What do you call a person who wants to offer governmental handouts to unmarried men in order to improve their personal lives? Right you are, a Conservative! Here is an excerpt from an interview with Ross Douthat:
There’s increasing interest on both sides of the aisle in criminal justice reform, wage supports for unmarried men, and other ideas that might make a difference to couples or would-be couples on the margins. But that consensus won’t hold if the policy drift is just toward a kind of open-ended support for single parents. There has to be a specific focus on making men marriageable, and making it easier to be married to them, and that focus has to cash out (literally) in whatever policy choices we make.
Talking about big government and Big Brother, governmental policy aimed at investing public money to improve the dating lives of a few of society’s members seems scarily intrusive and authoritarian. I thought that Conservatives should be fleeing in horror from such ideas. Yet here is Douthat, super comfortable with the idea of costly governmental intrusions into the private lives of citizens. I’m also kind of surprised to see such an open contempt for men that doesn’t even attempt to disguise itself. According to Douthat, the only way of making men attractive as marriage partners is by giving them cash. Of course, Douthat is projecting here and offending all men while doing so.
But Douthat doesn’t stop here in his fantasy of governmental intrusion into the private lives of citizens. He also supports
waiting periods and counseling for divorcing couples (especially couples with children), preferential treatment in court for spouses who are being divorced against their will (in the absence of evidence of abuse).
He isn’t suggesting giving governmental handouts to people in order to prevent them from divorcing but I’m sure he will get there soon enough. Maybe Douthat’s plan consists of bribing every citizen into living the lifestyle that doesn’t make Douthat uncomfortable. It’s looking like relieving Douthat’s angst at the sight of people who are enjoying “adult freedom. . . in a society organized around adult desire” (Douthat’s own words) will be a costly project for us as a society. Maybe we should give him a governmental handout to seek a mental health specialist? In the long run, treating Douthat will turn out cheaper than remaking the world to fit Douthat’s fantasy.
Clarissa's Blog 
For a literature specialist you’re missing a lot of subtext. I’m pretty sure that if you insert the word ‘black’ before men you’ll get his real message.
He can’t come right out and say “We need to pay black men to get and stay married” so he uses (very) slightly more ambiguous language.
That’s not to say his message is any less offensive.
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Any reading is valid if it relies on the totality of textual evidence. 🙂 If the author chose to leave holes in his text, he should be prepared for readers to fill them in according to their own preference. I heard that the divorce rates are sky – high among poor whites, actually. How can I be expected to guess that this is not what he is referring to?
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It’s an American thang. Conservatives are worred about high divorce rates among poor whites (when they remember they exist). They are far, far more worried about non-marriage among African Americans.
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Ok so what this guy says is that the US should pay unmarried men money and this is going to encourage them to get married? How the hell.
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Douthat is a long-time proponent of the idea that the only thing that attracts women in men is money. If you follow this logic, then gay relationships are the only healthy ones. 🙂
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Yes but if the money is offered to unmarried men only and women marry for money, it’s an incentive to never actually get married. The sense in this. I’m failing to find it, even if I accept the premises of the argument. Which I don’t.
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I wonder if these would also be given to gay men living in states where same sex marriage is illegal. No, not really, I already know how he’d recoil at that possibility. 🙂
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But there are no male gold diggers, so gay men have no need of extra cash. 🙂
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Clearly, anyone who believes on that has never been on the MSM (Men seeking Men) section of SeekingArrangement, or on Grindr or Manfinder. 😉
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What about jobs creation programs and a raise in the minimum wage?
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Why take the easy road which will definitely work when you can take the complex confusing road that will not work, you know?
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I love how introduces the statement by claiming that there’s “growing interest on both sides” for his proposal. That way he can pretend that he’s part of rising movement, rather than a lone idiot with a stupid opinion.
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According to Douthat, the only way of making men attractive as marriage partners is by giving them cash. Of course, Douthat is projecting here and offending all men while doing so.
Dude is married. I suspect that much of that has to do with his class trappings
Job creation programs and minimum raises involve far more cash than some kid stipend. Plus where’s the fun of telling people what they should do with their lives? Douthat knows that.
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“Dude is married.”
– And it’s clear to all of us what his wife sees in him. 🙂
“Job creation programs and minimum raises involve far more cash than some kid stipend. Plus where’s the fun of telling people what they should do with their lives? ”
– I think it’s more the latter than the former. 🙂 But I really dig the hypocrisy of defending “a small government” while simultaneously insisting that a government should control people’s personal lives through any means possible, including taxpayers’ money. And what if I don’t want my tax dollars to go towards the goal of making some guy more attractive to women? Jeez.
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Do my class trappings reveal that I’d rather be building grand libraries?
As an unmarried unabashed elitist, I’d hope this is the case. 🙂
After all, someone has to help lead countries such as the United States out of the great endarkenment that’s being led by such great lights as Ross Douthat …
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So why do adults need special ideological or financial or other assistance to enable them to become adults? The patriarchal ideology always insists on this, that one cannot be an adult unless propped up in some way.
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You might find this article interesting.
“So many of the successful companies are formed by people who seem to be suffering from a mild form of Asperger’s,” Thiel said, referring to Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning type of autism. People with Asperger’s often have limited socialization skills and, he said, are unafraid of pursuing ideas seen as strange. “What is it about our society where anyone who does not have Asperger’s gets talked out of their heterodox ideas?”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-07/peter-thiel-criticizes-harvard-business-school-praises-aspergers
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And all this in a world where if a woman dares to accept even a $5 espresso from a man, she is labelled as a golddigger. What a Douchebag is this Douthat. Maybe he wants a reason he can call women whores for, just as an essential part of his unique personality.
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I get the feeling that Douthat is the sort of armchair quasi-economist who honestly believes that if you get rid of all negative externalities, suddenly a wellspring of good feeling will enter a marketplace and everything will resolve ab initio as if the crisis had never occurred …
There are plenty of reasons for the phenomenon he’s describing, and that the “specific focus on making men marriageable” is in essence a wish for magical thinking that removes externalities without working on the core reasons.
One reason this magical thinking doesn’t work is analogous to why Maxwell’s daemon would never work in physics: the effort involved would be greater than the benefit gained. Worse, the perversion of fundamental rights that would be required would ensure that men would become a united force against the changes he views as positive.
His position isn’t too different from a bunch of semi-drunken buddies gathering around a table and, upon presenting highly abbreviated evidence, determining that they have all of the necessary information with which they can “fix the world’s problems”.
Fortunately the world’s problems are more intractable than that, and fortunately the world can safely ignore someone like Douthat.
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