Community Levee Association

The Community Levee Association agrees with Ms. Gaes' position and welcomes it as part of the public debate about abortion.

Abortion is not empowering
Monday, August 2, 2010; A12

Gloria Feldt's July 25 Outlook essay on teen pregnancy was marked by three major misconceptions: that adoption is a poor option, that children are replaceable and that abortion empowers women.

Despite Ms. Feldt's criticisms of the movie "Juno," the film graphically portrayed a choice both courageous and compassionate -- and the joy of an adoptive parent. The you-can-always-have-your-children-later assertion neglected to acknowledge what an ultrasound shows -- each new life is unique and unrepeatable. Children cannot be swapped out like bowling pins or rental cars.

Ms. Feldt's most damaging assertion, however, is that abortion has empowered women. On the contrary, abortion has enabled men to be callous, selfish and irresponsible. Current law makes a woman alone bear ultimate legal responsibility for the life of her child. In the end, she is often solely financially and emotionally responsible as well.

Half of all Americans are against abortion. We have seen its bitter fruits for more than 35 years.

Jean Gaes, Crofton

President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, June 22, 2010; A19

The Community Levee Association does not endorse Mr. Cohen's opinions written here about President Obama. We only post this article to endorse and call attention to what Mr. Cohen writes about virtue and intelligence (see red highlights below).

It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama's foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges -- of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama's approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So, it seems, does the man himself.

For instance, it's not clear that Obama is appalled by China's appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.

This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs? The president himself is no help on this score. When it comes to his own image, he has a tin ear. He hugely misunderstood what some people were saying when they demanded that he get angry over the gulf oil catastrophe and the insult-to-injury statements of BP chief executive Tony Hayward. (Wayward Hayward, he should be called.)

What these people were seeking was not an eruption of anger, not a tantrum and not a full-scale denunciation of an oil company. What they wanted instead was a sign that this catastrophe meant something to Obama, that it was not merely another problem that had crossed his desk -- and this time just wouldn't budge. He showed not the slightest sign in the idiom that really counts in a media age -- body language -- that he gave a damn. He could see your pain, he could talk about your pain, but he gave no indication that he felt it.

One can understand. Obama's father deserted the family and afterward visited his son only once. He twice was separated from his mother, who lived in Indonesia without him. He was partially raised by his grandparents -- an elderly white couple. If the president is what the shrinks call "well-defended," who can blame him? It's ironic that Oprah Winfrey was maybe Obama's most significant early backer when the man himself is so un-Oprah. He cannot emote.

The consequences are unfortunate. Obama's opaqueness has enabled his enemies -- they are not mere critics -- to define him as they choose. He becomes a socialist, which he is not, or a Muslim, which he also is not. Even his allies are confused. The left thought he was a leftie. He's not. The right, too, thought he was a leftie. He is, above all, a pragmatist. This makes it a lot easier to say what he is not than what he is.

Fortune has not smiled on Obama's presidency. His one uncontested attribute -- a shimmering intellect -- has become suspect. A world of smart guys has turned against us. Everyone at Goldman Sachs is smart, but they seem to have the amorality mocked by the songwriter Tom Lehrer in his sendup of the celebrated American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi (" 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun").

The oil industry is full of smart people, and so is the mortgage industry. Smart people seem to have brought us nothing but trouble. Smarts without values is dangerous -- threatening, scary, virtually un-American. This is why a succession of archconservative eccentrics have succeeded. Their values are obvious, often shockingly so. We know what they want, just not how they are ever going to get it. Experience has become a handicap and inexperience a virtue. Smart is out. Dumb is in.

Foreign policy is the realm where a president comes closest to ruling by diktat. By command decision, the war in Afghanistan has been escalated, yet it seems to lack an urgent moral component. It has an apparent end date even though girls may not yet be able to attend school and the Taliban may rule again. In some respects, I agree -- the earlier out of Afghanistan, the better -- but if we are to stay even for a while, it has to be for reasons that have to do with principle. Somewhat the same thing applies to China. It's okay to trade with China. It's okay to hate it, too.

Pragmatism is fine -- as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn't show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven't a clue.

cohenr@washpost.com

The Community Levee Association believes the arguments for "marriage equality" are misguided because those in favor of preserving the traditional definition of marriage are not asking the government to prohibit behavior, only to not misuse a religious term. If behavior were being prohibited, as it was with slavery, jim crow, and laws against miscegenation, then there would be legitimate constitutional issues and the "marriage equality" movement would be a great civil rights struggle. As it is, this is simply a group of persons who want a title that does not apply to them, though they are free to live as they wish.

Marriage equality for all couples
By John D. Podesta and Robert A. Levy
Tuesday, June 8, 2010; A17


Nearly a century after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that "marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man.' " That 1967 case, Loving v. Virginia, ended bans on interracial marriage in the 16 states that still had such laws.

Now, 43 years after Loving, the courts are once again grappling with denial of equal marriage rights -- this time to gay couples. We believe that a society respectful of individual liberty must end this unequal treatment under the law.

Toward that goal, we have agreed to co-chair the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. The foundation helped launch the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which is currently before a federal district court in California but is likely to be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Perry case -- scheduled for closing arguments next Wednesday -- was brought by two couples whose relationships are marked by the sort of love, commitment and respect that leads naturally to marriage. Kris Perry and Sandy Stier and their four children, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, ask for no more, and deserve no less, than the equal rights accorded to every other American family. But they are blocked from obtaining marriage licenses under California's Proposition 8.

The plaintiffs' legal team, headed by former Bush v. Gore antagonists Theodore Olson and David Boies, has demonstrated that no good reason exists for the denial of fundamental civil rights under Proposition 8. We support that position.

Although we serve, respectively, as president of a progressive and chairman of a libertarian think tank, we are not joining the foundation's advisory board to present a "bipartisan" front. Rather, we have come together in a nonpartisan fashion because the principle of equality before the law transcends the left-right divide and cuts to the core of our nation's character. This is not about politics; it's about an indispensable right vested in all Americans.

Over more than two centuries, minorities in America have gradually experienced greater freedom and been subjected to fewer discriminatory laws. But that process unfolded with great difficulty.

As the country evolved, the meaning of one small word -- "all" -- has evolved as well. Our nation's Founders reaffirmed in the Declaration of Independence the self-evident truth that "all Men are created equal," and our Pledge of Allegiance concludes with the simple and definitive words "liberty and justice for all." Still, we have struggled mightily since our independence, often through our courts, to ensure that liberty and justice is truly available to all Americans.

Thanks to the genius of our Framers, who separated power among three branches of government, our courts have been able to take the lead -- standing up to enforce equal protection, as demanded by the Constitution -- even when the executive and legislative branches, and often the public as well, were unwilling to confront wrongful discrimination.

Indeed, the Supreme Court issued its Loving ruling in the face of widespread opposition. A Gallup poll taken within months of the decision found that 74 percent of the American public "disapproved" of interracial marriage. Nevertheless, the court vindicated those constitutional rights to which every American is entitled. As we look back, the Loving decision is hailed as an example of the best in American jurisprudence.

In terms of public opinion, courts addressing marriage equality have less of a hill to climb. Opposition to same-sex marriage pales next to the intense hostility the court faced before its ruling in Loving. A February Post poll showed 47 percent support for same-sex marriage (up from 37 percent support in the same poll in 2003). The Post poll also showed that the younger an individual is, the more likely he or she is to favor marriage equality, regardless of political persuasion. Among individuals ages 18 to 29, an estimated 65 percent support marriage equality.

Our history will soon be written by young people who are seizing the reins from the baby boomers. They seem prepared to reject laws that serve no purpose other than to deny two committed and loving individuals the right to join in a mutually reinforcing marital relationship.

The decision in Perry depends, of course, on values far more permanent and important than opinion polls. No less than the constitutional rights of millions of Americans are at stake. But the public appears to be catching up with the Constitution. Just a little more leadership from the courts would be the perfect prescription for a free society.

John D. Podesta is founder and president of the Center for American Progress. Robert A. Levy is chairman of the Cato Institute.

The Community Levee Association believes that "social gospel" and personal morality are not mutually exclusive and that each is important - one should take care of his own virtue and also work in the world to care for the physical, emotional, and spiritual well being of others.

Unoriginal sins By James A. Morone
Sunday, May 23, 2010

In 1845, America's most famous temperance crusader, John Gough, got caught dead drunk in a bordello. He responded with what would become the fallen Puritan's standard: I've shed "bitter tears of repentance." And besides, my enemies are at the bottom of this.

Scandal has long been an occupational hazard for moralizers. Last week, Rep. Mark Souder, a Republican from Indiana, was the latest to be snared. Souder, a champion of family values and abstinence education, acknowledged an extramarital affair with an aide, Tracy Meadows Jackson. He quickly announced his resignation and -- following the familiar script -- said he was "ashamed" for having "sinned," and blamed the "poisonous environment of Washington" for his downfall.

Souder joins a long roster of lapsed Republican moralists who rode to power in part by preaching family values: Mark Foley (lewd text messages to House pages), Mark Sanford (mistress in Argentina), John Ensign (payoffs to the family of his former mistress), Larry Craig (wide stance in airport bathroom), House speaker-designate Bob Livingston (garden-variety affair) and the list goes on.

Of course, there are sinners on both sides of the aisle -- few falls from political grace have been quite as spectacular as those of Democrats John Edwards (child with a mistress) and Eliot Spitzer (Client No. 9).

You'd almost think Americans would be ready to concede the obvious -- that we are all imperfect -- and return our politicians' moral lapses to the realm of sad but private affairs. Well, that's not going to happen, and here's why.

Three different moralizing streaks run through American culture and history. The most powerful goes right back to the early Puritan settlers. Their idea was simple: Sinners impoverish themselves, diminish their communities and imperil America itself. President Ronald Reagan put it best, with a snippet mistakenly attributed to Tocqueville: "America is great because she is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

The quote touches the heart of the matter: Lost virtue will lead to national decline. Whenever those fears recur -- and the fears of national decline have rarely been more powerful than they are today -- cries about moral decay proliferate. Lewd leaders become a marker of the terrible state we're in.

Republicans are so often ensnared in career-ending hypocrisies because they have seized with such vigor the sackcloth of the prophet Jeremiah, who warned the sinful Israelites to repent of their wicked ways. While the Puritan jeremiad has a long American legacy, the contemporary version first showed up during the Carter administration. Evangelicals, outraged about Roe v. Wade and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, roared onto the political scene, organized the Moral Majority, helped elect Reagan, basked in his approval ("You can't endorse me," he beamed to a convention of evangelicals in 1980, "but I endorse you") and rightfully shared the credit for the rising Republican dominance. Their continuing influence keeps the party lashed to its Puritan mast. And among the prominent neo-Puritans stood Souder himself.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), in turn, did not soften his judgment when he gave Souder the shove. His office said simply that Boehner holds party members to "the highest ethical standards."

A second moral tradition makes things still worse for our falling preachers by idealizing the leader who enters politics to do the right thing. The eternal model is George Washington, reluctantly accepting his duty to be commander of the Continental Army and then president of the new republic. Jimmy Stewart played the role a century and a half later in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Early Americans contrasted their leaders with the courtiers and aristocrats of the corrupted European monarchies. Today, the "tea party," for all its contradictions, taps right into this venerable way of thinking. The routing of incumbents in last week's primaries reverberates with the old contempt toward decadent political establishments.

As we keep hearing, government has lost touch with basic, popular virtues. Of course, the image of a frugal, honest, sober citizenry may stretch the facts, but in frightening times, the old myths take on new power.

For now, conservatives have seized on these two great moral traditions -- the Puritan and the republican. Meanwhile, there is an eerie silence on the left. Liberals no longer seem to relish the Puritans' fall. Perhaps that's because Democrats have lost touch with their own inner Jeremiahs.

What they are missing is a third moral vision that once defined American liberals -- the social gospel. A long line of reformers directed their moral rage at poverty, hunger, racism, segregation, sexism or other forms of injustice, turning the focus from individual sinners to communal wrongs.

Martin Luther King Jr. described the social gospel beautifully when he called on his listeners to become good Samaritans, to forget their selfish desires and to care for needy people of every race. King stood squarely in an American tradition of reformers stretching from William Jennings Bryan ("You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold") to Franklin Roosevelt ("These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is . . . to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men") and Lyndon Johnson ("Should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be [racially] unequal . . . then we will have failed as a people and as a nation"). From this perspective, political morality means worrying less about teen sex and more about ministering to our neighbors.

Two generations ago, Democrats tirelessly reminded the rich and powerful about their obligations to community, nation and planet. That would seem the perfect stance for our own "dark days." In this view, the big American problems -- King might have called them sins -- are not delinquent kids, single moms, drug abusers, illegal immigrants or errant members of Congress but disparities in health, education, wealth, wages and justice.

Today, the social gospel sounds like a quaint echo from the distant past. That's because there are so few leaders willing to stand up and articulate it. That failure diminishes our politics -- and the way the political parties fight their fights. Mark Souder was quite right to blame "the poisonous environment of Washington." Perhaps our hardball politics hastened his departure. But partisanship is nothing new. Nor is moralizing, or moralizers brought low by the very sins they preached against.

This time, however, the crude end of Souder's career barely made a stir beyond the Beltway. The emptiness in the sad spectacle suggests a deeper loss than the crash of another earnest conservative.

Conservatives find it hard to live up to their moral code; liberals find it hard to locate theirs. The tit for tat "gotcha" of sinning politicians is a poor alternative to a robust debate between visions of a good -- and moral -- American society.

James A. Morone, chairman of the political science department at Brown University, is the author of "Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History."

The Community Levee Association disagrees vehemently with Ms. Valenti's opinions below.

While researching her 2007 book "Virgin: The Untouched History," Hanne Blank went to Harvard's medical library looking for a definition of virginity. She was surprised by what she found: nothing. That's right, there's no accepted medical definition or diagnostic standard for virginity.

Why, in such an out-of-the-closet world, do we still define sexual initiation -- and in many quarters, virtue -- by such an artificial and old-fashioned standard? And why don't we mind that, increasingly, that standard is more about image than actual purity? Tween pop singers are trotted out wearing both miniskirts and promise rings, allowing their handlers to profit off the girls' sexuality without offending anyone's parents.

Promise rings, virginity pledges and other efforts to enforce chastity aren't just backward -- they're a failure, and they may even endanger teenagers. A 2008 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that pledgers are just as likely to have sex as non-pledgers and are more likely to have that sex unprotected. And researchers from Yale and Columbia report that teens who take virginity pledges are also more likely to engage in oral and anal sex than their peers. (Somehow, I don't think sodomy was what the creators of virginity pledges had in mind.)

These are the predictable results of telling teenagers that sex is wrong and that the only pure thing to do is wait. A teenager who takes these messages to heart won't in good conscience keep condoms -- much better to get "carried away" than to plan for an impure act. He or she may, however, look for loopholes, often dangerous ones. The health and the lives of young people are not worth risking over an arbitrary definition. And teaching young women -- and let's be honest, this is mostly about women -- that they must "save" their virginity only conflates their worth with their sexuality.

It's fine to have some way of demarcating sexual initiation, but old-school definitions of purity aren't it; they're more about inflicting shame than celebrating rites of passage. It's time we talked about sex as something healthy and natural. Losing "virginity" is one step in that direction.

George Huguely, Ben Roethlisberger, Lawrence Taylor: Male athletes encouraged to do the wrong thing
By Sally Jenkins
Saturday, May 8, 2010; D01

[The Community Levee Association believes the issues raised in the last two paragraphs deserves special attention.]


George Huguely is said to have been a vicious drunk who menaced Yeardley Love, yet there has been no indication that any of his teammates said anything to police. Ben Roethlisberger seems to be a serial insulter of women, whose behavior is shielded by the off-duty cops he employs. And if the charges are true, Lawrence Taylor ignored the bruises on a 16-year-old girl's face as he had sex with her, never thinking to ask who beat her.

It's a bad stretch for women in the sports pages. After reading the news accounts and police reports, it's reasonable to ask: Should women fear athletes? Is there something in our sports culture that condones these assaults? It's a difficult, even upsetting question, because it risks demonizing scores of decent, guiltless men. But we've got to ask it, because something is going on here -- there's a disturbing association, and surely we're just as obliged to address it as we are concussions.

"We can no longer dismiss these actions as representative of a few bad apples," says Jay Coakley, author of "Sport in Society: Issues and Controversies," and a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado. "The evidence suggests that they are connected to particular group cultures that are in need of critical assessment."

What do we mean when we ask whether there was something in the lacrosse "culture" that led to the murder of Yeardley Love? The Latin root of the word "cultura" means "to grow." It means the attitudes, practices, and values that are implanted and nourished in a group or society.

There's a lot we still don't know about Huguely and his "brothers," but three attitudes and practices of at least some members of the Virginia lacrosse team seem obvious: physical swagger, heavy drinking and fraternal silence.

In 2008, a drunken Huguely was so brutally combative with a female cop that she felt she had to Taser him. Last year, he assaulted a sleeping teammate who he believed had kissed Love, several former players say, and this year, he had other violent confrontations with Love herself, witnesses say.

We can argue about gaps in the system, but one constituency very likely knew about Huguely's behavior: his teammates and friends, the ones who watched him smash up windows and bottles and heard him rant about Love.

Why didn't they tackle him? Why didn't they turn him in?

Undoubtedly, many of the young men on the Virginia lacrosse team are fine human beings. I don't mean to question their decency. I don't mean to blame them.

But I do mean to ask those who knew of Huguely's behavior an important question. Why did they not treat Yeardley Love as their teammate, too?

Where were her brothers?

Why was she not deserving of the same loyalty as George Huguely? She played lacrosse. She wore a Virginia uniform. She was equally a champion. And yet because she played on the women's team, she seems not to have been accorded the same protection that Huguely was.

That doesn't just break the heart. It shatters it into a thousand pieces.

The allegations against Huguely, Roethlisberger and Taylor share something in common. In all of these cases, the alleged female victims were treated as undeserving of inclusion in the protected circle. They were "others" rather than insiders.

Sports Illustrated's profile of Roethlisberger and the men who look after him is utterly damning. According to the magazine story, on the night that he allegedly accosted an over-served undergrad in a Milledgeville, Ga., restroom, Roethlisberger held up a tray of tequila shots and hollered, "All my bitches, take some shots!" He exposed himself at the bar. He forced his hand up someone's skirt. Yet police sergeant Jerry Blash described the alleged victim as "this drunken bitch," and Roethlisberger's bodyguards apparently blocked off the area. Protecting Roethlisberger, being "in" with him, took precedence over ethics.

"Who needs the bodyguard here?" Coakley asks incredulously. "What is the role of bodyguard? It's not to maintain male hegemony and privilege. It's to maintain order."

The charge of third-degree rape against Taylor prompts another question. Police allege that a 16-year-old runaway was beaten by a sex trafficker and brought to Taylor's hotel room, where, according to police report, instead of protecting her, he allegedly protected himself with a condom. If Taylor is guilty, how could he have acted in such a depersonalizing way -- unless he viewed her as more object than person?

According to Coakley, the data is clear: Certain types of all-male groups generally have higher rates of assault against women than the average, and their profile is unmistakable. They tend to include sports teams, fraternities, and military units, and they stress the physical subordination of others -- and exclusiveness.

Common sense tells me that "sport" in general is not the culprit in all of this so much as excessive celebration and rewarding of it: binge drinking, women-as-trophies, the hubris resulting from exaggerated entitlement and years of being let off the hook. We are hatching physically gifted young men in incubators of besotted excess and a vocabulary of "bitches and hos."

What has happened to kindness, to the cordial pleasures of friendship between men and women in the sports world? Above all, what has happened to sexuality? When did the most sublime human exchange become more about power and status than romance? When did it become so pornographic and transactional, so implacably cold?

The truth is, women can't do anything about this problem. Men are the only ones who can change it -- by taking responsibility for their locker room culture, and the behavior and language of their teammates. Nothing will change until the biggest stars in the clubhouse are mortally offended, until their grief and remorse over an assault trumps their solidarity.

The More, the Better As Europe and Asia become 'veritable old-age homes,' the U.S. will enjoy the benefits of a growing population. March 24, 2010 WSJ

By NICK SCHULZ A gloomy mood might seem to be justified at the moment. Unemployment is nearing 10%. We have just witnessed a bitter financial crisis, a series of debt-deepening bailouts and a bruising fight over health care. Conservatives fret that we're running out of time to tackle the entitlement crisis. Liberals fret that we're running out of time to tackle the climate crisis. Roughly 60% of poll respondents say that America is on the wrong track. Meanwhile, China has resumed its torrid economic growth and has become for the U.S. what Japan was in the 1980s—the seemingly unstoppable Asian force that will soon leave America's economy behind.

How to respond? "Declinists have always projected America's imminent demise," the editors of Newsweek wrote earlier this month. "For a change, they're onto something." Joel Kotkin would disagree. In fact, he is in a cheerful mood, in part because he has been thinking less about the present than about the near future, when the news, he says, is likely to be much brighter, at least for America.

"In stark contrast to its rapidly aging rivals," Mr. Kotkin writes in "The Next Hundred Million," "America's population is expected to expand dramatically in coming decades." He points to a slowly rising birth rate and to the continuing in-migration of young workers from poorer countries. Most of America's population growth between 2000 and 2050, he notes, "will be in its racial minorities, particularly Asians and Hispanics, as well as in a growing mixed-race population." No other developed country, he says, "will enjoy such ethnic diversity."

For Mr. Kotkin, population growth translates into economic vitality—the capacity to create wealth, raise the standard of living and meet the burdens of future commitments. Thus a country with a youthful demographic, in relative terms, enjoys a big advantage over its global counterparts. In the next four decades, Mr. Kotkin observes, "most of the developed countries in both Europe and Asia will become veritable old-age homes" because of stagnant population growth. And the economies of these countries, already devoted to a vast welfare-state apparatus, will face crushing pension obligations—but without the young workers to defray the cost.

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The Next Hundred Million By Joel Kotkin
Penguin Press, 308 pages, $25.95

Inevitably, Europe and Asia will decline, Mr. Kotkin predicts, and America will thrive. Indeed, the U.S. will emerge, he says, "as the most affluent, culturally rich, and successful nation in human history." What about the billion-person behemoth across the Pacific? Not to worry. Mr. Kotkin thinks that, by midcentury, China's one-child policy will cause it, too, to suffer from the burdens of an aging population.

If Mr. Kotkin is right about America's "next hundred million" people being the key to its happy destiny, where are these people going to live? In the suburbs, he believes—and why not? For most Americans, Mr. Kotkin writes, the suburbs represent "the best, most practical choice for raising their families and enjoying the benefits of community." He adds that, even with one hundred million more people, the U.S. "will still be only one sixth as crowded as Germany." In short, there is lots of room to grow.

Mr. Kotkin's vision of America's next four decades—expanding, browning, adapting and thriving—is largely convincing. He's no Pollyanna, however. He worries especially that upward mobility is more difficult than it once was and that class polarization is a real possibility, because a knowledge economy like America's tends to widen class divisions. The result is "an expanding affluent class of the highly educated, a stubbornly impoverished population, and a shrinking middle class."

Here is one area where Mr. Kotkin might have said more. The collapse of the family in America's underclass persists—with more families than not headed by single mothers. Mr. Kotkin is delighted to report that the family in America is taking ever new shapes, adapting and "resurging" in different forms. This claim may well be true for the broad middle class. But in that stubbornly impoverished sector, the family isn't resurging at all. America's relatively high birthrate—a source of national strength generally, as Mr. Kotkin says—contains a large percentage of out-of-wedlock births. In some urban neighborhoods, the rate stands close to 70%. The most "successful nation in human history" still has some work to do.

Mr. Schulz is editor of American.com, the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, and co-author of "From Poverty to Prosperity" (Encounter, 2009).

The cost of growing up on porn
By Pamela Paul
Sunday, March 7, 2010; B05




Guess what, guys? Turns out pornography -- the much-maligned bugaboo of feminists, prigs and holy rollers -- is nothing more than good, not-so-dirty fun.

The proof comes from the University of Montreal, where recent research showed that connoisseurs easily parse fantasy from reality, shudder at the idea of dating a porn star (what would Maman think?) and wholeheartedly support gender equality. "Research contradicts anti-pornography zealots," gloated a column's headline in the Calgary Sun.

So, I've been contradicted. Presumably, I'm one of the zealots in question. My anti-porn fanaticism took the form of a 2005 book, "Pornified," in which I dared to offer evidence that all is not well in the era of Internet porn. Today, 20-somethings, teenagers and even -- sorry to break it to you, parents -- tweens are exposed to the full monty of hard-core pornography.

Wasn't it time someone asked some obvious questions? What will happen now that the first generation of men raised on Internet porn is making its way onto the marriage market? What influence does the constant background blare of insta-porn have on their ideas about women and monogamous relationships?

The answers I found to those questions were less than cheering. In dozens of interviews with casual and habitual porn users, I heard things such as: "Real sex has lost some of its magic." "If I'm looking like eight or 10 times a day, I realize I need to do something to build my confidence back up." "My wife would probably think I was perverted and oversexed if she knew how much I looked at it every day."

In the years since I wrote the book, I have heard from dozens of readers who described the negative effects of porn. One was a student at Berkeley, who observed that "ever more deplorable acts needed to be satiated" and noted: "As a child, we are exposed to things that we may not realize have formative effects. As adults, many times we simply continue without questioning." (Women, it seems, also turn to iVillage.com, where a board devoted to "relationships damaged by pornography" contains more than 32,280 messages to date.)

Yet there's still so much we don't know. Perhaps we can learn from the skintillating news out of Montreal. Let's have a closer look at that -- oops! -- turns out there is no study. Simon Louis Lajeunesse, a postdoctoral student and associate professor at the university's School of Social Work, has yet to publish a report. His findings, such as they exist, were based on interviews with 20 undergraduate males who detailed their views on sex, gender and pornography in one to two lickety-split hours.

Granted, it's qualitative, not quantitative, research, but the brevity of the interviews is concerning. While reporting "Pornified," I felt the need for more than four hours with many of my 100 interviewees. Of course, my guys could talk anonymously to a disembodied voice on the phone; the poor fellows in Montreal had to sit down and look a male social worker in the eye before confessing a penchant for three-ways. Lajeunesse asked 2,000 men before he found 20 willing subjects. Most of them, he said, were referred by women in their lives. Hmm.

And just how did Lajeunesse learn that pornography hadn't affected their views of said women? Why, he asked and they said so! "My guys want to have equal relationships, equal income, equal responsibility domestically," Lajeunesse told me. Color me dubious, but I hardly think most men would own up to discriminating against women, spurred on by porn or not.

To be fair, researching the relationship between men and pornography isn't easy. My methods had flaws, too. The most methodologically sound study would involve gathering a sample of men, scheduling regular sessions to view online porn, and comparing their subsequent sexual attitudes and behaviors with those of a control group that did not use pornography. Through a series of measures -- interviews, questionnaires, observations -- the data would be collected and analyzed by a team of objective academics.

That's not going to happen now, though it once did. Back in 1979, Jennings Bryant, a professor of communications at the University of Alabama, conducted one of the most powerful peer-reviewed lab studies of the effects of porn viewing on men. Summary of results: not good. Men who consumed large amounts of pornography were less likely to want daughters, less likely to support women's equality and more forgiving of criminal rape. They also grossly overestimated Americans' likelihood to engage in group sex and bestiality.

Yet Bryant's research (conducted with colleague Dolf Zillmann) was carried out long before the Internet brought on-demand porn to a computer screen near you. So why no update? Other than a spate of research in the '80s and '90s that attempted to link pornography with violence (results: inconclusive), nobody has looked at the everyday impact of hard-core porn. "That's a catch-22 with most studies about media effects," Bryant told me. "If you can't demonstrate that what you're doing to research participants is ultimately beneficial and not detrimental, and you can't eradicate any harm, you're required not to do that thing again."

Every university has a review board for the protection of human subjects that determines whether a study is ethically up to snuff. "It is commonly the case that when you get studies as clear as ours, human subjects committees make it difficult to continue to do research in that area," Bryant explained. "Several graduate students at the time wanted to follow up, but couldn't get permission." In other words, the deleterious effects were so convincing, ethics boards wouldn't let researchers dip human subjects back into the muck.

No matter -- people will take care of that on their own. As one young man explained, after mentioning that "porn may have destroyed my relationship with my girlfriend" in an e-mail: "I always feel that I'm over porn, but I find myself keep coming back to it. There seems to be an infinite number of porn sites with limitless variations, one never becomes bored with it. . . . It's a very difficult habit to break."

Or as one 27-year-old female lawyer noted recently: "All of my girlfriends and I expect to find histories of pornographic Web sites on our computers after our boyfriends use it. They don't bother erasing the history if you don't give them a lot of hell." The implications troubled her. "I fear we are losing something very important -- a healthy sexual worldview. I think, however, that we are using old ideas of pornography to understand its function in a much more complex modern world."

Of the many stories I've heard revealing the ways in which young men struggle with porn, I offer here just one, distilled, from a self-described "25 year old recovering porn-addict" who wrote to me in October. "Marc" began looking at his father's magazines at age 11, but soon, he wrote, he "turned to the Internet to see what else I could find." This "started off as simply looking at pictures of naked women. From there, it turned into pictures of couples having sex and lesbian couples. When I got into watching videos on the Internet, my use of porn skyrocketed." At 23, he began dating a woman he called "Ashley." "However, since Ashley's last boyfriend had been a sex/porn addict, I was quick to lie about my use of porn. I told her that I never looked at it. But after 5-6 months, Ashley discovered a hidden folder on my computer containing almost a hundred porn clips. She was devastated."

Marc and Ashley broke up, got back together and spent several months traveling in India. He continued to look at porn behind her back, and on a trip to Las Vegas, he got lap dances despite promising not to. Ashley broke up with him again. "I had never thought about the adverse effects of my use of porn. . . . I want to change. I want to be a respectful human being towards all human beings, male and female. I want to be a committed and loving boyfriend to Ashley."

This is hardly solid lab research. But it is one of many signs of pornography's hidden impact. And flimsy "if only it were true!" research isn't an acceptable substitute for thorough study. An entire generation is being kept in the dark about pornography's effects because previous generations can't grapple with the new reality. Whether by approaching me (at the risk of peer scorn) after I've spoken at a university or via anonymous e-mails, young people continue to pass along an unpopular message: Growing up on porn is terrible. One 17-year-old who had given up his habit told me that reading about porn addicts "was like reading a horrifying old diary, symptoms, downward spirals, guilt, hypocrisy, lack of control, and the constant question of to what degree fantasy is really so different from reality. I felt like a criminal, or at the very least, a person who would objectively disgust me."

Let's not ignore people like him, even if it's tempting to say, as one headline did, "All men watch porn, and it is not bad for them: study."

That's just one more fantasy warping how we live our real lives.

Pamela Paul is the author of "Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families."

Emily Post Would Be Rightly Appalled

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Long gone, for most adolescents, are the elegant dances and cotillions whose disappearance Emily Post was already lamenting in her 1922 book "Etiquette." In such environments, modesty and public decorum had been required "because people were on exhibition, where now they are unnoticed components of a general crowd."

Her exalted reputation aside, Mrs. Post had no illusions about human propensities. Unsupervised teenagers would grapple in the dark. It was to everyone's benefit, especially youngsters on the brink of adulthood, for society to insist on restraint.

"Don't allow anyone to paw you," Mrs. Post advised debutantes, perfectly aware that scoundrels would try. She was censorious about young people who flaunted romantic conquests. "It is not considered a triumph to have many love affairs, but rather an evidence of stupidity and bad taste," she wrote.

The revered arbiter of manners would probably be pained by the writhing spectacle of contemporary high-school dances, but not surprised. What might amaze her, though, is to see her name affixed to an etiquette guide counseling teenagers to ask themselves, "Am I willing to buy and use condoms?"

This disconcerting query appears in "Prom and Party Etiquette," a just-published volume written by Peggy Post and Cindy Post Senning, manners mavens who, through the Emily Post Institute, perpetuate their famous relative's legacy with books, lectures and seminars. The authors lay out basic rules: Always send a thank-you note after a party; put soiled dinner napkins on the table, not the chair; converse with dinner guests on either side of you. The modern Posts have no qualms in specifying what's expected, procedurally. Yet on morality, suddenly it all goes squish.

In a subchapter entitled "A 'Special' Act for a Special Evening?" the authors note that "some teens talk about prom night as the night they might have sex for the first time because the night feels special and significant." Without making any ruling as to the wisdom of such a practice, they invite young people to consider whether to bed their dates by asking themselves: "Will I be able to look this person in the eye the next morning and talk about the experience? If we break up afterward anyway, how will I feel?" The authors conclude: "Sex is the most intimate act between two people, so you should take the time to consider all these questions and answer them coolly and honestly."

It seems startlingly passive advice, even in an era in which, as a newly retired school principal ruefully told me, "Girls save themselves not for marriage but for the prom."

Well, of course sex is intimate. It's also profoundly consequential and, you'd think, something the heirs of Emily Post would be unafraid to tell young people to delay. ("Don't allow anyone to paw you!") Alas, no more.

"We're not prudish by any stretch; we're more realists than anything else," Peggy Post explained by phone. "We really made a conscious decision not to try to lecture teens or tell them what to do, but instead give them the tools, questions for them to ask themselves, so that they don't feel pressure."

"We didn't want to preach to teens," Ms. Post told me, although, she conceded, "We could have gone one step further."

Eve Grimaldi finds this exasperating. As dean of students at Georgetown Visitation, an all-girls high school in Washington, she's a tireless warrior for decorum. Every year, come dance time, Mrs. Grimaldi sends out humane "Do's and Don'ts." She encourages parents to embrace their inner authoritarian: "DON'T let your daughter go off to a dinner party or restaurant . . . if you have an uneasy feeling about the location or substance of either." She carries sweatshirts to every dance, to cover the scantily clad, and periodically wades into the throng of dancers "like the grim reaper." And she has no patience with moral neutrality when advising the young.

"Are the writers [of "Prom and Party Etiquette"] too cool to draw a line?" Mrs. Grimaldi wonders. "Shouldn't adults be helping teenagers to avoid just those kinds of far-reaching caprices?"

Undoubtedly so. Here's the problem with morally neutral sex advice for teenagers: It isn't neutral. It can't be. The very discussion of coital practicalities creates a moral framework, a matrix of what is reasonable and acceptable.

Oddly, Cindy Post Senning and Peggy Post don't mind telling grown-ups what to do. In the 2004 edition of "Etiquette," for instance, they advise adults: "It's perfectly okay to say, "I'm sorry, but until we know each other better . . . we just can't get involved in a sexual relationship. There's just too much at stake."

Quite right! You'd think that's exactly what "Emily Post" and every other adult should tell teenagers, who need guidelines far more than do their elders. A dance ought to be an occasion to enjoy youth's frivolity, not to become mired in adult complexity. There's just too much at stake.

Mrs. Gurdon is a regular contributor to the book pages of The Wall Street Journal.

The Kids Will Be Alright The coming U.S. population boom will bring new economic vitality; the resurgence of Fargo

By JOEL KOTKIN America's population growth makes it a notable outlier among the advanced industrialized countries. The country boasts a fertility rate 50% higher than that of Russia, Germany or Japan and well above that of China, Italy, Singapore, North Korea and virtually all of eastern Europe. Add to that the even greater impact of continued large-scale immigration to America from around the world. By the year 2050, the U.S. population will swell by roughly 100 million, and the country's demographic vitality will drive its economic resilience in the coming decades.

This places the U.S. in a radically different position from that of its historic competitors, particularly Europe and Japan, whose populations are stagnant. The contrast between the U.S. and Russia, America's onetime primary rival for world power, is particularly dramatic. Some 30 years ago, Russia constituted the core of a vast Soviet empire that was considerably more populous than the U.S. Today, even with its energy riches, Russia's low birth and high mortality rates suggest that its population will drop to less than one-third that of the U.S. by 2050. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has spoken of "the serious threat of turning into a decaying nation."

Douglas JonesAn equally dramatic and perhaps more critical demographic shift is taking place in East Asia. Over the past few decades a rapid expansion of their work force fueled the rise of the "East Asian tigers," the great economic success stories of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Yet that epoch is coming to an end, not only in Japan and Korea but also in China, where the one-child policy has set the stage for a rapidly aging population by mid-century.

Within the next four decades, most of the developed countries in both Europe and East Asia will become veritable old-age homes: A third or more of their populations will be over 65, compared with only a fifth in America. Like the rest of the developed world, the U.S. will certainly have to cope with an aging population and lower population growth, but in relative terms the county will boast a youthful, dynamic demographic.

As many other advanced countries become dominated by the elderly, the U.S. will have the benefit of a millennial baby boom as the "echo boomers" start having offspring in large numbers later in this decade. This next surge in growth may be delayed if tough economic times continue, but over time the rise in births will add to the work force, boost consumer spending and allow for new creative inputs.

The differing demographic trajectories create a diverse set of issues for 21st-century America than those facing its rivals. The key challenges the European Union, Japan and Korea will contend with in the coming decades involve coping with a rapidly aging population, filling labor shortages and finding ways to invest in growing economies. In contrast, the U.S.'s greatest priority will be to create opportunities for its ever-expanding population. The New America Foundation estimates the country needs to add more than 125,000 jobs a month simply to keep pace with population growth in 2010. What the U.S. does with its "demographic dividend"—that is, its relatively young working-age population—will largely depend largely on whether the private sector can generate the incomes among the young to meet the needs of a larger aging population.

Entrepreneurialism and America's flexible business culture—including the harnessing of entrepreneurial skills of aging boomers—will prove critical to meeting this challenge. Many of the individuals starting new firms will be those who have recently left or been laid off by bigger companies, particularly during a severe economic downturn. Whether they form a new bank, energy company or design firm, they will do it more efficiently—with less overhead, more efficient use of the Internet and less emphasis on pretentious office settings.

"People are watching their companies go under. Therefore you get three vice presidents who get laid off but know their business," says Texas entrepreneur Charlie Wilson. "They start a new company somewhere cheap that is more efficient and streamlined. These are the new companies that will survive and grow the next economy."

It is here—at the grassroots level—that you can best glimpse the essential sources of American resiliency. American society draws most of its adaptive power not from its elite precincts but through the efforts of communities, churches, entrepreneurs and families.

You can see this in the resurgence of once-declining Great Plains cities like Fargo, N.D., where high-tech now joins agriculture and manufacturing to form one of the country's strongest local economies. Or you can visit the emerging immigrant hotbeds, such as the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles or the Sugarland area, just west of Houston, with their plethora of new churches, temples, companies and ethnic shopping malls.

Immigrants represent a critical component of our next wave of new dynamism. Between 1990 and 2005, immigrants started one quarter of all venture-backed public companies. Large American firms are also increasingly led by people with roots in foreign countries, including 14 of the CEOs of the 2007 Fortune 100.

But much of the energy will come from more obscure enterprises. Recent newcomers have already distinguished themselves as entrepreneurs, forming businesses from street-level bodegas to the most sophisticated technology start-ups.

What drives immigrants is their optimism in America's future. California developer Dr. Alethea Hsu, in explaining why she opened a new Asian-oriented shopping center in Orange County, cited the entrepreneurial energy of both affluent and working class immigrants which, she said, will allow them to thrive through the recession and beyond. "We are leased up, and we think the supply of shopping still is not enough," Ms. Hsu said in early 2009. "We feel great trust in the future."

This entrepreneurial urge also extends beyond the immigrant community. In 2008, 28% of Americans said they had considered starting a business, more than twice the rate for French or Germans. Self-employment, particularly among younger workers, has been growing at twice the rate as in the mid-1990s. In the most recent Legatum Prosperity Index, the U.S. ranked at the top among all countries in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Most important of all will likely be the rise of the millennial generation—a group of Americans who will start reaching their prime earning years late in the next decade. Surveys identify them as strongly family- and community-oriented. The millennials will be America's new entrepreneurs, workers and consumers in the coming decades. They will provide the kind of resource our major competitors are destined to run short on.

The millennials also will help shape an increasingly culturally diverse America which by 2050 will be roughly half made up of ethnic minorities. This emerging post-ethnic future contrasts dramatically with the ethnic politics common among the nation's chief global rivals. Even famously politically correct nations as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands have turned against immigration. Switzerland just banned the construction of minarets, while France is considering banning some forms of Islamic garb.

Our prime Asian rivals—China, Japan, and Korea—remain even more culturally resistant to diversity. Chinese xenophobia, in particular, is deeply entrenched, notes Martin Jacques, author of "When China Rules the World." A Chinese world superpower would be both racially homogenous and far from tolerant of newcomers. Recently the appearance of a mixed-race Shanghai girl on a national talent show sparked a surge of racist invective.

The very diversity of the emerging America makes many wonder what ultimately will hold the country together. Ultimately, this unique society will find its binding principle in the notions that have long differentiated it from the rest of world: a common belief system, a sense of a shared destiny and an aspirational culture.

As the British writer G. K. Chesterton once put it, the U.S. is "the only nation…that is founded on a creed." This faith is not, and was not initially meant to be, explicitly religious; rather, it is a fundamentally spiritual idea of a national raison d'être.

Of course, this optimistic scenario depends on intelligent and energetic actions by central and local governments, as well as community organizations. But the road to the American future will be primarily laid not by the central state but by families, individuals and communities. During the industrial age Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, "The age has an engine, but no engineer." Much the same may be said in the coming decades.

—Joel Kotkin is a distinguished presidential fellow at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London. This essay was adapted from "The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050," due out next month by Penguin Press.