On Tuesday, The Daily Telegraph reported:

“Riot-swept Britain is tasting the “bitter fruit” of its failure to introduce Chinese-style controls on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, Chinese state media crowed on Tuesday, while raising questions over whether London could be trusted to stage a safe 2012 Olympic Games.”

Your humble Blog Goliard was inclined to play this for laughs, until he saw the latest report from the emergency session of the House of Commons:

The government is exploring whether to turn off social networks or stop people texting during times of social unrest.

David Cameron said the intelligence services and the police were exploring whether it was “right and possible” to cut off those plotting violence.

Even though he’s a PR man by trade and a bit of an empty suit (but I repeat myself), I never thought Cameron would be so ungrounded in the fundamentals of Western liberty that he would pick up an editorial in the People’s Daily and say to himself, “You know, I think these Chinese Communists may be on to something here…”

Comment threads and blogs have been exploding in response to Kay Hymowitz’s article in the WSJ. “Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children,” she notes; and that this is no longer the case is obviously and rightly a cause of great grief and frustration for many women.

However, though it seems de rigeur these days to allow the concerns and perspectives of women to overshadow others, let us be sure to take a complete look at the situation from the male perspective; and in particular how much harder it is for today’s man in his 20s to achieve the education, financial independence, marriage, and fatherhood (not mere baby-daddy-hood, which is depressingly easy to attain) than for the most recent generations of his forebears.

Given the following:

1. a) The economy continues to transform in ways unfriendly to the “living wage” and many workers, and the Boomers are busy pulling up the ladder after themselves, making long-term job prospects grim, even for men with multiple degrees under their belts. Also, while women still face subtle discrimination in a dwindling number of areas, non-minority men face overt discrimination in a growing number.
2. b) A high school diploma, while still free through public schools, doesn’t get one very far these days; and as for higher education, even as its returns have diminished its costs have exploded. Many people are now forking over a sizeable portion of their paychecks to the student loan companies well into their forties.
3. c) Student loan burdens are high, and housing is still unaffordably expensive post-bubble, while mortgages have gotten much more difficult to obtain. Taken together with ruinous (and non-dischargeable!) student loans, this makes it notably harder than in the past for a freshly-minted college graduate to find his way to anything more than either a crash pad or moving back in with the parents.
4. d) Cultural cues tell us that immature, foolish, and stupid men are the norm, and manly virtues are either forgotten or proscribed or in a state of complete confusion. The ubiquity of “idiot-man adverts” is just one easily spotted manifestation of this.
5. e) Female empowerment has had certain side-effects; for instance, empowering women to be demanding, self-centered, and unforgiving, with unrealistic expectations; and empowering them to elevate female friends (sometimes along with the ever-popular gay male mascot) above all others—including any man they might marry, whom it is all too easy to relegate to the status of a junior partner.
6. f) Women are much more eager to get married than to stay married. Your humble Blog Goliard knows all too many good guys who married, tried—albeit imperfectly—to please their wives and be the men they wanted, stayed away from the worst vices, had children with them…and then wound up kicked to the curb or abandoned at the wife’s whim. (Refer to e) above: girlfriends are for life, men are disposable.) This is a very, very common story these days.

Given all of this, why not take a slacker McJob, share a crash pad with some buddies, and retreat to a world of videogames, TV, beer, hookups, and porn?

The American ideology of work—which underlies so much of the up-by-the-bootstraps advice one receives when one has fallen on hard times—generally holds that hard work is not only a necessary cause of success, but very nearly a sufficient cause.

Your humble Blog Goliard dissents. Hard work is highly correlated with success, yes. But much like intelligence and any number of virtues, it is not necessary…and is nowhere near sufficient.

The American ideology of work also holds that hard work is not only productive in se but virtuous in se.^* Again, I agree that there is often a strong correlation. But again, I dissent.

All of us have surely had colleagues who spent ridiculous amounts of time in the office or the library, spinning their hamster wheels so very hard, but to very little benefit. And all of us can surely think of any number of people who have worked tremendously hard to accomplish great evil.

What, she’s still around?

Apparently she is…but not for much longer, not on the radio anyhow. Because, as she told Larry King (what, he’s still around?), she has decided against renewing her contract, as she is tired of not being able to fully exercise her First Amendment rights.

Some of the usual suspects have responded with their usual lectures about what the First Amendment is and is not. It’s clear enough what she was trying to convey, though: Dr. Laura wishes to be able to exercise her First Amendment rights without worrying about blowback from her sponsors. Fair enough. Even those of us of a vastly more modest station, such as your humble Blog Goliard, can experience frustration over the things we would wish to say but cannot. And he can summon up a small bit of sympathy for a woman who has for years faced a relentless campaign against her…one that has shown itself capable of the same hate and intolerance it accuses her of having.

But only a small bit. For one thing, no one forced her into the arena. For another, she’s held on to her nationally-syndicated radio show for, what, 15-20 years? Put out a newsletter and numerous books that sold scads of copies? Had a TV show for awhile?

Yes, it would just kill your humble Blog Goliard to have such severe obstacles in his way when all he seeks is the freedom to speak his mind and the ability to have his little voice heard for once. (And that’s not even mentioning the added inhumanity of being paid millions of dollars to face those challenges.)

There have always been plenty of reasons to politely decline Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s offers of moral advice. Now there’s at least one more.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment.

It is an occasion for your humble Blog Goliard to remark upon two things.

First, he would like to remind the rest of America (especially those who love to look down their noses at the rubes out in flyover country…even if they’re not entirely sure where Idaho or Iowa are, or even if they’re the same state or not) that we in the Mountain West were way ahead of you here.

Second, he would like to reiterate his main point from two posts prior (The Obsolescence of Article V). If it required a Constitutional Amendment to extend the voting franchise to women (or to extend it to 18-year-olds, or to end the poll tax), then it should absolutely require an Amendment for the Federal government to require states to expand or modify the scope and terms of marriage, or even to enshrine marriage in civil law in the first place.

This is stated so broadly because this is not a point that pertains only to same-sex unions. If the Federal government wishes to create same-sex unions, or legalize polygamy, or establish uniform national standards for age of consent or consanguinity, or compel states to either grant or deny annulments and divorces under certain circumstances, or anything else of the kind, it may only do so if the States relinquish to the Federal government the general police powers reserved to them under our system of government (see Amendment X).

And the only legitimate way to do that is to pass a Constitutional Amendment.

Clive Crook at The Atlantic posted a piece yesterday that seemed most promising based on the headline: “Climategate and the Big Green Lie”. And it wasn’t bad really; yet the opening made it clear that it would never live up to the headline’s promise. It also made clear, once more, just what we’re dealing with in this climate change business.

The author has to remind us where he stands, as he puts it, in order to demonstrate that he is a decent person who of course takes the global warming religion seriously, and doesn’t really doubt it like those wicked heretical “deniers”. No, of course not…he’s just concerned that some people on his side have been a bit naughty in the way they’ve fought for truth and justice.

Such bowing to orthodoxy and denunciation of heresy—even if thoroughly insincere—is simply the price of admission to the debate these days, if you wish to be taken seriously by polite society. It’s all the demonstration one needs to establish that the bien-pensant segment of Western society is once again in the grip of a pseudo-religious (and, once again, not a little crypto-Marxist) delusion.

In the ’70s we were all going to die because of global cooling. In the ’00s we were all going to die because of global warming. In the 2030s, I’m sure, people will laugh at how silly we all were back in the ’70s and ’00s…while they fret about the undeniable fact that all of us are going to die because of global temperatures staying too much the same.

That is, if that decade’s version of the deadly flu pandemic doesn’t get us all first. (We’ve had avian, and swine at least twice…maybe it will be the donkey flu next? The llama flu?)

Your humble Blog Goliard may not be a Brit, but in a pinch he can play one on TV. Or at least, he follows Anglosphere politics avidly enough to now and then roam about, playing at being Mark Steyn (with much the same beard, but vastly inferior knowledge of Broadway tunes).

This morning, it was a post on ConservativeHome that got the commenting juices flowing. The full article is short enough to read, but the gist is that some geniuses across the pond put together a report entitled “Future of Politics”, which dispenses advice on how politicos can “keep up with a new generation of ‘digital natives’”—largely by doing more stuff on the Internet, whether or not there is any real benefit in doing so.

And of course, it simply must be two-way, “interactive”, Web 2.0, [insert additional buzzwords here], because plain old websites have of course become completely passé and useless. So says everyone…particularly those folks over there, whom you may recognize from about fifteen minutes ago, when they were grabbing you by the lapels to tell you that you needed to hire them to make a Web 1.0 website for you right now, because that was the Future. (It appears that the Future has become even less durable than Aldous Huxley feared.)

Anyhow, the ConservativeHome blogger reported on the new document with some thoughtful criticism, but not nearly enough to suit this reader…or to ward off some silly follow-on comments welcoming the coming age of interactive Prime Minister’s Questions and Internet-based plebiscitary democracy. So yours truly chimed in to say:

What a damn fool bit of starry-eyed technobabble.

There’s almost too many points to be made here for one to sort out.

1) That graphic tells you more than it means to. It portrays technology being used, not to bring the House information necessary for informed debate, but rather the 24-hour news channel simulacrum of “information”. To wit: shallow visual flash. Fancy graphics, b-roll video, a mugshot of a person, outline maps…all of which are designed not to convey information, but to give ADD television viewers sufficient visual stimulus to prevent them changing the channel.

2) The digerati may think they have invented two-way conversations, but Alexander Graham Bell might have disagreed…as might anyone else who has ever engaged in that hopelessly outmoded exercise that involves standing in close proximity to another person and alternating between exercising one’s vocal cords and employing one’s ears.

And anyhow, meaningful two-way communication between MPs and the public will always be rare, whatever technology is employed, so long as: a) there are millions, not dozens, of Britons who would like to have their concerns heard and their questions answered…and only so many hours in a day; and b) one end of the conversation involves a politician who endeavours to say as little as possible while talking, whilst working in as many focus-grouped PR phrases as possible.

3) Even to the extent that a more involved and connected public is possible, that would first require an informed public capable of rational deliberation on the public good. How many of the people texting in their queries to be put to the Prime Minister will meet this requirement…especially if they are all ‘digital natives’?

Mitchell and Webb really deserve the last word here (the full skit can be found here):

What possible reason could there be for you to not email us? Certainly ignorance shouldn’t be a bar. You might not know anything about the issue, but I bet you reckon something. So why not tell us what you reckon? Let us enjoy the full majesty of your uniformed, ad hoc reckon by going to bbc.co.uk/meandmyimportantthoughts (all one word), clicking on ‘What I Reckon’ and simply beating on the keyboard with your fists or head.

In the course of a discussion of H-1B visas, John Derbyshire is concerned about the career choices of young people if they are indeed being displaced or discouraged by imported workers:

Smart youngsters will drift away into junk disciplines — or worse yet, into Law School, adding to our already way-overstock of verbal-ability parasites, and piling yet more nuisance lawsuits on the ever-shrinking productive part of our economy.

If only it were so! In reality, today’s law school graduates have far dimmer job prospects than the info-tech folks he is (still rightly) concerned about.

There are two reasons for this. First, we’ve got way too many law graduates already—there’s a limit to how many parasites can feed on any host—yet both applications and available places continue to increase. Second, even those who do find well-paying legal jobs after graduation are often quickly miserable and seeking a way out.

Why the latter? The ratcheting up of work hours and expectations in recent decades has been at its fiercest in law firms…and to what end exactly? For those of us under 40, we’re not sure. The problem of the dead hand of the Boomers is as strong in the law as anywhere: the higher echelons are jammed full of them, and they are remorselessly reluctant to get out of the way, or to cut us anywhere near the same deal they got when they do make way. (Academia—your humble Goliard’s second line of qualifications, in addition to law—is even worse in this regard.)

As an academic advisor at a large state university, I try to educate and/or disillusion my young charges, who think their only career choices in this world are lawyer, cop, or doctor, and that two of these three are a guaranteed ticket to the upper classes. (At best only the latter is…and you might be surprised there too.)

Their naïveté I understand—they’re young and know little of the world beyond the fantasies they’ve had planted in their heads in school, and almost every prime-time television drama they’ve ever seen has been either a cop show, a lawyer show, or a doctor show. What continues to amaze me is that their parents overwhelmingly share this perspective. Don’t they know how the work world works themselves? Don’t they have any friends with kids who went off to law school and came back home with a J.D., $100,000 in debt, and a short-term gig doing document review for $20 an hour?

(Think that’s an outlandish scenario? See this entry on the WSJ Law Blog, and the Journal article it links to. The blog’s comments section is worth a browse too.)

Now I know that there are people in my age cohort who have nonetheless done very well for themselves, and that I could be one of them if I had more of a knack for making money and rising in this world. Or if at least one of the many things I am very good at had a tendency to pay well. Also, my life is sweet and full in any number of non-financial ways. So I don’t seek pity for myself, or to seem more whiny than is called for on behalf of my age cohort.

On the other hand, I know that I am far from the only thirty-something who—whatever my numerous flaws—is bright, highly (over?) educated, works hard, plays well with others, is honest and upstanding…and feels stuck. (And, in my case, lucky to be making nearly $30,000 a year with good benefits—and that after a mere six years in the job and ten years of higher education!)

How much of this has to do with immigration, how much with the changes and disruptions in family life, how much with education, how much with the broader crisis in young men, how much with Gen-Xers simply sucking as an age cohort…I dunno. What I do know is that precious few of these concerns seem to be reflected in any of the political campaigns so far this year.

Which may, actually, be one of my generation’s few bits of luck: being mostly overlooked by the folks in Washington. Life is challenging enough without the President and Ted Kennedy trying to help us.

I’ve been softening on the issue of capital punishment as of late, but that has done little to dampen my enthusiasm for a plan I came up with a short time ago to deal with spammers, phishers, 419 scammers, and the more malicious breed of hackers. To wit: I propose that a group of wealthy tech people get together to establish, and generously fund, a secret international hit squad tasked with taking down these bad actors, who threaten to make e-mail—and the Internet more broadly—all but unusable.

The proposition may seem somewhat drastic, but one must realize that an increasing proportion of the malefactors operate outside of the tidier and more law-abiding jurisdictions; to this Blog Goliard’s mind, that leaves extrajudicial assassination as the only real option.

And the faint of heart should be consoled by the knowledge that not all of them—not even near all of them—would have to be liquidated. Making an example of a relatively small number of egregious offenders should have a robust deterrent effect on the rest, since most of this behavior proliferates not because the benefits are all that great, but because the costs are nearly non-existent.

Introducing the risk of sudden, violent death would go very far in balancing out the equation.

It has long been a pet theory of mine (pet theory #322, if I recall correctly) that people today, especially Baby Boomers, have come to believe that if they do everything perfectly—perfect diet, perfect exercise regimen, perfect use of all safety devices, perfect medical care, perfect precautions taken in response to every scare that comes down the pike—they will not die. Or even grow old and sick and frail. But above all, not die. Because death is a mistake, not part of life.

But last I checked, the mortality rate was still holding steady at 100%. Yes, if you try to live sensibly and make good decisions and take care of yourself, you can increase your odds of having a longer and healthier life, and not going before your time. (Inner peace has physical benefits too, I believe.) But your time will come. As will your parents’, and your children’s, and everyone else’s.

Be sensible, be good to yourself, take good care of those in your charge. Enjoy the time that you have and the moments you spend with loved ones. Know that everything comes to an end, but don’t let that knowledge crush you. Above all, nolite timere: be not afraid.

We take risks, tremendous risks, when we dare to love, to form families, to make babies and welcome them into this world. We have every hope for happiness and joy, but accept that some sorrow is inevitable, and a whole lot of sorrow is quite possible. We take those risks anyway, whether out of love or naïvete or some mixture of the two. We take them because we are human, and because deep down we realize that, regardless of the outcome, our lives would be much poorer without them.

Nolite timere. Be not afraid.