The Confederate Conundrum

Over at the Alternative Right blog, Matthew Heimbach makes the case for flying the Confederate battle flag.  He is unapologetic about the inherent racism in the symbol and I applaud his honesty.  He also deplores the greed and lack of humanity that led to the importation of slaves from Africa, to be fair. The crux of his argument follows:

This flag has become a symbol of the Confederate soldier, but also White resistance to federal tyranny and forced multiculturalism. The men who fought under it rejected the idea of multiculturalism and an empire to rule over them, instead supporting a movement that would allow them self determination. States Rights is a part of this ideology, but it must be understood within the context of the people at the time knowing that their racial extended family was part of an organic State, not just lines on a map. 

While not consciously, this seem to be in rebuttal to Lincoln's second inaugural, which makes reference to the causes of the Civil War as well.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

So which was it? Resistance to cultural annihilation or merely limiting slavery?  Even though a lifelong admirer of Lincoln, like most Americans, I am struck that Lincoln is a bit disingenuous here.  Restricting the expansion of slavery was only the first step that the abolitionist Republican party desired, and, through the course of the Civil War, abolition succeeded.  But Heimbach is also a little off the mark because the Southern leadership knew they were fighting for the preservation of slavery in perpetuity.  The South rightly saw the election of Lincoln as the beginning of the end for slavery and struck at the North while they thought the odds favored them.  That they fought to perpetuate the evil of slavery cannot be glossed over in the defense of the flying of the Confederate flag; which Heimbach does not do.

But what of the dilemma of self determination within one's own group?  African-Americans are still only partially integrated into the whole of American society.  In San Francisco's Chinatown, the displacement of ethnic Chinese due to economic forces wrought by Airbnb has brought protest and angst, as the Chinese desire their own community.  The success of Spanish language television is evidence of slowing integration of Hispanics into mainstream American society.  When lower class whites self segregate it's called racism and when upper class whites do it, it is politely ignored or glossed over.  We encourage every ethnic group except Europeans descendants to self-segregate in the name of multiculturalism.  The balkanization of America seems inevitable as long as cultural marxists hold sway in leading the direction of America.

Further, there is scientific evidence that our brains are hardwired to be more accepting of people like ourselves.  Tribalism is deeply embedded in our make up. So America has a natural barrier to overcome, and seems to have done so right up until the 1960s.  At this point in history, it seems that our success is coming apart.  Why?  I feel as though we are not asking the right questions.

The right question to ask is, why were we successful in being absorbing other cultures into our society in the first place?  The answer has to do with unspoken agreement about the nature of the culture and the relative numbers of people who were not part of it.

American culture and political theory derives from England. The American revolution was essentially an English one, in which the colonists objected to the impositions of the crown, because they violated their rights as Englishmen.  The nation was founded with a language and culture inherited from England, perhaps Great Britain.  Its institutions and the logic of its judiciary were inherited from English experience with separation of powers.  Over time, new immigrants were expected to accept this regime, learn English and assimilate.  Rather than from a set of universalist beliefs, our nation is founded on a particular set of beliefs about our rights that derive from our English cultural antecedents. I discussed the difference between universal and national rights in a prior post.

Additionally, like it or not, there seems to be a genetic component to political belief and one's view of rights.  This leads me to conclude that the current antipathy to the Anglo-centric European view of limited government can be traced in part to the increased immigration from nationalities unfriendly towards that view of government.  This has been exacerbated by an increased leftism among white people who some feel guilty over the dominance that European peoples have had over the rest of the world.  The left has turned against the culture of their forefathers and sought alliance with immigrants from lands hostile to American and European hegemony.  This explains in part the left's support for open borders.  (Libertarians in favor of open borders are deluded into thinking that all cultures are amenable to concepts of limited government, when this desire is in fact limited to a very few nationalities.)

It is in this context that I have to re-examine my long time dislike of the Confederate battle flag.  While it has the taint of slavery, it is also the most recognizable expression of a desire to preserve and Anglo-centric European culture in America.  In my view, it is a culture worth preserving because it gave us the founding fathers, and somewhat paradoxically, Lincoln; and the most free and prosperous nation the world has ever seen.  As I quote very often, Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful.  American traditional culture is all of that, which makes it worth preserving.

As to why were we successful for a while and no longer seem to be?  I lay the failure at the doorstep of feminism and leftism, really the same things.  We started telling ethnic groups that they no longer needed to assimilate and rewarded them for not doing so.  We started bringing in massive numbers of immigrants from cultures whose values were inimical to our own. We started undermining traditional societal roles, undermining social cohesion.  We started undermining the white middle class through globalism and mass immigration.  We undermined white middle class by undermining marriage through feminist doctrine.  We started undermining social cohesion by an assault on our society's traditional belief in Christianity.  As a result of these assaults, many people in American society no longer see themselves as Americans, but as some "other" such as Black, Hispanic, or Muslim.  Given that a larger number of Americans self-identify this way, and given the power of identity, is it any wonder that the idea of America is being overthrown?

But ultimately, the rights of people as individuals and their rights as members of groups are on a collision course.  Given the large numbers of whites in the country, I can only see conflict ahead if a sense of national identity is not restored.  So whites have a reasonable right to fly the confederate flag in protest against an organized attempt to marginalize their culture.  But isn't the answer.

What is needed is a counter-synthesis to the prevailing synthesis of leftism and traditionalism that governs our culture.  This is why there is an alt-right that looks at these issues not through the prism of policy or law, but through the perspective of cultural heritage that is biologically inherited.  The problem still to be solved is how to assimilate those who lack the genetic propensity to accept the cultural and political norms that founded the nation; and how to ostracize and defeat the traitorous left that seeks to destroy the most successful culture the world has ever seen.

Paying Tribute to Veterans at Mount Soledad

I spent the morning at Mt. Soledad Veteran's Memorial with men from my church.  If you live in San Diego or ever pass through, you should definitely visit the site; it is one of the gems of the city.

Today, we paid tribute to veterans we knew and talked about their lives and how service to their country was an integral part.  I was struck at how members of the World War 2 generation, were and still are reticent about their war experiences.  Certainly, war is always horrible, regardless of the technology used to fight; but it seems that men are much more willing to discuss what happened today.  I am not passing judgement on this, just an observation.

I was also struck but how unspoken our assumptions about military service are.  There are many motives for signing up, but in our nation, we have traditionally believed that serving in the military served a higher calling; because our nation is, was and always will be a beacon for good.  We exercise our freedom of religion, but collectively believe that our national belief in a good and just God makes us a nation worth defending.

Such concepts are under assault by the left on a daily basis, especially on our campuses.  The ease with which College Insurrection produces clickable headlines for conservatives has to do with the outrageous way that the left behaves on campus.  (Today's headline: University cuts Pledge of Allegiance from Veterans Day Chapel. Short rebuttal: Faith and patriotism have always been linked.)  If those of us who cherish our liberty and the cultural conditions that produced limited, constitutional government continue to lose the culture wars, then military service will be dead.  Freedom for our nation will be dead as well.

The good news is that the left always lies and their dogma makes no sense.  The bad news is that they are influencing the culture successfully.  We are heirs to two millennia of intellectual tradition and greatness.  To lose when holding such a winning hand would be ludicrous; but is possible.

White Working Class Death Rates and The Culture

I already posted about the increase in the death rate among middle-aged white people without college degrees and its tie to immigration.  Heartiste has done a great job in summarizes all of the causes behind the statistic:

Think about the ingredients of a happy life: 

Family — destroyed by welfare, feminism, gogrrl careerism, obesity, and sinking earnings for working class men.
Community — destroyed by population density and Diversity™.
Work — destroyed by open borders, automation, and oligarchic greed.
Faith — destroyed by SCALE-induced materialism and noblesse malice. 

The working poor and less-educated need these four pillars, perhaps more than effete SWPLs do, to feel like their lives have purpose. Instead, malignant elements in our ruling class have done everything in their power to knock those pillars over and smash them to dust.

SWPL = Stuff White People Like, but has become a term of derision for effete college-educated whites who identify as liberal as long as they never have to encounter an actual black man.

The lack of faith, as evidenced by rampant materialism, is driving down birth rates, which in turn become a source of depression.  We see this most rampantly in Germany, which despite being an economic engine of Europe now, won't remain so for long with a fertility rate of 1.4 (well below replacement of 2.1) and a mere 8.2 children born per 1,000 inhabitants over the last five years.  It is not coincidental that Germans are gutting churches to make room for Muslim immigrants.

Gavin McInnes Nails It

Being interviewed in the Hollywood Reporter, Gavin McInnes nails my political philosophy (and I don't care if you think he's trolling):

"I am a socially liberal libertarian who is not for open borders," he says. "That's my only problem with libertarians. I want almost no laws, I want the smallest government possible. I don't want anyone telling anyone what to do. But I also see the merit in tradition and I think that women and men are different."
When THR pointed out that this sounds more like a socially conservative position, McInnes laughed. "Yeah, I guess so."

For those who misread yesterday's post, this is my philosophy as well.  We should be free to use social pressure to re-institute a conservative social order that will make the country prosper and become far happier.  But unlike, the left I don't care to impose such a social order through the government. Such a culture is robust and successful that it doesn't need government to impose it, unlike leftism.

If you don't think a lack of social cohesion and purpose is a destroyer of culture, I ask you to ponder this piece by Leon Wolf at RedState bookends quoted here:

There’s a very simple reason why extremist Islam – a culture that is unable on its own merits to progress scientifically beyond the beginning of the 18th century or so – is able in the modern world to consistently embarrass countries possessed of vastly superior military might. That reason is this: extremist Islam believes that it has a claim to a superior message for the world. Christendom no longer does.
. . .
There is a reason that every week brings a new story about a kid raised in comfort here in the West running off to join ISIS, to the shocked dismay of his/her parents. ISIS, at least, presents a front that says that the world and life has objective meaning and that they, ISIS, have a claim to that meaning. Here in the West, by way of contrast, we allow our kids to just float adrift on a sea of meaningless moral relativity and nihilism. As C.S. Lewis noted, the human psyche tends toward rejection of a meaningless explanation for existence – and if the West cannot offer such meaning, people will get it somewhere else.

Leftism is doomed, it will eat the societies it conquers.  The real question is whether we Americans can restore the sense of our exceptionalism based on a Christian culture.

What You Should Be Reading

• Heather Gillers (@hgillers on twitter) according to KTCat. Her excellent reporting on Chicago's financial collapse has been ignored by the voters of that fine city.
• Erick Erickson at Redstate.com for inventing the phrase "you will be made to care" to describe the fascist approach to gay rights.
• William Jacobsen at LegalInsurrection for exposing the anti-semitic filth that is the BDS movement.

How Your Support for Gay Marriage is a Threat to Craft Beer

Alternate title:
The Left and Government Sanctioned Destruction of the Culture

The key insight that brings conservatives and libertarians together in an alliance against the left is that liberty in a constitutional republic can only be predicated on a conservative culture. A conservative culture constrains the bounds of behavior so that government can exercise a light touch over a society that will still function properly. This is why the left is seeking to destroy the pillars of conservative culture in America; marriage and family, the Christian church, and the language. This is being accomplished through government aided destruction of those institutions; while simultaneously "solving" the problems so created and simultaneously growing government.  I am not making an accusation of conspiracy; merely stating that there is a shared realization on the part of the leaders of the left, whether intuitive or explicit, that traditional American culture is a bulwark against their desire for a socialist society.  Hence the movements to delegitimize the keepers of this cultural flame.

The Christian religion, and in particular, the Northern European interpretation of it, has led to a culture of individualism. In this interpretation, one's salvation is determined by an individual decision to follow Jesus. This relationship with God, an intensely personal one, without the benefit of an earthly mediator, leads directly to the conclusion that each man and woman is responsible for the ordering of his or her own life within the constraint of belief. This gives the individual the mental freedom to be entrepreneurial which is usually disruptive to the established order.  Further, within this theological understanding, the grace granted by God should lead to good works in this life as evidenced by one's hard work and frugality.  This idea of this Protestant work ethic being related to the rise and success of capitalism is not new, having been proposed by Max Weber in 1905.  There is a natural cultural pairing of Christianity and capitalism, especially in America. The left, which is nothing if not anti-capitalist, naturally views traditional Christian belief as embodied in the conservative church as an enemy.

This Christian culture is not going to survive without actual Christian belief, so the left seeks to attack both Christian belief and institutions at every opportunity.  Gay marriage is only the latest example.  The move to legalize gay marriage was followed without pause by a public campaign of persecution against those who have religious and moral objections to that outcome.  In some cases, the persecution has taken the form of state sanction against bakeries.  The seamless transition to persecution gave the lie to the notion that this was about equal rights. The gay marriage movement was clearly a ploy to delegitimize traditional Christian belief.  In the meantime, there is no parallel movements against Muslim belief, even though Islam is much more harsh in its treatment of gays than Christians. Why? Because the Left sees Muslims as potential allies to attack the traditional Christian culture.

Destroying traditional pillars of culture and morality results in the need for more government control to make up for the lack of self-control in the population. This is a feature, not a bug, of the process of destroying the culture and is embraced by the left. For example, rampant sex between undergraduates on college campuses is the norm today, or so we are led to believe. While perhaps that has always happened to some extent; it was far less in degree and done with far greater discretion in times past.  But since this behavior gives rise to sex under questionable circumstances, we have the California have the California State Legislature considering how to regulate sex on campus. Here is KTCat's take:

Of course, as we all know, freedom isn't free. No, there's a price to be paid for freedom. We must maintain eternal vigilance lest the dark powers of Christian morality and its wretched partner, chivalry, attempt to come back.
Well, vigilance and affirmative consent rules, ruthlessly enforced by the State, that is. After all, we need something to do the job of a national culture based on Judeo-Christian objective morality.

The same groups who demand that government, to include colleges acting in loco parentis, stop prohibiting sex are now those who demand that government become involved in sex at college.  Why the shift?  This has to do primarily with feminism, which seeks the destruction of traditional gender roles in society and is almost always allied with leftism for that reason.  The initial calls to deregulate sex allowed women more sexual freedom.  Coupled with the wide-spread introduction of no-fault divorce, and state support for single mothers; this shifted economic power away from bread-winning males to the state.  (Time precludes a full exposition of this theory, see Dalrock for more detail.) I note that the government has taken to jailing fathers who don't pay child support in fairly large numbers, further shifting power away from men to the government.  This is necessary because it is men who are likely to be the revolutionaries that rise up against state power.  Now, the new change in attitudes with regards to sex on college campuses is to make it easier for women to accuse men of rape and for consequences to be meted out, without the benefit of trial.  Again there is power shifting towards women, who can claim rape without having to go to trial. The shift of power to single women suits the left just fine, because they tend to be reliable supporters of left-wing candidates.  Married women are much more conservative, because the power of government robs their family of provisioning resources, since intact families are much more likely to be paying more in taxes than they receive in benefits from the state.

So how does the left act in power?  They seek to regulate all facets of society to shift ever more power to the government, in the name of protecting the ordinary worker and consumer, often harming those same groups in the process.  It is not a coincidence that the same political groups that set themselves against traditional culture are the ones who also argue for larger government.  I may add examples later, but the fight over uncontrolled illegal immigration has to do with how fast our society can today assimilate immigrants without damaging our current culture.  Those who favor amnesty and open borders that would inevitably bring in more immigrants call their opponents racist; claiming that is the only reason that traditionalists would wish to control immigration. But society can only assimilate immigrates so fast.  So the call for amnesty and open borders is a cal to subvert traditional American culture by overwhelming it with immigrants who have not had the time to assimilate.  For the most part, those supporting amnesty also support increased government spending and regulating, such as the Affordable Care Act. In turn, government spending and regulating is destructive of free markets.  The left consists of an alliance of groups such as union leaders, environmentalists, and feminists seeking to both increase the scope of government and undermine traditional society.  These goals are complimentary not separate.

Which brings me to craft beer.  My observation is that craft beer is largely a pursuit of white males who are just starting to disrupt the current market for beer dominated by large corporations like AB-InBev.  Budweiser's Super Bowl commercial was evidence that the big companies are taking notice.  AB InBev has a large contract with the Teamsters in North America.  If craft beer threatens union jobs, how long before craft brewers come under pressure?  There will be calls to raise wages, to increase regulatory scrutiny and to change alcohol distribution laws to protect the big boys and the union jobs.  (Look at what Walmart endures.)  Further, the whiteness and maleness of the industry will come under attack by the cultural marxists. (Don't believe me, perform a search on "San Diego Craft Brewers Guild" under images and look at the faces in the various pictures.) The guardians of political correctness will seek to make sure that craft beer will be seen as somehow racist or anti-feminist or some other pejorative.  When craft beer is seen as a threat, and that is just starting, then the persecution will begin.

So this is why your support for gay marriage threatens craft beer.  By supporting gay marriage you are joining an alliance that views entrepreneurs, such as craft brewers, as a threat and who wish to destroy the culture that allows free markets to thrive.  You are voting for socialism, whether you like it or not.

Yes, that's a picture of Jesus watching over my craft beer drinking.

It's the Culture, Stupid

Elections tomorrow are really only a rearguard action to slow the spread of the disease of leftism and its advance vermin of multi-culturalism and feminism in our society.  The attacks on all things traditional, including and especially the rule of law are intended to pave the way for leftist politicians with unlimited power to get away with ruling by decree because those laws are just "unreasonable." Like freedom of speech?  The left, in the guise of #feminism launches a campaign to mark some speech, #catcalling, as so offensive as to be in need of restriction.  Of course, it is only part of a larger scheme.  R.S. McCain explains:

You see? The whole point of the “catcall” video was to provoke conflict over a phony “issue” that is not really an issue at all. That is to say, everybody is anti-catcall, except those men who are actually engaged in this boorish behavior, so why is there an “issue” here?
Objectively, catcalling presents no cause for political controversy. Ah, but it does give feminists a chance to (a) demonize men, and (b) discredit any male commentator who attempts to dispute feminism’s authority to define what catcalling means as an “issue.” This is really about who controls the narrative, see?
. . .
Feminists can “win” arguments only if they are permitted to control the terms of debate, to decide what the issues are, to limit the parameters of discussion, and to disqualify critics who refuse to cooperate with feminism’s Orwellian thought-control project.

Fortunately, because of the racial content of the men depicted in the catcall video, there has been some blowback against feminism.  But that was only luck.  We lose the culture wars and then elections, when we allow the left to frame the debate.  Too often we win elections and the government still changes under our feet.

Mark Steyn makes that point regarding gay marriage:

In 1986, in a concurrence to a majority opinion, the chief justice of the United States declared that “there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” A blink of an eye, and his successors are discovering fundamental rights to commit homosexual marriage.
What happened in between? Jurisprudentially, nothing: Everything Chief Justice Warren Burger said back in the ’80s — about Common Law, Blackstone’s “crime against nature,” “the legislative authority of the State” — still applies. Except it doesn’t. Because the culture — from school guidance counselors to sitcom characters to Oscar hosts — moved on, and so even America’s Regency of Jurists was obliged to get with the beat.
Because to say today what the chief justice of the United States said 28 years ago would be to render oneself unfit for public office — not merely as Chief Justice but as CEO of a private company, or host of a cable home-remodeling show, or dog-catcher in Dead Moose Junction.

Indeed, ballot measures to define marriage as between a man and a woman passed even in solidly Democrat California, but it made no difference.

So what's to be done?  The only way to fight back is to seize control of the narrative, to ridicule lampoon and shame the forces of cultural marxism, to call them out for the liars they are.

Rapes on campus? Sorry, you're a bunch of liars.  And who said you get to regulate sex on campus? And if your stupid statistics are true, why did you send your daughter to college, do you hate her?

Lena Dunham the spokesperson for her generation? Sorry, don't accept lectures from pedophiles.

Gay marriage? I find it disgusting to hear about men sticking their dicks in other men and most of you do too. Isn't that what gay marriage is about?

R.S. McCain continues with this great advice:

“Turn the camera around,” as Andrew Breitbart used to say. Instead of them demanding answers from you — “Look at this awful misogyny! Why don’t you denounce this misogyny? Is it true that you secretly hate women?” — you start asking them questions:

1. Who appointed you as Grand Inquisitor?
2. What is the basis of your authority to interrogate me about this? What difference does my opinion make?
3. When did Americans elect you as Our Moral Superior?
4. Where do you get the idea that I’m obliged to cooperate in this transparent political “gotcha” game you’re paying?
5. Why is it necessary that I answer your questions?
6. How much is the Democrat Party paying you to do this?

Indeed, because the whole point of the cultural marxism is to move the country to the left.  Because in a country founded on principles of limited government and liberty, traditional values are the bulwark of maintaining that form of government.  So the left seeks to destroy the values that preserve liberty, and this is why the culture ware is more important.

Sad to say, I am personally more comfortable with economics and policy, so I have left this topic alone for the most part.  The culture is not my forte, so I will most likely stick to my expertise on this blog.  But my growing understanding of the nature of framing the narrative by the left has dampened my enthusiasm for writing about the purely political.



 

Influencing the Culture - Economics of Divorce

Fellow SLOB blogger, KTCat, rightfully points out the overwhelming number of correlations between cultural dysfunction and economic blight both in the U.S. and overseas.  He asks tough questions and gets on my case over drug legalization because I believe he sees it as another step backward in maintaining a culture that caused our country to become a great and wealthy country.  The culture is at least partially the product of the incentives that the populace operates under.  For example, we subsidize single parenthood through AFDC and low and behold we get more of it.  We should ask what incentives could be changed to start to change the culture.  I have also been surveying some blogs that focus on culture for some of the answers.  I offer some ideas for your consideration.

Divorce.  The U.S. Census Bureau reports that children of divorce are more likely to live in poverty.  What causes divorce?  I don't know all of the reasons, but we know that divorce was less likely in times past.  Maybe the question we should be asking is what prevents divorce.  It turns out that the extent to which courts enforce alimony and child support increases the probability that a woman will seek divorce.  H/T Dalrock.  Dalrock points out that the authors of the study think this is a good thing, because it allows mothers to have more leverage over fathers in marriage.  Why this is good is not explicitly stated.  Any discussion of reducing the rate of divorce has to start with reducing the incentives, including alimony which typically goes to the woman, because woman tend to marry up.

Single Parenthood.  The divorce rules will also provide an incentive for men to avoid marriage as well.  The greater the potential financial penalty in a potential divorce, the less willing will men be to enter into marriage.  Given the average woman's desire to have offspring and the uncertainties of birth control and the lack of opprobrium surrounding extramarital sex, there are powerful incentives for men to avoid marriage.  Changing the ground rules in family court might help change these incentives.  Perhaps the old rules requiring a cause of action for divorce would apply if one of the aggrieved parties desired alimony or child support.  Flimsy reasons for divorce provided by supposedly Christian mommy-bloggers might not look so attractive if no child support or alimony were forthcoming.

Penalizing Marriage. The ACA encourages divorce because of the way that subsidies are tied to the poverty level.

Any married couple that earns more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level—that is $62,040—for a family of two earns too much for subsidies under Obamacare. "If you're over 400 percent of poverty, you're never eligible for premium" support, explains Gary Claxton, director of the Health Care Marketplace Project at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But if that same couple lived together unmarried, they could earn up to $45,960 each—$91,920 total—and still be eligible for subsidies through the exchanges in New York state, where insurance is comparatively expensive and the state exchange was set up in such a way as to not provide lower rates for younger people. 

The tax code overall is mixed regarding penalties and bonuses for getting married.  Continuing to ensure that there is no penalty for marriage is helpful.

These are a few ideas that come to mind.  I am not so naive as to believe that economic incentives by themselves will change the culture, and surely not in the short term.  But I notice that people respond to incentives in the long run.

What You Should Be Reading

• If you want Christian perspective on culture that is not polluted by the screed of feminism, then try KTCat, Dalrock and Sunshine Mary.
• Dean is back, noting the falling U.S. economic freedom index.
• In a small blow for economic freedom, federal judges overturned ridiculous FCC rules on net neurality.
• The City Journal because it has excellent in depth policy discussion that will get you thinking.
• Legal Insurrection documents the administration's march towards Hugo Chavez style thugocracy, with its proposed rules to quash conservative groups' tax exempt status, while leaving leftists' untouched.

Why I Froze My Eggs - You Ignored the Wisdom of Ages

I started to read a WSJ article that discussed egg freezing this weekend while visiting my parents.  Ever the optimist, I thought this would be an article about giving married woman more options, which might also reverse our low birthrates.  Instead, the second paragraph revealed the real issue:

Egg freezing stopped the sadness that I was feeling at losing my chance to have the child I had dreamed about my entire life. It soothed my pangs of regret for frittering away my 20s with a man I didn't want to have children with, and for wasting more years in my 30s with a man who wasn't sure he even wanted children. It took away the punishing pressure to seek a new mate and helped me find love again at age 42.

I don't normally wade into the culture wars, leaving that for KT and Leslie (Leslie also posts regularly on College Insurrection).  But I have to ask what inability to assimilate socially useful information (search that phrase) results in a decade and a half of relationship futility with known losers?  Decade 1: you know that you don't want to have children with Dolt #1, despite your claim that having children is your lifelong dream, but hey what's a decade?  Decade 2: Dude can't even decide?  Sorry, a real man will either say "I want to have children and marriage for life; honey you're the one I want to make babies with" or "I don't want kids, I am focused on my own career, or whatever, but I still want the lifelong marriage."  Mister milquetoast does neither and Ms. Egg Freezer can't bring herself to leave this loser.  I didn't read the rest of the article, because this woman had destroyed her credibility in two short paragraphs.  And she is sadly mistaken if she thinks that this all cost her $50,000.  It cost far, far more and sadder still, she is now lying to herself about it.

This is why, in ancient times, like up to a few centuries ago, marriages were arranged by parents or through some other means.  Relationships outside of the context of life long commitment weren't even contemplated.  The lesson to be drawn is that you only date those with whom you see a possibility of marriage.  My oldest son, in his early twenties, gets this.  If you ask him why he hasn't been on that many dates, he will say that he only dates women with whom he intends to have a serious relationship.  By serious, he means potentially leading to marriage.  Why bother otherwise, he says, it just wastes the precious little time that God has given him on this earth.  That American women in their late thirties do not understand this concept eludes my comprehension.  Like all great principles, this one is simple and understandable.

What You Should Be Reading

Dean calls out Chuck Schumer for throwing Obama under the bus, acknowledging that the ACA is going to send your health care bills through the roof.  Relatedly, Megan McArdle analyzes why access to Medicaid doesn't make Oregonians healthier.  

As Professor Mark J. Perry has been pointing out on his blog, Shale oil and gas in North America is THE game changer.  Even Obama can't stop this from benefiting the U.S. in a big way.  The National Interest looks at the national security implications.