I’ve written three times before on the question of how much the Dobbs decision, which gave states the power to tighten abortion laws, has actually reduced abortion in the US (I, II, III). The upshot of those pieces was that it has not reduced abortion very much (~2%) because the vast majority of the US population lives in… Continue reading Abortions Now Exceed Pre-Dobbs Levels
Why Did Noah Smith Post This?
Noah Smith wrote a piece at his newsletter (which I generally find interesting) titled “Western leftists have lost the plot” where he collects a handful of extreme reactions to the recent Hamas attack and then pivots to psychoanalyzing why the Left has reacted this way. The short of it is that the Left, in his… Continue reading Why Did Noah Smith Post This?
Alarmgate
When you are in the discourse for as long as I have been, you start to spot certain patterns of discursive behavior. One such pattern is that groups of people who are loosely affiliated in some way will create and then reinforce myths and misinterpretations about individuals and institutions that don’t make any sense. What’s… Continue reading Alarmgate
Response to Douthat on Two-Parent Families
Ross Douthat had a response to my response to the various promotional pieces about Melissa Kearney’s new book. Douthat’s response is generally OK but, in addition to clarifying my point, I do want to respond to one part of Douthat’s piece here, as he says something that has been annoying me for a while but… Continue reading Response to Douthat on Two-Parent Families
Doing the Marriage Thing Again
Melissa Kearney is promoting a book where she dares to speak a truth that nobody else is brave enough to say: marriage and two-parent families are very good. So stigmatized is this view that in the last three days alone, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post (twice) have featured pieces promoting… Continue reading Doing the Marriage Thing Again