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Putnam and the death of the diversity ideology
Daniel Henninger has some thoughts on the Robert Putnam study. Henninger says this is the short version:
"People in ethnically diverse settings don’t want to have much of anything to do with each other. ’Social capital’ erodes. Diversity has a downside.
Prof. Putnam isn’t exactly hiding these volatile conclusions, though he did introduce them in a journal called Scandinavian Political Studies. A great believer in the efficacy of what social scientists call ’reciprocity,’ he wasn’t happy with what he found but didn’t mince words describing the results:
’Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.’ The diversity nightmare gets worse: They have little confidence in the ’local news media.’ This after all we’ve done for them.
Colleagues and diversity advocates, disturbed at what was emerging from the study, suggested alternative explanations. Prof. Putnam and his team re-ran the data every which way from Sunday and the result was always the same: Diverse communities may be yeasty and even creative, but trust, altruism and community cooperation fall. He calls it ’hunkering down.’"
The whole article, "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture", is available here.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [246] | 8/16/2007 7:27 AM
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Special Ops
Almost all of us now know that the guys in Afghanistan after 9/11 on horseback with GPS technology in one hand and gun in the other were Army Special Forces, a part of Special Operations Forces. They were (and are) impressive. David Tucker & Christopher J. Lamb (both served in an office in DOD that had "special operations and low intensity conflict" in its title; you gotta love that!) just published a volume in which they cover, as far as I can tell, everything important (and therefore controversial) about what SOF are and have been, how they are organized, and how againt Islamic extremism and other irregular threats SOF can provide the greatest strategic value.
"SOF are less a model for information-age transformation of conventional forces than they are a model for how to fight irregular warriors with discrimination, at low cost, and through emphasis on indirect methods." Theoretically exciting as this is, I glance at a photo of some scruffy guys fondling their cold guns and unlit cigars in some desert village far away. Their American eyes see both good and evil. This good book is dedicated to such good men (and their families).
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 8/15/2007 11:14 AM
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Is Giuliani Another JFK Catholic?
According to Richard Cohen of the WASHINGTON POST, Rudy had a Kennedy moment when he told a reporter that his religious beliefs were none of his business. That allegedly signaled that Rudy would be guided by his own reason rather than by any religious authority as president. Romney, meanwhile, acknowledged that his religious beliefs might have some limited influence over his public policy views. But can Giuliani’s rude or manly moment really substitute for his sustained reflection on the place of religion in his personal and American public life? And can we really say that his repeated suggestion that ROE was rightly decided is actually based on reason?
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [18] | 8/15/2007 11:29 AM
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Lopsided Lincoln
Since I am still in the Malay-running-Amok mode, I can’t comment on Karl Rove (whom I like very much, flaws included) or the lopsided coverage his resignation is getting, but I can quickly bring this story to your attention on what modern science can tell us about Abraham Lincoln: He had "cranial facial microsomia" (and also strabismus, smallpox, heart illness and depression). When Tolstoi said "His example is universal and will last thousands of years...and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives," he was not speaking as a scientist.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [7] | 8/14/2007 9:43 AM
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What Studies Show on Masculinity
Palaeontologists have developed an index of masculinity (and therefore attractiveness to women) based on face shape. That allowed them to be able to discover the ten most masculine celebrities in the world. Although I’m a bit skeptical, I know of no other hypothesis that can account for the appeal of Justin Timberlake. (In the cases of Will Smith, Johnny Depp, and Brad Pitt, I’m open to the possibility that they’re actually excellent actors.) The scientists do acknowledge that further studies may be needed. [Thanks to Ivan the K.]
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [20] | 8/14/2007 8:48 AM
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Is Conservative Artist an Oxymoron?
We conservative pop culture critics are rigidly orthodox herders who make our slavish sheep carry the rhetorical water. Plus we say dumb, ideological things about good movies.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 8/13/2007 3:45 PM
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The Handicappers Say Huckabee Won
Here’s one version of the verdict among many. I agree with the nerve of the thoughtful comments in the threads below: Mike might be both too much like Bush and too much like Clinton. But I have to add the more positive spin that his disdain for Wall Street and his worry about our dependence on foreign oil--as well as his general compassionate unlibertarianism--sound something, at least, like our friend Dr. Pat Deneen (with evangelical add-ons). I make that point not to endorse the new man from Hope’s positions but to suggest that Huck might be developing a distinctive niche campaign. I also agree with the point made in the threads that the Ames result also showed that maybe the only Republicans who aren’t lethargic are particularly concerned with either abortion or immigration.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [9] | 8/13/2007 9:10 AM
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Huckabee’s Great and Vertical "Results Conservatism"
It’s only fair to post a fairly flattering article about the one candidate who clearly did better than expected in the Iowa straw poll. Mike is articulate, not particularly edgy, somewhat witty, actually wrote his own book, and has thoughtful and stable positions on the issues. But Julie and John Podhoretz are right: The hyping of Ames is best understood as a futile journalistic attempt to keep the campaign from getting even more boring, and poor Romney ended up spending a huge amount of money per vote.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [15] | 8/12/2007 8:53 PM
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You’ve All Been Thinking It . . .
. . . but it took John Podhoretz to say it--and say it so well. What’s the big whoop about Iowa and Ames anyway?
Posted by Julie Ponzi | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 8/12/2007 8:37 PM
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My Break from Blogging
Well, I’ve been busy. I gave the keynote lecture and mentored and all that at the ISI Honors Program in Quebec City (which is a very pretty and enjoyable mixture of contemporary American convenience and European charm--without any obvious displays of the decadence of either). My topic was "Building Better Than They Knew" or the relationship between our country and the true science of natural law. And then I went to Boulder (like Quebec, basically a theme park for the casual visitor) for ISI/Miller Center Program on Teaching American Studies for young faculty and advanced graduate students. There I sort of talked about Tocquevlle, Locke and Darwin and how our founding appears to us today.
I mention these programs because surely there are many readers of NLT who should apply to next year’s versions of them.
Our Ivan the K was in Boulder. Ralph Hancock, who’s telling the tough truth about Rawls, justice, and the good in the thread below, gave a stunning, lucid, and unmoody lecture in Quebec on Strauss and the emerging field of post-Straussian studies. You can’t miss Ralph’s witty and pathbreaking critical overview of some recent studies on Strauss in the next POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER. Paul Seaton (Gary’s impoverished [by comparison] brother) and Marc Guerra also have excellent essays in that issue.
Dan Mahoney was also as authoritative and charming as usual in both Quebec and Boulder on every book ever written, but mostly on those by Pierre Manent and Orestes Brownson.
The most manly, most stylish, and fittest man in Boulder was Harvey Mansfield, who gave six hours worth of funny, deep, and provocative presentations in a a 24-hour period. Well, maybe Jim Ceaser was even more stylish in his own way, and certainly he was everywhere looking over everything.
The honors undergrad fellow from Berry College, Tricia Steele, took buses from Newark to Quebec and back rather than miss the program. In Boulder, Berry grads include the only woman professor (Jocelyn Evans) and Baylor graduate students David Ramsey and Elizabeth Amato.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [5] | 8/12/2007 10:44 AM
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The Skeletor Show
One of the teachers who attended my MAHG seminar a few weeks ago sent me a link to this video. She told me it had been featured on NPR this weekend, but of course I don’t listen to that commie propaganda. But the video made me laugh harder than I have in some time, particularly because I well remember the old "Masters of the Universe" cartoons from the 1980s.
Posted by John Moser | Link to this Entry | Comments | 8/12/2007 10:19 AM
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Innocents abroad
We’ve been in Europe for a week, and I thought it was time to check in. A couple of general observations: both Austria (surprisingly) and the Netherlands (unsurpisingly) are more diverse than on my last visit (fourteen years ago). I’ve actually seen more Muslims in Salzburg than in Amsterdam (though mostly of the sort who cover their heads but wear fashionable western dress otherwise). We haven’t encountered any overt anti-Americanism, not even from relatives. I guess I’ve been surprised by the lack of obvious security in the train stations. I’ve gone through exactly one metal detector (and that was in the Rijksmuseum). The Knippenberg family highlights so far have been Delft (lovely town with great squares and churches) and the Maria-Plain pilgrim church outside Salzburg (where my folks were married back in ’55). The latter gives me anecdotal evidence that Catholic piety is alive in central Europe--there was beautiful spontaneous singing, and, gosh, I shook the hand of the Arch-bishop of Salzburg. More later, probably after we’ve spent some time in Italy.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [9] | 8/11/2007 3:03 AM
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Cigars and Dennis Prager
I have been reading (surprise!). After my hurly-burly schedule it feels like I’m stealing from a deep place and I like it. For my light reading it’s been The Elephant and the Dragon. Very good. To remind me that language at is best is for the sake of clarity, and understatement may be best, I have been re-reading Coolidge’s Autobiography. Splendid! I also remembered that Calvin loved cigars. Which brings me to this piece by Dennis Prager in which he briefly explains (in prose) why he loves cigars and what he likes about cigar stores. I guess that does it, I’ll have to invite him to give a talk at the Center!
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [5] | 8/10/2007 5:21 PM
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Telling it Like it is
I’ve been staying away from NLT, mainly because this has been the busiest summer I ever remember having. Fortunately all my business has been enjoyable, but it’s left me no time for blogging. One thing I’ve been up to is portraying Howard Cosell as part of this year’s Ashland Chautauqua. I did a 45-minute monologue, set in December 1983--right after his final telecast of Monday Night Football. This was followed by Q&A from the audience. Anyway, if you live in North Central Ohio, and you didn’t have a chance to catch my Chautauqua performance, I’ll be reprising it tomorrow night at 8:00 pm at the Mansfield Playhouse. This will be a special fundraiser for the Playhouse to kick off its 40th anniversary season. Tickets are $10, and the performance will be followed by a gourmet reception (courtesy of my beautiful and talented wife). Tickets will no doubt be available at the door, but if you want to make reservations call 419-522-2883.
Posted by John Moser | Link to this Entry | Comments [7] | 8/9/2007 8:38 PM
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Dems too Cocky?
Toby Harnden in Britain’s Telegraph writes what begins to look like a plausible strategy for Republican candidates in this election cycle: there’s "blood in the water" on the Dem side he argues. They may finish themselves off if Republicans leave them alone. Obama is presenting himself too much as the left-wing anti-war candidate which (as events have proven) has the danger of making him look weak and childish in the mold of McGovern and Dukakis. Hillary’s strength is that she is the safe candidate--like Mondale or like Gore. The problem is that her likability is at least equal to that of Gore or Mondale too. Which is to say that she’s not particularly likable and we all know what happened to Gore and Mondale when they were confronted with likable Republicans. Say whatever you will about all of the Republican front runners--they’re at least likable.
Posted by Julie Ponzi | Link to this Entry | Comments [8] | 8/9/2007 7:51 PM
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Putnam and diversity
In the Comments Steve Thomas section linked to this article in the Boston Globe about Robert Putnam’s latest study on diversity. Just wanted to make sure everyone saw it.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [11] | 8/8/2007 9:58 AM
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Assimilation and citizenship
Last Fall I gave a talk at the Heritage Foundation on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution and it is now published. They have put it out under a "First Principles Series" and some of the other essays might interest you. My piece, alas, is a variation on a theme with which you are all too familiar. Sorry.
And yet, perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised that the simple (although, I hope not simple-minded) themes of citizenship and assimilation of immigrants continues to press, Note this Washington Post article in which the deep question is posed: Should the U.S. Government encourage assimilation? The question is not, of course, whether the Feds should spend money on programs that encourages or teaches immigrants to become Americans. That is missing the point. Please note that in the WaPo article almost all the immigrants quoted make perfect sense (e.g.: Americans "want all the people -- black, yellow, green, Chinese," Zemikel (from Eretria) said. "In other countries, they don’t want them, like, equal.").
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [13] | 8/7/2007 10:23 AM
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John Rawls and the Greening of Liberalism, Part 2
Linda Hirshman contends that the success of John Rawls’s philosophy has a lot to do with the failure of liberal politics. The portion of her argument she has shared with the public so far is neither complete nor compelling. Her primary complaint is that The Theory of Justice is bloodless: “Rawls’s political actors, such as they were, looked a lot like brains in vats – theoretical beings completely disconnected from real-world politics.” Hirshman is no conservative, and certainly no Straussian, but her critique of Rawls resembles Allan Bloom’s. Rawls makes an argument for redistribution based on his “Original Position,” where humans design a society behind a “veil of ignorance,” not knowing whether they’ll be smart or dumb, beautiful or ugly, in the ethnic majority or minority, etc. Rawls argues that people would be utterly risk-averse in the Original Position, designing a society with extensive income redistribution to make sure the least-advantaged are always as well off as possible. Bloom’s central problem with this framework is that Rawls doesn’t adequately explain why human beings should adhere to the arrangements they devised in the Original Position once the veil of ignorance has been removed. When the strong know they are strong, not weak, they may not regard the protection of the weak as the highest priority. All Rawls can offer to urge people to maintain the deal he imagines they would have made is, according to Bloom, “sermonizing.” This is one of the stronger criticisms of John Rawls. The trouble for Hirshman’s position is that it’s difficult to see: 1) how the “brains in vats” quality of Rawls’s philosophy became an attribute of political liberalism generally because of the publication of A Theory of Justice; and 2) how, even if this quality did affect what liberals said and did after 1971, voters noticed or cared. It is not difficult to identify a less abstract and more obviously unpopular aspect of Rawlsianism. A Theory of Justice is an unyielding argument for a strikingly unrugged individualism. Each person must have everything he thinks he needs to pursue his “life plan,” including self-esteem. The individual whose life plan consists of counting blades of grass deserves not only the wherewithal to do so, but the assurance that he’ll be treated with no less respect than a Harvard professor. As Bloom says, Rawls insists government must be laisser faire about the ends people pursue, but beaucoup faire about providing the means to pursue them. Hirshman may or may not choose to take issue with this aspect of A Theory of Justice. She would have a hard time, again, arguing that Rawls talked liberals into a position they would not otherwise have taken. The sentiment that people had virtually unconditional welfare rights had pervaded liberalism long before Rawls had any disciples. The prominent sociologist, Christopher Jencks, offered this rebuttal to the “Moynihan Report” in 1965: “If [poor black families] are matriarchal by choice (i.e., if lower-class men, women, and children truly prefer a family consisting of a mother, children, and a series of transient males) then it is hardly the federal government’s proper business to try to alter this choice. Instead, the government ought to invent ways of providing such families with the same physical and psychic necessities of life available to other kinds of families.”
Posted by William Voegeli | Link to this Entry | Comments [21] | 8/6/2007 11:59 PM
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Monster Madness
I take time out from my blogging hiatus (I’m sequestered for the next few weeks at my California house to work exclusively on Age of Reagan II) to mention a first: Yesterday I attended a monster truck show. I have a five-year-old, okay? And his favorite monster truck, Grave Digger, was participating! As a cultural matter this is beyond NASCAR: monster truck madness (which includes big air motocross, too), seems a combination of circus acrobatics, professional wrestling (good guys versus bad guys), and the Battle of the Bulge. There was a moment of silence offered for our fallen soldiers in Iraq before the engines roared to life.
Posted by Steven Hayward | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 8/6/2007 3:07 PM
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Mansfield vs. The New Atheism
According to the manly Mansfield, the old atheists were against the church, but the new atheists are against religion itself, which really means they’re against constitutionalism itself. The new atheists pride themselves as being the only animals smart enough and tough enough be atheists, but their arguments, Harvey shows us, are as predictable as chimp behavior. Harvey once called attention to the philosopher-atheist’s criticism of times of "Enlightenment": They take all the fun out of "free thought." But it takes a time of alleged Enlightenment to show us that there’s nothing more boring than atheism or at least raving atheists.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [21] | 8/6/2007 1:01 PM
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