Serious sociologists don't deny the links between fatherless families and crime rates. So, why is this view controversial? A review of Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America.
Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America
by Ann Coulter
published by Crown Forum (January 6, 2009)
Hdbk., 320 pgs.
ISBN-10: 030735346X
ISBN-13: 978-0307353467
Ann Coulter is back.
In Guilty: Liberal "Victims" And Their Assault On America, the conservative movement's rose advances the view that pretend victims are breeding like rodents.
We see them on soulless talk shows. We see them with grey ponytails in Starbucks, eating spinach croissants. In fact, some of them are even Nazi-collaborators with big pockets. The media loves them. Or, to paraphrase, Dennis Prager: Only the truth is controversial on television.
Undoubtedly, some critics will claim that Coulter is just preaching to the choir (again). I heartily disagree.
In my experience, Coulter's books are good at challenging my assumptions, and setting me right on key issues. I've seen the light (and double-checked her footnotes and endnotes).
Of course, this is not to suggest that "the choir" doesn't have the right to enjoy Coulter's books. To the contrary, I'm sure Baptists will love Guilty. And critics are missing a larger point: she isn't preaching to the choir – she's recharging the choir.
Consider these points:
Page 45:
Hollywood movers and shakers are as rich as any oil company CEO, but the role they love to play the most is the victim.
P. 55:
The Los Angeles Times quoted another single mother by artificial insemination, who said, "You're paying for it, so you kind of want the best of the best." Call me old-fashioned, but when someone is promoting eugenics like that I prefer it in the original German.
P. 179:
Pro-lifers can't stand on a public sidewalk within 36 feet of an abortion clinic, but liberals think they have a divine right to disrupt speeches at the Republican National Convention.
P. 229:
There are books, operas, and songs about Jacqueline Kennedy's style for her singular accomplishment of looking like a Republican while being married to a Democrat.
P. 232:
While a stylish Democrat sends the media into swooning fits, a stylish Republican sends them into sans-culottes denunciations of the rich.
P. 244:
Plutocrat George Soros has compared Bush to the Nazis – which raises the question: If Bush is like the Nazis, why isn't Soros collaborating with him?
In essence, crybabies like to play the victim card, and Coulter likes to laugh at their acts.
Also, consider Coulter's "controversial" views on single motherhood, and ask yourself, "Are her comments controversial?"
Serious liberal and conservative sociologists alike (with exception to Whoopi Goldberg), don't deny the links between fatherless families and crime rates. So, why is this view controversial? Is it because Coulter is giving meaty sociological facts to mainstream America, in a readable and digestive format?
In The Case for Marriage by Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, we find that (p. 130):
For children, just as for adults, married homes are healthier homes. Children living in female-headed homes are more likely to be hospitalized, to have chronic health conditions such as asthma, heart ailments, or convulsions than are children in two-parent homes.
. . .
The health advantage of married homes for children remains sizable, even after taking into account the lower average education and income of female-headed families.
. . .
For babies, marriage can make the difference between life and death. White babies born to unmarried moms are 70 percent more likely to die in the first year of life, while black infants born out of wedlock are 40 percent more likely to die before their first birthday.
So, who are the under-reported victims?
There are, to be sure, some big exceptions to every rule. And, Coulter recognizes this.
Alas, not all women in the hood can find a big-bucks job on The View, spouting illiterate talking points to clapping seals. So, their children are less likely to see their first birthday candle. And, their children's cries are less likely to be heard on The View because . . . ?
"But, at least Coulter's enemies aren't judgmental," I hear liberals say. Or are they?
Perhaps this is just a red herring or a form of projection too.
Think:
Who judges Coulter for making right judgments? Who judges working class couples, and treats them like cap-and-trade servants? Who demands that we all "get along" and blindly praise "rainbow families" while thousands of children are condemned to ordinary (and or dangerous) lives? Who continually hides the many links between poverty and family choices, because they prefer to compare Republicans to Nazis? Who? The rich "non-judgmental" liberal, that's who. And, who – who – really loves swimming in left-wing tears?
In my Protestant view, we know that Jesus never told us not to judge. He told us not to make hypocritical judgments. There is a difference. And, just as importantly, He praised people for making right and controversial judgments.
Thankfully, in her "controversial" book, Coulter treats statistics like children.
Thus, in my religion, Guilty is innocent. And, so was John the Baptist.
Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America is available on Amazon.com.
"So, why is this view controversial?"
One word: Octuplets!
What is really necessary about Coulter these days is that her sharp wit and willingness to assign guilt to individuals and social groups other than GW Bush offsets the mind-numbing drone of the "yes we can" media. I wish, however, you'd summed up her arguments a bit more and spent less time defending her against her media detractors. Her position on the family, in her chapter on single mothers, is terrific. Coulter argues that traditionally, to have a right to raise children you were assumed to be married. Having attacked the institution of marriage as being outdated, the liberal federal courts then tried to recreate it be using the "genetic" or "biological" family as its substitute. This led to "biological fathers" having the rght to disrupt the often happy and healthy lives of their children, who were being raised in foster families. LIkewise, the "biological" family gave mothers the right to pursue their children's father for his money–setting up the evil mess which is today's custody courts. Up until the late 1960s, Coulter argues, a father need not pay child support if he wasn't married to the mother–but he also lost all rights to his children. Coulter suggest that by upholding the institution of marriage, it gave a tremendous incentive for fathers to 1) marry their children's mothers and 2) mothers to marry their children's fathers (or at least refrain from impregnating themselves until they were married).
Coulter also does the usual excellent job documenting media double standards when treating conservatives and liberals. While Coulter is as feisty as ever–seemingly sparing no one, it's important to pay close attention to her underlying arguments, which in the case of the importance of marriage as a stabilizing force in society, is an excellent one.
The view that marriage is a positive isn't controversial. The problem with people like Coulter and the rest of you who seem to enjoy her work is that you focus far more on what is wrong than how to fix it.
Alright, we can all agree that children who are born into families with both parents married are likely to have a better time of life. How do we encourage that behavior? I don't want to hear any inane arguments about how things got this way in the first place because its too late for that now. What can we do today? How can we fix it? Are we going to punish child birth out of wedlock? What's your plan and how do you think it will sit with America?
Coulter proposes creating an incentive to actually get married: make the father's access to children depend on his marrying the mother–and make a mother's right to her child's father's money dependent upon her marrying the father. Get rid of the court's attempt to "recreate the family" on a sort of weird biological level (which enables a biological father to disrupt the lives of the child/foster family who has raised his child; and the mother to endlessly puruse the money of the biological father in court).
YOu can "privilege" the family–or for purposes of keeping kids off the state welfare roles, you end up endorsing the liberal court's "biological family" model, which has angered fathers and mothers by reducing fathership to "money". The "biological model" was probably introduced in part to give "wealthy, libertine" fathers the chance to avoid marriage. In any case, it has wholly undercut the marriage model and made child custody/support into a cottage industry.
Coulter is a polemicist, but she generally has a very good argument underlying the hyperbole. If you watch her on the media, the liberal interrogators spend all their time trying to play "gotcha" with her hyperbole–and avoid her arguments. –she also seems to spend most of her time correcting misquotations–whcih also prevents her from talking about her arguments.