The Nanny State
Posted by: tony on 10/04/2007 10:38 PM
Updated by: tony on 10/04/2007 10:41 PM
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Expires: 11/04/2007 12:00 AM
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I agree with The Regular Guy™1:
... but I agree with Ann Coulter:
If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.
It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and 'We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care -- and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?'
This sort of dovetails with a fabulous article via Et Tu?. This is a transcript of a speech by Roy F. Baumeister entitled "Is There Anything Good About Men?".
The conclusion is that men and women are both social but in different ways. Women specialize in the narrow sphere of intimate relationships. Men specialize in the larger group. If you make a list of activities that are done in large groups, you are likely to have a list of things that men do and enjoy more than women: team sports, politics, large corporations, economic networks, and so forth.
And the problem with women voting is that they are taking the skills and motivations appropriate to the narrow sphere of intimate relationships and trying to apply it to the much borader arena of national politics. Sharing what you have with your family and friends is an admirable thing. Sharing what you have with strangers in need is much more admirable. Forcing your neighbor to share with strangers who are not in need (SCHIP health care for those making $82,000/year) is not admirable. Making Johnny share his pudding with Jimmy may work when your sons are both smaller than you, but it doesn't work for national policy. Making Tommy stop fighting with the next door neighbor Timmy is admirable if and only if you can somehow make Timmy stop hitting your son, but it doesn't work when "Timmy" straps on expoisives for the express purpose of killing as many innocent people as possible.
The "mommy state" is unworkable. It hasn't worked in the Soviet Union, it is not working in Scandanavia or Europe, and it hasn't worked for almost 50 years here.
Mr. Baumeister continues...
Fairness is another example. Research by Major and others back in the 1970s used procedures like this. A group of subjects would perform a task, and the experimenter would then say that the group had earned a certain amount of money, and it was up to one member to divide it up however he or she wanted. The person could keep all the money, but that wasn’t usually what happened. Women would divide the money equally, with an equal share for everybody. Men, in contrast, would divide it unequally, giving the biggest share of reward to whoever had done the most work.
Which is better? Neither. Both equality and equity are valid versions of fairness. But they show the different social sphere orientation. Equality is better for close relationships, when people take care of each other and reciprocate things and divide resources and opportunities equally. In contrast, equity — giving bigger rewards for bigger contributions — is more effective in large groups. I haven’t actually checked, but I’m willing to bet that if you surveyed the Fortune 500 large and successful corporations in America, you wouldn’t find a single one out of 500 that pays every employee the same salary. The more valuable workers who contribute more generally get paid more. It simply is a more effective system in large groups. The male pattern is suited for the large groups, the female pattern is best suited to intimate pairs.
It's time to get back to the "daddy state" ("male pattern") as is was designed when the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Grab a beverage of choice and read Mr. Baumeister's speech from top to bottom. Read it slowly, try not to let your knee jerk. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
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