Lots of Obamaphiles like to say that Barack Obama is a practitioner ofrealpolitik in the mold of George Herbert Walker Bush. Presumably, this is meant to make Republicans more comfortable with an Obamaesque foreign policy. But Paul Bonicelli studies the record and takes issue with this claim. Here’s why:

• Practitioners of realpolitik don’t seek the approval of the United Nations as much as the Obama administration does.
• Practitioners of realpolitik do more to try to shape the international system so that it conforms with the interests of the nation-state being led/represented by the practitioners in question.
• Practitioners of realpolitik do more to secure economic and military strength in order to maximize nation-state power.
• And finally, when practitioners of realpolitik have leverage overseas, they tend to use it instead of wasting it.

I would love to have an administration that pays more than lip service to the principles of realpolitik. But the Obama administration is not that administration. I don’t get why the president and his buddies don’t just call themselves Wilsonian internationalists? Whom do they think they are fooling, anyway?

The latest installment of the Hinderacker-Ward Experience podcast featured an interview with ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper, who discussed his new book, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor.  If you haven’t already listened, I encourage you to do so now, after which you will very likely be compelled to buy the book.  You will not regret doing so.

As it happened, on Nov. 13, the day the book was released, Hugh Hewitt devoted an hour of his program to an interview with Mr. Tapper, at the conclusion of which I made haste to my local Barnes & Noble and bought a copy.  Though I’m only a third of the way through the book, I’m compelled to add my thanks to Mr. Tapper for his account of extraordinary men making extraordinary sacrifices in combat.  Some of those men, as you will discover in heartbreaking but no less compelling fashion, made the ultimate sacrifice.

Most of us go through our days here at home blithely unaware of what our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are doing on our behalf on the other side of the world in the unforgiving landscape of Afghanistan.  This book will cure you of that.  I cannot recommend the book more highly, and I again extend my thanks to Mr. Tapper for allowing me to know these valiant men.

In his syndicated column from this past weekend, George Will kindly quoted extensively from a law review article of mine that argues that killing al Qaeda leaders with drones is not assassination, which is prohibited by executive order. Instead, I argue that al Qaeda leaders are fighters who are legitimate targets, just as Admiral Yamamoto, who was shot down in a special mission over the Pacific, was in World War II. Here's Will:

But was the downing of Yamamoto’s plane an “assassination”? If British commandos had succeeded in the plan to kill German Gen. Erwin Rommel in Libya in 1941, would that have been an assassination? If President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 attack on military and intelligence targets in Libya, including one that Moammar Gaddafi sometimes used as a residence, had killed him, would that have been an assassination? What about the November 2001 CIA drone attack on a Kabul meeting of high-level al-Qaeda leaders that missed Osama bin Laden but killed his military chief? 

The natural implication of this argument is that in any war, the American civilians in the military chain of command are equally legitimate targets of attack. I think that is right. So if the Russians were to go to war with us, President Obama and Secretary Panetta are legitimate targets. But Secretary Sebelius is not. 

This doesn't address, however, whether terrorists can legitimately use force at all. I do not believe that they are belligerents covered by the Geneva Coventions because they have not signed on to the treaties and do not obey the rules of war, such as wearing uniforms and avoiding civilian casualties. Terrorists are illegal combatants whose very resort to force is illegal. Thus they are not even due the careful protections for civilian or military targets that would be applied in a normal war, just minimum humanitarian protections. Otherwise, there is no sanction on terrorists for violating all of the rules of civilized warfare. 

Last week, I took my daughter to the pediatric ophthalmologist, a physician she has seen for several years.

Upon arrival, the receptionist gave me three additional forms to fill out. These were not the usual address update forms, but paperwork requiring specific demographic information. I wondered why my daughter’s eye doctor needed to know the color of our skin.

Next, the doctor came into the examination room and proceeded to ask me a series of questions, all invasive, such as “Does anyone smoke in the home?” and a few others along those lines. I said to my good Republican doctor - "What gives? Why do you need to need know whether or not I smoke?” 

He said that the forms contained new requirements under Obamacare. That additional data, he explained, is collected and then entered into a “government database.”

I mentioned this to several friends in an e-mail conversation and, to my surprise, this is developing into a pattern. A friend in Pennsylvania took her twin boys to the pediatrician and was asked similar questions. Another friend in Virginia thought she was having informal girlfriend chat with her physician and suddenly realized that her doctor was writing everything down.

If the government requires doctors to ask more invasive questions, and our private information is being recorded and entered into some government database, there are troubling implications. Does anyone remember HIPPA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which addressed security and privacy of health data? A lot of time and money was spent passing HIPPA, but I question its effectiveness in the era of Obamacare.  

A government database does not enhance a feeling of security with respect to my, or my family’s, private medical data. Government has a spotty record of keeping confidential information out of the wrong hands. I do not want my medical information to be the target of some overeager hacker who wants to make a big score and get bragging rights by cracking the code of the federal government’s huge medical information database.

If my visit to my daughter’s ophthalmologist is any indication, we're heading towards a future of more paperwork, less time spent between doctors and patients, and more invasive questions being dumped into a  “government database.”

Welcome to the Nanny State - it has arrived.

Since I had such a strong response to my last two posts about guns, I thought I'd start one more thread on the subject. 

On a recent conference trip to Pennsylvania, a faculty member (who shall go nameless here to protect his career) took me to a shooting range and produced a collection of famous guns from the movies.  It was great -- we shot a Civil War revolver, a revolver of the kind used by the army in the old west, a "Dirty Harry" Magnum .44, a WWI-era Colt semi-automatic, James Bond's Walther PPK -- well, you get the idea. At least I learned why the gunmen used their hands to rapid fire with the hammer in the cowboy movies, and why it took so long to reload during the Civil War

But it got me to thinking -- what is the best firearm in the movies -- the one that, if you could have only one, you would pick? I nominate the Magnum .44 from "Dirty Harry." I suppose the James Bond gun is popular, but when I shot it, I thought it was all show and no action. Any other nominees?

It has induced some companies to borrow in order to pay special dividends:

Companies that issue dividends, or are considering special dividends, are being pushed by shareholders to issue them before year-end because of rising concern that any deal in Washington to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff — of tax increases and spending cuts that looms at the end of the year — could include letting taxes on dividends rise.

For some companies, issuing debt to pay dividends makes sense right now because interest rates are so low and bond investors are clamoring for more securities, especially from companies that don’t issue regularly. If they can cheaply finance a boost in their stock prices, some companies will take that, even if the idea is detrimental to their own bondholders, because it adds to company debt obligations without boosting growth or their ability to pay back the debt.

Debt sales to finance dividends haven’t been very common since the credit crisis began in 2008, because both stockholders and bondholders have less appetite for something seen as a little more precarious to a company’s health.

But bondholders are now allowing companies to do it relatively cheaply because they’re so desperate for yields on corporate debt that are often just slightly higher than what is available on Treasury bonds.

This means that firms are leveraging themselves to pay off their shareholders. That debt could have financed additional investment, R&D, or acquisition of other firms. Instead, firms are going to the debt market, or even to banks, to turn equity into debt -- all because the President is insistent that dividends be taxed as ordinary income. If you wanted there to be less leverage in markets as a matter of public policy, you would want dividends to remain tax-preferred.

(UPDATE:  A Twitter comment pointed me to the fact that Costco's credit rating was cut by one agency after the special dividend announcement.)

As the Ricochet editors mentioned, tomorrow Encounter Books releases my new book, co-authored with Sherif Girgis and Robert P. George, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. So while blogging at Ricochet this week, I thought I’d explore some of the issues raised by the book—and recent events, thanks to the Supreme Court. Today I’d like to situate the debate over the definition of marriage within its proper context.

Some people wonder why conservatives choose to focus exclusively on same-sex marriage. The answer is simple: We don’t. First, conservatives always did—and still do—make other social and political efforts to strengthen the marriage culture. The push for same-sex marriage was brought to us. Second, now that this is the live debate, we can’t ignore it, for its outcome will have wider effects on the marriage culture that really is our main concern.

Long before there was a debate about same-sex marriage, there was a debate about marriage. It launched a “marriage movement,” to explain why marriage was good for the men and women who were faithful to its demands, and for the children they reared.

Articles in mainstream magazines such as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s 1993 cover story for The Atlantic, “Dan Quayle was Right,” documented how family fragmentation was wreaking havoc on society. In 1996 Mike and Harriet McManus launched Marriage Savers to combat marital breakdown, and in 2001 Wade Horn championed the Healthy Marriage Initiative for the Bush Administration. Their targets were high divorce rates and the rising birthrate for unmarried women. From pre-Cana programs to various fatherhood initiatives, examples could be multiplied ad nauseam.

Same-sex relationships weren’t on anyone’s radar. (It may be hard to remember, but until just recently same-sex marriage was inconceivable to almost everyone.) The marriage movement leaders’ concern, like that of today’s leading conservative scholars and activists, was much broader.

So it’s not surprising that the leading opponent of redefining marriage today, Maggie Gallagher, was active throughout the ’80s and ’90s in this marriage movement. She wrote a book in the late ‘80s on how the sexual revolution was “killing family, marriage and sex” and “what we [could] do about it;” in a 2000 book she made “the case for marriage,” showing the many ways that marriage is better for couples than cohabitation.

The question of whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships didn’t take center stage until 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court claimed to find a constitutional right to it. Those who had been leading the marriage movement for decades had to ask themselves: Would recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages strengthen the marriage culture, or weaken it?

They saw that redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships was not ultimately about expanding the pool of people eligible to marry. Redefining marriage was about cementing a new idea of marriage in the law—an idea whose baleful effects they had spent years fighting. That idea—that romantic-emotional union is all that makes a marriage—couldn’t explain or support the stabilizing norms that make marriage fitting for family life. It could only undermine those norms.

Indeed, that undermining already had begun.  Disastrous policies like “no-fault” divorce, too, were motivated by the idea that a marriage is made by romantic attachment and satisfaction—and comes undone when these fade.

Same-sex marriage would require a more formal and final redefinition of marriage as simple romantic companionship, obliterating the meaning the marriage movement had sought to restore to the institution.

They say conservatives can sound shrill. It is true that there is a sort of desperate edge sometimes to talk radio, Fox News, the conservative blog sites, or the Drudge Report as they attempt to challenge the established monopoly of the  network news, the wire services, and news feeders —AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, Google and Yahoo News — the marquee newspapers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, and the left-leaning government owned NPR and PBS.

To be heard above that cacophony, conservatives must be loud, persistent, and repetitive. And the message of limited government, free markets, and self-reliance is easily caricatured as selfish and greedy, at least in comparison to the idea of a paternalistic government and its egalitarian Siren songs of taking care of the collective at the supposedly small price of surrendering liberty.

Although MSNBC certainly seems more hysterical than Fox, The Huffington Post far more accusatory than is the National Review, Air America more crass than right-wing talk radio, at times we might do better with tragic voices rather than accusatory ones -- to remind the public that it was the left, not the right, that turned mean and crass and decided that its utopian means justified almost any means necessary.

How, for example, did it happen that the liberal movement forsook its classical roots and instead opted for the tribe—the resort to illiberal voting along ethnic lines, as if those who look or speak similarly are not so much individuals as racial automatons. And how strange that we now speak so casually of the Latino vote, the black vote, the Asian vote, gay vote, the youth vote—as if there is not a human vote? Are there not to be any individuals within these stereotyped castes? Was the pathos of Martin Luther King to look to the content of our characters rather than to the color of our skin to end with the bathos of Rev. Joseph Lowery's pre-election venom that whites belong in Hell?

The reason we read Lincoln and Churchill and not Andrew Jackson or David Lloyd George is not just the greater wisdom of the former, but the greater beauty of their words as well. Conservatives cannot, as competing would-be emperors bidding for the services of the Praetorian Guard, trump the big-government entitlements of the Democrats. But we can offer more cogent—and more elegant—arguments for smaller government, fewer taxes, and greater individual freedom.

Barack Obama, it is true, is at times mellifluous on the teleprompter, but his rhetoric grows wearisome because it long ago became stereotypical and trite. We tire not just of the faux cadences and patois; of his monotonous fillers like ‘Make no mistake’, and ‘Let me be perfectly clear’; or the constant straw men “they”, or the obsessive use of the first-person “I”, “me”, “my” and “mine”; or the psychodramatic braggodacio about Skip Gates, Trayvon Martin, and Susan Rice; or the occasional mean-spirited threat like “punish our enemies” and “get in their faces”; but also the banality of “pay your fair share” ad nauseam, and all of its predictable formulas like "spread the wealth", "corporate jet owner", "fat cat banker", and "you didn’t build that"  business. An Obama speech is now all refrain and chorus with not a new line to be had.

Cannot a conservative answer in a simple, straightforward and logical manner? At what point did success become morally suspect, and dependence a virtue? If paying over half an income in local, state, and federal taxes is not a fair share, what, then, would be? Is not half a man’s waking hours enough for others?  Mr. President, we can understand why you might brag to your base that you shut down new oil and gas leases on federal lands, but why at the same time boast that those whom you sought to stop—despite, not because, of your hostility—produced more gas and oil on private lands than at any time in our recent history? Are they to be damned or praised for providing more domestic carbon-based fuels?

Forget birth certificates and college transcripts. Let us show how Barack Obama is absurd and juvenile—but let us do it in a manner unlike that of Barack Obama.

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This week, we're privileged to have two distinguished figures joining us as guest contributors at Ricochet.

Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at The Heritage Foundation. as well as the editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey

A former assistant editor of First Things and executive director of the Witherspoon Institute, he is most recently the co-author, with Princeton’s Robert P.George and Sherif Girgis, of the new book “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense”

Cherylyn LeBon is a writer, political commentator, lawyer, wife, and lacrosse mom.  She served as a political appointee in the George W. Bush Administration; as a spokesman at the Republican National Committee; and as Senior Counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Cherylyn is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel and on national broadcast radio shows. She is a contributor to Townhall and The Blaze.

We look forward to both of their insights. Please welcome Ryan and Cherylyn to Ricochet.

That's the provocative headline of an Atlantic piece about two tribes in Africa. The piece begins:

Barry and Bonnie Hewlett had been studying the Aka and Ngandu people of central Africa for many years before they began to specifically study the groups' sexuality. As they reported in the journal African Study Monographs, the married couple of anthropologists from Washington State University "decided to systematically study sexual behavior after several campfire discussions with married middle-aged Aka men who mentioned in passing that they had sex three or four times during the night. At first [they] thought it was just men telling their stories, but we talked to women and they verified the men's assertions."

In turning to a dedicated study of sex practices, the Hewletts formally confirmed that the campfire stories were no mere fish tales. Married Aka and Ngandu men and women consistently reported having sex multiple times in a single night. But in the process of verifying this, the Hewletts also incidentally found that homosexuality and masturbation appeared to be foreign to both groups.

Sex is referred to as the "work of the night," as distinguished from the work the tribe does during the day. It's a really interesting read, but the bottom line is that the tribe relies on reproduction for its survival, so conjugal, life-producing sex is very important. And when that's the case, masturbation and homosexuality don't seem to be present in the culture (even though these tribes are aware that other groups engage in homosexuality).

We live in a country where adults estimate, on average, that 25% of the population is gay (in real life, that percentage is in the low single digits).

What, if anything, can we learn from the Hewlett's study of these tribes?

I write from Great Britain, where I am holed up in Bristol pondering the size, shape, and character of a great mercantile city that Edmund Burke once represented in Parliament. When, however, I am not speaking to a conference about ancient and modern constitutionalism or admiring the beauty of this metropolis and its surroundings, I am thinking about Michigan -- where, last week, the Republicans in the legislature passed right-to-work legislation, which Governor Rick Snyder is poised to sign into law this week.

I live in an obscure, impoverished corner of Michigan -- in a county with the highest unemployment in a state that has had very high unemployment now for nearly a decade -- but I am not a Michigander born and bred. I can describe the political geography of the state, using a broad brush. But I do not know its nooks and crannies, and I am very much puzzled by what I see.

In November, Barack Obama won the state handily, and Debbie Stabenow was reelected to the Senate without any difficulty at all. In the same election, two conservative justices on the Michigan Supreme Court were reelected, and a third conservative very nearly won a seat on the court that was being vacated by a liberal Democrat. Moreover, the left made a valiant attempt to secure the passage of a series of referenda designed to entrench union privilege in the state constitution, and they lost on each and every measure. What is one to make of this?

Michigan was once a union stronghold -- the capital of an empire controlled by the United Auto Workers. The private-sector unions are now, however, no longer what they were. They have strangled industry. Wherever I have gone in Michigan, I have heard stories of plants closing and of jobs disappearing. The collapse of the auto industry was merely the final coup de grace. Other industries -- and there were many of them -- withdrew or simply disappeared long before the arrival of the Great Recession. The unions and the Democratic machine associated with them have also destroyed Detroit. It was once the fourth largest city in the United States; it was once the nation's wealthiest city per capita. Now the median price of a house is $10,000, and, where there were once two million residents, there are now fewer than 700,000. The state is changing character. In the last decade, it has lost 10-15% of its population.

What I do not know is whether Michigan is ready to be a right-to-work state. Its becoming one would give one hope that it might have a future. Absent a major turn-around, it will continue on a path that will lead it to look like West Virginia in 1955. But what is needed is not always possible, and I find myself wondering whether -- in a state that firmly backed Barack Obama and Debbie Stabenow -- there will not be a ferocious reaction to what Rick Snyder and the Republicans are now doing. John Kasich and the Republicans in Ohio got a comeuppance not long ago when they passed a far less radical piece of legislation aimed at curbing public-sector union power (and that alone). Will Michigan explode? Will the unions strike back with powerful effect?

I do not know. But this I do know: If Snyder and the Republicans succeed -- if they are as successful with their endeavor as Scott Walker and the Republicans in Wisconsin have been with theirs -- it will shift the national balance. The unions may be entrenched in California, Illinois, and New York. Those states may be lost. They may have to face bankruptcy before they can make a comeback. But if Michigan can free itself from this albatross by its own efforts in the current environment, then, there is hope almost everywhere else. Things are going to get hot in Michigan. It is a state that bears close watching.

It could also be the case that -- with Washington deadlocked -- the real action over the next four years will be at the state level. In 2012, the Republicans lost the national election. But, at the same time, they garnered in 2010 and 2012 a strength at the state and local level that they have not seen as a party since the 1920s. The fact that the Republicans in Michigan have just passed right-to-work legislation is proof that the Tea-Party impulse is by no means dead. The year 2012 may be remembered not as the year in which the latest wave of Progressivism triumphed. It may be remembered as a year in which the Republican resurgence hit a minor bump in the road. Stay tuned.

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Daniel:  "Grandpa, it's raining!"  

Me:  "Is water falling from the sky?"  

Daniel:  "No, Grandpa!  It's raining!"  

The only thing more refreshing than a few days off after over a month on the road, is a few days off in the company my grandson, Young Master Daniel, during the Christmas Season. Setting out with my daughter and Daniel, we ventured into a few stores yesterday before watching the hustle and madness from the comfort of a restaurant. I don't know that I've ever seen a child's eyes light up with as much pure wonder before. Oh, I'm sure other children are just as wide-eyed and fun. On second thought…  But the marvel and fascination of a child's attention will manifest itself in the most amazing reality this side of Mother Goose. Water doesn't fall from the sky, Grandpa,… it's just raining!  

There was a little red haired, freckle-faced girl that lived down the street from us in Baton Rouge. We were both in first grade, and though I knew she was a celebrity, I didn't let the other children in on the secret. She was cute in a homely kind of way, with big blue eyes, and bucked teeth that resembled the goal posts in Tiger Stadium. Christmas was her season though, because everyone sang songs about her. I knew this because her name was Holly, and every year people sang about having to haul her out, and decking the halls with her bowels. It seemed an awful lot of trouble to go through to celebrate Christmas, even for this little six-year-old. But she dutifully reported for class after Christmas break looking none the worse for the trauma, and said not a word to anyone about it. I didn't bring it up either.  Probably too traumatic for her to talk about. But the following year, the process would repeat itself, and she shouldered the burden with remarkable grace. I couldn't have managed it.  I couldn't even stand booster shots.  

Last night, Daniel, my daughter, son-in-law, and I traveled to see a remarkable Christmas musical presentation. It featured a choir of over 100 hundred people lifting their voices in full and joyous celebration. Little Daniel was spellbound at the pageantry, the banners, and the rich, all-encompassing voices in song. I couldn't help but wonder what impressions were being made behind those curious eyes as he sat enrapt at the spectacle. What did he think when the little girls in white robes ran to the front of the auditorium to play the role of angels welcoming the newborn King to earth? He noticed right away that the Baby Jesus was a real baby. He listened as a congregation of several hundred joined with the choir in old and venerable Christmas Carols (I went to school with Carol too, but she was a great deal more of a contrarian than Holly, and with less reason since it wasn't her innards that decked the halls).  

There was a crown of thorns resting atop a cross just off stage left, and I wondered if they were going to re-enact the entire life of Christ. But at prescribed point in the program, a large, burly gentleman wearing a utility belt and a baseball cap, stood up and walked toward that cross. He was carrying a box wrapped in Christmas paper, which he placed at the foot of cross. Then, removing his cap, he knelt at the cross for a moment before taking a smaller cross in his hands and taking his place in front of the young child that represented the baby Jesus. Then, another man, this one in a suit, followed in the same fashion, presenting his gift, kneeling at the cross before taking his own cross and standing next to the first gentleman. Next came a doctor, with white jacket and stethoscope, to kneel before the cross and then stand with Jesus. Then came a farmer, and on the procession went as the choir's voices rose, and I realized I was holding my breath, so captivated was I by the poignancy of the moment.  

I realize that I've gotten this far in the tale without remembering to mention that my Dad was in the choir as well. A retired minister of music, Dad had only to hear this choir once to know that he wanted to be a part of it. Some readers may recall that it was a year ago that Dad was given the official diagnosis of Alzheimer's. This diagnosis prompted the choir director to give special dispensation for Dad to use sheet music during the performance, while everyone else was required to memorize the cantata. Stubbornness being a family trait, however, Dad was having none of it and insisted on memorizing the cantata like everyone else, Alzheimer's or not. Deciding that Alzheimer's would have to work extra hard to rob him of his faculties, Dad sang through the music at least half a dozen times each day. And he pulled it off without a hitch last night, telling us afterward that this was harder to memorize than his studies in seminary had been. But he did it, and went on to make three other generations of our family laugh with delight late into the evening.  

These are the sorts of memories that little Daniel will carry with him long after we're gone. Memories of a family that loves him more dearly than life, and a heritage of embracing life with a smile and a steadfast faith in the One whose birth and life we celebrate. Perhaps one day I'll tell him of the Christmas celebrities I knew as a child, but for now, it's his turn to create and spin his own stories, limited only by his never-ending and wondrous imagination. But I do wonder how Holly is getting along these days.

Showtime is airing a new television series, "Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States," which is being marketed with a companion book of the same name.  The entire project represents a fraud.  

But don't take my word for it. Listen to our brethren at Pajamas Media, Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, who discuss the series with historian Ron Radosh. (To my mind, by the way, Radosh represents an almost saintly figure.  A man who dedicated his early years to the left, Ron has dedicated himself ever since to the painstaking labor of writing the history of the twentieth century, intent on telling--yes--the truth.)

A quarter of an hour that everyone should watch--and email to every high school and college student in his family.

Ross Douthat recently caused a stir with this piece in the New York Times in which he bemoaned the recent decline in the American birthrate. While the immediate cause of this fall could, as Douthat recognizes, be a function of today’s hard times, he worries that it may persist and that the economic consequences for America will not be pretty:

Today’s babies are tomorrow’s taxpayers and workers and entrepreneurs, and relatively youthful populations speed economic growth and keep spending commitments affordable.

That might have been true in the past. But now?  We live in an age in which production relies ever more on technology and ever less on a large workforce. And when it does still need the latter those factories have a nasty habit of migrating abroad.   

The traditional idea that (per capita) economic growth relied on population growth has been looking a little tired for quite some time, and the increase in the numbers of the elderly depending on social security does not alter that fact: the unemployed are not going to be able to pay for the pensions of the retired.

What counts is not the size of a population, but its productivity. That’s not yet something that the baby boosters are prepared to acknowledge, but why should they?  Many of them are bothered by something else altogether, as is evident from this passage towards the end of Douthat’s article:

The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

Well, you can agree with that or not (let’s just say that I am unconvinced), but one thing is clear, this is not an argument that has much to do with economics. 

Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear appeals in two cases involving same-sex marriage.   The Court will decide the fate of:

• The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA): can the federal government define "marriage" for the purpose of eligibility for federal benefits?
• California Proposition 8: can a state define "marriage" as the union of one man and one-woman?

The two cases should raise distinct issues.  When considering DOMA the Court should address whether the law raises any federalism concerns.  I think it does (even though such concerns may not be fatal to the law).  Traditionally, when federal law refers to "marriage" or related concepts, the feds defer to state law to determine whether a given marriage is valid.  DOMA doesn't force states to change their laws, but it puts a thumb on the scale.  The Court needs to discuss under what circumstances the federal government can (how shall I put this?) encourage states to change their internal laws.  For example, can the federal government create its own definition of a valid corporation, etc.?

But, alas, the Supreme Court may not reach the federalism issue because the lower courts barely touched it.  In the DOMA case (Windsor v. United States), the Second Circuit basically used an Equal Protection analysis.  What is notable is that the court held that traditional marriage laws must meet a heightened level of scrutiny because they presumptively discriminate against a "quasi-suspect class" (homosexuals) who, collectively, lack political power.  

As our own Richard Epstein has often pointed out, once a court decides to apply heightened scrutiny, the law under review is doomed.  Such was the case in Windsor, where the court dismissed in the most cursory fashion imaginable, the federal government's interest in defining marriage. The concept of "preserving the traditional  understanding of marriage" is brushed aside in two short paragraphs.   And "encouraging responsible procreation?"  Again, two paragraphs is all it gets.  As Nancy Pelosi might say: "are you serious?"

The Prop 8 case is a Ninth Circuit decision penned by the paleo-liberal judge Stephen Reinhardt.  Reinhardt also based his decision on Equal Protection.  Although he claimed that his decision was limited only to the specific facts of the California law, the rationale is fatal to other traditional marriage laws.  

In the Equal Protection rulings, the lower courts have been ignoring Supreme Court precedent -- we'll see if the High Court lets them get away with it.  In 1972, the Court held that Minnesota's traditional marriage law did not raise any issue under the Equal Protection Clause (or any other constitutional provision) (Baker v. Nelson).  The Court has never revisited that decision.  In 2003, when the Court struck down anti-sodomy laws, the majority promised that its decision (Lawrence v Texas) had no bearing on same-sex marriage because there are other reasons for a state to preserve traditional marriage "beyond moral disapproval of an excluded group," as Justice O'Connor put it. 

But that was then, and this is 2012.  Lower courts have now assumed the power to overturn binding Supreme Court precedent and to declare that Justice O'Connor failed to perceive the anti-gay prejudice behind all traditional marriage laws.   Stay tuned.

Whether or not we voted for him, Barack Obama is our president and will be for the next four years, which means that we are invested in his inauguration. We deserve to have it open to us so that we are able to witness it and so that we are able to glean something from it regarding the president’s plans for a second term.

Too bad that the Obama administration might be thinking otherwise:

The White House Correspondents Association is strongly urging the Obama administration to allow press access to the president’s official swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, following indications from inauguration committee officials that the event could potentially be closed to the press.

“Mindful of the historic nature of this occasion, we expect the White House will continue the long tradition of opening the President’s official swearing-in to full press access, and we as an organization are looking forward to working with the administration to make that happen,” Ed Henry, the Fox News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents Association, said in a statement.

Because inauguration day falls on a Sunday in 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts will officially administer the official oath of office in a private ceremony that day. The public inauguration on the Capitol Building’s West Front — at which Roberts will administer a second, symbolic oath of office — will take place the next day.

In early meetings with the inaugural committee, officials privately indicated to reporters that the Jan. 20 event could be closed to reporters and cameras, with an official photograph supplied to press by White House photographer Pete Souza, sources familiar with the meeting told POLITICO.

[. . .]

“Call me shell-shocked. I’m stunned that this is even an issue; it boggles the mind,” NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd told POLITICO. “This is not their oath, this is the constitutional oath. It’s not for them. It’s for the public, the citizens of the United Sates. It just boggles the mind — How is this even a debate?”

Now, to be fair, as the story indicates, no final decision has been made to make the January 20th inauguration a private one. And even if it were, the public inauguration will indeed serve to indicate what direction the president wants to take when it comes to policy in the second term. But that doesn’t change the fact that the January 20th inauguration is the actual, official inauguration–the one that serves as a starting gun for the second term. It is bizarre in the extreme to contemplate making that event a purely private one. At the very least, the press pool should be allowed to witness the event, and as the story goes on to note, when Ronald Reagan faced a similar situation for his inauguration in 1985, “Reagan’s White House allowed complete news coverage of the private ceremony, including three reporters, three still photographers, and one network television pool camera, according to a Los Angeles Times report from the time. ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN carried live broadcasts of the event.” There is no reason why the Obama administration should do anything differently.

But of course, we really shouldn’t be surprised if the administration does things differently. Despite the fact that Barack Obama promised “the most transparent administration in history,” a simple Google search reveals that promises of government transparency have been broken multiple times and for no good reason whatsoever. I’d like to think that Barack Obama will finally try to keep his pledge to run a transparent government–especially given the fact that we are discussing his own inauguration here–but I am not holding my breath.

The overwhelming response to my post on guns proved what we all knew (like all good social science): there are a lot of gun owners on Ricochet. As some pointed out, McDonald and Heller seem to introduce a balancing test for the Second Amendment that might allow reasonable regulation of firearm possession. I am curious how hard or easy it is to buy a gun in different states and cities.

In California, you have to take a written test, but -- contrary to the popular notion that everything about gun ownership is difficult in California -- the exam is ridiculously easy. There is a booklet on the internet that contains all the questions and answers (just like getting a driver's license). And only a fool would fail many of the questions even without study. I believe one of the questions was something like:

Q: What is the safest direction to point a gun

1. At yourself

2. At another person

3. In a random direction

4. At the ground

5. In a direction where no one or nothing is located

If you study for more than 10 minutes, you should pass. I think you need get only two-thirds right to do so. And if you fail, you can take it again right away. Then you get a license that allows you to buy guns. The whole process is sort of like the bar exam without the wait.

The serious lesson, I'd suggest, is that if you want to regulate something properly, putting up tests or rules for the activity itself is often ineffective, silly, or counterproductive. The most efficient method would be a tax. States, especially ones deep in the fiscal hole like California, should make it as easy as possible to get guns, but tax them heavily.

What are the gun possession barriers like in other places?

The November unemployment numbers released this morning showed 146,000 new non-farm payroll jobs being added and the unemployment rate dropping to 7.7 percent. It's a sign of the times -- and how anesthetized we are to our current economic torpor -- that this number feels good despite the fact that it's still objectively miserable (if you want to see this trend on steroids, look no further than here in California, where champagne glasses have been clinking over the fact that unemployment went down to 10.1 percent in October).

But there's a hitch. There's always a hitch. Per Keith Hall, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

Disengagement from the labor force does continue to be a problem as participation dropped from 63.8% to 63.6%. Participation remains at a very low level and has dropped by 0.4 percentage point so far this year. Labor force dropouts were entirely responsible for the November decline in the unemployment rate to 7.7%. This widespread disengagement plus the fact that 40% of unemployed have been job hunting for over six months will make for a very, very long road to full labor market recovery.

I guess when you consider that we have an administration whose foreign policy is defined by "leading from behind," it makes it slightly less surreal that their economic policy is defined by growth through contraction.

That headline isn't nearly as hysterical  as it might sound. To wit:

In "A Nation of Singles," his cover story for the Weekly Standard, Jonathan Last quotes Princeton professor Robert George:

As Robert George put it after the election, limited government "cannot be maintained where the marriage culture collapses and families fail to form or easily dissolve.  Where these things happen, the health, education, and welfare functions of the family will have to be undertaken by someone, or some institution, and that will sooner or later be the government."

Marriage is what makes the entire Western project--liberalism, the dignity of the human person, the free market, and the limited, democratic state--possible.  George continues, "The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institution of marriage.  These institutions will, in the end, stand or fall together."

There are all kinds of profound implications here, but shall we start with just one?

Anybody who thinks Republicans should shut up about social issues--that we could fix the economy and the country by electing libertarians who just don't care about the institution of marriage--has another thing coming.

Note: You can hear Jonathan discussing his "Nation of Singles" piece on this week's Need To Know podcast with Mona Charen and Jay Nordlinger.

What happens between the Easy-Bake Oven and the professional kitchen? Think Progress wants to know:

Thirteen year old Mckenna Pope’s little brother loves to cook. But when he watches the commercials for a product he’s hoping to get for Christmas — the Easy Bake Oven — he only sees girls playing with the toy. Because of that, he believes that “only girls play with it.”

Pope is hoping to change that perception with a video and a petition. She is asking Hasboro — maker of the Easy Bake Oven — to start putting boys in their commercials, so that her little brother sees it’s okay for boys to cook.

Okay, so the story so far: it's a classic left-wing cliche about "gender norms." Girls are told to bake and clean; boys are told to fight and earn. (And yes, this still is 2012. We haven't gone back to 1974, when "Free to Be You and Me" was on every record player.)  

But here's what I'd say to young McKenna Pope, who seems so exercised about her brother's disinclination to cook: Relax, little girl. When it comes to professional chefs, that industry is, like, totally male dominated.

And liberals are mad about that, too. From New York Magazine:

We live in a golden age of chefs. Between your Batalis and Bouluds, your Vongerichtens and Riperts, your Masas and Morimotos, New York is bubbling over with cooking legends who not only practice world-class gastronomy but also manage to turn themselves into global gajillion-dollar megabrands. So here’s a question: Where are all the women? Despite the fact that women make up the vast majority of home cooks, and despite four-plus decades of modern feminism, women still run just a small percentage of top kitchens in New York and elsewhere. Never mind the Rachael Rays and Nigella Lawsons of the world. They’re TV personalities, not chefs. They don’t turn out hundreds of meals a night on a hot, high-stress line at one of the country’s most esteemed and critically scrutinized restaurants.

But how do those guys even know they want to cook if Hasbro, the maker of the Easy-Bake Oven, tells them it's something that only girls do? 

Unless -- brace yourselves -- all of this talk about which toys promote which behavior is just a lot of archaic liberal nonsense. Can't be that, right?

Last week, our own John Yoo joined Northwestern University School of Law's John McGinnis and Georgetown University School of Law's Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz for a discussion at the American Enterprise Institute on how the Executive Branch — specifically the Obama administration — is undermining America's constitutional commitment to the rule of law through a surreptitious expansion of executive power. Professor Yoo's contributions begin around minute 37.