0:06

Ladies

0:14

and gentlemen, can

0:17

I please have your attention? Can

0:20

you dig in? Greetings,

0:28

dear listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of

0:30

the Remnant podcast, brought to you by the

0:32

Dispatch and Dispatch Media. Very excited, long time

0:34

waiting to do this

0:36

podcast because every time, not every time,

0:38

but almost every time I go to the office

0:40

at AI, I bump into

0:43

today's guest and I ask

0:45

him, I've asked him the

0:48

cruelest words you

0:50

can ever ask an author, which is either,

0:53

how's the book going or is the book

0:55

done yet? And it's

0:58

the only thing that I

1:00

think it's kind of like with military vets,

1:03

they can ask kind of cruel questions of

1:05

other military vets that you would never dare

1:07

ask as a civilian who's never

1:09

served. Because being

1:12

asked, is the book done yet is a viciously

1:15

cruel question to people working on a book.

1:17

But it is done. It is out. And

1:19

that is why we have my AI colleague,

1:21

Tim Carney, here on

1:23

the Remnant to talk about family

1:25

unfriendly, how our culture made raising

1:28

kids much harder than it

1:30

needs to be. Now, Tim, I got to

1:32

tell you something. I cut you off when

1:34

we were talking before we started recording because

1:37

I want to get this on tape. We're

1:40

originally from New York. I'm

1:42

originally from New York. We come

1:45

from a certain kind of a tribal's

1:49

too strong, but like we have

1:51

a certain love for the ethnic

1:55

Kongs of old

1:57

New York kind of thing. And

1:59

we both come from the right side of

2:01

the political aisle. You've always been, we

2:04

can talk about it more in a minute, little

2:06

harder to label than I think I've been, but so

2:09

be it. When I saw Al Sharpton

2:14

tweet a clip on

2:17

Twitter from his account, boasting

2:20

of his conversation with you,

2:24

I wanted to go back in a time machine

2:27

and show it to a young Tim Carney and

2:29

say this is the life you're choosing. Anyway,

2:32

welcome to the remnant. Take

2:35

that anywhere you wanna go. Thank you. So

2:38

yeah, so Morning Joe had me on when

2:40

the book came out the other day. And

2:43

so Joe and Meek are

2:45

asking me questions about family,

2:47

about travel sports, about

2:50

religiosity and the decline in

2:52

community in the US. And

2:55

when you're on TV, Jonah,

2:58

you know, some of your listeners may not. A

3:00

lot of times you're just in this little

3:02

black closet and there's nothing warm or welcoming about

3:04

it. You're staring at a camera where the lights

3:06

you can barely see the lens and you're pretending

3:09

that you're looking at people, but you don't

3:11

really know who's talking to you. Now, you know,

3:13

I know Joe Scarborough, I know Meek, I

3:16

know where their questions were coming from, but all of a

3:18

sudden in my little earpiece comes a

3:20

voice from 1988. And

3:25

it's Al Sharpton. Now again, I'm

3:27

from Manhattan. So he was

3:29

a vague background figure when I was

3:31

little until the Tawana Brawley episode, right?

3:34

And so then he proceeds to ask the

3:36

best question I got. That

3:42

whole opening day, all of Monday basically. And

3:44

he asked, he said, I'm not

3:46

gonna try to do my Al Sharpton voice. I don't know if you can do

3:49

it. But he said, when I was growing up in Brooklyn and

3:52

we were in church, there was

3:54

sort of a generational continuity That

3:57

we were inheriting something from our parents and passing

3:59

it down to- Kid and the

4:01

to smartphones make people lose

4:03

that continuity and so the

4:05

kids don't They don't have

4:07

that I something. Absolutely brilliant.

4:10

So. I get. I would not have

4:12

imagined this is the twenty thirty something

4:15

years ago question but that's where I

4:17

would have in an amateur be my

4:19

brothers my the car or a watching

4:21

Ss and they were even more caught

4:23

off guard that shape and play I

4:25

know different that were Simpsons ask growth

4:27

has. Almost

4:30

bigoted stereotype, but because

4:32

it was. Some. Something

4:34

in the morning and but I

4:36

might actually sit around. A bunch

4:38

of Carney brothers had an Irish

4:41

bar spitting out there be hit

4:43

or me see the South Vietnam

4:45

but our and I know that's

4:47

not what have a I but

4:49

I'm parts I have violated the

4:52

first rule. Of

4:54

of. Of. This. Podcast When

4:56

it comes to author's coming on with books, Is I?

4:58

I'm supposed to. This. Question I was

5:00

one ago bucks or. What's. Your book about. Things

5:03

kind of in the title but like expand

5:05

on. Yes, So

5:08

childhood. Anxiety is at

5:10

a record high. it's an epidemic you've

5:12

got, parents are stress, and the birth

5:15

rate is a record low. So we're

5:17

with a total fertility rate. Women or

5:19

children for women is down to one

5:21

point seven, one point six. The number

5:23

of babies born. Has gone down

5:26

almost every year for the last fifteen years

5:28

and so a lot of people say well

5:30

this just as because you can afford kits.

5:32

That's the number one answer you get. and

5:34

then other people when he asked would be

5:36

grandparents why they don't have grandkids yet A

5:38

lot of them sale Well you know that

5:40

the the kids today are too selfish. And.

5:43

I don't accept either of those for

5:45

reasons we can talk about. My argument

5:47

is that there's a cultural. Problem

5:49

that's making it harder to have kids.

5:51

It's third, the desired families. I still

5:53

two point seven kids and we're getting

5:56

one point six, one point seven. That's

5:58

an average that not most people aren't

6:00

saying. two points at is averaging up

6:02

to. To my argument is that

6:04

in all sorts of ways our culture,

6:06

his family unfriendly. And so

6:08

start with parenting. Culture is just. it's

6:11

way too it's it's one that we

6:13

replace local little league with intensive, expensive

6:15

travels for It's Mom and dad are

6:17

expected to helicopter Little Conard or make

6:20

sure he never skins his knee. Dating.

6:23

And mating culture is totally dysfunctional, thanks

6:25

mostly to the apps, but also some

6:27

of the. The. Sociological changes

6:29

Reverend Al was referring to. And

6:32

our families our our cultures

6:34

values are family unfriendly to

6:36

and that we are too

6:38

materialistic. We worship autonomy as

6:40

it as a.is the only

6:42

sort of unquestionable good in

6:44

in modern. Psyche. You've

6:47

got The idea of commitment

6:49

is be is antagonistic to

6:52

the idea of of autonomy.

6:54

And all of the values point against

6:57

the idea of getting married, settling down,

6:59

and having kids, and modern feminism has

7:01

become the sort of work. this nightmare

7:04

that that rejects the idea of giving

7:06

up your life and and getting together

7:08

with another person whether be your your

7:10

spouse, your kid. Cetera, So.

7:13

I'm trying to say oh, it is harder to

7:15

raise kids today. But. It's not because

7:17

people are worse or the economy is

7:19

worse because our culture doesn't do the

7:21

support of families and the pointing people

7:23

towards family that a tradition and employees

7:25

be clear, like nice when he's a

7:27

culture I'm and you mean largely culture

7:29

but also caught in the broader sense

7:31

because there are. Tax. Policies

7:33

there are. you know it's it's it's

7:35

almost. Our civilization has a problem because

7:37

it's not just an American to women.

7:39

I know you focus on America, but

7:41

I just saw the numbers. I

7:44

would really This morning that didn't last

7:46

two years. Germany's birth rate,

7:48

which was already trending low. Dropped

7:51

by like. Went from

7:53

like one point six to one points for

7:55

just the last two years or something like

7:57

that. It's it's like almost in free fall.

8:00

And so it's funny, like, I

8:02

think you know this about me. I

8:04

am not particularly enamored with the post-liberal

8:06

integralist theory about Western

8:09

civilization and whatnot. But one of

8:11

the places where I have some sympathy for it, because

8:13

I'm a conservative, is this point

8:16

you make about feminism

8:20

basically wanting the

8:23

– I

8:25

use this somewhat ironically

8:27

– neoliberal late capitalist

8:30

male model of labor

8:33

and thinks that real feminine,

8:35

real female equality can only

8:37

be achieved by mimicking the

8:39

sort of gray – man in

8:41

the gray flannel suit version of

8:44

male accomplishment. And I am

8:47

very sympathetic to that argument. I mean, it seems to

8:49

me like you could

8:52

make the – we

8:54

would be better off as a society if the feminist

8:56

had won – the earlier feminist,

8:58

the essential feminist, whatever label we want

9:01

to call them, had successfully

9:03

convinced more men to have

9:05

a more maternalistic view of family

9:08

and community rather than the other way

9:10

around. So why don't we expand on

9:12

all that? So a

9:15

term I encountered was gender

9:18

symmetry feminism, which is about

9:20

eradicating basically all differences. But

9:23

the sort of one

9:25

term that I came up with counter to that

9:27

was what I call bathroom feminism. There

9:30

was this time I was talking to this

9:32

feminist activist at the United Nations interviewing her,

9:35

and she seemed totally radical and

9:37

extreme in all sorts of ways. And then

9:39

she watched this complaint against the United Nations

9:41

that was interesting. She said, if

9:44

you look at the floor plan around the

9:47

General Assembly, you can tell it was made

9:49

by a man because the

9:51

women's bathroom is the same size

9:53

and square footage and layout as

9:55

a men's bathroom just with some

9:57

of the urinals replaced with salt.

10:00

I thought, what does this have to do with

10:02

anything? And then she just explained, you can fit

10:04

fewer sort of urinals per, I mean, more urinals

10:06

per square foot, fewer stalls, women take longer. So

10:08

there's this long line coming out of the ladies

10:10

room at every break and the short line coming

10:12

out of the men's room. And then suddenly I

10:15

realized that that was the sort of feminist I

10:17

was. Some dude didn't take into account that women

10:19

were different. So that's a background argument

10:21

I put in there. But on the work front, the

10:24

way I put it is, instead of that

10:27

a lot of feminism today tries to turn

10:29

women into company men. I

10:32

think a better feminism would try to turn company

10:34

men into family guys. And

10:36

not into male moms, but

10:38

into sort of dads

10:41

who even in the workplace

10:43

are loud and expressive about

10:45

their dads. And so, and

10:48

I do it on Twitter and you get made fun of if

10:50

you talk glowingly about your

10:53

wife and your husband and your kids

10:56

on Twitter. I mean, I don't know if women get

10:58

made fun of if they talk about their husband, but

11:00

men, we get called wife guys. And

11:04

so, and I decided that that was a good thing.

11:07

If people were going to make fun of me for

11:09

being too obsequious, that was probably good. And

11:11

so I put suburban dad in my

11:13

bio to try to lead with that.

11:16

Now, again, it's not the same as being

11:18

more maternal, because

11:21

another thing that I think we need to focus

11:23

on is, if dadding

11:26

is a different thing, and probably, in

11:28

my opinion, a more fun thing than momming,

11:30

I take my three boys out and play

11:33

and beat them in basketball whenever

11:35

I can. The one who's slightly taller than

11:37

me, I can barely beat him. The one who's nine

11:40

years old, I demolish him. I

11:42

can't literally dunk on him, but I

11:45

just swat his shots left and right.

11:47

And it's so much fun. It's fun

11:49

for them. It's fun for me. That's

11:51

the kind of image of masculinity that needs to be

11:53

out there, but then in the workplace that has to

11:55

be in there. So in the later chapters, I talk

11:58

about a family friendly workplace. It's

12:01

about pushing

12:03

back on this idea that the

12:05

way to get equality is more

12:07

just subsidize the heck out of

12:09

daycare. Because that's about

12:12

saying, well, the problem is that women

12:14

are trying to want

12:17

flexibility and so they really need to take

12:19

care of their kids and that's what's holding

12:21

them back. My argument is, well, then the

12:23

women are doing it right and the

12:25

men should want flexibility too. And

12:27

that family-friendly feminism that I lay out is an

12:29

idea that in the workplace men should be just

12:32

proudly saying, you know, I got to leave at

12:34

4 o'clock every Friday because I'm coaching T-ball. What

12:37

was your answer to Al Sharpton? I'm

12:40

legitimately curious. I

12:42

told him that his

12:45

ideal would be the Jews. In

12:49

Israel, there's absolutely this idea. So

12:51

Israel has a 3.0 birth rate.

12:54

Europe is 1.5. Secular

12:57

Jews even are 2.0. And

13:00

I interviewed this man on the

13:04

streets of Tel Aviv. I went to Tel Aviv

13:06

specifically to find secular Jews. He's pushing

13:08

his two kids in the stroller while the

13:11

baby and mom are napping and he tells

13:13

me, God has nothing to do with our

13:15

family planning. But then later on

13:17

he says, you have to keep the tribe

13:19

going. That

13:21

notion of inheriting something from your parents

13:24

and passing it down to your children. I

13:28

think that's lost in the modern mindset

13:30

a lot, especially in America where

13:32

like on the left, the idea that inheriting

13:35

something can be good. That's

13:37

lost because it's either your parents imposing on

13:39

you or it's you're handed

13:42

a privilege that you didn't deserve. But

13:46

in Israel and

13:49

more observant Jewish communities in the US,

13:51

that's certainly a thing. When

13:53

you get handed something, you appreciate it and you have

13:55

a duty to take care of it and pass it

13:57

down. So cultural inheritance. So I said yes. cultural

14:00

inheritance is exactly a thing that's lost.

14:03

And that the social media,

14:05

the message of those

14:07

media is to isolate

14:09

you and to disentangle you from

14:11

previous generations. Something I remember doing

14:14

one of these podcasts yesterday was how

14:16

many of our colleagues, DC or New

14:19

York journalists sort of pride themselves on

14:22

uprooting themselves from their family, that

14:24

they're starting everything anew, they're not inheriting

14:26

something. So Reverend Al growing up in

14:29

the black church in Brooklyn, it

14:31

was very clear that he inherited something and

14:34

it was very clear in that world

14:37

that you are supposed to be passing

14:39

it down, that cultural inheritance is valuable,

14:41

real and an obligation and a privilege.

14:44

So I make, what I keep thinking about is, which

14:48

was a big theme in my last

14:50

book, Suicide of the West, which I

14:52

am indebted to our boss, you've

14:55

all lived in for, which

14:58

is this conception

15:00

of conservatism as gratitude, this

15:03

idea that, and I really

15:06

do think it's a small C conservatism

15:08

as much as it's a big C conservatism, because I

15:10

think this is something that you

15:14

can be left of

15:16

center ideologically on all sorts of role of

15:18

government kind of things, but this is something

15:20

that, like many, I

15:22

don't know if you know this about Jews, but many of

15:24

them are, and yet they still

15:26

have this

15:29

small C conservatism that says, you

15:32

should be grateful for your family, you should be grateful

15:34

for what you've inherited, you should be grateful for what

15:36

you have around you, you look

15:38

at the things in your life around you that

15:41

you think are lovely and deserving of love

15:44

and gratitude and because you're grateful for them,

15:46

you wanna pass them on, preserve

15:49

them, right? It doesn't even have to be passed on

15:51

to your children, but pass them on to our next

15:53

generation more broadly and the

15:56

Problem with our culture today is we teach people the opposite

15:58

of gratitude, we teach them a lot. Censored entitlement we

16:01

sent them at the teach them a

16:03

sense of grievance based upon simply the

16:05

circumstances of their birth. I also being

16:07

passed something. Is. It's

16:09

it's an unspoken thing, right? I

16:12

got somebody. It's And to the

16:14

it brings on chosen privileges and

16:16

and chosen and undeserved privileges and

16:18

and shows and obligations. That's.

16:20

Something that really clashes with.

16:23

A. Modern mine and that's one of the

16:25

things I really try to get into in

16:27

the later chapters. Surprising that

16:30

are on your show We skip like

16:32

the easy beginning so I try to

16:34

start with i travel sports or for

16:36

us when we have ever about him

16:39

and work myself work the reader up

16:41

to your on chosen obligations are actually

16:43

they'd have my are you are or

16:45

as Casey Affleck put an end gone

16:47

baby gone I was thought it was

16:50

a things we didn't choose at make

16:52

your who yeah and so at but

16:54

that idea that the and chosen obligation

16:56

is a good thing. That. Is

16:59

with so much. Of the

17:01

modern elite. Spirit.

17:03

Is argue cats when you read the

17:05

monthly New York Times are bad in

17:08

favor of to force. It's somebody slowly

17:10

coming to realize. wait a sec. Once.

17:13

I was in this marriage I no

17:15

longer app is. So much of my

17:17

life was not consensual, it was just

17:19

sort of written for me and I

17:21

had instead to break free of that's

17:23

and be free to write my life

17:25

script line by lines on a blank

17:27

page with none of it filled out.

17:30

So. That mindset which is not brand

17:32

new to the air. obvious. I

17:34

mean I think the some hour

17:36

or so sorry. but it's it's

17:39

it's it's newish that it's so

17:41

unthinkingly adopted. As good as a

17:43

good thing that is the ultimate

17:45

family unfriendly aspect of our culture.

17:47

is that spirit that autonomy and

17:49

and being a self create itself

17:51

is the the real good yeah

17:53

I'm in. The phrase I grew

17:55

goes back to resolve. It's very

17:58

romantic. This idea of a be. inner

18:00

lamp of meaning is the only

18:02

thing that matters. But

18:04

the phrase that I now love and

18:07

think about all the time, which I gather started

18:09

on Instagram or one of these places, is main

18:11

character syndrome, where people

18:13

think that they see their life

18:15

as a movie and they think they're the main character.

18:17

The other characters can fall off or

18:19

be instrumental or whatever. I

18:22

remember a couple of years ago, Steven Spielberg

18:24

gave an interview where he admitted

18:27

how basically ashamed he was, of

18:29

how he wrote the Richard Dreyfus character in Close

18:32

Encounters of the Third Kind. Because

18:34

Richard Dreyfus really doesn't think twice

18:37

about abandoning Terry Gar

18:39

and a bunch of little kids to go

18:41

look for aliens. And

18:44

Spielberg was like, look,

18:48

I was a young man back then and

18:50

I had this different understanding. I didn't really

18:52

appreciate family and all that. I would never

18:54

have written that that way today. But that

18:56

1970s Kramer versus Kramer, Close

18:59

Encounters kind of thing, it is

19:01

weird how deeply instantiated that is in

19:03

a certain brand of basically of New

19:05

York Times, Op-Ed page, New

19:07

York Magazine, elite liberalism. But

19:11

at the same time, as you pointed

19:13

out with the birth rates, it feels like

19:15

it's not just the cosmopolitans

19:18

of New York City and LA

19:20

that think this way. Because if

19:23

the rest of the country didn't

19:25

think this way, the birth rates would be higher and

19:27

family formation would be in much better shape. And

19:30

one of the arguments they make that this is

19:32

a cultural rather than primarily economic or

19:35

policy matter is that the

19:39

collapse in the birth rates as well as

19:41

the childhood anxiety have trickled down from

19:44

the upper class to the middle class. And

19:46

that's what cultural trends tend to

19:48

do. And so, but at

19:50

the same time, I would

19:54

make the same sort of argument I made in Alienated

19:56

America about the collapse of community that

19:58

it definitely manifests. affects itself

20:00

different in the working class. The

20:02

working class collapse in the birth

20:05

rates, the

20:07

sort of proximate causes are a

20:10

lack of stable marriage and

20:13

a lack of stable community. And

20:15

in the elite classes, it's going

20:17

to be this worship of autonomy,

20:20

as well as the over

20:23

ambitious parenting, the

20:25

helicopter parenting, the intensive parenting,

20:31

those things are going to shrink families, make

20:33

parenting seem more daunting to a lot of

20:35

people. Those ideas though too are trickling down

20:37

to the middle class. We conducted a, AI

20:42

helped us conduct a focus

20:44

group of single and

20:46

married men, single and married women who didn't

20:48

have children and were undecided or

20:50

against having children. And the undecided

20:53

guys, most of them just said,

20:56

I just don't want to give my kids the

20:58

bare minimum. I want to give them the best

21:01

of everything. You

21:03

shouldn't want to give your kids the best

21:05

of everything if it means love and support

21:07

and all that stuff. But

21:11

if it means the best possible

21:13

lacrosse team, no. But

21:16

that is an idea that's trickling down from

21:19

the upper class. So to some extent the

21:21

working class baby bus is a different story,

21:23

but a lot of it is again that

21:25

idea. And the idea

21:27

that of accepting,

21:29

part of being a dad often is accepting

21:31

a job that's not a ton of fun

21:34

and pays the bills. I don't go

21:36

on at length about that because I don't have

21:38

credibility because I have a super fun job, but

21:41

that is part of being, and that is another

21:43

thing that the working class is increasingly saying, no,

21:45

it really needs to be a calling for me.

21:47

For me, my calling is being a dad. And

21:51

that idea that your job should be a

21:53

calling and provide you satisfaction, that has trickled

21:56

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21:58

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22:30

both lucky. The life

22:32

we've chosen we're pretty well suited for. Otherwise, we would have

22:34

gotten out of it a long time ago. When

22:37

I give advice to people, I do say, you should not

22:39

find a job in life that

22:41

you hate, right? If

22:44

you can avoid it. But you don't have

22:46

to necessarily love it, right? Because there's some people

22:48

whose identity is their job, and there's some people

22:50

for whom their job

22:53

is the thing that funds their identity. And

22:56

I'm increasingly more in favor of multiple identities.

22:59

I don't mean like multiple personalities. You have

23:01

different roles in different institutions. In some institutions,

23:03

you're a follower, and some you're a

23:05

leader, and some you're somewhere

23:08

in between. Have you noticed how all

23:10

our conversations just become footnotes who you've

23:12

all lived in? Pretty much. It's really

23:14

kind of disturbing. And

23:16

at some point, we're

23:18

just going to have to burn them as a witch. But I do

23:21

want to... So you

23:23

are a dues-paying

23:27

member and good standing of the Two

23:29

Thumbs Up for Capitalism Club, as

23:31

am I. And I agree

23:34

with you. The culture

23:36

problem that you're talking about is not

23:38

necessarily... It doesn't

23:41

automatically or necessarily flow from the free

23:43

market, right? Free market cultures... There are a lot of

23:45

free market cultures that have different cultures,

23:48

but they're still free market. That

23:50

said, Lyman Stone, who I know you

23:52

know, one

23:54

of the arguments that he makes is

23:58

not the traditional... And

24:01

Patrick Dineen, capitalism

24:03

is bad for families argument

24:06

because of its view of derastinated

24:10

automatoms and whole economic.

24:13

His argument is, in part,

24:15

I don't want to be unfair to him, but in part, free

24:18

market creates a lot of really cool stuff. And

24:21

that distracts us. And so

24:23

he finds like birth rates for people who

24:26

have access to really good beach, proximity to

24:28

really good beach vacations is

24:30

lower than places where it's not.

24:34

And is

24:36

the multiplicity of choice and

24:38

options that comes from

24:40

a free market society, the general

24:44

prosperity, is

24:46

that making

24:49

things a little harder for family

24:52

formation and having kids? And

24:54

actually, I'll start by

24:57

answering with something that's kind of between Lyman

25:00

Stone and Patrick Dineen probably, which is

25:02

that we've

25:05

let the logic of

25:07

capitalism seep into our

25:10

social arrangements. And that's a problem. That

25:13

you don't just as you don't run

25:15

your home as a democracy.

25:19

You just run it as

25:21

a duarchy. But

25:26

your social

25:28

arrangements shouldn't be run capitalistically.

25:32

But increasingly, they are, that we

25:34

are transactional instead of relational. Again,

25:36

read these New York Times things

25:38

that one of them was an

25:40

op-ed saying, even if

25:43

you never get divorced, you should

25:45

basically have a divorce agreement with your

25:47

husband so that everything is very neat

25:50

and 50-50 and schedule that. So you're

25:52

never fighting over who should do what.

25:55

And so that is letting the logic of capitalism

25:58

seep into a marriage. Now, some people might have

26:00

been. reject my terms because people get really defensive

26:02

about capitalism. But that's why you sort of... The

26:04

only thing that's different about divorce, family, and parenthood,

26:06

so you're like in a big minefield here, dude.

26:08

But go ahead. But

26:12

so that logic of capitalism doesn't

26:15

allow for sort of lifelong

26:19

commitment and a lack of kind

26:21

of accounting and

26:24

scorekeeping that comes with marriage

26:26

and family formation. So that's

26:28

one part of the problem is that

26:31

if capitalism goes from being an economic

26:33

system, and I said this to my

26:35

libertarian friend, if your libertarianism goes from

26:37

being telling Congress what to do to

26:39

telling people how to live their life,

26:41

we're definitely not going to find

26:44

very much agreement at all. And if capitalism goes

26:46

from being an economic system to an approach to

26:49

life, it fails. So

26:51

does the logic of

26:53

capitalism necessarily expand? No,

26:57

because what access checks on that

26:59

is again going to be civil

27:01

society. And

27:03

so that has always been sort of a rampart

27:10

against capitalism

27:12

creeping too far, and democracy too.

27:16

Both democracy and capitalism are

27:18

checked by civil society.

27:20

I think this is basically you could take

27:22

this directly from Tocqueville if you wanted to.

27:25

The reason they go hand in hand is they

27:27

balance each other beautifully. And

27:30

they allow for the multiple identities that you're talking

27:32

about, that you get to

27:34

sort of define yourself by

27:36

your religious community, your local

27:38

pub, your

27:40

work community, your neighborhood, et cetera.

27:44

But on the point of

27:47

does material limit

27:49

the optionality? In

27:52

a lot of ways, choosing is Having

27:56

a lot of choices is actually harmful.

27:58

So Remember Bernie Sanders. It's a

28:00

knock the idea that there's nineteen different kinds

28:02

of the odor and in the Starks, this

28:04

is actually sort of a complaint. I

28:07

had to. although I'm very particular, I'm

28:09

anti anti. People sometimes

28:11

call me anti anti trump with a don't think issue

28:13

but I'm deathly anti anti person. just a straight up

28:15

the odor it. But when I go to the grocery

28:17

store to try to buy. Something.

28:20

It's my wife normally does the suffix. I

28:22

hate all those choices when I make. My

28:24

kids were access. If I give them

28:27

options. But. Give them more than one option. They're.

28:29

Unhappy. So. It's just she's are

28:32

now. On the breakfast sandwich

28:34

so that that's the right number of

28:36

choices. I. Could Stephanie married

28:38

and a couple other? I'm sort

28:40

of left of center, far left

28:42

women. Talking. About

28:45

how once parenthood became. Sort.

28:47

Of exquisitely choose. We.

28:49

Postpone it. We agonize If we

28:52

choose it. it's part of intentional

28:54

livings rather then. It's. Kind of

28:56

what you do, it's not as EPA you grow up

28:58

yet married, you have kids sort of eat it once

29:00

it went from sort of what you do. You.

29:03

Alone The two of you. Chose.

29:06

After intense deliveries. A.

29:09

If. If the burning of it you

29:11

have to do it right Be the

29:13

social support for it. Declined

29:15

because this is your problem. Don't

29:18

have. You had a oh and it kept giving you problems. I

29:20

would try to help you want and love adventure do a job.

29:22

You chose to buy a boat or case you knew it was

29:24

gonna be a headache. This. Is a response

29:26

Turns. You. Just have a kid. To

29:29

your. Kids annoying the and the French. When

29:31

you to have a kid you close enough to

29:34

find see grandma at the sort of responses we

29:36

get that's the wrong approach and more in favor

29:38

of the sort of Israeli approach of like kids

29:40

are naturally part of life. like bring your left

29:42

arm on up. And

29:45

so that's one of the ways in which the.

29:47

The. Choosing and the choice gets in our

29:49

way in addition to the way that

29:51

Lyman Saki maps but it it seeps

29:54

into are are are sort of our

29:56

psyche as a as a culture and

29:58

we say. Is. It it's. your choice,

30:00

it's your problem. Yeah. And I think that's a

30:02

really great point. This once

30:04

you turn marriage

30:07

and parenthood into this bespoke

30:10

thing that is supposed to be manicured

30:14

for Instagram rather

30:16

than, you know, what

30:19

you do, you get this, um, it,

30:23

it feels like a much, much heavier lift.

30:25

And it's funny. You bring this up, like,

30:27

so my wife is writing a biography

30:30

of her dad and she grew up with nine, one

30:34

of nine in Fairbanks, Alaska. And

30:37

every kid was allowed to have

30:39

one food that they wouldn't eat. Like

30:43

if, if you, that's it. But like, you said,

30:45

like if you hated tomatoes and mushrooms, pick the

30:47

one you hate more because you are not allowed

30:49

to complain about the other one. And, uh, he

30:52

would throw, uh, he would go into

30:54

a rage, uh, if you

30:57

tried to bring more than one kind of salad dressing

30:59

to the table. And

31:01

this was a guy with a master's degree

31:03

from Milton Freeman in New Jersey, Chicago, an

31:05

unapologetic capitalist, but the little platoon

31:08

of the family worked under different rules. And so

31:10

it's funny, like this is a remnant bingo card

31:12

point here because I bring it up all the

31:14

time. But this is Hyatt's point about the

31:17

microcosm and the macrocosm is that you

31:20

cannot bring the values of the

31:22

contractual market order into

31:24

the family or you'll destroy the family or

31:26

the free association or the church or

31:28

whatever, all these communities that work on different levels.

31:31

But you also can't bring, and this is the

31:33

point that a lot of our friends on the

31:35

nationalist and integralist right miss is

31:38

you also can't bring the values of the family

31:41

or the tribe or the church

31:43

and impose them on the extended order of

31:45

liberty because you'll ruin that. You

31:48

got to keep the peanut butter of germane

31:50

shaft out of the chocolate of gussellshaft period.

31:53

And I mean, there can be a little overlap, but it can't

31:55

be. And I think

31:57

that this is one of the things your point about the sort

31:59

of inter... culture of capitalism getting

32:02

into the groundwater, the priorities

32:04

of capitalism getting into the

32:07

groundwater of family and community

32:09

culture, I think is a really good

32:11

one. That's a big part of the problem.

32:15

But I think, yeah, we should go further down this

32:17

road because what I... The

32:20

sort of middle-ish road I try

32:22

to walk here is it's middle

32:25

between sort of a pluralism

32:28

and an all-consuming small-l

32:31

liberalism on the one side and

32:34

a very prescriptivist

32:36

integralism or whatever on the other side.

32:40

And a lot of people think pluralism, liberalism is the

32:42

middle road, and I understand that argument, but

32:44

I would say we shouldn't

32:46

necessarily be neutral at

32:49

every level on the question of

32:51

family. So for instance, the

32:53

easiest thing is there are some things that

32:55

the government is doing and will be doing

32:58

for the foreseeable future, such as building infrastructure.

33:01

The infrastructure should be more pro-family than it

33:03

is. There should be. Yeah, okay. This

33:06

is a fair point. If I sound like I disagree with this, I

33:08

take it back. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, no,

33:10

no, no. I'm starting with the easy part, the part

33:12

you're definitely going to agree with, but that the infrastructure

33:14

should be more pro-family than it is, more sidewalks. There's

33:17

not a sidewalk in front of my house. It's

33:19

a super wide street, which is great for cars.

33:22

So you realize now there's trade-offs. And there

33:24

was a neighborhood near me where they

33:26

were talking about putting in a sidewalk, and

33:28

Montgomery County, Maryland folks said, oh, well, this

33:30

will kill trees. And somebody said,

33:32

well, it might kill my kid. They have

33:34

to walk in the street to school. And the response is,

33:37

your children shouldn't be walking to school alone anyway.

33:40

And so you suddenly see there is this clash

33:42

of values. You can't be neutral. You have to

33:44

choose between trees and children. I don't

33:46

think it's a tough choice. We should take that side. So

33:48

that's where government is going to be involved. And I wrote

33:50

in the Wall Street Journal and Op-Ed saying, as long as

33:53

we have an income tax code, there should

33:55

be a child tax credit, not a massive one, not

33:57

a tiny one, a little bigger than what we have.

34:00

taxes, sidewalks,

34:02

etc. Then, I'd

34:04

say institutions feel

34:07

a pressure to be low. So employers,

34:09

for instance, some employers got blowback when

34:11

they expanded their maternity and paternity leave.

34:14

People said, what about my puppy? What

34:16

about? And I realized at one

34:18

point, we had one colleague who

34:20

said, well, what about the fact, you

34:22

know, when Seth Mandel was at

34:24

the Washington Examiner, and so I was doing

34:27

T-ball, Seth was getting off Friday to make

34:29

sure he was home by sundown, and

34:32

all of this stuff. And somebody

34:34

said, I don't have a religion or kids.

34:36

So I don't get these accommodations. And

34:38

I thought, when you got when you had a cat, we

34:41

let you take four days off, because your vet

34:43

said to stay with a cat for four days.

34:45

And when arsenal or whatever was in the Premier

34:48

League finals, we let you go and drink

34:50

at the bar at 10am

34:53

and be drunk all day on a Thursday. And

34:55

so you get a little accommodation, we

34:58

get more, because faith and family are more

35:00

important. So an employer, a

35:04

community institution, these other things should

35:06

be pro family, especially when we

35:09

have birth rates at 1.7. And

35:11

the median, I mean,

35:13

the mean, desired optimal family

35:15

is 2.7. We're falling short

35:18

on something really important. So we

35:20

should actually take sides of

35:22

of being pro family.

35:24

But not to the degree

35:26

that we're trying to prescribe

35:30

one way of life, but that we're sort of recognizing

35:34

this is the natural course of events, we're

35:36

going to accommodate it at times

35:39

to the detriment of other things.

35:41

Cars will suffer in favor of

35:44

kids. Dog owners

35:46

might suffer in favor of parents. Yeah, look,

35:48

in the dog owners, as you know, I

35:50

am a proud dog owner. I

35:53

have two as well. So be it,

35:55

right? I mean, like, to me, these are not, you

35:57

know, very difficult questions. at

36:01

the level that you're sort of proposing them. I

36:03

mean, and I agree that

36:06

the state has, the

36:09

state in the

36:11

liberal, even libertarian paradigm, right?

36:13

The sort of the limited government

36:18

version of the state still has skin in the

36:20

game on this question. And- Because

36:22

it should be future oriented, not just

36:24

present oriented. So being pro-kid is future

36:27

oriented. And you don't have to have

36:29

the sort of metaphysical spiritual

36:33

leveling that requires, that

36:35

would allow you to say, well, all choices are

36:37

equal. They're sort of choosing to have a kid

36:40

is no different than choosing to have a bunch

36:44

of dogs or a

36:47

garden or weird hobby, right?

36:51

Cause like having kids is not a weird

36:53

hobby. And doesn't mean there's anything- I

36:55

wish that line was in my book. That would be good. It

36:58

doesn't mean there's anything wrong with weird hobbies.

37:00

I love people with weird hobbies, but like

37:03

it's not the same thing as like raising

37:07

the citizens of

37:09

the, in the future

37:11

inheritors of your civilization, right? And so like

37:13

you can be reasonable about these things. At

37:16

the same time, like, you know, my

37:18

old boss was Ben Wattenberg. He wrote a book called The

37:20

Birth Earth that was attacked viciously

37:22

by a lot of people for a long time as

37:24

one of the first pro-natalist, which

37:26

means increasing the fertility rate

37:29

thing. One

37:31

of the first pro-natalist books in the 1970s, he's a

37:33

debate Paul Ehrlich. It turns

37:35

out that just like the actual nuts

37:37

and bolts of encouraging people to have

37:39

more babies is a very

37:42

thorny and difficult public policy thing, right? So

37:44

like, how

37:47

do you think about that? How do you sell people

37:49

on the idea of it? Presumably

37:52

there's no coercion involved, but

37:55

like what

37:57

do you think actually works? You've looked at this literature. lot

38:00

more recently than I have. And every time I dive

38:02

into it, it looks like the Hungary

38:04

stuff is... There's

38:07

nothing there, but there's less there

38:09

than some of the people who claim it's

38:11

like this silver bullet, right? So,

38:14

yeah, if you listen to what

38:16

Hungary and their best friends in the

38:18

USA, you would think that Hungary has

38:20

a baby boom going on right now.

38:22

It doesn't. It's flowed

38:24

and halted its falling birth

38:26

rate, but about the same

38:28

as its next door neighbors who haven't invested

38:32

as much. And

38:34

if you... So,

38:36

there's no like clear controlled

38:39

study of how this stuff works. So,

38:41

all we have is observations. Look at

38:43

states, look at countries, look at time,

38:45

compare them. And so, all we can

38:47

do is come up with an impression.

38:50

And the impression I come up with, and

38:52

I think if you asked other

38:54

demographers who weren't biased, if you

38:56

asked Lyman Stone, for instance, I

38:59

think he'd agree with 80% of what I'm about to

39:01

say. If you want to

39:03

spend lots of money to boost the birth

39:05

rate, you can do

39:08

that, but it's super expensive

39:10

and it'll only get you so

39:12

far. And that the way

39:14

to do that is mostly just

39:16

to give large piles of money to parents.

39:20

Certainly don't subsidize daycare.

39:22

Subsidizing daycare is subsidizing

39:24

work. It's subsidizing one specific

39:26

way of life. And it's,

39:28

I mean, that's what sort

39:31

of an evil chamber of

39:33

commerce pretending to be pro-natalists

39:35

would advocate. It's just subsidize,

39:37

turn mothers

39:39

into company men and keep company

39:41

men as they were. But

39:44

if you get... So, France is a telling

39:46

example because they have the highest birth rate

39:48

in Europe. And it's not just immigration.

39:50

1.8 is a birth rate of

39:52

native-born French. They

39:55

spend so much money. You got to check when

39:57

your baby is born. You get a

39:59

child allowance on top. of that you

40:01

get a maternity leave, paternity leave

40:03

that's basically a stay-at-home mom benefit.

40:06

If it's your third kid, you get three years of

40:08

being paid to be a stay-at-home mom. And

40:12

that works because it's a ton of money. I

40:14

think that subsidizing stay-at-home moms can actually

40:17

change the culture in a pro-family way

40:19

and changing the culture is what you

40:21

have to do. I also think

40:23

it's just, it eats up a huge

40:25

portion of their economy. And it doesn't have, they're

40:28

not even close to where Israel is and

40:30

Israel has a far skimpier spending.

40:33

One of the problems, and this is sort

40:36

of AEI thing that we

40:38

get into sort of internally is you're

40:41

also discouraging work, which is

40:43

not always bad. If

40:45

it's a married couple and discouraging work means

40:47

now there's stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad,

40:50

I think that's great. But also

40:52

you can be discouraging marriage and that is

40:54

bad. This is why I actually partway through

40:56

the book stopped saying pro-natalist

40:58

and just started saying pro-family

41:01

because I don't want a

41:04

big subsidy. I want to help single mothers

41:06

as much as possible. But if

41:08

our subsidy programs are discouraging marriage,

41:11

then that can be harming the kids

41:13

and in the long run, not

41:16

necessarily help these women who might want

41:18

three kids get three kids because

41:20

it's discouraging them from getting married. So all

41:22

of that is tied up and I would just

41:24

say what we're doing

41:26

in the US might be the right thing to do on the

41:28

federal level money-wise.

41:32

And if you ramped it up a little bit, the

41:34

child tax credit, expanded

41:36

it to age 18. Right

41:38

now when your child is 16, you're going to

41:40

lose the tax credit. And

41:44

allow people to claim some of it earlier,

41:46

make sure you adjust it for inflation. These

41:49

are the small expansions that I would do almost

41:52

as fairness measures, but most of the

41:54

work by government is going to have to be done. You're going

41:56

to have to ask the question, are

41:59

you making the culture? were more family friendly. And

42:01

money generally doesn't do that. And a central government

42:03

in a country the size of the US generally

42:05

can't do that. It's funny,

42:07

I recently had our colleague Brad Wilcox on

42:09

to talk about his book about marriage.

42:13

And chunks of it, we

42:15

had to sort of, or at least I had to

42:17

sort of fight the temptation to just say, isn't a

42:19

big part of the problem that men suck. And

42:22

there is a, there is a,

42:28

you look at a lot of the studies

42:30

on this and it's like, women still

42:32

want a lot of women, blue collar,

42:35

working class women, non-college educated women, they

42:37

want to get married. They would like

42:39

to be married, but the

42:41

men available to them are

42:44

not men, I

42:47

can almost stop the sentence there, they're not men, they're boys.

42:49

And what they don't want is

42:53

to have, particularly if they already have kids,

42:55

right, these single moms, what they

42:58

don't want is just another dependent that

43:01

they're taking care of. They want

43:03

a responsible partner

43:05

to help with

43:07

parenting, to do the division of labor stuff that

43:09

you talk about a lot in the book that

43:12

is sort of essential to parenting. And

43:16

so in some ways, isn't part of the problem,

43:18

you're right about, I

43:21

tend to agree with you about the problem

43:23

with the sort of feminism that says make women

43:26

into company men, but

43:29

isn't part of also the cultural

43:31

problem that men

43:33

don't want to be men.

43:36

They don't want to be responsible, I mean

43:38

men, menches, right? I

43:40

mean the idea of being

43:42

responsible people who subordinate

43:47

their desires or instant

43:49

gratification and self-indulgence to,

43:52

as you were saying earlier, basically answering to

43:54

women because that's a big part of being

43:56

a good dad is following

43:58

orders. I say that unapologetically. Yeah.

44:02

And if you see Wedding Crashers, they

44:04

make fun of the two readings that

44:06

are in all Christian

44:08

writings. It's either Corinthians

44:10

or Ephesians. And the Ephesians

44:12

reading, it's sometimes notorious because

44:14

it says women subordinate yourselves to

44:17

men, but it actually starts a

44:19

verse before, is husbands and

44:21

wives subordinate yourselves to one another, which

44:25

I studied Greek and I love that

44:27

idea of subordinate, which literally rank yourself

44:29

below. So husband says

44:31

wife, number one, I'm number two. The

44:34

woman says husband, number

44:36

one, I'm

44:38

number two. And so that idea, which

44:40

is sort of this logical impossibility, you

44:42

can't both be number two, et cetera,

44:44

that to me is a

44:47

great expression of marriage. And

44:51

it's in some conservative,

44:54

manosphere type circles that that's

44:56

totally rejected. And

44:59

Christine Emba, she wrote a really good book,

45:01

I think it was two years ago now,

45:03

called Rethinking Sex. And she wrote

45:05

another piece, I forgot where it ran, I

45:07

think, oh, big Washington Post, like cover piece,

45:10

Weekend Magazine or whatever, saying like, we

45:12

need a better model of masculinity.

45:17

And that's because the idea

45:20

that all masculinity

45:22

is toxic causes this

45:24

blowback, which is Andrew Tateism.

45:27

But then even a subtler one that's

45:29

easier to notice, if like me, you

45:31

sort of dwell in conservative Catholic circles,

45:33

which is, well, men aren't

45:35

getting married because, you know, women

45:39

don't care enough to give

45:41

up their careers. And

45:44

then I'm gonna one guy even said to me, if

45:46

I marry a girl who has a master's degree, I'm

45:48

going to be paying off her student loan for this

45:51

worthless thing for life. I

45:53

was just like, hey, it's not worthless, okay,

45:55

an education if she even if she's a

45:57

stay home mom has value, but be like,

45:59

yeah. Yes, man up, pay off

46:01

her student debt. So

46:04

that trickles in. And

46:07

then you have Donald Trump saying how embarrassed he

46:09

is when he sees men pushing strollers down the

46:11

street or finds out that men change diapers. And

46:14

so that's why I really

46:16

liked Christine M. M.'s argument, and it's one of the things

46:19

I try to take up in the book. Oh, I talk

46:21

about destroying my kids at basketball. It's like a

46:24

real sacrifice for your family that's

46:26

masculine in tone. Now,

46:30

if we get invaded by a

46:32

Viking horde, then it's easy to

46:34

know what the sacrifice is. You're

46:37

going to go out there and you're going to fight the war. And

46:39

this is what men in Ukraine are facing.

46:41

This is what all throughout

46:43

history men are facing. If we

46:45

don't have that, a manly kind

46:48

of sacrifice for the family is

46:52

something that isn't articulated enough by

46:54

a left that wants to erase

46:56

differences between men and women, and

46:59

then some of these manosphere circles

47:01

that thinks the whole is this

47:04

sort of resentful idea

47:06

that we don't sort of

47:08

naturally have dominance over the

47:10

home, that that should just be

47:12

handed to us, that we're going to be

47:14

in charge as if it's not something you

47:16

have to earn through sacrifice. Yeah,

47:21

and I pushed back a little bit about this

47:23

thing, about how it's in this impossible ideal to

47:25

subordinate yourself to each other. I'm

47:29

not sure that's true, right? We were talking before about sort

47:31

of multiple identity stuff. Back

47:33

when, particularly when the division

47:35

of labor about running a household was

47:38

much more

47:41

onerous, right? I'm

47:46

not saying it's the natural sphere, that women have

47:48

to have this role. I'm just saying that there

47:51

are areas of life where I defer

47:54

to my wife. And

47:58

then there are others where... much

48:00

fewer where she differs to

48:03

me. And I think

48:05

a lot of happy marriages have, I shouldn't

48:08

say happy marriage, a lot of happy

48:10

marriage, but also just a lot of successful marriages which

48:13

are not always the exact same thing. There is

48:18

this notion of spheres

48:20

of authority where in

48:22

some contexts you're a follower and in some

48:24

contexts you're a leader. And I think that's

48:26

true in a lot

48:28

of relationships. I

48:30

despise using

48:33

this analogy in ways that will haunt me for

48:35

the rest of my life. But

48:38

Steve Hayes and I, we have a

48:41

division of labor about the dispatch and there

48:43

are areas where he follows my lead and there are areas

48:45

where I follow his lead. I'm not married

48:47

to Steve Hayes. But I

48:49

think most good relationships, not

48:53

just dual binary relationships, but like

48:55

multiple relationships, they kind of have

48:57

these understandings like a good military

48:59

platoon. There's just some issues where the

49:01

sergeant or the lieutenant is going to say, you know, Baker

49:03

knows more about combat engineering

49:07

so we're all going to defer to

49:09

him on this thing, that kind of

49:11

thing. And deference and surrender though cut

49:14

against that idea of sort

49:16

of the human as ultimately 100%

49:19

intellectual creature who's going to

49:21

choose everything when

49:23

you go along. And so I use

49:25

the word surrender in the book because

49:27

that's what my mother-in-law said. She said

49:30

marriage is about surrender. And so

49:32

I tell the story of unpacking the boxes

49:34

of the gifts we had registered for. We,

49:37

in quotes, the gifts we had registered for

49:39

when we were engaged. And I open

49:41

up this one box and it

49:44

was our drinking glasses. And

49:46

your favorite glasses of which were square. Okay, now it's

49:48

not just that I don't like

49:55

the aesthetic of it. I actually have an

49:57

opinion that round of a certain range of

49:59

diameter. properly fit the human mouth. I'm the

50:01

kind of guy who's thought about those sort of things.

50:04

And so I just shouted. And so

50:06

my brother had moved out. We weren't yet

50:08

married. I was living in this empty apartment by

50:11

myself, just filled with these boxes. And I shout,

50:13

I whine very loudly, I do not want

50:15

to drink out of square glasses. And then

50:17

my mother-in-law, my future mother-in-law's word comes

50:20

into my eyes, just surrender. Okay, I

50:22

was drinking out of square glasses. One of the

50:24

blessings of having six kids is everything

50:26

gets destroyed and broken. So all the square

50:29

glasses are gone now, 18 years into our

50:31

wedding. They all have top round

50:34

tops. But then as

50:36

I was writing that passage, I looked up at the

50:38

wall, where in our

50:41

living room, the Bailey's Irish

50:43

Cream Mirror was hanging. And

50:45

it has a map of Ireland with every

50:47

county and then all the last names and what parts

50:49

of Ireland they come from. And I

50:51

thought, my wife did not say, I want to

50:54

have a Bailey's Irish Cream Mirror hanging from my

50:56

wall. She surrendered on this one thing when I

50:58

hung it on a St. Patrick's Day and then

51:00

said the next day, can we just leave it

51:02

up? And that was not

51:05

me convincing her. That looked beautiful. This

51:07

was her saying, okay, this will make my husband happy. And

51:09

it's in a sense of enough. All right. You

51:12

made me feel guilty about skipping past all

51:14

the sports league stuff and all that kind

51:16

of thing. Talk about the

51:19

little things. I mean, we don't

51:21

have to get into the public policy. Talk about

51:23

the little things that people actually have control over in

51:26

their own lives,

51:28

whether they're single or they're married, whether they have

51:31

kids, whether they don't, that you

51:33

think could be... I'm

51:37

not a huge fan of the phrase, but life

51:39

hacks, right? Yeah. I actually use

51:42

that term, but I blame it on my kids. Yeah,

51:44

I know. I've surrendered to the term. The

51:48

little tricks that

51:51

you have some agency and control over

51:54

that make life a little more family friendly. I

51:56

guess a mindset would be... When

52:00

you're asking what the best of

52:03

something is, so the best

52:05

music teacher, the best school,

52:07

the best baseball league,

52:11

it should always, the

52:13

primary consideration should be about

52:16

how it works with family culture, which often

52:18

is just going to mean convenience

52:21

of logistics. So

52:23

there is this, so I do talk

52:25

about over ambitious youth sports and how

52:27

it leads to kids burning out, and

52:29

how it makes kids less happy, how

52:32

you end up in a lacrosse tournament in

52:34

Delaware every other weekend, and it disrupts the

52:36

family. One of these programs that I've come

52:38

in contact with is called Next Level Lacrosse.

52:40

So there are nine-year-olds who are trying to

52:42

get to the next level, and

52:45

some of the dads say, I wish lacrosse didn't

52:47

control my family calendar. So I say, instead of

52:49

Next Level Lacrosse, it should be Next Door

52:52

Lacrosse. What is the lacrosse program that my kid

52:54

can walk to, or that's right after

52:56

school? And it's just a

52:58

mindset where you make a slightly different decision if

53:00

the first question is, how does this

53:02

play into my family? And

53:05

then just remind yourself, even if you put your kid

53:07

in Next Level Lacrosse for eight years, some

53:10

other kid is going to come by and be like, you know what,

53:12

let me try the lacrosse, and he's

53:14

going to be more athletic, and he's going to

53:16

take your kid's starting job. So let that be

53:18

your consolation if you're thinking, oh, he's getting second-tier

53:20

coaching, because it's just from some recent

53:23

high school grad, or some volunteer dad,

53:25

or something. The other

53:27

thing isn't going to work. It's going to make him hate lacrosse,

53:30

or he's going to lose his starting job. But

53:32

again, the general mindset is just start

53:34

from, how does this work for

53:36

the family? And what we were talking about earlier, a lot

53:38

of times your kids are happier if you limit the number

53:40

of choices they have. Often you

53:42

give them a choice, again, cheese or no cheese.

53:44

When we go to the zoo, I

53:47

say, okay, everybody pick one animal, and I

53:49

guarantee you, we will see that one animal.

53:51

We'll see other animals, but I'm not going

53:53

to, if you say after we see the

53:55

sea lions, oh, I desperately want to see

53:57

the Prusinski.

54:00

No, we're not going to change the

54:02

Przynszky's donkey because it's out of the way and you got to pick

54:04

the sea lion. And that's an overrated donkey, I'm just going to tell

54:06

you right now. That's

54:09

your anti-Polish bias. I actually don't remember

54:11

if it's called the Przynszky's donkey. It's

54:13

got some Polish name, I remember it.

54:18

And so limiting choices and just

54:20

putting family culture ahead of what

54:22

seems like the more elite

54:24

or the more prestigious or even the

54:26

more effective program. So

54:29

another area where I have some sympathy

54:32

with the critics

54:34

of capitalism and meritocracy,

54:36

and I'm putting air

54:38

quotes around meritocracy because it's a contentious

54:41

and contested term. I

54:44

really believe in merit, I just want to be

54:46

clear. But meritocracy is a more complicated term. Yeah.

54:49

Isn't a big part of the problem... So

54:52

you can sort of do the

54:55

grease board arrow causal pointing thing,

54:57

where to the extent we

55:00

will just say for shorthand, bad

55:02

values of elites trickle down to

55:05

non-elites. Isn't one of the drivers of the

55:07

bad values of elites, inconvenient

55:09

values of elites, counterproductive

55:11

values. That

55:16

elite college's demand

55:20

from parents in terms of their

55:23

kids. So the away sports stuff, the

55:26

travel sports stuff, in

55:28

my experience with my daughter, that

55:31

really is a function of elite

55:35

universities, which people in my

55:37

neighborhood, my kids' schools obsessed

55:40

with for

55:42

reasons that my wife and I... To

55:44

the degree that my wife and I utterly reject,

55:46

but we can't protect her from... We

55:50

once got yelled at by my daughter because

55:52

she was like, all my friends already have

55:54

had an SAT tutor for a year. Why

55:57

haven't you gotten us an SAT tutor yet? Got to

55:59

be an SAT tutor. And it's like, Jesus, you know,

56:02

this stuff drives me crazy. But

56:04

the compulsion to get a sport that can get

56:07

you into a college program is

56:09

an elite college

56:12

is really profound. And

56:15

the actual benefits of going to these

56:17

elite schools in

56:20

terms of the traditional benefits of a

56:22

good education, that's a contestable point.

56:26

And the sort of sheepskin effect, the network

56:28

effect of going to these schools remains as

56:30

valuable as ever. So like, isn't a big

56:32

part of us changing this culture, doing something

56:34

about all that? Exactly. And

56:36

so this is why when I first thought,

56:38

okay, if people are having this

56:41

few babies, and kids are

56:43

stressed, like, let's write a

56:45

book about the problem, and then I realized I don't want to

56:47

come across as just finger

56:49

wagging at parents that are doing it wrong.

56:52

And so that's why, you

56:54

know, a family unfriendly culture, the

56:56

subtitle is, our culture makes it

56:59

harder. Institutions

57:01

that set the culture, which includes

57:03

high schools, but also

57:06

these colleges, they are setting

57:08

up a framework where a parent has

57:10

to really opt out, parent

57:12

has to make the

57:16

counter cultural and make a decision that

57:18

you're afraid, okay, is this gonna harm

57:20

my child's career chances to

57:23

to do the right thing. So when I

57:25

talk about travel sports, I call it a trap, you

57:27

get funneled into I just want my son to play JV

57:29

baseball. Well, if you want to try out for JV, you

57:31

better play your route. And

57:34

on the college level, absolutely the

57:36

insane extracurricular thing, and then

57:39

that gets that

57:41

gets gamed. And so

57:43

we have

57:45

to and our, our daughter's high

57:47

school at least sort of pushes back and says, so

57:50

we ended up doing non AP regular

57:52

European history because the teacher said, she's

57:55

going to learn more and have more fun in that. Now

57:57

we're doing AP US history and that might actually

58:00

mistake. And I don't know, ask

58:02

me 10 years from now if if you're putting

58:04

my daughter on a whether AP was a mistake

58:06

or non-AP was a mistake. I did

58:08

tell her though to make

58:10

herself the vice president of the French club.

58:12

She doesn't speak French when her best friend

58:15

started the French club and Lucien was to

58:17

serve the craps and advance the slideshow that

58:19

the the French girl was doing. And

58:22

so that's one resume booster. It's just

58:24

whatever you're already doing because it's fun, just get

58:26

a good title for it. That's the

58:29

college transcript. Yeah, so the parents

58:32

are given bad incentives. So to

58:34

go back to selfishness, which I mentioned in the beginning,

58:37

I argue selfishness has not increased. My

58:39

sort of AEI chart of selfishness, which is zero,

58:41

Adam and Eve eat the fruit, it goes up

58:43

to 100. It's been flat since then. But

58:47

the job of civilization is to

58:49

combat to offset selfishness, to redirect

58:53

the self-interest towards the common good. And

58:56

so I think that we are failing

58:58

at that. And so this

59:00

is where civil society and institutions are

59:02

supposed to do that work. And

59:05

we do it better than most other countries.

59:07

I mean, go to Iraq, go to

59:10

even some of the Mediterranean

59:12

European states, the

59:15

selfishness is more, it's running rampant,

59:17

it's less checked by society. But

59:20

I do think that for

59:22

all the reasons we've talked about

59:24

earlier, the US culture, American culture

59:26

is inadequately checking that. And

59:28

the selflessness it takes to get

59:31

married, have kids, immerse yourself in

59:33

a community, even though

59:35

that redounds to the private benefit naturally in the

59:37

long it takes a long term to do that.

59:40

So that's a failure of our culture, including

59:42

the institutions that you're talking about, the

59:44

elite universities. Yeah,

59:46

it's funny. I just going back to my point

59:49

about Hayek's

59:51

microcosm and macrocosm. When

59:54

you talk about how other societies are

59:56

more selfish, one

59:58

of the best examples

1:00:00

of how this confusion,

1:00:02

right? So like the unconstrained

1:00:05

vision, whatever we're going to call progressives

1:00:07

or communists or socialists or whatever, right?

1:00:09

That tribe, which

1:00:13

I think the nationalists have a similar

1:00:16

psychological approach to these things, but we can talk about that

1:00:18

another time. What they want is

1:00:20

a less selfish society. And they think

1:00:22

that the state should be the engine

1:00:26

of enforcing that more

1:00:29

social solidarity. And

1:00:31

the great irony, which I

1:00:34

think people like us have not

1:00:36

been successful enough at explaining to

1:00:38

people, is those societies

1:00:40

that are based on those well-intentioned

1:00:43

premises, to a certain extent, we can

1:00:45

take out the bad parts, but like,

1:00:48

you know, say what you want about

1:00:50

communism. Communism actually creates more selfish people.

1:00:53

And that's the weird, that's what when

1:00:55

you try to run the macrocosm like

1:00:57

it's a microcosm, like it's just one

1:00:59

big family, the reality of facts on

1:01:01

the ground is that you

1:01:04

create this alienated society where no

1:01:06

one feels like they're all in

1:01:09

it together. They all feel like

1:01:11

they're all in it for themselves. And

1:01:14

that's the great weird irony of free

1:01:16

societies is that it provides opportunities to

1:01:18

feel like you're actually part of

1:01:20

something. And, excuse

1:01:23

me, a part of your argument is that we're

1:01:26

falling down on the job of providing those kinds

1:01:28

of institutions to let people feel like they're part

1:01:30

of something. Well, but yeah, because if

1:01:33

all you had was a liberal

1:01:35

pluralistic democracy, then you

1:01:37

wouldn't have any solidarity. If you

1:01:40

have a liberal pluralistic democracy

1:01:42

that's populated by robust institutions

1:01:45

of civil society, which

1:01:47

will in as microcosms be

1:01:51

less liberal, less pluralistic, but

1:01:53

they're freely chosen, even if they're a little sticky,

1:01:56

or they're inherited, but you could still leave them.

1:02:00

Then I have

1:02:04

always seen civil society

1:02:07

as a check on

1:02:09

liberalism, which is a funny thing to

1:02:11

say because we think they go together

1:02:13

because Tocqueville says this democracy, but then

1:02:15

you realize what Tocqueville is saying that

1:02:17

our love of egalitarianism and democracy will

1:02:20

actually lead us to become more isolated

1:02:22

and centralize the state. And so they

1:02:24

go naturally together in part

1:02:26

because they're different and because they're needed

1:02:28

as a check on one another. And

1:02:32

the family can be

1:02:34

seen as almost

1:02:36

an early indicator, a

1:02:39

canary in the coal mine. David Brooks wrote

1:02:42

a piece with the title, The Nuclear Family

1:02:44

Was a Mistake, which is obviously a provocative

1:02:46

way of saying the nuclear family needs support

1:02:48

from communities. But we've built a life that's

1:02:51

good for individuals and

1:02:53

bad for families or good

1:02:55

for really high achieving

1:02:57

adults and bad for children. And

1:03:00

I think that that's basically true. And

1:03:02

it can almost be, again, seen as

1:03:05

an early indicator of the

1:03:07

sickness of our society. So in some ways,

1:03:09

Family Unfriendly is a sequel to Alienated America.

1:03:11

The biggest story of the last 60 years

1:03:14

is the collapse of civil society in the

1:03:16

US. The most important consequence

1:03:18

of that, and so the biggest story of the

1:03:20

next 60 years is

1:03:22

the reduction in marriage

1:03:24

and family formation and

1:03:26

the shrinking population of young people in

1:03:29

the United States. Yeah. I

1:03:31

mean, the way I think about it, and that's why I was trying to steer

1:03:34

you into the connection between the

1:03:36

last book, which was great. The

1:03:39

way I kind of sometimes think about it is that society

1:03:43

is this big Rube

1:03:45

Goldberg, no relation, machine, right?

1:03:47

With all these weird things, doing these weird things

1:03:49

towards certain social ends. And

1:03:52

at the center of it is this hamster

1:03:54

wheel that powers

1:03:57

the whole thing. the

1:04:00

family. And this

1:04:02

is a point that really got hammered home with me

1:04:04

with Charles Murray's coming apart,

1:04:06

was that you

1:04:09

look at the institutions of

1:04:11

civil society, and you're kind of

1:04:13

an exception. Basically every

1:04:20

food can drive block

1:04:23

party, movie night at

1:04:26

a church or

1:04:28

a synagogue, whatever, scratch the

1:04:30

surface and you get this Pareto distribution

1:04:32

where it's like a handful of really

1:04:35

impressive women who are

1:04:37

calling the shots and telling their husbands what

1:04:40

to do. And

1:04:43

this is the point about little league

1:04:47

coaches or the tee ball coaches and all that kind

1:04:49

of stuff. Very

1:04:51

few single men do that kind of thing

1:04:54

because single men don't have wives telling

1:04:56

them what to do and like to

1:04:58

be part of a community. And so

1:05:01

if you lose the

1:05:04

hamster wheel, it's very difficult

1:05:06

for all of these different subordinate

1:05:10

institutions, at the end of the day, they

1:05:12

start to come apart as well.

1:05:14

And that's the connection I kind of

1:05:16

see between the two books. Well, and it's why I

1:05:18

have, and to go even further,

1:05:20

it's why I have a chapter, it's called

1:05:23

Quit Your Job. But

1:05:25

it's, I praise my

1:05:27

wife, who's a stay at home mom

1:05:29

and all the things she does that

1:05:31

benefit her friends,

1:05:34

neighbors, these institutions that we belong to

1:05:36

that she's able to do because she's

1:05:39

at home full time. So, you

1:05:41

know, she reads to the kindergarten

1:05:43

classroom when somebody's sick. There's

1:05:45

one day where we got a call and it

1:05:48

was, you know, the first grader, a friend

1:05:50

of our first grader had wet herself. And so

1:05:53

the call comes in and says, do you guys

1:05:55

have a spare pair of underwear and leggings to

1:05:57

bring down to St. John's to drop off? All

1:06:00

those little things. And then I found Emma Green

1:06:02

at the Atlantic had written a whole history of

1:06:04

how women being outside of

1:06:07

the paid workforce was absolutely central

1:06:09

to American history and

1:06:11

to the abolition cause,

1:06:13

to the women's suffrage cause, for

1:06:17

better or for worse, to the temperance movement, et

1:06:20

cetera. But that has always been at

1:06:22

the heart of it. And then to...

1:06:25

So a chapter praising stay at home moms is

1:06:27

one of the things I'm hoping is going to,

1:06:29

you know, catch some attention because you don't see

1:06:31

it a lot, but also just more generally to

1:06:34

go back to alienated American. One of

1:06:36

the things that just the norm of marriage does

1:06:40

and is make it

1:06:42

easier for there to be people

1:06:45

involved in the community. That

1:06:48

partly because women tell them

1:06:50

to, partly because the flexibility

1:06:52

that marriage buys you

1:06:55

in all sorts of ways. And yeah,

1:06:59

so married couples are more involved in

1:07:01

the community and that being

1:07:05

unmarried, you're just, it's harder to be selfless

1:07:07

and to care about the common good.

1:07:11

So one way I talk about it is

1:07:13

I spend the whole book, you know, let's

1:07:15

pull out a travel sports. Let's

1:07:18

not helicopter. Let's have more sidewalks. Parenting can

1:07:20

be easier if we do these things right.

1:07:23

And I said, it's going to be the hardest thing you

1:07:25

ever do if you do it. But

1:07:27

it's the easiest path if where

1:07:30

you're trying to get is lofty

1:07:32

enough. If you want to be a

1:07:34

man or a woman of virtue, parenting is

1:07:36

like a cheat code. If

1:07:39

you, it's the easiest in

1:07:41

Catholic terms, I think marriage and

1:07:43

parenthood are the easiest path to

1:07:46

sainthood, not the only one, but they make it

1:07:48

easier for us. So the Bible says,

1:07:50

feed the hungry, clothe the naked. I

1:07:52

wake up in the morning, there are hungry, naked people

1:07:54

in my house. They're

1:07:57

right there waiting for me. And

1:07:59

so. that idea that when one of

1:08:01

the things Charles got in trouble with

1:08:04

when he wrote coming apart was he said, there

1:08:06

are virtues that are lacking in the working class.

1:08:09

And so then some liberal populace were like,

1:08:11

you're attacking the liberal class as being full

1:08:13

of vice. I reframed it a

1:08:15

little and I said, the idleness

1:08:17

that Murray talks about is an affliction. It's

1:08:21

not just a vice, it's something

1:08:24

that they're suffering through. That

1:08:26

I'm not, my lack of idleness is not

1:08:28

because a

1:08:30

great guy is just constantly saying, how can I help

1:08:33

my community? Because I belong to all these things that

1:08:35

are fun. And then somebody comes up to

1:08:37

you and you can see the look in their

1:08:40

eyes and, hey

1:08:42

Tim, I see Meg is signed

1:08:44

up for basketball. Yeah, we

1:08:46

have enough girls from the parish to run a team.

1:08:48

That's great. We need a coach. All

1:08:50

right, good luck on finding, Tim, I hope you can

1:08:52

coach, sorry. I'm too

1:08:54

busy this year, I'm writing a book. What's the book

1:08:56

about? So

1:08:59

then I become the kindergarten girls basketball coach. And

1:09:03

so the community and

1:09:05

family rope us in to doing stuff

1:09:08

that's kind of selfless and

1:09:10

makes the world better. So why

1:09:12

should we care about the baby bus? That's what

1:09:15

I get asked by the more friendly

1:09:17

liberal feminists on Twitter, who are

1:09:19

kind of like, I don't think you're a,

1:09:22

what's the Margaret Atwood? Handmaid's

1:09:25

Tale. No, Handmaid's Tale,

1:09:27

not bride's head. Handmaid's

1:09:30

Tale. I don't think you're a

1:09:32

Handmaid's Tale guy. Why are you worrying about the fact that

1:09:34

women are, now have autonomy and aren't

1:09:36

having babies? And it's because family

1:09:39

makes people better. Yeah, I mean, this is

1:09:41

like, I think it's the sort of

1:09:43

the, I don't even wanna call

1:09:45

it conservative because then it alienates people,

1:09:47

whatever. Like it is the

1:09:49

essence of wisdom. And when it comes to sort

1:09:51

of the political cultural understanding of things, I mean,

1:09:54

Russ Roberts, his

1:09:57

last book, Wild Problems, gets at some of

1:09:59

this. One of the things I love about Russ is, first

1:10:01

of all, he's brilliant. He's a great guy. I

1:10:03

love his podcast. He's

1:10:06

kind of a recovering economist and

1:10:08

he's realizing

1:10:10

that economics,

1:10:13

particularly free market economics, is

1:10:15

fantastic for the things that free

1:10:18

market economics is fantastic for and

1:10:20

utterly useless for the

1:10:23

things that it is not well suited for. And

1:10:26

part of his point about wild problems is that

1:10:28

some problems, some choices, you

1:10:31

can only realize they're the right

1:10:33

choice after you take the

1:10:35

leap of faith, after you make the commitment,

1:10:37

right? And parenthood

1:10:40

and marriage make

1:10:43

you a better person and

1:10:46

you can't see it from

1:10:48

this side of the ravine because

1:10:50

all you're seeing is the dirty diapers and

1:10:54

then the late nights and the lack of Saturday

1:10:56

night fun and all that kind of stuff. And

1:10:59

what you're not seeing is that you become other

1:11:01

directed and you subordinate

1:11:03

yourself to

1:11:05

the needs of others, which we

1:11:08

now know is one of the only

1:11:10

routes to actual life satisfaction and happiness.

1:11:14

And a public policy that takes that

1:11:16

into account, economy, liberty

1:11:19

is great. Economy is not

1:11:21

the same thing and autonomy is not

1:11:24

necessarily entirely good. But

1:11:28

who's going to listen to me? Just

1:11:30

to close this out, has

1:11:33

the blowback begun from the sort of

1:11:35

hardcore feminists or is it not

1:11:37

a thing yet? I

1:11:39

have not yet been blessed with being attacked

1:11:42

by the hardcore feminists. In fact, Michelle Goldberg

1:11:45

just said, let's just say, liberal

1:11:48

columnist of The New York Times, let's just say

1:11:50

Tim Kearney is a Catholic data six and

1:11:52

he's a conservative. So I obviously don't agree with him on

1:11:54

most of it, but I do think if you want to

1:11:57

tear kids away from their cell phones, you need playgrounds and

1:11:59

sidewalks. But

1:12:02

the stay-at-home

1:12:04

mom chapters and

1:12:06

the stuff that questions the

1:12:08

effect of birth control on our culture, those are

1:12:10

the later chapters. So I'm hoping people will get

1:12:12

to those over the weekend and I'll start getting

1:12:14

attacked on Monday or Tuesday.

1:12:17

If I've helped in that regard in

1:12:19

any way, I'm glad for it. Thank

1:12:22

you. Tim Carney, the book is Family

1:12:24

Unfriendly, How Our Culture Made

1:12:26

Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs

1:12:28

to Be. Thanks for being on the run.

1:12:31

Thank you. Alright,

1:12:34

so Tim Carney has left the studio. As

1:12:36

you can tell, I'm a big fan of Tim's. I liked him.

1:12:39

We see eye-to-eye on a bunch of things. A

1:12:42

lot of his stuff dovetails with a lot of my

1:12:44

stuff. We've

1:12:47

had our political disagreements in

1:12:49

the past about various things, but

1:12:52

different times. And

1:12:55

I highly recommend Alien in America and I

1:12:57

also highly recommend The Big Ripoff, which was

1:12:59

a great book. And of course I recommend

1:13:01

his new book, Family Unfriendly. Tim's

1:13:05

a really good writer, clear writer, understands

1:13:08

the importance of making things accessible in

1:13:11

ways that I sometimes do not, I

1:13:13

confess. And it's funny, we were

1:13:15

talking about this stuff. I wanted

1:13:17

to talk about the scene

1:13:21

that comes into my mind and I've talked about this on here before.

1:13:24

And the reason why I don't talk about it more often is I

1:13:26

almost always end up crying when I talk about it. But

1:13:29

the scene at the end of Saving Private

1:13:31

Ryan, where Private Ryan character,

1:13:33

Matt Damon character

1:13:35

is an old man looking at Tom

1:13:38

Hanks grave and

1:13:41

he turns to his wife with his kids and maybe

1:13:43

his grandkids in the background and

1:13:46

just says, tell me I'm a good man. And

1:13:50

that to me is sort of the... That's

1:13:52

sort of the point of the whole thing, right? To

1:13:56

be a good man, to be a good person. And

1:13:59

there are many roots. to

1:14:02

that. And marriage isn't

1:14:04

for everybody. I think it's for a lot more

1:14:06

people than they realize.

1:14:09

Parenthood's not for everybody. I think

1:14:11

it's for a lot more people

1:14:13

than people realize. But

1:14:17

I really

1:14:19

liked Tim's point about how

1:14:23

marriage and family is kind of this cheat

1:14:27

code, this hack for

1:14:29

getting sainthood on the cheap. Maybe

1:14:31

not literal sainthood, but

1:14:35

for being a good person because it provides

1:14:37

this near-to-hand,

1:14:42

real opportunity to

1:14:44

be a

1:14:47

servant of others, to provide for

1:14:49

others, to provide for people you

1:14:51

actually love and care for, and

1:14:55

to allow them to do the same for you. And

1:15:00

the desire to turn

1:15:03

marriage and parenthood into some sort of veblin

1:15:05

good where you're showing off fashion

1:15:08

or style or

1:15:11

diplomas and all that kind of stuff is

1:15:13

really kind of missing the point. And

1:15:17

so I really do hope that Tim's book succeeds. I hope

1:15:19

people will get it. I hope people will get it for

1:15:21

other people. I

1:15:24

very much want to live in a country where there are a bunch of

1:15:26

little kids running around. There's something Steve

1:15:28

has agreed on very early when we

1:15:30

were launching the Dispatch. It was like,

1:15:32

we are pro-baby. We like babies. We

1:15:34

want more babies around. We want people

1:15:36

to have babies. We don't want to make anybody have a

1:15:38

baby, but

1:15:40

we want to make it as easy as

1:15:43

possible for there to be more babies

1:15:45

around and to have more kids running

1:15:47

around, making noise, getting into trouble,

1:15:51

having fun. And I

1:15:53

think society is happier. Society is better

1:15:56

when there are a lot of kids around. And

1:15:58

I think people are better. better when

1:16:00

they have kids and when

1:16:03

they have someone to spend life with. If

1:16:06

that's all too sappy for a lot of people, so

1:16:08

be it. That's really what

1:16:10

I believe. And anyway,

1:16:14

with that, thank you very much for

1:16:16

listening. I

1:16:18

got another it's been a crazy

1:16:20

week. I'll talk about it on the solo, I guess.

1:16:22

And I got another crazy week next week and another

1:16:24

crazy week after that. But we

1:16:26

will keep trying to meet all. I will

1:16:28

keep trying to meet all of my obligations,

1:16:31

various and sundry. With that, I'll

1:16:34

see you next time. No, you won't. This

1:16:37

is a podcast. You