daughters, and that was also part of Elder Hanks’ message:

Boys need men to learn from, men to be with who understand their need for activities that are challenging and socially and spiritually constructive and that stretch them and give them a chance to learn manly skills, men to love and who love them, men who are models of what a man ought to be. The father should be the first line of strength, and a boy blessed with such a father is fortunate indeed.

He even specifically stated that “we have no lack of appreciation for the wonderful influence of mothers and other noble women in guiding boys. . .but it takes men to make men.” And I believe that’s true. We’ve even written about that at Difficult Run before, for example here and here.

In fact, that’s one of the most important things that Mormonism—as a religion and also as an institution and a culture—does for its members. It provides a template for pro-social, principled masculinity (and femininity). And I think that’s essential for our growth as human beings. We are social beings, and to live vibrant lives we should understand ourselves as unique individuals, as part of non-universal group (and the groups: male and female are the most fundamental such groups), and as part of a universal collective. Those are the three fundamental levels of human experience: alone, part of an exclusive us, and part of an inclusive us.

Coming back to the talk, here are two more quotes that I really liked:

How foolish we are if we reserve to ourselves, or for others than our own children, the knowledge and testimony of the gospel we have gained. They, no less than others, need and deserve this from us.

And then:

It is no small thing to reestablish confidence and faith in a man at a critical point in his life when he has failed and is full of self-doubt.

And then a final thought that gives me both direction and hope in my life:

God bless you boys to appreciate your dads, to be patient and gracious and forgiving.

Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!