The Overview (Monday, March 1)
The Equality Act is a step closer to becoming law, how policies aimed at curbing child poverty affect abortion rates, and Jake Meador weighs in on the Ryan Anderson-Amazon controversy
It has been quite the past couple of weeks at the Bennett household. Two weeks ago Northwest Arkansas was in the midst of its coldest weather in a decade, culminating with several inches of snow, closed schools, and (mostly) failed attempts to keep birds away from the relative warmth of our chicken coop. And then last week, just as we were getting back into the swing of things, illness struck with a vengeance. We’re only now approaching full recovery. Here’s to a better two weeks ahead!
While we wait, here’s the Monday, March 1 edition of The Overview:
1) Kelsey Dallas of the Deseret News breaks down the Equality Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week, and the Fairness for All Act, which was introduced by GOP Rep. Chris Stewart shortly thereafter. I’ll leave it to the article to explain the differences between these two legislative efforts aimed at protecting the civil rights of vulnerable Americans. However, I will say that while I’m generally supportive of efforts like Fairness for All, it’s frustrating to admit that such a bill has little chance of becoming law.
Most Democrats will balk at anything less than full-throated in its support for LGBT rights, and most Republicans will be critical of the admittedly limited ways in which Fairness for All protects the liberties of religious Americans opposed to same-sex marriage and certain aspects of gender ideology. As a compromise bill, I think Fairness for All is phenomenal. But in order to be realistic, there needs to be the willingness to compromise by more than a handful of legislators. And on this issue, I’m sorry to say that we’re just not there. Zero-sum politics may make for good talking points and fundraising opportunities, but it’s horrible for the necessary work of legislative compromise.
2) Writing for Public Discourse, demographics researcher Lyman Stone details how recent proposals aimed at curtailing child poverty could reduce abortions. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently proposed an update to the Child Tax Credit and related programs, and the biggest change would be the creation of a child allowance, paid monthly, to American families. Stone argues elsewhere that conservatives should be thrilled with this proposal for a variety of reasons, but here he meticulously lays out why the abortion rate would decrease if such a policy were put into place. It’s hard to highlight any one paragraph or section, as they are connected by the larger argument Stone is making. Just read it for yourself.
Stone later pushes back against one conservative critique of such a proposal, that it would disincentivize working. Stone counters:
Conservatives who say that a child allowance will reduce work are correct. It will yield somewhat fewer Uber drivers, Amazon warehouse workers, and cashiers at Arby’s, and more parents at home raising their own kids. Losing some lower-wage, easily automated work in order to get more parenting—a task we cannot automate and of which there is a dire shortage—is a trade any conservative should be happy to make. Besides, because the Earned Income Tax Credit pays out thousands of dollars a year for low-income workers, that “low-wage work” often gets as large a taxpayer subsidy, or larger, than the child allowance would provide. It’s not clear to me how it’s better for a family to be dependent on the dole and their manager at Walmart than it is to subsidize their raising a child.
Other Republican senators traditionally vocal on this policy, including Marco Rubio (FL) and Mike Lee (UT), have come out against Romney’s proposal, saying, “An essential part of being pro-family is being pro-work.” But if conservative, pro-life senators continue to object to innovative ideas like Romney’s, one that empowers families to comfortably and confidently have children, on the well-trod grounds of “personal responsibility,” then it’s hard to take their commitment to the sanctity of life especially seriously.
3) Mere Orthodoxy’s Jake Meador responds to news that Amazon will no longer carry a book critical of transgender ideology. Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally was published in 2018, generating high levels of both support and opposition in the years since. However, last month Amazon pulled the book from its virtual shelves (no explanation was given), prompting a great deal of criticism from Anderson’s defenders.
Meador suggests that this episode is the latest example of America continuing to pull apart. In doing so, he offers a dire prediction about the future:
Conservatives, catechized by narratives of paranoia and fear from their preferred media outlets, will react to both real and perceived threats as their catechists have taught them to react. Progressives, having been taught to venerate individual autonomy and self-determination above all else, will continue to tear up American civil society at its roots in the name of liberation, leaving us increasingly trapped in the mechanical workings of big business and big government, cut off from older forms of belonging and common life.
Suffice it to say, this isn’t a pretty picture.
4) In the latest edition of his newsletter for The Dispatch, David French offers a deep dive on the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a tradition of thought within certain elements of evangelical Christianity with important implications for today. As others have noted, the Trump administration attracted a certain element of Christianity, one that emphasized personal revelation and prophecy; there is a good deal of overlap between this community and the Seven Mountain Mandate. And the 2020 election, French argues, was a major moment for this movement:
When Trump lost the election, the church not only lost a “mountain king,” alleged apostles and prophets lost their own access to the “high places.” They also lost a portion of their spiritual credibility. The post-election challenges weren’t just the path to preserve the presidency—for some of Trump’s most fervent and prominent Evangelical leaders, they were a means of preserving the integrity of their divine pronouncements.
French concludes with a sharp criticism of the Mandate’s emphasis on earthly power, saying, “Any admonition that declares that we must rule should be checked with the immediate reminder that Christ did not.” Amen.
5) Finally, the New York Times’ Michael Powell paints a fascinating picture of the clashes over race and class at Smith College, one of the nation’s most prestigious (and affluent) institutions of higher education. There’s no shortage of discussions on race and privilege among the country’s academic elite, but what happens to people on campus (cafeteria workers, janitors, support staff, etc) who are decidedly not elite yet are caught up in ensuing controversies anyway? The article is frustrating, enlightening, and well worth your time.
I found the article about Ms. Kanoute and Smith College to be quite fascinating, thank you for sharing it. I have thought a lot recently about how there appears to be an almost schizophrenic level of paranoia about the supposed racial motivations of some actions by authority figures that persists in the mind of some. When I compare Ms. Kanoute's story to other similar tales, there seems to be a distinct lack of any facts or fact patterns that would support her story. I have no doubt that Ms. Kanoute suffered emotional trauma but I find it fair to point out that most likely that psychological distress was wholly self-manufactured. There seems to be a dramatic amount of exaggeration from being approached about her presence in a restricted area, regardless I should say, of her knowledge regarding that area being restricted beforehand, and her "being at Smith, and my existence overall as a woman of color," as Ms. Kanoute is quoted as saying. Ms. Kanoute's behavior also seems to be predatory, what with her Facebook posts targeting specific employees, several of whom were not even close to being involved in the incident. Ms. Kanoute seems to have deliberately avoided any official channel for resolving her dispute and instead she took the public square, a notoriously less productive space to talk about sensitive issues. What I find especially troubling is that Ms. Kanoute seems to have totally thrown the concept of "good faith" out the window. No doubt she did so because she believes the entire school to be founded on white supremacy, and thus is unfit for any engagement beyond public lambasting, except for of course, her direct funding of the university with thousands and thousands of tuition dollars. I can't imagine how workers and administrators on that campus might be and indeed are cowed when faced with prospects such as these.
It is no wonder that Ms. Blair refused mediation: a key foundation of mediation is the shared conviction that both sides are operating in good faith, and I must say, Ms. Kanoute couldn't have done more to stamp out that shared conviction unless she was actively trying to. It seems obvious now why the university administration offered a segregated dorm, as it is mentioned in the beginning of the article. What do parents do when two children are fighting incessantly with each other? Conscientious parents separate them. Unfortunately, this tactic will probably not work out all that well, as instead the separated students will have lost many opportunities for growth and communication and the distinct spaces will mostly likely create positive feedback loops and echo-chambers for their respective inhabitants.
The A.C.L.U's racial justice director's comments are particularly frustrating to read. He moves the goal posts and says that "subconscious bias is difficult to prove," nicely avoiding the issue of facts in this case entirely and in only one sentence. What an outstanding rhetorical move. The racial justice director goes on to say, "It’s troubling that people are more offended by being called racist than by the actual racism in our society ... Allegations of being racist, even getting direct mailers in their mailbox, is not on par with the consequences of actual racism.” Racism can be very vicious, but when the only supposed consequence of supposed racism is someone being asked to leave an empty place kindly, and without force, malice, or threats, the consequences of the allegations of racism that Ms. Blair experienced, being near-death threats, hostility from students, and as others have experienced, potential job loss, tend to weigh more, significantly so.