It may look like a far-fetched notion, but in this fascinating article from Nicholas Eberstadt and Hans Groth it becomes clear that there is indeed a silver lining to Europe's demographic problems:

Another economic benefit of healthy aging is that longer and healthier lifespans mean more vigorous senior citizens. The payoff would come not from putting great-grandparents to work but mainly from greater productive activity among people in their 50s and 60s. The generation of western Europeans currently 50 to 74 years old is more physically robust, and better educated and trained, than any before in that age group in the continent's history. The health and education of similarly aged cohorts in the future can be expected to increase further over the next quarter century--even as ordinary working conditions in Western Europe's knowledge-based and service-driven economy continue to become less arduous. All of this could make for an upsurge in economic activity among older western Europeans.

I have long argued that it is ridiculous to forcibly retire perfectly healthy and productive citizens only because they have reached the arbitrary mark of '60' or '65'. That in particular is an issue when the cost of that is passed on to society at large. Some nations are catching on to this, the Germans for instance have bravely set the first steps on the road to retirement age reform a little while ago. The benefits would translate into such tangibles as increased purchasing power and enlarging the scope for savings which in turn would benefit investment and growth. As obvious as the fix is, the harder it will be to implement as it requires a significant change in social and cultural attitudes, note where Europeans stand today:

Yet, over the last generation, western Europeans have translated all of their increased life expectancy--and then some--into leisure time. As life expectancy has risen steadily, the average age of retirement has fallen.

[ ... ]

Contrast these developments with patterns in other affluent OECD societies. Although in the United States, Japan, and South Korea labor-force participation at older ages has also declined as prosperity has increased, a major gap now separates these countries from prosperous western European ones.

The nature of European retirement will therefore have to change for the old continent to maintain its living standards or allow them to keep growing at roughly the same pace as North America and emerging economies. The beauty of it all is that these changes should be within reach even when we take into account that uniquely European obsession with leisure. Wealth can be built at a far earlier age allowing not so much the option to eventually retire, but the flexibility to work part-time later in life. Or better still, pursue career interests that are less driven by the need to pay the bills but by finding work that addresses self-fulfillment while matching the needs for “downtime” that come with advanced age.

I for one can not see myself retire fully, but I do look forward to shifting around some of my current activities so that they match my interests better. If I can continue to get paid for that, all the better. Sure, there will always be a mandatory component to setting retirement terms, but we should be able to move away from today’s often expensive and highly arbitrary model to something which actually generates wealth for a society. Europe, take note.

Further to the plans to make ‘happiness’ an integral part of public policy, Darrin McMahon (via Paul Kedrosky) at Cato takes a closer look at this hard to grasp concept and its historical roots:

Thus, one of the most striking developments in Western societies over the last several hundred years is the steady expansion of the hope and expectation of happiness in this life. Concomitant with this expansion has been the steady erosion of other ways of conceiving of life’s purpose and end. If other ways of doing so have not been entirely abandoned — there are those who still live for virtue, honor, one’s homeland, or family name — in a world that places a premium on good feeling and positive emotion, these other ends have nowhere near the power to channel and constrain our choices that they once did.

One of my concerns always has been that - especially in the European context – the idea of being happy is turned into a basic right and that the failure of public channels to provide it constitutes a justifiable grievance. It has also spawned a culture of hedonism or self-indulgence that is making it increasingly impossible for many to truly appreciate the sacrifices one needs to make to attain a certain state of happiness. That conclusion brings us right back to the basic difference between ‘happiness’ and the ‘pursuit of happiness’. It is startling to note that in Europe some are considering to incorporate ‘happiness’ into the same box of health, environment & welfare and thus putting an inordinate burden on governments to deliver on it.

And yes, this once more underlines one of the fundamental differences between Americans and Europeans. It stands to be reasoned however that as societies get wealthier and less effort is required to become happy, feelings of unhappiness can increase exponentionally. The proliferation of shrinks I dare say is an American phenomenon. Here is McMahon again:

On one level, then, we worry about happiness today with such single-minded focus because we can: Inhabitants of the world’s developed nations are the most fortunate creatures to have walked the face of the earth. And yet for all our focus on happiness it is by no means clear that we are happier as a result. Might we not even say that our contemporary concern is something of an inauspicious sign, belying a deep anxiety and doubt about the object of our pursuit? Does the fact that we worry so much about being happy suggest that we are not?

McMahon goes on to argue that individuals are far better positioned to find their state of happiness rather than the state delivering it to them.

For myself I still haven’t figured out what constitutes happiness, which to some extent also explains my global quest to discover it. Happiness probably falls apart in three key categories: where you are, what you do and who is accompanying you during the journey. I have nailed down the last part and am beginning to get a firmer grip on the 'what you do' part, but my deepest feelings of unhappiness are most often triggered by, “Why am I not living in New York?” or “Did I abandon Asia to soon?” or better still, “What if I returned to Europe?”. Of course these questions reflect precisely what McMahon says: the relative ease with which such goals can be realized these days contribute directly to our feelings of unhappiness.

This probably will be a recurring Peaktalk item, almost worthy of a new category.

On one continent it is the individual pursuit of it, on the other an objective for public policy:

A group of economists, sociologists and policy wonks are gathering in Rome Monday to discuss these questions. It comes as happiness has blossomed into a growing field of study, with hundreds of journal articles published in the past seven years alone.

The conference will focus on whether life satisfaction can be quantified and integrated into policy. “We are, it seems, much closer to measuring how happy people are, as well as understanding more clearly other aspects of their subjective well-being,” noted the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, one of the conference's organizers, on its website.

“These advances, so some would argue, open the door to different paradigms for policy-making...which see people's happiness, rather than national income, as the goal that policy-makers seek to maximize.”

I am open to the argument that GDP is probably not the best indicator to measure overall well being, but deeply suspicious of declaring a highly subjective concept like happiness as new territory for public policy.

And how we cope.

Mark Schmitt and Rosa Brooks argue the statistical insignificance of the results presented earlier this week.

A long anticipated study about the effects of the time children spend in day care is released, the NYT reports. It's important that there now is some solid evidence to support the assumption that both parents working, and longer hours at that, will have some negative impact on childen's behavior:

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.

But the finding held up regardless of the child’s sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than two million American preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors argue.

So the price we're paying for all of this is probably not as dramatic as some would have us believe. Yet given the fact that more and more households have both parents employed and that the quality of day care is not necessarily improving, I remain convinced that any day care time for pre-Kindergarten kids needs to be balanced with family time:

And as parents in the thick of it know all too well, the stress of juggling chores, work and young children does not help. “It’s not an easy ride,” Ms. Robb said, “and you can see that here at drop-off time and in the evening when kids are picked up.”

Picking up your kid in the evening is probably not the wisest approach to finding that balance.

Amitai Etzioni is back blogging. He's written a thought provoking piece on how the West is struggling with the tension between materialism and the quest for spiritualism and how that affects our relationships with other cultures. Key quote:

Western secularism largely avoids these issues. Its consumer hedonism has an appeal of its own, but more and more people find that they cannot keep up with the Joneses. Hence the growing alienation in the countryside and among urban migrants—among the majority of the people—in developing nations such as India and China. The West does well when it extols the dignity of the individual, the value of autonomy and human rights. However these are basically ideologies that serve as compelling antidotes to excessive governmental intrusions and celebrate self-government. They do not address the questions that a person faces once he is free to choose, free to set his own course of destiny and purpose.

Read the whole thing.

A number of readers forwarded me a link to How Not to Talk to Your Kids a lengthy but fascinating piece:

For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.

When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short.

But a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.

The study has found that effort-related forms of praise work much better and actually teach a kid persistence rather than a blanket "you're intelligent". Of course, this is one of our current social ills where many parents lack the time and effort to teach and help their kids along. This then results in the never-ending praise which in turn is also leveraged to enhance the status of some kids in a group: one or two average performers in my daughter's classroom have been elevated to superstar status purely on the basis of parental anecdotal evidence of the "they're so intelligent" variety.

Anyway, this is a must-read for parents or anyone who wants to retroactively figure out how his or her performance was affected by distinct parental praise methods.

Following my earlier post on this, Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber sheds some more light on the happiness of Dutch kids in particular. As I suspected, generous public arrangements as well as socially liberal attitudes explain quite a bit here, but it is clear that such policies do not necessarily work in any jurisdiction, ie. the Dutch cultural and physical setting somehow makes them work better. What is also noteworthy however in Robeyns’ piece is the observation that certain hierarchical structures which should in the end be to the benefit of children are under serious pressure:

“ … educational reforms in the last decades which have propagated the so-called “New Learning”, whereby children have been given more autonomy in deciding what to learn, and in learning to collect information and present information and opinions, rather than actually learning knowledge. Are French and German too difficult? Then why bother learning it, no-one forces you to do so. Why study history or geography if you can find all information in Wikipedia? In the Dutch debate, there is a consensus emerging that the educational reforms and this ‘New Learning’ have done more harm than good, and that children are increasingly lacking sufficient knowledge and skills in mathematics, sciences, and writing skills. In short, I think that these anti-hierarchical views on children’s education, whereby children are seen as equals to their parents and teachers, have harmed the children educational capital in the long run.

Indeed, excessive individualism combined with its inherent anarchical tendencies has started to produce that we may consider a ‘rudderless’ generation. Sure, in the short term this may produce children that are unusually well and happy in their overall being, but in the long run it may lead to some very disgruntled citizens whose social compass and lack of proper learning will add an additional cost to society. And that as I have explained at lengths before is one of the key issues facing most western societies.

Also, for the demographically inclined, it is important to note that despite the lavish taxpayer funded arrangements that support families with children, the Dutch birth rate remains remarkably low.

Unicef has produced a report considering children's well being in 21 industrial nations. The results are remarkable, Dutch kids topped the list, but the Brits have been embarrassed by taking the bottom slot:

It is predicted that by 2010 there will be more children living in a step-family than in their biological family.

According to today's report, the UK lags in other areas too such as the number of children living in relative poverty, vaccination rates, and the time spent talking, or eating with a parent or parents.

It also has high rates of obesity, drunkenness, bullying, early sexual intercourse, cannabis-taking and teenage pregnancy.

Britain was rated higher for education, but languished in the bottom third for each of the other measures, giving it an overall placing at the bottom, along with the US.

Of course, we can take these findings with the usual grain of salt and qualify them as an attempt by the UN to favor statist economies over free-market entities, but that would be too simple and somewhat disingenuous. So, let’s for a second assume that this is not the case and that the various indicators used by Unicef can be measured objectively and create certain averages by which countries can compensate for scoring low in one area but high in another. Now, take a look at the list:

1. Netherlands 2. Sweden 3. Denmark 4. Finland 5. Spain 6. Switzerland 7. Norway 8. Italy 9. Republic of Ireland 10. Belgium 11. Germany 12. Canada 13. Greece 14. Poland 15. Czech Republic 16. France 17. Portugal 18. Austria 19. Hungary 20. United States 21. United Kingdom

Apart from the obvious conclusion that this report offers some great talking points to Gordon Brown, what explains these rankings?

Are free market economies putting pressure on children’s overall well-being? Possibly, the UK and the USA are not doing very well here, but Canada and Ireland who both ranked in the top-10 of the world’s freest economies are doing much better, although they’re not as high on this list as one might expect.

Religion? Take a look at the first ten: the Catholics and Protestants are distributed fairly evenly, although the first four are largely protestant.

Social tolerance? High divorce rates? The Dutch and Swedes have been pioneers in this department so that does not necessarily support the notion that the break-up of families and alternative lifestyles contribute to children that are less happy. What is worthwhile to note though is that Ireland, Italy and Spain – all catholic – who have the some of the lowest divorce rates on the planet, end up doing well in this ranking.

Cultural confidence? The least likely of all I would say, as it would ensure that the self-assured Brits and Americans would do much better than say the Dutch or the Belgians. This however is an anecdotal measure that is based largely on my own observations.

Maybe smaller countries are scoring better here, compare the numbers 1-10 to 11-20, but that again is not a very satisfactory measure in my mind, as it doesn’t really explain anything.

Yet, there are four northern European countries that top the list who each are known for being economically strong with relatively free markets, have predominantly protestant origins, are socially tolerant, and whose economies have been able to support lavish welfare arrangement without a crippling economic effect. The US has protestant origins and so has Britain, are economically successful, have less generous entitlements handed out by the state and are less liberal on the social front. A pattern? A possible explanation? This is a tough one, feedback is welcome.

UPDATE: Of course, the Dutch "no nonsense" style is an important factor here as one reader says:

I'd like to think my family's attitude towards discipline, during my upbringing, approached Dutch norms of the times: "Firm, but fair." In other words, a variation on the "Here's the line; you'll be warned if you cross it and there will be consequences if you do it again." approach.

Seems to have worked very well with our daughter, who was raised in a purely North American environment. Empathetic, respectful, pensive, reflective, great sense of humour, loyal, an A student. In any event, she herself has on more than one occasion told us how much she appreciated that simple attitude.

It's a comment we often hear from other parents and teachers who observe our kids.

It's been a while since we visited the risk aversion department, but it is one of my favorite topics. The latest is from Britain:

Teachers who refuse to let children take risks are undermining the economy, a former director general of the Confederation of British Industry says today.

In a savage attack on the health and safety culture in schools, Sir Digby Jones says that a generation of "cotton wool kids" are applying for jobs without any leadership or entrepreneurial skills.

He blames a raft of politically-correct policies imposed by head teachers, including sports days which have been banned to stop children being stigmatised as "losers" if they come last.

[ ... ]

"If we never took a risk our children would not learn to walk, climb stairs, ride a bicycle or swim; business would not develop innovative new products, move into new markets and create wealth for all; scientists would not experiment and discover; we would not have great art, literature, music and architecture," says Sir Digby.

It reminds me of the snowball ban from a few years ago. It should be clear that we can't just blame the schools here, many parents these days have an extraordinary tendency to opt for creating catatonic kids by combining risk aversion with low intensity activities. Not good. My daughters at ages six and four can swim, fight and are able to complete lengthy hikes and they love it. The school here however does do a pretty good 'bear awareness' campaign which I consider to be a very sensible form of 'risk preparation'.

The Dutch are not increasingly secular according to this interesting piece from Joshua Livestro in the Weekly Standard, rather secularization in the lowlands peaked in the 1990s and faith is making a steady comeback, albeit in a different format:

Apart from being a herald of potential change from secular to post-secular society, youth churches are also an indicator of another significant development, namely the move away from the church of bricks and mortar to a less clearly recognizable, more informal setting. Youth churches seem to meet anywhere but in traditional church buildings: cultural centers, sports halls, school assembly rooms, parking lots, even in night clubs. The idea is that something that less resembles a traditional church might prove more welcoming to potential new believers.

[ … ]

The question, though, is whether Christianity is best placed to profit from this development. For better or for worse, Dutch Christianity is now largely an underground phenomenon. If an average Dutchman has any picture of Christianity, it is of empty pews and derelict church buildings.

As with the impending demographic bust, the jury is still out on this particular phenomenon and it may be a while before we can confidently claim that secularization was a late 20th century fluke.

There are however a number of remarkable indicators that God is not exactly ‘out’. As Livestro notes, for all the Muslim immigrants arriving in The Netherlands there is also a significant Christian influx - think of the droves of Catholic Poles for instance – that contribute to this phenomenon. Furthermore, during the last general election, the parties with a Christian background did surprisingly well, the small Christian Union will for the first time in its history form part of a coalition government. And lastly, I do think there is a natural tendency in atheist and individualistic western societies to somehow re-connect with spirituality and community. The question of course is if that urge is channeled in the right direction as I can think of many other houses of worship that would make continued secularization a far more preferable option.

Islam however is according to Livestro not all that well-positioned:

Even the most optimistic estimates of Dutch Muslim organizations put the number of converts to Islam at no more than a few hundred a year. With immigration from Islamic countries grinding to a halt and birth rates among the Muslim community further approximating average Dutch birthrates with each new generation, it seems unlikely to say the least that visions of a caliphate in Holland will come to pass in this century--or the next, for that matter.

Speculation of course, but the notion that birth rates will overtime fall into line with the local breeding rate – often a function of economics – is correct as noted here and here before.

Kirsten Powers, a former Clinton appointee and columnist, is as perplexed as I am by what is on offer these days as role models at your local toy store. Powers has some revealing photos on her blog in order to illustrate the sad state of affairs.

There are however ways in steering our kids away from Britney & Barbie and of course the Bratz - which our girls find extraordinary cool - and that is by encouraging other options. And believe it or not, our kids have developed an unusual ability to translate our disapproval to finding workable alternatives. Last week they submitted their wish lists which are quite wholesome with the Cabbage Patch doll probably as the best example of a return to basic values. No idea where they got it from and I have also no idea how they cope with schoolfriends that drown in Bratz-stuff, but they do it.

Yet, there are other less ambiguous options to neutralize the confusion resulting from the Brat-Hilton-Whore culture and that is Fulla:

Fulla as you can see has discovered virtuousness, something we can't instill early enough in our young kids. And what's more, Fulla bucks the trend of being young and independent:

Maan Abdul Salam, a Syrian women's rights advocate, said Fulla was emblematic of a trend toward Islamic conservatism sweeping the Middle East. Though statistics are hard to come by, he said, the percentage of young Arab women who wear the hijab is far higher now than it was a decade ago, and though many girls are wearing it by choice, others are being pressured to do so.

Trying to find a middleground between Britney and Fulla and taking the time to learn young girls to make positive choices may seem obvious, but there are few parents that can actually manage it. It is too easy to succumb to the crass culture on offer, or, to just accept that "a certain idea of womanhood" has some undeniable and easy answers. Take your pick.

Putting Parents First is an excellent article from the hand of Yuval Levin and it addresses a Peaktalk core issue: the tension between capitalism and family values. And not only that, it digs deeper in arguing that this is one of the key challenges for conservatism to address now that state intervention in both the market place and the family are essentially bankrupt concepts. Here's an excerpt:

The worry of middle- and lower-middle-class families arises from a genuine tension between the two things they most eagerly strive to do: build families and build wealth. That tension, and the disquiet it causes, is especially acute for parents. Indeed, Americans in the middle class and what used to be called the working class would be better conceived of today as the parenting class. Their concerns and aspirations are no longer focused on their standing in the workplace, as they were when our political vocabulary was coming of age, but on balancing the pursuits of family and prosperity.

This is the anxiety of a successful capitalist economy filled with individuals who want to lead good lives. It is an anxiety produced by the kind of society conservatives seek to promote. It therefore calls for a response from the right, from those who share the aspiration to balance families and free markets, not those who think the system is about to collapse (and deserves to fall).

Levin argues that conservative parties thus find their challenge not in being either socially or fiscally conservative, but in mitigating the clear tension that exists between these two concepts.

It many ways this could serve as a cold shower for the unabashed free-marketeers who, like myself, have put a lot of stock in capitalism as providing unquestionable results. By taking on market deficiencies, the right will be forced to take the initiative and maintain its intellectual lead without resorting to the simple textbook of cutting taxes and rolling back government. As Levin argues, much of that has indeed been accomplished, at least in the US.

Interestingly, there is a North American conservative leader who may actually get this new approach and has already started experimenting with it in the areas of childcare and income-tax splitting. His name is Stephen Harper and his adversaries on the left have discovered that they are behind in the department of ideas:

In a press conference Tuesday, Mr. Goodale, who also serves as house leader for the Opposition, described Mr. Rae as the person to best confront the Conservative government, which he said was the “most rigidly ideological government in Canadian history”.

Yes – the mere audacity to define new ideas or a new ideological direction can land you in a most difficult spot. But there is a good reason for that as yesterday’s progressives are falling behind in defining a progressive vision for tomorrow and have in desperation turned the debate between left and right into one of "no ideas vs. ideas". At least in Canada, the conservatives are beginning to manifest themselves as today’s progressives by addressing some of Yuval Levin's points.

Contrast this:

Out of the dining room and into the stores; the traditional day of feasting has turned into a day of early holiday shopping for some.

A spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation says some retailers are trying to find a way to take advantage of the fact that "once dinner is over, many families are looking for some kind of entertainment."

With this:

But while consuming mass quantities was once a big deal -- a splurge -- now we're all used to having plenty of food. Now the real splurge consists in getting everyone to take time from their busy schedules to all get together. It's a feast of no-other-priorities! I like it. I think that Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday, because it's all about getting the family together.

And while I am writing this Irene just quotes me a number from the newspaper which says that 36% of children below the age of six have a TV in their room. And, during last week's power outage some parents actually purchased a generator so that the kids could watch TV. Imagine that they would be forced to spend social time with the rest of their family. Or, perish the thought, creatively adapt to the situation by finding some new and alternative ways of entertainment which is what our kids did.

Yes, I know I have argued for the ability of free markets to forge great societies. But eventually we will have to pay some sort of price for offering up the family and the fun of human interaction on the altar of excessive consumerism and passive entertainment.

I have been a longtime fan of Camille Paglia, in particular because she is a non-conventional thinker and able to destruct both the left and the right with her razor sharp wit. The interview with her yesterday in Salon - in which she covers a variety of current topics - is a must-read.

While clearly identifying Iraq as a mess and Bush as "out of his depth" this onetime Democrat has no qualms about reducing her party to absolute rubble. More importantly, she understands the challenges of our future better than most of her contemporaries, note the following:

But my generation of baby-boom Democrats hasn't done much deep thinking about international issues except in terms of postmodernist fragmentation or fuzzy, smiley-face multiculturalism. We desperately need better candidates.

As for looking to the future here are Paglia's key indicators of impending doom:

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. How are we ever going to get wise leadership or sophisticated diplomacy from people who have such a distorted, clichéd view about everything that's wrong with the United States?

And my favorite:

The more liberal parents are, the less contact their children have with religious ideas. That will surely disable our future American leaders from being able to understand the religious commitment of Islamic fundamentalists. Liberal journalists often seem incredulous about how anyone would seek death for religious principles. But that was the entire history of early Christianity, when the saints willingly sought martyrdom. We're heading into that world again.

Paglia is not calling for a religious revival, but for a measure of historical and religious awareness. Looking around me I am astounded to note how incredibly shallow historical knowledge is these days, especially among the 'well-educated' middle classes, the group supposedly forming the backbone of our society. It is one of the key reasons why western societies are so divided over rogue nations going nuclear and Muslim zealots blowing themselves up on commuter trains: most of us simply can’t recognize the phenomenon, much less conceive of any action to protect ourselves against it.

Even as a secular person, I would still strongly advocate to regain some of the moral bearings that religion has given us and at the same time try and raise a new generation with some basic historical awareness. The fact that I grew up in a house stacked with historical works and a father who had seen – and taken me – to war cemetery after war cemetery in Europe did at least leave me in a position where I could write the stuff that I write here on this site.

And Paglia is therefore on the mark in arguing that the absence of any clear leadership from either the right or the left in these challenging times is so troubling. So far we’ve been lucky in escaping any real disaster but we better start investing in a new generation that is bound to face situations where luck is no longer a sufficient enough tool to ward of our destruction.

Have a good weekend. Next week it will be Theo Van Gogh week over here.

Andrew Sullivan is promoting his new book, The Conservative Soul which I haven't read as yet, but the many reviews so far tell me we all should.

If you have the time I recommend the interview Sullivan did with Hugh Hewitt yesterday. Transcript here and audio here. Not sure if it is all that enlightening, but it is a highly entertaining debate.

The Sunday Times investigates how the debate over the separation between church and state on the European side of the ocean is back in full force. Expect that discussion to grow more intense with time, so do take note of this useful primer.

The notion of Europe’s demographic bust is questioned once more. France's policies to avoid one are apparently paying off through some clever social engineering:

But the propensity of women here to have more babies has little to do with notions of French romance or the population's formerly strong religious ties to the Roman Catholic Church.

France heavily subsidizes children and families from pregnancy to young adulthood with liberal maternity leaves and part-time work laws for women. The government also covers some child-care costs of toddlers up to 3 years old and offers free child-care centers from age 3 to kindergarten, in addition to tax breaks and discounts on transportation, cultural events and shopping.

Very few countries so far have been able to get childcare, inextricably linked to birthrates, right. A prime example are the Dutch where women have been urged by relentless government campaigning to join the workforce, but where any solid childcare plans to support these policies have been sorely lacking. It is not that different here in Canada where the current conservative government has been trying to encourage moms or dads to stay at home, but the monetary reward for that so far has been paltry to say the least. And that is where the essence of encouraging birth rates and extended childcare is: to what extent can the state interfere and fund it all?

For the statist French that has been a relatively easy question to answer and that is why they are getting results. Now the issue is whether all these babies will eventually find a job in France’s moribund economy.

In November’s edition of Prospect Eric Kaufmann puts forward the idea that Europe may follow America in terms of demographics and in turn become a more conservative and religious entity, leaving its liberal-secular peak behind in the past. So, instead of the popular immigration and economics induced demise, he suggests this alternative:

Even so, religiosity—as belief rather than attendance—significantly predicts a more conservative ideological orientation. Though we are unlikely to see the rise of evangelical Christian politics in Europe, we may find a long-term drift towards more conservative social values. Europeans will become more "traditional" on moral issues like abortion, family values, religious education and gay marriage. Inter-faith co-operation between Christians and Muslims on these issues is quite possible since ecumenical structures are already in place in most countries to facilitate it. The ease with which conservative Protestants and traditionalist Catholics and Jews have co-operated in the US may be taken as evidence. Much will depend on how these ideological synergies are channelled by parties and electoral systems in different countries, but by the mid-21st century, the peak of secular European politics will be long past. As in America, politicians will need to stay on the right side of religious sentiment to ensure they are not outflanked by their opponents.

It’s an interesting theory and you should read the whole article to appreciate the complexity of projecting demographic and social trends. Stanley Kurtz at The Corner is on the mark in arguing that Kaufmann‘s prediction may not be all that reliable, but that we equally can not afford to take any other scenario for granted all that easily.

I’ve long argued that pessimism of the ‘Sharia 2050’ nature relies on overly simplistic assumptions. However promoting such scenarios can help today in trying to alter tomorrow’s outcomes. Kaufmann has just given us a few more tools to predict and influence that future.

Since I do not want to sound overly alarmist and let one incident define a broad social trend, I initially stayed away from the attacks on ambulances in The Netherlands. Yet there was simply too much to ignore and last night another incident occurred, in my old hometown of all places:

Two police officers in Vlaardingen were slightly injured last night after they offered assistance to two ambulance workers after they were threatened. In the downtown area of the city they were set upon when trying to help someone who had lost consciousness.

The reason for the threatening behaviour wasn’t clear. The windows of the ambulance were kicked in after which the police was called in. When it arrived some 250 men turned against the police.

Crime numbers however it seems are down, no doubt providing some good ammunition for the governing parties during the election campaign. It is probably harder to come up with indicators that measure the moral rot that enables some to attack first aid crews, as well as police when they arrive on the scene.

Michelle Malkin writes about how the Bratz culture is corrupting our young girls and how we need to find better role models. Couldn't agree more. But she ends with a remarkable mea culpa:

Not that it's so easy. I confess I broke down and let my 6-year-old daughter have a Bratz lunchbox. Now she wants to be a Bratz doll for Halloween, an idea that warrants only one word (a word not said often enough): "No."

And sure enough, what did the Dorsmans do a few months back after being pressured by a six and four year old? They made a Bratz birthday cake for the four year old. It was a Baby Bratz one, but still. Bad, bad, bad.

Here is an excellent example of social engineering that through its arbitrary and mandatory nature will no doubt have a detrimental effect on companies' and shareholders’ ability to effectively manage their affairs:

Within the next year, the 510 Norwegian companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange must have 40% of their respective board seats occupied by women. Any company failing to comply will be booted off the OSE. For now, the law passed in 2002 only applies to publicly traded companies. But the government is considering extending the law’s reach to cover family-owned companies as well.

While I do understand the background to that European penchant to get women to work, it is hard to see how such an objective can be achieved by such drastically enforced legislation. The only way to encourage more female representation on boards is to let the market do its work and build boards based on merit and achievement. Women have advanced rapidly in terms of career development and achievement over the past few decades, so I don’t see why this process needs to be artificially accelerated by some overzealous nordic legislators.

Secondly, while measures like this will throw a bit of a challenge in front of large publicly traded companies; they will make life for medium and small sized businesses all that much harder. I have been closely involved in building boards for a number of early stage technology forms and if they had to comply with what is now on the table in Norway, their difficult first years would have been even harder.

Finally, I could make a lame joke about Patricia Dunn, but I won’t.

Yes, Pope Benedict XVI fits into that long line of polemicists who have in- or unintentionally run afoul of the Muslim world as Der Spiegel argues here. Rushdie, Hirsi Ali and of course Theo van Gogh come to mind. But if we use that analogy than almost immediately it becomes evident that the Pope’s comments have most likely not been that inadvertent after all. At least I believe that this pontiff is far too clever and experienced to have miscalculated the impact of his comments, he was after all the ideological force behind his media savvy predecessor, John Paul II.

The question now of course is if the free wrold needs to rally behind what Christopher Hitchens calls a “moribund church” or the force of secular reason in dealing with radical Islam. The Pope has put his option the table, but I fear that there will not be that many takers. On the other hand we know that reason and secularism are, despite their compelling nature, not exactly providing the morally strong cohesion that we need going forward. And therein we find the hard problem: the West remains far more divided than its current opponents who despite their own internal divisions have embraced something that we seemed to have lost a long time ago. Like him or not, our German pontiff is probably one of the few to have articulated that particular weakness.

Andrew Sullivan is back from his sojourn, part of which he spent in Amsterdam. I was looking forward to some interesting observations, but alas, even our Sully is stuck in the same old rut when it comes to defining things Dutch:

It was nonetheless eye-opening to visit a free country, compared with the U.S. Observing people actually allowed to relax over a joint and a cappuccino in a coffee-house, or buy some soul-expanding mushrooms at small, regulated stores as common as Starbucks was a reminder that not every society is terrified of pleasure or freedom or happiness.

It depends on how you define freedom, but compared to the US and Canada, the Dutch are probably overregulated and overtaxed to an extraordinary degree, so let's keep things in perspective. Yes, this is probably a function of being one of the world’s most densely populated nations, but also because of a predominant culture that in the post-war years came to believe deeply in relieving the individual from as much responsibility as possible, the nanny state in full swing. Yet, that overarching and impersonal state at the same time retreated to let individuals flourish completely unhindered in their own domain. Sounds paradoxical, but there is no other way to explain it I think: we take care of you and you can essentially do whatever you like. The breeding ground of hedonist man.

Note that I am not opposed to drug legalization, on the contrary, but the Dutch model has somehow created sizeable groups of people that are devoid of any moral or normative compass. Consider the latest, from today’s news:

The CNV Companies Union raised the alarm about the aggression with which ambulance staff and paramedics are confronted. Last month one paramedic was assaulted in Amsterdam. This happened after he decided to treat a woman who had become unwell, something that was not fully appreciated by bystanders.

"The aggression is often the result of wrong expectations the public has about the work of ambulance employees", according to Jaap Jongejan of the union. He thinks it is time for a campaign to raise the awareness among the public about what ambulances and paramedics do.

Note how Jongejan finds the solution in launching an “awareness campaign”, that great tool with which the welfare state seeks to educate its citizenry. It’s beyond belief to learn that a new phenomenon of randomly assaulting emergency staff is the topic, but there’s probably no telling what you reap if you engage in unfettered social experimentation. And there’s more:

This spring the department of Social Affairs announced that 60% of ambulance staff has been subjected to violence. According to the latest numbers a figure that has increased significantly since.

Now, there is probably no direct no correlation between smoking pot and attacking paramedics. Still, the increasing absence of basic moral and responsible behavior I believe can probably only be found in the toxic realm of an unbound citizenry and a state that has totally misread its role in a modern society. However free the Dutch are, the excesses of that freedom now beg for the state to enforce at least some normative behavior among its citizens, and that I am afraid will take more than just a simple awareness campaign.

There is a lot of controversy and debate around Andrew Sullivan’s latest column where he launches the concept of ‘Christianists’. It brought back some memories about the issue.

Maybe some of you recall that Sullivan linked to my piece about a radical Muslim who was arrested for trying to bomb Amsterdam’s red light district? The idea of the post was to contrast jihadism with tolerance, but I couldn’t resist slipping in the comment “I guess Christian fundamentalists would equally cheer such an attack”. Well, the traffic deluge from Daily Dish readers yielded a lot of e-mail in particular about this one sentence. And they weren’t all that complimentary. They fell apart in roughly two groups: one chastising me for having the temerity to soil my otherwise good post with such a controversial comment, and the other educating me on all the good work churches and religious groups do in actually helping and rehabilitating (rather than bombing) sex industry workers. The latter group is absolutely right, the former I am not to sure as I do think that many Christian fundamentalists - and in The Netherlands there continues to be a particularly strong and highly intolerant Calvinist strain – would, in silence, approve of the beginning of the end of the sexual tolerance and loose morals that have become an integral part of free societies.

It doesn’t mean that Sullivan’s theory about ‘Christianists’ is sufficiently clear to delineate groups, ideologies and political platforms. For instance, I am highly supportive of legalizing prostitution and decriminalizing drugs, while at the same time I defended Terri Schiavo’s right to remain on life support and yes, I continue to be fearful of any attempts to legalize euthanasia as both private and public healthcare facilities may end up with a tool to further streamline and economize their business.

So anyway, socially liberal positions do not necessarily exclude accepting positions that Sullivan considers ‘Christianist’. The boundaries that separate these opinions and ideas are often unclear and remain blurred, thankfully. I guess that is what sets our free and open society apart from those that are actually governed by religious fundamentalists. We can combine, we can debate, we can find some common ground in order to define and shape moral dilemmas.

NOTE: An interesting example is The Netherlands, one of the few countries in the west that actually has a number of political parties whose platform is based on biblical values, most notably the Christian-Democrat Appel, which is the largest party and has routinely lead coalition governments for most of the past 150 years. Are they Christianist? No, but neither are they on the left. The have successfully captured the center while always ensuring that their religious base remained comfortable. Therefore, same-sex marriages as well as euthanasia legislation were all enacted during the brief interlude (1994-02) when they were out of power and now that they’re back they would not have a hope of nullifying any of these laws. But that is also the result of coalition-style government, prompted by proportional representation.

Here's a long but fascinating piece by Martha Bayles on how America could potentially polish its cultural image abroad:

During the Cold War, the battle for hearts and minds was conceived very differently from today. While threatening to blow each other to eternity, the United States and the Soviet Union both claimed to be defending freedom, democracy, and human dignity. Without suggesting for a moment that the two sides had equal claim to those goals, it is nonetheless worth noting that America’s victory was won on somewhat different grounds: security, stability, prosperity, and technological progress.

Our enemies today do not question our economic and technological superiority, but they do question our moral and spiritual superiority.

My comment to this would be that the absence of moral and spiritual coherence in our society is something that plays into our enemies' hands in two ways. In the first place, Islamic purism provides an alternative but more importantly, the lack of a strong moral compass prevents us from effectively waging a battle, be it a physical one or one of ideas.

Hat tip: The Cunning Realist

NOTE: Martha Bayles blogs about film and culture over at Serious Popcorn.

Here’s another sign of impending doom, the death of manners. It may be trivial at first sight, but Theodore Dalrymple is correct in arguing that the quest for egalitarianism has spawned a form of aggressive individualism:

A problem arises, however, when all such rules, arbitrary as some of them might be, are eroded to the point of total informality. The culture of any society becomes graceless in the absence of all formality, a development that is peculiarly evident in my own country, Great Britain. Here, gracelessness has become, by a peculiar ideological inversion that has occurred in my lifetime, a manifestation of political virtue.

Dalrymple discounts the upward mobility of lower classes as a reason for the death of manners and lays the blame at equality’s door. There is probably a bit of both in it and unmannered and excessive individualism was no doubt given a lot of help by the advent of popular culture and the quest for instant gratification. At least, that is what I experienced in Europe where taste and manners went hand in hand and were often narrowly defined by class. For my generation it was a test, at primary school I was ‘forced’ to address my teacher by her name (this was the early 70s) and we were led to believe that the breakdown of authority and paternal structures was a virtue that provided endless freedom. Of course it did, but only a fraction of that very same generation came to realize that such unbounded excess wasn’t exactly contributing to a stable social framework. And so some of us gravitated back to be well-mannered citizens, barely scarred by the indiscriminate power of egalitarian education.

NOTE: Found the Dalrymple piece via Ed Driscoll. If you're in the middle of raising your kids or if you're behind in the manners department, I can absolutely recommend The Manners Club. The CD has some very catchy tunes, notably the theme song Everybody Needs Good Manners!

Canada’s new conservative government is on a roll with Stephen Harper threatening an early election if his budget – which contains a few controversial items – is rejected by parliament. And poll numbers indicate he would do well if such a snap election were held today.

This week the debate has centered around one of the more interesting features of the upcoming budget, the proposed childcare benefit which amounts to a taxable $1200 cash benefit per year for each pre-school child. Of course, the critics are correct in pointing out that this is a pretty measly hand-out which won’t buy you an awful lot of care for your child. But that is not the point here.

With the proposed childcare benefit, Harper aims to achieve a few things. Firstly, in order to fund it he will scrap the bloated one-size-fits-all solution put in place by the previous Liberal government which will inevitably create a unionized, huge in overheads, behemoth that will benefit and take care of everyone except your child. It’s an outdated solution, based on an outdated nanny-state philosophy. Secondly, and this is the more interesting part, the new childcare benefit seeks to give parents who have made the choice to stay at home something of value which they would miss out on if the one-size-fits-all solution were to be implemented. You want to invest in your child? Great, but don’t expect to see any of your tax dollars coming your way as we need it to fund our cradle-to-grave plans for other children. So, the new plan above all gives parents the right to make their own choice and frees them from being subject to an expensive institutionalized system of almost mandatory daycare.

All sound logic you will say, but the left has reacted as if bitten by a snake. Yesterday’s Globe and Mail ran the same picture of Harper as the one you see above, but it was accompanied by the headline “Social Conservatives to sell Tory daycare plan”. The positive, well-meaning and sometimes costly choice to stay at home for the first few formative years of your child’s life is for some not a particularly progressive choice. Worse, today’s “progressives” tend to look down upon moms and dads that are willing to forego income to help raise their child.

One other thing will also take center stage here. Many opponents to Harper’s plan will argue that some do need the old statist solution to their problems because some just can’t make ends meet without it. You won’t here a response to this argument from the conservatives, too awkward politically, but I will hand it to you: If you can’t make ends meet, you shouldn’t have a baby; if you’re a single mom you haven’t exactly acted very responsibly in getting pregnant in the first place; if your marriage is rocky then maybe you shouldn’t have a baby. In short, take responsibility.

It is too early a stage to throw a value as “socially conservative” as ‘responsibility’ in front of your average citizen, but with his childcare plans Stephen Harper has at least made an earnest beginning. By the time the little kid that pinches his nose is a grown up, maybe citizens can be expected to responsibly make their own choices without the omnipresent state as the giver of last resort.

Sure, it's not the end of the west, but to me it is another depressing example of how today's social mores are corrupting children's lives. Read For girls, is 12 the new 15?

The European birth deficits are compensated for almost exclusively by immigrants who in turn have more babies than the average European family, according to EU Business. It's not an entirely surprising conclusion, but it's nice to have some firm numbers in place supporting it.

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This time the BBC has taken a closer look at the numbers for Europe and the various ways in which governments are trying to get their citizens to procreate.

The magic replacement number is 2.10 children per family, a number that even Europe's most active breeders, the Catholic Irish, fail to attain with an average of 1.99 babies per family. Of course, this number fits the image that Ireland has always had in Europe (at least until its recent economic fortunes) as a backward and impoverished nation.

The nation that has almost given up on repl